PRIESTLEY is a name to conjure with in the North of England. Every breath we take could be a reminder of the Rev Joseph Priestley, one of the 18th century discoverers of oxygen. But topical is the novelist and playwright bred in satanic mills country who, 70 years ago, was the most acclaimed broadcaster in wartime Britain.

The BBC asked J B Priestley to give a series of ten-minute talks on the Home Service just after the nine o’clock news on Sundays. Called Postscript, these were to counter William Joyce’s weekly “Germany calling” slots aired from Hamburg at the same time.

Lord Haw-Haw, although despised, had a morbid fascination for millions of British listeners; his stock in trade was a veneer of verisimilitude (he asserted once that Darlington town clock, atop its Teutonic tower, was two minutes’ slow) to enhance “our spies are everywhere” propaganda.

Priestley’s contributions were enormously popular. He had up to 16 million listeners. His Postscripts were a potent mix of common sense, patriotism, laughter at the Nazis and a theme that once the war was won, there should be a fairer Britain – with no repeat of the 1914-18 broken promise that troops should return to “homes fit for heroes”. The Establishment was offended. Priestley was replaced.

Tomorrow, Radio 4 dramatises his novel Bright Day. His finest play, An Inspector Calls, has just been broadcast. It makes magnificent radio. A prosperous mill-owning family is confronted with the tragic consequences of its culpable complacency in the patrician pre-1914 era that so gets Priestley’s goat.

Is the time-travelling inspector their conscience or even God? In its call for community fellow-feeling and responsibility, it is truly a play for today.