Few would guess how hard-won Melvyn Bragg’s successful stability is. His CV suggests a master of the balancing act

Melvyn Bragg on suicide, loss and his breakdown

In an exclusive interview, Melvyn Bragg talks about breakdown, loss and his latest work, Remember Me..., a moving lament on the suicide of his first wife

Peter Kemp

Few would guess how hard-won Melvyn Bragg’s successful stability is. His CV suggests a master of the balancing act: highly regarded author and respected broadcaster, veteran radio presenter for the BBC and controller of arts for LWT, equally at home in the House of Lords and working-class Cumbria, where he was born in 1939 and still has a frequently visited cottage. Yet, as he talks to me over coffee in the conservatory kitchen of his Hampstead house, he soon reveals that, behind this assured-seeming public equilibrium, there has been nightmarish private turmoil.

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