Actors - Ludovic Kennedy

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	Actors - Ludovic Kennedy

Sir Ludovic Henry Coverley Kennedy (born 3 November, 1919) is a British journalist, broadcaster, and author. He was knighted in 1994 for services to journalism.

Early life and Naval career

Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, the son of a career Royal Navy officer, Kennedy was schooled at Eton College (where he played in a jazz band with Humphrey Lyttelton) and was set for university when World War II broke out. Kennedy's father Edward Coverley Kennedy, by then a 60 year old retired captain, was returned and given command of HMS Rawalpindi, a hastily militarised P&O steamship.

While on patrol southeast of Iceland the Rawalpindi encountered the German battlecruiser Scharnhorst. Scharnhorst sank Rawalpindi; of her 312 crew 275 (including E.C.Kennedy) were killed.

Ludovic Kennedy followed his late father into the navy; he served as an officer on destroyers, mostly in the same northern seas. His ship was one of those which pursued the battleship Bismarck following the Battle of the Denmark Strait. Kennedy later wrote about this in his book Pursuit.

Journalism and broadcasting

After the war he attended Christ Church college, Oxford and began a career as a journalist.

In February 1950 he married dancer and actress Moira Shearer in the Chapel Royal in London's Hampton Court Palace. The couple went on to have one son and three daughters from a 56-year marriage which ended with her death on 31 January, 2006 at the age of 80.

A campaigning, investigative reporter, Kennedy wrote for a number of publications including Newsweek. Later he became a television journalist and a newsreader on ITV's Independent Television News. He presented the BBC's flagship current affairs programme Panorama for several years. In his career Kennedy has been interested in miscarriages of justice, and he has written and broadcast on numerous cases.

He appeared as himself in several episodes of the political comedy series Yes, Minister, and was the subject of an episode of That Reminds Me. From 1984 to 1991 he presented the television review programme Did You See...?. He interviewed Peter Cook's character Sir Arthur Streeb-Greebling in A life in pieces in 1990.

Writing

Kennedy's highly regarded book Pursuit: The Chase and Sinking of the "Bismarck" (ISBN 0304355267) detailed the career of the Bismarck, her sinking of British battlecruiser Hood, and her destruction by the Royal Navy.

He has written several books that question the convictions of a number of notable cases in British criminal history. Among these 10 Rillington Place (ISBN 0586034285) examined the conviction of Timothy Evans, who was executed for the murder of his wife and baby. Kennedy contended that Evans was innocent, and that the crimes had been committed by the serial killer John Christie. Evans was posthumously pardoned, and the scandal helped in the abolition of the death penalty in the UK. Kennedy's book was filmed in 1971: Richard Fleischer's film starred John Hurt as Evans and Richard Attenborough as Christie.

In 1985 Kennedy published The Airman And The Carpenter (ISBN 0670806064), in which he argued Bruno Richard Hauptmann did not kidnap and murder Charles Lindbergh's baby, a crime for which he was executed in 1936. The book was made into a 1996 HBO film Crime Of The Century, starring Stephen Rea and Isabella Rossellini.

In 2003 he wrote 36 Murders and 2 Immoral Earnings (ISBN 1861974574) (), in which he analysed a number of noted cases, including the Evans case and those of Derek Bentley and the Birmingham Six.

He concluded that the adversarial system of justice that pertains in the UK and the United States "is an invitation to the police to commit perjury, which they frequently do."

Kennedy has also written:

Sub-Lieutenant: A Personal Record of the War at Sea, 1942
One man's meat, 1953
Trial of Stephen Ward, 1964, ISBN 0575010355
Very lovely people; a personal look at some Americans living abroad, 1969, ISBN 0671202057
Nelson and His Captains (also called Nelson's band of brothers), 1975, ISBN 0002115697
Presumption of Innocence: Amazing Case of Patrick Meehan, 1976, ISBN 0575020725
Death of the Tirpitz (also called Menace - the life and death of the Tirpitz), 1980, ISBN 0316489050
On My Way to the Club, 1990, ISBN 0006370799 (his autobiography)
Truth to Tell: Collected Writings of Ludovic Kennedy, 1992, ISBN 0552995053
In Bed with an Elephant: Personal View of Scotland, 1995, ISBN 0593023269

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