Cecilia Grace Hunt Gillie ( Reeves; 17 August 1907 – 20 April 1996) was an English radio executive for the BBC. She joined the BBC Foreign Liaison Office in 1933 and had her first foreign assignment in establishing the BBC Paris Office six years later. Gilles was appointed the BBC French Service's senior talks assistant in 1940 and became head of the BBC European Liaison Office towards the end of the Second World War. From 1947 to 1967, she served as the BBC's Paris representative, and assisted senior members Robin Scott and Noble Wilson on radio matters. Early life Gillie was born Cecilia Grace Hunt Reeves to the naval engineer Albert Robert Reeves and his wife Ella, née Hunt, on 18 August 1907, at Alma Road, Sheerness, the Isle of Sheppey, Kent. She was raised in Birmingham and taught at King Edward VI High School for Girls. Gillie enrolled at Newnham College, Cambridge and graduated with a degree in modern languages. Career In 1933, she joined the BBC Foreign Liaison Office, which had been recently formed at the time, and was made assistant to the foreign liaison officer Richard Marriott. During these duties, Gillie became especially worried with the arrangements of Edward R. Murrow, the CBS network's European director, with the two becoming close friends. She arranged from Broadcasting House for the uncensored broadcast of Murrow's report on Adolf Hitler's Anschluss to the United States in March 1938. Gillie had her first assignment abroad when she assisted Marriott in establishing the BBC's Paris Office in 1939. The two worked in Paris during the Phoney War period of the Second World War, but returned to London in mid-1940 after the Battle of France. Gillie was appointed the BBC French Service's senior talks assistant and attempted to form a team of French broadcasters to contribute to the programme Les Francais Parlent aux Francais (English: The French Speak to the French) to control the expansion of the service necessitated by Nazi German control of French broadcasting. Peter Pooley, the creator of Radio Newsreel and theatre expert, consulted her and told her the stage director Michel Saint-Denis, was in England awaiting repatriation to France after the French Army demobbed him. Gillie persuaded Pooley Saint-Denis would be more useful in broadcasting. She worked as talks assistant, producer of the programme and mentored those working on it. By the war's conclusion, she had become the head