Denys Blakeway is a British
television producer
A television producer is a person who oversees one or more aspects of video production on a television show, television program. Some producers take more of an executive role, in that they conceive new programs and pitch them to the television net ...
and author who is best known for documentaries and books about
contemporary history
Contemporary history, in English-language historiography, is a subset of modern history that describes the historical period from approximately 1945 to the present. Contemporary history is either a subset of the late modern period, or it is ...
.
In 1994 he set up Blakeway Productions, a
television company based in London. Before establishing himself as an independent producer Blakeway wrote and directed a number of documentaries for the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
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and
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned enterprise, state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a four ...
, including ''
Primo Levi
Primo Michele Levi (; 31 July 1919 – 11 April 1987) was an Italian chemist, partisan, writer, and Jewish Holocaust survivor. He was the author of several books, collections of short stories, essays, poems and one novel. His best-known works ...
: The Memory of the Offence'', ''
The Falklands War
The Falklands War ( es, link=no, Guerra de las Malvinas) was a ten-week undeclared war between Argentina and the United Kingdom in 1982 over two British Overseas Territories, British dependent territories in the South Atlantic: the Falkland I ...
''; and ''Thatcher - The Downing Street Years''. He has also been responsible for several documentaries about former British prime ministers, all made with their participation:
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 ...
,
John Major
Sir John Major (born 29 March 1943) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of the Conservative Party from 1990 to 1997, and as Member of Parliament ...
and
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 ...
Since setting up Blakeway Productions he has produced numerous programmes for British public service radio and television including many documentaries about the
British royal family, the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, several series with
historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the stu ...
s
Christopher Clark
Sir Christopher Munro Clark (born 14 March 1960) is an Australian historian living in the United Kingdom and Germany. He is the twenty-second Regius Professor of History at the University of Cambridge. In 2015, he was knighted for his servi ...
,
Max Hastings
Sir Max Hugh Macdonald Hastings (; born 28 December 1945) is a British journalist and military historian, who has worked as a foreign correspondent for the BBC, editor-in-chief of ''The Daily Telegraph'', and editor of the ''Evening Standard' ...
,
and
David Reynolds, and arts programmes with artist and critic
Matt Collings. In 2004 Blakeway Productions was acquired by the
Ten Alps
Ten Alps Plc () is a UK-based multimedia production company formed of three divisions. Television production falls under four brands: Blakeway, Brook Lapping, Films of Record and Reef TV. The first three produce documentaries and current affairs p ...
plc media group.
Recent television productions include a number of programmes about the causes of the
First World War
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...
, including 'The Necessary War' written and presented by Sir Max Hastings which argued that the British were right to enter the conflict against Germany, and 'Royal Cousins at War' which told the story of the tensions between the royal houses of Europe in the years leading up to the war, both for BBC 2. Some past productions include profiles of King George V and Queen Mary for BBC 2, ''George and Mary: The Royals who Rescued the Monarchy"'' and an award-winning ninety-minute programme about the artist
Lucian Freud
Lucian Michael Freud (; 8 December 1922 – 20 July 2011) was a British painter and draughtsman, specialising in figurative art, and is known as one of the foremost 20th-century English portraitists. He was born in Berlin, the son of Jewis ...
, ''Lucian Freud: Painted Life'' also for BBC 2. A three-part series about
Queen Victoria's fraught relations with her children was broadcast on BBC2 in January 2013 and Blakeway was responsible for the BBC's 90 minute official obituary 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 ...
, ''Margaret Thatcher: Prime Minister'' which was transmitted on BBC1 on the day that her death was announced. The obituary was subsequently shown by television stations around the world.
Denys Blakeway is the author of ''The Last Dance'', an account of the turbulent year of 1936,''The Falklands War'' and ''Fields of Thunder-Testing Britain's Bomb''.
Blakeway has also written and presented numerous programmes for BBC Radio 4 including the
Peabody award
The George Foster Peabody Awards (or simply Peabody Awards or the Peabodys) program, named for the American businessman and philanthropist George Peabody, honor the most powerful, enlightening, and invigorating stories in television, radio, and ...
winning ''The Unspeakable Atrocity'', a documentary about the BBC and the Holocaust produced by Nigel Acheson and ''Remembrance'' an archive based documentary about changing attitudes to remembering British war dead. In May 2013 he presented 'The Longest Suicide Note in History', a documentary about the Labour Party's disastrous 1983 general election campaign.
[BBC Radio 4 'The Archive Hour', 1 June 2013, producer Melissa FitzGerald]
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Blakeway, Denys
British television producers
Living people
Year of birth missing (living people)