This chapter focuses on the changing role of the BBC World Service in addressing audiences in the Middle East, exploring the evolving relationship between the World Service and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, its paymaster, over some seven decades.1 This particular case allows us to discern (a) the parallel activities between formal diplomacy and “soft power” that have been in place for some time, (b) the shift from an approach that might be labeled “propagandistic” to one that better fits within the rubric of “public diplomacy”, and (c) the changing rhetoric of the key institutional players as they attempt to embrace “public diplomacy.”