David Davis (broadcaster)

William Eric Davis (David Davis, 27 June 1908—29 April 1996), was a British radio executive and broadcaster. From 1953 to 1961, he was the head of the BBC's Children's Hour.

Born in Malvern, Worcestershire and educated at Queen's College, Oxford, Davis began a teaching career at Dunchurch Hall Preparatory School, but soon moved on to Bembridge School in the Isle of Wight. He then applied successfully for a job at the BBC advertised in The Listener, and joined Children's Hour at the beginning of 1935 as a staff accompanist, but it was soon found that he had the ideal voice for radio story-telling. In the years that followed, he recorded many stories, including Anna Sewell's Black Beauty, Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows and Kipling's Just So Stories.

On 28 December 1935, he married at St. Peter's Church, Dunchurch, Barbara Grace de Riemer Sleigh (1906–1982), she being the daughter of the artist Bernard Sleigh and niece of John de Riemer Phillp, joint proprietor of Dunchurch Hall, where Davis had taught. Barbara Sleigh was also employed on Children's Hour at the time, but she had to resign due to a BBC policy against married couples working in the same department. She continued to work for radio as a freelance writer and became a well-known writer of children's fiction.

In 1961, Davis was appointed head of children's sound broadcasting at the BBC, but by that time children were deserting radio for television and the separate children's radio department closed in 1964.^[1]

References

External resource

David Davis reading a short passage from "The Wind in the Willows" in 1950: . Retrieved 12 August 2010.