A structure is a bit like a story. People will go along with you – they see where you’re going. – Melvyn Bragg
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
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
My life is not very different from what it was 20 years ago. In fact, my career hasn’t changed much since I was 22. – Melvyn Bragg
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
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
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
My memory seems to be holding on quite well. There is no reason why it shouldn’t if you keep training it. – Melvyn Bragg
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
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
In 1997, the Labour government set out to strengthen funding for the arts – and achieved it. – Melvyn Bragg
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
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
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
That’s why writing is important to me. Time goes past, and you’ve been somewhere and come back that hasn’t hurt you, and you’ve been somebody else. – Melvyn Bragg
Few places on earth have been as affectionately alchemised into literature as the Lake District. – Melvyn Bragg
The arts stimulate imagination. They provoke thought. And then, having done that, all sorts of other things happen. – Melvyn Bragg
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
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
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
As the 20th century unspooled, a cultural warming melted down many frozen class characteristics. – Melvyn Bragg
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
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
I’m not a fan of the working class being mocked, including by some of our famous writers – even those who came from it. – Melvyn Bragg
Once, the arts were opera, ballet, classical music, and everything else deemed highbrow. – Melvyn Bragg