William Crawley
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William Crawley is a BBC journalist and broadcaster in Northern Ireland.
He presents Blueprint, a three-part television natural history series which runs from 31 March 2008 as the centre-piece of the most ambitious multi-platform broadcasting project in the history of BBC Northern Ireland. The Blueprint season unites TV, radio and online to explore 600 million years of Ireland's natural history. For this reason, the series provoked mild criticism ahead of transmission. The range of comments on public access websites such as Slugger O'Toole suggested that the souped-up programmes had been aimed at school children and thus were necessarily simplistic.
Other TV presenting roles include BBC Northern Ireland's weekly late-night television interview series "William Crawley Meets ...", face-to-face interviews of 30 minutes in duration with leading thinkers and social reformers from across the world, including the philosopher Peter Singer, the scientist Richard Dawkins, the writer and broadcaster Melvyn Bragg, and the gay bishop Gene Robinson. He presented Frozen North (BBC One Northern Ireland), a documentary examining the possible future impact of global warming on Northern Ireland; Festival Nights (BBC Two Northern Ireland), television coverage of the 2005, 2006 and 2007 Belfast Festival at Queens; Hearts and Minds (BBC One), a television political review programme; What's Wrong With ...?" (BBC One), a six-part round-table current affairs discussion programme; and More Than Meets The Eye (BBC Two), a series investigating folklore in contemporary Ireland.
On radio, he presents BBC Radio Ulster's weekly Sunday Sequence programme, and Not the Nolan Show, a weekly current affairs phone-in programme and The Book Programme, a literary review programme. His other regular radio presenting roles include: Talk Back, BBC Radio Ulster's daily news and current affairs programme; Evening Extra, the station's drive-time news programme and Arts Extra, a daily arts review programme. Previous radio programmes include: The Bonfire Makers (for BBC Radio Four), an examination of Northern Ireland's controversial annual loyalist bonfire tradition, and an extended radio essay about George Bernard Shaw for BBC Radio Three.
He writes a BBC blog entitled "Will & Testament", and has also presented a radio documentary on the blogging revolution for BBC Radio Ulster.
[edit] Trivia
- In his televised interview with the evolutionary biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins, Crawley challenged the use of the term "delusion" in Dawkins's best-selling book The God Delusion. Dawkins accepted that likening the term "delusional" with mental illness may infer the wrong connotations.
- In April 2005, the artist Andy Scott's sculpture "The Ring of Thanksgiving" was unveiled in Belfast at the side of river Lagan. In a radio discussion that month, Crawley referred to the sculpture as "Nuala with the Hula", a name he had heard used in Belfast numerous times before; a name in fact given to the sculpture by Gerard Doyle, a local wit.
- On 26 February 2007, he presented Sorry For Your Trouble (BBC One), a one-hour documentary about death and dying, in which he spoke openly about a "struggling" relationship with his late father and made a visit to his father's grave for the first time in two decades.
[edit] Biography
William Crawley was born and raised in north Belfast. Prior to his career in the media, he worked as a university lecturer in philosophy and theology and as Presbyterian chaplain at the University of Ulster at Jordanstown. He was educated at Castle High School, Belfast Royal Academy, Queen's University, Belfast, and earned a doctorate in philosophy (Ph.D.