Jack Longland

He formed a lifelong concern for the welfare of unemployed people, and after a time working in community service he moved to become an educational administrator, retiring in 1970.

Among his achievements was the establishment of White Hall in Derbyshire, the country's first local authority Outdoor Pursuits Centre for young people.

Longland was a familiar broadcaster on BBC Radio, appearing regularly from the late 1940s until the 1970s in the long-running Round Britain Quiz, Any Questions?, and the panel game My Word!, which he chaired for twenty years from 1957.

In 1934 he married Margaret Lowrey Harrison in a ceremony conducted by the Bishop of Durham (Hensley Henson) assisted by Longland senior and two other clergymen.

From August 1957 he succeeded John Arlott as chairman of the panel game My Word!, and remained in the role until he retired in December 1977.

[12] In 1990 Longland gave an address at a gathering to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Sir George Everest, the Surveyor General of India, after whom the mountain was named.

Among them were Lord Hunt, leader of the first successful British expedition in 1953, and Sir Edmund Hillary, who first climbed the mountain with Tenzing Norgay.

Chris Bonington, Doug Scott, Stephen Venables and Harry Taylor talked of the post-war achievements, and Longland spoke about the early attempts on the mountain.

[2] In his last years he was distressed, in the words of The Times, "to sit by and watch his educational work being undone by successively tougher Conservative secretaries of state."