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Richard Dimbleby
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Richard Dimbleby CBE (May 25, 1913–December 22, 1965) was an English journalist and broadcaster.
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Dimbleby was born in Richmond and was educated at Mill Hill School, a famous boys' independent school in North London. He did not go to university. He began his career with the family newspaper, The Richmond and Twickenham Times, in 1931. He joined the BBC as a radio news reporter in 1936, and in 1939, accompanied the British Expeditionary Force to France. In 1945, he broadcast the first reports from Belsen concentration camp. [1]
After the war Dimbleby switched to television, eventually becoming the BBC's leading news commentator and the host of the flagship current affairs series "Panorama." He was perhaps best known as the commentator on a series of major state occasions including the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953 and the funerals of George VI, John F. Kennedy [2], and Winston Churchill. He took part in the first Eurovision television relay in 1951 and appeared in the first live television broadcast from the Soviet Union in 1961. In addition to heavyweight journalism, he hosted lighter programmes such as "Twenty Questions" and "Down Your Way."
Dimbleby, during his time with Panorama, also reported the infamous spaghetti tree hoax on April 1st, 1957, as an April Fool's Day joke.
He was appointed an OBE in 1945 and advanced to CBE in 1959.
He died aged only 52 from lung cancer, attributed to his habit of smoking 40 cigarettes a day [3]. He gave up cigarettes in 1962 after reading the Royal College of Physicians' report Smoking and Health. Two weeks before his death, he presented a documentary on the links between heavy tobacco smoking and lung cancer [4]. The Richard Dimbleby Cancer Fund was founded in his memory.
Married to Dilys Thomas in Copthorne, West Sussex in 1937, Dimbleby had four children, two of whom, David and Jonathan, have followed in his footsteps to become major broadcasting figures in their own right.
The Richard Dimbleby Lecture was founded in his memory and is delivered every year by an influential business or political figure. The 2004 lecture was delivered by vacuum cleaner tycoon, James Dyson; in 2005 by Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair; and by General Sir Mike Jackson in 2006.