Jonathan Dimbleby
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Jonathan Dimbleby, born 31 July 1944, is a British presenter of current affairs and political radio and television programmes, a political commentator and a writer.
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[edit] Education
Dimbleby was educated at the Charterhouse School, a famous boys' Independent school in Godalming, Surrey in Southern England. He graduated from University College, London in 1965 having read for a Philosophy degree. He studied in the same department as the author Ken Follett.
[edit] TV and radio career
He is the presenter of BBC Radio 4’s flagship programme of topical debate Any Questions? and its twin phone-in programme Any Answers?. He has also presented BBC1's On The Record political programme, until he was succeeded by John Humphrys. He later changed channels and presented ITV's flagship weekly political programme, Jonathan Dimbleby until the show ended on May 7th 2006. He is also ITV's anchorman on every General election night since 1997.
[edit] Writing and other activities
His first book was about his television journalist father; "Richard Dimbleby: A Biography" was published in 1975. In 1979 he wrote "The Palestinians", an illustrated history of the people and politics of a volatile region of the world.
In 1994 Dimbleby wrote The Prince of Wales: A Biography. Widely regarded as reflecting the perspective of Prince Charles concerning the collapse of his marriage to Diana, Princess of Wales, it is often contrasted with the 1992 book "Diana Her True Story" by tabloid writer Andrew Morton.[1]In fact, Dimbleby's promotional listing refers to the autobiography as "authorized", and Dimbleby himself wrote, in its preface:
...[T]he moment seemed right to me for a full and, if possible, authoritative portrait of the life and character of the Prince of Wales...However, I had no expectation that he would offer me the unprecedented and unfettered access to the original and entirely untapped sources on which this biography is based. Over the last two years, I have been able to comb through his archives...I have also been free to read his journals, diaries and many thousands of the letters which he has written assiduously since childhood. Not only have I drawn heavily from this wealth of original material but I have been free to quote extensively from it. Nor has the Prince discouraged past and present members of the royal household from speaking to me; likewise, at his behest, his friends and some of his relatives have talked about him openly at length, almost all of them for the first time...In my formal agreement with the Prince of Wales, I undertook 'to take into account any comments made by HRH with respect to factual inaccuracies'...While I have corrected agreed factual errors, I have not been inhibited from writing what I felt to be the truth about him.[2]
The book ends prior to the Wales couple's decision to divorce. Yet it includes a number of personal details not only about their courtship and marriage, but about the upbringing, personality, family relations, activities, finances, charities and lifestyle of the Prince. In the hardcover version's 600 pages, Prince Charles's future wife, Camilla Parker Bowles, is mentioned on 19 pages.
Dimbleby also wrote and presented a television documentary on the Prince of Wales entitled Charles, The Private Man, the Public Role. This included the famous interview in which Charles admitted to having committed adultery after his marriage had "irretrievably broken down", which aired internationally on June 29, 1994.
In a lengthy interview conducted by PBS prior to Diana's death in August 1997, Max Hastings, publisher of the Daily Telegraph between 1986 and 1995, discussed the impact of Morton's and Dimbleby's books on subsequent news coverage of the Royal Family:
I suppose the Morton book was a watershed because finally one was asked to come to terms with the fact that a very prominent member of the Royal Family had done something incredibly foolish, incredibly indiscreet and attempted to manipulate the media for her own ends. Now when this was compounded by the Prince of Wales doing exactly the same with Jonathan Dimbleby and also engaging the Murdoch press in this operation, that at that moment in fact--I did write to the Prince of Wales's office and I said 'Hitherto I've always tried very hard to run the newspaper for which I am responsible in a way that will be helpful to the institution of the Monarchy and the Royal Family. But from hereon all bets are off.' Not that one would ever wantonly do the Monarchy or the Royal, the Royal Family any disservice but any notion that one would act against the interest of the paper or keep something out of the paper in order to help the Royal Family has to be off when you've half the Royal Family exploiting the media for their own ends and in this particular case actually being willing to flog anything they've got to flog to the Murdoch press, who in this case were our competition. So, if they're not prepared to help themselves, why on earth should any of the rest of us stick our necks out to help them?
Dimbleby also presented a documentary on the British departure from Hong Kong in 1997 entitled The Last Governor (a reference to Chris Patten). A book version was released the same year.
Dimbleby runs an organic farm near Bath, and is President of the Soil Association and of Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO). He is also Vice-President (and past President) of the Council for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE) and a trustee of the Richard Dimbleby Cancer Fund. He wrote the forewords for "The Organic Directory: Your Guide to Buying Natural Foods" in 1999 and "The Origins of the Organic Movement" in 2001.
[edit] Family
Dimbleby is the son of the famous World War II war correspondent Richard Dimbleby, who was later to become presenter of the BBC TV current affairs programme Panorama, and younger brother of David Dimbleby, also a current affairs commentator and presenter of BBC programmes. He was a director of the Dimbleby Newspaper Group, former publishers of the Richmond and Twickenham Times, acquired by the Newsquest Media Group in 2001.
For thirty-five years, Dimbleby was married to fellow author Bel Mooney. They have two adult children, Kitty, a journalist for the Femail section of the Daily Mail, and Daniel, a producer on Jamie Oliver's television show. After interviewing Susan Chilcott for his television programme, Dimbleby pursued a relationship with the operatic soprano who, however, died of breast cancer in September 2003 at the age of 40, a doomed romance whose coverage by the Daily Mail is said to have embittered him. He lived and cared for Chilcott the last four months of her life. The following year the Dimblebys announced their separation. Sometime thereafter, Dimbleby began living with a 30 year-old publicist, Jessica Ray and married her in Dartmouth, Devon on March 12th 2007.
[edit] See also
[edit] External link
[edit] References
- ^ Kakutani, M: "Books of the Times; 'He Says, She Says' on a Royal Level", New York Times, November 25, 1994
- ^ Dimbleby, Jonathan: "The Prince of Wales: A Biography.", pages xvii-xx. William Morrow and Company, Inc., New York, 1994
