Sir Denis Forman joined Granada as a producer and went on to become its chairman for 13 years

Published: 28 February, 2013
by GERALD ISAAMAN

SIR Denis Forman, television pioneer, war hero, opera lover, author, Labour supporter and Hampstead resident for more than half a century, died on Sunday in a private nursing home.

He was 95 and lived his final years in Lyndhurst Gardens, Hampstead, with his second wife, Moni Cameron, widow of journalist James Cameron.

A charismatic man with a huge zest for life, Sir Denis joined Sidney Bernstein’s new Granada company as a producer and went on to become its chairman for 13 years.

He was director and subsequently deputy chairman of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, author of the Good Opera Guide, and, earlier in his career, director of the British Film Institute and founder of the National Film Theatre.

What he will be remembered for is his own role as the driving force behind the 15-hour series Jewel in the Crown, an adaptation of Paul Scott’s novels of the British Raj in India.

It was, in 1985, the most expensive TV series ever, costing £5.5million, starred Dame Peggy Ashcroft, Tim Pigott-Smith, Charles Dance, Art Malik and Geraldine James and amassed more awards than any other series in the history of television.

He was also responsible for Brideshead Revisited and was creator of World in Action, What the Papers Say and some of the golden-era years of Coronation Street.

“It’s very easy to make programmes that are bad,” he declared. “It’s very easy to make elitist programmes that are good but that nobody wants to see. What is hard is to make popular programmes that are good.”

Born in Dumfriesshire, the son of a clergyman-cum-country gentleman with a country estate, he became estranged from his family, becoming a rebel with a cause who imagined putting a machine gun in the pulpit and killing the congregation.

Initially, he took a job selling soap but the outbreak of World War II saw him joining the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders and using his skills to organise a battle school in really hostile conditions.

At the Battle of Monte Cassino, in Italy, he had his lower left leg amputated after being hit by an exploding smoke canister.

In Hampstead, he had a coterie of influential good friends, in particular the then Labour leader Michael Foot and Peggy Ashcroft. His home in Hampstead Hill Gardens was the scene of splendid and illuminating parties.