Henry Swanzy was an Anglo-Irish radio producer in Britain's BBC General Overseas Service who is best known for his role in promoting West Indian literature particularly through the programme Caribbean Voices, where in 1946 he took over from Una Marson, the programme's first producer.
16 Facts About Henry Swanzy
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Henry Swanzy was educated at preparatory schools in Cheltenham and Eastbourne, before going on to Wellington College in 1928.
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Henry Swanzy read History at New College, Oxford, graduating with a first-class honours degree, and he won the Gibbs Prize.
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Henry Swanzy began working for the BBC during the war, reporting for the General Overseas Service.
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Henry Swanzy took over Caribbean Voices after Una Marson, the programme's original architect and first producer, returned to Jamaica in April 1946, and he remained at the helm until 1954.
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Henry Swanzy is acknowledged to have "transformed Caribbean Voices into the primary site for new and unpublished poetry and prose from the Caribbean, granting an international forum to many who would go on to become the leading lights in Caribbean letters".
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Our sole fortune now was that it was Henry Swanzy who produced 'Caribbean Voices.
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In 1956, Henry Swanzy himself wrote about what the programme had achieved:.
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Henry Swanzy has agonised over the waifs, the unemployed, the mental patients, scoundrels, fallen women, the rich and comfortable in their wall of privilege.
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From 1954 to 1958 Henry Swanzy was seconded as head of programmes to the Gold Coast Broadcasting System, after a colonial government commission had proposed the establishment of GCBS to produce programmes of local content "in the spirit of independence", with BBC staff being sent to Accra, capital of the then Gold Coast, to develop news and entertainment programmes, train staff and promote the purchase of wireless sets by the general public.
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Henry Swanzy subsequently returned to the BBC's external services, where he worked until his retirement in 1976.
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Henry Swanzy wrote several critiques of West Indian literature and for a decade edited the journal of the Royal African Society, now called African Affairs.
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Henry Swanzy died on 19 March 2004, aged 88, at his home in Bishop's Stortford, England.
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On 12 March 1946 at Hampstead register office, Henry Swanzy married the artist Tirzah Garwood, widow of Eric Ravilious, and mother of three children.
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Henry Swanzy's papers are held at the Bodleian Library of Commonwealth and African Studies at Rhodes House.
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Papers of Henry Swanzy are held at the Cadbury Research Library, University of Birmingham.