Big Red Book
Celebrating television's This Is Your Life
Isabella WOODFORD MBE (1873-1966)
- The first edition to be broadcast on Christmas Day
THIS IS YOUR LIFE - Isabella Charlotte Woodford, retired nurse, was surprised by Eamonn Andrews in her home village of Quainton in Buckinghamshire.
Isabella, who was born in Hebron, Northumberland, trained in nursing at Newcastle's Royal Infirmary before moving to Queen Charlotte's Hospital in London, where she qualified as a midwife. In 1912, she became Assistant Matron at Dundee Infirmary and volunteered with the Territorial Auxiliary Nursing Service.
During the First World War, she received the Royal Red Cross medal for her work as an Embarcation Sister in Boulogne, France. After the war, Isabella became Matron at the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, and later at SCIO House Hospital in Putney, London - a hospital catering for military officers suffering from TB. She retired in 1948, aged 75, after more than 50 years in nursing.
For this special Christmas Day edition, each guest brought Isabella a present, and the tribute ended with all the guests sitting down to a Christmas turkey dinner.
programme details...
- Edition No: 176
- Subject No: 177
- Broadcast: Mon 25 Dec 1961
- Broadcast time: 7.25-8.00pm
- Recorded: Mon 18 Dec 1961 8.00pm
- Venue: BBC Television Theatre
- Series: 7
- Edition: 13
on the guest list...
- Cicely Dymock
- Bill Brooks
- Edith Wootten
- Alan Moore
- Pat Bainbridge - niece
- Jocelyn Symon - niece
- Muriel Kerr
- Dick Lee
- Olive Prentice
- William Coffey
- Ethel Venning
- Bill Cassidy
- Alvar Lidell
- Mrs Tremlow
- Mr Wootten
- Mr Harrison
- William Moor - cousin Filmed tribute:
- Dr John Clay
production team...
- Researchers: Nickola Sterne, Arthur Sellwood
- Writers: Nickola Sterne, Arthur Sellwood
- Director: Yvonne Littlewood
- Producer: T Leslie Jackson
- with thanks to Alan Moore for his contribution to this page
Photographs of Isabella Woodford This Is Your Life
Bella was my Dad's cousin and was born less than 2 miles from where I lived. When I got to know her, she was already an old lady, but she used to come to the family farm regularly for holidays. This was in the village of Longhirst in Northumberland. She was then living in the village of Quainton in Buckinghamshire, and I can remember going to visit her in 1958, and I can recall her having a red and green parrot in a cage. For some reason, we seemed to get along together really well.
My mum and I travelled by train to London on the 16th December 1961 and stayed at the Coburg Hotel. We had rehearsal and run-through of the script the next day, or we may have had two days of rehearsal. I can't be certain. Certainly, on the night of the 17th, Yvonne Littlewood came to me and said they had two special guests in the BBC television centre that night and that she would take me to meet one of them. Did I want to see Nat King Cole or Sid James? An easy question for a boy of 8 to answer. Sid was exactly as you would expect. A dimple pint glass in one hand and a big cigar in the other and a face creased with laughter.
I think, in a way, I've always been quite pleased that no recording survives as possibly watching it I might find excruciating.
Series 7 subjects
Max Bygraves | Mario Borrelli | Alastair Pearson | Brian Rix | Derek Dooley | Elizabeth Twistington Higgins | Sandy MacPhersonRonald Menday | Harry Day | Peter Finch | Charlie Drake | Timothy Cain | Isabella Woodford | David Park | Sefton Delmer
Coco (Nicolai Poliakoff) | Jenny Gleed | Arthur Davies | Tom Evans | David James | Kenneth Horne | Marie Rambert | David Butler
Glen Moody | Kenneth Cooke | Tom Breaks | Dora Bryan | Bob Oatway | Acker Bilk | Hester Meakin | Joe Filliston | Ellaline Terriss