Ghiță Ionescu on the BBC

Abstract

Ghiță Ionescu, Romanian journalist and diplomat, arrived in London in March 1947. In the 1930's he had published several articles in leftist press. His communist simpathies were crushed by the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, on 23 August 1939, Ghiță Ionescu started hating with equal passion both Fascism and Communism. In October 1949, Ghiță Ionescu started teaching the Romanian language and history at the War Office as part of courses held by the prestigious School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES) with London University. The director of the SSEES was probably the one who recommended Ghiță Ionescu for the European section of the BBC in 1950. Ionescu submitted an analysis of Cominform policies, recorded on magnetic tape on 8 June 1950 and broadcast on 15 June after the 19:00 news bulletin. Shortly after, the Romanian section of the BBC asked him for a longer version of that analysis. The text was broadcast by the Romanian section of the BBC on the evening of 22 June 1950. In late August 1950, he decided to submit a proposal to BBC management to turn "Letter from London" into a regular feature to be broadcast on Wednesday night every other week. The head of the Romanian section, Doreen Berry, told him on 12 September that he could continue the feature until the end of the year. Ghiță Ionescu was asked to focus "more on the international scene and less on special Romanian events". For five years, starting in 1950, “The Letter from London” was Ghiță Ionescu's signature feature.