Hallam Tennyson (radio producer)
Beryl Hallam Augustine Tennyson (10 December 1920 – 21 December 2005) was a British radio producer.
He was born in Chelsea, the son of Sir Charles Tennyson and his wife Lady Ivy (née Pretious), and the great-grandson of the Poet Laureate Alfred, Lord Tennyson. He was educated at Eton College and Oxford University.[1]
He married Margot Wallach in Kensington, London in 1946.[1] She was born 30 March 1921 in Mönchengladbach, Germany, and died 19 April 1999 in Highgate, London.
He was homosexual, a fact known to his wife at the time they married. He was convinced by a therapist that his homosexuality would be cured if he married a woman. He and his wife Margot nevertheless had satisfactory sexual relations, and they had a son, Jonathan Tennyson (born 1955), and a daughter. He was stabbed to death in his bed, at home in Highgate, in 2005.[2]
Hallam joined the BBC World Service in 1956, working as a radio producer and becoming assistant head of drama.[1] 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. James is depicted as unable to overcome his inhibitions against loving either a woman or another man.
References
- 1 2 3 Angela Pleasence (6 January 2006). "Obituary: Hallam Tennyson". The Guardian.
- ↑ Adam Fresco (23 December 2005). "Tennyson's gay great-grandson stabbed to death in bed". The Times.