Godfrey Talbot

	This page: general experience and audio clip.
	Includes inventory and audio clip.

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Godfrey Talbot behind the lines shortly after El Alamein battle.

From the Battle of El Alamein in October 1942 to the fall of Rome in June 1944, War Correspondent Godfrey Talbot was among the half-dozen or so best-known voices on BBC radio. For countless listeners at home he seemed to provide a much-needed link with the men of the Eighth Army in North Africa and Italy.

Godfrey was born in 1908, in the village of Walton near Wakefield. He left Leeds Grammar School at 16 and started work at the Yorkshire Post as an office boy, working his way up to a junior reporter within two years. In his early twenties Godfrey was first Assistant Editor, then Editor, of the Manchester City News, before joining the BBC in 1937 as a Press Officer. When the war came two years later his employers summoned him to London as a news sub-editor and occasional reporter. Then, when sources close to the Government indicated unease about the optimistic reports that Richard Dimbleby in Cairo was putting out about General Auchinleck, whom Churchill was about to replace, Godfrey was chosen to take up the broadcasting baton in Egypt. He did not disappoint, managing to record discs in the sandy desert, which satisfied government, the BBC and an ever-growing listening public. The broadcasts displayed a natural flair for descriptive detail, including the arrival of Churchill in Tripoli, the fall of Monte Cassino and finally the entry into Rome.

Diary entries from 22 October - 24 October 1942

Godfrey Talbot surveys German wreckage after El Alamein battle.

Following the war, Godfrey remained with BBC Radio as Court Correspondent and accompanied many Royal Tours. After his retirement from the Corporation in 1969, he began a new career as a popular speaker on various lecture circuits, regaling his audiences with amusing anecdotes about royalty.

The BBC party (Talbot in Centre) with 'Belinda'; the BBC recording truck.
The thirty hundred weight army truck was memorably described by Godfrey as "large and fat and friendly-looking; a bit slow, always over-burdened, long-suffering but great hearted".

The Centre is fortunate to hold a substantial collection of material donated by Godfrey's family, including his manuscript diaries, transcripts of some of his better-known broadcasts and a series of wartime photographs. In the summer of 2000, Godfrey's thoughts on the war, seldom expressed in post-war years, were tape-recorded by his son David, who has subsequently taken on voluntary work on behalf of the Centre, including an impressive number of interviews as well as generous financial support.

Godfrey Talbot Audio Clip:
Regarding the 2^nd Battle of El Alamein

Audio Clip Requires Real Player - free download here

Transcript of Audio Clip

I knew it was going to happen that night mind you, but it was dramatic all the same. Absolutely dramatic, absolutely quiet, when the signal was passed and somehow, at any rate, it was passed straightaway, simultaneously, right along the Alamein front, until a voice, or whatever it was, some signal, was given, "Fire", or whatever the word was, and then whether you were a soldier, civilian, whatever you were, suddenly all hell, absolutely cracked and nowhere in any war has there been such a barrage at dawn. Something like 900 field guns along miles and miles of front simultaneously burst into flames. The most dramatic, theatrical thing you had ever seen.

	This page: general experience and audio clip.
	Includes inventory and audio clip.