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“... How strong was the fortress of Jewish life when you were young – did it hold up against the invasions of Chicago? I think it broke down very quickly, at least in the Twenties. After the Second World War the Jews were shocked out of this and turned again to Orthodoxy but no longer the old Orthodoxy – to a sort of suburban religious life without much substance to it ...”

“... more readers/viewers/listeners to the subject’s work. Thus when Kirk Douglas or Richard Adams or Melvyn Bragg ‘agrees to see me’ shortly before their new book comes out, they are not doing it out of the kindness of their hearts but in hopes of a socking great plug. And even if I say their book is lousy, their publishers will still reassure them that ...”

“... Four titles, and an abstract noun apiece – well, Melvyn Bragg has two, but it’s the well-known coupling as in (exactly as in, that’s rather the trouble) a fight for love-’n’-glory. Salman Rushdie’s word is a real operative concept, indeed a kind of virtue insistently contrasted with shamelessness ...”

“... and I was on all of them. I thought ‘Christ, that’s awful.’ I found it quite disturbing. Melvyn Bragg interviewed by the Daily Mail, 1990 To judge from his fiction, Melvyn Bragg finds his status as the nation’s cultural uncle as unsettling as anybody. An early novel, The Nerve (1971), is ostensibly ...”

“... off’ in the column of that name in last Sunday’s Observer (we go to press on 22 March), Melvyn Bragg – novelist, broadcaster, Controller of Arts Programmes at LWT, President of the National Campaign for the Arts, Labour peer and otherwise big-haired all-rounder – lavished praise on Chris Smith. He ended with an anecdote about a meeting in ...”

“... novels, and one cannot help feeling that her best talents lie elsewhere. The Maid of Buttermere by Melvyn Bragg is a full-blooded historical novel, with a wealth of invented incidents, a use of picturesque Cumbrian landscapes and a degree of psychological melodrama belonging in the tradition of Scott. The outlines of Mary Robinson’s story are to be ...”

“... have made them wish there was an RSPCA for humans, Dame Edna (for it was she) suddenly spotted Melvyn Bragg. ‘And there’s little Melvyn!’ she yelped. The erstwhile chairman of the Arts Council’s Literature Panel grinned no more easily than any of us would have done in his place. ‘Hands up,’ demanded Dame ...”

“... the Second World War, including Joanne Harris’s Five Quarters of the Orange and A Son of War by Melvyn Bragg, An Act of Treachery follows the success of Widdecombe’s first novel, The Clematis Tree. That tale of a child brain-damaged in a car accident could be said to have something of the night about it. Edwina Currie, whose novels include A ...”

“... and brought such champions of Wheldon’s reputation as Sir Denis Forman, Ludovic Kennedy and Melvyn Bragg trumpeting into the field. In common with other young men of his generation (he was born in 1916), Wheldon was slow to come to terms with his sexual drive. Sent to stay with a Westphalian family and learn German during the first years of the ...”

“... Mellor, Alan Bennett. There are a few outers: Jonathan Miller, Stephen Spender, Alfred Brendel, Melvyn Bragg – but even in these he is good on the hair, which, according to Craig Brown, was what he always homed in on. Rosemary Sayigh, Boxer’s sister, provides the most intimate of the recollections. In 1931, when Mark was born, the family, though ...”

“... fair,’ says Sue Townsend. ‘I believe they do a very good smelter.’ I am disturbed to find Melvyn Bragg working in the hotel as a doorman. He pretends not to recognise me. To Massenet’s Werther at the Bolshoi. It is an indifferent production, the scenery and sets almost Music Hall, but the house is packed and Nina and Galina, our guides, say ...”

“... both fantasy and about fantasy, not least as a way of coming to terms with pain and horror. Melvyn Bragg’s novel is of the documentary kind, a transcription of what goes on outside it – true to life, one would say if one found it any good: but then paradoxically that depends on the liveliness of what he himself has created. Kingdom Come has a ...”

“... is basically an exercise in steam-venting for pressure groups and interested parties, like Melvyn Bragg and Mrs Whitehouse. In the process the Corporation hopes to obscure the awkward fact that it is not the private property of Marmaduke Hussey, John Birt and their acolytes to dispose of as they see fit. Imagine the outrage there would be if the ...”

“... for 15 minutes. If so, my time is up. In Britain the worst I had to face was a nasty grilling from Melvyn Bragg on Start the Week. (Only a few days before the programme I discovered that Bragg is an officer of the British ME Association.) And even he relented enough to give me a piece of Eric Hobsbawm’s 80th-birthday ...”

“... for the next two instalments. If God likes a good read, he’ll give Mrs Thatcher a fourth term. Melvyn Bragg’s latest effort is a claustrophobic study of male infatuation. A 54-year-old, retired bank manager and Rotarian falls in love with an 18-year-old secretary with a dubious Irish Catholic background (some things haven’t changed in a hundred ...”