Obituary: Denis Moriarty — Mayor of Henley and BBC TV producer

DENIS MORIARTY, who died on August 15, aged 87, was mayor of Henley for the civic year 1975-76.

A BBC TV producer, he and his wife Tessa had moved from Hampstead to a house in Ancastle Green during 1967.

The couple, who were married in 1964, had their son Edmund in 1972 and daughter Eleanor in 1975.

In 1968, Denis became an Independent on Henley Borough Council. He was re-elected in 1971 as a Labour councillor and became chairman of the finance committee.

He stood for Labour as a parliamentary candidate in the Abingdon constituency in the two general elections of 1974, coming second on both occasions.

Denis was able to use his year as mayor to spread his enthusiasm for the war poet Wilfred Owen whose memorial stone at All Saints’ Church in Dunsden was unveiled three years later.

In 1977 the family left Ancastle Green for Rotherfield Greys and two years later returned to West London.

Denis Edmund Hugh Moriarty was born at West Wickham, Kent, on July 27, 1935 but his family soon moved to Reading and Denis grew up in Tilehurst. He attended Reading School where he became school captain and the leading light in the school’s dramatic and operatic societies and the debating society.

He won a scholarship to read history at St John’s College, Oxford, but deferred it to undertake his National Service, which was spent with the Royal Berkshire Regiment as a subaltern, much of it at Goslar, Germany, in the company of a number of other old boys of the school. He took up his place at St John’s in 1956, becoming president of the Junior Common Room, acting with the university dramatic society and gaining his MA (class II modern history).

Coming down in 1959, he joined the BBC, where he spent 32 years. Among the programmes that he was responsible for as a television producer were a series on English towns with Alec Clifton Taylor, Face the Music with Joseph Cooper, One Hundred Great Paintings, Edwin Lutyens Master Architect and The Triumph of the West.

His life at the Beeb revolved around music and the arts, which were his enduring interests. For some years he sang with the Philharmonia Chorus.

He was married for a second time in 1979 to Brigid Beattie, née Green, whose maternal grandmother had been landlady of the Three Horseshoes in Henley. They had one son.

Brigid had won national renown as a pioneering educationalist for which she was made a CBE. She died from a brain haemorrhage at the age of 61.

As his BBC career wound down, Denis began to direct study courses at music festivals at home and abroad. He lectured widely for the National Association of Decorative and Fine Arts Societies for 37 years from 1985 and led architectural and historical tours worldwide.

He was also a published author and a former president of the Old Redingensians Association, reflecting his lifelong loyalty to Reading School.

In 2014 he married Jinnie Chalton, who survives him together with his children.

Ken Brown