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" One of the great things about making 'Reel History' was meeting British people from all over the class system. It made me realise that London is a different country. "

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" Magna Carta has 63 clauses in abbreviated Latin. Two of them that are still on the statute book, numbers 39 and 40, could be said to have changed the way in which the free world has grown. "

Melvyn Bragg

Said

Book

Free

" 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

" The class barricades have been stormed by the forces of a broad culture, which is made up of clusters of individuals who have decided for themselves what they will be in society. "

Melvyn Bragg

Culture

Class

" The theatre always seems to be in trouble but always thriving. It's deeply comical to me that we agonize about our crap football teams and indifferent Test sides when in front of our noses is a great world success story that no one's interested in apart from those who work in it. "

" 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 abolition of slavery was driven by the King James Bible. It gave slaves a common language and purpose. "

" 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 don't go around thinking I'm attractive or not attractive. It has never occurred to me. People don't think like that where I come from... No one has ever said, 'Oh, he's a good-looking bloke.' They just didn't use those words about men. "

Melvyn Bragg

Words

Thinking

" More people go to Tate Modern than watch the Arsenal. "

Melvyn Bragg

People

" Britain is undoubtedly becoming more cultural. No question of it. People who say it is dumbing down simply don't look around enough. They don't know enough. "

" I like the fact George R. R. Martin took Shakespeare's political plays as material, but he also took on all sorts of other sensational stories and mingled them in together. "

Melvyn Bragg

Stories

Together

" The best of pop in our country is among the best of the arts that we do. And Britain does the arts as well as, and sometimes better than, anybody else on the planet. "

" 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. "

" Writers are looking for a story. Using your own life as the basis for a story gives it an association with reality that's a wonderful starting point. "

" I think television does tease out a certain vanity in everybody when you look at yourself and you go, 'Oh Christ.' Maybe that's why my intros get shorter and shorter. "

" In 1997, the Labour government set out to strengthen funding for the arts - and achieved it. "

" It is in our culture that we don't want to admit that our culture is good. "

" I don't want closure, I don't know what that means or why you would want it. "

" In music, the Specials brought a city, Coventry, bombed out for a second time and riven with racism, to a celebration between black and white musicians and their 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! "

" I am 74 now. Looking back, I have a sense of not really being in control of my career. I just went where it took me. "

" I've been making arts programmes for almost 50 years, and every day, I can't believe my luck. "

" I'm a Labour party supporter, but I'm also a democrat. "

" 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. "

" 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

" A structure is a bit like a story. People will go along with you - they see where you're going. "

" Autobiographical fiction is very tricky. "

" I'm a class mongrel. "

Melvyn Bragg

Mongrel

Class

" I love writing, and I love making arts programmes. "