My grandfather, John Grist, who has died aged 92, was a fighter pilot and pioneering broadcaster at the BBC.
He was born in Southampton to Austin and Ada (nee Ball), a much younger brother to Muriel, Betty and Joan. His father worked for the Post Office, which meant that the family moved many times before finally settling in Ryde, Isle of Wight, in 1935. He attended Ryde school, whose motto, Ut prosim – That I might be useful – feels like something my grandpa took to his heart. He was deeply committed to public service.
As a child, he was a keen cyclist and, for a short time, a boxer, but his real passion was for aircraft, which he would watch as they arrived at the aerodrome from across the Solent. The war enabled him to follow his dream to become a pilot, and in 1941 he joined the Royal Air Force and began with a six-month history and geography course at Oxford University. Qualifying as a pilot in August 1943, he was posted to Tain, Ross-shire, to 86 Squadron, where he remained for the duration of the war, achieving the rank of flying officer.
In 1946, he took up a place at the London School of Economics, where he met Jill Cranage, whom he married in November 1952. Both my grandparents enjoyed an education delivered by influential postwar thinkers and it was here that lifelong friendships began as well as their political interest and activism. After leaving the LSE, my grandfather studied for a year at the University of Chicago, where his love for the US began. This love affair culminated in relocation to New York for three years in the late 1970s.
He joined the BBC in 1950, with three years spent in Nigeria from 1953 supporting the development of the national broadcasting service in preparation for independence. On his return to London, he began work as a producer in the factual television department in Lime Grove. There he oversaw coverage of the party conferences, and created the programmes Who Goes Home? and Gallery, of which he became editor. In 1966, he became head of current affairs and in 1972 controller of the English regions.
Before retiring he supervised the project to install televised screenings of the House of Commons, was a Foreign Office observer to the Russian elections in 1993, and was consulted on media coverage of South Africa’s first post-apartheid elections in 1994. He left the BBC on his 70th birthday, in South Africa, the day Nelson Mandela was elected.
My grandfather had an amazing energy for life – walking in the Lake District into his 70s, writing novels in his retirement and studying Italian Renaissance art. He was a warm, funny and intelligent man with a glorious twinkle in his eye.
His daughter Nicky, my mother, predeceased him. He is survived by his children Caroline and Bill, his seven grandchildren and his great-grandson.
