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LAST WORD
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Last Word
Listen to the latest editionFriday   16:00-16:30
Sunday 20:30-21:00 (rpt)

Radio 4's weekly obituaries programme
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This week
Friday 16th February 2007
(Rpt) Sunday 18th February
Matthew Bannister
Matthew Bannister tells the life stories of people who have died recently. This week: Elisabeth Rivers-Bulkeley, Harry Webster, Cyril Demarne, Sir Ian McGregor and Christopher Helm.
Elisabeth Rivers-Bulkeley
One of first women elected to the Stock Exchange who has died aged 82.

In the nineteen seventies, the Financial Times said Elisabeth Rivers-Bulkeley was a “name that has struck fear into the hearts of every London broker determined to keep Throgmorton Street an all-male province.” A beautiful socialite who was friends with Noel Coward and Gianni Agnelli, Elisabeth Rivers-Bulkeley had repeatedly applied to be elected to the Exchange. She was turned down on the grounds that she had been born in Austria and that there just weren’t sufficient “facilities” for women. Eventually the London exchange gave in. Along with nine other women, Elizabeth was finally admitted on March 26th 1973. She became something of a celebrity, offering financial advice for women on the BBC – and in a column in the Daily Telegraph. She was diagnosed with terminal cancer last year and decided to end her life in an assisted suicide at the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland.

Matthew Bannister talks to Elisabeth Rivers-Bulkeley’s god-daughter Wendy Stephenson. Extracts of her articles were read by Christine Kavanagh.
 
Elisabeth Rivers-Bulkeley was born April 30th 1924. She died December 19th 2007.
Harry Webster CBE
Triumph engineer who has died aged 89.

Harry Webster as director of engineering at the Standard Motor Company in Coventry was responsible for some of the most iconic British car designs of the 1950s and 60s. In later life he became something of a cult figure for the enthusiasts who collect cars like the Triumph TR2, the Herald, the Vitesse and the Stag.

Matthew Bannister talks to Chris Cunnington who is the General Manager of the TR Register – the club for fans of Triumph TR car and to motoring journalist Graham Robson used to work for Harry Webster:

Harry Webster, CBE was born on May 27th 1917. He died on February 6th 2007.
Cyril Demarne
Fire Officer who has died aged 101.

The London Blitz lasted from September 1940 to May 1941 – nine months of almost nightly bombing which put enormous pressure on the London Fire Brigade. Sub Officer Cyril Demarne was based at West Ham, where he was instructing members of the Auxiliary Fire Service when war broke out. Cyril took a leading part in tackling the massive fires which devastated many parts of the capital and caused thousands of casualties.

He recalled those dramatic events in a memoir and in an interview with the Museum of London. His memoirs are read by Jason Cheatham.
 
Cyril Demarne was born February 7th 1905. He died January 28th 2007.
Sir Ian McGregor CBE, FRS
Malariologist, who has died aged 84.

Sir Ian McGregor became one of Britain’s most respected authorities on malaria, but he took up the subject by chance. After qualifying as a doctor in Glasgow, Ian was called up for national service, posted to Palestine and told that he was to be trained as a malariologist - a term he’d never heard before. After leaving the army, he studied at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. One of his teachers there offered Ian a post at a small research unit recently established in the Gambia.

Sir Ian Macgregor was director of the Medical Research Council laboratories in the Gambia for more than twenty years. It was there that he met his wife Joan who helped him with his research.

Matthew Bannister talks to Sir Ian McGregor’s son Alistair and one of Sir Ian’s colleagues in the Gambia Professor Herbert Gilles, former Dean of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine.

Sir Ian McGregor was born on August 26th 1922. He died on February 1st 2007.

Christopher Helm
Publisher and amateur ornithologist who has died aged 69.

Christopher Helm turned his private passion into a publishing success story. He was a keen ornithologist who drew on his hobby to publish some of the world’s most admired and successful books on birds. He was educated at Harrow and Cambridge and started his publishing career at Penguin and Macmillan. But it was when he teamed up with an editor called David Croom and founded Croom Helm, that his real success began.

The firm initially specialised in academic books, but in 1983 they issued a comprehensive guide to seabirds which was an instant hit with the growing numbers of amateur ornithologists around the world. A companion volume on the Waders of the World also sold nearly one hundred thousand copies. Over the next twenty years Christopher published dozens of bird books, selling two companies and starting a third.

Matthew Bannister talks to Christopher’s widow Amanda and to his friend and colleague Bob Kiernan.
 
Christopher Helm was born February 1st 1937. He died January 20th 2007.
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