Brian Widlake

'Brian Widlake is a British journalist, broadcaster and presenter known for co-presenting the BBCs Money Programme in the early 1980s with Valerie Singleton. He worked as a reporter for ITN in the 1960s and was a regular presenter of BBC Radio 4's news magazine programmes The World at One and PM during the 1970s and 1980s. Widlake joined London's news and talk radio station LBC to present a breakfast programme on LBC Crown FM, later LBC NewsTalk 97.3 in 1989. He then transferred to LBC's hour-long Midday News programme.

Widlake is the step-father of the former cricketer, sports journalist and TV presenter Mark Nicholas.

References

Nelson Mandela

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (/mænˈdɛlə/; born Rolihlahla Mandela (Xhosa pronunciation: [xoˈliːɬaɬa manˈdeːla]); 18 July 1918 – 5 December 2013) was a South African anti-apartheid revolutionary, politician, and philanthropist, who served as President of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was the country's first black chief executive, and the first elected in a fully representative democratic election. His government focused on dismantling the legacy of apartheid through tackling institutionalised racism and fostering racial reconciliation. Politically an African nationalist and democratic socialist, he served as President of the African National Congress (ANC) party from 1991 to 1997. Internationally, Mandela was Secretary General of the Non-Aligned Movement from 1998 to 1999.

A Xhosa born to the Thembu royal family, Mandela attended Fort Hare University and the University of Witwatersrand, where he studied law. Living in Johannesburg, he became involved in anti-colonial politics, joining the ANC and becoming a founding member of its Youth League. After the Afrikaner minority government of the National Party established apartheid – a system of racial segregation that privileged whites – in 1948, he rose to prominence in the ANC's 1952 anti-apartheid Defiance Campaign, was appointed superintendent of the organisation's Transvaal chapter and presided over the 1955 Congress of the People. Working as a lawyer, he was repeatedly arrested for seditious activities and, with the ANC leadership, was unsuccessfully prosecuted in the Treason Trial from 1956 to 1961. Influenced by Marxism, he secretly joined the South African Communist Party (SACP). Although initially committed to non-violent protest, in association with the SACP he co-founded the militant Umkhonto we Sizwe in 1961, leading a sabotage campaign against the government. In 1962, he was arrested, convicted of conspiracy to overthrow the state, and sentenced to life imprisonment in the Rivonia Trial.

Brian Williams

Brian Douglas Williams (born May 5, 1959) is an American journalist best known for his ten years as anchor and managing editor of NBC Nightly News, the evening news program of the NBC television network. Six months after Williams joined the program in December 2004, NBC News was awarded the Peabody Award for its coverage of the Hurricane Katrina story, with the award committee stating that Williams and the NBC staff displayed the "highest levels of journalistic excellence" in their reporting. In February 2015, Williams was suspended for six months from the Nightly News for "misrepresent[ing] events which occurred while he was covering the Iraq War in 2003."

Early life

Born in Ridgewood, New Jersey, Williams was reared in a "boisterous" Irish Catholic home. He is the son of Dorothy May (née Pampel) and Gordon Lewis Williams, who was an executive vice president of the National Retail Merchants Association, in New York. His mother was an amateur stage actress. Williams is the youngest of four siblings. He lived in Elmira, New York for nine years before moving to Middletown, New Jersey, when he was in junior high school.