Grace Wyndham Goldie
| Grace Wyndham Goldie | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Grace Murrell Nisbet 26 March 1900 Arisaig, Lochaber, Scotland |
| Died | 3 June 1986 Kensington, London, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation | Television executive |
| Employer | BBC |
| Title | Head of BBC Television Talks, later Head of BBC News & Current Affairs |
| Spouse(s) | Frank Wyndham Goldie |
Grace Wyndham Goldie (née Grace Murrell Nisbet; 26 March 1900 – 3 June 1986) was a producer and executive in British television for twenty years, particularly in the fields of politics and current affairs. During her career at the BBC, she held her own as one of the few senior women in an establishment dominated by men. As a producer, she pioneered many of the television formats now taken for granted in Britain. Wyndham Goldie became Head of Talks, and later Head of the Current Affairs Group at BBC Television.
She was born Grace Murrell Nisbet in Arisaig, a small village in the western Scottish Highlands. Much of her childhood was spent in Egypt, where her father worked as a civil engineer, and she attended a French Catholic convent school in Alexandria before attending Cheltenham Ladies' College. Nisbet obtained her first degree at Bristol University, and then attended Somerville College, Oxford. In 1928, Nisbet married Frank Goldie, an actor who used the stage name Wyndham Goldie, which she adopted as her married name. Frank Goldie died in 1957.
Wyndham Goldie developed her interest in broadcasting while as a weekly columnist for The Listener, which reprinted the texts of BBC talks, between 1935 and 1941. She specialised in drama and entertainment, and wrote enthusiastically about the new medium of television. After working as a civil servant at the Board of Trade from 1942 to 1944, she was invited to join the BBC as a radio producer in June 1944. In 1947, she joined the Television Talks Department.
Wyndham Goldie pioneered television coverage of general elections and the coverage of politics and current affairs on television. The first general election which the television service was able to cover occurred in February 1950. The BBC engaged in no reporting of the campaign whatsoever because of a cautious reading of the Representation of the People Act 1948. However, producer Grace Wyndham Goldie managed to persuade the BBC to transmit a programme on election night to report the results only - there was to be absolutely no prediction of what was to come.
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