Hugh Greene

Sir Hugh Carleton Greene (15 November 1910 – 19 February 1987) was a British television executive and journalist. He was director-general of the BBC from 1960 to 1969. After working for newspapers in the 1930s, Greene spent most of his later career with the BBC, rising through the managerial ranks of overseas broadcasting and then news for the main domestic channels. He encountered opposition from some politicians and activists opposed to his modernising agenda, but under his leadership the BBC was recognised to be outperforming its commercial rival, ITV, and was awarded a second television channel (BBC 2) by the British government and authorised to introduce colour television to Britain. After retiring from the BBC, Greene published several books, including a collaboration with his brother, the novelist Graham Greene, and made television programmes both for the BBC and ITV. Background Greene was born on 15 November 1910 in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, the youngest of four sons and the fifth of the six children of Charles Henry Greene, headmaster of Berkhamsted School, and his wife (and cousin), Marion Raymond, the daughter of the Rev Carleton Greene, vicar of Great Barford, with his mother being a cousin of the Scottish novelist Robert Louis Stevenson. Among the couple's other children were Graham Greene, the novelist, and Raymond Greene, a Doctor of Medicine and a mountaineer. Greene was educated at Berkhamsted School and at Merton College, Oxford, where he obtained a second class in classical moderations (1931) and English (1933).