Pirates of the north sea.

• Author: Walker, Jesse
• Position: Briefly Noted - Oliver Smedley - Brief article

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Britain's pirate radio stations of the 1960s broadcast bands like the Who and the Rolling Stones to teenagers across the U.K. But when Oliver Smedley helped launch the offshore radio revolution, he didn't have music on his mind. A classical liberal--he preferred the word radical-influenced by F.A. Hayek and Ronald Coase, Smedley was on a mission to break up the British Broadcasting Corporation's monopoly of the airwaves.

Adrian Johns tells Smedley's story capably in Death of a Pirate (Norton). Johns is both a sharp intellectual historian and a talented storyteller, a man who...