Sir Hugh Carleton Greene; Former Director of BBC

Sir Hugh Carleton Greene, former director-general of the British Broadcasting Corp. and a successful author and editor, died in a London hospital Feb. 19.

One of his four sons, Graham Carleton Greene, said his father, who was 76, had been ill with cancer.

Hugh Greene, brother of novelist Graham Greene, will be remembered by most for bringing satire to Britain’s public television network during the 1960s in the form of “That Was the Week That Was,” an irreverent late-night send-up of politicians that broke new ground in broadcasting. He also produced “Z Cars,” considered the first realistic police series on British television.

With his brother, he wrote “The Spy’s Bedside Book.” By himself, he was the author “The Future of Broadcasting in Britain” and “The Third Floor Front.” He also was editor of the highly popular “The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes,” and several sequels that dealt with fictional detectives outside England solving crimes during the Holmesian years.

Greene was a journalist in Warsaw when Hitler marched into Poland in 1939, and covered the event for the Daily Telegraph. He reported the war from Romania, Bulgaria and Turkey.

In 1940, he joined the BBC as head of the German News Service, which he built into a British government tool against the Nazis.

He was posted in the British Zone in Germany and ran the East European service during the Cold War.

In 1960, he became director-general of the BBC, was knighted in 1964 and left the BBC in 1969.