Friday, March 21, 2014

My hero / Joan Bakewell by Kirsty Wark

 

Joan Bakewell interviews Harold Pinter on Late NIght Line-Up.


My hero:

Joan Bakewell by Kirsty Wark

Joan was, and still is, a role model – a sassy, bright young woman who looked so incredibly modern and relaxed on television

Friday 21 March 2014

I

have a very clear memory of watching Joan Bakewell (pictured with Harold Pinter) on Late Night Line-Up. The programme ran during my formative teenage years and even now when, preparing to write this article, I listen to the opening theme tune it takes me right back to the late 1960s.

When I was 15 it never occurred to me that there might be something unusual about a woman in a prominent role on an unashamedly intellectual and hip programme. Joan was one of two main presenters and every night she explored ideas of literature, drama, poetry – and she was there by right, a sassy, bright young woman who looked so incredibly modern and relaxed on television. She interviewed every big arts and cultural figure on the radar. This was the era of the TV drama Take Three Girls, and Nova magazine, and Edna O'Brien's Girl with Green Eyes, and other material that explored what it was like to live in a new age. My friends and I talked about the fact that attitudes were changing rapidly. This was the permissive society, and in my senior year at school we became aware of the agitation around women's liberation and the demands for equality legislation. We needed role models and to me Joan was, and still is, the epitome of cool.


Joan Bakewell


When you are 17 you really have no idea where your life will take you, but early on I had the idea that I wanted to be a journalist. Both The Late Show, which I presented, and now Newsnight, have strong elements of Late Night Line-Up. Maybe I was trying to channel Joan Bakewell all along, and if I was, thank you, Joan, for the privilege.

THE GUARDIAN





2009
001 My hero / Oscar Wilde by Michael Holroyd
002 My hero / Harley Granville-Barker by Richard Eyre
003 My hero / Edward Goldsmith by Zac Goldsmith
004 My hero / Fridtjof Nansen by Sara Wheeler 
005 My hero / Mother Mercedes Lawler IBVM by Antonia Fraser
007 My hero / Ernest Shepard by Richard Holmes
008 My hero / JG Ballard by Will Self
009 My hero / Alan Ross by William Boyd
010 My hero / Ben the labrador by John Banville
011 My hero / Vicent van Gogh by Margaret Drabble
012 My hero / Franz Marek by Eric Hobsbawm

2010

017 My hero / Jack Yeats by Colm Tóibín
018 My hero / Francisco Goya by Diana Athill
019 My hero / Max Stafford-Clark by Sebastian Barry
020 My hero / Arthur Holmes by Richard Fortey

036 My hero / Robert Lowell by Jonathan Raban
037 My hero / Beryl Bainbridge by Michael Holroyd
038 My hero / Charles Schulz by Jenny Colgan
039 My hero / Oliver Knussen by Adam Foulds
040 My hero / Annie Proulx by Alan Warner

041 My hero / David Lynch by Paul Murray
042 My hero / Edwin Morgan by Robert Crawford
043 My hero / Anne Lister by Emma Donoghue
044 My hero / Jane Helen Harrinson by Mary Beard
045 My hero / Edmund Burke by David Marquand
046 My hero / Shelagh Deleaney by Jeanette Winterson
047 My hero / Christopher Marlowe by Val McDermid
048 My hero / Gwen John by Anne Enright
049 My hero / Michael Mayne by Susan Hill
050 My hero / Stanley Spencer by Howard Jacobson

051 My hero / William Beveridge by Will Hutton
052 My hero / Jean McConville by Amanda Foreman
053 My hero / Alexander Pushkin by Elaine Feinstein
054 My hero / Michael de Montaigne by Liyun Li
055 My hero / Michael Donaghy by Maggie O'Farrell
056 My hero / Richmal Crompton by Louise Crompton
057 My hero / Edward Thomas by David Constantine
058 My hero / Cy Twombly by Edmund de Waal
059 My hero / Sefton by Jilly Cooper

2011
079 My hero / Gene Wolfe by Neil Gaiman
087 My hero / Alberto Moravia by John Burnside
096 My hero / Isaac Babel by AD Miller
097 My hero / Lucian Freud by Esi Edugyan
100 My hero / Thomas Tranströmer by Robin Robertson

102 My hero / David Hockney by Susan Hill
111 My hero / Arnold Lobell by Julia Donaldson (23 December)

2012 (PAGE 9)
115 My hero / Nadime Gordimer by Tessa Hadley (27 January)

(PAGE 8)

2013

(PAGE 5)
194 My hero / René Descartes by James Kelman (13 September)
199 My hero / Albert Camus by Geoff Dyer (1 November)

(PAGE 4)



(PAGE 3)

2015
250 My hero John Bayley by Richard Eyre (22 January)
2016



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