jueves, 11 de julio de 2013

Television presenter Robert Kee dies aged 93 - The Guardian

Author and television presenter Robert Kee, one of the original "famous five" presenters of 1980s breakfast TV show TV-am, has died aged 93.

Kee's television career spanned four decades and included the landmark BBC series, Ireland – A Television History.

He was one of the original presenters of ITV's first breakfast programme, TV-am, which launched in 1983 and featured Kee alongside Sir David Frost, Anna Ford, Michael Parkinson and Angela Rippon.

But it struggled in the ratings against its BBC1 rival, Breakfast Time, which launched two weeks earlier and was criticised for being too highbrow for breakfast TV viewers.

A prominent figure in current affairs journalism, Kee worked on BBC1's Panorama, ITV's First Report and Channel 4's Seven Days.

He joined the campaign for the release of the imprisoned Guildford Four and Maguire Seven, who had been convicted of taking part in the Guildford pub bombings in 1974 and wrote a 1986 book about the case, Trial & Error.

His 13-part series, Ireland - A Television History was broadcast in 1980 and 1981 and was based on his three-volume history, The Green Flag.

BBC foreign correspondent Fergal Keane said on Twitter that Kee was "the most fair-minded UK observer of Ireland that ever lived".

Calcutta-born Kee began his career as a journalist at the Picture Post, the Sunday Times and the Observer after serving in the Royal Air Force during the second world war.

He was shot down over the Netherlands and spent three years in a prisoner of war camp before he escaped to Poland.

Kee's novels, many of them based on his experiences in the war, included A Crowd is Not Company. He also wrote 1939: The Year We Left Behind, 1945: The World We Fought For and Munich: The Eleventh Hour.

Educated at Magdalen College, Oxford he was taught by historian AJP Taylor, with whom he became good friends.

He moved into television in 1958 and was awarded Bafta's Richard Dimbleby award in 1976. He also worked as literary editor of the Spectator.

Kee leaves a wife and three children.

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