My father, Malcolm Brown, who has died aged 87, was a BBC documentary producer who became an author and historian specialising in aspects of the first world war.
He was born in Clayton, West Yorkshire, to William, a Baptist minister, and his wife, Bernice (nee Radcliffe). In 1937 the family moved to Nelson, Lancashire, and in 1945 south to Parkstone, in Dorset, where Malcolm went to Poole grammar school.
After winning a scholarship to St John’s College, Oxford, he gained a congratulatory first-class degree in English, and from there joined the BBC as a graduate trainee. For more than 30 years he produced documentaries that included profiles of world leaders such as Anwar Sadat of Egypt, the Shah of Iran and King Hussein of Jordan, as well as a series on great Britons, including Lord Nelson. Later he specialised in programmes about the first world war, including Scapa Flow, The First Day of the Somme, and The Christmas Truce.
For research he asked the public to send in diaries and letters from servicemen and their families left at home. There was a flood of responses, providing him with enough material for the programmes as well as for the first of his books, Scapa Flow (1967), followed by Tommy Goes to War (1978) and The Christmas Truce (1984, co-written with Shirley Seaton). He donated the material he received to the Imperial War Museum archives in London.
In 1986 Malcolm left the BBC to become a freelance writer, working at the Imperial War Museum and continuing to specialise in the first world war. He was keen to give the ordinary serviceman a voice, and his work opened a channel for families who had not known where they might find a place to send valuable, but disappearing, memories.
In all he wrote 14 books, including Book of the Western Front (1993), The Somme (1996), Spitfire Summer (2000) and four books on TE Lawrence. He also conducted tours of the battlefields and cemeteries of the former western front.
In 2007 Malcolm was diagnosed with Multiple System Atrophy with Parkinson’s traits. At first his symptoms were hardly noticeable, but gradually his speech and then his movement deteriorated.
He is survived by his wife, Beatrice (nee Light), a teacher whom he met at Parkstone Baptist church and married in 1953, by their three children, Michael, Katherine and me, and two grandchildren, Jakob and Matthew.
