WAY WITH WORDS
The Way With Words exhibition celebrates notable people with a connection to the local area who found success with a career in words.
Peter was born in Smithdown Road Hospital and attended Dovedale Primary School.
Peter Sissons was probably British television’s most experienced presenter of News. For nearly forty years he worked for ITN, Channel Four, and the BBC – presenting all the main terrestrial bulletins, and a host of special programmes on major events. He also succeeded Sir Robin Day as presenter of the BBC’s flagship discussion programme, Question Time.
In 1984 he was named by the Broadcasting Press Guild as the “Best Front of Camera Performer”. During his time as anchor, Channel 4 News won an unprecedented three consecutive BAFTA awards and in 1988 Peter was awarded the Royal Television Society’s “Judges Award” for his work on the programme.
Sylvia Sissons, Peter’s wife, says: “Peter was proud and grateful for his Liverpool roots. He was full of admiration for his teachers at Dovedale Road school, who managed classes of 50, and for the academic excellence of the Liverpool Institute (now the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts) which secured him a place at Oxford. But Peter’s education was so much more than academic. Perhaps most of all, he valued the insights he gained as a schoolboy and student into the working lives of many people. He variously worked as a bus conductor, postman, security guard at the docks, cake factory worker and, at Christmas, he was a turkey minder. This gained him an empathy and better understanding of people’s lives which stood him in good stead when he returned first as a reporter and, latterly, as a frontline interviewer and chairman of Question Time.”