I first heard the voice in Oxford in the late 1940s during a college production of King John. “Now, say, Chatillon, what would France with us?” The words were those of Shakespeare’s slimiest monarch, but the voice could have been that of Henry V. It belonged to Paul Vaughan, who has died aged 89. What I heard that night later became known to millions as the “Horizon voice” on BBC2. Bold, articulate, and trustworthy as the Bible, it was the perfect disguise for a royal conman. And although Vaughan, in his many years as a voiceover virtuoso, declared that he would never employ it in the service of tobacco, warfare or the Conservative party, he would have had no difficulty in convincing the wariest of listeners that rattlesnake venom was a wholesome as mother’s milk.
The voice was his prize accomplishment, in professional use into his 80s. But it was not the only one. A lifelong clarinettist (self-taught from the recordings of Frank Teschemacher) what he most enjoyed was sitting in the midst of an orchestra and contributing to the surrounding waves of sublime sound. His first books were spin-offs from his career as a medical journalist, including a history of the British Medical Association, and a study of the contraceptive pill (The Pill on Trial, 1972).
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