My husband, Mark Jones, who has died aged 67 of cancer, was for 15 years a popular head of the BBC’s Sound Archive. He spent four years on the board of the International Association of Sound and Audiovisual Archives.
Born in Raglan, in south-east Wales, to parents who were both schoolteachers, Mark was educated at the Haberdashers’ school in Monmouth. Its only lasting gift to him, he claimed, was a lifelong love of rugby union. A talented cricketer, he opened the batting for the school in 1964, relishing the coaching of the prolific Essex opener Sonny Avery. Later, while watching a Test match in Broadcasting House’s reception area, he was recruited into the BBC’s illustrious (if somewhat eccentric) cricket team the Bushmen. He was an avid member of the MCC.
Mark studied English at Bristol University, winning the Modern and Shakespeare prizes in his final year. The disappointment of an uncompleted MPhil at York was tempered by later teaching for London University’s extramural department and at the City Lit adult education college.
He joined the BBC in 1972 and found his niche in the Sound Archive four years later. The first three years were spent in the arcane grading department, which evaluated 25,000 jobs across the corporation. The climax of this was spending a week in Lisbon with a news crew, observing how editorial decisions were made as the Salazar dictatorship was overthrown. All jokes about being paid to watch people work had been heard by the time he left.
Mark left the corporation in 1996 and used his vast knowledge and love of radio to research and write more than 40 audiobooks. Among other projects, he was recruited, with Jonathan James-Moore, the former head of radio light entertainment, to prepare the ground for a new BBC digital archive channel, now Radio 4 Extra. Their dummy schedules outlined its shape and approach.
In 1998 Mark won a gold award from the Spoken Word Publishing Association for 75 Years of the BBC, a celebration of radio broadcasting. He contributed to the BBC History magazine and provided all the recordings for the multi-award-winning audio series Eyewitness, a 10-part history of the 20th century. At the time of his death, he was half way through a series marking the centenary of the first world war.
Mark was a dedicated supporter of York City, one of the more modest football league clubs. His wit, sense of mischievous fun and deep humanity will be greatly missed.
Mark and I met at the BBC Sound Archive and, having lived together since 1994, married in 2013. He is survived by me, his brother, Tim, and two sisters, Wendy and Bridgett.
