Beryl Hallam Augustine Tennyson (10 December 1920 – 21 December 2005) was an English radio producer and writer, best known for his tenure as Assistant Head of Radio Drama at the BBC between 1964 and 1974.

Early life and education Hallam Tennyson was born in Chelsea, the third son of Sir Charles Tennyson and his wife Ivy (née Pretious). He was a great-grandson of the Poet Laureate Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

Tennyson was educated at Eton College before attending Balliol College, Oxford between 1938 and 1940. He left university before earning a degree.

Career During the Second World War, Tennyson was a conscientious objector and served in the Friends' Ambulance Unit between 1940 and 1945, working in Egypt and Italy. Both of his elder brothers died during the war, Penrose in 1941 and Julian in 1945.

Tennyson joined the BBC World Service in 1956, working as a radio producer and becoming an assistant head of drama in 1964, holding this position for a decade. His own radio play The Spring of the Beast, an account of the friendship between Henry James and author Constance Fenimore Woolson, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 as The Monday Play on 26 May and repeated as Afternoon Theatre on 31 May 1986.

Personal life He married Margot Wallach in Kensington, London, in 1945. She was born on 30 March 1921 in Mönchengladbach, Germany, and died on 19 April 1999 in Highgate, London. Wallach was a Jewish refugee who had arrived in Britain after fleeing Nazi Germany. The couple had a daughter, Rosalind (born in 1950) and a son, the physicist Jonathan Tennyson (born in 1955). One of his grandchildren is the stage and screen actor Matthew Tennyson.

Tennyson nursed his wife through her regular spells of mental illness. During the 1970s he began to campaign for gay rights, and around that time revealed his homosexuality, writing in 1984 an autobiography, The Haunted Mind, which was serialised in a newspaper.

Death Tennyson was stabbed to death in his bed, at home in Highgate, in December 2005. His murder remains unsolved.

Works

Selected radio plays YearTitleNote1965Gwendolen Harleth Based on George Elliot's Daniel Deronda; also broadcast in 19761966HaroldAdaptation of the original stage play by Alfred, Lord Tennyson1973The Last TemptationAdapted from Nikos Kazantzakis's novel with Andreas Stavrou1981On Balance1982No Ordinary Light1986The Spring of the BeastBased on the life of Henry James; also published in Volume 50 of The Visva-Bharati Quarterly

Publications

References