The Education of Melvyn Bragg

The renowned British radio and television broadcaster Melvyn Bragg is perhaps best known in the U.S. as the host of “In Our Time,” his long-running BBC Radio 4 program and podcast, in which he vigorously guides three academics through a particular subject of their expertise, beginning with his distinctive let’s-get-right-to-it introduction. “Hello, Paul Dirac, 1902-1984, made some of the greatest discoveries in twentieth-century physics, second only to Einstein.” “Hello, when Athenians first saw Euripedes’ play ‘The Bacchae,’ in 405 B.C., they were on the point of defeat in a long war with Sparta, their fate beyond that unknown.” “Hello, some mass extinctions happen instantly, as when an asteroid hits the Earth. . . .” The show is relevant to the human experience but not to the current news cycle or culture calendar; it respects the listener by being clear, serious, and curious. It’s also one of the most popular programs in the U.K.—and, in the podcast era, widely heard internationally. Bragg chooses the subjects with his producer, Simon Tillotson, and, as host, he’s shrewd and self-effacing, occasionally sprinkling in genial phrases like “comes a cropper” or “we’re going before our horse to market.” It’s an entirely refreshing listening experience, subtly reminding you of the boundlessness of your own ignorance while gamely helping to mitigate it.

Bragg, who is eighty-one, grew up in the small factory town of Wigton, in Cumbria, where his parents ran a pub. He attended Oxford on a scholarship, continued on to the BBC, and quickly began producing cultural programs. His professional life has been as wide-ranging as the contents of “In Our Time”: he hosted the ITV arts-documentary series “The South Bank Show,” which he created in 1978 and led for more than three decades; he’s written twenty-two novels, and fifteen nonfiction books on subjects including Richard Burton, the King James Bible, great scientific discoveries, and the history of the English language; he was chancellor of the University of Leeds from 1999 to 2017; he’s a Labour peer in the House of Lords. Throughout, he’s been a champion of popular culture—on July 19th, he hosted the South Bank Sky Arts Awards, recognizing artists such as Dua Lipa, Michaela Coel, and Grayson Perry—and of the robust funding of public institutions, including the N.H.S. and the BBC.

During the pandemic, Bragg has been working on a memoir and continuing to host “In Our Time.” I recently spoke with him via Zoom. He was at home, in London, with his wife, in a cheerful domestic mode: when he said “Hello,” it was followed not by astrophysics or the Interregnum but by “I want to take the dog out of the room.” Our conversation has been condensed and edited for clarity.

I love what’s behind you—look at these paintings you have!

Well, I come from the Lake District, in the northwest of England, Wordsworth’s territory. And this is a collection of paintings from that district. The funny thing about the Lake District is that only one of them is called a lake. The rest are called the waters; Windermere, a lot of meres, a lot of Norse words.

I watched your “Adventure of English” program, from 2003, and I learned a lot of new word origins, including “mere.” Do you spend time up there now?

Yeah, I got a cottage there nearly fifty years ago. It’s very, very, very remote. We’re on a hill—they call it fells up there, they still use the Norse word. They’re all hill farmers, very agreeable people. When I first went there, a chap came up and he said, “I sat at the same school desk as your father. So if you ever want a turnip, just let me know.” [Laughs.]

Did you ever get a turnip?

Every other week!

I would love to hear about your childhood and Wigton—what your parents were like, what the town was like.

All right! My father came from a family of nine. His father was in a family of sixteen, and worked down the pits. At the edge of Cumbria, there’s a seam—two seams, actually, it’s quite rare—of anthracite, which is high-quality coal, and of iron ore. My father left school when he was fourteen, having passed two scholarships to local public schools but being able to take neither of them. He went down the mines, and eventually went in the war and worked in a factory, unskilled. And he always had two jobs. He was a bookie in the evenings and then eventually tenanted a pub—the worst pub in Wigton, a town of five thousand people, with twelve churches. It was founded by the Norse in about the eighth or ninth century. I was an only child, and I was sort of brought up in the pub.

And you lived above it, right?

We lived in a flat above it. And then my mother, my mother was illegitimate, and so she had a tough time. It was a very pious little town, still Victorian in its pieties. She worked in a factory, making buttonholes, and the rule of the factory was that when you got married, you got fired. So she got fired, and she was asked if she wanted a prodded rug or set of fish knives. She chose the fish knives. [Laughs.]

After she got fired from the factory, she cleaned people’s houses, and I used to tag along with her. So I saw the inside of some nice houses. And then they went into the pub, working three hundred and sixty-five days a year. Most of the pubs in Wigton had a definition. The Vaults was the pigeon club, where the pigeon men met; their pigeons flew over from France, and they went up to the Vaults to click in the timing. The Lion and Lamb was the Carlisle United football club. And we were the dog pub. There was a type of dog racing on the fells, called hound trailing. It’s a very old sport—I don’t want to get too oldy-worldy, but it’s the poor man’s racehorses. My dad was a dog man, and the dog men met in our pub.

It was a terrifically rich life, looking back on it. Partly because the men coming back from the war, I think they came back thinking, At least we’ll give the kids a good time. So they volunteered, running all sorts of things. And a lot of them were associated with the churches. I was in the choir, and one good thing was that we got paid—fourpence every time we went to the morning or evening service and choir practice. Every time we didn’t go, we got sixpence knocked off.

Wow.

And nobody was fussing or pushing you, and nobody expected—I thought I would leave school at fifteen. I only didn’t by that margin—[gestures with fingers]—when a teacher, unknown to me, went to my father and said, “It might be worth keeping him on.” I didn’t discover that until I was in my late sixties, early seventies.

Was that Mr. James?

Mr. James. I’ve written quite a lot about him in this book. He was a Spitfire pilot in the Second World War, and a terrific enthusiast. When he came to Wigton, we were very badly off. We didn’t think we were, but he saw there was a big job to be done. And he just buckled down to make sure we got a good education. He had a headmaster, similarly, who’d been in the war, and they just got hold of the school by the scruff of the neck and turned it around. We began to pass scholarships to Oxford. We had a rugby team that could beat everybody in sight.

And you were in a skiffle group, yes?

A skiffle group, the Memphis Five! I sang and organized it, and we rehearsed in the singing room of our pub. Ha! We once went to Carlisle Ballroom, which was in a big city. We were the little act in the middle, with one or two people fondling each other in the corner. One guy came out and said, “Well, it can only get better!”

Reluctantly, we went our separate ways. I got far too interested in schoolwork by that time. [Earlier,] when I was about thirteen or fourteen, I had had a colossal breakdown, which I didn’t know about, because I didn’t know what a breakdown was.

What happened to you? What did it feel like?

Terrible out-of-body experiences. I was frightened of lying in bed on my own because a light was suddenly in the corner, and that light was me, and all I wanted was for that light to come back and join me again. And that happened night after night. It was awful. And as I say, I was an only child. . . . It never occurred to me to talk to a doctor. I wouldn’t dare tell my father and mother, because I was ashamed. My life fell apart.

I was in 2A or 3A; I went to 3B and then to 3L, the lowest form in the entire school. Then the headmaster threatened to expel me, because I started behaving badly.

How did you come out of that?

Well, it was a fluke. The headmaster’s daughter [saw me] in a terrible state. Might even have been crying. What I think happened is that she went to her father and said, “What’s he in this state for?” And I went back, the next term, into 3A or 4A. And somehow, what clicked was learning. That’s what clicked, because I was on my own in the flat upstairs. I started to read. I mean, I read comics and “The Adventures of Robin Hood” and all the rest of it. But I started to really read. Read and read and read.

What were you reading then?

Anything I could get my hands on. I mean, all the English novelists: Dickens, Thackeray. American novelists, Hemingway—French and Russian novelists in English translations. And I think what happened was that I was so taken up with this that I forgot myself. Some of these clichés are perfect. You do forget yourself. I was in those books; I wasn’t worrying about whether I was going to be worried. I was worried about whether Anna Karenina was going to do this or the other. And I think that changed me.

And then Mr. James spotted that I was interested in learning a lot, and piled on the homework. And that’s when he went to my father and said, “He’s got to stay on.” I just worked and worked. I would do five hours of homework a night with pleasure—because it was O.K. [Laughs.]

Tell me what Oxford was like. That must have been a big transition for you—or maybe not?

You know, it was. It wasn’t on the radar; Mr. James put me in for Oxford and I got a scholarship. And, Sarah, I couldn’t believe anything was so beautiful. I was going for Queen’s College, which had a very good library, and I went to have a look and it was magnificent. And this is silly, but it’s true. I saw somebody very like myself go to this golden shelf of books, and just pick one out, and I thought, Christ! You can do that?

Anyway, there was a bit of snobbery, but they could bugger off, I wasn’t interested in them. I was fortunate in the first year, because I played a bit of rugby. So that meant fourteen people you knew already. And then I went in the choir, and started to write for the university magazine, and made a film, and was in a play—we toured Germany with “The Tempest.” So I was up and running.

And it’s always so exciting to connect with people about literature and ideas and the things you’re learning about, as you know.

And also to do it! I mean, when we toured Germany with “The Tempest,” we had a guy, a Northern working-class man, who was a tremendous director. And because of a postwar hunger in Germany, or wish for reconciliation or whatever it was, we went round with our props and costumes on this big bus, and we played in all the cities—in Cologne and Marburg and Freiburg—to packed audiences.

Wow.

I think it had nothing to do with our sheer brilliance. And we were put up in their houses, which was extraordinary, because I thought they were doing so well; you came up to Wigton and we were still on our knees. [Laughs.] Then I got another sort of scholarship, into the BBC.

That must have been a special opportunity.

Oh, as soon as I got there, I thought, I’m never going. This is all I want to do—make programs. And I’ve just made programs ever since. I mean, what a life. What a life! And you know, Sarah, the thing is, it didn’t make me tired. I’d been surrounded by people in the pub who were tired. They came in from a day’s work and they were tired. And my father and mother were sometimes exhausted. But this lot is lovely to do! And you had plenty of time to get on with writing. So there you go.

You amaze me, because I love it, but I do find it tiring. And you’ve certainly been prolific. How did you end up co-writing the “Jesus Christ Superstar” screenplay?

Well, it was a sort of fluke, really. I made a bit of a reputation in television, writing screenplays for Ken Russell, for another program. And “Superstar” came up, and somebody said, “Would you like a go?” So I had a go. And it hit Andrew [Lloyd Webber]’s imagination, and it hit [the director] Norman Jewison’s imagination. And I think Norman got a bit carried away towards the end, with the crowds. I said, “No crowds, we don’t need crowds.” Anyway, it seemed to do all right. All the good bits were what we worked on, and if there was something that didn’t work very well. . . . [Laughs.]

That’s why it’s better to write novels, right? Because you can write the whole thing. You don’t have to compromise with a team.

Yeah, and I’d got used to running my own life. In television, as well. BBC 2 turned up, so we had a lot of space for arts programs. When I was twenty-five, I was running a couple of programs and saying what we did.

What was the BBC like when you started there?

It was wonderful. It was full of people who were not very well paid, including at the top, but who did it because they really wanted to do it. And they believed in it as a public service. People liked to come in. You felt proud to be in the BBC because it meant something. It was a place where you could get on with doing what you wanted to do, and I wanted to make arts programs, so I got on with it.

Tell me about those early arts programs that you did.

Well, I had a couple of series for BBC 2. The BBC is a very English story. They hadn’t prepared for [the second channel], and then they got it, and they didn’t bloody think about it. So they came to me: “Will you just do a series? And will you do another? We’re shorthanded.” Shorthanded? They were no-handed. So I had a few pals that I’d been with at Oxford, and one or two others drifted in from different places, and we set about it. We made films on Renoir, the Nouvelle Vague filmmakers in Italy and in France, and the writers that we admired and so on. I stayed there for a while doing that.

And that led to “The South Bank Show,” for ITV?

Eventually, yes. I was fed up with the way book programs were being done on television. Basically, they were two earnest people talking to each other about a hardback book that nobody had read because it had just come out the day before. It was a complete waste of time. So I thought the only way to get this sort of thing going is to turn it into a panel game [“Read All About It”]. That’ll do. The panel was Gore Vidal, Martin Amis, Antonia Fraser, Clive James. This was the panel!

That’s quite a panel.

And then it actually caught on, I think, because it looked so unpretentious. That was the first thing. The second thing was, we only did paperbacks. So they’d been out for a year, and those on the program could slag them off if they wanted to, they needn’t be respectful. Also, people could afford to buy them! And we had little quizzes.

That sounds like fun.

It was fun, but I got slagged on. I was “bringing down the tone.” I brought down the tone when I went to ITV and started “The South Bank Show,” forty-three years ago. Because I was determined to do two things there. The BBC was getting very arty, partly because of Ken Russell, because he was so good at being arty. And I thought, The first thing I’m going to do, we’re going to sit down in front of an artist whose work we have researched thoroughly and talk to that artist about his or her work. That’s going to be the main thing we do. And the second thing we’re going to do is try to break the pyramid idea of the arts in this country, where opera is best, ballet is best, classical music is best, and then down, down, down. Pop music and comedy aren’t even on the pyramid. So we started with Paul McCartney as our first program. And the papers, Jesus Christ.

What did they say?

“We’re rather pleased that ITV’s putting a lot of money into . . . but we draw the line at Lennon and McCartney.” [Laughs.] Then I said, I’m not starting with contemporary plays from the West End, because I think a lot of television plays are better written, better acted. So we started with a Dennis Potter play. The boss took me for a quiet walk around the building, saying did I really know what I was doing? I can’t remember what I said. The thing that clinched it was that we won the great Oscar for television, the Prix Italia.

Oh, wow.

That calmed the waters. And, honestly, it’s worked out like that, isn’t it? I mean, you couldn’t do an arts program nowadays and not have the best of popular music, the best of television drama. Look at the television dramas in your country! They’re sensational. And comedians as well. Billy Connolly and persons like that . . . What they’re doing is as good as what the poets are doing.

So how did “In Our Time” start?

I accidentally started to introduce a radio program. A friend of mine was doing it—Russell Harty—and he got ill. [The show] was on Monday morning and called “Start the Week.” He rang me up; I said, “I’m no good, I’ll get nervous,” and he said, “No, no, it’ll be all right.” I got the hang of it, and I stayed there for about ten years. And then I got fired. Tony Blair wanted to build up the arts representation in the House of Lords—they wanted to put through a big arts [initiative], so they asked people like David Puttnam and myself to go in the Lords to help that through. So we did. And the BBC said I couldn’t be in the Lords and do “Start the Week” because it was a political program. It wasn’t. Doesn’t matter.

I was offered another program on Thursdays, which was traditionally known in the BBC as the death slot. Well, how could I resist? So I got a six-month contract for the death slot, on the condition that I could do it my way.

Which was what?

I thought, If I come on, I’m not having people plug their books and plug their shows, so that’s out.

Why was that?

It held things up, it seemed self-serving. Get on with the subject.

Well, there’s a reading list to go with it.

They can go to the reading list! I think that’s very well thought through.

I had about five or six rules. I’m not having people talk about different subjects; I’m having people talking about one subject the entire time. I’m having academics, but they’re going to be teaching academics, so they’re used to clarifying things—not dumbing them down. I wanted to be eclectic, and I wanted to be collegiate. And I wanted to do things that I knew nothing about, because I could get an education on the sly.

You know? I wanted to do astrophysics, which we did. I wanted to do consciousness, neuroscience. I wanted to do stuff in China. I particularly wanted to do stuff about the Middle East, because nobody was ever writing about the great intellectuals from 700 to 1200 in the Middle East—Avicenna, those sort of people. They couldn’t stop us, because we got this golden six-month contract. [Laughs.] We did O.K., and somehow stumbled through, and then sort of caught on. You don’t know how these things happen, because we don’t have advertising, of course.

And now we’ve been going twenty-two years. Nine hundred-odd editions, with the audiences over two million each week. And I’m proud of this—next to BBC Global News, which is massive, we’re regularly the second-biggest download in the whole BBC. And everybody gets it for free. In China, they not only get it, they have plans to translate it into Chinese.

Really!

Yes.

Wow.

So I’m looking forward to hearing something where I am speaking Chinese.

I cannot imagine. One thing that always strikes me is how you’re very good at keeping the conversation going without being brusque.

Well, the academics know the subject, so that’s one thing. They know that I’m not competing with them. Also, they’ll have listened to the program a few times, so they know that if they go on too long, they’re going to get chopped off. [Laughs.] Politely! They’re very, very good at encapsulation. I mean, we did something on Kant’s idea of the Copernican revolution. That seemed really tough. But these people seized it, and it was as clear as a bell, it really was. And that’s because they’ve listened, and because they’re very clever, and because they’re used to talking to people who aren’t very clever, like me. That freshness happens every time, and the audience is very grateful for it. During lockdown, we’ve done Kant, we’ve done eclipses, we’ve done cave art, we’ve done the American-French alliance at the end of the eighteenth century.

Oh, that was a great one.

We finished this season with a program on the [Shakespearean] sonnets, and Simon Schama says it’s one of the best radio programs that’s ever been. Simon is given to exaggeration. But it was something, because we did a previous program about Shakespeare, Frank Kermode was on it. And they talked about Shakespeare’s language, but they were tentative. This time, we had this chap Don Paterson, and [Emma Smith and Hannah Crawforth], who knew what they were doing. And they went for the sonnets in a way that didn’t try to strangle them or diminish them, but they were completely different. I mean, who’s ever talked at length about the misogyny? About the racism? And they did. They said nobody else could do what he’s done, but let’s look at some of the things that he couldn’t do and didn’t do, and it was invigorating.

I was surprised by that, and I found it refreshing, because every time I studied the sonnets in school, I feel like my professors sought to make them love poems, even though, you know, the Dark Lady poems are very insulting. They tried to make them sort of comical but passionate. And it was interesting to hear the idea that maybe they’re not those things—maybe they actually aren’t very loving.

Well, you’ve got it! The idea that it was gentle love poetry—not when you dig in! I mean, the first sonnets are very commercial. He’s laying it on thick. And other times he’s talking about women in the most disgraceful way. He’s demeaning people, if you get hold of what he’s doing. And “let me not to the marriage of true minds”—I mean, for God’s sake, if you look at that, you wouldn’t get married in your life. No, no, no. And I think that’s the advance of a healthy lack of respect. I mean, he was holy. And now he isn’t holy, and we’re all the better for it.

Are there subjects that you get requests for that you don’t want to do?

There’s nothing we don’t want to do. Nothing, really.

But do people say more history, more literature, less math, more this or more that?

They tend to say more science. We do a lot of science, but I think we—Simon Tillotson comes into this. He’s a wonderful producer. We have about nine different sections: literature, China, India, physics, and on it goes. “We haven’t done something from that for a while, we’ll try to find a subject there. . . .” We meet every six weeks or so and try to knock together the next six weeks.

So it’s pretty much the two of you figuring that out together.

And a lot of people who appear on the program make suggestions, because we ask them to. And they say, “Why don’t you do such and such?” So we jot it down. And they’re not pushing themselves; they’re saying it’s a good idea. I think what’s happened, Sarah, is that we just struck lucky—I think it’s the first time the British academic intelligentsia has had their own program. This belongs to them. And they look after it, and we feel buoyed up by it.

I feel that the people I know who love the program seem very grateful for it in a way that’s different from other shows. It’s fascinating, because it seems like a very simple idea—four people talking about a subject, in depth, without bells and whistles. American podcasts, as you probably know, are generally very highly produced, and they like to “humanize” everything—I like that you’re shaking your head—and there’s a lot of “personality” that goes along with it. And that can be condescending, even though it doesn’t necessarily try to be, and it can be exhausting. When you listen to your program, there are so many things about it that are not exhausting. You’re not talking about anything that’s happening right this minute, which is in itself refreshing.

I forgot another rule, which is that we’re never knowingly relevant. It is very simple; it’s what it should be. And it’s—I mean, one could be pretentious about it. Perhaps I’m being very pretentious in this interview—

No!

Well, I think the fascination of knowledge is an addiction. And I sometimes think the fascination of knowledge is the meaning of life. I really do. I mean, it saved me when I was a kid. It got me out of a really, really bad hole. And I’ve tried to keep out of it ever since.

I was watching the program you did about class and culture a few years ago.

Yeah, I didn’t think that through well enough. It was O.K., but it wasn’t good enough. Something was going on—people were identifying themselves in my country as much by their culture as by their class, as much by the pop group they liked or the films they saw as by “I am a working-class person.” Well, that’s fine, because the great bedrock of the working class in this country had partly dissolved, and it’s sort of up for grabs. . . . I wouldn’t mind going back to it sometime. I think what I should do, if I do it again, is just get on my bike and talk to a lot of people in back terraces in Sheffield, and find out what’s really going on.

That is a good idea. You know, in the U.S., part of what’s happening is this anti-élitism—people feel alienated by the intellectual class and angry at them, to the extent that they don’t want to get vaccinated or told what to do by the “élites.” I find that heartbreaking, because I do think that knowledge is thrilling for all of us. I don’t think your show alienates anyone—it’s there for everyone who wants to enjoy it—but I wish there were a better way to deal with that dynamic. Do you know what I mean?

I think I know what you mean, and I think you’re on the right track. It’s just how to do it. What I do, anyway, is dive in and hope that people are going to pick it up. The idea of the élites telling you what to do is no longer acceptable. And I do think that, in this country, it is massively shot through with class. I mean, we are still up to our knees in it. When you look at the Etonians, you can’t believe it, who’s running the show. Not only how dumb and stupid and corrupt they are. Put that to one side. How many of them there are. And that’s just one school.

The class system in this country—it has always been an enforcer of values. There’s a rigidity; it’s a nonmobile society, whatever people say. There’s an awful long way to go.

What do you think about the BBC’s role in this? I was intrigued by a detail, in your program, about how early broadcasters would wear dinner jackets to read the news. There was a feeling of that class coming through the airwaves.

It was nonsense, but that’s what it was—it was for the upper class. Lord Reith, who set the whole thing in motion, was a very strange man, but in one way he was very shrewd, because who are these people sitting in Savoy Hill with these tinpot little things, sending out important messages to the rest of Britain? I think he wanted people to dress up to show there was authority there. It was a sign of authority, as it always has been.

Do you have an opinion on the current funding debates about the BBC?

It’s being attacked, there’s no doubt about it. It’s got serious enemies: [Rupert] Murdoch, and a lot of the other papers, and a lot of rival television from your country. But, you know, you can look at it another way. None of these people have the variety of programs, especially in radio, that the BBC offers. They don’t even know how to do it. England’s full of niche audiences, like the old hedgerows full of different birds, and they’re all singing away. And that’s very, very important. Variety, diversity, and—I hate to use the word professionalism, but, yes—professionalism. We want to tell you the truth here. And we are not going to be waylaid by ads or by sponsors or overinfluenced by people.

I think that’s increasingly difficult, but I don’t think it’s impossible to keep doing, because the BBC keeps winning gongs as well. It’s got a long life, as long as it’s got a strong support force. But how much that stretches, I don’t know. I mean, how much is Boris Johnson interested in anything at the BBC? Yeah, that much. [Gestures with fingers.]

What’s your relationship to affecting this, as a Lord?

Well, we have very good debates in the Lords, and they’re reported. I mean, the two things I speak on are broadcasting and universities. I occasionally chip in when it’s about the countryside in my part of the country. We send amendments back to the Commons, and the Commons take a great deal of notice of our amendments. So, yes, you can have an influence. Not as big as you’d like, but you can be an influencer, that new word. People are calling themselves influencers. Well, very good.

Do you like being a Lord?

I was very embarrassed at first, and I refused. And then they came and said, “Look, this is for a specific purpose.” My mother came when I was sworn in, and she was looking up all the time. I said, “What are you looking up at?” And she said, “Isn’t that a wonderful ceiling!” It was a great ceiling. I didn’t mind.

It is what it is. When I was younger, in reviews of my books, for instance, there were rather derogatory remarks about me being a Lord. But, on the whole, I’ve done probably marginally more good than harm.

How many novels have you written? Like twenty, right?

I started writing fiction when I was nineteen and I’m now eighty-one. So let’s say sixty years. So that’s about one every three years. That isn’t a lot. You look at what Dickens did, I mean, I’ve been a slouch.

Are there more novels you want to write?

I finished this memoir, and I was quite taken with the nonfiction thing. I mean, I’ve written nonfiction to do with the history of the English language, the value of the Bible, that sort of stuff. But I came from a really undeveloped background—there’s no sob story here, I was rich in everything that mattered—and I landed here in London, meeting God knows who and so on. And if I could bring those two together, it would be great, wouldn’t it? But I can’t think how to do it, except in a sort of a Dick Whittington way. . . . This poor boy comes to London and does very well, doesn’t he? Ha ha.

I don’t know. I mean, like all writers, I’d like to write the best book I’ve never written. I can’t quite understand why it’s so important.

What, writing?

Yeah, for me. I just don’t really get it. I mean, the world is full of wonderful books. I’ll never be as good as those people. On a sunny day in London, which this is, with Wimbledon upstairs, why will I be sitting down and writing? I remember saying something like that to William Golding, whom I did two or three long interviews with. William wasn’t afraid to talk big. And he was talking about writing, and the meaning of writing, and why he did it. And then he came up with a lovely little phrase. He said, “Really, Melvyn: I write pour passer le temps.” [Laughs.] And I thought, You’ve got it! What else would I be doing if I wasn’t doing this?

You know, that reminds me of something I wanted to say about “In Our Time,” which is that the title of it—

It’s pointless. Ha ha!

It’s either funny or wonderful or both, because, you know, it could be taking the very long view of “our time”—

Yes, yes. That’s a generous interpretation of it. [Laughs.] They were determined it should be called by my name, “Melvyn Bragg Such-and-Such.” And I absolutely wouldn’t have it. Rubbish! And a nice fellow, not given to snappy or relevant titles, he came up with this. I said, “That’s it, we’ll call it ‘In Our Time’!” I mean, the title is as good as the program. The program is O.K.: it’ll do.