Geoffrey Fisher Archives - Richard Dimbleby: Broadcaster

My Coronation Commentary

Dimbleby published his own account of his experiences in Westminster Abbey in the ‘Sunday Dispatch’ five days after the Queen’s Coronation on 2 June 1953:

In all my experience of State ceremonies – and I have described most of them in the past ten or fifteen years for the BBC – I have never known one go so quickly. I think that this was due to the wonderful colour of the scene in the Abbey and because it was changing all the time. There was always something to watch.

I left my yacht, the Vabel, on the river in a police launch at a quarter past five on Coronation morning, and I was in my box in the triforium of the Abbey at 5.30. I sat in the box without a break until 2.30 in the afternoon – nine hours. But it felt like no more than two or three. All my colleagues of the BBC had the same experience. It was almost impossible to believe that virtually a whole working day had passed since we came in.

The commentators’ box that had been built by the Ministry of Works for the BBC was a miniature house occupying the two central arches of the triforium, or upper gallery of the Abbey, and in the middle of the eastern end… in other words, immediately behind the High Altar.

This ‘house’, which was so completely sound-proofed that it would have been possible to shout at the top of one’s voice inside it without being heard by somebody standing outside the door, was divided into four rooms.

John Snagge and Howard Marshall, who were the commentators for sound radio, occupied the ground floor left, while the ground floor right was filled by a television cameraman and his camera, of necessity so cramped that he was only just able to sit upright.

On the upper floor the room on the left was occupied by two French commentators, one talking to France for sound radio and television combined (a Herculean task) and the other to French-speaking Canada for radio.

The whole of the ‘coverage’ of the historic ceremony as far as television and sound at home and abroad were concerned came from this minute ‘house’, which was connected with the sound control room in the Dean’s Verger’s room and with the television control in a hut built just outside the Abbey.

The existence of the commentators during the day was reasonably comfortable though rather cramped. Certainly we had an unrivalled view of the whole proceedings, thanks largely to the personal interest taken by the Earl Marshal, the Duke of Norfolk, who climbed up to the triforium one day, a few weeks in advance of The Day, to survey the site and decide on the spot what accommodation should be provided.

One of my outstanding memories of the whole Coronation was, indeed, the kindness of the Earl Marshal. Anyone who believes that this peer, with a castle and big sporting interests, had a sinecure in his – if I may use the expression – stage management of the occasion is utterly mistaken.

Here was a man who carried the entire burden of the arrangements on his own shoulders, who knew every detail, and personally worked out every timetable. I do not think that he could have had more than a few hours’ rest at any time during the eight months preceding this week.

Nevertheless he found time to attend meetings with the BBC and the newsreel organisations to discuss technical details, to go to Broadcasting House to listen to recordings made at the previous Coronation in 1937, to invite the three BBC commentators to luncheon privately so that we could talk over any problems, and to attend the BBC television studios at Lime Grove on the Saturday before the Coronation so that any such minute difficulties could be resolved.

He is also a man of quite tremendous humour. He told me that, having observed some of the staff officers fidgeting during the final rehearsal in the Abbey, he sent them a message ordering them to stop and reminding them that ‘there is plenty of room in the Tower’.

The same could be said of that jolly, entirely natural and charming man, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who has the knack of putting one completely at ease. He confounded me by saying when we met in the Abbey at a rehearsal two weeks ago: ‘What wonderful progress your pigs are making.’

For the moment I thought I had misunderstood his remark until he explained that he had been staying with one of his sons who lives in our village and had seen my piggery and the latest litter. Thereafter each conversation we had in the Abbey was always prefaced by a remark or two about the pigs, to the astonishment of the sundry Officers of State who were standing near.

I cannot deny that I found my task of acting as television commentator for the Abbey ceremony an exacting one, but it was an honour of which I am very proud. The essence of the whole thing is that timing should be precise. The duty of any television commentator is to say just enough and no more, although there are times when the effect of what is being shown on the screen is infinitely greater if it takes place in silence.

Thus, in the Abbey there were moments in the ceremony which had to be left uncovered by speech but which were preceded immediately by ritual which needed explanation. It was, therefore, vital to know exactly how long this ritual took and to prepare a note or ‘rubric’ which fitted that time precisely.

This, I think, was the greatest strain, to speak at a critical moment, knowing that within a second or two something must happen over which one must not speak, or even that Her Majesty or the Archbishop were about to speak.

So thorough had been the rehearsals that we were able to fit this jigsaw together successfully, being caught only once, when the Archbishop proceeded directly to a prayer when at rehearsals he had paused before uttering it. Such details in retrospect may seem very trivial, but it is close attention to them that gives any great occasion its maximum effect. Details, of course, are what one remembers most when looking back on the occasion. I remember when the Duke of Cornwall first appeared by the side of his grandmother, the Queen Mother, in the Royal Box. We had been waiting for this, of course, and for an awful moment I thought that he was in a position in which our cameras could not see him.

His presence in the Abbey for the Coronation of his mother had been so widely publicised beforehand that we never would have been forgiven for not showing him to the millions of those looking in on television. You may imagine my relief when I heard the voice of Peter Dimmock, the television producer at the Abbey, saying in my headphones: ‘I have got a lovely shot of Charles – mention him as soon as you like.’

Then there was the charming paternal attitude of the Bishop of Durham [now Archbishop of Canterbury], who by ancient tradition stands on the right hand of the Sovereign during the whole ceremony. I am sure that millions of people watching their television screens must have seen the continuous glances which he gave the Queen, almost as though he were saying: ‘Don’t worry, my dear… it is going beautifully.’

It reminded me exactly of a father nursing his daughter through some trying ordeal, though in fact the Queen needed no encouragement at all. She had attended several rehearsals, taking part in them herself, and quite obviously knew the whole ceremony.

Though her attitude throughout was devout, indeed humble, since this was largely a Communion service in which she was partaking, I saw her at the moment when the Mistress of the Robes was adjusting the gown of white linen that she wore for the anointing give an almost imperceptible signal with her right hand behind her back that enough adjustment had been made and that she was now to be left alone.

Another moment in the service I found very touching was the homage paid to his wife by the Duke of Edinburgh. The historic form of service laid down for the Coronation demands that the Princes of the Blood and the Peers when kneeling before the Sovereign shall first give their Christian name and title.

For example, the Duke of Norfolk said: ‘I, Bernard, Duke of Norfolk…’. I wonder how many people noticed that the Duke of Edinburgh only gave his Christian name and omitted any title? Was it perhaps because he wanted the Queen to know that he was paying homage to her as her husband and not simply as one of the Royal Princes?

I must also mention the splendid bearing and dignity of Sir George Bellew, who as Garter King of Arms was responsible for a great deal of the detailed ‘stage management’ on the floor of the Coronation theatre. ‘Garter’, as he is known, is a living encyclopaedia on all matters appertaining to State affairs. I have never known him at a loss to answer immediately and correctly the most difficult technical question. Signals which he gave in his capacity as King of Arms during the ceremony for various movements were a model of efficiency and unobtrusiveness.

One little thing slightly marred the glorious memories. When I was in the Abbey in the evening while we were preparing the television epilogue which we put on the air unannounced at 11.30 I saw the melancholy sight of the litter left behind by the peers.

It seemed to me amazing that even on this occasion we could not break ourselves of one of our worst national habits. Tiers and tiers of stalls on which the peers had been sitting were covered with sandwich wrappings, sandwiches, morning newspapers, fruit peel, sweets and even a few empty miniature bottles. Let us be fair however, and remember that the peers, many of them elderly men, had sat in their places, some of them seeing very little of the ceremony, for seven hours.

Perhaps it was because the day was so cold that no casualties at all were reported to the ambulance teams hidden away within the Abbey. One herald fainted during the final rehearsal and one page was taken ill. During the actual ceremony no human failing marred the proceedings, in sharp contrast to the considerable casualty list at the Coronation of King George VI in 1937.

During Tuesday’s ceremony I heard an American say: “This is the only country in the world that could stage such a wonderful show.’

His choice of words could be improved upon, perhaps, but his meaning was quite clear. It was a very moving experience, even for one as urgently preoccupied as I was with the details of the occasion, to see a ceremony being performed which would be recorded in the children’s history books 500 years hence.

I felt profoundly conscious that I was seeing history in the making, and, indeed, the whole pageant on the floor of the Abbey moved with a slow irresistible rhythm that seemed to lift it out of time altogether. I thought at one moment as I half-closed my eyes and watched the measured ceremony being carried through that I might be watching something that had happened a thousand years before. In all that time there has been no major change in our Coronations: the lovely robes of the great officers of State, the gleaming swords, the Crown Jewels, the massed assembly of bishops in scarlet and white, and the matchless setting of the Abbey itself – belonging not to one year or to one century but to our history.

This curiously detached emotion was not just the hypnotic effect of a great occasion. During the past two days I have been working with Brian George, who is in command of all recording operations at the BBC, making a permanent gramophone recording of the great occasion.

This has necessitated playing over several times recordings of last Tuesday’s ceremony.

It is an extraordinary thing that the thrill of emotion that I felt when I heard the lovely music and singing and the beautiful spoken words of the Archbishop during the actual ceremony has returned every time that the recordings were played. There is, indeed, a strange quality about the Coronation ceremony. It makes it quite different from any other great occasion in our national life.

There were moments during the ceremony when my emotion must have been obvious to listeners. For example, when I saw the Queen’s Champion so proudly bearing the Queen’s Standard in the procession, a man whose family has defended the honour of their Sovereign without a break since days of William the Conqueror, I found it very difficult to control my voice and speak properly at all.

John Snagge, in the adjoining box, told me that he felt precisely the same emotion.

I believe that we as a nation have done ourselves a profound service by showing to the world how unchanging are the traditions and pride which are our foundations. Visitors from abroad who were in London on Tuesday were envious of everything they saw, and none more so than the Americans – a race of such vitality but so lacking in tradition – who know that they must wait a thousand years before they can show the world anything so significant or so lovely.

I have never been so tired as I was when I finally left the Abbey at half-past midnight on Tuesday – seventeen hours after I entered it. I have never felt so acutely the strain of describing a great public occasion, and I have never before had such a feeling of nervousness and anxiety before the day began.

But I have never been so proud or so glad that I was able to contribute in a small way to history, even to making a fragment of history, because this was the first time that the Coronation of a British Sovereign had ever been seen as it happened except by the privileged few in the Abbey.

Last Days

Leaving New York Richard again had an unlucky flight. His aircraft could not get beyond Shannon. He sat on a bench at the airport until well after dawn, uncomplaining, but unusually quiet. He introduced two more Panoramas. But the New York illness and temperature persisted. It was thought that he had picked up gastro-enteritis in New York, or had reacted to a TAB injection, or perhaps there had been a resurgence of his 1937 paratyphoid. His doctors suspected a gall bladder infection and told him so. Richard said philosophically, ‘You’d have thought it enough to have cancer. Now I have to have a gall bladder as well.’

It was announced that he had entered St Thomas’s Hospital for observation of suspected gall bladder infection, and this is what both he and his doctors then genuinely believed was keeping him from his Panorama place.

But after an operation it was discovered that a secondary and widespread growth of cancer had given him the symptoms of a gall bladder infection. On 5 November Richard with characteristic courage and common sense told his son David to explain clearly why he was in hospital:

‘My father first contracted cancer over five years ago and has been undergoing treatment at various times since then. He asked me to explain this because he is very strongly opposed to the idea of cancer being an unmentionable disease. The reason he has not mentioned it is that in the last five years he has not lost a single day’s work because of it, but as he expects to be away for a few weeks he thought that people should know why.’

The news of Richard’s illness and the manner of its telling gave his friends, known and unknown, both sadness and enhanced respect. Over 7,000 wrote to him in the hospital. They included many ordinary people who suspected they had cancer and now were given the courage to consult their doctors. His announcement dramatically lifted a taboo. Large numbers of people found they could use a word they had always avoided before. The ‘Nursing Mirror’ was to write:

‘Any public figure has special opportunity for service denied to the man in the street, but does not always recognise it, or use it. In Mr Dimbleby’s case, the opportunity was seen, seized with both hands, and utilised to create an impact on this country which will surely never be forgotten, and which promises to be the forerunner of a change in attitude which will affect the lives of millions of people in the future.’

One day a uniformed guardsman arrived bearing champagne from the Queen. Other members of the Royal Family also asked to be kept informed of his progress. Both Lord Fisher of Lambeth and Cardinal Heenan sought to visit him, but few except his immediate family were allowed to his bedside. Dilys Dimbleby never left him.

On Sunday 19 December, Paul Fox went to the hospital:

‘He brushed aside all questions about himself. His interests even then centred on the people at Lime Grove; on the programmes; on the audiences. The past he had enshrined did not matter to him. His thoughts, as ever, were on the future.’

The next night, as Panorama ended, James Mossman spoke to camera:

‘There are many kinds of courage and it’s appropriate for me to refer to a particular example of it tonight. Richard Dimbleby, who has always been here to give an end-of-term flourish to the last Panorama of the year, is, as everyone knows, ill in hospital, and as everyone also knows, he was a very sick man long before he took time for hospital treatment, though he never during that time gave any intimation to colleagues, or viewers, of the strain he must have been feeling. That is what is known as professionalism, as well as courage. And what I would like to say, to Richard, because I hope he is watching, is that all of us here in Panorama, both on the screen and behind it, send you our very best wishes. I know all of you do also, judging from the seven thousand letters he has received. Yesterday he told a colleague of mine who visited him that he particularly wanted us to pass on his thanks tonight, and to wish all of you a Happy Christmas from him.’

Richard did see, and appreciated, that part of the programme. Two days later, on Wednesday 22 December 1965, he fell into a coma. Shortly after 9 p.m., with Dilys, David and Jonathan at his bedside, he died. He was 52.

His Example Shone Bright

The Dimbleby family received several thousand letters. Many wished to give practical expression to their affection and admiration for Richard. The Richard Dimbleby Cancer Fund was quickly established, to which the profits of this book and of the companion long-playing record will go. The public response was immediate and strong.

Richard Dimbleby sometimes called Westminster Abbey his ‘workshop’. On the morrow of his death the Dean of Westminster straightway suggested that a Memorial Service should be held in the great cathedral church where England honours those who have done outstanding service. Moreover the Dean and Chapter decided that none of the substantial expense of holding an Abbey Memorial Service should fall upon either the Dimbleby family or the BBC.

The service on 4 January 1966 was a fitting farewell to the man who had so often been the spokesman of the BBC, and of the nation, at Westminster Abbey’s great occasions. The Abbey was freshly adorned and floodlit in celebration of its 900 years. Close to the High Altar a Christmas Tree still stood, with golden bows and bells the only decoration to its dark green branches. Television lighting enhanced the brilliant colouring of the choir stalls and the vestments. For hours beforehand patient queues had formed behind unopened doors.

After every seat was taken, hundreds crowded into the cloister to watch the Memorial Service on television. Others outside the West Door listened to the Sound broadcast on loudspeakers. Five million viewers at home saw the service at 4 p.m., and another six and a half million watched a recording at the end of the evening. Dr Eric Abbott, the Dean of Westminster, conducted the service and read a prayer for broadcasters. The address was given by Dr George Reindorp, Bishop of Guildford:

‘Praise my soul the King of Heaven, to His feet thy tribute bring.’ And the tribute we now bring is the life, work, art, friendship and love of Richard Dimbleby.

The very mention of his name conjures up in the minds of millions a person, someone they felt they knew. Many here in the Abbey did know him personally – those who shaped and shared with him the priceless treasure of a happy home – to whom today our hearts go out in loving sympathy. You in the BBC were his colleagues. So were you in his newspaper for which he cared so much. You all pay tribute here to a man, a friend, a colleague whose work inspired your admiration, marred by never a hint of jealousy.

The measure of his contribution to our English way of life is the fact that almost everyone in England would wish, if they were able at this moment, to give their own picture of what Richard Dimbleby meant to them.

Why is this? Was it because he was a prodigious worker, covering an immense amount of ground in an all too short life? Not entirely, though he was certainly that. Was it because he was a superb professional, demanding the highest standards from himself and inspiring all around him to attain them also? Not entirely, though he was a master at his art. Was it because, although broadcasting cannot speak to the individual, broadcasters of genius can nearly seem to do so? Not entirely, though he was certainly one such.

The entrance to the Abbey crowded with people

It was because there was something in him which responded to people as people. Queens and cameramen, bishops and bakers, politicians and printers, homes and husbands, craftsmen and children – these were of the stuff of England’s green and pleasant land which Richard loved. To describe them to others, to hear their point of view, to admire their craft, to listen to their hopes and fears, to help their fellows to assess their value in the moving line between past and present which we call history – this for Richard made sense to his integrity of soul which was his supreme possession.

And it was just because he knew these people, because something in him responded to the majesty and meaning of what was happening that, in the words of Garter King of Arms, he ‘originated and established the new profession and art of commentator on the great occasions and ceremonies of state’. For though he walked with kings and queens, he did not lose the common touch; and knew how by word and by silence to interpret to us ordinary English people throughout the land the outward expression of our heritage and history.

A close-up of 11 people in the congregation

The broadcast Memorial Service, with the Dean of Westminster, mourners in the Abbey, Bishop of Guildford, and Archbishop Lord Fisher

But his unique contribution to our state occasions must not cloud our gratitude for much, much more. A brilliant war reporter, sharing the experiences of fear and danger, his visit to Belsen, one of the first people to go there after the war, left an indelible mark on him. From then on he was never without the knowledge of what can happen to an individual in horrible cruelty, or in squalor; what can happen to those who are unloved or uncared for. And just because of this, the English scene, the English people, their moments grave and gay, gave to him a security which he in turn gave back to them in admiration and service. Richard really cared.

When in those marathon broadcasts about the General Elections Richard Dimbleby announced the results from here or there and added some homely comment about this place or that, you always felt that he was recalling this individual or that whom he had met there. Perhaps it was you in the Abbey, or you in the crowd overflowing the Abbey in the cloister outside, or you viewing, or you listening, or you, or me. And it usually was. For remember that long before Panorama became part of the English scene, for five and a half years, for two days a week, Richard was Down Your Way touring these islands among the people whom he loved, mindful, as Milton taught him, that ‘where there is much desire to learn, there of necessity will be much arguing, many opinions: for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making’.

Outside shot of the Abbey captioned "In Memoriam / RICHARD DIMBLEBY, C.B.E., LL.D / 1913-1965"

Memorial Service: the empty commentary box, Sir Adrian Boult, the family

And it was to avoid embarrassment to these English people he knew so well that without any fuss or heroics he allowed the secret of his cancer, shared by his family and friends for five years, to be made known to the public who would miss his part in their daily life. And by his action he gave courage and hope to many in the knowledge that if he could face this scourge squarely, so could they. And his example shone bright in a dark day.

Who shall pay the last tribute? Shall it be a Surrey housewife who said: ‘He made many things real to me. In an age of shams he was a man of integrity’, or shall it be the anonymous writer of perhaps one of the most human of the thousands of letters that poured in to him in hospital:

Dear Mr Dimbleby,

My wife and children asked me to write to you and say how sorry we are that you are ill, and how much we miss you on Panorama.

Who am I? Just an ordinary roadman from Berkshire.

See you down my road one of these days.

Yours faithfully,
The Roadman.

Now Richard has left us. Sometimes as we stand on the shore waving goodbye to a ship – as she fades hull-down on the horizon, lost to our sight, we say ‘There she goes’, and turn away heavy-hearted. But we forget that there on the further shore eager eyes are watching for her and eager hands stretch out in greeting.

So, too, with Richard. With quiet confidence and deep gratitude and love, we commend him to the King of Heaven, firm in the knowledge that death cannot kill the bond of love which lifts us all above time and space into the heart of God Himself.

Archbishop Lord Fisher spoke the Commendation of the Departed. It referred to Richard Dimbleby’s gifts of mind and heart and spirit which ‘he improved by care and diligence so great that he established a new art and a new profession of communicating to the people by a commentary the outward forms and the inward meaning of great occasions both in Church and State’.