He wrote many books on farming and the countryside and in the 1950s and 1960s became a well-known national figure, especially as a regular guest on the BBC radio programme Any Questions?
[1] During the Second World War, Wightman began to broadcast once a week to the United States on English country life, and he gave 290 such "Trans-Atlantic talks".
[3] As a broadcaster specializing in farming and the countryside, Wightman was soon seen as the natural successor to his mentor A. G. Street, and from the 1950s on, he established himself as a national figure, known for his books, his column in The Guardian, and his radio and television work.
[4] On 15 April 1957, he was Roy Plomley's guest on Desert Island Discs, choosing music by Elgar, Vaughan Williams, Mendelssohn, Strauss, Parry, Paul Robeson, and Bill Haley.
[1][2] Wightman was the model for the countryman Arthur Fallowfield, a comic character created by Kenneth Williams in Beyond Our Ken, notable for his Dorset accent and his catch-phrase "the answer lies in the soil".