Inaugural Satchwell Lecture

BBC Director General Lord Tony Hall delivered the inaugural Satchwell Lecture on the evening of Monday 8 October.

Organised by the Society of Editors, the Lecture took place at Stationers’ Hall in London.

Lord Hall of Birkenhead, Director General since 2013, is one of the key figures in the United Kingdom’s media and arts industry. As head of the Corporation, Hall is the editorial, operational and creative leader of the BBC.  He oversees all the Corporation’s services within the UK and around the world, both public service and commercial.

He joined the BBC as a news trainee in 1973, and after a 20-year career as a senior journalist and editor, he became Chief Executive of BBC News and Current Affairs. He was responsible for all of BBC News’ output across the UK and the world. In 2001 he left the Corporation and, for more than a decade, was in charge of the Royal Opera House which incorporates the Royal Opera, one of the world’s leading opera companies, and the Royal Ballet, the UK’s largest ballet company.

He was previously a non-executive director, and Deputy Chairman, of Channel 4. In 2006 he was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) for services to Opera and Ballet. In 2010 it was announced that Hall was to become a life peer, sitting in the House of Lords on the Crossbenches. He is a Trustee of the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, one of the largest independent grant-making foundations in the UK.

The Satchwell Lecture is named after former Society of Editors Executive Director Bob Satchwell (pictured below) who stepped down from his role in March 2017 due to a life-changing illness. The Lecture helped to raise funds for Bob’s rehabilitation care following his debilitating aneurysm and stroke.

High resolution photographs from the evening can be downloaded here. The full speech of Lord Hall’s Lecture can be found here.