Wynford Vaughan-Thomas

Lewis John Wynford Vaughan-Thomas CBE (15 August 1908 – 4 February 1987) was a Welsh newspaper journalist and radio and television broadcaster. In later life he took the name Vaughan-Thomas after his father. In the mid 1930s he joined the BBC and in 1937 gave the Welsh language commentary on the coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. This was the precursor to several English language commentaries on state occasions he was to give after the Second World War. During the war he established his name and reputation as one of the BBC's most distinguished war correspondents of the Second World War. His most memorable report was from an RAF Lancaster bomber during a real bombing raid over Nazi Berlin. Other notable reports were from Anzio, the Burgundy vineyards, Lord Haw Haw's broadcasting studio and the Belsen concentration camp.

Links To Peel
Peel described Vaughan-Thomas as one of the natural broadcasters he admired on Radio Radio in 1986 and also described him as one of the great broadcasters he's heard in his life on his 14 December 1991 show.

Mentioned On Shows
1986 1991
 * Radio Radio: "The broadcasters that I admire most are people who seem to me to have been entirely natural broadcasters. And this would have heard people I would have heard on the radio during and after the war, people like Wynford Vaughan-Thomas and then later – I mean, I used to listen to cricket commentaries when John Arlott was doing them."
 * 14 December 1991: "There have been some great broadcasters in my life; Wynford Vaughan-Thomas, Wolfman Jack, Humphrey Lyttelton, Alan Freeman, Russ Knight, the Weird Beard, Peter Clayton, but John Arlott was the greatest of them all."