Bakewell, Joan 1933-

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Bakewell, Joan 1933-

PERSONAL:

Born April 16, 1933, in Stockport, Cheshire, England; married Michael Bakewell, 1955 (divorced, 1972); married Jack Emery, 1975; children: (first marriage) Matthew and Harriet. Education: Newnham College, Cambridge, B.A.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Stockport, England. Agent—Knight Ayton Management, 70A Berwick St., London W1V 3PE, England. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Journalist, writer, columnist, broadcaster, and educator. Joined BBC radio as studio manager; subsequently hosted numerous arts, travel, and current affairs programmes; BBC television arts correspondent, 1981-87. Also Newnham College, Cambridge, England, associate, 1980-81, associate fellow, 1984-87; British Film Institute, acting chairperson, 1999.

MEMBER:

Society of Arts Publicists (president, 1984-90), British Film Institute (member of governing body, 1994—).

AWARDS, HONORS:

Richard Dimbleby Award, British Academy of Film and Television Arts, for television journalism.

WRITINGS:

(With Nicholas Garnham) The New Priesthood: British Television Today, Allen Lane (London, England), 1970.

The Complete Traveller: Everything You Need to Know about Travel at Home and Abroad, Sidgwick & Jackson (London, England), 1977.

(Selector, with John Drummond) A Fine and Private Place: A Collection of Epitaphs and Inscriptions, photos by Andrew Lawson, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (London, England), 1977.

The View from Here: Life at Seventy, Atlantic Books on behalf of Guardian Newspapers (London, England), 2006.

Also author of the autobiography The Centre of the Bed. Author of the play Brontës: The Private Faces, 1979, and numerous radio plays, including There and Back and Parish Magazine. Writer for Punch and Radio Times; television critic, the Times, 1978-81; columnist for the Sunday Times, 1988—, the Independent, and the Guardian, all London, England. Contributor to numerous British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) television series, beginning in 1962 with Sun-day Break on through the 1980s, including The Heart of the Matter, 1988; author of BBC4 programs My Generation, Taboo, and Flowering in Autumn.

SIDELIGHTS:

A well-known television and radio broadcaster and writer in Great Britain, Joan Bakewell is also the author of several books, including The View from Here: Life at Seventy. In her collection of essays, first printed in the London Guardian, Bakewell ponders such subjects as ageism, modern life, and the luck of her generation, sometimes weaved within her own reminiscences. "This is by no means a woman who has embraced the concept of retirement as a time to go home and put your feet up," wrote a contributor to London's Mail on Sunday. The contributor also noted that the author "examines with barely concealed fury the ageism and sexism that persist at work and in private life." Reviewers also noted the author's writings about a lost era. For example, Val Hennessy wrote in London's Daily Mail: "She ends her book in reflective mood, with words that will strike a chord with those who grew up in the vanished world of tea and buttered toast and vicars on bicycles." Hennessy also noted in his review: "In retrospect, Bakewell believes that her generation was blessed to live during a golden age of tolerance, thriftiness, self-reliance, enlightenment and concern for society as a whole."