Gerald Priestland

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Gerald Priestland

Gerald Francis Priestland (26 February 1927 – 20 June 1991) was a foreign correspondent, presenter and, later, a religious commentator for the BBC.

Early life and work

Gerald Priestland was the son of (Joseph) Francis ('Frank') Edwin Priestland,

Spondon House School in Derbyshire, having taken over from his father-in-law, Rev. Thomas Gascoigne.[3]

Gerald Priestland was educated at Charterhouse and New College, Oxford. He began his work at the BBC with a six-month spell writing obituary pieces for broadcast news. Indeed, he even jokingly wrote his own obituary shortly before leaving the job for a post as a sub-editor in the news gathering operation. In 1954, he became the youngest person (at 26 years) to work as a BBC foreign correspondent, having been sent by the controversial Editor of News, Tahu Hole, to the BBC's office in New Delhi. Between 1958 and 1961, Priestland was relocated to Washington, D.C. where he covered, among other things, the successful election of John F. Kennedy and the first US human spaceflight of Project Mercury.[4] Following this, he spent most of the next four years as the BBC's Middle East correspondent, including covering the funeral of Jawaharlal Nehru,[5] before requesting a transfer back to London as a television newsreader.

BBC2 opening night

Possibly Priestland's best known news broadcast occurred on the opening night of the

BBC2 channel (Monday 20 April 1964). He had the onerous and unexpected task of anchoring the evening's transmission from the newsroom at Alexandra Palace as a consequence of an extensive power failure across London.[6]
The channel's output that evening was restricted to repeated readings of the news and apologies for the loss of normal service and only lasted for about three hours.

Later life and work

During the late 1960s, Priestland was back in the USA as chief American correspondent where he covered such events as the

atheist
in his youth.

Religious affairs

From the 1970s onward, Priestland became increasingly involved in religious broadcasting and was the BBC's religious affairs correspondent from 1977 to 1982. His "Priestland's Postbag" was a controversial part of

Papal Elections of 1978 and introduced a Saturday morning programme on BBC Radio 4 entitled Yours Faithfully. He gave the 1982 Swarthmore Lecture
entitled, Reasonable Uncertainty: a Quaker approach to doctrine to the annual gathering of British Quakers. Priestland published his autobiography, Something Understood, in 1986, a work which he hastily altered before publication to express his true feelings about Tahu Hole, who had recently died: "He was a monster in every sense."

Priestland participated in a number of television and radio programmes for both the BBC and

ITV until his death in 1991. After his death he received the rare honour (shared with John Reith, Huw Wheldon and Richard Dimbleby) of having a series of annually broadcast lectures named in his honour. He expressed his love of Cornwall in Postscript: with love to Penwith
, published after his death.

Programmes

Priestland presented or featured on the following BBC programmes:

Personal life

On 14 May 1949, Priestland married (Helen) Sylvia Rhodes (17 May 1924 - 14 January 2004), daughter of (Edward) Hugh Rhodes, C.B.E.,[9] of Turner's Wood, Hampstead Garden Suburb, a senior civil servant.[10] Sylvia Priestland was an artist. They had two sons and two daughters.[11][12]

Sources

  • ISBN 0-297-81328-5
  • Priestland, Gerald (1992). Postscript: with love to Penwith: two essays in Cornish History; with a foreword by Sylvia Priestland. Patten People, No.5. Newmill, Hayle, Cornwall: The Patten Press.
    ISBN 1-872229-02-6
    .

Printed material by Gerald Priestland

References

  1. ^ Something Understood- An Autobiography, Gerald Priestland, Andre Deutsch Ltd, 1986, pp. 11-14
  2. ^ Something Understood- An Autobiography, Gerald Priestland, Andre Deutsch Ltd, 1986, pp. 11-12
  3. ^ Something Understood- An Autobiography, Gerald Priestland, Andre Deutsch Ltd, 1986, p. 10
  4. ISBN 9780521035354
    .
  5. ^ "Fond farewell to modern India's father". 13 September 2005. Retrieved 24 October 2018.
  6. ^ "BBC Two's 50th anniversary: Disastrous launch remembered". BBC News. 2014.
  7. ^ "Priestland's Progress - BBC Radio 4 FM - 30 September 1981 - BBC Genome". genome.ch.bbc.co.uk. 30 September 1981. Retrieved 24 October 2018.
  8. ^ "BBC Radio 4 - Desert Island Discs, Gerald Priestland". BBC. Retrieved 24 October 2018.
  9. ^ Who was Who: A Companion to Who's Who, A. & C. Black, 1981, p. 636
  10. ^ Something understood (Pbk edition) pp.78, 91 "With my exam of my life behind me, the Navy dismissed, and a job in hand, Sylvia and I were able to fix the wedding for May 14th 1949, three days before Sylvia's birthday"
  11. ^ George Wedell: Priestland, Gerald Francis (1927–1991), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2011, accessed 24 May 2015
  12. ^ The last page of Something understood gives more family information.
  13. ISBN 0099523809

External links
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