Nancy Wigginton (6 November 1925[1] – 11 May 2019), known professionally as Nan Winton, was a British broadcaster, best known for being the first female newsreader to read the national news on BBC television.
[4][5] In the years after the Second World War, Winton toured Italy with a theatre company to entertain the troops and gained a place at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
[5] From the mid-1950s, she co-presented Information Desk, a programme to which viewers send questions, and Mainly for Women, a daytime television magazine show.
[6] She was given the job of reading the 6pm news and weekend bulletins on Sunday evenings, in response to rivals ITN, who had a female newscaster, Barbara Mandell, from its launch in 1955.
BBC executives believed that Winton was serious enough to counteract the prejudice that women were "too frivolous to be the bearers of grave news".
[14] On 23 October 1948 Winton married the actor and The Rank Organisation sales representative Charles Stapley,[4][15] who later appeared as Ted Hope in Crossroads.