Quotes by Melvyn Bragg - Page 2

When anybody tells you something about writing, somebody will tell you something completely different and they will also be right
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Different
Writing
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I was the only BBC graduate trainee in 1961 interested in arts broadcasting. I knew I wanted to write, and I had to make a living.
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Broadcasting
Bbc
Graduate
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Craig has explored the darker recesses of 007's psyche. He has shown us the lonely man. And he has shown him falling truly in love.
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Lonely
Craig
Darker
Explored
Falling
Psyche
Shown
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It's amazing that Sky is the only place that has two dedicated arts channels. The BBC is doing very well... but why don't they do more?
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Dedicated
Sky
Bbc
Channels
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I do think the BBC could do more, but I've always thought the BBC could do more - I think there should be more arts programmes full stop.
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Programmes
Bbc
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The idea that popular arts were shallow by definition and the traditional arts were profound was dead, I thought, and I wanted to prove it.
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Profound
Shallow
Definition
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We were working class, and you don't lose that. Later on, I bolted on media middle class... and now people like me are in the House of Lords.
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Middle Class
Me Lose People
Lords
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I don't get nervous when I'm interviewing someone on film - it can be cut, and we can do it again. It is quite nerve-racking doing things live.
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Nerve-Racking
Interviewing
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Is it rather stupid and dangerous to take Magna Carta so much for granted, as many of us seem to do, and to think of this attitude as 'very English?'
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Granted
Magna
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Writers are looking for a story. Using your own life as the basis for a story gives it an association with reality that's a wonderful starting point.
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Association
Starting Point
Life Reality Your
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Magna Carta has become totemic. It is in the comedy of Tony Hancock, in the poetry of Kipling, never far from the front pages in a constitutional crisis.
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Comedy
Crisis
Pages
Constitutional
Front
Magna
Tony
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Britain is undoubtedly becoming more cultural. No question of it. People who say it is dumbing down simply don't look around enough. They don't know enough.
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Britain
Enough Look People
Cultural
No Question
Undoubtedly
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I have written favourably in support of subsidy for the arts since the 1960s, and I continue to believe absolutely in subsidy, as I do in the BBC licence fee.
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Bbc
Fee
Licence
Subsidy
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If I meet pals, we do hug each other, and it's very nice, you know... it's something that's come on me late and became second nature, and it's first nature now!
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Hug
Pals
Second Nature
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Occasionally now I feel a wang that goes in my head - once you've got it you've got it. The [illness] was quite severe, leaving me deeply unhappy and frightened.
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Leaving
Mental Illness
Unhappy
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Grime reminds me, if there is an echo, of sort of near enough like Liverpool in the very early Sixties. It's a lot of kids obsessed with music - obsessed with it.
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Liverpool
Music Enough Me
Echo
Near
Reminds
Sixties
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The best of pop in our country is among the best of the arts that we do. And Britain does the arts as well as, and sometimes better than, anybody else on the planet.
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Britain
Anybody Else
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One of the great things about making 'Reel History' was meeting British people from all over the class system. It made me realise that London is a different country.
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Great Things
History Great Me
British People
Meeting
Realise
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The driving force behind 'In Our Time' is that I want an education. I want to know more about science, say, and if I want to know, then other people probably do, too.
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Driving Force
Our Time
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I think television does tease out a certain vanity in everybody when you look at yourself and you go, 'Oh Christ.' Maybe that's why my intros get shorter and shorter.
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Tease
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In music, the Specials brought a city, Coventry, bombed out for a second time and riven with racism, to a celebration between black and white musicians and their music.
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Black And White
Celebration
Racism
Time Music City
Bombed
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The BBC does a sterling job, but I'd like to see it do more. ITV does four arts programmes a year; it used to be 28. At least Sky, with its two arts channels, is trying.
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Programmes
Sky
Sterling
Arts
Bbc
Channels
Least
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I like the fact George R. R. Martin took Shakespeare's political plays as material, but he also took on all sorts of other sensational stories and mingled them in together.
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Sensational
Martin
Shakespeare
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We listened to a lot of drama, adaptations of books, comedy. There was a real love of music expressed in choirs, because you didn't have to have instruments except your voice.
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Adaptation
Instruments
Real Love
Love Music Your
Love Music Voice
Choirs
Expressed
Listened
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The class barricades have been stormed by the forces of a broad culture, which is made up of clusters of individuals who have decided for themselves what they will be in society.
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Clusters
Broad
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Now, perfectly ordinary people will give each other hugs. I mean, it used to be that a hug was reserved for if you came back from Australia - you know, back in the '40s and '50s.
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Hug
Ordinary
Ordinary People
Reserved
People Will Back
Hugs
Perfectly
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You ask 20 of your friends how English and American democracy came about. None of them would say that Anglicanism or Protestantism had anything to do with it. But it was crucial to it!
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Crucial
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We start out as sand and soot out there in the universe, and who knows, in 40 trillion years' time we might come back. But if we come back without memory, it doesn't really interest me.
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Sand
Time Memory Me
Trillion
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I actually admire some of the books by a lot of the writers who write magic realism very much, but it's not for me. It's not what I can do, but even if I could, I don't really want to try.
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Admire
If I Could
Magic
Realism
Books
Writers
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Magna Carta has 63 clauses in abbreviated Latin. Two of them that are still on the statute book, numbers 39 and 40, could be said to have changed the way in which the free world has grown.
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Free World
Latin
Numbers
Clause
Magna
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In the 40 or so years I've known David Puttnam, not only has he pursued an outstanding career in films and now politics, but he has been the keeper of the flame of the British film industry.
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Film Industry
Outstanding
Pursued
David
Flame
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Dame Barbara Cartland was an endearing eccentric, and when I interviewed her, she wanted me to listen to her dictating to her secretary one of those romantic novels that she turned out fortnightly.
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Barbara
Eccentric
Endearing
Secretary
Dame
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I was brought up in a strong working-class community by working-class parents and relations until I was 18, and that's what I really am. Now all sorts of things have been added, but that's what I am.
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Working Class
Added
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It is very difficult for middle-aged, institutionalised males who have done so well out of subsidy - and, fair play, given much back - to realise that there is a time to be a well-heeled revolutionary.
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Fair Play
Males
Middle Aged
Revolutionary
Realise
Subsidy
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A lot of the novels that I've really enjoyed in my life, whether it's Tolstoy's 'Cossacks,' or 'Sons and Lovers' or 'Jude the Obscure' or 'David Copperfield' or 'Herzog,' have an autobiographical spine.
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Enjoyed
Lovers
Obscure
Spine
Autobiographical
David
Jude
My Life
Sons
Tolstoy
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I'd been writing fiction for 50 years, since I was 19. And when you write fiction, it becomes a way of thinking: there's always a novel around. The strange thing was that after 'Remember Me,' there wasn't.
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Remember Me
Thinking Me Remember
Strange Thing
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Television, above all, is the place where people can see the world they live in, and if the world they live in is a world without the arts, so much the worse for television, and so much the worse for the viewers.
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Viewers
World People Live
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Darwin talks about evolution, but he doesn't say how it started. Maybe the sense of mystery will dissolve in the face of science, but I am not so sure. We are all described by the human genome, but it's getting people nowhere.
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Genome
Nowhere
Darwin
Dissolve
Talks
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The success of the arts has come through a mix of public subsidy, substantial private support, and good box-office receipts, but central to Labour's post-1997 programme has been a determination to increase access as much as excellence.
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Access
Determination
Excellence
Increase
Labour
Receipts
Support
Arts
Central
Mix
Private
Programme
Subsidy
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I don't go around thinking I'm attractive or not attractive. It has never occurred to me. People don't think like that where I come from... No one has ever said, 'Oh, he's a good-looking bloke.' They just didn't use those words about men.
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Attractive
Bloke
Good-Looking
Occurred
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I just got fed up with the Protestantism that I'd been brought up with being rubbed out, disregarded. There's an awful lot of frailty and doubt about it, which I understand and share, but there are certain things you just have to acknowledge.
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Acknowledge
Disregarded
Fed Up
Frailty
Awful Lot
Certain Things
Fed
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In the 1990s, from the estates of Scotland came the phenomenon of Irvine Welsh. 'Trainspotting' demanded its place not only in the high ranks of contemporary fiction but as a describer of a Britain that literally and metaphorically was in a deep mess.
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Britain
Contemporary
Estates
Mess
Phenomenon
Scotland
Welsh
Demanded
Ranks
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The theatre always seems to be in trouble but always thriving. It's deeply comical to me that we agonize about our crap football teams and indifferent Test sides when in front of our noses is a great world success story that no one's interested in apart from those who work in it.
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Crap
Indifferent
Noses
Sides
Success Work Great
Agonize
Success Story
Teams
Thriving
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What artists are doing, and what people who are receiving the arts are doing, is entering into this agreement to occupy a parallel world. The parallel world is ever-expanding. We used to think that it existed only for people who were wealthy, well-born, or educated. It isn't like that.
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Agreement
Educated
Entering
Receiving
World People Doing
Existed
Occupy
Parallel
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I wanted 'The South Bank Show' to reflect my own life and that of the team around me; to stretch the accepted boundaries and challenge the accepted hierarchies of the arts; to include pop music as well as classical music, television drama as well as theatre drama, and high-definition performers in comedy.
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Accepted
Boundaries
Classical Music
Performers
Pop Music
Life Music Me
Bank
Classical
Hierarchies
Include
Reflect
Stretch
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Like university science departments, the arts have shown how they can earn their way and point to an economically newborn future for this country. They show that the U.K. could be a prime provider of imaginative riches and intellectual adventure, which I think are the two great prizes of the 21st century.
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Adventure
Imaginative
Newborn
Riches
Departments
Earn
Economically
Prizes
Provider
Shown
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We got a copy of the 'New Statesman' at my grammar school in Wigton, Cumbria, in the 1950s. It sat mint fresh every week on the library table, with two or three other bargain-offer magazines. The 'Statesman' came out of the unimaginable Great World. I started to read it then and have pegged along ever since.
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Grammar
Grammar School
Library
Magazines
Mint
Sat
Unimaginable
Great World New
Copy
Fresh
Statesman
Table
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I'll never forget my interview with Barry Humphries - one of the oddest I've ever done. He insisted that for half the time he appeared as Dame Edna. So I interviewed the real Barry Humphries in a suit and tie, and then I interviewed Edna in full fig in her dressing room, where she criticised Barry mercilessly.
Melvyn Bragg / Broadcaster
Never Forget
Appeared
Barry
Dame
Dressing
Dressing Room
Fig
Half The Time
Insisted
Interview
Suit
Tie
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Melvyn Bragg Quotes - Page 2

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