It is 18 months since Sue MacGregor retired from presenting the Radio 4 programme Today and could stop getting up at 3 am. “That bit I don’t miss,” she said. “But I do miss the buzz of Today, the gossip, the camaraderie, the constant sense of danger of live broadcasting.” The programmes she makes now, A Good Read and The Reunion, are all recorded. A most perceptive interviewer, who actually listens to the answers to her questions, MacGregor was almost defeated by the gushing Liverpool luvvies in The Reunion this week, who piled wall-to-wall superlatives on each other. She is spending her birthday on holiday in Dubrovnik, Croatia, with friends. She is packing lots of books to read, including The Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seirestad and The Devil In The White City by Erik Larson, a thriller about a serial killer in old Chicago. As chairman of A Good Read, she already tackles up to 30 titles a week. Sue MacGregor is 63 today.
RGT
Sir Harold Atcherley, chairman of Toynbee Hall, 1985-90, 86; Lord Brain, 78; A. P. Dyer, chief executive and deputy chairman of BOC, 1993-96, 72; Kenneth Gill, General Secretary of Manufacturing, Science, Finance, 1989-92, 77; Antony Gormley, sculptor, 54; Lord Healey, Chancellor of the Exchequer, 1974-79, 87; Lord Keith of Castleacre, merchant banker and industrialist, 88; Dr Jeremy Lee-Potter, chairman of the British Medical Association, 1990-93, 70; Professor Iain MacIntyre, endocrinologist, 80; Dr Sir Peter North, Principal of Jesus College, Oxford, 68; K. Payne, VC, 71; John Peel, broadcaster, 65; Sir Henry Phillips, colonial administrator, 90; Pamela Stringer, Headmistress of Clifton High School for Girls, 1965-85, 76; Professor J. M. Thoday, geneticist, 88; the Very Rev Professor T. F. Torrance, theologian, 91; Joan Woodgate, matron-in-chief of Queen Alexandra’s RN Nursing Service, 1962-66, 92.