From today's Guardian

      Obituary


      Pamela Howe

      BBC producer who programmed her passions

      David Heycock
      Thursday March 18, 2004
      The Guardian

      In the late 1960s, while working in Bristol on a regional edition of
BBC Woman's Hour, the producer Pamela Howe, who has died aged 75, received
a memoir about a childhood. Handwritten, in dog-eared exercise books, it
dealt with the vanished 1920s world of the Forest of Dean, that remote
area between Gloucester and Wales. Pamela was so fascinated by the story
that she drove to the Forest to meet the memoir's (self-educated) writer,
Winifred Foley. From that meeting, and others that followed, came a
Woman's Hour serial, read by June Barrie. By 1974, the memoir had become a
BBC book, A Child In The Forest. Out of that came a bestselling trilogy.
Story Time, Talking About Antiques, and A Good Read were all programmes
Pamela produced during a career that lasted more than four decades. Her
delight in the social observation and humour of Richmal Crompton's Just
William resulted in her first producing Martin Jarvis's reading of the
stories and the documentary Richmal Crompton: The Woman Behind William.
That sense of humour and her literary judgment were behind her efforts in
the 1970s - with David Cecil and Philip Larkin - to resuscitate the
reputation of Barbara Pym, through a radio documentary and readings of her
novels. Her delight in autobiography led to happy collaborations with
Arthur Marshall and Kenneth Williams through serialisation of their
memoirs. Among other of her series were Four Romantic Heroes - studies of
such characters as Jane Austen's Mr Darcy and Daphne Du Maurier's Maxim de
Winter, and Thriller, which focused on the work of PD James, Frederick
Forsyth and Ruth Rendell.
Pamela never lost her common touch. She understood the listener's need not
to be talked down to. She found stories about situations and feelings with
which people could identify, and effective, original ways of bringing them
to their attention. And everyone in her productions was made to feel they
were special. The most reticent newcomers to the studio and microphone
were coaxed into giving performances of which they would never have
believed themselves capable.
      Born in London, the only child of Thomas and Molly Howe, a civil
servant and journalist, she suffered the loss of her father when she was
seven. She and her mother moved from Wimbledon to Edinburgh before the
war, and she was educated at George Watson's Ladies' College. There, a
love of reading and the English language, which were to be so important in
her work, became a passion.
      In the late 1940s, 18-year-old Pamela joined the BBC as a secretary.
Working with the BBC features group at Broadcasting House in London was to
have a lasting effect on her subsequent career. Through producers like
Laurence Gilliam and Jack Dillon, and writers such as Rene Cutforth and
Louis Macneice, came an understanding of the skills and tensions involved
in broadcasting. She learnt practical efficiency and human understanding,
the need to encourage, persuade and reassure contributors so that their
scripts and performances could be written, rehearsed and made ready for
transmission.
      Fraught discussions, writer's blocks and long lunch breaks in the
George public house near Broadcasting House would be followed by moving
and witty broadcasts.
      During that period in London she spent time with the BBC in Leeds,
and by the late 1960s she had become a producer with the BBC West Region
in Bristol, where she was based for the rest of her career.
      Pamela was great fun, often irreverent, sitting with her pug in the
office, unwilling to give up smoking and impatient with demands for
political correctness.
She wanted to make programmes celebrating the enjoyment reading had given
her and that she hoped radio would enable her to share with many more
people. She retired in 1988.
Pamela, never competitive, was popular with her many friends and
colleagues. She was a very special person with whom jokes, gossip,
differences of opinion - and unexpected discoveries -were great to share.
She was unmarried.
· Pamela Mary Howe, radio producer, born January 23 1929; died March 8
      2004















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