Mary Adams (broadcaster)

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Mary Adams was a producer and administrator in the BBC. She was instrumental in setting up the BBC's television service both before and after World War II.

[edit] Biography

Mary Adams gained a first class honours degree in Botany at Cardiff University. She then went on to study tissue culture in Cambridge at the Strangeways Laboratory under Professor Strangeways. After her series "Six talks on Heredity", broadcast on BBC Radio, she left research and joined the BBC's Further Education Department in 1930. In 1936 she joined the fledgling television service at Alexandra Palace, London, and from January 1937 until war broke out in 1939 was active in setting up the service and producing television programmes (e.g. History of Costume with Pearl Binder) and the service was shut down. She spent the war in BBC Radio and the Ministry of Information. When the television service resumed in 1946 she helped build it up again – producing programmes on all subjects, but not drama and light entertainment. She was appointed Head of Television Talks in 1954. She retired in 1958. She encouraged David Attenborough to join BBC Television in 1952, appointed staff and commissioned ground-breaking programmes – such as Zoo Quest; The Quiz Programme; Animal, Vegetable, Mineral; Your Life in their Hands and A Matter of Life and Death (early medical programmes), as well as programmes for children – Muffin the Mule (with Anne Hogarth, who pulled the strings), Andy Pandy, and the Flowerpot Men (with Freda Lingstrom and Maria Bird).

Mary Adams (née Campin) married Vyvyan Adams (b.1900), Conservative MP for West Leeds (1930-1945) who, along with Duff Cooper, were the two Conservative MPs to oppose the Munich agreement with Hitler in 1938. He was adopted for the safe Conservative seat of Darwen early in 1951, but died later in the year.