A brilliant historian and writer, he made sense of the world for television audiences.
Keith Kyle, who has died aged 81, was a distinguished historian and a prolific writer and broadcaster with an extraordinary capacity for making sense out of complex, politically sensitive scenarios. Those who watched him on the BBC Tonight programmes in the 1960s could not fail to be impressed by his broadcasts from Kenya and the Congo during the critical years of African independence.
He would stand there, in shirt sleeves, in the midst of a battle and explain who the protagonists were, what would happen next and why it was important to us – all with huge enthusiasm and expertise, waving his arms about and talking for at least five minutes without Autocue, notes or a clipboard in sight.
Article continues
It was a gift Kyle seemed to have been born with. At Oxford, Dick Taverne, a fellow student and later his best man, recalled, “he was possibly the most naturally talented speaker of his generation.” This in a field of undergraduates that included Robin Day, Shirley Williams, Bernard Williams, Margaret Thatcher and Kenneth Tynan.
None the less, most of his contemporaries believed Kyle was ideally suited to an academic career. He certainly looked the part. Unfailingly courteous, he combined intellectual brilliance with acute absent-mindedness and gentle eccentricity. He lost so many articles of clothing that his wife sewed name tags into his garments as if he was a schoolboy. Which, in a way, he always was; ever the enthusiast, he was determined to see, experience and report on world events for himself.
Extract taken from;
Keith Kyle by Sandra Harris
The Guardian, Tuesday February 27, 2007