Category: BBC
Date: Factual
& Arts TV
Printable version
Key presenters/anchors
Andrew Graham-Dixon
Andrew is a renowned art critic who has written several
books and made many arts series and documentaries for BBC Television,
most recently a programme about the Elgin Marbles for BBC TWO.
He is currently the Sunday Telegraph's art critic.
Andrew read English at Oxford University and was chief
art critic of The Independent from its launch in 1986 until 1998.
In the Eighties he won the BP Arts Journalism Award
three years running and, in 1991, the Hawthornden Prize for art criticism.
His previous work for the BBC includes a film about
Gericault's The Raft Of The Medusa which won first prize in the Reportage
section of the Montreal International Festival Of Films in 1994.
He wrote and presented the BBC TWO series A History
Of British Art in 1996.
Besides his most recent book, In the Picture, published
in 2002, Graham-Dixon's other books include Renaissance, which accompanied
the television series, the best-selling A History Of British Art (1996)
and a highly acclaimed monograph on Howard Hodgkin (1994).
Paper Museum, a collection of his writings from The
Independent, was published in 1996.
Charles
Hazlewood
One of the most prolific and dynamic musicians of his generation, Charles
Hazlewood conducts many of the great orchestras in the UK and around
the world.
Following his studies at Christ's Hospital and Oxford
University, Charles Hazlewood won first prize in the European Broadcasting
Union Conducting Competition in Lisbon in 1995 and has since established
himself as one of Britain's most exciting young conductors.
His passion to explore music of all varieties with the
widest possible audience has lead him to work with some of the most
celebrated contemporary composers, with the rawest new South African
vocal talent and at the cutting edge of the pop music scene.
He is passionate about new work: in the past six years
he has conducted more than 50 world premieres.
His fresh and insightful approach to music has been
acclaimed in television and radio programmes which Charles authors and
conducts for the BBC.
Programmes include Vivaldi Unmasked for BBC ONE, The
Genius of Mozart for BBC TWO/FOUR and the forthcoming The Genius of
Beethoven for BBC TWO/FOUR.
He regularly appears on BBC Radio 3 and his work for
the station includes Charles Hazlewood Discovering Music.
In 2003 Charles Hazlewood was nominated for a Royal
Television Society Award.
Charles is joint artistic director and co-founder of
the successful lyric theatre company Dimpho Di Kopane (Sotho for "combined
talents"), based in Cape Town.
He is also music director of Excellent Device formerly
EOS and has a sister orchestra Harmonieband.
Kwame Kwei
Armeh
An award-winning playwright, Kwame is currently working
on a new play with the National Theatre.
His most recent play, Elmina's Kitchen, also staged
by the National Theatre, won The Evening Standard's Charles Wintour
Award for Most Promising Playwright and was nominated for a Laurence
Olivier award for Best New Play 2003. It was recently produced and aired
on BBC Radio 3 and BBC FOUR.
Kwame was writer in residence at the Bristol Old Vic,
1999 to 2001, in which they produced his drama A Bitter Herb and two
productions of his musical Blues Brother Soul Sister, before it embarked
on a commercial national tour.
The Belgrade Coventry produced his adaptation of Cyrano
De Bergerac simply entitled Big Nose.
For many Kwame is best known for his role as the paramedic
Findley Newton in the series Casualty.
He is also the Good Will Ambassador for trade for the
NGO Christian Aid.
He has written articles for The Guardian, The Independent
and The Evening Standard.
Mariella
Frostrup
Defying any attempt to pigeonhole her skills and talents,
Mariella has made her mark on a wide variety of programmes and writes
regularly for The Observer, the Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday and magazines
including Harpers and Queen and the New Statesman.
On television and radio in a 15-year career she has
continued to impress both audiences and critics with her friendly, accessible
and intelligent screen presence.
Her projects run the gamut from current affairs (Panorama
and The End Of The Week Show) to movies and the arts with a five-year
reign as the queen of movie reviewers on ITV's Little Picture Show and
a weekly arts show Brunch which ran for two years on Channel 5.
She currently presents the BBC Radio 2 arts show, The
Green Room, and Open Book for BBC Radio 4.
Mariella is a respected arts critic and has sat on the
judging panels of various awards including the Booker Prize, the Orange
Prize for Fiction, the Evening Standard Film Awards, the Amnesty International
Media Awards, the Esquire Non-Fiction Awards and the London Film Festival.
Verity Sharp
Verity Sharp has been co-presenting Late Junction on
BBC Radio 3 since it started five years ago.
She has won the Silver Sony Music Broadcaster Award
and Late Junction has scooped Gold.
The programme is a vast mix of traditional and contemporary
music, from classical to electronic, folk, world and jazz, reflecting
her own musical background and training at Dartington College of Arts
and York University.
Verity studied primarily as a cellist, but a growing interest in the
roots music of the UK has since inspired her to take up the fiddle and
begin exploring this country's traditional music.
Formerly a BBC producer, she has produced and presented numerous programmes
including Radio 3's The Music Machine and contemporary music programme
Hear and Now; the arts magazine Meridian Live and Meridian Books for
the BBC World Service; and the BBC Proms for Radio 3 and BBC FOUR.
She contributes to World Routes and Music Matters and
writes for the BBC Music Magazine.
She now freelances as a producer, voiceover artist,
and presenter on radio and TV.
Regular reporters and specialists
Mark Kermode
Film critic, broadcaster and musician Mark Kermode is
the resident film critic for the New Statesman and for BBC Radio Five
Live.
He is also a contributing editor to Sight & Sound,
a regular writer for the Observer, and a regular panellist on BBC TWO's
Newsnight Review.
He is the writer and presenter of numerous television
documentaries including The Fear of God, 25 years of The Exorcist; Hell
on Earth; Shawshank, The Redeeming Feature; Fire in the Sky, On The
Edge of Blade Runner and Mel Gibson; Gods Lethal Weapon.
Mark has a PhD in Modern English and American Horror
Fiction, and is a Fellow of the English and Film Department of Southampton
University.
He plays the double bass in the skiffle band The Dodge
Brothers.
Lawrence
Pollard
Lawrence Pollard has spent the past three years as arts
correspondent for the BBC World Service, a job which has taken him from
backstage at the Oscars to the Ougagdougou film festival - which he
says was much more fun.
An experienced arts journalist he's worked for BBC Radio
3 and BBC Radio 4 on Night Waves, Front Row, Open Book, Back Row and
Saturday Review and has made documentaries on film, cartoons, archaeology
and the social impact of the bicycle, as well as writing in the national
press.
When asked he will enthuse about wood engraving, Hammond
organs and black and white photography.
Linda Kennedy
Linda is a broadcaster and writer who has enjoyed a
portfolio career.
She has been a TV news correspondent, a foreign documentaries
presenter and writer, and a newspaper columnist.
At ITN, she was a correspondent for News at Ten and
all other ITV news bulletins, reporting on stories which ranged from
Madonna's wedding to the World Cup to Russia's economic meltdown.
At Scottish Television she produced, wrote and presented
several overseas documentaries for a series called Scottish Reporters,
travelling to Afghanistan, Angola and Zimbabwe.
She was also a reporter on the station's news programme,
Scotland Today.
She has also been a humour columnist and reporter on
The Scotsman, written a daily TV column for The Herald, and contributed
columns and articles to other publications including the Sunday Times.
Shelley
Jofre
Shelley is an award-winning investigative reporter who
has travelled all over the world making documentaries for Panorama,
Newsnight and Frontline Scotland and contributing films to programmes
including Breakfast News, Six O'Clock News, Nine O'Clock News and Radio
Five Live.
She has reported on issues as wide-ranging as young
robbers and paedophiles on the internet to prescription drugs and the
crack cocaine trade.
She has also contributed to The Independent, The Sunday
Herald and The Guardian.
Music, films and travelling are among her favourite
pastimes.
Zina Saro-Wiwa
A broadcaster whose big passions are music, 'ideas'
and cultural politics, Zina is British-Nigerian, (born in Nigeria but
raised since the age of one in Britain).
She grew up in Surrey and attended Bristol University.
She has worked as a researcher, producer and reporter
on BBC Radio 4 programmes such as You & Yours, Woman's Hour, Home
Truths, The Long View as well as for the BBC World Service and BBC Radio
3.
As a radio presenter on Radio 4 and BBC World Service
her work includes a series on the relationship between faith and fashion
on BBC World Service, and a series on water provision in India and East
Africa.
She has a series coming up called Hello World which
is looking at global celebrity culture.
She also writes columns for Home Truths and World Service
arts programme The Ticket.
Zina is currently an adviser for the British Council's
music unit and also a guerilla film-maker.
Her two documentary films to date are Hello Nigeria!
which was shown at the New York African Film festival in April 2004
and Bossa about Bossa Nova music.
