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 Friday 16:00-16:30
Sunday 20:30-21:00 (rpt)
Radio 4's weekly obituaries programme |
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This week
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Friday 20th
April 2007
(Rpt) Sunday 22nd April
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Paul Leventhal
Educator, journalist and nonproliferation expert who has died aged 69.
Paul Leventhal started his career as an investigative newspaper
journalist. But a desire to see government from the inside took him to
Washington where he ended up working for a Senate subcommittee on how
to re-organise the American Atomic Energy Commission. It was work which
changed his life. He was passionate about the dangers of nuclear
proliferation and devoted the rest of his career to working against it.
He established and ran the Nuclear Control Institute, travelled the
world to lecture on the subject and was in demand as an adviser to
governments.
Long before the events of September 11th 2001,
Leventhal warned of the dangers of terrorists gaining access to nuclear
materials.
Matthew Bannister talks to his friends and colleagues at the Nuclear
Control Institute, Eldon Griffiths and Richard Wegman.
Paul Leventhal was born February 12th 1938. He died April 10th
2007.
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Richard Kennedy Vosburgh,
Comedy writer and lyricist who has
died aged77.
Born in Elizabeth New Jersey, Dick persuaded his father to send him to
the UK to study at RADA in 1948, where he won the comedy acting prize.
Whilst he was a student he was already contributing sketches to West
End reviews and he went on to work with many of the great names of
British comedy – from Tommy Cooper and Frankie Howerd to the
Monty Python team and the Two Ronnies.
Dick Vosburgh’s love for Broadway musicals and classic
American films resulted in many an accurate parody, culminating in a
Broadway show. A Day In Hollywood, A Night In the Ukraine was written
with the composer Frank Lazarus, and combined a revue satirising the
movie industry with a pastiche of the Marx brothers.
Matthew Bannister talks to Ronnie Corbett and to Barry Cryer
– who knew Dick Vosburgh for forty years and was one of his
earliest writing partners.
Richard Kennedy Vosburgh was born August 27th 1929.
He died London April 18th 2007.
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Joan Wyndham
Writer who has died aged 85.
Joan Wyndham had an affair with Lucien Freud, was propositioned by
Dylan Thomas (who she recalled smothered her with beery kisses) and
went to parties with Quentin Crisp. The bohemian Joan was born into an
eccentric upper class family. She came to public prominence late in her
life on the publication of diaries she had kept during the second world
war. Her charming, irrepressible descriptions of life as a young art
student in London as the bombs dropped made her something of a literary
celebrity. One critic called her “a latter day Samuel Pepys
in camiknickers”. Joan describes a round of parties, love
affairs and eventually the much desired loss of her virginity.
After the war she opened Oxford’s first espresso bar, ran a
hippy restaurant in London’s Portobello Road and cooked for
the actors at the Royal Court Theatre. She became a passionate - if not
always well informed - fan of Chelsea football club and in latter years
eagerly followed their progress on satellite television.
Joan’s home was a bohemian refuge for actors, artists and
models. In 1957 she divorced her first husband and married her Russian
lodger Shura Shivarg. The couple bought a scruffy Georgian house in
London where there were always parties, cats and lodgers.
Matthew Bannister talks to two of her lodgers Neil Norman and Simon
Shaw.
Joan Wyndham was born October 11th 1921. She died April 8th
2007.
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Neville Duke DSO, OBE, DFC and two
bars.
Squadron Leader and test pilot who has
died aged 85.
Neville Duke was a wartime fighter ace who moved into the jet engine
age and broken the world air speed record. He was awarded a DSO and
three DFCs for his courage in wartime dogfights in the skies above
North Africa and Italy. He shot down an astonishing 27 German planes.
After the war he took on the perilous job of testing experimental
aircraft for the Hawker company. His record breaking flight came in the
Coronation year of 1953 at a time when Britain was briefly ahead of the
Americans in the development of jet planes. It made him even more
famous with a string of children’s books based on his
exploits and an appearance in the Eagle comic’s
“Heroes of Today” column.
Matthew Bannister talks to Norman Franks who edited Neville
Duke’s wartime diaries, read by Nick Rowe.
Neville Duke was born January 11th 1922. He died April 7th 2007.
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Last Word
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Listen again
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Previous programmes
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13th
April 2007
Kurt Vonnegut, Colin Graham, Jagjit Singh Chauhan, Terry Hall, and Paul
Lauterbur.
6th
April 2007
Franco Cosimo Panini, Sir Thomas Hetherington, Tony Scott, Felix
Levitan and Michael Dibdin.
30th March
2007
Alexander King, Mao Anqing, David Mendel and John Backus.
23rd
March 2007
Beryl Corner, Chris Lightfoot, The Mighty Terror, Sir Arthur Marshall
and Freddy Francis.
16th
March 2007
Captain Wiliam Anderson, Professor Neville Butler, Russell Churney,
Baron Bernd Freytag Von Loringhoven and Jack Gaster.
9th March
2007
Ernest Gallo, Lieutenant Colonel Digby Willoughby, Jean Baudrillard,
Cecil Gysin, Sir John Smith.
2nd
March 2007
Lord Forte, Arthur M Schlesinger and Earl Jellicoe.
23rd
February 2007
Maurice Papon, Peter Ellenshaw, Hugo Moser,
Ray Evans and Gary Frisch.
16th
February 2007
Elisabeth Rivers-Bulkeley, Harry Webster,
Cyril Demarne, Sir Ian McGregor and Christopher Helm.
9th
February 2007
Adelaide Tambo, Frankie Laine, Sir Victor Le Fanu, Gian Carlo Menotti
and Hans Wegner.
2nd
February 2007
Paul Channon, Ruth Crisp, Glen Tetley, Mary Low and Professor Roland
Levinsky.
26th
January 2007
Abbe Pierre, Gracie Cole, Sybil Elgar, Larry Stewart and Robert Phoenix.
19th
January 2007
Rev. Bruce Kenrick, Vincent Sardi Jnr, Antonella Marchioness of
Lothian, Alice Coltrane and Chalkie.
12th
January 2007
Carlo Ponti, Richard Boston, Pierre Delanoe, David Ervine and Magnus
Magnusson.
5th
January 2007
Teddy Kollek, Sydney Wooderson, John Heath-Stubbs, Phillippa Pearce and
Scobie Breasley.
29th
December 2006
Maurice W Graham, Major Roy Farran, Naushad Ali, Merlyn Rees, Hugh
Thompson and Birgit Nilsson.
22nd
December 2006
Joseph Barbera, John Rae, Desmond Briscoe, John Hamilton and Elizabeth
Bolden.
15th
December 2006
Frank Johnson, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Peter Brayham, Augusto Pinochet and
Ahmet Ertegun.
8th
December 2006
Peter Roberts, Ed Bradley, Edward Grismond Beaumont Davies-Scourfield,
Lionel Bryer and Mario Merola.
1st
December 2006
Betty Comden, Edward Ford, Willie Pep and Alan Freeman.
24th
November 2006
Nick Clarke, Peter Fryer, Robert Altman and Emanuel Hurwitz.
17th
November 2006
Milton Friedman, Ursula Moray Williams, Fernec Puskas and Desert Orchid.
10th
November 2006
Marcus Wolf, Samuel Holloway Bowers Jnr, Allister Bowtell, Bulent
Ecevit and Susan Billington.
3rd
November 2006
President PW Botha, Nigel Kneale, Olivia Breitha and Peter Barkworth.
27th
October 2006
Eric Newby, Jeff Getty, Paul Walters, Valerie Finnis and Anna Russell.
20th
October 2006
Marc Hodler, Lucilla Andrews, Hugh Merewether and Bluma Feld.
13th
October 2006
Anna Politkovskaya, Beth Levine, Professor Adam Curle, Paul Hunter and
Professor Charles Rees.
6th
October 2006
Rosamond Carr, Henri Jayer, Joel Blamey and Tom Bell
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