Melvyn Bragg

Rosebud with Gyles Brandreth

Gyles Brandreth / Plain Jaine Media

Society & Culture

4.6 • 2.3K Ratings

🗓️ 22 August 2025

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We have a broadcasting legend for you today on Rosebud, as Gyles interviews the creator and host of In Our Time and The South Bank Show, Melvyn Bragg, Lord Bragg of Wigton. Melvyn takes Gyles back to his roots in Wigton, a small town in Cumbria, in which his parents ran one of the local pubs, and the young Bragg played all day long in the streets, making bows and arrows from trees overhanging the river. He tells Gyles about his schooldays, the brilliant teachers who guided him and there's a really interesting discussion of the unexpected mental health problems he had as a teenager. He takes us to Oxford University, where he fell in love with cinema, and was encouraged to apply for a BBC traineeship. And we hear about some of the landmark interviews of his career, with Francis Bacon and Paul McCartney. But its Bragg's evocation of his working class childhood which will really stay with you - this is a journey to a special time and place which no longer really exists.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Charles Brandreth and I'm here to offer you a respite from everyday life.
0:06.6	You can forget the cares of the world, turn off the news, stop working for a minute,
0:12.5	don't check your mobile during this, just prepare to immerse yourself in a world of memory.
0:19.8	Yes, we're looking forward to looking back.
0:23.7	Welcome to Rosebud.
0:25.2	Cue the music.
0:27.7	Music. Hello and welcome to another episode of Rosebud.
0:50.8	I'm on the road.
0:52.0	In fact, I'm in Hampstead in North London. It's a beautiful sunny day. I've walked down the hill from the underground station, and I'm thinking, yes, this is very much the part of the world where rather interesting artists to live. It's beautiful. You have actually passed shops that are setting things like cheese and a butcher's shop
1:12.7	that delivers to your door. People have been offering us flowers to buy and they'll deliver
1:16.8	them every week. It's that kind of part of the world. But I'm going to meet somebody, a remarkable
1:22.5	man who's now, I think about 85. I've been lucky enough to know him off and on for half a century.
1:29.3	He's a polymath, he's a novelist, he's a broadcaster, he's a great champion of the arts,
1:36.3	a filmmaker, he's also a member of the House of Lords.
1:40.3	And his story, well, it's all rooted as I think we're going to discover when we get to meet him,
1:46.0	in his childhood in Cumbria.
1:48.7	It's a story of, well, of triumph and tragedy.
1:52.2	There has been tragedy in his life and trauma.
1:55.1	I imagine he'll share some of that with us.
1:57.9	But he's also an enthusiast, a lover of literature and the arts, and somebody,
2:04.5	well, I think he's rather brilliant. I hope you will enjoy this very special edition of Rosebud,
2:10.4	coming to you from Hampstead in England with Melvin Bragg. Cue the music.
	...

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