Melvyn Bragg

Melvyn Bragg, Baron Bragg (born 6 October 1939), is an English broadcaster, author and parliamentarian.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> He was the editor and presenter of The South Bank Show (1978–2010, 2012–2023), and the presenter of the BBC Radio 4 documentary series In Our Time from 1998 to 2025.<ref name=iot1000>Template:Cite web</ref>

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. After his ennoblement in 1998, he switched to presenting the new In Our Time,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> an academic discussion radio programme, which has run to more than one thousand broadcast editions and is also a podcast.<ref name=iot1000/> He served as Chancellor of the University of Leeds from 1999 until 2017.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In September 2025, Bragg announced that he would step down from hosting In Our Time.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Early life

Bragg was born on 6 October 1939 in Carlisle and was raised in Wigton, Cumberland,<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="mbceotv"/>Template:Fv the son of Stanley Bragg, a stock keeper turned publican, and Mary Ethel (née Park), who worked alongside her husband in the pub.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Both the Braggs and Parks, Cumberland families, were agricultural labourers, also working at collieries and in domestic service.<ref name="telegraph 2007">Template:Cite newsTemplate:Cbignore</ref> He was given the name Melvyn by his mother after she saw the actor Melvyn Douglas at a local cinema.<ref name=BBCTwo18July2015>Melvyn Bragg: Wigton to Westminster, BBC Two, 18 July 2015</ref> He was raised in the small town of Wigton,<ref name=BBCTwo18July2015/> where he attended the Wigton primary school<ref name=GuardianProfile2004/> and later The Nelson Thomlinson Grammar School,<ref name="mbceotv"/>Template:Fv where he was Head Boy.<ref name=BBCTwo18July2015/> He was an only child, born a year after his parents married. His father was away from home serving with the Royal Air Force for four years during the war. His upbringing and childhood experiences were typical of the working-class environment of that era.<ref name=BBCTwo18July2015/>

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.<ref name=BBCTwo18July2015/> 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.<ref name=BBCTwo18July2015/> Into his teens he was a member of the Boy Scouts and played rugby in his school's first team.<ref name=BBCTwo18July2015/> 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.<ref name=BBCTwo18July2015/> He studied Modern History at Wadham College, Oxford, in the late 1950s and early 1960s.<ref name="telegraph 2007"/>

Career

Broadcasting

Bragg began his career in 1961 as a general trainee at the BBC.<ref name="mbceotv"/>Template:Fv He was the recipient of one of only three traineeships awarded that year.<ref name=BBCTwo18July2015/> He spent his first two years in radio at the BBC World Service, then at the BBC Third Programme and BBC Home Service.<ref name="Mensa1">Article by Melvyn Bragg in British Mensa Magazine, January 2002, p. 7.</ref> He joined the production team of Huw Wheldon's Monitor arts series on BBC Television.<ref name="Mensa1"/> He presented the BBC books programme Read All About It (and was also its editor, 1976–77)<ref name="mbceotv"/>Template:Fv and The Lively Arts, a BBC Two arts series.<ref name="Bignell">Template:Cite book</ref> He then edited and presented the London Weekend Television (LWT) arts programme The South Bank Show from 1978 to 2010.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> His interview with playwright Dennis Potter shortly before his death is regularly cited as one of the most moving and memorable television moments ever.<ref name=IndyProfile2014/> His interest in popular music as well as classical is credited with making the arts more accessible and less elitist.<ref name=IndyProfile2014/>

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),<ref>Simon Elmes, And Now on Radio 4: A Celebration of the World's Best Radio Station, London: Random House Books, 2007, pp. 72–73.</ref> The Routes of English (mapping the history of the English language),<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and In Our Time (1998 to 2025), which in March 2011 broadcast its 500th programme.<ref>Template:Cite podcast</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> 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.<ref name=ITVGrandees>Template:Cite news</ref>

In 2012 he brought The South Bank Show back to Sky Arts 1.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> 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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> 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.<ref>"Melvyn Bragg on Class and Culture", bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 3 April 2014.</ref> 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.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In 2015, Bragg was appointed as a Vice President of the Royal Television Society.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

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.<ref name=BBCTwo18July2015/> 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.

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.<ref name=BBCTwo18July2015/> 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.<ref name=BBCTwo18July2015/>

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 ReviewTemplate:'s 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.<ref name=IndyProfile1993>Profile: A time to dance back to Cumbria?: Melvyn Bragg, cultural supremo in a crisis, The Independent, 27 November 1993</ref> 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.<ref name=GuardianProfile2004/>

Peerage

Bragg's friends include the former Labour Party leaders Tony Blair and Neil Kinnock, and former deputy leader Roy Hattersley.<ref name=GuardianProfile2004/> 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.<ref name=BBCdonors>Template:Cite news</ref> 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,<ref>Minutes and Order Paper – Minutes of Proceedings from the House of Lords, 28 October 1998.</ref><ref>Template:London Gazette</ref> one of a number of Labour donors given peerages. This led to accusations of cronyism from the defeated Conservative Party.<ref name=BBCdonors/>

In the Lords he takes a keen interest in the arts and education.<ref name=BBCTwo18July2015/> 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.<ref name=GuardianProfile2004>The Guardian profile: Melvyn Bragg, The Guardian, Steven Morris, 17 September 2004</ref> He campaigned against it on the grounds that it could affect the livelihoods of Cumbrian farmers.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> 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.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

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".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

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."<ref>Template:Cite newsTemplate:Cbignore</ref> In 2012, Bragg criticised what he claimed to be the "Animus and the ignorance" of the atheism debate.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

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.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite newsTemplate:Cbignore</ref>

Personal life

In 1961, after a short courtship, Bragg married his first wife, Marie-Elisabeth Roche (b. 1939).<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In 1965 they had a daughter, Marie-Elsa Bragg.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Roche was a French viscountess studying painting at Oxford.<ref name=BBCTwo18July2015/> In 1971, Roche died by suicide.<ref name="Telegraph 20-6-16">Template:Cite news</ref> 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."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> This was in part a reference to his infidelities which included Cate Haste, whom he married in 1973.<ref name="mbceotv" /><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Haste was also a television producer and writer, whose literary work includes editing the 2007 memoir of Clarissa Eden, widow of Lord Avon, 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.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite web</ref>

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.<ref name="Telegraph 20-6-16" /> The marriage between Haste and Bragg was dissolved in 2018 and Haste died from lung cancer in April 2021.<ref>Template:Cite newsTemplate:Cbignore</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Another reported affair was with Lady Jane Wellesley between 1979 and 1987.<ref name="Telegraph 20-6-16" />

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.<ref name=":0" /><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Bragg has publicly discussed two nervous breakdowns that he has suffered, one in his teens and another in his 30s.<ref name="smh.com.au">Template:Cite news</ref> 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.<ref name=BBCTwo18July2015/> The second followed his first wife's suicide.<ref name=IndyProfile2014>Template:Cite news</ref> 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.<ref name=BBCTwo18July2015/>

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,<ref name=IndyProfile2014/> but still owns a house near his home town of Wigton.<ref name=BBCTwo18July2015/> He is a member of the Garrick and Chelsea Arts clubs.<ref name="IndyProfile2014" /><ref name=":0" />

He also takes an interest in football, supporting both Carlisle United<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> and Arsenal.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> He is the vice president of the Carlisle United Supporters Club London Branch.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

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.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Positions and memberships

• President of the Words by the Water literary festivalTemplate:Cn
• President of the National Campaign for the Arts (since 1986)
• Domus Fellow, St Catherine's College, Oxford (1990)
• Chairman of Border Television 1990–96 (deputy chairman 1985–90)<ref name=GuardianProfile2004/>
• Honorary Fellowship from Wadham College, Oxford (1995)
• Governor of the London School of Economics (since 1997)
• Peerage – Baron Bragg (since 1998)
• Chancellor of the University of Leeds (1999–2017)
• President of the charity MIND (2002)<ref name=GuardianProfile2004/>
• Honorary Fellowship of the British Academy (2010), for "public understanding of the arts, literature and sciences"<ref name="ba2010">Template:Cite web</ref>
• Honorary Fellowship of Royal Society (2010)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• Honorary Fellowship from the University of Cumbria 2010<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• Honorary Doctorate of Literature (D.Litt.), University College London (2014)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• President of the National Academy of Writing
• Vice President of the Friends of the British Library<ref name="ar0607">Template:Cite web</ref>
• Chairman of the Arts Council Literature Panel
• Vice President of the Carlisle United Supporters Club London Branch
• Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) (2018)<ref>Template:London Gazette</ref>
• Honorary degree from the University of Oxford (2025).<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Awards and honours

Literary prizes

• Writers' Guild Screenplay Award (1966)<ref name="mbceotv"/>
• Mail on Sunday/John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for Without a City Wall (1968)
• Time/Life Silver Pen Award for The Hired Man (1970)<ref name="mbceotv"/>
• Northern Arts Association Prose Award (1970)
• Bad Sex in Fiction Award for A Time to Dance (1993)
• WH Smith Literary Award for The Soldier's Return (2000)
• Crossing The Lines was long-listed for the Booker Prize in 2003<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Film & television awards

• Broadcasting Guild Award (1984)
• British Academy of Film and Television Arts Dimbleby Award (1986)<ref name="mbceotv"/>
• BAFTA TV Award for An Interview with Dennis Potter (1995)
• BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award (2010)<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
• Best New Radio Series for Routes of English (2000)<ref name=GuardianProfile2004/>
• Royal Television Society Lifetime Achievement Award (2015)
• Sky Arts Awards Lifetime Achievement Award (2024)

Other awards

• Ivor Novello Musical Award (1985)<ref name="mbceotv"/>
• Honorary Degree from the Open University as Doctor of the University. (1989)
• Namesake of Millom School Drama Studio (2005)<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
• The South Bank Show Lifetime Achievement Award (2010)
• Sandford St.Martin Trust Personal Award (2014)

Bibliography

Novels

• For Want of a Nail (1965)
• The Second Inheritance (1966)
• Without a City Wall (1968)
• 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)
• 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)
• Now is the Time (2015)
• Love Without End: A Story of Heloise and Abelard (2019)

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)
• The Seventh Seal (Det Sjunde Inseglet) (1993)
• 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)
• 12 Books That Changed the World (2006)
• In Our Time: A Companion to the Radio 4 series (editor) (2009)
• The Book of Books (2011)
• William Tyndale: A Very Brief History (2017)
• In Our Time: Celebrating Twenty Years of Essential Conversation (2018)
• Back In The Day. A Memoir (2022)

Children's books

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

Screenwriting

• The Debussy Film (1965)<ref name="mbceotv"/>
• Isadora (1968) (with Clive Exton and Margaret Drabble)
• Play Dirty (1968)
• The Music Lovers (1970) (directed by Ken Russell)
• Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) (co-written and directed by Norman Jewison)

External links

• Template:Discogs artist
• Template:IMDb name
• In Our Time (BBC Radio 4)
• Template:Commons category-inline
• Template:Cite encyclopedia
• An interview with Melvyn Bragg on Notebook on Cities and Culture
• Archival material at Template:Wikidata