Queen Elizabeth Archives - Richard Dimbleby: Broadcaster

Enterprise but No Faking

In June 1937 Richard Dimblehy married a girl he had met as a fellow reporter on the family newspapers at Richmond, Dilys Thomas, third daughter of a London barrister. The BBC gave him a wedding present of £5. Had he been with the staff a whole year it would have been £10. The Dimblebys were poor and happy.

Charles Gardner soon moved over from sub-editing to join Richard Dimbleby as the second BBC news observer, and between them they covered all the home news stories, while Ralph Murray continued to report the League of Nations.

A bride and groom — Copthorne, Sussex, 26 June 1937

Richard was fascinated by the technique of the use of recordings. He was always experimenting with sound effects and with microphone placings. Here both he and I had to observe one very clear rule of the News Talks section – there must be no faking. To fake was the unforgivable sin. The bark of the dog that roused the household against a burglar had to be the bark of the dog and not just the bark of any other dog of the same species. We were rather proud of this integrity, and when it was suggested to us, as it so often was, that rather than put all concerned to a great deal of trouble to produce some sound effect or other, we could more easily and more convincingly fake it, we used to reply with great dignity ‘News Talks never fakes’. I have some recollection of Dimbleby and Arthur Phillips spending all of some railway journey behind a new record-breaking engine recording the real sound of the train’s wheels by dangling the microphone down a lavatory pan.

About this time there was the affair of the telephone boxes. This arose after a series of headline news stories had annoyingly occurred in the remoteness of East Anglia. Probably the Fen floods was one of these stories. East Anglia was a ‘Here do dwell savages’ area on our map, because there was nowhere nearer than London we could use to play back discs for that night’s news. So, after a series of problems about getting discs back from East Anglia, and losing a high proportion of them as Railway Press Packages, Richard had his telephone box idea. What was wrong with hitching an amplifier and a BBC microphone on to a GPO box and making any telephone kiosk an impromptu Outside Broadcast point? What indeed? So Richard and, I think, David Howarth of Recorded Programmes wandered around putting in calls to Broadcasting House from telephone kiosks and getting them recorded. In the end the GPO said the whole proposal was illegal and that was that. So East Anglia remained the great broadcasting waste unless, of course, one ignored the law and used a telephone hitched up to a recording channel at Broadcasting House and then remembered to remove from the disc the ‘thrrreee minutes’ interruptions from the trunk operators (before the pips were invented). Richard did this several times for straight eyewitness pieces, and so did I. We were never prosecuted.

Richard Dimbleby in those pioneering days of BBC reporting was cheerful, good natured, intensely hard-working and bubbling with enthusiasm for each and every story. Together we made youthful common cause against the hated ‘admin’ – the administrative people in the BBC – seen by us in simple black and white terms as the ‘baddies’. ‘They’ couldn’t properly organise the instant availability of a recording car; ‘they’ would hardly sanction the spending of a halfpenny on the news service; ‘they’ challenged the need to buy a pint of beer for someone who had helped us. Fighting ‘them’ became the joy of our lives.

With hindsight and the maturity of extreme age, I can imagine that ‘they’ were really scared stiff at the possible Trojan Horse they had invited inside the walls of Broadcasting House. The BBC putting out safe bulletins ‘copyright by Reuter, Press Association, etc.’ was one thing. Any allegation of error or bias could be neatly blamed on the agencies. BBC staff reporters were different. Might they not start to editorialise – to use the great power and prestige of the BBC to shape public opinion this way or that way – even by an inflection of voice? Outside experts might just land the BBC in trouble on this score, but at least they were not BBC staff. Dimbleby and Murray and I were staff and could not be disowned or explained away.

Two people in a classic car — With his wife in the London to Brighton Veteran Car Rally, 1948

Richard and I were then perhaps too raw, too young, or too inexperienced to give these matters of high policy a thought. We never dreamed of editorialising. We were professionally-trained reporters, interested only in conveying undisputed facts and not concerned to hold inquests. Richard spent a great deal of quiet and careful time in ascertaining, checking and cross-checking the facts. If there was a discrepancy either he left it out or used the ‘some say this – others say that’ technique without advancing his own views. But – and this is my point – we did this by instinct not by command. Of course we had views, but we never dreamt of inflicting those views on the public. Both of us had been brought up in the old-fashioned Scott school which said that facts were sacred – and the free comment was not our affair.

In the News bulletins time was strictly limited. It was common to be told ‘You have 45 seconds in the nine o’clock and you can have 2 minutes 15 seconds at ten’. Richard’s great and enduring strength, the ability to tell any story with a beginning, a middle, and an end in any stated time-scale from 30 seconds to a lavish 3½ minutes derived, I am certain, from those early days.

The News Department was impecunious – and we ourselves were perpetually broke. I remember the night in 1937 when it became clear to Richard and me that there was potentially big news in the fact that Tommy Sopwith’s America’s Cup challenger Endeavour on her return journey across the Atlantic had broken her tow and was facing full gale conditions.

We decided to cover two key places: Southampton where Sopwith’s motor yacht had now fetched up, without Endeavour hitched on behind; and Plymouth near to which Endeavour must sail if she ever regained our waters.

Richard and I tossed up for destinations. He won and chose Southampton. Then came the little matter of getting railway tickets. An office ‘float’ cash box existed for such emergencies. It was scheduled to contain £20 – the system being to extract some cash and leave a signed IOU in its place. We opened the box, and found a shower of IOUs – all of them signed by the news editor ‘R. T. Clark’. So Richard and I turned out our pockets and dunned our colleagues – but the collection fell short of £3. Our next move was to go to the Queen’s Hall opposite, where the BBC was staging the Proms. There we persuaded the cashier to give us £10 each from the till, on note of hand alone. Thus did Richard get to Southampton and I to Plymouth that night.

It was while on this story, and as a guest on Sopwith’s luxury motor yacht, that Richard, replete with champagne and feeling thirsty in the night, drank some doubtful water, contracted paratyphoid, and was seriously ill in hospital. He was away for two months. The expense involved nearly broke him and he pleaded with ‘Admin’ to get them to pay his hospital bills on the grounds that he contracted his paratyphoid on Corporation duty. The story became involved because there was a simultaneous typhoid outbreak at Croydon at the time, plus a counter allegation that Richard had been negligent in using a wrong tap to get his water. Finally the BBC split the bill down the middle, but even so Richard’s half of it was a serious problem for him. While Richard was getting paratyphoid at Southampton, I was getting seasick at Plymouth. I managed, however, via friendly pilots at the airfield, to find Endeavour and go alongside in a small hired boat to interview the Skipper – while Fleet Street was still arguing the toss in pubs ashore. I returned to start my own anti-‘Admin’ file on the matter of 3s. 6d. expended for a bottle of sea-sick remedy. We cleaned up completely in the Endeavour story for a cost of about £20. The newspapers spent hundreds – and missed out.

At this time neither Richard nor I could afford a personal motor-car. We did, however, finally set ourselves up with a jointly owned Swift purchased for £10 with capital borrowed from Ralph Murray and repaid to him out of the 3d. a mile BBC car allowance for duty journeys. Richard and Dilys had the private use of the car one weekend, and my wife Eve and I had it for the other. I have now completely forgotten what happened to the Swift, but I remember Richard coming to me very excited to say that MGs would give us a new car each (to be changed every year) if we would put ‘BBC News’ on it somewhere. Imagine the temptation – but after a mournful drink, we decided that we daren’t. My memories of Richard’s financial troubles at this time are varied, but they had one central theme, ‘Dilys has rung to say she is going to sell the piano’ – but I don’t think she ever did.

In December 1936, just before the Abdication, Richard and I were parties to one of the BBC’s best kept skeletons – the day the BBC News Department threatened to strike. The newspapers, after Bishop Blunt’s sermon, were now full of the Simpson divorce but the BBC didn’t carry a word. Eventually this became, in our view, stupid and the staff of BBC News issued an ultimatum: either that night’s bulletins made some reference to the main topic of the day – or there would be no News Bulletin at all. Richard and I weren’t directly involved, but gave our general agreement. Fortunately the matter wasn’t put to the test because that afternoon Stanley Baldwin made mention of the matter in the House of Commons and our local crisis was averted. Would there have actually been a strike of BBC News? I don’t know. The key mover, Alan Wells, who was killed by a bomb in the war, felt very strongly indeed on the subject and he had much support.

Early in 1939 the Spanish Civil War (a very difficult subject from a BBC impartiality viewpoint) was delicately covered by Richard interviewing refugees at Perpignan. Later both of us went to Yarmouth to interview all concerned in an action off the East Coast in which a Spanish warship had fired on and sunk a Spanish merchantman and alleged blockade runner. I, and half of Fleet Street, caught a train to Yarmouth. Richard said if I would get the story he would liberate the recording car and join me. I telegraphed ahead and booked the only two station taxis in the majestic name of the BBC, and thus was able to isolate Fleet Street for long enough to sign up an exclusive interview with the Spanish captain for £5. I knew that, back at the station, O’Dowd Gallagher of the Daily Express was willing to offer £100. I waited ages with my story and the interviewee for Richard to arrive with the recording car, mounting guard on the hotel stairs and concealing from our Fleet Street colleagues who had now arrived that the principal actors in the drama were upstairs in the same building. Had O’Dowd found out he would certainly have outbid me. Richard eventually showed up (the recording car had been locked up and no one had the key, so he had had to break in the garage door) and we all repaired by a back exit to the Post Office where we used our car amplifier to transmit the story and the exclusive interviews. When we finished I saw a movement behind a pillar in the GPO – it was O’Dowd, notebook in hand, taking down our stuff. His office could, of course, have got it direct in London by listening to the radio – and probably did.

We enjoyed our battles with Fleet Street. We were handicapped by having no money to bribe or buy or to hire aircraft or boats, so we used the magic of the BBC name instead. For some reason people were very willing to talk to us for nothing when they were not so forthcoming to other reporters.

I have little recollection of Richard’s coverage of the Royal Tour of Canada in 1939 save a picture of him gloomily telling me that even he who had a certain genius with BBC expense sheets was unable to account for some £96 spent on the Canadian trip and he didn’t know what was going to happen. He was very low about it for days, until suddenly he showed me a memo he’d composed which said, ‘You can’t expect me to account for every halfpenny when I am with my King’. Apparently that memo did the trick and Richard brightened up again.

Indeed, when on a job involving good hotels and a chance of a grander life than either he or I could normally afford (I think we both got under £600 a year) Richard set about making the most of it. I remember him ringing all the bells in sight in one splendid hotel and ordering a manicure, drinks in the room, and expensive sandwiches – mainly I think to enjoy seeing the shock on my face. On jobs which permitted it, the best was only just good enough for Richard, and I envied the grand manner he assumed to match his temporary opulence. I suspect that this lay at the heart of many minor clashes with the ‘Admin’. I hasten to add that these little assumptions of grandeur were done as a piece of gamesmanship against the BBC administration and always ended in a giggle of anticipation at the reception of the expense sheet.

War was drawing near. Richard was to go to France with the Army and I, as a qualified pilot, with the RAF. The fun days were over; but for both of us our attitude to broadcasting, to integrity, to non-editorialisation and to careful reporting, whether we knew it or not, was shaped for all time.

If I had to name those who contributed to the shaping in those prewar days, I would say S. J. de Lotbinière of Outside Broadcasts, whose demand for professionalism and integrity extended its influence well beyond his own department, R. T. Clark with his casual but shrewd light handling of reins, Michael Balkwill for his sense of fairness and balance, and Ralph Murray’s morning criticism of what we had perpetrated the night before. But none of this would have counted if Richard himself had not been the right selection from the start. I suppose he could have set radio reporting back for five years; instead he advanced it by a decade.

A man on a deck of a ship — On the ‘Duchess of York’, 1939

I first met Richard Dimbleby in the spring of 1939. I had been brought into the BBC to run the News Talks in German, which Ralph Murray had started a month or two before. Dimbleby was about to leave for Canada and the United States to cover the tour of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. It was the first time that a Royal Tour had included a BBC correspondent.

Equipped with a new morning suit and evening tails, Dimbleby sailed on the ‘Duchess of York’ on the first of many visits to the New World. He shared a cabin with his father’s old friend Edward Gilling, for long the Court correspondent of ‘Exchange Telegraph’ who gave him many useful tips on how to deal with the elaborate retinue surrounding the Monarch.

On this journey Dimbleby substantially increased his stature as a correspondent. In addition to being a broadcaster of enterprise he became one of distinction. Handling Richard’s scripts daily, as I did at the time, one could watch his style mature and his national reputation grow during that Royal Tour. The Board of Governors recorded their appreciation of his exceptionally good work in Canada.

It was also significant that the King and Queen got to know, to like and to trust Richard Dimbleby. As they neared the American stage of their journey he posted a note (signed ‘Bumble’) from the Royal Train to his friend Muriel Howlett in News Talks.

The US looks like being pretty frantic. … We’ve also been invited to the Roosevelts’ picnic and I have fixed up to say ‘how-do’ to the gentleman himself, which will be interesting. …

I took part in an amazing broadcast at Moose Jaw the other day, for the local station, and was announced with a terrific fanfare of trumpets as the star of the evening. They brought the mike right up to the train as it arrived, and all would have been well if the bastard (beg your pardon) hadn’t got my name wrong. Very undignified having to correct him and say your name isn’t Dunglehop. I suppose he must have seen my signature somewhere.

After that he had numerous letters from Moose Jaw, one addressed to Dangleberry. ‘I think that’s the worst.’

Visits to Canada

During a trip to Montreal and Quebec for the Queen’s visit in September 1964, I spent a week with Richard Dimbleby watching the entire coverage of the event by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. It was only his second visit to Canada since he’d covered the journey of the King and Queen in 1939. Throughout the week he contrasted the mood of the two Royal Tours: in 1964 it was one of danger and hostility; in 1939 the Royal Tour was in the warm glow of Empire, when the Monarchy represented a great power on the American continent. It was the stuff of boys’ magazines, when Toronto and Banff seemed as far as the Mountains of the Moon and when the coverage of distance itself was an adventure for the intrepid.

During a long lunch at the Chateau Frontenac in Quebec – long, because the food was good and the weather was fine – he told me of an evening in the Banff Springs Hotel with the pressmen and photographers covering the 1939 tour. King George VI and Queen Elizabeth had been with them in the earlier part of the evening, talking informally. But after they went the party continued and grew in volume of numbers and of sound, with Richard at the piano. As the day drew to 11 o’clock or so, the King appeared in the room and asked if they minded his rejoining them: this he did and the party continued with no change of mood or style. A contrast, said Dimbleby, to the Mounties stationed above the Café de Paris and at every rooftop and naked window in Quebec for the present tour.

After finishing lunch, Richard Dimbleby took me through the heavy security of the 1964 Press Office and headed unerringly for the trestle table with piles of red and blue books on it – each embossed with the royal standard. ‘The Book of the Tour’, he whispered. ‘Must get the one issued to the royal entourage: gives you everything – people on parade grounds, in processions, upstairs, downstairs, who the Queen is meeting, what time she starts on the lobster – it’s invaluable.’ He pocketed one, greeted every journalist he knew with the unique delight he reserved openly for everybody, and we left the hotel.

A small boy is lifted up to see the King and Queen go by in a carriage

The flight to Quebec from Montreal was undertaken just for the day so that Richard Dimbleby could feel the atmosphere of this expected centre of French-Canadian hostility to the British Monarchy. He found the day totally rewarding because he was able to see the royal car, guarded by police and Mounties, on the quayside where the Queen would disembark the next day; because he was able to remind himself of how undramatic and essentially dull the Heights of Abraham are; because he discovered the names of the paintings in the Quebec Parliament Chamber, and experienced an overpowering smell of newly polished wood in the entrance hall of the Parliament building. And he saw the stunning colours of the Canadian Fall. But the smell was the important moment – and it emerged when he finally did his commentary to the edited film of the week’s tour. ‘When those pictures of her visit to the Quebec Parliament pop up,’ he said, ‘I shall be able to tell people at home exactly what was the most immediate sensation experienced by the Queen at that moment.’

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.

How America saw the Coronation

Dimbleby thought, and it made him angry, that the relay of his Coronation commentary from the Abbey had been interrupted on one American television magazine programme by a facetious interview with a resident chimpanzee called J. Fred Muggs.

I was the BBC’s chief correspondent in America at the time, and saw the offending programme. It was in fact the live radio commentaries of Howard Marshall and John Snagge that were interrupted, when shortwave reception faltered, for this graceless enterprise. Richard Dimbleby, on the contrary, suddenly achieved transatlantic fame and respect.

The rival American television networks were hotly competing for the best and fastest coverage of the Coronation. The first to get pictures on to the American air would scoop a huge expectant audience. This was, of course, before the development of videotape recording or live transatlantic transmission by satellite.

As soon as the Coronation date was announced the Earl Marshal was asked to estimate at what exact time the Archbishop could be expected to lower the crown on to the Queen’s head. (His forecast, made months ahead, was correct to within one minute.) The American networks made elaborate and secretive arrangements to send their own ace commentators to London and to rush the films and telerecordings up to the moment of crowning back to the United States as fast as possible.

Ed Murrow, then in charge of news for the Columbia Broadcasting System, chartered a Stratocruiser from BOAC, ripped out the seats, installed film processing and editing machines, and arranged to work in this flying laboratory and cutting room so that the film, with his own commentary, would be ready for immediate transmission.

The National Broadcasting Company made similar preparations with another airline and also arranged with the Venezuelan Air Force that on 2 June it would conveniently take delivery of a much faster Canberra bomber ordered from Britain. Of course it would have to stop in America on the way, and could drop off cans of film exclusively for NBC. (In the event that Canberra developed engine trouble after two hours and had to turn back.)

The American Broadcasting Company was at that time a poor third in the television stakes, and could not afford such outlays. It settled for booking a coaxial cable to the nearest point in Canada to pick up whatever the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation showed.

In fact the transatlantic race was won by an RAF Canberra which brought the BBC telerecording to Canada. Thus it was Richard Dimbleby’s Abbey Commentary, relayed by ABC-TV, to which avid United States viewers first switched. The American republic suddenly realised that Britain could not only stage glorious coronations. She also had outstanding television production skill, and an exceptional television commentator.

The week after the Coronation BBC television cameras were present at the Royal School of Needlework Exhibition at St James’s Palace, which the Queen Mother was to visit. Dimbleby began his commentary five minutes before Her Majesty was due to arrive, but, unexpectedly for Royalty, she was late and he had to speak for a further twenty minutes during which he treated viewers to a detailed history of the Royal School. It transpired subsequently that the Queen Mother was watching the programme at Clarence House when it started, and was so enthralled that she left her home rather later than she had planned.

Soon after she arrived at nearby St James’s Palace she saw Dimbleby and made straight for him with a word of greeting and congratulation on his Coronation commentary. The stick microphone in Dimbleby’s hand was live, and viewers heard her say, ‘Good evening…’. Quick-thinking as he bowed to the Queen Mother, Dimbleby held the microphone under the tails of his evening dress to muffle the sound and prevent her private conversation and personal congratulations to him from going out over the air.

Confidence in Ourselves

In Coronation year I was unexpectedly plunged into the deep sea of ceremonial commentating. Distressingly inexperienced, it was hard work keeping my head above water in the company of some of the best commentators in the world. Most difficult of all was my assignment to cover the Royal visit to Northern Ireland, because this involved going ahead on my own to Belfast to set the scene before Richard came over in time for the Queen’s arrival.

Everyone was overwhelmingly kind and hospitable, but I felt like someone in the back row of an orchestra which, through some awful circumstance, lacked a conductor. Everyone treated me like a seasoned professional. I tried to behave like one. But inside I felt hopelessly incompetent.

And then Richard arrived. He came to dinner at my host’s house. He greeted me not only as a friend but as an equal, a professional colleague. In a matter of minutes his humour – smiling at the touchiness of local politics which had frightened me into silence – and his enthusiasm had cut my inflated nightmares down to size. It was as though the orchestra had a conductor again.

His presence brought everyone working with him a feeling of warm security because of the confidence we had in him. But more than that, and most unselfishly of all, he gave us confidence in ourselves.

HM Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother in furs speaks to Richard Dimbleby in a suit — Television Centre, 1961

Commentator at Royal Events

Few knew these qualities more intimately than Antony Craxton, who produced more than a hundred major outside broadcasts with Richard Dimbleby, and was his ally in countless battles with the authorities to secure proper facilities for television to cover public events:

Few people have any conception of the complexities a television commentator faces on a large-scale outside broadcast. One should think it difficult enough to describe events taking place in sight – which they very often are not – while at the same time watching the same events on a television screen. But in addition to this, a commentator has to wear a pair of headphones, through which he can hear in one earpiece the sounds of the event – the band, horses’ hooves, etc. – and in the other the producer giving to him and the many cameramen detailed, involved instructions. Thus, while describing solemn events of a State Funeral, for instance, the poor commentator will be getting constant interruptions to his train of thought. He virtually has to have a split mind, which can keep a fluent commentary going while at the same time absorbing information from the producer which will be essential to him as the broadcast proceeds. Moreover, the instructions the producer gives to the cameramen are equally important to the commentator, as they often forewarn him of what pictures are being planned and which he can then be ready to describe.

Antony Craxton and Dimbleby briefing Eurovision commentators before Princess Alexandra’s wedding

For Richard Dimbleby, these difficulties were an integral part of the job of commentating, and so supreme a master of his craft was he that never did they prevent him from giving of his best. Very often when I was the producer I got carried away and used to give my own commentary as I switched from picture to picture – a commentary which, of course, Richard could hear all too clearly – putting words into his mouth. This must have caused him embarrassment on occasions, as he often pulled my leg about it, but at no time in the countless outside broadcasts we undertook together did he lose control of himself, and there were many occasions when the conditions under which he worked would have daunted the brave. Snow, torrential rain, suffocating heat, Richard suffered them all with a philosophical outlook which made him the great professional he was.

One occasion which challenged even Richard’s powers was the departure of Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon on their honeymoon on 6 May 1960. Richard and I had left Westminster Abbey almost immediately after the marriage service had finished, to journey to the Tower of London, from where the Royal Yacht Britannia was sailing. We had decided to go on the air as the Royal couple left Buckingham Palace, and to fill the twenty minutes the journey to the Tower was expected to take with a planned sequence of pictures from the four Tower cameras. Little did we think that the twenty minutes would be more than doubled before the car arrived. Having completed our rehearsed sequence, we searched for visual material to interest the viewers while they waited: the Tower itself, the Bridge, the jetty, the Yeomen Warders, the Britannia of course, the launch, the skyline of London; every possibility was used. The most remarkable aspect of this unexpected marathon was that Richard wove his commentary into a masterpiece of continuity, so that few people realised that what was being seen and said had not been planned in great detail beforehand. Unrelated subjects and objects were somehow, by Richard’s description, made into a pattern that at once seemed natural and flowing. Towards the end, after the marathon had been in progress some fifty minutes, Richard did show some impatience towards the three or four helicopters circling noisily overhead, and which must have seriously disturbed his concentration, seated in the open as he was. He confessed to me afterwards that he had exhausted his almost inexhaustible fund of information about the scene, and was ready to break into silence at any moment.

I also vividly recall the opening of the Wedding broadcast. Richard had forgotten that instead of beginning, as originally planned, at ten o’clock, we had decided, for technical reasons, to start five minutes earlier. He was due to open our transmission, in vision, on the lawn outside the North Door of the Abbey. Two minutes before time I noticed that he wasn’t at this camera position, and asked where he was. I was extremely alarmed to hear from a cameraman in the Abbey that he was strolling quietly down the Choir checking seating arrangements, oblivious of the urgency of his presence outside. The only way to get him to the start on time was for the cameraman to startle the distinguished assembled company by calling out to Richard from his lofty position in the Abbey and indicating the need for some haste. Richard arrived a few seconds before the broadcast began, and no viewer would have guessed from his opening remarks that he had run the last fifty yards or so.

The Merchant Navy Memorial surrounded by people — Merchant Navy Memorial (TV camera to right of band)

Some years earlier I remember an occasion when the usually meticulous Royal arrangements went wrong and caused us acute embarrassment. It was the unveiling by Her Majesty the Queen of the Merchant Navy Memorial at Tower Hill in November 1955. The Memorial is sunk below ground level and consists of a central area with two small side alcoves. In order to get a television camera into one of these wings we had buried a cable at an early stage of construction so it would not look unsightly on the day. As the photograph shows, the camera, on a movable four-wheeled truck, was tucked away in the wing, together with the choir, and almost completely filled the area. The Queen, on her inspection of the Memorial, was due to walk across the front of this alcove, but to our consternation the architect escorted her into it to one side of the choir, and thus out of sight of our cameras. We knew that it would be virtually impossible for Her Majesty to walk right round the alcove as our camera would block her progress. All we could do was to move the camera forward on to the grass, knocking over military band music stands in the process, and subsequently to heave on the submerged cable and, in so doing, lift the flagstones, in an effort to allow the Queen room to squeeze through. My panic-stricken instructions to the cameramen, all of which Richard could hear only too well, did not prevent him from calmly describing the scene, well aware of the predicament we were in. He conveyed nothing of this to the viewing public.

A bank of 16 television screens, a clock and engineers — Dimbleby’s view of Princess Alexandra’s wedding

At Princess Alexandra’s wedding on 24 April 1963, instead of using a number of different commentators, which was customary when our cameras were ranged over a wide area, I decided to break new ground and use Richard alone. He was in a sound-proof box in our central control room at the Abbey, immediately behind my position overlooking all the twenty or so monitor screens. The advantages were enormous. Richard could see, as I could, exactly when events were about to happen at Kensington Palace, Clarence House, or Buckingham Palace, as well as along the route and inside and outside the Abbey. This meant that he could work far more closely with me. For instance, I could tell him over his headphones to watch the Kensington Palace picture and that, as soon as Princess Alexandra stepped out from her home, we would switch to those cameras immediately. While describing events elsewhere he was able to keep an eye on that vital screen. Even before I switched to Kensington Palace, Richard had said ‘and as Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother arrives at the Abbey, some three or four miles away the bride leaves her home for the last time’, or words to that effect. Again, when we picked up the bridegroom’s car as it sped along the route, Richard was able to follow it continuously, even though we were only showing its progress to the viewers from time to time. Consequently, he knew its exact position whenever I decided to switch to it. This method of describing events can only be of value if many locations are involved, and where split-second switching from one to the other is necessary.

For the historic funeral of Sir Winston Churchill, Richard had two positions in the West Gallery of St Paul’s Cathedral, and our control room was in the Crypt. From one box Richard described the entire procession from Westminster to Waterloo; from the other, overlooking the Nave, he described the Service below him.

This was a mammoth effort for him. Five hours as sole commentator, then no relaxation – a hurried journey to Television Centre to edit the tapes ready for a two and a half hour transmission that night with a fresh commentary.

Few people can realise the homework Richard undertook for this epic task; the vast amount of reading necessary to assimilate every detail of the solemn events. On this broadcast he achieved a perfection he had never attained before.

High contrast image of Dimbleby in a glass both with a lip mic — West gallery, St Paul’s Cathedral, Churchill’s funeral, 30 January 1965

As part of his preparation Dimbleby had arranged to meet the Duke of Norfolk, who as Earl Marshal was in charge of the arrangements, at 5 p.m. on the day before the funeral to settle any outstanding questions for his final commentary. The Duke of Norfolk later wrote in ‘The Times’:

‘As it happened we met at 4.15 a m. in New Palace Yard at the final rehearsal. Dimbleby asked me what I proposed to do and when I told him I was going to move up and down the route he said: “May I tag on with my car?” At about 7.30, as the morning grew lighter, he came up to me on Tower Hill and said: “Unless you want me this evening we can call off our meeting – I have all I want and you will be busy!”

It will be hard to match his gentle kindness, sense of humour, intelligence, and tact.’

Eden and Slim stand behind a frail seated Attlee — Pall bearers the Earl of Avon and Field-Marshal Lord Slim behind Earl Attlee

The Churchill funeral broadcast will long be remembered by those who saw it and studied by generations to come. Some 600 letters came to the BBC afterwards, of which these are samples:

‘It was a triumph for everyone concerned, organisers, cameramen and commentator. I need Richard Dimbleby’s flow of language adequately to express my thanks for everything. Perhaps you would thank him, as much for his silences as for his excellent commentary.’

‘I watched from 8.30 a.m. until the end and in my humble opinion the BBC – always excellent – excelled itself! My genuine gratitude to all – no matter how humble their parts may have been – who helped to achieve such a wonderful result.’

‘I feel I must offer to you and your colleagues grateful thanks for the truly magnificent way in which you showed that epoch-making event, especially at such very short notice. The commentary of Mr Richard Dimbleby was also absolutely splendid, and fully worthy of the solemnity and splendour of the occasion, as was indeed also the carriage and behaviour of the soldiers who had the truly arduous task of carrying for long periods their precious burden. Altogether the whole proceedings were worthy of the wonderful man in whose honour they, in fact, were arranged for, and those of us who witnessed them will never forget.’