24 Facts About Hugh Greene

Hugh Greene was director-general of the BBC from 1960 to 1969.

Hugh Greene encountered opposition from some politicians and activists opposed to his modernising agenda, but under his leadership the BBC was recognised to be outperforming its commercial rival, ITV, and was awarded a second television channel by the British government and authorised to introduce colour television to Britain.

Hugh Greene was educated at Berkhamsted School and at Merton College, Oxford, where he obtained a second class in classical moderations and English.

Hugh Greene worked in Munich for two British publications, the Daily Herald and the New Statesman, and in 1934 he joined the Berlin office of The Daily Telegraph, becoming its chief correspondent in 1938.

The writer of his entry in the Dictionary of National Biography, Colin Shaw, comments that Hugh Greene's direct witnessing of the Nazis deeply influenced him for the rest of his life, "teaching him to hate intolerance and the degradation of character to which the loss of freedom led".

Hugh Greene was expelled from Germany in May 1939 in reprisal for the expulsion from London of a journalist and Nazi agent, Rudolf Rosel.

In 1940, Hugh Greene was one of the first to undergo security clearance vetting by MI5 while working at the BBC, for MI5 suspected him to be a communist.

Hugh Greene established a peacetime radio service, Nordwestdeutscher Rundfunk, served as its first director-general and gave it a charter on the lines of the BBC.

In 1948, the station was handed over to the German authorities and Hugh Greene returned to England.

Hugh Greene was appointed head of the BBC's eastern European service in 1949, just before the Russians began to jam its broadcasts.

On his return to London, Hugh Greene resumed his work at the BBC.

Hugh Greene was appointed to succeed him; Shaw comments that this temporarily distanced him from any direct involvement with programmes, but clearly identified him as the potential successor to Jacob, who was due to retire in 1959.

Jacob backed Hugh Greene's modernising approach, and moved Hole to be director of administration.

Early on, Hugh Greene abolished the position of director of news and current affairs, and appointed himself editor-in-chief.

Hugh Greene pressed the BBC's case, arguing that the interests outside television of the commercial franchise holders constituted a conflict of loyalties with their public service obligations, and that the quality of programmes from commercial television was greatly inferior to that of the BBC's.

Hugh Greene ignored Whitehouse's protestations and commissioned a painting of her naked with five breasts for his office which he threw darts at.

If, as was suspected at the time, Wilson's motive was to provoke Hugh Greene into resigning, the ploy almost succeeded, but Hugh Greene's advisers convinced him that if he resigned the whole board of management of the BBC would resign with him, leaving the corporation "at the mercy of its new master" as one colleague put it.

Nonetheless, after a year Hugh Greene began to look forward to retirement.

Hugh Greene did so, and served for two years before resigning, feeling that his presence was inhibiting his successor.

Hugh Greene edited several collections of stories about the rivals of Sherlock Holmes, collaborated with his brother Graham on Victorian Villanies and became chairman of Bodley Head, his brother's publisher.

In May 1970, Hugh Greene married the German actress Tatjana Sais ; they had lived together in the late 1940s.

Hugh Greene died from cancer in King Edward VII's Hospital, London, on 19 February 1987.

Hugh Greene was appointed OBE in 1950 and knighted in 1964.

Hugh Greene received honorary degrees from the University of East Anglia, the University of York and the Open University.