Austen Kark

Austen Kark CBE (* October 20, 1926, † 10 May 2002 Potters Bar ) was the managing director of the BBC World Service. He was to integrate together with Gerard Mansell and John Tusa one of three former owners of the item, to counter the prevailing which the plans of John Birt, this service to the BBC. After Birt 1992 director of the BBC, he planned the independent status of the Service in Bush House to finish in central London, and to let him swallow the rest of the company.

Kark led a colorful life before his tenure at the BBC. He was the son of a London Major of the Army who became a publisher. He attended Upper Canada College in Toronto, the Nautical College in Pangbourne, the Royal Naval College and Magdalen College, Oxford. In 1944 he was a midshipman in the Royal Navy, and served two years with the East India fleet, on board HMS Nelson and HMS London.

1948 led Kark in Oxford the first production of Jean -Paul Sartre's play The Flies. He later joined the magazine business his family, Norman Kark Publications. One of the magazines the company was the glossy literary magazine Courier. Kark married in 1949 Margaret Schmahmann and had with her two daughters. The couple divorced in 1954. In the same year Kark Nina Bawden married and became stepfather to her two sons. Together they had a daughter. In 1954 he was BBC reporter and in 1964 director of the Southern Service in Bush House. His experiences in Southern Europe conveyed his interests in the region, especially Greece; later he wrote guidebooks about this country.

Kark moved in 1972 to Eastern Europe and the Russian service was active. The following year he became editor of World Service. In 1979, he advised the last Governor of Rhodesia, Lord Soames, with the broadcast of the election in this country.

Kark 1974 Controller of Engineering Services. In 1980, he stood before the Harare government report on radio and television in Zimbabwe under Robert Mugabe. In 1981 he began a two- year term as Deputy Managing Director of External Broadcasting. He was promoted in 1984 to Managing Director, exactly 30 years after he had started at the BBC.

Kark was the middleman another great BBC controversy - the start of the BBC World TV Service to complete its radio counterpart. The idea was first proposed by Karks predecessor, Douglas Muggeridge - for discussion - the nephew of the broadcaster Malcolm Muggeridge. Kark retired in 1986.

Kark was a man of many interests, especially when it came to Southern Europe and the Commonwealth. He became an officer of the Commonwealth Journalists' Association in 1993. Retired he wrote in 1994 Attic in Greece and 1999 The Forwarding Agent, a spy thriller that played in the Middle East and was created by crime writer PD James, an old friend, praised. Most of his books was in his house in Nauplion, a small town in the Peloponnese, written, where he and his wife, the novelist Nina Bawden, who spent most of the time. In London, the couple lived in Islington, in a house whose back was facing the Grand Union Canal. His hobbies included real tennis, the original shape of the tennis, traveling and Mosaic customer. He was a member of the Oriental Club and MCC and 1987 he was appointed CBE ( Commander of the Order of the British Empire ) appointed.

Austen Kark died at the age of 75 years in a railway accident at Potters Bar, in which his wife, author Nina Bawden, was seriously injured.