Reggie Collin

Reggie Collin, who has died aged 84, ran Bafta (the British Academy of Film and Television Arts) during the 1980s and as a television producer 20 years earlier revived the fortunes of the popular ITV spy series Callan, starring Edward Woodward.

Edward Woodward in Callan 

Collin’s brief had been to kill off Callan, but when his series was broadcast by Thames in 1969 it was such a ratings hit that the show was recommissioned and returned in both 1970 and 1972, as well as spawning a feature film and a range of novels.

In June 1970, when the Labour prime minister (and Callan fan) Harold Wilson called a general election, ITV postponed transmission of an episode called Amos Green Must Live. It starred Corin Redgrave as the eponymous Green, a politician with the combustible view that “coloured immigration is dangerous to Britain and must stop”.

It was obvious that the Amos Green character was a thinly disguised portrait of Enoch Powell, the Conservative MP who had made his notorious “Rivers Of Blood” speech two years earlier and returned to his theme during the campaign, alleging that government officials had falsified immigration statistics.

As a result Amos Green Must Live became the first British television programme to be pulled for political reasons since the cancellation of That Was The Week That Was ahead of the 1964 general election.

Reginald Thomas Collin was born on July 7 1927 in Islington, north London. His father, who designed women’s handbags and also worked as a part-time greengrocer, moved the family to Harrow shortly after the outbreak of war. Leaving Wembley grammar school at 14, Reggie’s first job at the height of the Blitz was that of lab boy at the then Westminster Hospital. A month after the war ended he was called up for military service.

When the RAF trained him as a shorthand typist, Collin embarked on the most enjoyable three years of his life. Posted to Headquarters Bomber Command at High Wycombe, he spent most of his time either playing tennis or running the amateur drama group; happily very little was done by way of work.
On leaving the Air Force he won a scholarship to The Old Vic Theatre School, where Prunella Scales was a fellow student. Three years’ weekly rep in Huddersfield followed, and then several more directing pantomimes and summer shows.
In 1959 Collin was invited to join ABC Television (later to become Thames), becoming a director in the features department and creating the arts programme Tempo before moving into the drama department.
As well as Callan his other credits, mainly directing for Thames, included Sat’Day While Sunday (1967); the series Special Branch (1969); Mystery and Imagination ; and the dramas Man at the Top and The Mind of Mr JG Reeder (both 1971). Napoleon and Love (1974) was a series of plays starring Ian Holm as Napoleon; In Sickness and in Health (1975) starred Patrick Mower as an overworked London GP.
In 1977 Collin was appointed director of Bafta. During his tenure he oversaw the expansion of the organisation’s headquarters in Piccadilly, central London, and the opening of a Bafta office in Los Angeles, since reinforced by another in New York. He retired in 1987.
In the course of his television career, Collin received a number of awards, among them Best Drama Producer for 1969, as well as two Bafta nominations and awards for services to the industry from Bafta and Kodak.
Reggie Collin married, in 1960, Pamela Lonsdale, who won a Bafta for the pre-school children’s programme Rainbow, which she created; she survives him.

Reggie Collin, born July 7 1927, died December 16 2011

Kenneth Dahlberg

Kenneth Dahlberg, who has died aged 94, was an American fighter ace during the Second World War, later becoming a multi-millionaire and playing a significant, if unwitting, role in the Watergate scandal that brought down Richard Nixon’s presidency.

Dahlberg was the Midwest finance chairman of Nixon’s 1972 re-election campaign. After collecting donations of $25,000 he wrote a cheque which he delivered to the president’s re-election committee in Washington. The cheque then surfaced in a bank account of one of the five Watergate burglars – who had been paid by Republicans to break in and plant listening devices in the headquarters of their political rivals. As a result an article appeared in the Washington Post on August 1 1972 headlined: “Bug Suspect Got Campaign Funds”. The story immediately triggered three separate investigations and helped seal Nixon’s fate. As one Post reporter commented: “It [the cheque] was the first real connective glue between Watergate, its funding and the Nixon campaign.”

As a result Dahlberg became an object of intense scrutiny by federal investigators. Though they cleared him of any wrongdoing, his role in Watergate was turned into a moment of high drama for the film that documented the scandal, All the President’s Men (1976). While Dahlberg admitted the scandal “made good copy”, he thought it was unfortunate that incident overshadowed his many other accomplishments.

Kenneth Harry Dahlberg was born on June 30 1917 in St Paul, Minnesota, and graduated from St Paul Harding High School in 1935. His first job was at the Lowry Hotel washing pots and pans. He rose quickly, and by 1941 was in charge of food and drink at almost two dozen hotels owned by the Pick chain across the United States.

Dahlberg was drafted in 1941, some months before the United States entered the war, and trained as a pilot. One of his instructors was the future Republican presidential nominee, Barry Goldwater, who remained a lifelong friend.

Dahlberg completed his flying training in 1942 and, like many other graduates early in the war, was immediately assigned to be an instructor, serving in Arizona. Finally, however, he was selected to be a fighter pilot in 1944, arriving in England in May. He joined his squadron on June 2 and flew his first mission four days later, on D-Day, having had just 30 minutes flying experience in the P-51 Mustang (he had trained on the P-47 Thunderbolt).

During August he was leading his flight when it encountered a force of 40 Messerschmitt Bf 109s. In the ensuing dog fight he shot four of the fighters down but a fifth hit his Mustang and he was forced to bail out near Paris. He was sheltered by the Resistance and, after donning a disguise, bicycled back to Allied lines, then only 40 miles away.
Rejoining his squadron, his successes mounted until he transferred to a unit equipped with the P-47 Thunderbolt, which he thought much inferior to the Mustang. Attacking enemy tanks in the Ardennes during the Battle of the Bulge, his aircraft was crippled by ground fire and he was forced to crash land. He was picked up by a forward patrol of American tanks.
By early 1945, just six months into his operational flying career, Dahlberg had crashed two aircraft and twice escaped capture by the enemy. But he had also shot down 15 aircraft, placing him 23rd on the list of fighter aces in Europe during the war and making him a “triple” ace.
On February 2 1945, Dahlberg’s aircraft took a direct hit and blew up; he was thrown clear and parachuted down. Despite being wounded he managed to avoid capture; eventually, however, he was taken prisoner and marched more than 100 miles to Stalag VIIa at Moosburg near Munich. Patton’s Third Army liberated the camp in May.
Dahlberg returned to the United States and joined Telex, a maker of hearing aids and hospital communications equipment. Soon afterwards he joined an Air National Guard unit in Duluth and suggested that Telex should use its audio expertise in military flight helmets. The company duly became a leading maker of headsets for aviators.
In 1948 Dahlberg and his brother began their own business. Over the years, he developed and marketed the Miracle Ear hearing aid, a pioneering all-in-the-ear device, which became the largest selling brand of hearing aids in the United States. In 1994, the firm was sold to Bausch and Lomb and he began a venture capital company called Carefree Capital.
In addition to his business career, Dahlberg also became involved in politics – a result of his wartime friendship with Barry Goldwater. Dahlberg was deputy chairman of fund-raising for Goldwater’s presidential campaign in 1964.
Dahlberg remained an active pilot, flying with the Minnesota Air National Guard until 1951 and as a civilian into his 90s. He was a generous supporter of the Museum of Flight in Seattle, and was a director of both the Air Force Academy Foundation and the American Fighter Aces Association.
For his wartime services he was awarded the Silver Star, the Distinguished Flying Cross with cluster, the Bronze Star, 15 air medals and two Purple Hearts. In 1945 he was awarded one of the United States’ highest awards for gallantry, the Distinguished Service Cross but, as he was a PoW, he could not collect it. In the end, the medal was presented in 1967 in Washington, DC, by Vice President Hubert Humphrey, with the Joint Chiefs of Staff also present.
Kenneth Dahlberg married Betty Jayne Segerstrom in 1947. She survives him with their son and two daughters.

Roy Skelton

Roy Skelton, the actor who died on June 8 aged 79, provided the voices for many characters on British television over nearly 50 years, notably Zippy and George, the much-loved puppets in the popular children’s television show Rainbow; he was also one of the original Daleks in Dr Who.

Roy Skelton (in the black top hat) with other members of the 'Rainbow' team, (from left) Rod Burton, Jane 

Created by Pamela Lonsdale for pre-school children and presented for most of its run by Geoffrey Hayes, Rainbow centred around the antics of Zippy, a loud-mouthed creature of indeterminate species with a rugby ball for a head and a zip for a mouth; George, a shy, pink and slightly camp hippopotamus; and Bungle, a nosy brown bear (played by John Leeson, then Stanley Bates). The episodes usually involved some kind of squabble between the puppet characters and Geoffrey Hayes’s attempts to calm them down.

Skelton joined the ITV show in the 1970s, performing Zippy and George for 22 years until it came to an end in 1992; he also wrote many of the scripts. He claimed to have based the voice of the domineering Zippy on a cross between Margaret Thatcher and Ian Paisley and remembered many hilarious moments — “like when Bungle had a terrible wind problem and tried to blame everyone else”. Hayes recalled Skelton as being particularly good when Zippy and George were having an argument: “It sounded like he’d double-tracked it as they seemed to be talking over each other. It was a wonderful technique. ”

Although Skelton’s voices were familiar to millions, as his real identity remained hidden behind layers of cardboard, foam and fur, he never became a celebrity. “I can walk down the street and no one knows who I am,” he told an interviewer. “People don’t say, 'There’s Zippy’, or ask me to say, 'Exterminate!’ I sometimes wish they did.”

Born in Oldham on July 20 1931, Roy Skelton joined the National Association of Boys’ Clubs Travelling Theatre straight from school and worked at the Oldham Coliseum before training at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. After repertory work in Bristol, he appeared in several plays in the West End (including Oh! My Papa! and Chrysanthemum) and got his first television role as Lampwick in Pinocchio. He went on to appear in repertory theatre all over the country before landing parts in Music for You and Quick Before They Catch Us, on the BBC.

An opportunity to voice the grumpy Mr Growser character in the BBC’s rod puppet version of Toytown led to his career providing voice characterisations. Among other roles, he was Sossidge the dog in Picture Book and the Lord Chamberlain and King Boris in Gordon Murray’s Rubovian Legends. Beginning with The Evil of the Daleks, he was a Dalek between 1967 and 1988, uttering such classic lines as “You will be exterminated!” and “That is an order! Obey!” He also provided voices for the Cybermen and the Krotons.

Cesária Evora

Cesária Evora, who has died aged 70, won international acclaim as a singer when she brought the haunting music of her native Cape Verde to concert platforms around the world.

Known as the “Barefoot Diva” for her habit of performing without shoes, Cesária Evora was the mistress of “morna” — the guitar-based music of the Cape Verde Islands. The essence of morna is the idea of “sodade”, a profound nostalgia and melancholy which are also features of Portuguese fado, certain South American genres and of the Blues. Cesária Evora’s themes were the vicissitudes of love, the pain of rejection and the suffering of the exile who longs to return home.

Having begun her singing career in the rough bars of Mindelo, the port city on the island of São Vicente, Cesária Evora brought the same informality to her performances on the international stage. On one occasion, in the middle of a concert in New York City, she ignored the rigid ban on smoking to light up a cigarette — to the delight of her audience.

Singing for the most part in the version of creole spoken in her homeland, she toured with a Cape Verdean band which accompanied her on guitars (including the cavaquinho), bass, piano, violin, saxophone and percussion.

“Our music is a lot of things,” Cesária Evora said in an interview in 2000. “Some say it’s like the Blues, or jazz. Others say it’s like Brazilian or African music, but no one really knows. ”

Cesária Evora was born on August 27 1941 and grew up at Mindelo. Her father died when she was seven, and three years later she was sent to an orphanage because her mother, who worked as a cook, was finding it hard to bring up her seven children. Cesária always retained, however, fond memories of her mother, extolling her in one of her songs: “Next to your oven, you raised us with your black skirt and your little scarf. You showed us who we were.”

By the age of 16 Cesária was working as a seamstress. She had also been singing with a local choir, and a friend suggested that she perform in the bars of Mindelo, where the visiting sailors were in search of some invigorating nightlife. Initially she was not paid, simply allowed free drinks — encouraging a fondness for cognac that eventually, in the mid-Nineties, forced her to forswear alcohol .
Cape Verde gained independence from Portugal in 1975 , and fewer ships came to dock at Mindelo. For a time Cesária abandoned singing, and few would have heard of her had not a local musician urged her, in 1985, to try her luck as a performer in Lisbon.
There a Frenchman of Cape Verdean descent, José da Silva, persuaded her to go to Paris, where , in 1988, she recorded an album, La Diva aux Pieds Nus (a reference to her habit of performing without shoes), which won critical acclaim. Her fourth album, Miss Perfumado (1992), took her popularity beyond France, and Cesária (1995) won her a Grammy nomination. Now in her fifties, she embarked on a highly successful series of international tours. In 1996 she gave a sell-out concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London.
In 2003 she won a Grammy in the World Music category for her album Voz D’Amor.
Cesária Evora had been suffering from ill health in recent years, and the last of her albums, Nha Sentimento, was released in 2009. In September this year she retired to the house in Mindelo in which she had been brought up, having extended it to include 10 bedrooms to accommodate visiting family and friends.
Cesária Evora had three children by different men, but never married.

Cesária Evora, born August 27 1941, died December 17 2011

John Hart

John Hart, who has died aged 75, was the first man to win Mastermind, in 1975; he was also notable, in legal circles, as being a party in the House of Lords case Pepper v Hart, now regarded as a landmark case in English law.

The BBC television quiz show, with Magnus Magnusson as question master, was first broadcast in 1972. But when the first three Mastermind champions turned out to be women it was rumoured that the programme makers were debating whether to change the title of the show to "Mistressmind". There was much idle speculation in the press about whether a man would, or could, ever win the title.

John Hart

 

This all proved somewhat academic when Hart, a classics master at Malvern College, romped home to take the trophy in 1975. The balance was subsequently redressed, and tipped in favour of men. (Gavin Fuller, a staff member at The Daily Telegraph, would become the youngest winner, at 24, in 1993.)

It was Hart's knowledge of ancient Greek and Roman history that took him to the title. An hour after his victory, however, he was back in the dreaded black chair as part of the first "Supermind Challenge", in which the first four champions took part in what Magnusson described as a "light hearted joust". The contest was won by the 1972 winner Nancy Wilkinson.

The son of a primary school headmaster, John Thornton Hart was born in Oxford on September 30 1936 and educated at Rugby and St John's College, Oxford, where he read Classics.

After graduation he taught at Stonyhurst College in Lancashire, moving to Malvern College in 1963. He was appointed head of classics in 1967 and remained at the school until his retirement in 1996. In 1982 he published Herodotus and Greek History, which earned favourable reviews.

In 1992 Hart and nine other teachers at Malvern challenged the Inland Revenue over the amount of tax they were being required to pay under the 1976 Finance Act. From 1983 to 1986 they had taken advantage of a "concessionary fee" scheme, which allowed their children to be educated at rates one-fifth of those paid by other pupils.
The Inland Revenue argued that the total cost of their education (which they estimated at £10,000 per pupil per year) should be treated as a taxable benefit; but the teachers argued that the cost to the school was minimal as, since it was not full to capacity, the children were occupying places that would not otherwise have been filled.
A literal interpretation of the Act seemed to support the Inland Revenue's case, and both the High Court of Justice and Court of Appeal had found in favour of the taxman. But when the case was considered by a panel of five judges in the House of Lords, they took into account the debates on the legislation as it made its way through Parliament, which showed that ministers' intention had been that such benefits should be taxed on the marginal cost to the employer, as the teachers had argued. The Lords found in favour of Hart by a 4-1 majority.
Pepper v Hart, as the case has come to be known, is regarded as a landmark in that it overturned a principle of at least 300 years' standing that judges should not refer to "extra-statutory" sources when interpreting the law.
After his Mastermind win Hart became a sought-after after-dinner speaker in and around Malvern, and used these occasions to raise a considerable amount of money for charity. He was a Freemason for 40 years, and after his retirement dedicated much time to running the Masonic Library and Museum in Worcester.
A keen musician, he played the piano at his local church for many years and ran a school jazz band. He also enjoyed touring the village cricket circuit as a member of the Malvern College Masters XI.
He is survived by his wife, Sally, and by their two sons and two daughters.

John Hart, born September 30 1936, died November 15 2011

Shirley Becke

Shirley Becke, who has died aged 94, was the first woman commander in the Metropolitan Police (the equivalent of assistant chief constable), having already carved out a career in what was traditionally a man's world as a gas fitter.

She was not a woman to differentiate between the sexes in the workplace, and believed that women could, and should, function as effectively as men, even in a police force with a "macho" culture. "There is no such thing as a lady policeman," she once ventured. "We are police officers who just happen to be women."

Shirley Becke in Piccadilly Circus, central London, c1970

When Shirley Becke first joined the force, in wartime London, the few women officers were largely confined to dealing with women prisoners and children. They were forbidden to marry, were paid less than men, and were not allowed to carry truncheons. Women now occupy senior positions throughout the British police, from anti-terrorist commanders to armed response personnel. The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) has 77 women members, including four chief constables.

In fact, women had been employed as police officers since the First World War, despite opposition from the Police Federation, which in 1924 insisted: "It is purely a man's job alone". When Shirley Becke became head of the Metropolitan Women's Police 40 years later, the same organisation was still complaining that the service was being flooded with women who lacked the necessary physical strength to do the job.

But Shirley Becke had no truck with such attitudes. In the mid-1960s, by then promoted to the senior echelons of the Met, she launched a campaign to recruit more women officers, pointing out that policing was one of the few careers in which a young woman could "come straight in and do something positive and make her own decisions".

She herself had done just that. In the early 1940s Shirley Becke, then in her mid-20s, had resolved that she would contribute to the war effort by making her mark in the police force, and quickly earned promotion from pounding the beat on the streets of war-torn London into the ranks of the CID. As a young woman detective, she played a small but vital role in a murder investigation.

In November 1945 a notorious gangster known as "Russian Robert" was found dead in his car in Chepstow Place, Notting Hill. He had been shot in the back of the neck. A murder squad superintendent briefed Shirley Becke to trace two suspects, both armed, who had hurriedly left their Paddington boarding house.
Dressed in civvies, Shirley Becke went from door-to-door explaining that her "fiancé" had left her "in trouble" and that she had to find him as soon as possible. Eventually she found a woman who had seen the two wanted men, and who gave information that led to an arrest. The two men were hanged in April 1946.
During her time in the vice-ridden West End and Soho of the 1950s, Shirley Becke weathered her fair share of violent confrontations, but she had been trained in self-defence and made many successful arrests. Such experiences merely reinforced her belief that there should be no distinction drawn between men and women officers.
The women's service ceased to exist as a separate branch and was integrated into the main police service in 1969. In the 1970s, promoted to the rank of commander, Shirley Becke was the officer who briefed the couturier Norman Hartnell on the design of a new uniform for policewomen – an outfit that was to be dignified, recognisable, practical and hard-wearing.
Comprising a short cape, velvet-collared "box" jacket, white blouse and bow tie, a figure-hugging skirt and a peaked pillbox hat designed by Simone Mirman, milliner to the Royal family, it was tailor-made for each individual officer and cost £60. To Shirley Becke's great satisfaction, the introduction of the new uniform boosted considerably the recruitment of women.
She was born Shirley Cameron Jennings on April 29 1917 in Chiswick, west London, and educated at Ealing grammar school. Deciding to follow in the footsteps of her father and brother, she tried to enrol as a gas engineer but was told she must be in the wrong room as "we've never enrolled a girl before". She replied: "You have now."
In 1939, after five years' study at Westminster Technical Institute, she qualified, then spent two years working in a gas showroom before applying to join the police.
One of only four women to be chosen from 30 applicants, in 1941 she enlisted as a WPc at £3 a week and found herself one of just 120 women officers of all ranks. Of these, only 11 were serving with the CID.
When she started on the beat in the blitzed streets of London, wearing a cork helmet and knee-high laced boots, she persuaded her chief at Savile Row to let her join the men on regular squad duties. She soon got a taste of the rigours and risks of front-line policing. By 1945 she had joined the CID.
In 1948 she was promoted to detective-sergeant, and over the next 15 years rose to the rank of detective chief inspector. By 1959 she was based at Scotland Yard as the Met's senior woman detective. Two years later she was back in uniform as superintendent in charge of the women's force in south-west London.
She held this post for 18 months before returning to the Yard as deputy to Winifred Barker, the chief superintendent in charge of women officers. When Miss Barker retired in 1966, Shirley Becke took her place and ran a separate department for women officers known as A4. She became a commander when the rank was upgraded in 1969.
As the Met's first woman commander, and the highest ranking policewoman in Britain, she was also the first woman to join the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO).
With the coming of equal pay legislation, the new Commissioner, Sir Robert Mark, abolished A4 in 1973 and ruled that women could serve in any branch of the Met. Shirley Becke retired the following year.
Shirley Becke was awarded the Queen's Police Medal in 1972 and appointed OBE two years later.
She married, in 1954, Justice Becke, a chartered accountant who later became a vicar in Surrey; he predeceased her.

Shirley Becke, born April 29 1917, died October 25 2011

Sir Zelman Cowen

Sir Zelman Cowen, who has died aged 92, worked to heal the wounds left by the departure of his immediate predecessor as Governor-General of Australia, Sir John Kerr; later he became Provost of Oriel College, Oxford.

Cowen’s appointment as Governor-General in 1977 was, he said, “totally unexpected”. In 1975, to break a stalemate within the government which threatened to bankrupt it, Kerr had controversially used his authority to dismiss the Prime Minister of Australia, Gough Whitlam, and to appoint the Liberal leader, Malcolm Fraser, in his place.

Sir Zelman Cowen with the Prince of Wales on his visit to Australia in 1981

The dismissal provoked outrage (the residents of the street in which Kerr was born reputedly posted him 30 pieces of silver), and Kerr resigned early in December 1977. Cowen, entirely unaware of the resignation, was summoned to Canberra from Brisbane by Fraser and offered the post. He later vividly described his shock at the proposal, recalling: “My head was like a split atom.” He was sworn in as Australia’s 19th Governor-General on December 8 1977.

Cowen regarded the role as being “to interpret the nation to itself”. Asked shortly after his appointment what he hoped to achieve in the post, he quoted the first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru, replying that he wanted to “bring a touch of healing” to the office. He was widely regarded as succeeding in this aim, and was asked to serve a further three years when his initial term ended in 1982 (he declined the offer). He cited representing Australia at the wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer, and at the funeral of Lord Mountbatten, as two of the highlights of his tenure.

He also enjoyed telling the story of his aunt, who, hospitalised during his tenure with a head injury and unable to remember her address, firmly told doctors, in a thick eastern European accent, one fact of which she was sure: “My nephew is Governor-General of Australia”. The doctors, convinced that she was delirious, refused to release her until this was confirmed by Cowen’s cousin.

Zelman Cowen was born in St Kilda, Melbourne, on October 7 1919, the son of Russian immigrants whose families had fled to Australia to escape persecution. He was educated first at St Kilda synagogue, then at Brighton Road State School, and finally at Scotch College in Victoria, where he was Dux (Head) of School. The headmistress at Brighton Road recalled Zelman’s frequent visits to her office to show off a piece of work, each trip ending with his asking her: “Aren’t I wonderful?”

During his teenage years he paid close attention to events in Europe and to the arrival of the first German refugees in Australia. He remembered the culture shock they caused, and the hostile reception they received from some in Australian society. Many years later, Justice Michael Kirby said that Cowen had “felt an obligation to stand up against fascism and to interpret its evils, on a human level, to Australian school friends for whom it all seemed so far away”. The refugees, Cowen believed, “added a valuable cultural strain to Australian life”.
Cowen studied Arts and Law at the University of Melbourne, and was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship in 1940. His studies, however, were postponed by the Second World War, during which he served as a naval intelligence officer; he survived the Japanese attack on Darwin in 1942. After the war he moved to New College, Oxford, to resume his studies, revelling in “the blazing richness of life, in intellectual and cultural terms” that the University offered. In 1947 he became a Fellow of Oriel, a position which he held until 1951, when he returned to Melbourne to become Professor of Public Law .
He presided over a revolution in Australian legal education, characterised by the use of full-time teachers, the introduction of the American casebook system, and closer ties with American law schools. During these years he also advised the British Colonial Office on constitutional matters, and advised the governments of Hong Kong and China on legal issues.
From 1966 to 1970 he was Vice-Chancellor of the University of New England in Armidale, New South Wales and, from 1970 to 1977, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Queensland. During his time in the latter post, Cowen gained praise for the “firmness and dignity” of his handling of issues arising from growing student radicalism and discontent over the Vietnam War. He was also Emeritus Professor of Law at Melbourne and the Tagore Professor of Law at the University of Calcutta.
He was appointed CMG in 1968 and knighted in 1976. He was appointed GCMG and a Knight of the Order of Australia in 1977, and GCVO in 1980.
Long before his appointment as Governor-General, Cowen had written the biography of Australia’s only other Jewish Governor-General (and the first Australian to hold the post), Sir Isaac Isaacs. He regarded his own commitment to tolerance and freedom as stemming in part from his Jewish roots, and stressed: “I have been conscious all my life of being a Jew. I have been conscious all my life of being a sharer in and a lover of the non-Jewish British world, but my Jewishness is deep i n me.”
He became a patron of the Council of Christians and Jews, the Jewish Museum of Australia, and the Friends of the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. He was also a governor of the Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University and the Weizman Institute of Science. Two of his sons adopted ultra-Orthodox Judaism, which came as something of a surprise to their more progressive father; but, as he gladly admitted, the diversity within the family “makes for interesting conversat ions”.
After retiring as Governor-General, Cowen remained active in Australian political life, especially in the debate over whether or not Australia should move towards becoming a republic, an idea which he supported in principle as “an evolutionary decision ... not a matter of disloyalty or disassociation”, though he disliked the anti-British sentiment that often went w ith it.
He served for five years on the board of Fairfax newspapers, publishers of the Sydney Morning Herald, including three as chairman, and became a patron of St Kilda football club. Cowen also returned to Oriel, as Provost, between 1982 and 1990. Shortly after he left he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, but he remained intellectually active, considering that he had lived “a long and interesting life in a good and free country”.
He married, in 1945, Anna Wittner, with whom he had three sons and a daughter.

Sir Zelman Cowen, born October 7 1919, died December 8 2011

David Langdon

David Langdon , who has died aged 97, was a cartoonist whose work (notably for Punch and The New Yorker) spanned some 60 years; he was best known for a famous wartime series of advertisements for London Transport entitled “Billy Brown of London Town”.

David Langdon at work 

In Britain in the Second World War, humour contributed in numerous contexts to the construction of the British national character at war as improvisational, rural and suburban, lovable and human (if somewhat class-obsessed), in contrast to the mechanised inhumanity of the enemy. In one of Langdon’s wartime cartoons a wife is seen telling her husband: “I’ve invited the Hendersons over for the air raid, George.”

“Billy Brown of London Town” was created for the then London Passenger Transport Board for a series of cautionary posters aimed at helping travellers on public transport during the Blitz. The board was concerned that passengers on underground trains were removing the criss-cross tapes that had been applied to the windows to limit blast injuries, and asked Langdon to design a cartoon to warn them of the dangers.

Billy Brown, a city gent in pin stripes, bowler hat and umbrella, appeared in his first poster pointing to the tape being peeled off and saying: “I trust you will pardon my correction, that stuff is there for your protection” – to which one wag graffitied the reply “Thank you for your information but I can’t see the b***** station”.

Another poster, designed to discourage bus passengers from clustering around the exit, had Billy Brown saying: “Kindly pass along the bus and so make room for all of us”. A graffitied reply read: “That’s alright without a doubt, but how the Hell do we get out?”

Billy Brown caught the public’s imagination, helping to raise people’s spirits, and continued even after the war had ended. Indeed, such was his popularity that he was even included in a song by Noel Gay: “Who stood up and saved the town when London Bridge was falling down? Mr Brown of London town — Oi! Mr Brown!”

In the foreword to his first book of cartoons, Home Front Lines (1941), Langdon wrote: “To me it is the British sense of humour which is still the fount of ideas, and in paying my tribute to it and to the marvellous way it has persisted undaunted through the darkest hours, I raise my tin hat to those faintly ridiculous but wonderful people, the men, women and children of the blitzed areas whose sense of humour will carry through to victory.”
Born in London on February 24 1914, David Langdon was educated at Davenant Grammar School, where he contributed sketches to the school magazine. In 1931 he left school to work in the Architects’ Department of the London County Council, where he sent occasional cartoons to the LCC staff journal.
In 1936 he sold his first cartoon — a joke about Mussolini — to Time and Tide, and the following year he was invited to contribute to Punch at a time when the magazine was moving away from the stylised, detailed drawings and laboured jokes of an earlier era to crisper, simpler drawings and short, snappy captions. Langdon’s pared-down style and quick wit (he once described his method of working as “controlled mind-wandering”) suited the moment, and in 1937 he began contributing to the new magazine Lilliput. Among other things, he claimed to have introduced the “open mouth” into humorous art, to indicate who is speaking.
On the outbreak of war in 1939 Langdon became an executive officer in the London Rescue and Demolition Service, and it was during his time with the service that he produced his Billy Brown series. In 1941 he joined the RAF, eventually becoming a squadron leader and, in 1945-46, editor of the RAF Journal, to which he also contributed a strip entitled “Joe” featuring a naive new recruit known as Joe the Erk.
During the war years Langdon acquired an observant eye for the incongruities and absurdities of service life, the social comedy of class and a sympathy with the ordinary airman and soldier. These were reflected in his prolific output both during and after the war, when he became a leading humorous (gentle, rather than satirical) commentator on the British social scene,
As well as providing cartoons for Punch and Lilliput, Langdon founded a weekly cartoon column of topical gags with the Sunday Pictorial (later the Sunday Mirror) and continued to work for Mirror Group Newspapers until 1990. His work appeared frequently in The New Yorker from 1952; and for the children’s comic Eagle he created Professor Puff and His Dog Wuff.
He also pursued a lucrative sideline in advertising — providing cartoons for Bovril, Shell and Schweppes, among others. From 1959 he produced an annual racing calendar for Ladbrokes. In 1958 he was elected to the Punch “Table”.
Langdon published many collections of his cartoons and brought humour and wit to publications by others, such as Basil Boothroyd’s Let’s Move House (1977); George Mikes’s The Best of Mikes (1962); and Fred Trueman’s You Nearly Had Him That Time (1968). He exhibited widely around the world and was the official cartoonist for the Centre International Audio-Visuel d’Etudes et de Recherches in Saint-Ghislain, Belgium, from 1970 to 1975.
Langdon continued producing cartoons into old age, beginning an association with The Spectator in 1997 when he was in his 80s.
He lived finally at Amersham, where he played golf at Harewood Downs and was a devoted supporter of the Wycombe Wanderers football team.
In 1988 he was appointed OBE and elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. In 2001 he was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Cartoon Art Trust.
He married, in 1955, April Sadler-Philips, who survives him with two sons and a daughter.

David Langdon, born February 24 1914, died November 18 2011

Harry Morgan

Harry Morgan , who died aged 96, was best known for playing Colonel Sherman T Potter in the highly popular television series M*A*S*H.

Harry Morgan as Colonel Sherman T Potter, with Alan Alda

   

Arguably the most successful sitcom in the history of American television, M*A*S*H (1972-83) portrayed the reality of life and death at a US mobile army surgical hospital during the Korean War of the early 1950s, offsetting it with the gallows humour of the medical team led by Col Potter and assorted nurses and ancillaries.

M*A*S*H was adapted from Robert Altman’s 1970 film of the same name, which itself had been based on a novel by Dr Richard Hornberger, writing as Richard Hooker.

Three years into the series Morgan made a guest appearance as a visiting colonel in an episode directed by the show’s creator, Larry Gelbart. His performance was nominated for an Emmy award, and so impressed the producers that when McLean Stevenson, the actor playing the original Colonel Potter, decided to leave, Morgan was offered what he described as his “best-ever part”. He played Potter as an authoritative but good-humoured army surgeon, and a father figure to those under his command. The portrayal finally won him an Emmy in 1980.

Henry Morgan was born Harry Bratsberg on April 10 1915 in Detroit, where his Norwegian father worked in the motor industry. His family moved to Muskegon, Michigan, and he graduated from high school there in 1933, having been a schoolboy debating champion.

For two years he studied Law at the University of Chicago, but after dropping out because he was short of funds, went to work for a firm selling office equipment. This took him to Washington, DC, where he became involved in the fledgling Civic Theatre and realised that he preferred a life on the stage to selling rubber stamps and paper clips.

Assuming the name Morgan, which he felt was more euphonious than Bratsberg for an acting career, he made his stage debut in The Front Page before joining a repertory company at Westport, Connecticut. One early part cast him opposite a young Henry Fonda in a stage production of The Virginian.
On the big screen Morgan appeared in more than 100 films, making his debut in To the Shores of Tripoli (1942), a jingoistic film about the US Marines, and following it up with Crash Dive (1943); A Wing and a Prayer (1944); and A Bell for Adano (1945).
Early in his career he also featured with Glenn Miller and his band in Orchestra Wives (1942) and later in The Glenn Miller Story (1954) in which he played the pianist Chummy MacGregor, offering support to Miller’s wife after the bandleader’s mysterious wartime disappearance.
Having discovered that an abrasive television comedian also called himself Henry Morgan, he was billed from 1955 as Harry Morgan. Though in no way typecast, he was mostly in demand for friendly and reliable characters — and his voice and manner of speaking were unmistakably reassuring. When needed, however, he could stretch into menace, a talent he displayed in the thriller The Big Clock (1948) . Later, in Appointment with Danger (1951) he was the weak, expendable link in a criminal gang. His partner in crime, played by Jack Webb, picks up a child’s boot, a cherished memento of Morgan’s lost son, and beats him to death with it.
Nearly two decades later, Jack Webb and Morgan were reunited on the right side of the law when Morgan replaced Ben Alexander as Officer Bill Gannon, Sgt Joe Friday’s sidekick, in the 1967 remake of the celebrated Dragnet television series from the 1950s.
Morgan occasionally escaped the noir genre to appear in major films like Madame Bovary (1949), in which he played Hippolyte; High Noon (1952); and notably How the West was Won (1962), in which he played General Grant, who is shown discussing the morals of war and life with General Sherman, played by John Wayne. Morgan appeared again with Wayne in the Duke’s last film, The Shootist (1976).
Morgan appeared in several other television series, including Pete and Gladys (1960-62), a spin-off of December Bride (1954-59) in which he played Pete Porter; The Richard Boone Show (1963-64); and, latterly, Blacke’s Magic (1986), as the father of a magician who is drawn into solving crimes.
Morgan’s last films were for Disney – two Apple Dumpling Gang pictures (1975 and 1979) and The Cat from Outer Space (1978).
Harry Morgan was twice married, first to Eileen Detchon, from 1940 until her death in 1985, and then, in 1986, to Barbara Bushman Quine, granddaughter of the silent film star Francis X Bushman. Three of the four sons of his first marriage survive him.

Harry Morgan, born April 10 1915, died December 7 2011