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“... that ‘many a man who was attractive and amusing at 20 is a pompous old bore at 50,’ and Melvyn Bragg got a lot of stick for the novel he wrote about an icky romance between a nice enough man in his fifties and an even nicer 18-year-old whose looks were out of this world, but women (for whatever reason) never seem to tire of telling stories ...”

“... barely has an occasion: why toil so long and hard merely to add to the overkill? Accused on TV by Melvyn Bragg of writing about the Royals from a position of ignorance, James contended first that they are so well protected that it is impossible to know anything about their private lives, and second that they are so busy that they don’t have private ...”

“... her legs wide apart, her black satin crotch glinting between her scrawny 55-year-old thighs’. Melvyn Bragg, filming his reaction shots for the South Bank Show, ‘smiling, simpering, giggling, looking down at his nails’. Richard Harris at the Savoy in 1990, ‘playing pocket billiards’ through his tracksuit bottoms. Rafael Nadal in Rome in ...”

“... managing a writers’ XI would want to sign him on the spot – a sly, last-minute ringer for Melvyn Bragg or Martin Amis. A. is in his early thirties and is presently contributing to magazines in South America. A short story of his appeared in a Cuban anthology published last year. ‘We had help from Spain and the USA,’ he explains. ‘We would ...”

“... ever know anyone so anxious to please their parents, so lonely and so scared of failure that, like Melvyn Bragg, they suffered a breakdown in their first year at grammar school. What I do remember is that life improved in my later school years, which accords with Todd’s view that working-class children, particularly boys, tended to get more help with ...”

“... had consciously ended a major phase of his writing career. As he put it in an interview with Melvyn Bragg in 1983, ‘by the end of the Smiley books I’d gone too far into a private world.’ The Smiley saga ends, it will be remembered, with Karla crossing no man’s land, betrayed into defection by love for his daughter. It is a life’s triumph ...”

“... Memel is being prepared for a TV interview with Maximilian Faucher, a 1960s French version of Melvyn Bragg. Memel’s bloodless face regarded him from the mirror. He recognised the widow’s peak, a drooping around the eyes. An unexceptional mouth set above an unremarkable chin. His face had lengthened in his late teens, when his appearance had been ...”

“... a TV programme, that Luther was to religion what J.S. Bach was to music, brought the retort from Melvyn Bragg that Sir Thomas Beecham found that he could manage very well without Bach. Luther himself, and his followers, ensured that there would always be plenty to talk and argue about, so that hundreds of books and articles have been devoted to the ...”

“... share option lottery in 1993 fell well for them. (Among the lucky LWT managers, incidentally, were Melvyn Bragg, Barry Cox and Greg Dyke. They provided most of the £79,000 Tony Blair spent on his campaign to become Labour leader. Bragg was ennobled by New Labour, Cox is a senior executive in the ITV network and ...”

“... contact with Adam (known to viewers of London Weekend Television through the surrogate emblem of Melvyn Bragg conducting the live electricity of the Arts) has been hijacked for the dust-cover of this generic hybrid. Let us pause before the engaging image of the outstretched fingers of the human child glowing softly in response to the scaly protuberances ...”

“... Museum, all that rescued signage, all that period-specific authenticity, the impressive figure of Melvyn Bragg, who had been shooting some high-toned television against this picturesque backdrop, swept out to his waiting Mercedes. Nobody in the convalescent audience heard much of the introduction, but they waited patiently and gave this night’s ...”

“... tough, fashionable, self-conscious group, now at the top of the New York avant-garde art world,’ Melvyn Bragg explains, blunt brown sideburns toning nicely with his blunt brown tie. A bit later he addresses Acker directly. ‘You talk in your books about doing away with meaning. What do you mean by that, more precisely?’ She smiles.For this ...”

“... readings from the unlucky winner’s efforts. Recipients have included Rachel Johnson and Melvyn Bragg. At the Literary Review Waugh held up a distorting mirror to the literary world. Some of his scepticism must have been a product of his relationship with his father. Geoffrey Wheatcroft noted that as he grew older Waugh ‘became more candid ...”

“... Melvyn Bragg’s In Our Time has become something of a badge to be worn with pride by the contemporary British dilettante. I often find myself groping for conversation, when my interlocutor, perhaps sensing my abstraction, will reveal that she listens to – and loves – the Radio 4 discussion programme on the history of ideas ...”

“... off to drink himself stupid at Groucho’s in the company of (or at least in the same room as) Melvyn Bragg, Umberto Eco and Gore Vidal. Amnesia has gone away and names are being profusely dropped again. Bradbury has never had much luck with the Booker, and I would guess that he’s blown it for 1992. But what is intriguing about the description of ...”