A BIRDBRAINED IDEA TO MELT HITLER’S HEART

HARMAN GRISEWOOD, a pioneering announcer and founder of the Third Programme, was an irresistibly light-hearted spirit.

I loved his memory of the BBC’s second Director-General, Sir Frederick Ogilvie, who wanted to relay to Germany the famous 1924 recording of the cellist Beatrice Harrison playing to the nightingales in a Surrey garden. The idea was to soften Hitler’s heart. ‘Yes, it’s amusing,’ said Ogilvie, ‘but he took it very seriously indeed. Said the Germans are a sentimental race, and if they heard this nightingale they would be moved to tears.

‘I thought this was rather rot . . . because I’d taken the trouble to go to Berlin to see what was going on. A fellow announcer went with me, and we told the Director-General that it was pretty grim.’