From music to digital content via one of the country’s best known radio programmes, Lizzie Bennett has led a varied life which has taken her around the UK before bringing her to the Cotswolds.

Lizzie comes from a medical background. Her father, Michael Marsh, was a doctor and her mother, Joan, was a nurse. They met when he was studying medicine at Magdalen College Oxford and she was Night Superintendent at the Radcliffe Infirmary. They later moved to Manchester where both parents continued their careers, Joan as Research Nurse for the South Manchester district and Mike as a Consultant Gastroenterologist at Hope hospital in Salford. His speciality was coeliac disease (a form of gluten intolerance) and he became world-recognised for his work in the field. He introduced the classification system in 1992 which describes the stages of damage in the small intestine as seen under a microscope, also known as histological changes. This became known as the ‘Marsh Classification’ and is still used today.

Music came early into Lizzie’s life. Her father was a church organist while her two brothers attended Chethams School of Music and were choristers at Manchester Cathedral. After leaving Altrincham Grammar School for Girls she entered the Guildhall School of Music and Drama to study singing, piano and ‘cello. Five hours of piano practice per day took its toll. “I left not wanting to play an instrument ever again.” Instead she went to Newcastle to learn about photography and history of art, having her first encounter with the digital world; learning HTML and web design. She then moved to London - “just for six months for the experience,” she thought, but it turned out to be for much longer.

To secure a job in London, she first taught herself to touch- type, although she is modest about her accomplishment, and passed her audition at Office Angels, moving on to temping where she learnt what a floppy disk was. A job at a marketing agency found her joining a small web team. In her spare time she took up rowing, and enthuses about single sculling up the Thames to Richmond Bridge in the dark and seeing all the lights of London. She must have been very good at this as she won a Henley medal in doubles sculls.

Her next move was to the BBC, initially as a website coder and designer for what was then called BBC online. This was in its infancy and fitted into a single floor of Bush House on the Strand. From there she moved into producing and joined Radio 4 and rose up through the ranks, working on news programmes such as The World at One, PM, Broadcasting House and, particularly, Today where she became a senior content producer.

The main presenters at that time were John Humphrys, Sue MacGregor, Jim Naughtie and Ed Stourton. Rod Liddle was then the editor and although an early adopter of digital was soon replaced (after an ill-advised article in The Guardian) by Kevin Marsh, who was visionary in all things digital. Lizzie managed a small team who each day captured and edited the daily audio running order of the programme - which involved digitally ‘cutting’ each of the interviews so that listeners’ could choose specific interviews to listen back to via the Today website. This was instead of them having to scroll through the whole three hours of the programme to find what they wanted. In the early days of Podcasting the ‘Today 8:10’ interview was chosen to join the pilot alongside In Our Time. She would listen to the interview go out live and capture it digitally just after this and then publish it as a podcast within 30 seconds of the live transmission.

It sounds as if this was great fun although stressful, especially with the early start. She recalls a hilarious Today programme skiing trip to Italy, being driven up precipitous roads by Naughtie as he pointed out the views in all directions while Ed Stourton was navigating; commuting between Broadcasting House and Television Centre with the velvet- voiced newsreader Peter Donaldson; and the legendary Charlotte Green who would order a coffee with the same cultivated tones with which she read the shipping forecast.

By this time Lizzie’s first marriage had ended and she was looking after her two daughters. She moved in with her parents who by then were living in Charlbury. For the next two and a half years her daily routine was to leave home at 4.30am to catch the Oxford Tube to Shepherd’s Bush and thence to Television Centre at White City. In the middle of this strenuous period she joined the Burford Singers. They say that singing is good for your mental health and Lizzie would agree. She describes this as her “saving grace”. Going to a rehearsal on a Thursday evening was the high point of her week. She found Brian Kay great fun to work with and could hardly believe that on one occasion she was singing with her childhood hero Philip Ledger (classical musician, choirmaster, academic and at that time president of the Singers) playing the harpsichord continuo for Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus. She is now chairman of the Singers, something she sees as a payback for what she got from them at a difficult time.

A more challenging aspect of her time on Today was the fallout from the Hutton report following accusations that the government had “sexed up” a dossier of information about the threat of Iraqi “weapons of mass destruction” and the subsequent death of the scientist Dr David Kelly. The report led to the resignation of the BBC chairman, Gavyn Davies, and the director-general, Greg Dyke. The Today programme was at the epicentre of this controversy and the staff must have felt under siege while it was going on. She adds ”I do feel enormously proud to have been part of such a cherished programme team…we are after all just custodians passing through and it was such a privilege to have been part of that”.

Eventually Lizzie decided to have a change of scene. She moved to Northern Ireland with her girls, to work as Executive Producer for UTV, the ITV franchise on that side of the water. This was a complete contrast to her previous experience as it had no licence fee income and operated on commercial lines. She headed up a team of a new breed of

cross-platform journalists, supplying news on television, radio and online. It was whilst there that she realised that UTV had the biggest audience for its news output of any ITV region outside London. The reason? Widespread distrust of the BBC. Lizzie made many friends whilst there, some of whom she still sees today with regular visits back to Northern Ireland.

Then it was back to Charlbury where for a time Lizzie worked as a digital press officer for Oxfam and later set up a company advising businesses on how to create good content for social media. And something very important happened: she met Simon Bennett, now her husband. Simon has a DPhil in molecular genetics and works as a consultant in the pharmaceutical industry. He has four children from his previous marriage. A quick roll-call: Lizzie’s daughters are Molly, who is studying for a fashion marketing degree in London and Scarlett who is studying history in Bristol. Both are approaching their finals and will finish in the summer.

Simon has Fliss, who works for a local architect firm; Will, a graphic designer in London; Patience, a midwife with a law degree and mother to three small children and Charlie, a geopolitical risk analyst in Kyiv. All six children have been to Burford School.

Lizzie is now a lead content designer working on projects for various government departments. This includes designing “green button” services and writing guidance (essentially demystifying policy white papers). If you have ever used GOV.UK to apply for a benefit, renewed your passport or driving licence, you will have worked your way through one of these services. During the run-up to Brexit she and others had to rewrite 108 digital country guides explaining the new tariffs and sanctions when importing to and exporting from the UK - these guides had to be written for how to operate after a deal and also another 108 to cover there being no deal.

After Lizzie and Simon rented a property in Great Barrington they spotted their present house in Burford - their “forever home”. They have lived there for four and a half years. The piano and various other instruments in the living room show that Lizzie relented in her determination not to play music again. She has been able to throw herself into singing with the Burford Singers and other groups. She is looking forward to their summer performance of Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle on 29 June.

Editors