Mr. Middleton

Cecil Henry Middleton (22 February 1886 – 18 September 1945), widely known simply as "Mr. Middleton", was a gardener, writer and one of the earliest radio and television broadcasters on gardening for the BBC. Middleton broadcast in Britain during the 1930s and 40s, especially in relation to the "Dig for Victory" campaign during the Second World War. Many of his wartime talks appeared also in print.

Middleton was born in Weston by Weedon, Northamptonshire on 22 February 1886. Gardening was the family trade. Middleton was the son of John Robert Middleton, who was employed as head gardener at Weston Hall by Sir George Sitwell, father of the talented trio of Edith, Osbert and Sacheverell, all of whom Cecil Middleton came to know well as a child, probably as a playmate. On his marriage certificate on 10 August 1912 in London to Rosa Annie Jenkins, Middelton was listed as a Horticultural Instructor. He left Northampton to work first in the seed trade, then spent time as a student at Kew Gardens.

Middleton's broadcasting career began when Colonel Frank Rogers Durham (1872–1947), Secretary of the Royal Horticultural Society, recommended him to the BBC for radio talks. Others considered for the role had included the seasoned broadcaster Vita Sackville-West who, in the coming years, created a world-famous garden at Sissinghurst. Middelton's first programme was on 9 May 1931 and, from 1934 onwards, he broadcast regularly on Sunday afternoons at 2.15 p.m. a series of gardening talks entitled In Your Garden. These talks continued until 1939 when the BBC and Ministry of Agriculture extended the series to include topical advice about what became the "Dig For Victory" campaign and launched the complementary Kitchen Front programme.

By 1940, 3.5 million listeners were tuning in to hear Middleton's 15 minute talks from the BBC's studios at Evesham (the corporation having dispersed or evacuated many of its departments in wartime). These broadcasts, which were extremely successful and listened to both by practical gardeners and those who "only dreamed of gardening", were published in book form during World War II and have since been reprinted. Hs innate humour, which he deployed when allowed to do so, once led him to remark (with reference to the consequences of German bombing) on the availability of mortar rubble for liming soil. In 1942 research into listening habits suggested that over 70% of people in Britain with wireless sets listened to advice about gardening; of these, almost 80% referred specifically to In Your Garden, which was far and away the best known programme dealing with the subject. When the Allotments Bill was debated in Parliament in 1950, the Minister of Agriculture Tom Williams recalled that "until his death [in 1945], Mr. Middleton stimulated and encouraged us all by his avuncular advice every Sunday after lunch".

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