Russell Harty

Frederic Russell Harty (5 September 1934 – 8 June 1988) was an English television presenter of arts programmes and chat shows. Early life Harty was born in Blackburn, Lancashire, the son of greengrocer Fred Harty, who ran a fruit-and-vegetable stall on the local market, and Myrtle Rishton. He attended Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School on West Park Road in Blackburn, where he enjoyed appearing in school plays and met, for the first time, the then English teacher Ronald Eyre, who directed a number of the productions. Thereafter he studied at Exeter College, Oxford, where he obtained a degree in English literature. Teaching career On leaving university, he taught briefly at Blakey Moor Secondary Modern School in Blackburn, then became an English and drama teacher at Giggleswick School in North Yorkshire. "I got a first-class degree, and was a hopeless teacher", Harty later said. However, his friend and Oxford contemporary Alan Bennett commented in his 2016 memoir Keeping On Keeping On that Harty "had a third-class degree and taught brilliantly". Harty's entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography also states he was awarded a third-class degree in 1957. Among Harty's pupils at the Giggleswick School were the journalist and television presenter Richard Whiteley and the actors Graham Hamilton and Anthony Daniels. In the mid-1960s Harty spent a year lecturing in English literature at the City University of New York.