Big Red Book
Celebrating television's This Is Your Life
Lieutenant Colonel Frederick Spencer CHAPMAN DSO and Bar (1907-1971)
THIS IS YOUR LIFE - Frederick Spencer Chapman, British Army officer, was surprised by Eamonn Andrews at the BBC Television Theatre.
Whilst at Cambridge University Freddie developed a passion for adventure and was attached as a ski expert and naturalist to the legendary Gino Watkins's 1930-31 British Arctic Air-Route Expedition and a subsequent Greenland Expedition in 1932–33. At the outbreak of the Second World War he was commissioned into the Seaforth Highlanders and for three and a half years lived behind Japanese lines in the jungles of Malaya, blowing up trains, bridges and enemy soldiers, training local insurgents, battling malaria and starvation.
Eventually Freddie managed to escape from occupied Malaya in the submarine HMS Statesman after a trek from the mainland jungle to the island Pulau Pangkor off the west coast disguised as a Chinese labourer. After the war, Freddie was asked to form a School in Germany for the sons and daughters of British Forces resident in the British Zone of occupied Germany - the King Alfred School, Plön, for children 11 to 18 years of age. Freddie, as Headmaster, set up the school and organised the teachers and in 1948 accepted 400 young boys and girls into what was possibly the first successful comprehensive, co-educational boarding school in the World.
Frederick Spencer Chapman was the second subject in series 9 whose story was told over two consecutive editions of This Is Your Life.
programme details...
- Edition Nos: 239 / 240
- Subject No: 239
- Broadcast date: Thu 2 Jan 1964
- Broadcast date: Thu 9 Jan 1964
- Broadcast time: 8.50-9.15pm
- Recorded: Wed 23 Dec 1963 8.00pm
- Venue: BBC Television Theatre
- Series: 9
- Editions: 13 - 14
on the guest list...
- Quintin Riley
- Ex-Surgeon Captain Edward Bingham OBE RN
- Ex Sergeant John Sartin MC
- John Davis
- Richard Broome
- Nona Baker
- Faith - wife
- Valerie Searle
- Nicholas - son
- Stephen - son
- Christopher - son
- Sir Evan Nepean
- Tibetan House parents , The Llama and Tibetan children
- Frank Quayle Filmed tributes:
- Robert – brother
- Dr Robert Corti
production team...
- Director: Michael Goodwin
- Producer: Vere Lorrimer
- Executive Producer: T Leslie Jackson
saluting the armed forces
Series 9 subjects
Stratford Johns | Alice Stern | Robert Boothby | Bessie Love | Joan Stanton | Harry Worth | John Dodd | Ralph ReaderAlbert Guerisse | Margaret Lockwood | Franklin Day | Frederick Spencer Chapman | Thora Hird | Evelyn Bark
Madge Watson and Elsie Wood | Petula Clark | Derek McCulloch | Bert Matthews | Ted Moult | Dot Palmer | Teddy Winn
Barbara Mullen | Paul Burrough | Sydney Scroggie | Ninette de Valois | Dominique Pire | Olivia de Havilland | Mary Hawkins