Ian McDougall

One of the BBC’s foreign correspondents reporting on the unfolding events in the post-war period was Ian McDougall. Aged 28 he was the Corporation’s youngest correspondent when he was posted to their Paris bureau in 1948. He reported from around the world until he was 60 and then for the next nine years headed Radio 3’s review of world events, Six Continents, that came from foreign radio station reported via the BBC Monitoring Service at Caversham. He retired from the BBC in 1988 but continued to lecture on world events and authored a number of books. Ian died earlier this month at the age of 94.

Here he is commentating on one the more bizarre incidents of the Cold war, the shooting down in Soviet airspace of the U2 spy plane piloted by Francis Gary Powers.