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 Friday16:00-16:30
Sunday20:30-21:00(rpt)
Radio 4's weekly obituaries programme |
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Contact us |
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This week |
Friday 15th June 2007
(Rpt) Sunday 17th June |
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Kurt Waldheim
Former Secretary General of the UN and President of Austria who has died aged 88.
Kurt Waldheim served two terms as Secretary General of the United Nations and was elected President of Austria, despite allegations during the campaign that he had covered up his involvement in Nazi atrocities during the second world war. He was an Austrian career diplomat from a conservative catholic rural family. He studied law at the University of Vienna. and was called up as an officer in the German army at the outbreak of the second world war. After the war, Waldheim joined the Austrian diplomatic service, was appointed Ambassador to Canada and Foreign Secretary before becoming his country’s representative at the United Nations. In 1972, he began the first of two five year terms as Secretary General of the organisation. The events of his war service in the Balkans remain the subject of debate and controversy even today.
Matthew Bannister talks to Austrian political scientist Anton Pelinka.
Kurt Waldheim was born 21st December 1918. He died 14 June 2007.
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Sir David Hatch CBE
Managing director of ѿý Radio and chairman of the Parole Board of England and Wales has died aged 68.
Sir David Hatch started his career as a performer in the Cambridge Footlights alongside Graham Garden, Tim Brooke-Taylor and John Cleese. The team were hired by the ѿý to produce a radio comedy show called “I’m Sorry I’ll Read That Again” which ran for many years in the 1960s. David saw his future in production and management, eventually becoming Head of Radio Light Entertainment, Controller of Radio 2 and Controller of Radio 4. Promoted to Managing Director of Network Radio.
He created Radio 5, which brought together sport, education and children’s programmes and then fought to stop it from being turned into a rolling news service by the incoming Director General John Birt. Even though he was finally overruled, David Hatch didn’t leave the corporation. Instead he accepted the job of Adviser to the Director General, seeing his role as giving a human face to the rather more cold and clinical approach of Birt.
On his retirement, David Hatch became Chairman of the National Consumer Council and then of the Parole Board.
Matthew Bannister talks to Jo Dobry who worked with Sir David Hatch at the Parole board, broadcaster Sue Lawley, and the writer and performer John Cleese.
Sir David Hatch was born on May 7th 1939. He died on June 12th 2007.
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Sir Wally Herbert
Polar explorer whohas died aged 72.
Sir Wally Herbert’s greatest achievement was rather overshadowed by the landing of the first men on the moon. Whilst the astronauts of Apollo 10 dominated the airwaves and the newspapers in 1969, Wally and his team achieved another great feat of exploration. They were the first men to cross the frozen Arctic Ocean via the North Pole. The Prime Minister, Harold Wilson called the expedition “a feat of endurance which ranks with any in polar history” Wally Herbert came from a military family. He had served in the Royal Engineers and trained as a surveyor in Shoreham by Sea before landing a job with the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey which took him to the South Atlantic. He relished mapping uncharted territory and the harshness and simplicity of the icy wastes.
Matthew Bannister talks to explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes and to Wally Herbert’s daughter Kari.
Sir Wally Herbert was born on the 24th October 1934. Hedied 12th June 2007.
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Richard Rorty
Philosopher who had died aged 75.
The philosopher Richard Rorty believed that the search for truth was a waste of time. He annoyed many of his colleagues by suggesting that their branch of learning should have more in common with literature than with science. Rorty was born in New York, the child of Trotskyite parents. He described himself as a “clever, snotty, nerdy only child”. At the age of eight he sent a present and note of congratulations to a fellow eight year old who had made good – the newly enthroned Dalai Lama. Rorty rose to prominence at Princeton University where he taught for twenty years – but eventually stepped down to move into the literature department at the University of Virginia.
Matthew Bannister talks to Cambridge philosophy professor Andy Martin.
Richard Rorty was born on the 4th October 1931 anddiedthe 8th June 2007. |
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