Lord Bragg

Melvyn Bragg was born in 1939 in Wigton, Cumbria. He won a scholarship to Wadham College, Oxford, where he read history. He joined the BBC as a general trainee in 1961. Three years later, he was appointed editor of BBC2's first arts programme, First Release. Since then, he has become the pre-eminent figure in arts broadcasting.

As editor and presenter of The South Bank Show and as Controller of Arts for London Weekend Television, Melvyn Bragg is well known for his promotion of literature and the creative and performing arts. He is equally respected for his contribution to the public awareness of basic and social sciences and of philosophy. He has chaired The Darwin Debate on BBC2, which looked at the significance of evolution theory for human society and the Radio 4 series on the history of science, On Giants’ Shoulders. He has also presented a 20-part history of Christianity on ITV. His recent radio series ‘The Routes of English’ and current ‘In Our Time’ project are likewise testimony to his range.

Melvyn Bragg has also achieved both popular and critical success as a writer, again with a surprising breadth of output. As well as several screenplays, he has written 17 novels, one of the most recent of which, The Soldier's Return, won the W. H. Smith Literary Award for 2000. He has also written a biography of Richard Burton. His new novel, Crossing the Lines was published last month. The Adventure of English 500 AD-2000 AD, a revised account of his widely acclaimed ITV series about the English language, is forthcoming this October.

He has been President of the National Campaign for the Arts since 1986, and a Governor of the London School of Economics since 1997. He has honorary degrees from the Universities of Wales, Liverpool, Lancaster, Leeds, South Bank, St Andrews, Northumbria, Brunel, Northumbria, UMIST and the Open University. He was made a Life Peer in 1998, becoming Lord Bragg of Wigton in the County of Cumbria. He was elected Chancellor of Leeds University in 1999.

It is not only for these extraordinary achievements that we are honouring Lord Bragg. He has, as we psychiatrists put it, a long history of commitment to the cause of mental health, stemming back to his own experience of mental illness in his teenage years, which he has discussed publicly with exemplary bravery. In his own words, ‘The experiences were terrifying. I could literally feel a part of me leaving and hovering above my body’. As a result, he has become one of the country's most powerful advocates for people with a mental illness. He has been involved with MIND in Carlisle for 16 years, and became President of MIND in 2001. As he puts it: ‘I saw people with mental distress being outcast and stigmatised and misunderstood’.

Lord Bragg is one of that very select band of intellectuals who can lay claim to the Renaissance ideal of the ‘uomo universale’. For this and for his commitment to the cause of mental health, it is both a privilege and a personal pleasure for me to present him for the College's highest honour, the Honorary Fellowship.