Peter Batty was born on the 18th of June 1931, in Sunderland, England. First, he studied a Bachelor of Arts degree at the Queens’ College, University of Cambridge before earning his Master of Arts at the University of Oxford. Batty’s career began as a feature writer for The Financial Times in 1954 before he become a freelance journalist in the United States just two years later.
From 1958 to 1963, Batty served as a producer for the BBC before he was appointed editor for the BBC’s Tonight Programme. A year later, in 1964, Batty then earnt the position of “Executive Producer” and “Associate Head of Factual Programming” on ATV London. After a spell with ITV, he set up his own production company to produce, direct and script for film and TV.
Subsequently, from 1968, Batty settled as CEO of Peter Batty Productions, remaining in that role ever since. Batty had also produced and scripted 6 episodes of the internationally praised TV series The World at War. Most of his independent productions were shown in the USA, chiefly his 5-part series on the American Civil War. Batty tilted this The Divided Union, to which it was distributed via home-video in Reader’s Digest.
Nevertheless, aside from his remarkable career history, Batty is also known for his esteemed body of work and the awards he has achieved. Regarding his books, his body of work most notably includes The House of Krupp: The Steel Dynasty that Armed the Nazis, The Divided Union: The Story of the Great American War, 1861-65 and Hoodwinking Churchill: Tito’s Great Confidence Trick. Additionally, he has earnt several awards for his contributions to TV. These awards including a Grand Prix at the Venice Film Festival, Silver Dove from the Leipzig Film Festival for his Fall and Rise of the House of Krupp. Likewise, he produced and scripted for BBC TV two documentaries on Tito. The Daily Mail remarked on Tito as ‘fascinating’, The Sunday Telegraph ‘excellent’ and The Sunday Times ‘a damning investigation into the political dealings of the Yugoslav Partisan leader’.
