Stewart Brooke-Wavell

Stewart Brooke-Wavell, or Stewart Wavell (1921–2010), was a British Malayan broadcaster, sound recordist and writer, and a member of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society.

Life

Born in British Malaya, Wavell became a broadcaster with Radio Malaya, presenting programmes about the course of the Malayan Emergency in 1953, establishing their Sound Library, and pioneering their phone-in broadcasting.^[1] Between 1954 and 1962 he also produced or participated in a number of programmes or segments for the BBC, including coverage of the royal tour of the Commonwealth in 1954,^[2] and a profile of Tom Harrisson broadcast on 30 September 1960.^[3] His main interests were folklore, cultural anthropology, and exploration, and he was known for his field recordings in these areas.^[4][5] In 1960 he was the BBC's Burmese programme organiser,^[6] and in 1963 he accompanied a Cambridge University expedition to locate the ancient "lost" kingdoms of Langkasuka and Tambralinga.

In the late 1960s he served as director of training for the Ceylon Broadcasting Corporation, and wrote a training manual for them.^[7] By 1976 he was living in Surrey, England,^[8] and working as head of the BBC's Far Eastern Service.^[9] He died in Croydon on 16 September 2010.^[10]

His brother was Bruce Brooke-Wavell.

Publications

• The Lost World of the East (1958)
• The Naga King's Daughter (1965)
• with Audrey Butt and Nina Epton, Trances (1966)^[11][12][13]
• The Art of Radio (1969)
• A Dream of Kinabalu (1988)
• Great Cobra Mountain (1990)