Melvyn Bragg, Baron Bragg
Melvyn Bragg, Baron Bragg , FRSL , FRTS (born October 6, 1939 in Wigton , Cumberland , England ) is a British author , television and radio presenter and life peer .
Life
Family, education, private life
Bragg's parents were Mary Ethel Park, a seamstress, and Stanley Bragg, a warehouse manager who later became a machinist. He attended Nelson Thomlinson Grammar School in Wigton and then graduated in Modern History at Wadham College of Oxford University , which he with the degree of Master of Arts graduated.
Bragg was married twice. In 1961 he married Marie-Elisabeth Roche, with whom he has a daughter. His wife committed suicide in September 1971 after Bragg left her for another woman. He hadn't known about her previous suicide attempts. Still, he told the Guardian in 1998 : “I could have done things that would have helped, but I did things that caused suffering. I therefore feel guilty, I feel remorse. "
Bragg has a son and daughter with his second wife, Catherine Mary Haste, whom he married in 1973. Catherine Mary Haste is also a television producer and writer. Among other things, she edited the 2007 memoirs of Clarissa Eden , the widow of Anthony Edens . Together with Cherie Blair , wife of former Labor Prime Minister Tony Blair , she worked on a book about the wives of British Prime Ministers. Melvyn Bragg, for his part, is friends with Tony Blair. In 1998 he was on a list of the Labor Party's largest private donors .
Bragg says he suffered two nervous breakdowns in his life , one in his teens and one in his thirties.
Television career
Melvyn Bragg began his career in 1961 as a trainee at the BBC and spent the first two years working for the radio format BBC World Service . He later moved to the BBC Third Program and the BBC Home Service . He joined the production team for Huw Wheldon's cultural magazine Monitor at BBC Television . He began his work as a writer and television presenter in 1967. In 1971 he was the presenter of In The Picture (Tyne Tees) . From 1973 to 1977 he presented 2nd House on the BBC. He is best known for hosting the cultural program The South Bank Show on London Weekend Television (LWT), which he presented and produced from 1978 to 2009. The last episode aired in December 2009. The show was awarded the Prix Italia five times by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, as well as TV Music ad Arts Program of the Year and in 2000 at the TV and Radio Industry Awards .
From 1985 to 1990 he was Deputy Chairman ( Deputy Chairman ) and 1990-1996 Chairman ( Chairman ) of Border Television . He has been the Controller of Arts at LWT since 1990 and was Head of Arts from 1982 to 1990 . He is also known for his numerous programs on BBC Radio 4 , including Start the Week , which he presented from 1988 to 1998, In Our Time (BBC Radio 4) since 1998, and The Routes of English , a history of the English language . In 1992 he was the director of LWT Productions . He was also the presenter and author of Adventure of English .
Writing activity
In addition to his work for the radio, Bragg wrote novels and non-fiction books . He wrote biographies and monographs , among others on Richard Burton , Laurence Olivier and Ingmar Bergman . There were also numerous scripts for television and cinema films. Some of his early television work was done in collaboration with Ken Russell , for whom he wrote the biographies The Debussy Film (1965) and Isadora Duncan, the Biggest Dancer in the World (1967), and Russell's film about Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky , Tchaikovsky - Genie and Madness (1970) wrote. From 1996 to 1998 he wrote a weekly column for the Times . He has also written for The Observer , Sunday Times and The Guardian . His novel Remember Me , published in 2008, is largely autobiographical.
Bragg is President of the National Academy of Writing and Vice President of Friends of the British Library , which fund the British Library .
Membership in the House of Lords
In 1998, Bragg was promoted to Life Peer as Baron Bragg , of Wigton in the County of Cumbria . In the House of Lords he is a member of the Labor Party . As his political interests he gives questions of broadcasting , the promotion of universities and art as well as the development of the rural area.
Honors and other offices
Melvyn Bragg became a member of the Arts Council Literature Panel in 1969 and is now its chairman. He has also been President of the National Campaign for the Arts since 1986 , Director of the London School of Economics since 1997 and President of the Mind welfare organization since 2002 . As the successor to Katharine, Duchess of Kent , he became Chancellor of the University of Leeds in 1999 .
Bragg has received numerous honorary doctorates . Since June 1989 he has been an honorary doctor of the Open University , since 1993 an honorary doctorate in law ( Honorary LLD ) from the University of St Andrews , since 1994 Doctor of Civil Law ( Honorary DCL ) from the University of Northumbria , since 1998 Doctor of Science ( Honorary DSc ) from the Institute of Science and Technology at the University of Manchester , since 2000 Doctor of Science from Brunei University and since 2001 Doctor of Arts ( Hon DA ) from the University of Sunderland . He has been awarded the title of Doctor of Letters ( Hon DLitt ) several times: 1986 from the University of Liverpool , 1990 from Lancaster University and the Council for National Academic Awards , 1997 from South Bank University , 2000 from the University of Leeds, 2000 from the University of Bradford and in 2005 from Queen's University Belfast .
He was also a Domus Fellow of St Catherine's College in Oxford in 1990 , Honorary Fellow of the Lancashire Polytechnic and the Library Association in 1994 , Honorary Fellow of Wadham College in Oxford in 1995 and Honorary Fellow of the University of Wales in Cardiff in 1996 . In addition, Bragg was named Deputy Lieutenant (DL) of Cumbria in 2003 .
On October 17, 2005, Bragg officially opened the Melvyn Bragg Drama Studio named after him at Millom School in Millom, Cumbria .
Publications
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Awards
- 1969: Mail on Sunday / John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for Without a City Wall
- 1970: Time / Life Silver Pen Award for The Hired Man
- 1987: BAFTA Richard Dimbleby Award for Outstanding Contribution to TV
- 1989: RTS Gold Medal
- 1993: Bad Sex in Fiction Award for A Time to Dance
- 1995: BAFTA TV Award for An Interview with Dennis Potter
- 1999: Radio Broadcaster of the Year (for In Our Time and Routes of English ) Broadcasting Press Guild Radio Awards
- 2000: WH Smith Literary Award for The Soldier's Return
- 2000: VLV Award - Best New Radio Series (for Routes of English )
- 2000: VLV Award - Best Individual Contributor to Radio (for In Our Time and Routes of English )
- 2010: The South Bank Show Lifetime Achievement Award
Web links
- Literature by and about Melvyn Bragg, Baron Bragg in the catalog of the German National Library
- Melvyn Bragg in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ Family detective: Melvyn Bragg in: Telegraph of August 11, 2007
- ^ Melvyn Bragg, Baron Bragg on thepeerage.com , accessed August 17, 2015.
- ↑ Plato or Nietzsche? You choose ... Guardian article on June 7, 2005
- ↑ Luvvies' for Labor article on BBC News, August 30, 1998
- ↑ Melvyn in the middle Guardian article , June 14, 2008
- ↑ Melvyn Bragg ( Memento of the original from October 9, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. British Council biography
- ↑ a b c d e f g h The Rt Hon the Lord Bragg Biography at Debretts (available online)
- ↑ Melvyn Bragg Biography (1939-) entry at Filmreference.com
- ↑ Lord Bragg biography on the House of Lords page
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Bragg, Melvyn, Baron Bragg |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British author, screenwriter, television and radio presenter and life peer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | October 6, 1939 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Wigton , Cumberland , England |