This book looks at the rise in Pevsner?s standing at the BBC, at what he was admired for, and at the circumstances surrounding his being commissioned, in the mid-1950s, to give the first series of Reith Lectures on an arts subject. It also documents the unravelling of Pevsner's reputation, showing how he was caught between changing fashions in media culture and doubts about the safety of his ideas, both within the BBC and, externally, by British conservatives who found him too radical and American radicals who found him too conservative.