This is taken from The Times, January 09, 2007:

Magnus Magnusson
October 12, 1929 - January 7, 2006
Broadcaster, author and translator who became synonymous with the BBC quiz Mastermind

Among his many other activities, Magnus Magnusson was a translator of the Icelandic sagas and a presenter of television programmes on history and archaeology. But for a wider public he is synonymous with the BBC quiz Mastermind, over which he presided as question master for 25 years.

He had not been the automatic choice for the job. Bernard Levin and the political expert Robert Mackenzie were among the names considered, and when these had been discarded Magnusson had to audition against Alan Watson, a current affairs broadcaster from The Money Programme and Panorama. But he settled effortlessly into the role, which initially bore the forbidding title of interrogator.

Devised as a BBC riposte to ITV’s University Challenge, Mastermind was the creation of its first producer, Bill Wright, inspired by the wartime questioning by the Gestapo he had endured after being shot down over Germany. The BBC wanted a serious quiz and this was underlined by the contestants’ black leather chair, the spotlight that picked them out from surrounding darkness and the atmospheric theme music, appropriately called Approaching Menace.

Magnusson brought to the programme a formal presence, bordering on the austere, but he was always courteous and fair. He also unwittingly devised a catchphrase that stayed with him long after the programme ended. Contestants were given two minutes to answer questions, first on a special subject of their choice, and then on general knowledge. The timing was strict, and a beeper sounded when the two minutes were up. But it was thought fair, if this cut Magnusson off in mid-question, to let him continue and allow an answer. So was born the catchphrase “I’ve started, so I’ll finish”.

Mastermind began as a late-night experiment in 1972, but after moving to a peak-time slot attracted regular audiences of about ten million. Most of the winners enjoyed their moment of fame and returned to obscurity. Among the exceptions were Sir David Hunt, a retired ambassador and former private secretary to Churchill and Attlee, and Fred Housego, a London taxi driver, who both became popular broadcasters themselves.

Blighted, though, by erratic scheduling, Mastermind’s audience gradually declined, and in 1997 the BBC decided to call a halt. Magnusson was allowed to have the black chair as a memento. The format proved durable enough to transfer to radio and it eventually returned to television, but with other question masters. Magnusson, meanwhile, kept in touch with past contestants through the annual reunions of the Mastermind Club, of which he was patron. He also wrote a history of the programme, I’ve Started, so I’ll Finish.

Magnus Magnusson was born in Reykjavik, in 1929, but was brought to Scotland as a baby of 9 months when his father took up a business job in Edinburgh, where he was later the Icelandic Consul-General. At Edinburgh Academy Magnusson shone both in the classroom and on the games field, and he was selected for the Scottish schoolboys cricket team in a match at Lord’s. He would probably have been the first Icelander to play there — but rain prevented a ball being bowled.

Magnusson won a scholarship to Jesus College, Oxford, where he read English. He then spent two years doing postgraduate research into Old Norse literature, but gave it up for journalism, joining the Scottish Daily Express in 1953. He became assistant editor of the Scottish Daily Express before moving to The Scotsman in the same capacity in 1961.

Meanwhile, he had done occasional documentaries for Scottish Television and the BBC. In 1964 he was recruited as a presenter for Tonight, the early evening magazine programme, where he worked alongside Cliff Michelmore and such reporters as Fyfe Robertson and Alan Whicker.

After a year, during which Magnusson had leave of absence from The Scotsman, the Tonight programme was brought to an end, having been on the air since 1957. Magnusson was offered a job on its successor, Twenty-Four Hours, but instead, wishing to bring up his young family in Scotland rather than England, he chose to return to The Scotsman.

By now, however, television held more appeal for him. He produced documentaries for BBC Scotland and presented its weekly current affairs series. In 1966 he returned to national television as the presenter of Chronicle, a monthly programme for the BBC on archaeology and history. He was with Chronicle for 12 years and regarded it, and the series it spawned, as his most satisfying television achievement.

The first of these series, the 12-part BC: The Archaeology of the Bible Lands, was transmitted in 1977. Vikings!, a ten-part homage to his Norse ancestors, followed three years later. These were good-quality television, playing to appreciative but small audiences. But with Mastermind Magnusson became a television celebrity with a face known to millions.

Away from the screen he was a prolific author and translator. His early books were spin-offs from Chronicle and his archaeology series, but he also wrote histories of Ireland, Iceland, the island of Lindisfarne and his old school, Edinburgh Academy. A fascination with reference books led to his editing the 1990 edition of Chambers Biographical Dictionary.

In 2000 he published his most ambitious work, Scotland: The Story of a Nation, which ran to more than 700 pages — even though it ended in the 18th century. It was inspired partly by Walter Scott’s Tales of a Grandfather and a radio series in which he interviewed contemporary historians who were looking afresh at Scotland’s past.

Magnusson had translated and produced Icelandic plays while at Oxford, and he became a regular translator of Iceland’s literature. Among the works he tackled were four of the Icelandic sagas, in collaboration with Herman Palsson, and five novels by the Nobel prizewinner Halldor Laxness.

Although always busy with projects of his own, Magnusson found time to sit on several public bodies, and he served them assiduously. He was chairman of the Ancient Monuments Board for Scotland from 1981 to 1989 and of Scottish Natural Heritage for seven years in the 1990s. He sat on the boards of organisations concerned with museums and the environment and, as a keen bird-watcher since boyhood, was elected president of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in 1985.

Magnusson was Rector of Edinburgh University, 1975-78, and in 2002 became Chancellor of Glasgow Caledonian University. He had a string of honorary doctorates. He liked to say that while his hearth was in Scotland his heart was in Iceland, and he never gave up his Icelandic citizenship. In 1989 he was appointed honorary KBE.

He married Mamie Baird, a journalist, in 1954. Of their two sons and three daughters, one son died in a road accident just before his 12th birthday. Magnusson is survived by his wife and by his four remaining children, all of whom have worked in broadcasting.

Magnus Magnusson, journalist, broadcaster and author, was born on October 12, 1929. He died of cancer on January 7, 2006, aged 77

This is taken from The Guardian:

Magnus Magnusson
Gifted broadcaster whose serious approach brought a touch of gravitas to a popular quiz show
by Dennis Barker
Tuesday January 9, 2007

Magnus Magnusson, who has died aged 77 of pancreatic cancer, was best known as the presiding inquisitor of BBC1 television's quiz show Mastermind, memorable for the daunting black leather chair in which contestants were interrogated and for Magnusson's catchphrase, "I've started, so I'll finish." The show overshadowed his work as a journalist and author or translator of more than 30 books, but it brought him the national fame which he used to serve his pet causes, among them archaeology, Bible history, conservation and the study of birds. Though he had lived in Scotland since he was nine months old, Magnusson was to the last an Icelander, who declined to abandon his nationality even when it prevented him from using his honorary knighthood for services to national heritage.

In its heyday, Mastermind attracted audiences of 20m, though they had shrunk to 6m by the time the BBC axed the show in 1997, after a run of 25 years. Its big break came in 1973, when it was moved from its late-night slot to peaktime viewing. Though many viewers assumed Magnusson had invented it, the show was developed by BBC producer Bill Wright from a nightmare he had about being interrogated by the Gestapo (as he had been in reality when captured in the Netherlands during the second world war).

Wright correctly thought that to have a contestant being asked searching questions while sitting in a lonely, illuminated chair, with everything framed by ominous music, might have some fascination. Magnusson's contribution was to give it a gravitas that made it respectable to viewers who might have turned their backs derisively on more conventional quizzes. When, in 1996, Mastermind was second only to A Question of Sport as the longest running television quiz, Magnusson said the secret of its success was that contestants were "treated with such dignity ... We are there to play a game, a seriously entertaining game, and we don't want people to be humiliated ... a lot of people respond to that." He had the ability to make the interrogation of contestants - on subjects as various as punk rock, beekeeping, burial grounds of London and famous British poisoners - seem like a serious intellectual exploration.

The special subject round was followed by one on general knowledge questions, which Magnusson liked to think of as getting the viewers more involved. One of several spin-off versions, with Clive Anderson on the Discovery channel, developed this aspect interactively.

Though Magnusson had his critics - the Guardian's Simon Hattenstone wrote of his "unbearable pomposity" - his confidence and composure were vital to the programme's success. He once got in such a nervous state that he forgot which university he was broadcasting from, but neither the contestants nor the viewers realised anything was amiss.

Magnusson was one of four children of a cultivated Icelander appointed as European manager of the Iceland Co-op. The first stop of the ship carrying him and his family to Europe was at Leith, so they took up residence in Edinburgh. They wanted desperately to fit in; the seven-year-old Magnus got a memorable ticking off from his father when he was brought home by a policeman who had caught him breaking windows in a nearby empty house. After Magnusson Sr was appointed as Icelandic consul general in Edinburgh, the family home was filled at weekends with Icelandic students from Edinburgh University.

Magnusson was educated at Edinburgh academy, which he enjoyed so much that years later he wrote its history, The Clacken and the Slate (1974), drawing its title from a Robert Louis Stevenson poem. Similar to an English public school, its fees were just affordable, though he took in packed lunches to save money. He launched a bird-watching society at school, and at 14 won an essay competition organised by the RSPB (of which he became president in 1985). His enjoyment of the Icelandic sagas also developed into an adult interest, leading to the books Vikings Expanding Westwards (1973) and Hammer of the North (1976), and the television series Vikings! (1980).

He went to Jesus College, Oxford, at 18 to study English, and was soon writing for the student magazine Isis. To get urgently needed funds, he also produced a weekly do-it-yourself column for the Edinburgh Evening Despatch by copying out hints from public library books. In the vacations, he wrote for the Scottish Daily Express and the Scotsman. He translated and produced Icelandic plays, which was to lead to mature work in translation, including five of the novels of the Icelander Nobel prizewinner Halldor Laxness (1960-69) and, with Herman Palsson, four Icelandic sagas (1999-2002).

Magnusson would recount with sly self-deprecation his 1953 entry into journalism with the Scottish Daily Express, complete with "posh degree, yellow gloves, a silver-headed cane and an umbrella with holes in it". The chief feature writer, Mamie Baird, thought him a lunatic, but married him the following year. From being assistant editor of the Scottish Daily Express, he went to the same post at the Scotsman (1961-67). In 1964, he joined the BBC to present the current affairs programme Tonight, and he was one of the creators of the history series Chronicle on BBC2, which ran from 1966 to 1980. Mastermind started in 1972, and from 1979 he edited the Bodley Head Archaeologies series, of which he provided the introductory volume. In 1990, he edited the fifth edition of Chambers Biological Dictionary. In the end, as well as having written nearly 20 books, he had translated almost as many and contributed to many more on archaeology and other subjects.

Magnusson won numerous awards in Britain and Iceland, was given honorary doctorates by Edinburgh, York, Paisley, Strathclyde and Napier universities, was rector of Edinburgh University (1975-78), chancellor of Glasgow Caledonian University from 2002 , and chairman of the Ancient Monuments Board for Scotland (1981-89), Scottish National Heritage (1992-99) and the Scottish National Conservancy Council (1991-92).

Magnusson said that he would never sit in the black chair, since he did not think he could do it himself, though the 1980 winner Fred Housego, a London taxi cab driver whose special subjects were Henry II, Westminster Abbey and the Tower of London, maintained he would have won hands down. Housego contrasted the impersonal interrogator with the delightful man he got to know once the competition was over.

The Mastermind formula returned to BBC2 in 2003, with John Humphrys putting the questions: Magnusson presented the 2006 winner's prize in the final broadcast last November. Mamie survives him, as do their four children, Sally, Margaret, Anna and Jon, who all work in television. Their fifth child, Siggy, was killed by traffic after jumping off a bus at the age of 11 in 1973 .

· Magnus Magnusson, broadcaster and journalist, born October 12 1929; died January 7 2007