Michael Cockerell on:
[Wikipedia]
[Google]
[Amazon]
Michael Roger Lewis Cockerell (born 26 August 1940) is a British broadcaster and journalist. He is the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
's most established political
documentary maker, with a long,
Emmy
The Emmy Awards, or Emmys, are an extensive range of awards for artistic and technical merit for the American and international television industry. A number of annual Emmy Award ceremonies are held throughout the calendar year, each with the ...
award-winning career of political programmes spanning television and radio.
Early life
His father was Professor Hugh Anthony Lewis Cockerell,
OBE, Secretary General of the Chartered Insurance Institute, a professor who was an expert on insurance law, and his mother, Fanny, was an author and playwright, and daughter of Dr David Salomon Jochelman, a prominent leader of the British Jewish community. He was educated at
Kilburn Grammar School
Kilburn Grammar School was an English grammar school which opened in 1898 in Kilburn, north-west London. The school ceased to exist in 1967.
History
The school's history is detailed in a book by Richard E Brock. It was founded by the Rev. Dr. H ...
and
Corpus Christi College, Oxford
Corpus Christi College (formally, Corpus Christi College in the University of Oxford; informally abbreviated as Corpus or CCC) is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1517, it is the 12th ...
where he studied
Philosophy, Politics and Economics (
BA 1962,
MA 1968).
[ Daily Telegraph interview 2 December 2007]
Retrieved 26 March 2013
Career
Cockerell joined the BBC Africa service and for 12 years he was a reporter on the current affairs programme, ''
Panorama
A panorama (formed from Greek πᾶν "all" + ὅραμα "view") is any wide-angle view or representation of a physical space, whether in painting, drawing, photography, film, seismic images, or 3D modeling. The word was originally coined in ...
'';
he now specialises in in-depth documentaries on the politics of
Westminster
Westminster is an area of Central London, part of the wider City of Westminster.
The area, which extends from the River Thames to Oxford Street, has many visitor attractions and historic landmarks, including the Palace of Westminster, Bu ...
. He has made biographical profiles of
Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013) was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990. S ...
(''The Making of the Iron Lady'', 2008),
Edward Heath
Sir Edward Richard George Heath (9 July 191617 July 2005), often known as Ted Heath, was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1970 to 1974 and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of the Conserv ...
(''Sir Ted: A Film Portrait of Edward Heath'', 2005),
Alan Clark
Alan Kenneth Mackenzie Clark (13 April 1928 – 5 September 1999) was a British Conservative Member of Parliament (MP), author and diarist. He served as a junior minister in Margaret Thatcher's governments at the Departments of Employment, Tra ...
,
Barbara Castle
Barbara Anne Castle, Baroness Castle of Blackburn, (''née'' Betts; 6 October 1910 – 3 May 2002), was a British Labour Party politician who was a Member of Parliament from 1945 to 1979, making her one of the longest-serving female MPs in Bri ...
,
Roy Jenkins
Roy Harris Jenkins, Baron Jenkins of Hillhead, (11 November 1920 – 5 January 2003) was a British politician who served as President of the European Commission from 1977 to 1981. At various times a Member of Parliament (MP) for the Lab ...
(''A Very Social Democrat: A Portrait of Roy Jenkins'', 1996),
Michael Howard
Michael Howard, Baron Howard of Lympne (born Michael Hecht; 7 July 1941) is a British politician who served as Leader of the Conservative Party and Leader of the Opposition from November 2003 to December 2005. He previously held cabinet posi ...
,
David Cameron
David William Donald Cameron (born 9 October 1966) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2010 to 2016 and Leader of the Conservative Party from 2005 to 2016. He previously served as Leader o ...
,
Denis Healey
Denis Winston Healey, Baron Healey, (30 August 1917 – 3 October 2015) was a British Labour Party (UK), Labour politician who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1974 to 1979 and as Secretary of State for Defence from 1964 to 1970; he ...
(''The Best Prime Minister Labour Never Had?'', 2015) and most recently,
Boris Johnson
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (; born 19 June 1964) is a British politician, writer and journalist who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 2019 to 2022. He previously served as F ...
(''The Irresistible Rise'').
From the 1970s onwards, his work for television has included ''How We Fell For Europe'' (1975), ''The Lost World of the Seventies'' (2012), ''The Marketing Of Margaret Thatcher'' (1983), ''Blair's Thousand Days - The Lady And The Lords'' (2000), ''Life in Whips Office'' (1995), ''Inside 10 Downing Street'' (2000) and ''Cabinet Confidential'' (2001).
He has also made multi-part series', among them the ''How to Be'' trilogy (''How to Be Chancellor'', 2010, ''How to Be Foreign Secretary'', 1998 and ''How to Be Home Secretary'', 1999); a three-part series on the history of Anglo-American, Anglo-German and Anglo-French relations; an observational documentary on the workings of
Alastair Campbell
Alastair John Campbell (born 25 May 1957) is a British journalist, author, strategist, broadcaster and activist known for his roles during Tony Blair's leadership of the Labour Party. Campbell worked as Blair's spokesman and campaign director ...
's press office in ''News from Number 10''; and a three-part analysis of
Tony Blair
Sir Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (born 6 May 1953) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. He previously served as Leader of th ...
's 10 years in office as
Prime Minister
A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister is not ...
. He also followed up the ''How to Be'' series, with ''How to Be Ex Prime Minister'' (2007), broadcast just before Blair's resignation. The programme was repeated upon the departure from office of
Theresa May
Theresa Mary May, Lady May (; née Brasier; born 1 October 1956) is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party from 2016 to 2019. She previously served in David Cameron's cab ...
in 2019.
Cockerell's 2010 series ''The Great Offices of State'' was a behind-the-scenes look at the
Home Office, the
Foreign Office
Foreign may refer to:
Government
* Foreign policy, how a country interacts with other countries
* Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in many countries
** Foreign Office, a department of the UK government
** Foreign office and foreign minister
* Unit ...
, and the
UK Treasury
His Majesty's Treasury (HM Treasury), occasionally referred to as the Exchequer, or more informally the Treasury, is a department of His Majesty's Government responsible for developing and executing the government's public finance policy and eco ...
, three of the UK's
Great Offices of State
The Great Offices of State are senior offices in the UK government. They are the Prime Minister, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Foreign Secretary and Home Secretary or, alternatively, three of those offices excluding the Prime Minister.
Current ...
. This was followed by the 2011 series ''The Secret World of Whitehall''. He also made the four-part series ''Inside the Commons'' for the BBC, broadcast in 2015, for which had sought permission for six years.
In the run-up to the
May 2010 election, Cockerell was responsible for a documentary entitled ''How to Win the TV Debate'', in which he discussed the importance of Britain's
first television debates in the outcome of the general election. The programme featured candid interviews with US presidents and their advisers on debate strategy.
Cockerell has interviewed eight Prime Ministers – more than any other reporter in British political broadcasting. Prior to the
invasion of Iraq
The 2003 invasion of Iraq was a United States-led invasion of the Ba'athist Iraq, Republic of Iraq and the first stage of the Iraq War. The invasion phase began on 19 March 2003 (air) and 20 March 2003 (ground) and lasted just over one mont ...
in 2003, he interviewed Tony Blair for a documentary on Britain's relationship with the United States, ''Hotline to the President''. That interview was widely reported on the front pages of British newspapers when Blair accepted that the need to sustain the transatlantic '
special relationship
The Special Relationship is a term that is often used to describe the politics, political, social, diplomacy, diplomatic, culture, cultural, economics, economic, law, legal, Biophysical environment, environmental, religion, religious, military ...
' meant a willingness to 'pay the blood price'.
More recently, Cockerell has contributed shorter profiles to ''
Newsnight
''Newsnight'' (or ''BBC Newsnight'') is BBC Two's news and current affairs programme, providing in-depth investigation and analysis of the stories behind the day's headlines. The programme is broadcast on weekdays at 22:30. and is also availa ...
'', such as ''Who is Ed Miliband?'' and ''Theresa May's legacy''. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by the
University of East Anglia
The University of East Anglia (UEA) is a public research university in Norwich, England. Established in 1963 on a campus west of the city centre, the university has four faculties and 26 schools of study. The annual income of the institution f ...
in 2007.
Family
Cockerell has been married three times and has seven children.
He first married Anne Christine Adriane Faber (1944–28 November 2002) in 1970, and divorced 1981. Faber was the eldest child and only daughter of
Julian Faber and his wife
Lady Caroline Faber
Lady (Ann) Caroline Faber (29 August 1923 – 14 September 2016) was the daughter of Harold Macmillan (created Earl of Stockton in 1984) and his wife, Lady Dorothy Macmillan. She was the second of their four children, and their last surviving ...
(''née'' Macmillan), a daughter of
Harold Macmillan
Maurice Harold Macmillan, 1st Earl of Stockton, (10 February 1894 – 29 December 1986) was a British Conservative statesman and politician who was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1957 to 1963. Caricatured as "Supermac", he ...
. They had one son and one daughter.
His second marriage, in 1984, was to Bridget Alexandra Heathcoat-Amory (born 21 May 1952), daughter of
Brigadier Roderick Heathcoat-Amory and his wife Sonia Myrtle Heathcoat-Amory (''née'' Denison). By 1991, they had divorced.
In 2011, he married BBC producer Anna Lloyd, with whom he has three daughters;, the couple live in
Notting Hill
Notting Hill is a district of West London, England, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Notting Hill is known for being a cosmopolitan and multicultural neighbourhood, hosting the annual Notting Hill Carnival and Portobello Road M ...
.
Notes
External links
Journalisted – Articles by Michael Cockerell
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cockerell, Michael
British male journalists
Fellows of Corpus Christi College, Oxford
1940 births
Living people
People educated at Kilburn Grammar School