MELVYN BRAGG-WORDS BY THE WATER

Saturday 06/03/2010. Lord Bragg is the president of the festival and is one of the keynote speakers today. I attended his lecture but Joy did not. His subject was "Wigton and In Our Time" which is sufficiently wide in scope to offer lots of interesting commentary and so it proved. Melvyn is and was among friends, all us oldies who have been listening to him for years - In Our Time is required radio for me on Thursday mornings and (wonderfully) available as a podcast to allow me to catch up when the original broadcast is missed. Because of his Cumbria connections I have been picking up his books - sorry Melvyn, but mainly at charity shops and I see that his titles on my shelves are:

The Maid of Buttermere
Speak For England
The Soldiers Return
Crossing the Lines
A Son of War
Crystal Rooms
A Time to Dance
Land of the Lakes

All have been read with the exception of The Land of the Lakes. The following information has been copied over from my BritLit photo entry for Melvyn's lecture.
Melvyn Bragg is the President of the Festival and always makes an appreciated contribution, he is after all Cumbria's favourite son and man of letters who can look back over a long history of writing and broadcasting. Today I attended his lecture on "Wigton and In our Time" and of course it was a sell out and a great treat to listen him as he flattered his audience shamelessley. And how we lapped it up. I I have about six or seven of his titles and I keep thinking I should bring them over and get them signed, but I always forget.

Melvyn Bragg, now Lord Bragg of Wigton, was born in Wigton in 1939, and studied modern history at Wadham College, Oxford. He entered the media world through a BBC traineeship in 1961, taking over the editorship of BBC2's first arts programme, New Release, three years later. He is best known as the presenter of arts programs on television, especially 'The South Bank Show', in which he has made a sustained effort to present literature to a wide public in a popular and informal manner.

Over nearly four decades of pioneering broadcasting Melvyn Bragg has edited, produced and presented a wealth of award-winning documentaries and programmes across the cultural spectrum. He is a prodigious author, publishing the first of more than a dozen books, For Want of a Nail in 1965. He has also written a play, two musicals and several screenplays.

He is President of the National Campaign for the Arts and was made a Life Peer in 1998. He is Chancellor of the University of Leeds.

For futher biography see: www.visitcumbria.com/mbragg.htm