Melvyn Bragg
Above: Melvyn Bragg
Above: Melvyn Bragg
His voice is instantly recognisable and despite him having lived more than half his life in London, it has not entirely lost its distinctive Lakeland twang. He was on our screens most recently presenting the four-part series Written Britain, but is probably most famous for fronting the South Bank Show. He has also written 19 novels - one every two years since he was 20 - and presents Radio Four's rather academic weekly discussion programme In Our Time.
Not bad for a lad from Wigton who grew up with no books in the house and who would have been happy to leave school at 15 for a clerking job. ‘It didn't matter that there were no books in the house because I read a lot at school,’ he said. ‘Also, where we lived, in the old Council Yard, we were close to the library and Mr Carrick would recommend books to me. When the library moved to the Friends Meeting House it was run by two women and they helped suggest books too.
‘The only other entertainments were the pictures and that cost money or the wireless and you couldn't have that on all the time, so I was a big reader. Although there were no books in the house my father used the library as well, he was very well read. Not having books at home didn't make a difference, I read more as a child than my children do and our house is full of books.’
His parents, Mary, a tailor, and Stanley, a stock keeper turned machinist, went on to run a pub in Wigton while Melvyn went from the Nelson Thomlinson School to read Modern History at Wadham College, Oxford in the late 1950s.
‘I would have left school at 15 and taken a clerking job somewhere but my father met the history teacher who suggested I stay on and take A Levels and the same teacher suggested I went to university at Oxford. I hadn't thought about it myself.’ From there he gained a scholarship to the BBC where he worked for the World Service, the Third Programme and the Home Service. He has written, edited and produced the South Bank Show since 1978 and been Controller of Arts at London Weekend Television since 1990.
In 1998 he was appointed to the House of Lords as a Labour life peer with the title Baron Bragg of Wigton. But if his professional life seems to have been a smooth ride to the top, his private life has been a rockier road. He married Lisa Roche in 1961, when he was 21, shortly after he had graduated. She came from an aristocratic French background and was five years his senior. He did not know she had a history of suicide attempts.
After 10 years the couple were separated and he was involved in a relationship with Cate Haste who subsequently became his second wife. Bragg has spoken about the guilt he has felt since Roche's suicide 37 years ago. She had wanted to see him that night but he arranged to visit her the following day. He received a phone call from her friend the next day telling him his wife had taken her own life. Their daughter, Marie-Elsa was six-years-old. ‘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.’ Much of his early life is mirrored in the lives of the characters in his novels and his latest, Remember Me, published earlier this year, sees Joe (a publican's son from Wigton who studies at Wadham College) dealing with the suicide of his wife through conversations with their daughter. The book is dedicated to Lisa’s memory - ‘In Memoriam L.R’ - but Bragg has said it was essentially written for Marie-Elsa, who is now an Anglican priest. Bragg's second wife Cate, whom he married in 1973, is also a writer and, among other works, has collaborated with Cherie Booth, wife of Tony Blair in a book about the wives of British Prime Ministers.
The newspaper reviews of Remember Me - which agreed it was a hit - coincided with another project typical of Bragg, Written Britain, aired on Sunday nights throughout April in which he investigated how the landscape of Britain has inspired some of our greatest writers. ‘In a sense it was a help having such a close personal connection to the Lake District which is one of the great examples of a landscape which inspires,’ added Bragg, who still has a cottage in the northern fells. ‘When Daniel Defoe visited he said the place should be avoided because of its horror and barbarity and that was the general view but our whole view of nature, particularly grand and empty nature changed. It was exposed by Wordsworth, Coleridge and the people around them as the place to be for inspiration and people started to go there thinking they would be similarly inspired, in the same way that for years painters went to Florence.
‘There were four programmes in the first series and they weren't just literary but also about ordinary people as well. I hope there will be a further series, because it was very interesting to produce, but we'll have to see what the reaction is to this one first. ‘I’ve been lucky in my career, I've always done what I’ve wanted to do. I have had the very good fortune to talk to so many greats on the South Bank Show and In Our Time has allowed me to listen to very clever people talking about their subjects and I enjoy that enormously. ‘I do work hard, but then I have to earn my keep. And I have been very fortunate.’
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