In Memoriam: Charles Chilton (1917–2013)

An obituary by Steve Winders

Charles Chilton, who died on January 2nd, was one of British radio’s most innovative and successful contributors. Born in London during the First World War, Charles’ father died in action, without ever meeting his son and his mother died suddenly when he was just six years old. Charles was brought up by his paternal grandmother as a member of a large extended family of eight people sharing just three rooms – one of which was condemned as uninhabitable! On leaving school, he briefly worked as an apprentice, making electric signs, before being taken on by the BBC, where he first worked as a messenger boy and then as an assistant in the Gramophone Library. Later he became a gramophone programme compiler and producer and along with Leslie Perowne, he promoted jazz in Britain through programmes in the late thirties such as ‘Swingtime’ and ‘Kings of Jazz’. Although he began to present programmes himself, he was temporarily stopped because of his London accent!

Called up for military service in the Second World War, Charles trained as a wireless operator and spent much of the war training other wireless operators. In 1945, his previous experience and talents were better utilised when he returned to radio, working for Radio S.E.A.C. (South East Asia Command) in Ceylon. Here he worked alongside David Jacobs, who would later become a member of the cast of his most successful radio programme, Journey into Space. With the end of the War, Charles returned to the BBC and in 1947, married Penny, a secretary at the BBC, whom he had courted since 1940. Their marriage would last 65 years and Penny would make a significant contribution to his successful career, by carrying out research for his programmes.

After producing a number of music based programmes, Charles created a new series in 1949 which combined music and drama. This was the acclaimed western serial Riders of the Range, based on actual events in the history of the American west, and which Charles both wrote and produced. It ran to six stories over five years and led to Charles being asked to write a strip version of the programme for the popular boys’ weekly, Eagle. The strip was a great success and outlived the radio version by nine years. Charles set up a long partnership with the artist Frank Humphris and they produced many memorable stories, maintaining the highest standards right to the end.

He also wrote several historical books about the American west. Most notable of these was his 1961 work, The Book of the West. This won him The Western Heritage Award for Juvenile Books, in 1963, after it was published in the United States.

On the radio, Riders of the Range was followed by Journey into Space, a science fiction drama, which proved a massive ratings winner, famously being the last radio programme to beat the television audience. Three serials, broadcast between 1953 and 1956, told the exciting stories of Captain Jet Morgan’s expeditions to the Moon and Mars. Charles adapted the serials into novels and this series too, found its way into a comic strip, in TV Express.

He also produced three episodes of the third series of the famous Goon Show in 1952, returning to produce 15 episodes of the eighth series in 1958-59 and eight episodes of the Vintage Goons series, but in his later career he is best remembered for his musical documentaries, in which he explored historical events through the music of the time. Among these are The Blue and the Gray, about the American Civil War, Marching to Glory, about the Salvation Army, How the West was Won and The Long, Long Road, about the First World War. The Long, Long Road was adapted into the stage musical Oh What a Lovely War! in 1963 as a result of Charles’ collaboration with Joan Littlewood’s Theatre Workshop. It was made into a film in 1969 and is regularly revived on the stage.

Charles was awarded the M.B.E. for services to broadcasting in 1976 and retired from the BBC staff the following year, but he continued to work as a writer, with his play The Return from Mars, broadcast on radio in 1981, revisiting Jet Morgan and his Journey into Space crew. In 1984 he wrote a six part radio science fiction serial called Space Force, which had originally been intended to be a new Journey into Space serial, but was changed late in its development to be about a new crew. A second Space Force serial followed in 1985.

After recordings of Journey into Space were found in BBC archives in 1986, the serials were repeated on BBC Radio Two and gained a new audience. They have been regularly repeated since.

In 2008, at the age of 91, Charles wrote another new Journey into Space play in collaboration with his son David, and he was involved in a further play about Jet Morgan and his team in 2009, although this play was written by Julian Simpson. In a busy retirement, Charles acted as a guide on London Walks for many years.

I first met him in 1980 at a convention in London to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of Eagle. Here he formed a double act with Frank Humphris and they performed an extract from their Riders of the Range story The Arizona Kid. He was a natural storyteller and communicator. In 2010, he finally produced an autobiography Auntie’s Charlie, published by Fantom Films, an informative, amusing and sometimes poignant account of his life and work.

I wrote to Charles on several occasions over the years and always received friendly and detailed replies. My last communication was just a few months ago, regarding an article I was writing about Paul Carpenter, the actor who played Jeff Arnold in Riders of the Range on the radio. Charles was most helpful and even checked my piece for accuracy when I had completed it.

Charles’ work has entertained and educated millions of readers and listeners over the years. With Penny’s help, he always fully researched his documentary programmes to ensure accuracy and this meticulous desire for truth extended to his fictional work, enhancing both Riders of the Range and Journey into Space. He will be sadly missed.

• Charles Chilton, born 15th June 1917, died Wednesday 2nd January 2013, survived by wife Penny, children Anthony, Mary and David and 10 grandchildren.

Further Obituaries

• Bear Alley

• British Interplanetary Society

• Camden New Journal

• The Daily Telegraph

• Eagle Times

• The Guardian

• The Independent

• Starburst

• The Times (subscription required)

• The Washington Post

Web Links

• More about Auntie's Charlie on the Fantom Films web site, including a preview of Chapter 1

• Ham & High: Radio legend Charles Chilton dies, aged 95

• Roger Howe's interview with Charles Chilton, conducted when he was 92

• Charles Chilton deposited his personal tape archive at the British Library in 2005, where it remains a jewel of the radio collections. Article here on the Sound Recordings blog

Dan Dare inspired a lifetime of science for Professor Pillinger

Dan Dare fans inspired by his adventures might well be interested in Professor Colin Pillinger's new book, My Life on Mars.

Colin gained his PhD from the University of Swansea, Wales, in the late 1960s , and became one of the lucky few Britons to work on the lunar samples brought back by the Apollo 11 Moon landing mission. Later, at Cambridge and the Open University, he developed techniques for classifying meteorites according to their chemical composition, and has worked on a NASA mission to collect a sample of the 'solar wind', and ESA missions to investigate how meteorites erode in space.

He's perhaps best known for his work on the European Mars Express project and the the Mars Lander, Beagle 2 and his experiences surrounding its development are a major part of the new book.

Journey in to Space -
like Dan Dare, an
inspiration

Born in 1943 and growing up in the 1950s, it should come as no surprize to learn that Professor Pillinger was inspired by reading Dan Dare in the Eagle and the BBC's  Journey into Space radio adventure serial as a child. 

"Like many kids, I used to read Dan Dare comics and listen to Journey into Space on the radio," he revealed in an interview for the European Space Agency web site. "And I would draw rockets, which, of course, bore no resemblance to how they are now. It was a big surprise when I first saw that spacecraft didn’t have a point at the top and fins at the bottom!

"But I was not an anorak," he insisted in another interview for the Daily Telegraph. "When I went to class, it was to sit in the back row. School was a place to meet other kids and play football. I didn't want to be the next Einstein."

"My Life on Mars is a dual autobiography," Professor Pillinger says of the book. "Mine interwoven with the untold story (including the bits some people didn't want anybody to know) of Beagle 2. For seven years the British mission to look for life on the Red Planet captivated the public all over the World."

Stories about about the mission appeared in the media all over the World, particularly in the United States as the following extract from the book’s dust jacket reveals:

On 12 March 2010 Astronauts Neil Armstrong, the first man to set foot on the Moon, Gene Cernan, the last man to do so and Jim Lovell, who piloted the stricken Apollo 13 home, broke a journey back to the United States to attend an event at the Royal Society designed to encourage an audience of young people to follow careers in science and technology. Among the Fellows of the Society present was Colin Pillinger.

As Colin got up to leave at the end of the afternoon, he was grabbed by a US Embassy official who said “The Astronauts would like to meet you.” Of course Colin wanted to meet them but he wasn’t prepared for the greeting he received from Neil Armstrong, perhaps the best known man on Earth, “You analysed some of my samples!” Being recognised by such a trio must make Colin, a man with a passion for telling the public about science, one of the best known scientists in Britain.

Colin owed Armstrong et al. a great deal. He had come from what can only be described as an under-privileged background, via the Apollo programme to lead the ill-fated Beagle 2 mission to Mars. In 1996 he gathered around him an unlikely team consisting of the Rock Band, Blur, the country’s most controversial artist Damien Hirst, combined them with top University scientists and engineers from the satellite Industry, designed a spacecraft on the back of a beer mat, built it in a garage and set off 250 million miles to answer one of life’s ultimate questions: “Are we alone in the Universe?” Colin’s wife, Judith, named the spacecraft Beagle 2; it had the British Nation on the edge of its seat at Christmas 2003.

This then is Colin Pillinger’s story and the full, previously undisclosed, account of the Beagle 2 mission.

Published by the British Interplanetary Society, this 369 page book features over 100 illustartions and a foreword by Sir Patrick Moore. It  costs £16.50 (plus £2.50 P&P in UK, overseas please enquire) when purchased from British Interplanetary Society’s website at www.bis-spaceflight.com and is also available from all good bookshops (ISBN 978-0-9506597-3-2).


• For signed and dedicated copies contact the author at www.barnstormpr.co.uk


• More famous Dan Dare fans listed here on our main site


• Inside Out - 2004 BBC interview with Professor Pillinger 


• The Guardian, 16th January 2009: Britain needs a real-life Dan Dare to inspire the young

Ron Jobson In Book And Magazine Collector

The latest issue of the A5 size monthly Book and Magazine Collector is now in the shops and it has reached issue 350.

This issue has an article by Norman Wright and David Ashford on the artist Ron Jobson. While Jobson was the artist on the three "annuals" based on the science fiction character Space Kingley, since Kingley wasn't a character that featured in any of the weekly comics, the article doesn't fall under Norman and David's usual banner of Great British Comics Artists.

That said anyone who has the good fortune to own one or more of the Space Kingley books published by Sampson Low between 1952 and 1954 will know that Jobson did a superb job on the painted artwork for what was effectively a Dan Dare clone. Indeed the Kingley character was popular enough that there were even jigsaws released at the time featuring him in new Jobson artwork.

The other science fiction series that Jobson worked on were the covers for the earliest Kemlo juvenile novels by EC Eliott and the hardback dust jackets for Charles Chilton's Journey Into Space novelisations of the BBC radio series.

Book and Magazine Collector issue 350 is available for £3.50 from WH Smiths and Easons, or from the B&MC website.