Alexander Cadogan - Later Life

Later Life

In 1952, Cadogan was made Chairman of Board of Governors of the BBC by Winston Churchill, who had returned to office the previous year. When Cadogan expressed his concern that he lacked appropriate qualifications, Churchill replied, "There are no qualifications. All you have to do is to be fair." Cadogan added, "And sensible, I suppose." Churchill nodded. On his appointment he confessed that he had never seen a BBC television program and that what he had seen of American television, he disliked. He served until 1957. In the last decade of his life, Cadogan gradually shed his commitments and devoted more time to his late-blooming interest in art.