Jewel in the BBC's crown

The Envy of the World, by Humphrey Carpenter (Phoenix Giant, £10.99 in UK) A major chapter, or chapters, of broadcasting history, is covered in this lively, well-researched chronicle: fifty years of the BBC Third Programme and Radio 3. "The Third", as it became known, was a unique institution, the triumph of highbrow idealism over commercialism and the tastes of the Common Man. That it ever got going is a miracle, that it survived for so long is another, though eventually it was whittled down to a music programme and the golden age of radio talks and "scripts" by Louis MacNeice and his peers is long departed. The illustrations are nostalgia-inducing. B.F.