journalist war correspondent Prisoner
The son of Maxwell Ward, 6th Viscount Bangor, by his marriage to Agnes Elizabeth Hamilton, third daughter of Dacre Hamilton, of Cornacassa, County Monaghan, Ward was educated first at Wixenford, then, like his father, at Harrow and the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich.
Harrow School; Royal Military Academy, Woolwich.
He worked under the name Edward Ward. Becoming a journalist, Ward went overseas as a Reuters correspondent for China and the Far East. In 1937 he was taken on by the British Broadcasting Corporation as a radio announcer, and in 1939 was sent as a British Broadcasting Corporation war correspondent to Finland to cover what became known as the Winter War.
On 12 March 1940, Ward delivered a sensational international scoop, when British Broadcasting Corporation Radio News carried his story of a ceasefire agreed between the Soviet Union and Finland, a day before it was formally announced.
Ward was then deployed to Belgium and France, just before the Phoney War ended in Blitzkrieg. He escaped from the German advance by taking a ship from Bordeaux to Egypt, where the British Broadcasting Corporation used him to take the place of another correspondent, Richard Dimbleby.
He reported from Athens on the May 1941 evacuation of the ity. In November 1941 he was taken prisoner by Italian forces at Tobruk following the Battle of Sidi Rezegh.
He spent the rest of the Second World War as a prisoner of war in Italian and later German camps.
On 31 March 1945 he was among those liberated by American forces from Oflag XII-B, a camp for officers near Limburg an der Lahn. After the war, Ward worked as a foreign correspondent around the world until 1960. He reported from Hungary during the 1956 uprising of
After making a Christmas broadcast from Bishop Rock Lighthouse, he was marooned there for a month by rough seas.
He appeared as a "castaway" on the British Broadcasting Corporation Radio programme Desert Island Discs on 28 August 1961.
He published several books, including three volumes of autobiography. Bangor"s obituary in The Independent called him "one of the very best of the British Broadcasting Corporation"s war correspondents.
In 1950, he succeeded his father as Viscount Bangor, a title in the peerage of Ireland.
At the time of his death on 8 May 1993, Lord Bangor"s address was 59, Cadogan Square, London SW1. And he was a member of the Savile and Garrick clubs.
