Early life

Dimbleby was born near Richmond, Surrey,^[1] the son of Gwendoline Mabel (Bolwell) and Frederick Jabez George Dimbleby, a journalist.^[2] He was educated at The Mall School, Twickenham, and at Mill Hill School, and began his career in 1931 on the Richmond and Twickenham Times, which his grandfather, Frederick William Dimbleby, had acquired in 1894.

He then worked as a news reporter on the Southern Evening Echo in Southampton, before joining the BBC as a radio news reporter in 1936, going on to cover the first Royal tour of Canada,^[3] and becoming their first war correspondent. He accompanied the British Expeditionary Force to France and made broadcasts from the battle of El Alamein^[4] and the Normandy beaches during the D-Day landings.

During the Second World War, he flew on some twenty raids as an observer with RAF Bomber Command, including one to Berlin, recording commentary for broadcast the following day. He was one of the first journalists to experiment with unconventional outside broadcasts, such as when flying in a de Havilland Mosquito accompanying a fighter aircraft raid on France, or being submerged in a diving suit.

In April 1945, as the BBC's war correspondent, he accompanied the British 11th Armoured Division to the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp making one of the first reports.^[5][6] His description of what he saw there was so graphic the BBC declined to broadcast his despatch for four days, relenting only when he threatened to resign.^[5] An edited version was eventually aired, with references to Jews removed:^[7]

I passed through the barrier, and found myself in the world of a nightmare. Dead bodies, some of them in decay, lay strewn about the road and along the rutted tracks [...] Inside the huts it was even worse. I've seen many terrible sights in the last five years, but nothing, nothing approaching the dreadful interior of this hut at Belsen. The dead and the dying lay close together. I picked my way over corpse after corpse in the gloom, until I heard one voice that rose above the gentle, undulating moaning. I found a girl. She was a living skeleton, impossible to gauge her age, for she had practically no hair left on her head, and her face was only a yellow parchment sheet, with two holes in it for eyes [...] Babies were born at Belsen, some of them shrunken, wizened little things that could not live because their mothers could not feed them. One woman, distraught to the point of madness, flung herself at a British soldier who was on guard in the camp on the night that it was reached by the 11th Armoured Division. She begged him to give her some milk, for the tiny baby she held in her arms. She lay the mite on the ground, threw herself at the sentry's feet and kissed his boots. And when, in his distress, he asked her to get up, she put the baby in his arms and ran off, crying that she would find milk for it because there was no milk in her breast. And when the soldier opened the bundle of rags to look at the child, he found that it had been dead for days [...] I have never seen British soldiers so moved to cold fury as the men who opened the Belsen camp this week, and those of the police and the RAMC, who are now on duty there trying to save the prisoners who are not too far gone in starvation.^[8]

He described, in another broadcast, the wrecked interior of Hitler's Reich Chancellery at the war's end.^[9]

Broadcasting career

After the war, Dimbleby switched to television, eventually becoming the BBC's leading news commentator. He is perhaps best remembered as the commentator on a number of major public occasions, including the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953 and the funerals of George VI, John F. Kennedy and Winston Churchill. He wrote a book about the coronation, Elizabeth Our Queen, which was given free to many schoolchildren at the time. He also wrote a London crime novel, Storm at the Hook, published in 1948.

He took part in the first Eurovision television relay in 1951 and appeared in the first live television broadcast from the Soviet Union in 1961. He also introduced a special programme in July 1962 showing the first live television signal from the United States via the Telstar satellite. In addition to heavyweight journalism, he took part in lighter sound radio programmes such as Twenty Questions (as a panel member) and Down Your Way (which he hosted).^[10]

From 1955, he was the host of the flagship current affairs series Panorama.^[11] This programme saw him use his journalistic skills to full advantage in conducting searching, but polite interviews with key figures of the day, while acting as an urbane presenter for the programme. He was able to maintain his reporting talents by visiting places like Berlin, standing in front of the Brandenburg Gate a week before the Berlin Wall was erected across it by the communist authorities of East Germany.

Dimbleby's reputation was built upon his ability to describe events clearly yet with a sense of the drama and poetry of the many state occasions he covered. Examples included the Lying-in-State of George VI in Westminster Hall, where he depicted the stillness of the guardsmen standing like statues at the four corners of the catafalque, or the description of the drums at Kennedy's funeral which, he said, "beat as the pulse of a man's heart." His commentary for the funeral of Churchill in January 1965 was the last state event he commentated upon.

To produce his commentaries, he carried out encyclopedic research on all aspects of the venues of great events, their history and that of the ceremonies taking place, and the personalities involved. This was a necessary part of radio commentary, which transferred well to television coverage. He could also improvise extensively if there were delays in the schedule. His audience always felt that they were in "safe hands", especially in Panorama programmes like the one dealing with the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Inevitably, because of his close association with establishment figures and royalty, some people criticised his "hushed tones" style of speaking at state occasions, claiming he was pompous. In an interview, he laughed off such attacks, explaining that even though he had to use a special microphone, which covered his mouth to obviate his speaking disrupting the solemn atmosphere, he still had to pitch his voice low to avoid his voice carrying. A more common touch was demonstrated in his friendly broadcasts like Down Your Way where he met thousands of ordinary people in towns and villages, and the many trade unionists, politicians and industrialists etc. who appeared on Panorama and other programmes. Dimbleby also showed stamina and imperturbability in marathon election night broadcasts which ran from 10pm, when the polls closed, until around 6 or 7am the following morning.

Controversy and comedy

During his time with Panorama, Dimbleby narrated the famous spaghetti-tree hoax on 1 April 1957, as an April Fool's Day joke.^[12]

After commentating for half an hour on Elizabeth II's state visit in 1965 to Germany, Dimbleby uttered the mild expletive, "Jesus wept," unaware that the microphone was live, after discovering that the TV pictures had failed for all 30 minutes, meaning he would have to repeat the commentary.^[13]

Richard Dimbleby lecture

The Richard Dimbleby Lecture was founded in his memory in 1972 and is delivered every year by an influential public figure. Speakers have included:

• 2004 – James Dyson
• 2005 – Ian Blair
• 2006 – Mike Jackson
• 2007 – Craig Venter
• 2009 – Prince Charles
• 2010 – Terry Pratchett
• 2011 – Michael Morpurgo
• 2012 – Paul Nurse
• 2013 – Bill Gates
• 2014 – Christine Lagarde
• 2015 – Martha Lane Fox
• 2016 – Gregory Doran
• 2017 – John O Brennan
• 2018 – Jeanette Winterson
• 2019 – Tim Berners-Lee
• 2021 – Sarah Gilbert
• 2023 - David Harewood