31 Facts About Ludovic Kennedy

Sir Ludovic Henry Coverley Kennedy, was a Scottish journalist, broadcaster, humanist and author.

Ludovic Kennedy campaigned for the abolition of the death penalty in the United Kingdom.

Ludovic Kennedy's mother Rosalind was a cousin of the Conservative politician Robert Boothby, later Lord Boothby.

Ludovic Kennedy was posthumously mentioned in dispatches and his decision to fight against overwhelming odds entered the folklore of the Royal Navy.

Ludovic Kennedy followed his father into the Royal Navy; he served as an officer on destroyers, mostly in the same northern seas.

Ludovic Kennedy witnessed the final battle, until Bismarck was ablaze and its crew began to abandon ship, but shortage of fuel forced Tartar to depart for home before Bismarck sank.

Ludovic Kennedy later wrote about this in his 1974 book Pursuit, his chronicle of the chase and sinking of Bismarck.

Ludovic Kennedy returned to Christ Church, Oxford, at the end of the war to complete his English degree.

Ludovic Kennedy presented the BBC's flagship current affairs programme Panorama for several years.

Ludovic Kennedy was interested in miscarriages of justice, and he wrote and broadcast on numerous cases.

In 1957 Ludovic Kennedy made a guest appearance as a newsreader in the Scotland Yard supporting feature series episode The Lonely House.

Ludovic Kennedy wrote and presented a substantial number of television documentaries for the BBC on maritime history in the Second World War, beginning with Scapa Flow, followed by the dramatic narrative of the sinking of the Bismarck in which he was involved.

Ludovic Kennedy appeared as himself in several episodes on the political comedy series Yes Minister, often being called "Ludo" by Jim Hacker and Humphrey Appleby.

Ludovic Kennedy was the subject of an episode of That Reminds Me.

Ludovic Kennedy expressed to another journalist that there were "too many Blacks" on television.

Ludovic Kennedy wrote several books that questioned convictions in a number of notable cases in British judicial history.

In 1970 Ludovic Kennedy's book was turned into a film entitled 10 Rillington Place; the British crime film starred Richard Attenborough as Christie, John Hurt as Timothy Evans, Judy Geeson as Beryl Evans and Pat Heywood as Ethel Christie.

In 1985, Ludovic Kennedy published The Airman and the Carpenter, in which he argued that Richard Hauptmann did not kidnap and murder Charles Lindbergh's baby, a crime for which he was executed in 1936.

In 1990, Ludovic Kennedy became the advisory committee chairman of Just Television, a television production company dedicated to exposing miscarriages of justice.

In 1958, Ludovic Kennedy stood for election to Parliament as the Liberal candidate in the Rochdale by-election called after the death of the sitting Conservative MP, Wentworth Schofield, in December 1957.

Ludovic Kennedy lost to the Labour candidate, Jack McCann, but achieved an increase in the Liberal vote, pushing the Conservatives into third place.

Ludovic Kennedy stood for Rochdale at the 1959 general election, with a vote share increased from the by-election, but again came second to Labour.

Ludovic Kennedy was a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association, he contributed to New Humanist magazine, he was an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society and a Distinguished Supporter of the Humanist Society Scotland.

Ludovic Kennedy was an advocate of the legalisation of assisted suicide, and was a co-founder and former chair of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society.

Ludovic Kennedy resigned from the Liberal Democrats in 2001, citing the incompatibility of his pro-voluntary euthanasia views with those of the then Liberal Democrat leader Charles Ludovic Kennedy, who was a Roman Catholic.

Ludovic Kennedy then stood as an independent on a platform of legalising voluntary euthanasia in the 2001 general election for the Wiltshire constituency of Devizes.

Ludovic Kennedy won 2 per cent of the vote and subsequently rejoined the Liberal Democrats.

Ludovic Kennedy later remembered their meeting in 1949, when he was reluctantly persuaded by a friend to accept a complimentary ticket to a fancy dress ball held at the Lyceum ballroom in London.

Ludovic Kennedy died of pneumonia in a nursing home in Salisbury, Wiltshire, on 18 October 2009, aged 89.

Ludovic Kennedy received an honorary doctorate from the University of Strathclyde in 1985.

Ludovic Kennedy was knighted in the 1994 Queen's Birthday Honours List for services to journalism, on the recommendation of John Major's government.