Brenda Horsfield obituary

http://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2014/dec/18/brenda-horsfield

Version 0 of 1.

People described my friend Brenda Horsfield, who has died at the age of 88, as a force of nature. A willowy six-footer with a mane of fair hair, she was never shy of sharing her sometimes idiosyncratic opinions. She had a distinguished career as a BBC television producer, flew aircraft with the Women’s RAF Volunteer Reserve and was an expert glider pilot. She affected an aristocratic hauteur which masked a surprising degree of vulnerability and insecurity.

Born in Wallington, Surrey, Brenda was the daughter of Reginald Barnard, a civil servant, and his wife, Margaret (nee MacFarlane). After Reginald’s death in 1932, Margaret played the piano for silent movies; she remarried to a pilot, Derrick Horsfield, in 1936, and Brenda and her younger sister, Carson, both adopted the name Horsfield.

Brenda, who suffered from asthma all her life, went to Cheltenham ladies’ college, from where at the age of 16 she won a scholarship to read English at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. After the second world war, she tried various jobs and took up gliding, before training to fly with the women’s volunteer reserve.

It was when she joined the BBC in the 1950s that she found an outlet for her voracious range of interests, initially in women’s programmes, then in scientific and medical broadcasting. In 1965 she wrote her first book, Weather, to accompany a series for the recently launched BBC2.

For BBC further education (later continuing education), she produced an extraordinary range of series, on children under stress, automation, oceanography, engineering and design, sailing, museums, scientific inventions, railway history, Native Americans, geology and science fiction.

She co-authored three other books, Steam Horse: Iron Road (1972), The Great Ocean Business (1972) and Before the Ark (1975), all well received.

Possessed of a rebellious, anti-establishment streak, Brenda was an active trade unionist and supporter of the BBC Pensioners’ Association. As chair of the Women Pilots’ Association, she helped influence the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975. She was never afraid to speak out and I will always be grateful to her for standing up in a departmental meeting to protest at what she felt was unfair treatment of me. Soon afterwards, I was promoted.

Brenda was a free spirit of a singular kind, swishing around in her Triumph sports car, living in a caravan in the summer near her beloved gliding club at Lasham in Hampshire, always aglow with some exciting new idea.

She is survived by Carson and four nephews.