Stephen Peet

Stephen Hubert Peet (16 February 1920 – 22 December 2005) was an English filmmaker, best known as a pioneer of illustrated oral history and his BBC television series Yesterday's Witness (1969–1981).

[2][3][4] Peet was educated at the Quaker Sidcot School, Somerset,[5] where he met first his future wife, Olive, as a younger fellow pupil [6] (they married in July 1948 )[7]).

He was, like his father, a conscientious objector in World War II, serving with the Friends Ambulance Unit in London, north Africa and Greece, where he was taken prisoner on Kos, to become a civilian internee in Austria, then Germany.

[8][9] Unknown until 1985, MI5 blocked Peet's career progression at the BBC in 1965, suspicious of him for retaining links with his older brother, John, a communist who defected to East Germany in 1950 (see: "Christmas tree" files).

The BBC Two series in included a programme - "Prisoners of conscience: No to the State", no doubt a subject close to Stephen Peet's heart.