Lance Sieveking

Lance Sieveking (19 March 1896 – 6 January 1972) was an English writer and pioneer BBC radio and television producer. He was married three times, and was father to archaeologist Gale Sieveking (1925-2007) and Fortean-writer Paul Sieveking (1949-).

Lancelot De Giberne Sieveking, D.S.C was born on 19 March 1896 in Harrow, Middlesex, and was a very creative child, writing from the age of six, and starting a novel aged 13 which would ultimately see print when he was 26. In-between, he "actively support[ed] the Suffragette movement" before war broke out.

Sieveking (as well as his brother, Valentine Edgar Sieveking) served during World War I. Lance signed up with the Artists Rifles before "join[ing] the Royal Navy Air Service, [and winning] the D.F.C" before being "shot down over the Rhine" in 1917 and held as a German prisoner-of-war.

Upon his return to England, he attended St Catharine's College, Cambridge, and was close friends with fellow-Cambridge student Eric Maschwitz. The two were (with others) both editors on The new Cambridge chap book between 1920 and 1921.

He made his name with the BBC, starting out as assistant to the Director of Education, before "he went on to introduce the first running commentaries and adapt numerous classics for radio drama... it has been argued that the production of the first television play springs from his ingenuity". He was drama script editor for ten years (1940–50) before retiring "six years later in 1956".

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