Melvyn Bragg

The Right Honourable The Lord Bragg FBA, FRSA, FRSL, FRTS
Bragg addressing the London School of Economics, c.1990s
Born	(1939-10-06) 6 October 1939 Carlisle, Cumberland, UK
Nationality	British
Alma mater	Wadham College, Oxford
Occupation(s)	Broadcaster, presenter, interviewer, commentator, novelist, scriptwriter
Notable work	In Our Time
Television	The South Bank Show
Political party	Labour

Melvyn Bragg, Baron Bragg, FRS, FBA, FRSA, FRSL, FRTS (born 6 October 1939), is an English broadcaster and author, best known for his work with ITV as editor and presenter of the The South Bank Show (1978–2010).

Earlier in his career, Bragg worked for the BBC in various roles including presenter, a connection which resumed in 1988 when he began to host Start the Week on Radio 4. After his ennoblement in 1998, he switched to presenting the new In Our Time, a discussion radio programme which has run to over 600 editions. He is currently Chancellor of the University of Leeds.

Background

Bragg was born on 6 October 1939 in Carlisle, the son of Mary Ethel (née Park), a tailor, and Stanley Bragg, a stock keeper turned mechanic. He attended the Nelson Thomlinson School in Wigton and read Modern History at Wadham College, Oxford in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

Broadcasting career

Bragg began his career in 1961 as a general trainee at the BBC, spending his first two years in radio at the BBC World Service, then at the BBC Third Programme and BBC Home Service. He joined the production team of Huw Wheldon's Monitor arts series on BBC Television. and won an award for his screenplay on Debussy. He presented the BBC books programme Read All About It (also editor, 1976-77) and The Lively Arts, an arts series which included Whose Doctor Who (1977), the earliest documentary on the television series.

He is best known for the London Weekend Television (LWT) arts programme The South Bank Show, which he edited and presented from 1978 to 2010. He was Head of Arts at LWT from 1982 to 1990 and Controller of Arts at LWT from 1990. He is also known for his many programmes on BBC Radio 4, including Start the Week (1988 to 1998), The Routes of English, (mapping the history of the English language), and In Our Time (1998 to present), which in March 2011 broadcast its 500th programme. In February 2012, he began Melvyn Bragg on Class and Culture, a three-part series on BBC2 examining popular media culture with an analysis of the British social class system.

In 2012 he brought back The South Bank Show to Sky Arts 1, and is expected to stay with Sky until 2015. In December 2012, he began The Value of Culture, a five-part series on BBC Radio 4 examining the meaning of culture, expanding on Matthew Arnold's landmark (1869) collection of essays Culture and Anarchy. In June 2013 he wrote and presented The Most Dangerous Man in Tudor England, broadcast by the BBC. This told the dramatic story of William Tyndale's mission to translate the Bible from Latin to English.

A novelist and writer of non-fiction, Bragg has written a number of television and film screenplays. Some of his early television work was in collaboration with Ken Russell, for whom he wrote the biographical dramas The Debussy Film (1965) and Isadora Duncan, the Biggest Dancer in the World (1967), as well as Russell's film about Tchaikovsky, The Music Lovers (1970). He is president of the National Academy of Writing. His 2008 novel Remember Me is part of a series of autobiographical fictions.

Bragg is a Vice President of the Friends of the British Library, a charity set up to provide funding support to the British Library. He became a member of the Arts Council Literature Panel in 1969, since becoming Chairman, and is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society.

Bragg appeared on the Front Row "Cultural Exchange" on May Day 2013. He nominated a self-portrait by Rembrandt as a piece of art which he had found especially interesting.

Intellectual contributions

Bragg has described the rise of a mass intelligentsia in Britain. He is credited with bringing the term "intelligentsia" into common consciousness; it was earlier used only in specialist sociological studies.

Personal life

Bragg in 2011

Bragg married his first wife, Marie-Elisabeth Roche, in 1961, and they had one child, a daughter. Ten years later Roche killed herself. He did not know that his wife had a history of suicide attempts. "I could have done things which helped and I did things which harmed", he told The Guardian in 1998. "So yes, I feel guilt, I feel remorse."

Bragg's second wife, Catherine Mary Haste, whom he married in 1973, is also a television producer and writer, having, among other things, edited the 2007 memoir of Clarissa Eden, widow of Sir Anthony Eden, and collaborated with Cherie Booth, wife of Tony Blair, on a 2004 book about the wives of British Prime Ministers. They have a son and a daughter.

Bragg has publicly discussed two nervous breakdowns that happened in his life, one in his teens, and another in his 30s.

A friend of Tony Blair, in 1998 Bragg was named in a list of the largest private financial donors to the Labour Party. He is a supporter of Arsenal F.C. and Carlisle United (London Branch Hon President). In August 2014, Lord Bragg was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian opposing Scottish independence in the run-up to September's referendum on that issue.

Selected honours and awards

• Writers' Guild Screenplay Award (1966)
• Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for Without a City Wall (1968)
• Time/Life Silver Pen Award for The Hired Man (1970)
• Northern Arts Association Prose Award (1970)
• Broadcasting Guild Award (1984)
• Ivor Novello Musical Award (1985)
• President of the National Campaign for the Arts (since 1986)
• British Academy of Film and Television Arts Dimbleby Award (1986)
• Honorary Degree from the Open University as Doctor of the University. (1989)
• Domus Fellow, St Catherine's College, Oxford (1990)
• Bad Sex in Fiction Award for A Time to Dance (1993)
• BAFTA TV Award for An Interview with Dennis Potter (1995)
• Honorary Fellowship from Wadham College, Oxford (1995)
• Stretford Grammar Paired Reading Program, Stretford (1996)
• Governor of the London School of Economics (since 1997).
• Bragg was appointed to the House of Lords as Baron Bragg, of Wigton in the County of Cumbria (Labour life peer) on 4 August 1998
• Appointed Chancellor of the University of Leeds (1999)
• WH Smith Literary Award for The Soldier's Return (2000)
• Namesake of Millom School Drama Studio (2005)
• The South Bank Show Lifetime Achievement Award (2010)
• BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award (2010)
• Honorary Fellowship of the British Academy (2010), for "public understanding of the arts, literature and sciences"
• Honorary Fellowship of Royal Society (2010)
• Son of War, Crossing The Lines, and A Place in England, all long-listed for the Man Booker Prize

Bibliography

Novels

• For Want of a Nail (1965)
• The Second Inheritance (1966)
• The Cumbrian Trilogy:
  • The Hired Man (1969)
  • A Place in England (1970)
  • Kingdom Come (1980)
• The Nerve (1971)
• Josh Lawton (1972)
• The Silken Net (1974)
• Autumn Manoeuvres (1978)
• Love and Glory (1983)
• The Maid of Buttermere (1987) (based on the life of Mary Robinson)
• Without a City Wall (1988)
• The Second Inheritance (1990)
• A Time to Dance (1990)
• Crystal Rooms (1992)
• Credo (1996) also known as The Sword and the Miracle
• The Soldier's Return Quartet:
  • The Soldier's Return (1999)
  • A Son of War (2001)
  • Crossing the Lines (2003)
  • Remember Me... (2008)
• Grace and Mary (2013)

Non-fiction books

• Speak For England (1976)
• Land of The Lakes (1983)
• Laurence Olivier (1984)
• Cumbria in Verse (editor) (1984)
• Rich: The Life of Richard Burton (1988)
• King Lear in New York (1994)
• On Giants' Shoulders (1998)
• Two Thousand Years Part 1: The Birth of Christ to the Crusades (1999)
• Two Thousand Years Part 2 (1999)
• The Routes of English (2001)
• The Adventure of English (2003)
• Twelve Books That Changed the World (2006)
• In Our Time (editor) (2009)
• The Book of Books (2011)

Children's books

• A Christmas Child (1977)
• My Favourite Stories of Lakeland (editor) (1981)

Screenwriting

• Isadora (1968) (with Clive Exton and Margaret Drabble)
• Play Dirty (1968)
• The Music Lovers (1970) (directed by Ken Russell)
• Jesus Christ Superstar (1973)

External links

• "Melvyn Bragg". Encyclopedia of Television. Museum of Broadcast Communications.
• An interview with Melvyn Bragg on Notebook on Cities and Culture