Obituary: Ruggero Orlando

Ruggero Orlando, journalist and broadcaster: born 1907; married (one son); died Rome 18 April 1994.

RUGGERO ORLANDO was for many years one of the best-loved, best-known men in Italy, though he spent a major part of his life away from the country he seemed to personify for all those who knew him. He claimed to be a close relative of the Orlando who had been Italy's prime minister at the end of the First World War, one of the Big Four at Versailles.

Whatever the relationship, Ruggero was proud to be a highly political Sicilian. In spite of his somewhat anarchic and highly individual character, which made Mussolini's Italy too dangerous for him, he became the doyen of political journalists wherever he happened to be.

In 1939 he fled to Britain. It was for him an ideal moment to arrive: the BBC was just embarking on its broadcasts to Germany, and broadcasts to the then less menacing Italy followed. Orlando found his metier. He became one of the great broadcasters of the war. He had a flair for words, though his use of them was idiosyncratic, French and English strangely mingled with his gushing Italian. But his audiences loved it.

His message was a heart-warming mix of Christianity and socialism which went well with post-war optimism. Orlando became a standard-bearer for Britain's new Labour government. He would say: 'Think of Mussolini, then think of his opposite in every way. What is the result: Mr Clement Attlee, Britain's Labour prime minister.'

After the war he switched from the BBC to Rai, Italy's state broadcasting system. But he was later sent by Rai to the United States, where he was New York correspondent for 18 years, and became the United States' interpreter to the Italians. He was hugely successful.

In early 1972 he returned to Italy to fight as a Socialist in the general election of that year. He was comparatively ignorant of Italian politics and problems, fighting his election campaign on the need for the United States to get out of Vietnam and on human rights abuses against Angela Davis, the far-Left Californian activist. Though these issues may have appeared arcane to the Italians, Orlando was so well known he was easily elected to the Chamber of Deputies. In parliament he concerned himself with worthy environmental causes but remained always writing, always broadcasting.

But Ruggero Orlando was not merely a journalist - he was a poet and an interpreter of poets. When he was in England he was closely connected with the whole English post-war literary scene and was a frequent contributor to Poetry Today, introducing not only his own poetry but the poetry of great Italians like Eugenio Montale to an English readership. Indeed Denis Healey in his autobiography refers to Orlando fondly: 'I liked him particularly (among the European socialists) because he shared my love of literature and had translated Dylan Thomas into Italian. He had a fruity voice, a somewhat scabrous turn of phrase, short legs and a large head, like Buster Keaton's'

Orlando lived, he said, in an 'hotel-meuble of the Muses' - not only those of poetry but of painting too. He married early in the war a refugee like himself, a beautiful young German Jew who had brought with her a splendid collection of German Expressionist paintings. Noldes glowed from the walls. The marriage was cemented in mutual loss. His father had been killed in the First World War, Friedl's in the Second. Their one son, Raffaello, is a musician, a clarinettist of distinction. Two years ago he was the soloist at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, in London.

Ruggero Orlando left a legend behind him in the BBC's External Services - part of their reputation for freedom and the unconventional. Perhaps only Orlando could have managed to persuade a tight-fisted accounts department to accept as reasonable expenses on a trip to the United States a hefty bill for nylon stockings.

It is particularly sad that Orlando is no longer here to vent his feelings about Silvio Berlusconi and the neo-Fascists now in his chamber of deputies. They would have had short shrift.