Oliver Kite (1920–1968) was a master flyfisher, writer, broadcaster, naturalist and television personality of the 1960s. He was born on 27 November 1920 in Castleton, Monmouthshire, and his family later moved to Lancashire. He joined the army (

Royal Engineers The Corps of Royal Engineers, usually called the Royal Engineers (RE), and commonly known as the ''Sappers'', is a corps of the British Army. It provides military engineering and other technical support to the British Armed Forces and is heade ...

) in 1941 and served as an officer in Sierra Leone, India, Burma, Malaya and Singapore. He married Norah Fallon in Singapore in July 1947. After a number of postings, including witnessing an atomic bomb test at Maralinga, Australia, where he suffered a heart attack at the age of 35, he settled in

Netheravon Netheravon is a village and civil parish on the River Avon and A345 road, about north of the town of Amesbury in Wiltshire, South West England. It is within Salisbury Plain. The village is on the right (west) bank of the Avon, opposite Fit ...

, Wiltshire in 1958 and retired from the army in 1965. Kite gained a wide affection and audience among television viewers in the 1960s as the presenter of ''Kite's Country'' on

Southern TV Southern Television was the ITV broadcasting licence holder for the South and South-East of England from 30 August 1958 to 31 December 1981. The company was launched as 'Southern Television Limited' and the title 'Southern Television' was con ...

, gently displaying his skills as a fly fisherman and his keen naturalist's eye for the wildlife of Wiltshire and Hampshire, each weekly episode being narrated in his lilting Welsh accent with considerable charm and expert knowledge. Known for his simple fishing style, extraordinarily keen vision and his invention of several enduringly successful fly patterns including Kite's Imperial, his many friends locally were augmented by admirers in France, Denmark, Norway and across the UK. Kite popularised to a wide audience the Netheravon style of nymph fishing invented by Frank Sawyer, the Avon riverkeeper and author and also resident in Netheravon, to whom he gave full credit in his book ''Nymph Fishing in Practice'', first published in 1963. Kite went on to co-host a programme with

Jack Hargreaves Jack Hargreaves OBE (1911–1994) was an English television presenter and writer whose enduring interest was to comment without nostalgia or sentimentality on accelerating distortions in relations between the city and the countryside, seeking ...

, also on Southern Television, called ''Country Boy'': the idea being to teach a young boy from the city the ways of country life; each week this young person would be introduced to another new experience living in the country such as fishing. Kite died of a second heart attack on the banks of the River Test in 1968, at the age of 48. In 1969 a collection of Kite's articles for the Shooting Times magazine was published under the title ”A Fisherman’s Diary”. A new edition of ''Nymph Fishing in Practice,'' with a biographical introduction and notes by Robert Spaight, was published by Swan Hill Press in 2000.

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* {{DEFAULTSORT:Kite, Oliver 1920 births 1968 deaths British television personalities British naturalists Angling writers 20th-century naturalists British people in colonial India British Army personnel of World War II British people in British Burma British people in British Malaya