| Italy-Serbia European qualifier called off due to fan violence Italy's European Championship qualifier against Serbia in Genoa was abandoned after just seven minutes on Tuesday because of crowd trouble. rssfeeds.usatoday.com |
Serbia's Chief Says 19 Soccer Rioters Arrested Serbia's police chief says 19 soccer fans who rioted during a game against Italy have been arrested while returning to Serbia. feeds.nytimes.com |
Stanley Williamson obituary Radio producer known for his Trial By Inquiry programme on the 1958 Munich air crashStanley Williamson, who has died aged 89, was a Londoner who fell in love with the north. Although his first home was within earshot of the roar from the Den, home of Millwall football club, he devoted almost his entire life to the north of England, whose people, industries and landscapes he probed and celebrated in three decades of outstanding radio programmes (and some television) made for the BBC in Manchester.After a year at Cambridge, reading modern languages at Gonville and Caius, he was rejected for military service on account of his poor eyesight and went to work on the land, and then for the BBC during the blitz. He emerged as a fully fledged radio producer in the mid-1940s, meeting and marrying Bettie Emerson, a BBC colleague, in 1948.In that less specialised era, he was responsible for programmes on topics as diverse as Wordsworth, Vaughan Williams, modern Japan and farming in the Yorkshire Dales. He was equally at home producing, directing, scriptwriting or presenting. This capacity for different subjects and different roles in the process of broadcasting is almost unknown today. Nor did these all-round skills imply superficiality.Stanley did his research meticulously. In the radio series Trial By Inquiry, he first encountered Captain James Thain, the pilot of the plane that crashed at Munich in 1958 killing 23, of whom eight were Manchester United footballers. This ultimately resulted in Stanley's book The Munich Air Disaster: Captain Thain's Ordeal (1972), which cleared the pilot of blame.Stanley loved walking in the Lake District. Aged about 30, he began rock climbing, tutored by Colonel Horace "Rusty" Westmorland, founder of the region's first mountain rescue team, with whom he had made a programme about safety on the hills. With Rusty leading and while still very much a novice, Stanley made the first live broadcast commentary from a rock face (Shepherd's Crag in Borrowdale).Neither foresaw that the cables linking Stanley to the engineers at the foot of the crag and the studio in Manchester would get heavier as they paid out behind him. At a neat crux, the cables threatened to pull him off the rock. "Rusty would have held me," wrote Stanley later, "and it might have made entertaining broadcasting, but enough was enough." He abandoned the climb, leaving listeners to telephone anxiously for news of his fate.He also walked and climbed with his brother Roy and friends in Austria, accomplishing serious ascents, for example Wildspitze, at 3,774m the highest peak in the Tyrol, with the simple equipment – a single rope and carabiners – of the day. In the early years of this century, he helped the Ramblers Association survey land for possible public access under the right-to-roam legislation in Cheshire and the Peak District.In retirement he wrote two scholarly books, Gresford: The Anatomy of a Disaster (1997), an account of the pit explosion that killed 266 colliers in north Wales in 1934, and The Vaccination Controversy: The Rise and Fall of Compulsory Vaccination (2007). Both combine Stanley's elegant writing with scholarly research.Michael Green, who as network editor for Northern Region (later controller of Radio 4) was his boss for a time, said: "The word was all for Stanley; the simplicity of radio appealed to him. He was a sole trader who liked to work by himself," which is why he did relatively little in television. He never suffered fools gladly and studio managers were in awe of his rigorous methods. There is an unsubstantiated rumour that he once threw a typewriter at an incompetent secretary. This can be discounted given his slight stature, the weight of the Adler machines then used by the BBC and the admiration in which he was held by his colleagues.Stanley is survived by Bettie and their daughter, Elisabeth.• Stanley Williamson, broadcaster, born 20 August 1921; died 19 October 2010BBCRadio 4RadioManchester UnitedMountaineeringguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
U.S. women draw North Korea for World Cup opener The United States has drawn North Korea, Colombia and Sweden in group play for next summer's Women's World Cup. rssfeeds.usatoday.com |
Barcelona romp to Clasico victory Barcelona crush Real Madrid 5-0 in El Clasico at Camp Nou to go two points clear of their bitter rivals at the top of La Liga. foxsports.com.au |