To review Dr Leach’s Reith Lectures, A Runaway World, is not a straightforward task. It is not possible to take up the many points on which they invite comment or provoke disagreement without first defining one’s position towards the blanket disapproval with which they were greeted when originally delivered, and noting the implications of this opposition. The lectures were meaty and intentionally provocative: contrary to their author I think they make better reading than listening simply because there is too much to take in by the ear alone: which makes it all the sadder that so much comment was lavished on them as radio talks and so little in their printed form. Reith Lectures have, of course, proved controversial in the past but none has provoked quite the response these did, and this must, at least in part, be explained by timing and the topic.

The whole conception of the Reith Lectures assumes a hierarchical public opinion with a narrow apex definable largely in terms of who knows who but predominantly drawn from certain professions and the public service and the so-called quality newspapers, transmitting downwards through the universities, the colleges of education to eventually the secondary modern schools, the right opinions and the tolerated areas of disagreement. Quite suddenly in the last three years this hierarchical structure has started to break up and voices quite outside the old establishment, more strident, much less informed, but sometimes more passionately concerned have started to make themselves heard and been shown to carry weight.