Cleverdon, Douglas, 1903-1987

Douglas James Cleverdon, bookseller and radio producer, was born on Jan. 17, 1903 in Bristol, England, the elder son of Thomas Silcox Cleverdon, master wheelwright, and his wife, Jane Louisa James. He was educated at Bristol grammar school and Jesus College, Oxford, where as an undergraduate he published his first catalogue of books, thus establishing his reputation as a lover of fine printing and illustrated books. In 1926 Cleverdon opened a bookshop in Charlotte Street, Bristol, and also began publishing, with a limited edition of Eric Gill's 'Art and love' appearing in 1927, and an edition of Coleridge's 'The rime of the ancient mariner' with 10 engravings on copper by David Jones appearing in 1929. The Great Depression brought an end to Cleverdon's publishing venture, but he continued to sell books until the end of the 1930s when he began working part-time for the BBC. In 1939 he became a west regional features producer, and in 1943 a features producer in London. Shortly before the Second World War Cleverdon met Elinor Nest Lewis, daughter of James Abraham Lewis, canon, of Cardiff, Wales. They wed in 1944, and during the course of their marriage had two daughters and three sons. Dec. 1942 saw the first broacast of 'The brains trust', an informational radio program which he created with Howard Thomas. It reached an audience of twelve million, which was at that time about 29% of the population of the United Kingdom. After a brief stint in 1945 as a BBC war correspondent in Burma, he began developing a series of radio portraits for the Third Programme. He dramatized David Jones's In Parenthesis (1948) and The Anathemata (1953), broadcast the poems of John Betjeman, Thom Gunn, Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Siegfried Sassoon, Stevie Smith and Wole Soyinka, and produced the work of Jacob Bronowski, David Garnett, Rose Macaulay, and Compton Mackenzie. In addition to producing programs of folk song with A. L. Lloyd and Alan Lomax, Cleverdon commissioned new music from Lennox Berkeley, Peter Racine Fricker, Alan Rawsthorne, Humphrey Searle, Mátyás Seiber and Aleksandr Tcherepnin. His most famous commission was Dylan Thomas's 'Under milk wood', first broadcast in 1954 with an all Welsh cast and starring Richard Burton. After retiring from the BBC in 1969, Cleverdon returned to publishing. Among the publications of his Clover Hill Editions were works of Michael Ayrton, David Jones, and Reynolds Stone. Douglas Cleverdon died on Oct. 1, 1987 at his home in London.