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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 24th August 2007
(Rpt) Sunday 26th August
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Michael Deaver
Political adviser who has died aged 69.
Michael Deaver was Ronald Reagan’s spin-doctor, whose choice of settings for key Presidential speeches saw him dubbed the king of the backdrop. He worked as a PR man before being employed to help Reagan swap the film set for the theatre of politics. Michael Deaver oversaw the former actor’s election as Governor of California in 1966 and, after Reagan’s first Presidential victory in 1980, served as deputy White House chief of staff.
His skill was to second guess a photo-opportunity, to pre-plan settings in which the President would look more photogenic. Fending off charges of being a crude manipulator, Michael Deaver said “the only thing I did was light him well ... I didn’t make Ronald Reagan, he made me”.
John Wilson talks topolitical correspondent Johanna Neuman of the Los Angeles Times and to Michael Deaver's brotherBill Deaver.
Michael Deaver was born April 11th 1938. He died August 18th 2007. |
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Vice-Admiral Sir Ian McGeoch KCB, DSO, DSC
Submarine commander and Flag Officer Submarines who has died aged 93.
Vice Admiral Sir Ian McGeoch was a leader, a survivor and a hero deep beneath the seas of the Second World War. He commanded the submarine HMS Splendid which sank more German ships than any other craft during the Allied campaign to recapture North Africa.
The Splendid was eventually sunk itself, with the loss of many crew-members and the capture of all survivors, an episode which led to a new mission for Sir Ian – to escape back to Britain.
John Wilson talks to Commander Jeff Tall.
Vice-Admiral Sir Ian McGeoch was born March 26th 1914. He died on August 12th 2007.
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Tikhon Khrennikov
Composer and secretary of the Union of Soviet Composers 1948-91 who has died aged 94.
Under the rule of Joseph Stalin, the Soviet Union marched to the leader’s favourite tunes. Any composer with dangerous ideas of his own was silenced by having the work banned. The arbiter of Soviet musical taste was Tikhon Khrennikov who, for forty years, held the powerful post as First Secretary of the Composer’s Union. In the west he was reviled as the man who – in 1948 – denounced the music of Shostakovich and Prokofiev. Their musical complexity was at odds with the simplistic folk songs and martial hymns favoured by Stalin, the sort of thing in fact that Khrennikov himself wrote.
In his later years, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Tikhon Khrennikov claimed that he’d only been following orders in acting as a state censor.
John Wilson talks toLevon Akopian, a Moscow music critic and to the British music critic and composer Gerard McBurney.
Tikhon Khrennikov was born June 10th 1913. He died on August 14th 2007. |
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Sir John Burnett
Mycologist who has died aged 85.
Sir John Burnett was a mycologist, a leading expert on mushrooms and fungi, who helped set up an integrated system to help study and protect Britain’s eco-system. He was also the vice-chancellor whose refusal to implement controversial university reforms led Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to call him her “favourite dissident scientist”.
After serving as a Royal Navy Lieutenant during the war, he embarked on an academic career which included several Fellowships and doctorates. His speciality was mycology and once said that he wished to be known as a “friend of fungi”.
Sir John Burnett, a lifelong ecologist, went on to establish the National Biodiversity Network, an agency holding data on over 27 million life forms.
John Wilson talks to the director of the Network trust, Dr James Munford, a close friend of Sir John.
Sir John Burnett was born on January 21st 1922. He died on July 22nd 2007.
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