READERS of the Review are being asked to help in the hunt for a missing piece of the Forest’s history.

It relates to a television broadcast featuring Harry Beddington, one of the area’s best loved writers. The author, who was born in 1901 in Ruspidge and died in 1986, wrote nearly all his works in Forest dialect.

A BBC producer believes that, in the 1970s, he was asked to translate a Bible reading into the Forest tongue and read it out for a BBC television programme looking into dialect.

Tom Bigwood, producer for Inside Out West said: “We’re working on a feature about language in the Forest and the 75th anniversary of Harry’s prize-winning dialect comedy Footing the Bill. We would love to find this old footage of Harry.”

With little for Tom’s team of researchers to go on, they are appealing for any information that would help them track it down in the BBC archive.

Reading the Forest’s Jason Griffiths said that a member of the Beddington family told him they remembered Harry appearing on television with his Bible reading sometime in the 1970s.

“It seems likely it may have been for Nationwide,” he said. “But we’re not sure. We would really like to know if any readers remember seeing Harry’s Forest dialect Bible reading on television, when it was and what programme it was for.” If you can help, please contact Jason by email [email protected] or phone 07788 654023. Visit www.readingtheforest.co.uk/harry-beddington for more information about the author.