Jack Hargreaves
Jack Hargreaves OBE (born
31 December 1911, died
15 March 1994) was an
author and
television presenter in the
UK. His enduring interest was to comment without nostalgia or sentimentality on a range of accelerating distortions in relations between the city and the countryside. He also conceived and presented
How! - a live children's programme about how things worked, shown from 1966 on
Southern Television and networked on
ITV until the demise of Southern in 1981, but he is probably best known as the gentle-voiced presenter of the weekly magazine programme
Out of Town, first broadcast in 1963, following the success of his 1959 television debut with the B & W series
Gone Fishing. His country TV programmes continued in the 1980s with
Country Boy and
Old Country. Other programmes he created for local viewers were
Farm Progress and another live afternoon series
House Party. Most of his viewers were probably unaware that he was a player in the setting up of
ITV, and a member of Southern's board of directors. From early in his life he acquired a sophisticated grasp of city life. He made his reputation in the heart of
London, on whose outskirts he was born. Yet for the last 30 years of his life, Hargreaves, while employed by the
National Farmer's Union, serving on the Nugent Committee and throughout his later career as a TV personality, sought - in entertaining ways - to question and rebut metropolitan assumptions about the proper character and function of the countryside.
Born, like his brothers, in north
London, Hargreaves, in his youth, was placed by his mother with old family friends at Burston Hill Farm north of
Aylesbury in
Buckinghamshire where he was profoundly influenced by the farmer Victor Pargeter. Over half a century later, Hargreaves would acknowledge Pargeter as part of a composite of father, grandfathers, uncles and old farming friends in the formative character of 'The Old Man' at the start of his book
Out of Town (1987). Hargreaves was to live at a variety of addresses in central London between
Soho,
Chelsea and
Hampstead. In the late 40s he was moving between a London home and a caravan in a field on the bank of the
River Kennet at
Midgham, then a cottage in
Bagnor in
Berkshire by the Winterbourne running into the
River Lambourn, then various homes near
Lymington and East Boldre in
The New Forest, and, for the last years of his life, near
Belchalwell in
Dorset. He died at the Winterbourne Hospital in
Dorchester, was cremated at
Salisbury, his ashes spread on Bulbarrow Hill above his last home, Raven Cottage.
Born in London in 1911 to James and Ada Hargreaves (née Jubb), Jack (christened John Herbert) was one of three brothers. The family was rooted in
Huddersfield in the West Riding of Yorkshire, but James Hargreaves based himself partly in London for commercial advantage and to allow his wife the benefit of the capital's midwifery. The brothers attended Merchant Taylor's School near London after which Edward and Ronald Hargreaves pursued successful careers in medicine. Jack went to study at the Royal Veterinary College at London University in 1929, but left the University to earn a living as a copywriter, journalist and script writer for radio and films. By the late thirties he had established a reputation for his pioneering approaches to radio broadcasting.
At the start of World War 2 broadcasting was recognised as part of the war effort. Hargreaves' talents in this field meant he faced being recruited to a restricted post in radio. Instead he joined the
Royal Artillery as a private, quickly became an NCO, entered the
Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and was commissioned into the
Royal Tank Regiment. Even so Hargreaves' reputation as a communicator went ahead of him. He was recruited to the staff of General Montgomery to play a role setting up broadcasting services to allied forces before and after D-Day. He left the army in 1945 with substantive rank of major, having briefly held acting rank of lieutenant-colonel.
After the war Hargreaves had continued his media career and during the 1950s was editor of
Lilliput (magazine) and
Picture Post. His brilliance as a communications manager led to him being recruited to the
National Farmers Union (UK) by Jim Turner, later Lord Netherthorpe, celebrated for his success as a lobbyist for farmers. Working closely with Turner, Hargreaves organised and developed the NFU's Information Department, founding the "British Farmer" magazine during an almost intractable crisis of trust between NFU HQ and the members of the largest union in the country, many of whom were experiencing seismic change in the agricultural economy.
Hargreaves, though never a narrow specialist, had always loved fishing - doing it, learning more from respected experts and reading what others wrote about it. His first contribution to angling literature, 'Fishing for a Year', was published in 1951 and illustrated by his friend Bernard Venables. These private pleasures were brought to his work. His writing and his contacts among anglers saw the president of The Piscatorial Society, Sir Robert Saundby, asking Hargreaves to organise the Society's library. With typical thoroughness the collection was removed to Jack's home, leaving it fully catalogued with not a volume unread. This was when he became sceptical about the opinion of the immortal 17th century author of 'The Compleat Angler',
Izaak Walton, as to the culinary qualities of the
chub - a dish Hargreaves described as "eating cotton wool full of pins and needles".
|
Jack, Simon & Pewter in 1953 |
In 1959, by now well-known in the trade as a creative media innovator, Hargreaves was head-hunted by Roy Rich to the new ITV franchised company,
Southern Television, both as programme maker and assistant programme controller. He might have been promoted but
Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA) regulations prohibited being in charge of programming while also making programmes. It was at Southern, in the same year he joined the station, that Hargreaves made his screen debut with the B & W series "Gone Fishing" - and so, what had previously been a pastime became the focus of his wider reputation. He recounted how on his first broadcast, sitting in the studio, apprehensive at the thought of being about to talk live to a potential audience of millions, his director had reminded him that although that vast audience might be statistically daunting, it was more likely to be two or three people and perhaps a dog sitting in their front room. He aimed at conversing with such an audience for the rest of his career. In the early 1960s Hargreaves, fascinated with a still young medium and perceiving how completely different television - especially "live" television - was from cinema, collaborated in a new documentary series under the 'Out of Town' umbrella. Hargreaves had moved from his country home in Bagnor near Newbury to a new home near Lymington on the
Solent and one of his earliest programmes for 'Out of Town' documented the invention, design and construction, by his friend
Denys Rayner, of a family yacht - the Beacon Corvette - which evolved into Rayner's Westerly 22 and became among the first of a new family of small affordable sailing boats capable of being trailed behind a family saloon, easily launched and used for weekending as well as ocean voyaging. Jack and his last wife Isobel, who he married in 1964, took one of these - 'Young Tiger' (named after another of his TV series) - through the
Canal du Midi between Bordeaux and Sète in 1965, completing one leg of a transatlantic voyage continued by his step-son, Simon.
The programme "Out of Town" was broadcast between 1963 and 1981. Jack Hargreaves became a household name in the parts of England covered by
Southern Television. When STV lost their franchise, Hargreaves continued his TV career on
Channel 4, also continuing, in prose, the deceptively simple narrative style that had worked well "on the box". Hargreaves' most extended filming relationship was with Stan Bréhaut [
1], the cameraman who worked closely with him for over 20 years on over a thousand shoots. He described Bréhaut, who died peacefully in December 2005, as "the finest outdoor cameraman in England". Enjoyed for the relaxed style of his "countryside" broadcasting, Hargreaves, with Stan's help, used a sure grasp of how television worked best to spread cogent messages about the loss of men's connection with the land.
As an independent member of the Defence Lands Committee 1971-73, Hargreaves made key contributions to the Nugent Report 1973 [
2] reviewing the use of land held by the country's armed forces for defence purposes. He became even more aware that one of the best ways to reserve the countryside for its proper purpose was to keep most people out of it. Although agriculture would be preferable, military exercises seemed less harmful in their impact on the environment than its use for the recreational choices of a predominantly urban population. This was a conundrum he was wont to share wryly with his audience, gently repeating the point, that the countryside, in so far as it had a purpose for humans, was to grow their food in sustainable ways.
Jack Hargreaves was married, in 1932, to Jeanette Haighler. They had two sons, Mark and Victor, then after divorce, he married Elisabeth Van de Putte. Two more sons were born - James Stephen in 1946 and Edward John in 1947. That marriage ended in 1948 when he began a relationship with a journalist from
Vogue, Barbara Baddeley. Living with her until 1963, Hargeaves became a stepfather to Bay and her brother Simon, Barbara's children by the diplomat John Baddeley CMG. He also has a daughter Polly, born in 1957 as a result of a six year relationship with his secretary Judy Hogg. In 1965 Hargreaves married Isobel Hatfield (b.12 Apr 1919) living with her for the next 3 decades. Isobel died on 5 February 1998. Her ashes were spread with her husband's on Bulbarrow Hill. [
3]. Hargreaves' biographer Paul Peacock arranged for Polly to meet Simon's family in March 2006.
A number of the films Hargreaves and Bréhaut made together for the 'Out of Town' series exist as videos and DVDs published by Contender. This material is not the same as the originally broadcast versions of 'Out of Town'. Southern Television was no more, so Hargreaves, now retired and having bought the original 'Out of Town' tapes started working with Steve Wade, also retired, and with whom he had worked on 'How'. Based in the village hall at Meonstoke, Hampshire, Hargreaves and Wade sorted, edited, rehashed and broadcast new versions of "Out of Town" on Channel 4. These comprise:
No. 1 Appleby Fair/Ramming Time, New Forest Point to Point/Apple Grafting and Kingfishers/Model Carts
No. 2 Sheep Shearing/Sea Bream, Sweetheart Story/Tyring a Cart and Farm Sale/Fishing in a Gale/Forest Fire
No. 3 Market Day/Minnow Trap/Lobster Boat, Iron Ponds/Lobster Breeding and Romney Marsh/Pumpkins
No. 4 Lambing/Mayfly, Mole Catcher/High School Horse and Rake Maker/Stage Coach
No. 5 Bee-Skips/Pheasant Shooting, Tidal Mill/Ice Fishing and Fly Casting/The Log Splitter
No. 6 The Hidden Stream/Deer Shoot, The Shooting Master and British Finches/Yerro's Operation
No. 7 Stour River, Hacienda/Bullfight and House Building/Trout and Grayling
No. 8 Freeze Branding/Cider Making, Trammel Nets/The Coach Builder and Big Skate/Pannage
No. 9 Cod Fishing/Centenarian Angler, Charcoal Burners/Pigeon Shooting and Long Distance Ride.
Hargreaves also authored a number of audio-tapes and long play records on his favourite subjects.
*
Steve Hardy's website for people who enjoyed Jack Hargreaves' programmes*Jack Hargreaves, illustrated by Bernard Venables, 'Fishing for a year' MacGibbon & Kee 1951,
republished Medlar Press 1998
*Jack Hargreaves and others, 'HOW Annual', Independent Television Books 1975
*Jack Hargreaves, 'Out of Town: A Life Relived on Television', Dovecote Press 1987
*Jack Hargreaves, 'The Old Country', Dovecote Press 1988
*Jack Hargreaves with Terry Heathcote, 'The
New Forest: A Portrait in Colour', Dovecote Press 1992
*Paul Peacock, 'Jack Hargreaves - A Portrait', Farming Books & Videos 2006
*Report of the Defence Lands Committee 1971-73. Chairman: The Rt Hon The Lord Nugent of Guildford. Cmnd.5714. London:HMSO 1973
*Colin Willock, 'The Gun Punt Adventure',
new edition, Tideline Books 1988
