My former boss, Rosemary Hart, who has died aged 89, was the founding editor of BBC Radio 4’s arts magazine Kaleidoscope. The award-winning programme broke new ground on British radio and TV with its nightly review strand, and Rosemary piloted it from 1973 for its first 13 years, winning the Broadcasting Press Guild’s outstanding contribution to radio in 1983.
She had an eagle eye for presenters: broadcasters such as Paul Vaughan, Natalie Wheen and Paul Gambaccini were joined by the playwrights Ronald Harwood and Paul Allen, the novelist Jacky Gillott, the film director Tony Palmer, and the Guardian critics Michael Billington (theatre) and Waldemar Januszczak (art). Producers travelled to all corners of the UK and beyond, covering everything from the Pitlochry festival to the Minack theatre in Cornwall, from the Birmingham Ikon Gallery to the Venice Biennale.
Rosemary was encouraging, energetic and sometimes formidable. Every Monday producers assembled for the programme review session. No punches were pulled. After each live transmission the studio phone would ring, and a verdict, thumbs up or down, would be delivered. After my live discussion on architecture with stellar contributors including Richard Rogers and Terry Farrell, I was informed that “it never really started, did it Richard?” Sometimes the pull of the Yorkshire Grey pub across the road was irresistible.
The daughter of Joan Thompson, a nurse, and Harry Hart, an Olympic and Commonwealth athlete stationed in the UK with the South African Air Force, Rosemary was born in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire. The family moved to South Africa, but when Harry left the family in the 1940s, Rosemary and her mother returned to Britain, and both later took the surname Simpson after Joan remarried.
Rosemary experienced severe arthritis from an early age, but this never impeded her. According to her lifelong friend Gwynfa Neal, she was a great organiser of concerts and plays at Barrs Hill grammar school in Coventry. After her mother’s divorce, she changed her name from Rosemary Simpson to Rosemary Hart, studied English at University College London, took a secretarial course and joined the BBC.
By 1963 she was a presenter, and interviewed Paul McCartney for a special Beatles edition of Saturday Club in November that year before the release of their second LP. She went on to produce Home This Afternoon, then Options and Scan, before Kaleidoscope. Determined to be inclusive, she framed the review with interviews from artists, writers or directors, and vivid illustrations using play extracts, readings, and music. Before she left the programme in 1986, she launched an in-depth Kaleidoscope feature strand, and then produced documentaries until her BBC retirement in 1993.
After retirement Rosemary continued to live in Sutton, south-west London, but travelled widely, to South Africa, New Zealand and Australia, and on cruises to Panama and the Mediterranean. She was also a regular attendee at her local Nadfas arts society. When her sight deteriorated, she spent her final years in a care home in Epsom, though she remained as sharp as a tack, especially when discussing current radio programmes.
