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http://www.ex-bbc.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl >> Notices, obituaries and tributes >> Keith Kyle http://www.ex-bbc.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.pl?num=1172613833 Message started by Forum Admin on Feb 27th, 2007, 10:04pm

Title: Keith Kyle Post by Forum Admin on Feb 27th, 2007, 10:04pm This is taken from The Daily Telegraph: Keith Kyle Last Updated: 1:57am GMT 22/02/2007 Keith Kyle, who died yesterday aged 81, was a gifted journalist and scholar best known for his penetrating dispatches for the Tonight programme and as the author of Suez: Britain's End of Empire in the Middle East (1991), the definitive book on the Suez crisis. Kyle was a tall, thin man with a loud voice and donnishly enthusiastic manner. He was often taken as an eccentric for occasionally forgetting to brush his hair or adjust his dress. But though he was capable of absent-mindedness in trivial matters and did, on one occasion, send a love note intended for his wife to an ambassador, in his professional life he was a clear-thinking, well-organised man who never missed a deadline. His superficial absent-mindedness was, suggested a friend, "really his intense concentration on the things that mattered to him". Kyle's learning and integrity as a scholar never detracted from his journalistic flair. His deep and detailed knowledge of the politics of Africa, Ireland, Europe and the United States informed his writing and broadcasting. His BBC series looking back at the Suez crisis was journalism of a quality rarely seen on television. Keith Kyle was born on August 4 1925 and educated at Bromsgrove and as an exhibitioner at Magdalen College, Oxford. In 1943, after two terms, he was called up, and for the next four years served in the British, Indian and Gwalior State Armies in Burma and India. He returned to Oxford to complete his History degree as a pupil of AJP Taylor and KB McFarlane. As president of the Liberal Club he had Robin Day (who remained a lifelong friend) and Jeremy Thorpe on his committee. He entertained his fellow undergraduates by presenting an entire budget on the eve of Budget Day in the Commons. When staying with friends he would sometimes open a book after dinner and still be sitting there reading it when they came down for breakfast the next morning. On leaving Oxford Kyle joined the BBC as a talks producer with the World Service. In 1953 Geoffrey Crowther, editor of The Economist, recruited him to become the magazine's Washington correspondent, even though he had no experience of print journalism. The job meant turning down a Commonwealth fellowship at Harvard. Kyle stayed in Washington for five years, during which time he covered the Suez crisis, before returning to London as The Economist's man in Westminster, with additional responsibility for Irish affairs. In 1960 the itch to travel overtook him again and, after a period freelancing as a United Nations correspondent in New York, he took off for Africa. He had a contract with the BBC and, basing himself in Nairobi, ranged over east and central Africa, spending some time in the lawless jungle of the former Belgian Congo, filing reports for Tonight and writing articles for The Observer and The Spectator. The stories he covered included many of the independence celebrations in the region, the anarchy and the UN intervention in the Congo, and the lead-up to UDI in Rhodesia. He would work for the BBC, either full or part time, for the next 20 years or so, with academic intervals as a Fellow of the John F Kennedy Institute of Politics at Harvard (1967-68) and in various capacities at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House). Both as a journalist and as a scholar, Kyle became increasingly involved with the Middle East, dealing mainly with the Arab-Israeli dispute, but also with Cyprus. In 1969 he was accused by the Israelis of being anti-Jewish for criticising Israel's policy of "massive retaliation", rendering him persona non grata in the country. During the 1970s Kyle came to concentrate on Britain's negotiations to join the EC and the troubles in Northern Ireland. In 1977 he ran into a storm after interviewing for Tonight two Roman Catholics who claimed to have been beaten up while in RUC custody. Although he maintained he had done all he could to check the men's stories, his interview was condemned by the then Northern Ireland Secretary Roy Mason, and provoked a series of abusive letters. Suez had been the first major international event that Kyle covered, but he did not return to the subject again until 1976, when he was asked by the BBC to do a series of films to mark the 20th anniversary. Ten years later he was asked to make another anniversary film, and subsequently, following the release of Cabinet papers on the subject under the 30-year rule, he set about writing the book at weekends and in the early morning. In his book, eventually published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson in 1991, Kyle took the standard view - that Suez was a disaster and "the last great stand" for the British Empire. But in amassing the facts in a clear, readable narrative and applying sound judgment to the motives of those involved, he wrote a book that remains indispensable to any student of the crisis. Kyle was keenly interested in politics throughout his life, but became disillusioned with one party after another. In 1956, after much heart-searching, he had decided to switch from the Liberals to the Tories; but when the Suez crisis broke a week or two later he felt obliged to join the Labour Party. He contested St Albans as the Labour candidate in the 1966 general election, and Braintree in 1974. There, he and his team were followed by a television crew, whose film concluded that his academic upper-middle class image had proved a handicap. His agent candidly admitted: "We tried to relate him to the common man- but we couldn't." Kyle subsequently joined the SDP/Alliance - for whom he contested Northampton (South) in the 1983 general election - before finally throwing in his lot with the Liberal Democrats. "It is," commented his old friend Godfrey Smith, "the odyssey of a man who cares about politics almost too much". Kyle wrote various other pamphlets and books, including The Politics of the Independence of Kenya and Whither Israel? The Domestic Challenges (1993). He worked full time at Chatham House from 1982 until 1990, and from 1991 until 1998 was visiting professor of History at the University of Ulster. He remained busy until the end of his life. He married in 1962, Susan Harpur, a television current affairs producer; they had two sons.

Title: Re: Keith Kyle Post by Forum Admin on Mar 1st, 2007, 7:04am This is taken from The Guardian: Keith Kyle A brilliant historian and writer, he made sense of the world for television audiences by Sandra Harris Tuesday February 27, 2007 Keith Kyle, who has died aged 81, was a distinguished historian and a prolific writer and broadcaster with an extraordinary capacity for making sense out of complex, politically sensitive scenarios. Those who watched him on the BBC Tonight programmes in the 1960s could not fail to be impressed by his broadcasts from Kenya and the Congo during the critical years of African independence. He would stand there, in shirt sleeves, in the midst of a battle and explain who the protagonists were, what would happen next and why it was important to us - all with huge enthusiasm and expertise, waving his arms about and talking for at least five minutes without Autocue, notes or a clipboard in sight. It was a gift Kyle seemed to have been born with. At Oxford, Dick Taverne, a fellow student and later his best man, recalled, "he was possibly the most naturally talented speaker of his generation." This in a field of undergraduates that included Robin Day, Shirley Williams, Bernard Williams, Margaret Thatcher and Kenneth Tynan. None the less, most of his contemporaries believed Kyle was ideally suited to an academic career. He certainly looked the part. Unfailingly courteous, he combined intellectual brilliance with acute absent-mindedness and gentle eccentricity. He lost so many articles of clothing that his wife sewed name tags into his garments as if he was a schoolboy. Which, in a way, he always was; ever the enthusiast, he was determined to see, experience and report on world events for himself. Born in Sturminster Newton, Dorset, and educated at Bromsgrove school, Worcestershire, he was an exhibitioner at Magdalen College, Oxford. In 1943, after two terms, he was called up to the army and served in Burma and India. He returned to Oxford after the war to complete his history degree and then became a talks producer for the BBC World Service. In 1953, he was head-hunted by Geoffrey Crowther, editor of the Economist, to become its Washington correspondent. He protested that he had never been to America or been a journalist, and was not an economist either. Crowther merely asked how long he would need to make up his mind. "About 30 seconds", was the response. Kyle served in that position from 1953 to 1958, covering the emerging civil rights struggle in the south and the infamous McCarthy hearings. He got to know such diverse leaders as Martin Luther King, Richard Nixon, who did not impress him, and John F Kennedy, who did. JFK was senator for Massachusetts at the time. He invited Kyle to lunch and drove him some 30 miles out of town. "Unlike other politicians who might expect to be asked questions, he interrogated me ceaselessly throughout the journey," Kyle recalled, "keeping his eyes firmly fixed on my face and never once on the road. I presume he drove by peripheral vision." By 1960, Kyle had moved into tele-vision journalism, where he became a leading figure, making sense of the rapidly unfolding events in Africa and earning the admiration of viewers and his peers. "His integrity as a journalist and as a person was, and is, absolute," wrote Sir Robin Day. "Few journalists of any medium have been so scrupulous with the truth." He went on to become a regular correspondent, covering such stories as Britain's hapless attempt to join the EEC, the Arab-Israeli conflict and the first years of the Irish troubles. He also, in 1962, met and married Susan Harper, a young television researcher. Kyle would have relished the role of Labour MP, and stood unsuccessfully for parliament four times. This was before the Labour party had abandoned its opposition to Europe and the strong control of the trades unions. From the party's point of view, he was too liberal; a tragedy because he would have made a wise foreign secretary. But there were already signs of a new direction in his career. In 1967-68 he was fellow of the John F Kennedy Institute of Politics at Harvard, to be followed, 20 years later, as senior associate member of St Antony's College, Oxford. In 1972, he joined the staff of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, or Chatham House, for which he worked for 30 years, with his interests turning increasingly to the Middle East. He travelled the world chairing conferences and formulating plans for the book that would guarantee his place as a historian of world importance. Suez, a magisterial work cataloguing the tragedy of 1956, took him just three years to research and write, and was universally acclaimed on its publication in 1991. It remains the definitive work on the subject. In 1992 he became visiting professor of history at the University of Ulster, where his lectures were models of insight, elegance and wit. Further books included Whither Israel? (1993) and a new edition of his study of Cyprus, which had first appeared in 1984. He had a longstanding interest in Cyprus, attending conferences, writing articles - one comparing the island and Northern Ireland - and was until the end of his life an active committee member of the Friends of Cyprus. He remained a passionate believer in the essential goodness of mankind, and spent much of the last six months of his life writing his memoirs, which despite being picked up with alacrity by his publishers he believed would be published posthumously. As usual, he was right. He leaves Susan and their two sons. Godfrey Smith writes: Even among the torrent of ex-servicemen returning to Oxford from the war, Keith Kyle stood out. Six feet three, lean, vague, aquiline, scholarly, he looked like some benign bird of paradise that had wandered into the cloisters. An improbable former infantry captain, he came up to read history under AJP Taylor in 1947, and quickly made his name as a precocious Union speaker. He delivered his speeches - cogent, fluent and learned - without a note. He composed his own budget for fun each year just before the chancellor delivered his. With his formidable intellect went a legendary absent-mindedness. On honeymoon with Suzy in Tanganyika, he was invited to dinner by the governor, and tucked into a large salad before realising, too late, that it was the governor's wife's floral arrangement. One ambassador was startled to get an ardent love letter from him, while Suzy received the serious political missive. At a house party, his hosts left him one night reading a book, and came down next morning to find him still immersed in it. He had forgotten to go to bed. Left alone to contend with the humdrum imperatives of everyday life, he would have been lost. Suzy provided the serene haven he needed. Their house at Primrose Hill, north London, was the setting for many a convivial supper, where politicians, academics, broadcasters and writers gossiped and argued late into the night. The glittering prizes we had hoped for him came his way too seldom. Yet he adorned the hinterland between political and academic life with total integrity and unconscious charm. He was devoid of guile and incapable of envy. It was a privilege to have known him; and what a pleasure. · Keith Kyle, historian and writer, born August 4 1925; died February 21 2007

Title: Re: Keith Kyle Post by Forum Admin on Mar 2nd, 2007, 1:02pm This is taken from from Londoner's Diary in the Evening Standard: Fond memories of Keith Kyle, the historian, writer and broadcaster who has died aged 81. "He was always very forgetful," recalls a friend. "When Kyle was filming in America, his producer was paranoid he would forget his passport because he had to fly on to South America. So the producer sewed Kyle's passport into his jacket lining. When he got to passport control, Kyle said: "Oh, f..k it, I've forgotten my jacket."  He also acquired the nickname 'Boots Kyle' after taking his shoes to a cobbler in the Congo. In characteristic style he completely forgot about them and was amazed to discover his boots still at the same cobbler when he returned there six years later.

Title: Re: Keith Kyle Post by Forum Admin on Mar 7th, 2007, 8:26am This is taken from The Times, March 7, 2007: Keith Kyle Journalist and historian who reported on the Suez Crisis, the Middle East and the Troubles in Northern Ireland Keith Kyle was an imaginative journalist, historian and academic who wrote Suez: Britain’s End of Empire in the Middle East (1991), which is regarded by many as furnishing the most authoritative insight into the decline of the British Empire. In this work he examined the 1956 crisis in Egypt not merely in terms of what it represented at the time, but as a microcosm of the causes and effects of Britain’s worldwide decline. Kyle was a distinguished broadcaster. He was held in high regard for his reports for the BBC Tonight programme from Africa in the 1960s. At the same time he filed reports on the Congo and the run-up to UDI in Rhodesia for The Observer and The Spectator. Suez had been the first major international event that he covered, and he returned to the subject for the BBC on the 20th anniversary of the crisis, writing and presenting a series for Tonight in 1976. Kyle straddled the frontiers between politics, journalism and academe perhaps because, like many good journalists, he could never quite make up his mind which of these spheres was his true metier. To his friends, family and colleagues Kyle was known for his somewhat donnish personality. He was a tall, elegant man, who often seemed far away in his thoughts, sometimes carrying this absent-mindedness to the extent of indifference to his personal apearance or dress. Yet when he applied himself to the matter in hand on the professional level he was incisive and authoritative. He could rapidly assimilate a large amount of information from all sorts of sources and put it into order for transmission in print or as broadcaster. Keith Kyle was born in Sturminster Newton, Dorset, in 1925. He attended Bromsgrove School and was an exhibitioner at Magdalen College, Oxford. But in 1943 he was was called up, and served in the British, Indian and Gwalior state armies in Burma and India. He did so for four years, after which he returned to Oxford to finish his history degree, under the tutelage of A. J. P. Taylor. After leaving Oxford Kyle found employment with the BBC as a talks producer with the World Service and in 1953 was recruited by The Economist to become the Washington correspondent. He remained there for five years, in which period he covered the ill-fated Suez adventure that was to loom so large in his historical consciousness both then and afterwards. At the end of that time he returned to London to become The Economist’s Westminster correspondent, also keeping a watching brief on Irish affairs. But foreign affairs were closest to his heart, and in 1960 he went to New York to cover the workings of the United Nations. He moved next to Africa where, having secured a contract with the BBC, he based himself in Nairobi, from where he began sending his reports to Tonight. For these, as well as for his print journalism for The Spectator and The Observer, he covered many events in an unquiet time over much of eastern and central Africa. He followed the emergence and progress of independence movements in many African countries, and the tensions arising in Southern Rhodesia as the Central African Federation broke up. He followed events in Rhodesia as the self-governing colony moved towards its unilateral declaration of independence under its Prime Minister, Ian Smith, in 1965. Another of his interests, as a historian and journalist, was the Middle East and the Arab-Israel conflict on which he reported for the BBC’s 24 Hours. Insisting that he was not a Middle East “expert” but merely someone with a disposition to look at the situation on the ground through fresh eyes, and with “a bias towards peace”, he strove for objectivity. This involved him in criticism of some of Israel’s actions, notably the policy of “massive retaliation” against attacks and incursions. This aroused anger among Britain’s Jewish communities, and he became persona non grata in Israel. He also covered the conflict in Cyprus. After the Troubles broke out in Northern Ireland in 1968, he concentrated on affairs in the Province. Here, too, he ran up against government — in this instance the British one. His interview with two Roman Catholics who claimed that they had been assaulted by the RUC while in custody in 1977, brought the condemnation of Roy Mason, the Northern Ireland Secretary. Kyle continued his association with the BBC for the next two decades. He was a Fellow of the John F. Kennedy Institute of Politics at Harvard, 1967-68, and was involved with the Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House). He was also visiting Professor of history at the University of Ulster. He stood, unsuccessfully, four times, for Parliament. He had originally been a Liberal supporter, but subsequently switched to the Conservatives. After Suez, however, he changed his allegiance to Labour for which he contested St Albans in 1966 and Braintree in both of the general elections of 1974. He later joined the SDP/Alliance, for which he contested Northampton South in the 1983 general election. His final political resting place was with the Liberal Democrats. Besides his work on Suez Kyle was also author of The Politics of the Independence of Kenya and Whither Israel?: The Domestic Challenges. Kyle and his wife Susan, a television current affairs producer whom he married in 1962, kept a welcoming house in Primrose Hill, London. Kyle was unfailingly polite, vocal, charismatic, a little vague to the last, yet always enthused with life. He is survived by his wife and their two sons. Keith Kyle, historian and writer, was born on August 4, 1925. He died on February 21, 2007, aged 81

Title: Re: Keith Kyle Post by Forum Admin on Mar 13th, 2007, 7:32am This is taken from the Independent: Keith Kyle Broadcaster and historian Published: 13 March 2007 Keith Kyle, writer, broadcaster and historian: born Sturminster Newton, Dorset 4 August 1925; Talks Producer, BBC North American Service 1951-53; Washington Correspondent, The Economist 1953-68, Political and Parliamentary Correspondent 1958-61; married 1962 Susan Harpur (two sons); died London 21 February 2007. Keith Kyle was a historian, writer and broadcaster whose career spanned more than half a century. In those years, he was an eyewitness to many crucial events and a pioneer war reporter on television. As a historian, he will above all be remembered for his magisterial account of the 1956 Suez Crisis. Educated at Bromsgrove School, Keith Kyle won an exhibition to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he went up in 1942 to read History. There, he became a pupil and later a lifelong friend of A.J.P. Taylor. After four years of military service in India and Burma, he returned in 1947 to Oxford, where I first met him. There, he became a well-known figure - as an ardent liberal and, above all, as one of the stars at the Oxford Union. The audience at the Oxford Union at that time was unusually critical - partly because of the large contingent of returning ex- servicemen. Making one's mark as a speaker was far from easy. But Kyle established himself as a formidable and witty debater, equally strong on both substance and presentation. During the following 60 years, his appearance and personality changed remarkably little. His friends remember him as a tall, highly intellectual, donnish, famously absent- minded and extremely kind person. He was clearly ambitious, but lacked the ruthless streak with which ambition is often associated. In 1951, immediately after leaving Oxford, Kyle became a Talks Producer in the BBC North American Service. In 1953, he was invited to join The Economist as chief of its Washington bureau, a post he held until the later 1950s. In that capacity he covered, among many other things, the civil rights struggle, the downfall of the ill-famed Senator Joe McCarthy and, not least, the Suez Crisis. He also got to know many prominent figures, including the future President John F. Kennedy. In 1958 his editor recalled him to London to cover British domestic and parliamentary affairs, including Britain's attempts to get into Europe, which he strongly supported. From 1960 until the early 1980s Kyle became a frequent contributor to television, both BBC and independent (whilst continuing as a newspaper and radio journalist). He also developed a new area of expertise: Africa. In the early 1960s Africa was in the throes of decolonisation; and the BBC Tonight programme sent him to report on the spot from Kenya and from the Belgian Congo, then in a state of collapse and civil war. War reporters at that time did not have the benefit of satellite technology; and he had the job, not only of recording his piece for the camera, but of finding cameramen and then arranging for his pieces to be flown back to London. In this sense, he was indeed a pioneer. Broadcasting also led Kyle into two other highly controversial areas: the Middle East and Northern Ireland. In both cases, so he felt, there was a need for the most scrupulous fairness and accuracy in reporting. But this led him into a number of difficulties. In the later 1960s, when another Arab-Israeli war seemed imminent, the BBC asked him to give a talk on its Third Programme explaining the Arab point of view, which then got little coverage. His talk met with great disfavour among pro-Israeli groups; there were even demands that he should be banned from the air. But he was far from being uncritical of the Arabs. In 1969, BBC Television sent him to Iraq where he met the then vice-president, Saddam Hussein. Kyle paid special attention to the plight of the country's small Jewish population - whom he found to be living in a state of terror. However, the very fact of his visiting Iraq alienated the Israeli authorities still further. Northern Ireland, which he came to know extremely well, carried even greater risks for reporters. In the mid-1970s, he caused anger in high places by interviewing on BBC Television a man who claimed to have been tortured by the RUC. Kyle was required to defend himself before the Board of Governors, but was finally vindicated when the man recovered damages against the police. What helped to save him was his invariable habit of meticulously checking the facts. To his great disappointment, Keith Kyle never achieved his lifelong ambition to enter Parliament. He had begun as a passionate supporter of the traditional Liberal Party, but became disillusioned with one party after another. The result was that in the 1950s he switched from Liberal to Labour, then to the Conservatives, with whom he broke after Suez, then once again to Labour and finally in the 1980s to the SDP/Alliance. He unsuccessfully fought three general elections for Labour (St Albans in March 1966, and Braintree in February and October 1974) and fought Northampton for the SDP/Alliance in June 1983. Disappointment in no way meant the end of his career as a broadcaster, writer and expert. From 1982 to 1990 Kyle worked at Chatham House, where he took part in a number of research projects, and between 1991 and 1998, he was a visiting professor at the University of Ulster. But, despite the wide range of his activities, it is as a historian that he will probably be remembered. His historical knowledge gave a great depth to all he wrote - whether about America, Europe, Africa, Cyprus or the Middle East. His book Suez: Britain's end of empire in the Middle East, first published in 1991, draws not only on his personal recollection but on the declassified public record. It is recognised as the definitive account. To the end of his life Keith Kyle remained active. He had recently finished writing his memoirs, due to be published this year. David Wedgwood Benn

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