Ludovic Kennedy

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Sir
Ludovic Kennedy
Kennedy in 1958
Born
Ludovic Henry Coverley Kennedy

(1919-11-03)3 November 1919
Edinburgh, Scotland
Died18 October 2009(2009-10-18) (aged 89)
Salisbury, Wiltshire, England
Alma materChrist Church, Oxford
Occupations
  • Journalist
  • broadcaster
  • political activist
  • author
Political party
Other political
affiliations		Independent (2001)
Spouse
​
​
(m. 1950; died 2006)​
Children4

Sir Ludovic Henry Coverley Kennedy

Derek Bentley. He also campaigned for the abolition of the death penalty
in the United Kingdom.

Early life

Kennedy was born in 1919 in Edinburgh,[1] the son of a career Royal Navy officer, Edward Kennedy, and his wife, Rosalind Grant, daughter of Sir Ludovic Grant, 11th Baronet. His mother Rosalind was a cousin of the Conservative politician Robert Boothby, later Lord Boothby. He had two younger sisters, Morar and Katherine. Morar married the playwright Royce Ryton in 1954. Katherine married Major Ion Calvocoressi in 1947. Kennedy was schooled at Eton College (where he played in a jazz band with Humphrey Lyttelton) and studied for a year at Christ Church, Oxford, until the outbreak of war.[2] While at Oxford he was a member of the Bullingdon Club.[3]

Kennedy's father, by then a 60-year-old retired captain, returned to the navy and was given command of

P&O ocean liner, known as an armed merchant cruiser, that was used on the Northern Patrol.[2] On 23 November 1939, while on patrol southeast of Iceland, Rawalpindi encountered two of the most powerful German warships, the small battleships (or battlecruisers) Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, trying to break out between Iceland and Britain into the Atlantic. Rawalpindi was able to signal the German ships' location back to base. Despite being hopelessly outgunned, Kennedy decided to fight, rather than surrender as demanded by the Germans. Scharnhorst sank Rawalpindi; of her 312 crew, 275 (including her captain) were killed. Kennedy was posthumously mentioned in dispatches and his decision to fight against overwhelming odds entered the folklore of the Royal Navy.[4]

Naval officer

Ludovic Kennedy followed his father into the Royal Navy; he served as an officer on destroyers, mostly in the same northern seas. His ship, HMS Tartar, was one of those that pursued the battleship Bismarck following the Battle of the Denmark Strait. He witnessed the final battle, until Bismarck was ablaze and its crew began to abandon ship, but shortage of fuel forced Tartar to depart for home before Bismarck sank. Kennedy later wrote about this in his 1974 book Pursuit, his chronicle of the chase and sinking of Bismarck.[5][2]

Return to university

Kennedy returned to Christ Church, Oxford, at the end of the war to complete his English degree. He also edited the student newspaper

Nelson's captains.[7] After leaving Oxford he began a career as an investigative journalist.[2]

Journalism and broadcasting

Kennedy wrote for a number of publications, including

miscarriages of justice, and he wrote and broadcast on numerous cases.[9] In 1957 Kennedy made a guest appearance as a newsreader in the Scotland Yard supporting feature series episode The Lonely House.[10]

Kennedy was interested in

sinking of the Bismarck in which he was involved. Other subjects included the U-boat war, the story of HMS Belfast, and the Dieppe Raid and St Nazaire Raid. The Life and Death of the Scharnhorst (1971) brought him into contact with survivors of the battlecruiser that had sunk his father's ship Rawalpindi. The series included Target Tirpitz (1973), a history of the extraordinary attempts to sink the feared German battleship Tirpitz
; two of the films led to books.

In 1980 he presented an episode of the BBC television series

Great Railway Journeys of the World
, in which he crossed the United States.

From 1980 to 1988[6] he presented the television review programme Did You See...? He interviewed Peter Cook's character Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling in A Life in Pieces in 1990. He appeared as himself in several episodes on the political comedy series Yes Minister, often being called Ludo by Jim Hacker portrayed by Paul Eddington.[11][12] Kennedy was the subject of an episode of That Reminds Me (2002: series 4, episode 1).[13] Kennedy also expressed to another journalist that there were too many Blacks on television.[14]

Private Eye magazine sometimes referred to him as 'Ludicrous Kennedy'. In the long-running BBC sitcom Till Death Us Do Part, Alf Garnett – while attacking BBC personalities – spoke of him as a Russian Mick ("Mick" being a derogatory term for an Irish person), meaning "that Ludovich Kennedy!"

Writing

Kennedy's book Pursuit: The Chase and Sinking of the "Bismarck" (

Hood
, and her destruction by the Royal Navy.

Miscarriages of justice

He wrote several books that questioned convictions in a number of notable cases in British judicial history. One of the first

abolition of the death penalty in the UK. In 1970 Kennedy's book was turned into a film entitled 10 Rillington Place; the British crime film starred Richard Attenborough as Christie, John Hurt as Timothy Evans, Judy Geeson as Beryl Evans and Pat Heywood
as Ethel Christie.

In 1985, Kennedy published The Airman and the Carpenter (

Crime of the Century, starring Stephen Rea and Isabella Rossellini.[2]

In 1990, Kennedy became the advisory committee chairman of Just Television, a television production company dedicated to exposing miscarriages of justice.

In 2003, he wrote 36 Murders and 2 Immoral Earnings (

Derek Bentley and the Birmingham Six, a number of which were affected by claims of police failure, police misconduct or perjury. In it he concluded that the adversarial system of justice in the UK and the United States "is an invitation to the police to commit perjury, which they frequently do", and said that he preferred the inquisitorial system
.

Kennedy also wrote:

Politics and campaigns

In 1958, Kennedy stood for election to

Granada Television
).

He stood for Rochdale at the 1959 general election, with a vote share increased from the by-election, but again came second to Labour.

In addition to his writing and campaigning on miscarriages of justice, Kennedy campaigned on a number of other issues.

A lifelong

British Humanist Association,[15] he contributed to New Humanist magazine, he was an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society and a Distinguished Supporter of the Humanist Society Scotland
.

He was also an advocate of the legalisation of

Voluntary Euthanasia Society
. His book, Euthanasia: The Case for the Good Death, was published in 1990.

Kennedy resigned from the Liberal Democrats in 2001,[16] citing the incompatibility of his pro-voluntary euthanasia views with those of the then Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy (no relation), who was a Roman Catholic.

He then stood as an independent on a platform of legalising voluntary euthanasia in the 2001 general election for the Wiltshire constituency of Devizes.[2] He won 2 per cent of the vote and subsequently rejoined the Liberal Democrats.

Personal life

In February 1950 he married the dancer and actress Moira Shearer in the Chapel Royal, Hampton Court Palace. He later remembered their meeting in 1949, when he was reluctantly persuaded by a friend to accept a complimentary ticket to a fancy dress ball held at the Lyceum ballroom in London. Shearer – who had recently become famous for her role in The Red Shoes – was presenting the prizes at the occasion, and Kennedy later recalled that "I felt a tremor run through me when I caught sight of her. She looked even lovelier than in the film."

Summoning up his courage, he approached the 23-year-old dancer and asked her to dance. She would be delighted, she told him, only "I don't dance very well." She was not, Kennedy revealed, a competent ballroom dancer. The couple had one son and three daughters from their marriage that ended with her death on 31 January 2006 at the age of 80.[17]

Kennedy died of pneumonia in a nursing home in Salisbury, Wiltshire, on 18 October 2009, aged 89.[1][2]

Honours

He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Strathclyde in 1985.[18]

He was knighted in the 1994 Queen's Birthday Honours List for services to journalism, on the recommendation of John Major's government. Major's predecessor Margaret Thatcher had vetoed Kennedy's knighthood.[1]

References

  1. ^ a b c "Sir Ludovic Kennedy". The Daily Telegraph. London. 19 October 2009. Retrieved 19 October 2009.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h Booth, Jenny (19 October 2009). "Author and broadcaster Sir Ludovic Kennedy dies". The Times. London. Retrieved 19 October 2009.
  3. ^ Davies, Caroline (19 October 2009). "Ludovic Kennedy, veteran presenter and campaigner, dies at 89". The Guardian.
  4. ^ "News and Events : Royal Navy". Archived from the original on 10 October 2010. Retrieved 19 October 2009.
  5. ISBN 978-0-304-35526-6
    .
  6. ^ a b David Steel Obituary: Sir Ludovic Kennedy, The Guardian, 19 October 2009
  7. ^ Miall, Leonard (20 October 2009). "Sir Ludovic Kennedy: Writer and broadcaster who devoted much of his career to exposing miscarriages of justice". The Independent. Retrieved 3 August 2013.
  8. ^ "Sir Ludovic Kennedy dead at 89". The Herald. 19 October 2009. Retrieved 19 October 2009.
  9. ^ a b Robinson, James (19 October 2009). "Ludovic Kennedy dies aged 89". The Guardian. Retrieved 19 October 2009.
  10. ^ The Lonely House (Short 1957) ⭐ 7.2 | Crime, Short, retrieved 22 August 2023
  11. ^ "Yes, Minister: 'The Challenge' episode summary". TV.com. Retrieved 30 November 2010.
  12. ^ "Yes, Prime Minister: 'The Tangled Web' episode summary". TV.com. Retrieved 30 November 2010.[permanent dead link]
  13. ^ "That Reminds Me: A Titles & Air Dates Guide". epguides.com. 2006. Archived from the original on 29 November 2010. Retrieved 30 November 2010.
  14. ^ Deans, Jason (25 September 2003). "Too Many Blacks on TV, says Ludovic Kennedy". The Guardian. Retrieved 22 October 2018.
  15. ^ "Author Ludovic Kennedy dies at 89". BBC News. 19 October 2009. Retrieved 19 October 2009.
  16. ^ "Sir Ludovic quits Lib Dems". BBC News. 19 May 2001. Retrieved 19 October 2009.
  17. ^ Obituary in The New York Times, 2 February 2006. Retrieved 11 October 2014.
  18. ^ [1][dead link]

External links

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