Christopher Lee obituary

© Provided by The GuardianPhotograph: Jim Holden/Alamy

In 1995 BBC Radio 4 came to the end of a reading of the Bible in 15-minute weekday slots. For a replacement on a similarly grand scale the network turned to Christopher Lee, who has died aged 79 after a short illness, to script a 2,000-year history of Britain called This Sceptred Isle.

Before then, Lee was best known as a BBC radio defence and foreign affairs correspondent (1976-86), in particular through reporting on the Falklands war from London in 1982. But he was also a writer with a wide range of interests, and penning 396 episodes of This Sceptred Isle single-handedly was just one aspect of a considerable output.

The project incorporated extracts from Winston Churchill's History of the English-Speaking Peoples. It began with the Romans' occupation of Britain, and after it reached the end of Queen Victoria's reign, three further tranches were commissioned - covering the story of Britain's great dynastic families, the 20th century, and the British empire. It eventually concluded in 2006.

The series was orthodox in that it very much took a "kings and queens" approach to British history. It offered a grand overview, focusing on the almost mythic personalities and events on which the nation's sense of itself was built, from Julius Caesar and the Norman invasion to Elizabeth I and the Civil war.

Lee succeeded in blending academic rigour with accessibility, and the way he brought history to life made the series a huge hit with listeners and earned its author a Sony award. Released in various audio formats, it became one of the BBC's bestselling productions.

Much credit for its success went to Anna Massey for her narration of the initial series, with Paul Eddington and Peter Jeffrey voicing Churchill. In the follow-up series, Juliet Stevenson and Robert Powell were among the voices deployed.

But above all This Sceptred Isle was the expression of an extraordinarily copious and curious mind. "An immense talent" was how the series' producer, Pete Atkin, described Lee. "I never came across anyone with such range and depth of knowledge."

Born in Erith, Kent, now part of south-east London, Christopher was the son of Winifred (nee Robertson), a buyer for department stores, and James Lee, a bus driver. When he was 13 his parents emigrated to Australia. He declined to join them, instead moving in with an aunt and uncle.

He was educated at Wilmington grammar school (later Dartford Technical College), where he resisted authority. His acts of rebellion culminated in his expulsion after he burned down the school cricket pavilion, and at the age of 17 he ran away to sea, joining the crew of a tramp steamer before enrolling in the merchant navy (1958-59).

After abandoning a course in English at what is now Goldsmiths, University of London, he joined one of the country's first free newspapers, The Orpington News Shopper, as a reporter.

A sign on his door as a BBC defence correspondent reminded him: 'Be careful. They're going to believe you'

The paper had been co-founded by David English, who went on to edit the Daily Mail, and after learning the tools of the trade, in 1967 Lee landed a job at the Daily Express. He acted as deputy to its celebrated investigative and defence writer Chapman Pincher, and became an assistant editor of the paper (1975-76). In addition, he served in the intelligence arm of the Royal Naval Reserve and its communications centre at Chatham, Kent (1966-82).

© Photograph: Jim Holden/AlamyChristopher Lee at his home in Rye, East Sussex, in 2014.

His Falkland war reporting was praised in a memo from BBC radio's head of news for its "strength, quality and sobriety". Lee strove to live up to an ideal. He stuck a sign on his office door by way of a reminder every time he went on air: "Be careful. They're going to believe you."

After taking up a fellowship in contemporary history at Emmanuel College, Cambridge (1986-91) he went on to research the history of ideas at what is now Birkbeck, University of London, gaining an MA.

From the 1990s on Lee was prolific as an author, lecturer and scriptwriter. His radio dramas included The House, in which Julian Glover played the Speaker of the House of Commons and Timothy West the home secretary; Our Brave Boys, set in the Ministry of Defence and starring Martin Jarvis, Fiona Shaw and Peter Capaldi; The Trial of Walter Raleigh, with Michael York in the title role; Air Force One, about the assassination of John F Kennedy and set within a 90-minute timeframe on the day of his death; and A Pattern in Shrouds, recounting another assassination, that of Lord Mountbatten.

"He knew how dialogue worked," said Atkin. "His plotting was inventive, his characters strong." Jarvis praised Lee's work for its understanding of people's motives: "He took real historical events but he never twisted them."

Lee himself continued to broadcast almost to the end of his life, with a weekly programme on defence policy, Sitrep, on the British Forces Broadcasting Service.

Lee's books, in addition to those that came out of This Sceptred Isle, included Nelson & Napoleon: The Long Haul to Trafalgar (2005) and Carrington: An Honourable Man, 2018, a biography of the foreign secretary who resigned when conflict in the Falkland Islands became inevitable.

He published three Bath Detective novels, set in the historic Somerset city. A lover of village cricket, he brought a lyrical touch to its history in Nicely Nurdled, Sir! (1988), and he wrote the official history of Sussex County Cricket Club, From the Sea End (1989).

Eight Bells and Topmasts (2001) was a memoir of the time he spent at sea as a young man. He kept a boat of his own, moored in Hampshire and Suffolk.

In 1969 he married Chris Adams, and they had two daughters. They divorced in 2010, and the following year he married Fiona Graham-Mackay (nee Bain), an artist. She survives him, along with his daughters and three grandchildren.

. Christopher Robin James Lee, broadcaster, historian and writer, born 13 October 1941; died 14 February 2021