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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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