22 Facts About Olive Shapley

Olive Mary Shapley was a British radio producer and broadcaster.

Olive Shapley was born Peckham, south London, into a Unitarian family.

Olive Shapley's parents named her after the South African author Olive Schreiner.

In 1929 Shapley went to read history at St Hugh's College, Oxford.

Olive Shapley thought a claim by Paddy Scannell and David Cardiff that she was an innovator as being expressed in "very flattering terms".

Decades later, Olive Shapley thought it "probably the most unfair and biased programme ever put out by the BBC".

In 1939, Olive Shapley married John Salt, the BBC's programme director in the North region; at the time, the BBC did not permit married couples to work together at the corporation, and so Olive Shapley resigned.

Olive Shapley began to record interviews with Mabel's neighbours and produced radio programmes about the lives of black people in America.

Olive Shapley started to produce a "newsletter" programme which was sent back to Britain and broadcast fortnightly on the BBC's Children's Hour; among her interviewees were Eleanor Roosevelt and Paul Robeson.

Olive Shapley became a regular presenter of Woman's Hour, a programme with which she was associated for over twenty years, introducing the programme between 1949 and July 21st 1950.

Olive Shapley is credited with introducing some formerly taboo subjects to the programme, such as discussions about the menopause and women living independently of men.

In 1958, she began working in television, presenting Women of Today and narrating a children's programme, Olive Shapley Tells a Story, on BBC Television.

In 1953, the couple bought Rose Hill, a house on Millgate Lane in Didsbury, Manchester, where Olive Shapley lived for 28 years.

Gorton died of a heart attack in 1959 and Olive Shapley underwent treatment for severe depression.

Olive Shapley subsequently returned to her broadcasting career, taking a six-week BBC television training course in 1959, which enabled her to become a producer in the newer medium.

Olive Shapley devised a programme about books, Something to Read, and convinced the BBC to use journalist Brian Redhead as the presenter.

When in Manchester, Olive Shapley worked at Dickenson Road Studios, the BBC's regional TV production studio which was housed in a converted Methodist Church in Rusholme.

Olive Shapley wrote her autobiography with the assistance of her daughter, Christina Hart.

Shortly after publication in 1996, Olive Shapley suffered a severe stroke.

Olive Shapley was moved to a nursing home, where she died in 1999.

Olive Shapley was longlisted in 2015 for the WoManchester Statue.

Olive Shapley's autobiography, Broadcasting a Life, was published in 1996.