Robert Kee

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Robert Kee CBE (born 1919) is a British broadcaster, journalist and writer, known for his historical works on World War II and Ireland. He was educated at Stowe School, Buckingham and Magdalen College, Oxford. At Oxford he was a pupil, then a friend of the historian A.J.P. Taylor.

During World War II he served in the Royal Air Force as a bomber pilot. His plane was shot down over German-occupied Holland. He was imprisoned and spent three years in a German POW camp. This gave him material for his first book A Crowd Is Not A Company. It was first published as a novel in 1947 but was later revealed to be an autobiography. It recounts his experiences as a prisoner of war and his various escapes from the Nazi camp.

His career in journalism began immediately after the Second World War. He worked for the Picture Post, then later became a special correspondent for the Sunday Times and the Observer. He was also literary editor of the Spectator.

In 1958 he moved to television where he became one of the great broadcasters of his generation. He appeared for many years on both the BBC and ITV as reporter, interviewer and presenter. He presented many current affairs programmes including Panorama (TV series), ITN's First Report and Channel 4's Seven Days. He was awarded the BAFTA Richard Dimbleby Award in 1976.

Kee wrote and presented the documentary series Ireland - A Television History in 1980. The work received great critical acclaim and was widely shown both in the United Kingdom and the United States.

As one of the "Famous Five" he launched TV-am in 1983 along with Sir David Frost, Anna Ford, Michael Parkinson and Angela Rippon.

[edit] Works

A Crowd Is Not Company (1947) POW memoirs, issued as a novel first, reissued 1982
The Impossible Shore (1949) novel
Beyond Defeat by Hans Werner Richter (1950) translator
The Five Seasons by Karl Eska (1954) translator
A Sign Of The Times (1955) novel
Vorkuta A Dramatic First Report on the Slave City in the Soviet Arctic by Joseph Scholmer (1955)
Zero Eight Fifteen. The Strange Mutiny of Gunner Asch (1955)
The Sanity Inspectors by Friedrich Deich (1956) translator
Before the Great Snow by Hans Pump (1959) translator
Broadstrop In Season (1959) novel
The Betrayed by Michael Horbach (1959) translator
Refugee World (1961)
Officer Factory by Hans Hellmut Kirst (1962) translator
Forward, Gunner Asch! By Hans Hellmut Kirst (1964) translator
The Revolt of Gunner Asch (1964) translator
The Return of Gunner Asch (1967) translator
The Most Distressful Country (1972) The Green Flag vol.1
The Bold Fenian Men (1972) The Green Flag vol.2
Ourselves Alone (1972) The Green Flag vol.3
Ireland: A History (1980)
1939: The Year We Left Behind (1984) as 1939: In the Shadow of the War (US)
We'll Meet Again - Photographs of Daily Life in Britain During World War Two (1984) with Joanna Smith
1945: The World We Fought For (1985)
Munich: The Eleventh Hour (1985)
A Journalist's Odyssey (1985) with Patrick O'Donovan and Hermione O'Donovan
Trial & Error: the Maguires, the Guildford pub bombings and British justice (1986)
The Picture Post Album: A 50th Anniversary Collection (1989)
The Laurel and the Ivy: The Story of Charles Stewart Parnell and Irish Nationalism (1993)
The Green Flag: A History of Irish Nationalism (2000) one-volume edition
Another Kind of Cinderella (1997) stories, with Angela Huth