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 Friday听听听16:00-16:30
Sunday听20:30-21:00听(rpt)
Radio 4's weekly obituaries programme |
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This week |
Friday听22nd August听2008
(Rpt) Sunday听24th August |
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Leo Abse
Former Labour MP who championed reform of divorce, abortion and homosexual rights law
Leo Abse was born in Cardiff, the son of a solicitor and cinema owner. His older brother Wilfred was an eminent psychoanalyst and his younger brother is the poet Dannie Abse. A campaigning MP who was interested in family law, abortion and divorce rights, Leo Abse guided a Private Member's Bill through Parliament in 1967 that legalised sex between men. Matthew talks to Dannie Abse about his brother's life and to Leo Abse's friend and former Labour leader Lord Kinnock.
Leo Abse was born 22 April 1917 and died 19 August 2008. |
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Jim Johnson
Former soldier who led a military operation in Yemen
The life of Colonel Jim Johnson reads like something by John Buchan. He ran a clandestine operation in Yemen in the 1960s and then set up a private military company. When the Second World War broke out, Jim Johnson was 15 and joined the Home Guard. He later served in Europe as a junior officer with the Welsh Guards. After the war, Jim Johnson became a Lloyds underwriter but in his spare time rose to command a territorial army branch of the SAS. In 1962, a revolution in North Yemen overthrew the royal family. Opinion in Britain was divided. The Foreign Office wanted to recognise the new government, but some, including a group of Conservative politicians and former servicemen who met at White鈥檚 Club, were convinced that in the aftermath of the Suez crisis, Britain should act to protect her strategic interests in the region. Colonel Jim Johnson was asked to head up an unofficial military operation. Matthew talks to Colonel Johnson鈥檚 friend the writer Tony Geraghty and to Professor Clive Jones of Leeds University, who has written about the civil war in Yemen.
Jim Johnson was born 21 December 1924 and died 20 July 2008. |
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Jerry Wexler
Legendary record producer
Jerry Wexler was one of the most influential record producers of the past fifty years. He coined the term rhythm and blues, and, as a partner in Atlantic Records, worked with some of the greatest artists of the twentieth century. Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding and Dusty Springfield were among the star names who benefitted from the Wexler production technique. And, after leaving Atlantic, he went on to work with Dire Straits, Santana and Bob Dylan, among many others. Jerry Wexler was born in the Bronx, the son of a window cleaner who had emigrated from Poland. Having bluffed his way though school and left college early, he spent his nights in Harlem where he loved the music of Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday. After Second World War military service spent entirely in Texas and Florida, Jerry Wexler landed a job on Billboard magazine. As the broadcaster Paul Gambaccini recalls, at that time they were struggling with what to call their Black Music charts .
Jerry Wexler was born 10 January 1917 and died 15 August 2008. |
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Tony Vine
Norfolk naturalist
Tony Vine devoted much of his life to bats, birds and badgers. In doing so, he compiled a comprehensive set of diaries and log books which chronicle the changing patterns of wildlife in the county he loved. Tony was a member of more than thirty societies with interests which ranged from dummy airfields of the Second World War to Roman saltworks and mediaeval villages. But his major passion was the natural world. Helped by his work as a farm manager, he was able to persuade landowners to give him access to search out remote badger setts or roosting places for bats. Matthew talks to Tony鈥檚 bat-hunting friend Maurice Webber and our reporter Bob Carter visited Tony's house to meet his son Julian and see some of Tony Vine's many nature journals.
Tony Vine died aged 78 on 17 August 2008. |
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