Melvyn
Bragg has earned himself the rare distinction of being a true celebrity
academic in modern times. His achievements are vast and impressive. His career
got off the ground as a successful novelist in the 1960s and he has gone onto
win several critical awards up until the late 1990s. I grew up seeing him as
the presenter with the peculiar nasally voice, regularly lampooned by the
satirical puppet show Spitting Image,
who hosted The South Bank Show. Bragg
had a reputation for arts and culture, but I later discovered he was a huge
driving force behind science in the Radio
4 programme, In Our Time, which he
took over hosting and currently still presents. The show presents itself as a
history programme with Bragg hosting or, to be more accurate, chairing a panel
of university lecturers on a particular event or person from history. However,
in line with Eleanor Roosevelt’s regular quote regarding small minds discussing
people and medium minds discussing events, the listener quickly discovers the
strength in the show is its exploration of ideas. Bragg does well to keep the
discussing going along certain channels and even testing certain arguments with
the impartial view his role demands. Such a role reveals a broad yet in depth
understanding of a vast array of subjects that straddle the worlds of
imagination and fact-finding. As a fellow writer that does not like to be
confined to a narrow path, I find it is truly inspiring to see now that his
published work includes a wide range of subjects in both fiction and
non-fiction. Therefore, I shouldn’t have really been surprised to see the
hugely disparate selection of books he chose for 12 Books That Changed the World.
