Bob Danvers-Walker
| Cyril Frederick 'Bob' Danvers-Walker | |
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| Born | October 11, 1906 |
| Died | May 17, 1990 (aged 83) Oxford |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation | Radio and TV presenter |
| Known for | Voice of Pathé News |
Cyril Frederick 'Bob' Danvers-Walker (11 October 1906 – 17 May 1990) was an English radio and newsreel announcer best known as the offscreen voice of Pathé News cinema newsreels during World War II and for many years afterwards.
Born in Cheam, Surrey, Danvers-Walker spent much of his childhood in Tasmania and began his radio career in Melbourne, Australia, in 1925, moving on briefly to ABC in Sydney in 1932 before returning to the UK that same year.
From 1932 to 1939 he worked as a presenter for the International Broadcasting Company (IBC) network of commercial radio stations broadcasting in English to Britain from the continent, becoming Chief Announcer at Radio Normandy. He also helped the IBC to set up radio stations at Toulouse, Paris, Lyon, Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia, but Radio Normandy was always the company's flagship station, and Danvers-Walker was heard regularly over its airwaves until the station was closed down at the start of World War II in 1939.
Danvers-Walker wanted to join the BBC as soon as the war started, but was prevented by a BBC rule against employing anyone who had worked on commercial radio. This rule was quietly dropped in 1943, and from then on he was deployed on a variety of morale-boosting wartime BBC radio shows, including Round and About and London Calling Europe.
His rich, distinctive voice (though not his name) also became familiar to cinemagoers as the anonymous offscreen commentator for the twice-weekly British Pathe newsreel, a job he held continuously from 1940 to 1970. The upbeat, patriotic, "stiff upper lip" style he adopted in this role soon became a kind of standard for the medium, and is still parodied to this day whenever television or film wants to suggest 1940s and 1950s news coverage. Kenneth Branagh has stated that he was consciously imitating Danvers-Walker's "perky tone" in a cod "newsreel" segment in his 2000 film Love's Labour's Lost.
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