The Hour is genuine, accurate – and fiction

I agree with Lynne Reid Banks ( Letters , 25 July) that ITN in the 1950s was a trailblazer, but it was BBC News that first had an in-vision presenter, not alas, wearing a dinner jacket. The Hour is unfolding as a political thriller set against real events, and for plot purposes it has to be set at the "BBC", here much romanticised for dramatic effect. All the TV studio and news film kit on display is genuine and correct for the period of 1956. Having said that, The Hour is strictly a drama. Dicky Howett Historical technical and script adviser, The Hour • How come Reid Banks remembers so much detail about the BBC TV newsroom more than 50 years ago if she worked for ITN? I was a staff radio and TV news reporter for the BBC between 1955 and 1960, and I didn't observe any glaring inaccuracies in the first instalment of The Hour. In fact, I was impressed. True, we seldom went on assignments not accompanying a cameraman and sound recordist, but there were times when filming wasn't possible and we spoke our reports to camera later in the studio. Women's clothes and studio gear looked fairly convincing to me – after all, this was drama. Barbara Hooper Bisley, Gloucestershire • In the 50s I worked on the only BBC TV "news" programme, which was similar to Pathe and Movietone films shown in the cinema. Nothing of that day's news was shown. I was assured by the then head of BBC News, Tahu Hole, when boarded for another job in BBC News, that news had no place on TV and never would. I did not see the new BBC drama, The Hour. I do remember, however, that during ITV's first night in London, ITN had the effrontery to transmit live news with the likes of Robin Day and Chris Chataway sitting beside a teleprinter. The BBC persisted in its "news" output for quite a long time. It has never caught up. Graham Watts Askrigg, North Yorkshire