Product Code Database
Melvyn Bragg, Baron Bragg (born 6 October 1939), is an English broadcaster, author, and parliamentarian. Earlier in his career, Bragg worked for the BBC in various roles including presenter, a connection that resumed in 1988 when he began to host Start the Week on BBC Radio 4. He was also the editor and presenter of The South Bank Show (1978–2010, 2012–2023), and served as Chancellor of the University of Leeds from 1999 until 2017.
After his ennoblement in 1998, he switched to presenting the new BBC Radio 4 documentary series In Our Time, an academic discussion radio programme, which has run to more than one thousand broadcast editions and is also a podcast. In September 2025, Bragg announced that he would step down from hosting the show after 27 years.
When he was a child, he was led to believe that his mother's foster mother was his maternal grandmother. His grandmother had been forced to leave the town owing to the stigma of her daughter being born illegitimately. From the age of 8 until he left for university, his family home was above a pub in Wigton, the Black-A-Moor Hotel, of which his father had become the landlord. Into his teens he was a member of the Boy Scouts and played rugby in his school's first team. Encouraged by a teacher who had recognised his work ethic, Bragg was one of an increasing number of working-class teenagers of the era being given a path to university through the grammar school system. He studied Modern History at Wadham College, Oxford, in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
He was Head of Arts at LWT from 1982 to 1990 and Controller of Arts at LWT from 1990. He has made many programmes on BBC Radio 4, including Start the Week (1988 to 1998),Simon Elmes, And Now on Radio 4: A Celebration of the World's Best Radio Station, London: Random House Books, 2007, pp. 72–73. The Routes of English (mapping the history of the English language), and In Our Time (1998 to 2025), which in March 2011 broadcast its 500th programme. Bragg's pending departure from the South Bank Show was portrayed by The Guardian as the last of the ITV grandees, speculating that the next generation of ITV broadcasters would not have the same longevity or influence as Bragg or his ITV contemporaries John Birt, Greg Dyke, Michael Grade and Christopher Bland.
In 2012 he brought The South Bank Show back to Sky Arts 1. 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 Bragg 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 the original languages to English. In February 2012, he began Melvyn Bragg on Class and Culture, a three-part series on BBC Two examining popular media culture, with an analysis of the British social class system. "Melvyn Bragg on Class and Culture", bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 3 April 2014. 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. In 2015, Bragg was appointed as a Vice President of the Royal Television Society.
A novelist and writer of non-fiction, Bragg has also 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). Most of Bragg's novels are autobiographical fictions, set in and around the town of Wigton during his childhood. In 1972, he co-wrote the script for Norman Jewison's film Jesus Christ Superstar (1973). Although Bragg published several works, he was unable to make a living, forcing a return to television by the mid-1970s.
Bragg received a variety of reviews for his work, some critics declaring it outstanding and others suggesting it was lazy. Many suggested that splitting his time between writing and broadcasting was detrimental to the quality, and that his media profile and his known sensitivity to criticism made him an easy target for unjust reviews. The Literary Reviews prize mocking his writing of sex in fiction, according to The Independent, was awarded not on readers' nominations, but simply because it would be good PR. Profile: A time to dance back to Cumbria?: Melvyn Bragg, cultural supremo in a crisis, The Independent, 27 November 1993 From 1996 to 1998 he also wrote a column in The Times newspaper; he has also occasionally written for The Sunday Times, The Guardian and The Observer.
In the Lords he takes a keen interest in the arts and education. According to The Guardian in 2004, he voted 104 times out of a possible 226 in the 2002/3 session, only once against the government, on the Hunting Act. The Guardian profile: Melvyn Bragg, The Guardian, Steven Morris, 17 September 2004 He campaigned against it on the grounds that it could affect the livelihoods of Cumbrian farmers. In August 2014, Bragg was one of 200 public figures who signed a letter to The Guardian opposing Scottish independence in the run-up to September's referendum on that issue.
Bragg has occasionally commented on American politics, in 1998 agreeing with the sentiment that writer and polemicist Gore Vidal was "the greatest president America never had".
In August 2016, Bragg publicly accused the National Trust of "bullying" in its "disgraceful purchase" of land in the Lake District, which could threaten the Herdwick rare breed of sheep as well as the Lake District's historic farming system, for which the region was nominated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
In June 2016 it was reported that Bragg and Haste had separated amicably, and that Bragg now shared a home with former film assistant Gabriel Clare-Hunt, with whom he had an affair that began in 1995. She is 16 years younger than him. The marriage between Haste and Bragg was dissolved in 2018 and Haste died from lung cancer in April 2021. Another reported affair was with Lady Jane Wellesley between 1979 and 1987.
In September 2019 he married Clare-Hunt at St Bega's Church in Bassenthwaite, part of the Lake District National Park. His eldest daughter, Marie-Elsa, a priest, conducted the service. His second daughter, Alice, read a lesson, while his son, Tom, was an usher. Guests included Cumbrian mountaineer Sir Chris Bonington and the ceremony featured the premiere of music specially written by Bragg's friend, composer Howard Goodall.
Bragg has publicly discussed two nervous breakdowns that he has suffered, one in his teens and another in his 30s. His first breakdown began at the age of 13. Inspired by a passage in Wordsworth's The Prelude, he found ways to cope, including exploring the outdoors and the adoption of a strong work ethic, as well as meeting his first girlfriend. The second followed his first wife's suicide. He traces the origin of a lifelong nervousness of public speaking to the experience of giving a reading from the lectern as a choirboy at the age of six.
At the age of 75, he was profiled in the BBC Two television programme Melvyn Bragg: Wigton to Westminster, first broadcast on 18 July 2015. He lives in Hampstead Hill Gardens in Hampstead, London, but still owns a house near his home town of Wigton. He is a member of the Garrick Club and Chelsea Arts clubs.
He also takes an interest in football, supporting both Carlisle United and Arsenal. He is the vice president of the Carlisle United Supporters Club London Branch.
Bragg is a relative of Sir William Henry Bragg and his son, Sir Lawrence Bragg, who were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1915 for their work in X-ray crystal structure analysis. He presented a Radio 4 programme on the subject in August 2013.
Career
Broadcasting
Bragg began his career in 1961 as a general trainee at the BBC. He was the recipient of one of only three traineeships awarded that year. He spent his first two years in radio at the BBC World Service, then at the BBC Third Programme and BBC Home Service.Article by Melvyn Bragg in British Mensa Magazine, January 2002, p. 7. He joined the production team of Huw Wheldon's Monitor arts series on BBC Television. He presented the BBC books programme Read All About It (and was also its editor, 1976–77) and The Lively Arts, a BBC Two arts series. He then edited and presented the London Weekend Television (LWT) arts programme The South Bank Show from 1978 to 2010. His interview with playwright Dennis Potter shortly before his death is regularly cited as one of the most moving and memorable television moments ever. His interest in popular music as well as Classical music is credited with making the arts more accessible and less elitist.
Writing
Having produced unpublished short stories since the age of 19, Bragg had decided to become a writer after university. He recognised that writing would not, initially at least, earn him a living, and he took the opportunity at the BBC that arose after he had applied for posts in a variety of industries. While at the BBC, he continued writing. Publishing his first novel in 1965, he decided to leave the BBC to concentrate full-time on writing.
Peerage
Bragg's friends include the former Labour Party leaders Tony Blair and Neil Kinnock, and former deputy leader Roy Hattersley. He was one of 100 donors who gave the Labour Party a sum in excess of £5,000 in 1997, the year the party came to power under Blair in the general election. The following year he was appointed by Blair to the House of Lords as the life peer Baron Bragg, of Wigton in the County of Cumbria, Minutes and Order Paper – Minutes of Proceedings from the House of Lords, 28 October 1998. one of a number of Labour donors given peerages. This led to accusations of cronyism from the defeated Conservative Party.
Advocacy
Bragg has defended Christianity, particularly the King James Bible, although he does not claim to be a believer, seeing himself in Albert Einstein's term as a "believing unbeliever", adding that he is "unable to cross the River of Jordan which would lead me to the crucial belief in a godly eternity." In 2012, Bragg criticised what he claimed to be the "Animus and the ignorance" of the atheism debate.
Personal life
In 1961, after a short courtship, Bragg married his first wife, Marie-Elisabeth Roche (b. 1939). In 1965 they had a daughter, Marie-Elsa Bragg. Roche was a French viscountess studying painting at Oxford. In 1971, Roche died by suicide. In an interview with The Guardian in 1998, Bragg said, "I could have done things which helped and I did things which harmed. So yes, I feel guilt, I feel remorse." This was in part a reference to his infidelities which included Cate Haste, whom he married in 1973. Haste was also a television producer and writer, whose literary work includes editing the 2007 memoir of Clarissa Eden, widow of Anthony Eden, and collaborating with Cherie Booth, wife of Tony Blair, on a 2004 book about the wives of British prime ministers. They had a son and a daughter.
Positions and memberships
Awards and honours
Bibliography
Novels
Non-fiction books
Children's books
Screenwriting
External links
Categories: 1939 Births, Living People, 20th-century English Novelists, Alumni Of Wadham College, Oxford, Bafta Fellows, Bbc Radio 4 Presenters, English Biographers, English Male Journalists, English Male Novelists, English Radio Presenters, English Screenwriters, English Male Screenwriters, English Television Presenters, Fellows Of St Catherine's College, Oxford, Fellows Of The Royal Society Of Literature, Fellows Of The Royal Television Society, Honorary Fellows Of The British Academy, Honorary Fellows Of The Royal Society, Ivor Novello Award Winners, John Llewellyn Rhys Prize Winners, Labour Party Donors, Labour Party Life Peers, Life Peers Created By Elizabeth Ii, British Male Biographers, Members Of The Fabian Society, Members Of The Order Of The Companions Of Honour, People Associated With The London School Of Economics, People Associated With The University Of Leeds, People Educated At The Nelson Thomlinson School, People From Wigton, Peers Retired Under The House Of Lords Reform Act 2014
|
|
