Director and producer Peter Morley, who was acclaimed for his work on the current affairs programme This Week and his coverage of Sir Winston Churchill’s state funeral, has died aged 91.
The filmmaker, who was a former chair of Bafta and was significant in its founding, was also responsible for the documentaries Kitty: Return To Auschwitz, Twenty Five Years and The Mighty Continent and directed other films and documentaries for television.
He worked with Lord Attenborough, Lord Brabourne and Richard Cawston in 1972 as a founder trustee of the Society of Film and Television Arts, which is now Bafta, to establish the academy’s permanent headquarters in London’s Piccadilly.
Born in Germany in 1924, he emigrated to the UK after Adolf Hitler’s rise to power and began his showbusiness career as a rewind-boy in the projection box of the capital’s Dominion Theatre before becoming a projectionist for The Film Producer’s Guild and then a trainee director at Associated Rediffusion at the advent of ITV.
He worked on the channel’s first hour-long documentary Tyranny – The Years Of Adolf Hitler in 1959 and a live television production of Benjamin Britten’s opera The Turn Of The Screw in the same year.
He was later awarded the Royal Television Society Silver Medal for Lord Mountbatten: A Man For The Century in 1968 and the Royal Television Society Documentary Award for Kitty – Return To Auschwitz in 1979 and was made an OBE.
By his own estimation he directed some 200 programmes over the span of a long and distinguished career, Bafta said, and he recounts his many achievements in his autobiography A Life Rewound.
He died on June 23.
Comments: Our rules
We want our comments to be a lively and valuable part of our community - a place where readers can debate and engage with the most important local issues. The ability to comment on our stories is a privilege, not a right, however, and that privilege may be withdrawn if it is abused or misused.
Please report any comments that break our rules.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article