JOAN (DAWSON) BAKEWELL. Born in Stockport, Cheshire, U.K., 16 April 1933. Attended Stockport High School for Girls, Stockport, Cheshire; Newnham College, Cambridge, B.A. Married 1) Michael Bakewell, 1955 (divorced, 1972); children: Matthew and Harriet; 2) Jack Emery, 1975. Joined BBC radio as studio manager; subsequently hosted numerous arts, travel, and current affairs programmes; BBC television arts correspondent, 1981-87; has also written for Punch and Radio Times; television critic, The Times, 1978-81; columnist, Sunday Times, since 1988. Associate, 1980-81, associate fellow, 1984-87, Newnham College, Cambridge. President, Society of Arts Publicists, 1984-90; member, governing body, British Film Institute, since 1994. Address: Knight Ayton Management, 70A Berwick Street, London W1V 3PE, U.K.

TELEVISION SERIES

1962 Sunday Break
1964 Home at 4.30
1964 Meeting Point
1964 The Second Sex
1965-72 Late Night Line Up
1968 The Youthful Eye
1971 Moviemakers at the National Film Theatre
1972 Film 72
1973 Film 73
1973 For the Sake of Appearance
1973 Where is Your God?
1973 Who Cares?
1973 The Affirmative Way
1974-78 Holiday
1974 What's it all About?
1974 Time Running Out
1974 Thank You, Ron (producer, writer)
1974 Fairest Fortune
1974 Edinburgh Festival Report
1976 Generation to Generation
1976 The Shakespeare Business
1976 The Brontë Business
1976-78 Reports Action
1977 My Day with the Children
1979 The Moving Line
1980 Arts UK: OK?
1988- The Heart of the Matter

RADIO

Away from it All, 1978-79; PM, 1979-81; Newsquiz; There and Back (play; writer); Parish Magazine (play; writer).

STAGE

Brontës: The Private Faces (writer), 1979.

PUBLICATIONS

The New Priesthood: British Television Today, with Nicholas Garnham. London: Allen Lane, 1970.

A Fine and Private Place, with John Drummond. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1977.

The Complete Traveller. London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1977.

 

 

 

Joan Bakewell has been one of the most respected presenters and commentators on British radio and television over a period of some thirty years. At the start of her career, in the 1960s, she was admired as one of the first women to establish a reputation for herself in what had previously been an almost exclusively male preserve. She has since consolidated her status as one of the more serious-minded and thoughtful of television's "talking heads," making regular appearances both with the BBC and the independent companies and also becoming a regular writer for leading British broadsheet newspapers like The Times and the Sunday Times.

Early appearances on such programmes as BBC2's Late Night Line Up provided evidence of not only her intellectual grasp of a range of subjects and of her ability to extract from complex arguments the crucial issues underlying them but also profited by her youthful good looks, which were to earn her the unwanted tag (initially bestowed by humorist Frank Muir) "the thinking man's crumpet." Gradually, though, Bakewell has shaken herself free of the limitations of this description and has gone on to present a wide range of programmes, from current affairs shows, discussions of the arts and questions of public and private morality (notably in her long-running series The Heart of the Matter) to the less intellectually rigorous territory inhabited by, for instance, Film 73 and Holiday.

Always calm--she is perhaps the least hysterical of all female British television presenters--Bakewell has sometimes been accused of having a somewhat "dour" and even cold personality and viewers have complained that only rarely has she been seen to smile with any conviction. Intent on getting to the bottom of a particular issue, she is never distracted by opportunities for light relief or lured into exploring the possibilities of a colourful tangential course. Even when presenting holiday reports from various exotic parts of the globe she never gave the impression she was ready to abandon herself to anything resembling relaxed frivolity or other conventional "holiday-making" (she was consequently usually dispatched to report back from destinations with obvious cultural and artistic links).

This seriousness of purpose is, however, arguably dictated largely by the material Bakewell is usually associated with--weighty matters of relevance to consumers, voters and enthusiasts of the arts and so on. Her unflurried, concerned tone of voice enables the viewer to concentrate upon the intellectual questions being raised during discussions of such emotional topics as providing funds for the treatment of terminally ill children--questions that in less practiced hands could otherwise all too easily be swamped by gushing sentimentality. There is nonetheless a lighter side to Bakewell's character, amply demonstrated by her contributions to the jovial BBC radio programme Newsquiz, among other similarly humorous productions.

-David Pickering