Sharq Al-Adna/The Voice of Britain

Abstract

This study of Sharq al-Adna - The Near East Broadcasting Station - attempts to review the history of the British government-operated radio station in light of political and military developments in the Middle East involving the UK after the end of the League of Nations/United Nations Palestine Mandate. An examination of Sharq al-Adna is important because it helps document both British and more widely western concerns about the Middle East in the 1950s, especially after Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal in July 1956 after the June British departure. The article discusses western, and more specifically British, propaganda during the Second World War, and analyzes this station’s history with the aid of government documents that were declassified in the mid-1990s and to which the writer had access.