Author Archives: Natalie

And Andrew Ian Dodge has said it.

died the other day, aged 95 and just weeks after broadcasting his final Letter from America. This page contains well-merited tributes to him and excerpts and transcripts from the longest-running speech radio programme in history.

I remember listening to his distinctive, gravelly voice literally as a child at my father’s knee. I liked his voice. After a while it dawned on me that I liked and was learning from what he was saying too.

From all the vast range of topics he covered, this obituary couldn’t resist the opportunity to cherry-pick.

The lyricism of his broadcasting and the urbanity of his voice did not disguise his fears for America which he saw becoming a more violent society.

A liberal by nature, he reserved particular dislike for what he saw as the shallow flag-waving of the Reagan presidency.

True, he was a liberal. I would guess he voted Democrat for most of the many, many US elections he covered. But he was a liberal of a different era, or more accurately of a more timeless sort. He started writing for the Guardian when it was the Manchester Guardian and started speaking for the BBC when it was what I once meant by the BBC.

His character changed a great deal less than that of the institutions he worked for. Despite that – correction, because of it – he was an acute observer until the very end. Here’s a letter he wrote last Christmas about the urgency of fighting the Iraq war.

Wonder why News Online didn’t pick that one for the obituary?

is one of several blogs who have mentioned that Israeli minister Natan Sharansky sent a furious letter to the BBC over Orla Guerin’s coverage of the child suicide bomber who changed his mind.

. John Perry writes:

Hi Natalie, seen

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