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" Now, perfectly ordinary people will give each other hugs. I mean, it used to be that a hug was reserved for if you came back from Australia - you know, back in the '40s and '50s. "

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" A lot of the novels that I've really enjoyed in my life, whether it's Tolstoy's 'Cossacks,' or 'Sons and Lovers' or 'Jude the Obscure' or 'David Copperfield' or 'Herzog,' have an autobiographical spine. "

Melvyn Bragg

Life

Obscure

My Life

" There's a lot of hours in the week if you use them properly. "

" It was my idea for high culture and popular culture to be treated equally. "

" It's amazing that Sky is the only place that has two dedicated arts channels. The BBC is doing very well... but why don't they do more? "

" My life is not very different from what it was 20 years ago. In fact, my career hasn't changed much since I was 22. "

" The driving force behind 'In Our Time' is that I want an education. I want to know more about science, say, and if I want to know, then other people probably do, too. "

" There is some brilliant pop music and some very poor classical music. And why shouldn't comedy be treated as seriously as drama? "

" My memory seems to be holding on quite well. There is no reason why it shouldn't if you keep training it. "

" I'm going to try and make you take the Beatles and Eric Clapton as seriously as the Berlin Philharmonic and Simon Rattle. "

" What artists are doing, and what people who are receiving the arts are doing, is entering into this agreement to occupy a parallel world. The parallel world is ever-expanding. We used to think that it existed only for people who were wealthy, well-born, or educated. It isn't like that. "

" We were working class, and you don't lose that. Later on, I bolted on media middle class... and now people like me are in the House of Lords. "

Melvyn Bragg

You

People

" Magna Carta has become totemic. It is in the comedy of Tony Hancock, in the poetry of Kipling, never far from the front pages in a constitutional crisis. "

" I actually admire some of the books by a lot of the writers who write magic realism very much, but it's not for me. It's not what I can do, but even if I could, I don't really want to try. "

Melvyn Bragg

Admire

I Can

" Is it rather stupid and dangerous to take Magna Carta so much for granted, as many of us seem to do, and to think of this attitude as 'very English?' "

Melvyn Bragg

Dangerous

Attitude

" I'll never forget my interview with Barry Humphries - one of the oddest I've ever done. He insisted that for half the time he appeared as Dame Edna. So I interviewed the real Barry Humphries in a suit and tie, and then I interviewed Edna in full fig in her dressing room, where she criticised Barry mercilessly. "

" Darwin talks about evolution, but he doesn't say how it started. Maybe the sense of mystery will dissolve in the face of science, but I am not so sure. We are all described by the human genome, but it's getting people nowhere. "

" I don't feel like I'm slowing down. "

Melvyn Bragg

Slowing

Feel

" We got a copy of the 'New Statesman' at my grammar school in Wigton, Cumbria, in the 1950s. It sat mint fresh every week on the library table, with two or three other bargain-offer magazines. The 'Statesman' came out of the unimaginable Great World. I started to read it then and have pegged along ever since. "

" There are two big beasts in the arts: the BBC and Sky Arts - challenging, leading the way. "

" Sometimes, you're just moved by people's journeys. "

" Miliband failed us, his Labour supporters. And Labour will now, because of him, be in a disaster zone for a long time. "

" I was born in a radio world, and I got so much from it. "

" Dame Barbara Cartland was an endearing eccentric, and when I interviewed her, she wanted me to listen to her dictating to her secretary one of those romantic novels that she turned out fortnightly. "

" The success of the arts has come through a mix of public subsidy, substantial private support, and good box-office receipts, but central to Labour's post-1997 programme has been a determination to increase access as much as excellence. "

" Grime reminds me, if there is an echo, of sort of near enough like Liverpool in the very early Sixties. It's a lot of kids obsessed with music - obsessed with it. "

Melvyn Bragg

Early

Music

" You ask 20 of your friends how English and American democracy came about. None of them would say that Anglicanism or Protestantism had anything to do with it. But it was crucial to it! "

" Work is a great blotter up. It stops you thinking, which is useful. No, it stops you feeling. "

" I enjoy writing. Would I rather be playing golf? No. Would I rather be fishing? No. "

" It is very difficult for middle-aged, institutionalised males who have done so well out of subsidy - and, fair play, given much back - to realise that there is a time to be a well-heeled revolutionary. "

" As the 20th century unspooled, a cultural warming melted down many frozen class characteristics. "