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Sir Ludovic Henry Coverley Kennedy (3 November 191918 October 2009) was a British journalist, broadcaster, humanist and author best known for re-examining cases such as the Lindbergh kidnapping and the murder convictions of Timothy Evans and Derek Bentley, and for his role in the abolition of the death penalty in the United Kingdom. ==Early life and naval career== Kennedy was born in 1920 at Edinburgh,〔 the son of a career Royal Navy officer, Edward Coverley Kennedy, and his wife, Rosalind Grant, daughter of Sir Ludovic Grant, 11th Baronet. His mother Rosalind was a cousin of the Conservative politician Robert Boothby, later Lord Boothby. He was schooled at Eton College (where he played in a jazz band with Humphrey Lyttelton),〔 and was set for university when the Second World War broke out. Kennedy's father, by then a 60-year-old retired captain, returned to the navy and was given command of HMS ''Rawalpindi'',〔 a hastily militarised P&O steamship, known as an Armed Merchant Cruiser. On 23 November 1939, while on patrol southeast of Iceland the ''Rawalpindi'' encountered two of the most powerful German warships, the small battleships (or battlecruisers) and trying to break out through the GIUK gap into the Atlantic. The ''Rawalpindi'' was able to signal the German ships' location back to base. Despite being hopelessly outgunned, Captain Edward Coverley Kennedy of the ''Rawalpindi'' decided to fight, rather than surrender as demanded by the Germans. ''Scharnhorst'' sank ''Rawalpindi''; of her 312 crew 275 (including her captain) were killed. His son Ludovic was twenty years old. Captain Kennedy was posthumously mentioned in dispatches and his decision to fight against overwhelming odds entered the folklore of the Royal Navy.〔 Ludovic Kennedy followed his father into the navy; he served as an officer on destroyers, mostly in the same northern seas. His ship (HMS ''Tartar'') was one of those that pursued the battleship ''Bismarck'' following the Battle of the Denmark Strait although he did not witness her sinking because ''Tartar'' went to refuel some hours before the end. Kennedy later wrote about this in ''Pursuit'', his chronicle of the chase and sinking of the ''Bismarck''.〔 He had two younger sisters, Morar and Katherine. Morar married the playwright Royce Ryton in 1954. Katherine married Major Ion Calvocoressi in 1947. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Ludovic Kennedy」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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