Anthony Smith, Born 1938
BROADCASTER, AUTHOR & ACADEMIC
Anthony (Tony) Smith, CBE, is a British broadcaster, author and academic. He was born in 1938 and attended Harrow County School for Boys (now Harrow High School), from 1949 to 1956. He read English at Brasenose College, Oxford. He had a career in broadcasting starting as a producer of BBC current affairs programmes in the 1960s. He became responsible for running the nightly news programme Twenty-Four Hours. In the early 1970s, he became a Research Fellow at St Antony's College, Oxford. He worked for the Annan Committee on The Future of Broadcasting, and became engaged in the national debate which led to the foundation of the UK's Channel 4. Between 1979 and 1988 he was Director of the British Film Institute and was involved in the conception and establishment of the Museum of the Moving Image on London's South Bank. In 1988 he was appointed President of Magdalen College, Oxford University, and he retired from this position in 2005.