KENNETH ALLSOP (1920 – 1973) was born in Leeds and left school aged 17 to join the Slough Observer. He joined the RAF during the Second World War but left the service when injury caused his leg to be amputated. In 1949, he won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for Adventure Lit Their Star and later wrote the definitive account of 1950s British literature, The Angry Decade. He was also an accomplished journalist for Picture Post, Daily Mail and The Sunday Times. In 1955 he started reporting on television and in 1960 joined the BBC’s current affairs programme, Tonight, where he went on to become the nation’s best-known television presenter and commentator. He campaigned vigorously against oil exploration and woodland clear-felling in Dorset and Somerset, while his documentary Do You Dig Our National Parks? challenged open-pit mining in Snowdonia and became a milestone in Britain’s burgeoning environmental movement.