Timothy John Byford

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Timothy John Byford (Serbian Cyrillic: Тимоти Џон Бајфорд) (25 July 1941) is an author, actor, TV film-director and educator in Serbia.

Born in Salisbury, England, Timothy John Byford started his TV career directing films for the BBCTV 'Blue Peter' programme. His first TV documentary 'I Want to Be a Showjumper' won a BAFTA award in 1970. In 1971 he moved to Yugoslavia where he continued to write and direct children's television programmes during the 1970s and 1980s. He is best known for his Children's TV series 'Marigold' 'Granny's Boy' and 'Fledgling' (Belgrade TV) and 'Sunday Magazine', 'Musical Notebook' and 'On the Trail of the Dodo' (Sarajevo TV). 'Fledgling' won a Grand Prix at the Prix Jeunesse International Festival in Munich in 1980. During the past fifteen years he has been teaching English, writing and translating.

Foreigners living in Serbia and who appear on Serbian TV are often cautioned that they "will end up like Timothy John Byford". If one speaks Serbian with a strong English accent one is said to have a bajfordovski (sic) or Byfordian accent. His name is also associated with a wood in the northern suburbs of Belgrade, Banjicka Wood, as during the late 1980s he campaigned for it to have special protection because of the large number of nightingales and other species of birds that nest in it. The wood is now an officially protected natural habitat and has been dubbed by some (unofficially) as 'Byford's Wood'.