Nan Winton
First woman to read the BBC national TV news, whose ‘victory’ for feminism proved short-lived
NAN WINTON, who has died aged 93, had the distinction of being not just the first female to present the BBC’S national television news when she made her debut on the late-night Sunday bulletin on June 19 1960, but also the first to do it on any channel broadcasting throughout the whole of the United Kingdom. “Woman reads news on TV,” read one newspaper headline.
Many of the corporation’s executives considered a woman unable to impart “serious” news with the necessary authority, but Nan Winton was given her chance in front of a nationwide audience after carrying out the job on the London news programme Town and Around in 1959 and 1960.
The move came a full five years after Barbara Mandell had started presenting ITV’S midday news bulletin when the commercial channel opened. However, that lunchtime programme was axed amid financial cuts less than six months later, and Barbara Mandell had been seen only in the London area, the first to receive ITV.
More of the country was getting the channel’s broadcasts when she – and fellow reporter Lynne Reid Banks – occasionally fronted ITV news programmes later, but five regions were still not receiving the network when Nan Winton became a national newsreader in what the BBC regarded as an “experiment”.
Her apparent victory for women in a male-dominated world was short-lived. She was taken off late-night bulletins after four months, reinstated two months later, then eventually sacked in March 1961 – following audience research showing that viewers deemed a female newsreader as “not acceptable”.
Nan Winton recalled a lack of support from the BBC’S news staff. “They were men from their middle years and they’d come from Fleet Street,” she said in 1997. “I don’t
think that women reporters were too popular in Fleet Street and they certainly were a bit ambivalent about me.”
Her fellow newsreader Robert Dougall was one of those who was critical. He acknowledged in his 1973 autobiography, In and Out of the Box, that she had “a good voice and excellent presence … and might in time have made the grade”.
But he added: “Unfortunately one of the snags about this newsreading business is that it is necessary to know at least a little about an awful lot.” He cited Nan Winton’s mispronunciation of the Foreign Secretary Sir Alec Douglas-home’s surname and her referring to the Queen riding in an open landau by rhyming it with “now” instead of “saw”.
So the “experiment” did nothing to further the cause of women fronting television news, although ITV and BBC regions had previously hired female presenters – Pat Cox at ATV, in the Midlands, in 1956 and Armine Sandford on the Bristol-based BBC West programme Points West in 1957.
Nationally, Nan Winton was the BBC’S only regular female television newsreader until Angela Rippon in 1975. She went on to enjoy a long career as a radio presenter and panellist, and declined an invitation to a 25th-anniversary reunion of BBC television news staff in 1979.
She was born Nancy Wigginton at Portsmouth on November 6 1925 to Frank, a chartered surveyor, and his wife, Evelyn (née Nurse). During the Second World War, she was a drill sergeant in the Women’s Land Army.
With ambitions to act, she trained at Rada. After graduating in 1949 – and adopting the stage name Nancy Winton – she performed in rep and appeared in the West End as the police officer’s widow, Mrs Tomkins, in Murder Story (Cambridge Theatre, 1954), Ludovic Kennedy’s play about the hanging of Derek Bentley.
She also acted in a handful of episodes of the radio serial Dick Barton – Special Agent in 1949, and her versatile voice was in demand for dubbing foreign films.
Moving to television – as Nan Winton – she presented Information Desk (1955-56), answering viewers’ queries, and was an announcer between 1958 and 1961. She was also a reporter-interviewer on the current affairs series Panorama during 1959, a move also described as an experiment.
But much of her early career at the BBC reflected the sexist attitudes of the time. In 1955, Nan Winton was one of 10 women joining the continuity announcer Mcdonald Hobley in Afternoon Hostesses Tea-party “for a Christmas cup of tea”, according to the Radio Times. Two years later, she presented beauty tips in the Mainly for Women series.
She left the BBC in August 1961 and, as a freelance for ITV, presented the current affairs programme The Time, The Place – and the Camera (1961), and interviewed a variety of people in different occupations for the 1962 series of Here and Now.
Nan Winton was back at the BBC briefly on Living Today (1962-63), reporting on topics that included “making the best of yourself ” and “choosing meat”.
Radio served her better. She took over as a presenter of the final series of In Town Tonight (1959-60), meeting celebrities travelling to Britain, and continued for the entire run of its successor, In Town Today (1960-65).
In 1964 and 1965, she was a presenter of the listeners’ letters show Listening Post, before a longer run (1965-74) as a member of the team discussing such feedback in Petticoat Line. She was also a resident panellist on the general-knowledge quiz shows Treble Chance, from 1962 until 1971, Treble Chance Quiz (1972) and Forces’ Chance, visiting British services personnel abroad, from its 1971 series until it ended in 1977. She then left broadcasting behind.
Nan Winton was co-founder of the Association of Fashion & Advertising Photographers (now the Association of Photographers) in 1968 and the Association of Illustrators and the British Association of Picture Libraries and Agencies the following decade. She also won praise from Lord Rothschild for her work as general secretary of the Anglo-israel Association.
In 1948, Nan Winton married the actor Charles Stapley, who would become known as Ted Hope in the television soap Crossroads; they divorced in 1962. She is survived by their son and daughter.
Nan Winton, born November 6 1925, died May 11 2019