Frances Mary Line OBE    (1940)

The only member of this branch of the Line family to be awarded an honour by the Queen, Frances Mary received the Order of the British Empire for services to broadcasting in 1996 after a career with the BBC spanning almost 40 years. She retired as Controller Radio 2 in the same year. Frances lives in Eastbourne on the South Coast of England where she is Vice President of the Eastbourne Civic Society and press officer for the Friends of the Towner Art Gallery in the town.  

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This photograph of Frances was taken on 22nd October 1940. She was born on 22th February  1940 in Croydon, South London, into a world that was gearing up for catastrophe. Four months after her birth the BEF was evacuated from the beaches of Dunkirk and within another three months the Battle of Britain had begun with the concurrent Blitz on the town and its suburbs .Her earliest years were a round of bombings and nights spent in an air raid shelter with her mother.

 

This picture was taken  in 1948 when her sister Julia Line was a little over a year old. Within three years she would join the James Allen`s Girls` School in Dulwich  and then, in 1955, Croydon Technical College to complete a secretarial course. In 1957 she joined the BBC as a clerk/typist and by 1963 had moved to Television as an Assistant Producer in Drama and Light Entertainment. By 1990, having worked as a producer, senior producer, and in various management roles, she was appointed Controller Radio 2 - one of the BBC`s five national network radio stations.

 

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Probably her earliest appearance in front of a microphone, Frances is seen at London`s Guildhall in 1954. Here she read the lesson at a meeting of the English and Foreign Bible Society. Her later work with the BBC won her the Sony Gold Award for the Radio Station of the Year in 1995, a Gold Award from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors and, in the same year 1995, she was elected as a Fellow of the Radio Academy.

Frances married broadcaster Jim Lloyd in 1972. Jim was a regular presenter on Radio 2 fronting the weekly "Folk on Two" programme as well "Country Meets Folk" with Wally Whyton. Some television viewers may remember Jim Lloyd as co-presenter of the first series of the holiday programme "Wish You Were Here" with Judith Chalmers. He also presented the popular BBC TV ballroom dancing programme "Come Dancing".

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