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Subject:

Re: Obituary for Pamela Howe

From:

Jacquie Kavanagh <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

The History of the BBC <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Fri, 19 Mar 2004 12:25:36 -0000

Content-Type:

text/plain

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text/plain (128 lines)

Thanks for this - always useful

Jacquie Kavanagh 
Written Archivist 
Information & Archives, BBC Finance, Property & Business Affairs 
*  Work:   +44 (0)118 948 6294 (Internal 01 86294) 
*       Fax:    +44 (0)118 946 1145 
*    BBC Written Archives Centre, 
        Caversham Park, Reading, Berkshire, RG4 8TZ 
*   mailto:[log in to unmask] 
*      http://www.bbc.co.uk/heritage
*      http://finance.gateway.bbc.co.uk/rba 
*      http://research.gateway.bbc.co.uk/infoarch 
*      http://research.gateway.bbc.co.uk/ia/ 




-----Original Message-----
From: The History of the BBC [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Anthony McNicholas
Sent: 18 March 2004 10:34
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [BBC-HISTORY] Obituary for Pamela Howe


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















Guardian Unlimited (c) Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

BBCi at http://www.bbc.co.uk/

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