Stephen Peet

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

Born in Penge, south London, into a Quaker family, in which his journalist father, Hubert Peet, had been imprisoned as a conscientious objector in World War I, Peet was educated at the Quaker Sidcot School, Somerset, where he met his future wife, Olive, as a fellow pupil. He was himself a conscientious objector in World War II, serving with the Friends Ambulance Unit in London, north Africa and Greece, where he was taken prisoner of war, to be held in Germany.

He had begun his career in the late 1930s as a camera assistant in the documentary unit run by Marian Grierson, sister of John Grierson. He worked in the Central Africa Film Unit for many years, before work at ITV and the BBC. MI5 blocked Peet's career progression at the BBC, suspicious of him for retaining links with his brother, a communist who had defected to East Germany. [http://www.cambridgeclarion.org/press_cuttings/mi5.bbc.page9_obs_18aug1985.html] [http://www.cambridgeclarion.org/press_cuttings/mi5.bbc.staff_obs_18aug1985.html] This was revealed only in the 1980s.

With "Yesterday's Witness", Peet pioneered having ordinary members of the public telling their stories straight to the camera. He worked with others on the series, including James Cameron.

He and Olive had two sons, Graham and John, and twins, a boy and a girl, Michael and Susie.

ources

* [http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,1711597,00.html Obituary] in "The Guardian"
* [http://web2.unt.edu/news/story.cfm?story=7393 Short biography]