Melvyn Bragg
Lake District National Park
Famous for:
Arts broadcasting supremo and prolific novelist
More info:
BBC presenter: Melvyn Bragg
Lord Bragg is a well-known radio presenter and TV personality, as well as an author and biographer
Early life
Melyvn Bragg, now Lord Bragg, was born Wigton, Cumbria in 1939 and is a life-long fan of the Lake District. His mother was a tailor and his father a machinist. He went to the Nelson Thomlinson School in Wigton before winning a scholarship to study history at Wadham College, Oxford.
Move into broadcasting
Bragg began his long broadcasting career after winning a coveted BBC traineeship in 1961. He worked at BBC World Service, at the Third Programme, the Home Service and on Huw Wheldon’s Monitor, an arts series. He transferred to work at London Weekend Television since the launch of the long-running South Bank Show in 1978. The show ended in January this year. He is also well-known to Radio Four listeners, first as presenter of Start The Week and then In Our Time.
Bragg’s interviewees have included:
- Dame Barbara Cartland
- John Cleese
- Luciano Pavarotti
- Elizabeth Taylor
Love of the lakes
The Soldier’s Return and subsequent novels are set in small town Cumbria and, although he lives in Hampstead, London, Bragg also has a home just outside the National Park. His favourite lakes are said to be Buttermere and Bassenthwaite.
Guardian interview: Melvyn Bragg
Chronicler and novelist
A friend of Tony Blair, Bragg collaborated with Cherie Booth on the book, Prime Ministers’ Wives. He’s also edited the memoirs of Clarissa Eden, widow of Sir Anthony Eden. He’s written a number of television and film screenplays including his collaboration with Ken Russell for the film Tchaikovsky, The Music Lovers in 1970
He is also a prolific novelist with 21 novels and a couple of children’s books under his belt. Some of Lord Bragg’s novels include:
- Remember Me 2008
- The Soldier’s Return 1999
- A Son Of War 2001
- Crossing The Lines 2003
Historical record
Lord Bragg recently donated an archive containing more than 50 years’ worth of work to the Brotherton Library at Leeds University. The 60 boxes of manuscripts, notebooks and draft scripts even included an unpublished novel.
