Three Autograph Letters Signed and three Typed Letters Signed (all 'Charles') from the Chairman of the BBC Governors Lord Hill to the Observer journalist Hugh Massingham, mainly regarding their collaboration on the two volumes of his memoirs.

Author: 
Charles Hill (1904-1989), Baron Hill of Luton [Lord Hill], BBC 'Radio Doctor', Conservative MP, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, Chairman of BBC Governors [Hugh Massingham (1905-71), journalist]
Publication details: 
On letterheads of Bury Knowle, Milton Road, Harpenden; The Independent Television Authority, 70 Brompton Road, London SW3; Winch Hill House, Wandon End, near Luton; and last three from Broadcasting House, London W1. 1963 (1), 1967 (1) and 1968 (4).
£120.00
SKU: 12815

Totalling 5pp., 4to and 3pp., 12mo. The six items in good condition, on lightly-aged paper, with the first three in autograph and the last three (from Broadcasting House) typed. Hill begins the first letter (22 April 1963) with the assertion that he is 'taking heed' of Massingham's 'stimulating advice', and this sets the tone of the whole correspondence. In the same letter he reports that he has finished an 'unexciting piece on the Post Office', and that he is recasting two chapters (of his memoirs 'Both Sides of the Hill', published the following year): 'I recognise their particular importance & I will send the rewritten chapters back to you in a week or so.' He concludes: 'Our collaboration is helping me enormously as I expected.' The last four letters, all from 1968, would concern the second volume of Hill's memoirs, not published until 1974, as 'Behind the Screen'. They contain references to Graham Watson, Denis Hamilton and Hill's and Massingham's 'agent for the arrangement with the Sunday Times' regarding the first volume of memoirs, Dwye Evans. There is also a discussion of 'a tax point': 'A volume of memoirs is, as you know, counted as the publication of one's papers and so a capital exercise and is tax free. This is Volume 2 and there is no reason, I suppose, why it will not be regarded in the same category as Volume 1. But if we sell direct to a newspaper they are, I suppose, buying articles rather than book instalments.' On 6 August 1968 he states that his 'immediate reaction on reading that sneering piece in the Sunday Telegraph on "broadcasting and the Public Mood" was that I didn't want to go on with the piece. Perry Worsthorne's piece was excellent even if it was critical'. In the final letter (16 September 1968) he praises an interview with Massingham as 'very helpful to me. Your competitors are not pleased!'