Landor off

Not always the tallest person on the BBC News management team, but Liliane Landor's departure will leave large boots to fill. 

She returned to the BBC from a spell with Channel 4 News in the autumn of 2021, to run "International Service". She'd left abruptly in 2016, in what to outsiders looked like a disagreement over who should control new Foreign Office funding. 

At 68, she's been a wise, calming head in a frantic organisation obsessed with 'hits' and other superficial metrics.  She was born in Lebanon, and educated in France and Switzerland; she's British by adoption and Cuban through her mother. She speaks five languages, and worked as an interpreter in Paris and with the Council for Racial Equality in London before joining the BBC in 1980, presenting on the French Service. Thence to fronting Europe Today and The World Today before a range of editorial roles. She became Controller of Languages in 2010. She's a Gooner, and doesn't like current weekend changes on Radio 3. 

In her message to staff she writes "I remain deeply concerned about the operational capability of the World Service if additional cuts continue to weaken it further.

The essence of the World Service in English and 42 languages needs to be protected. It must be able to retain its distinctive universal voice regardless of how deeply it integrates into the wider BBC News framework. And it needs to continue to be a genuine international public service capable of reaching people and parts of the world in need of trusted news and information."