Tord Alvar Quan Lidell was an English radio announcer and newsreader for the BBC and compere.
22 Facts About Alvar Lidell
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Alvar Lidell joined BBC Birmingham as chief announcer in 1932 before moving to London the following year.
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Alvar Lidell left the BBC for one year to report for duty with the Royal Air Force and became chief announcer of the BBC Third Programme in 1946.
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Alvar Lidell began reading news bulletins regularly on the BBC Home Service and the Light Programme from 1951 to his retirement in 1969.
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Alvar Lidell was appointed Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 1964.
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Alvar Lidell was born on 11 September 1908 in Wimbledon Park, Surrey, the third child and younger son of Swedish parents.
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Alvar Lidell's father, John Adrian Lidell, was a timber importer who came to Britain in the 1890s.
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Alvar Lidell attended King's College School, Wimbledon, playing rugby and cricket.
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Alvar Lidell enrolled at Exeter College, Oxford, where he graduated with a second class degree in classical honour moderations in 1929, and read French.
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Alvar Lidell joined BBC Birmingham in 1932 as chief announcer, before he was moved to London in September 1933.
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Alvar Lidell became deputy chief announcer in 1937, and made some historic broadcasts, including the announcement of Edward VIII's abdication in 1936 as he was the only person in the newsroom.
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Alvar Lidell became a regular reader of news bulletins for the BBC Home Service and the Light Programme on 5 February 1951.
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Alvar Lidell's chosen book was the Oxford English Dictionary and his luxury item was playing-cards.
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In 1970 Alvar Lidell was heard as narrator on the Apple Records recording of The Whale by composer John Tavener.
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Alvar Lidell worked as a narrator, recording more than 237 volumes for Books for the Blind, including long works such as Anna Karenina as well as Arnold Schoenberg's Gurrelieder and A Survivor from Warsaw, as well as Ralph Vaughan Williams' An Oxford Elegy and William Walton's Facade.
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Alvar Lidell recorded two discs worth of ballads for His Master's Voice and studied under Julian KimbalI.
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Alvar Lidell's voice was regularly heard in the television series A Family at War and All Our Yesterdays.
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Alvar Lidell recorded lines introducing various reports on how Europe fared during the Second World War for the seven-part International Assignment radio series broadcast on BBC Radio 4 from November 1978.
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Alvar Lidell did not write news bulletins but rather read them.
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Alvar Lidell married Nancy Margaret Corfield, the daughter of a lawyer, at Chelsea Old Church on 1 October 1938.
21.
Alvar Lidell was appointed Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in the 1964 Birthday Honours.
22.
Alvar Lidell died of cancer eighteen months after its diagnosis at Michael Sobell House, Mount Vernon Hospital in Northwood on 7 January 1981.