Last Word

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Factual: Life Stories

Radio 4's weekly obituary programme, telling the life stories of those who have died recently

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Last Word: Grace Bumbry, Don Short, Dame Rosemary Cramp, Wee Willie Harris

Grace Bumbry, Don Short, Dame Rosemary Cramp, Wee Willie Harris

BBC Radio 4 - Last Word, Grace Bumbry, Don Short, Dame Rosemary Cramp, Wee Willie Harris

Matthew Bannister on an opera singer, a journalist, an archaeologist and a rock‘n’roller

Matthew Bannister on opera singer Grace Bumbry, journalist Don Short, archaeologist Dame Rosemary Cramp and rock’n’roller Wee Willie Harris.

Matthew Bannister on

The opera singer Grace Bumbry who broke down barriers by becoming the first black performer at the Bayreuth Festival.

Don Short, the showbusiness journalist who coined the term “Beatlemania” and became good friends with the Fab Four.

Dame Rosemary Cramp, the archaeologist who deepened our understanding of the Anglo Saxon period.

And Wee Willie Harris, the flamboyant rock’n’roller name checked in Ian Dury’s song “Reasons To Be Cheerful”

Interviewee: David Brewer
Interviewee: Daisy Dunn 
Interviewee: Professor Joanna Story
Interviewee: Jonathan Wingate
Interviewee: Tony Thorpe

Producer: Gareth Nelson-Davies

Archive used:

Royal Visit to Kenya - First Stage of the Commonwealth Tour, British Pathe, 1952; A taste of Beatlemania in the 1960s, CBS News, CBS YouTube channel, uploaded 21/01/2014;  Don Short interview about the writing of his memoir 'The Beatles and Beyond', The Surrey Edit, YouTube uploaded 24/03/2020;  Rosemary Cramp interview, On Site, BBC Radio, 03/09/1967;  Professor Rosemary Cramp interview, PM, BBC Radio 4, 29/05/1979;   Rosemary Cramp, Professor of Archaeology at Durham University, talks to Sue Macgregor about her life and work, BBC Radio 4, 08/12/1988; Meet The Archaeologist: Rosemary Cramp, YouTube uploaded 04/07/2014; Wee Willie Harris – Still Rocking, Celluloid Tapestry, YouTube uploaded 29/06/2023.

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