- Best known as presenter of BBC's South Bank Show and BBC Radio 4. In 1999, he was president of the National Campaign for the Arts, Governor of the London School of Economics and Chancellor of Leeds University. He directed films, including Portrait of Sir John Barbirolli; wrote the Debussey film for Ken Russell; was presenter on Tyne Tees Television local arts program; South Bank Show presenter from 1978 and Head of Arts on LWT from 1982 to 1990. He was director of LWT productions 1992; Chairman of Border Television 1985-1990, Govenor of LSE 1997. He was author of some 20 fiction books and a number of non-fiction works. He has written a number of screenplays, including Time to Dance 1992, Mardi Gars 1976, The Hired Man 1985. Plays include King Lear in New York, 1992. He was a journalist on The Observer, Sunday Times, The Guardian and The New York Times. His awards include an RTS Gold Medal, John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Award, Richard Dimbleby Award for Outstanding Contribution to Television 1987, the Ivor Novello Award for Best Musical (The Hired Man). Numerous other awards for the South Bank Show included three Prix Italia's, Radio Personality of the Year 1994, Honorary Degree Open University, Doctor of Literature of NNAA, Lancaster Uni, Domus Fellowship St Catherines College Oxford, Honorary Fellow Lancashire Polytechnic, Doctor of Literature Liverpool (1990), Doctor of Law, University of St Andrews (1993), Honorary Fellow Wadham College Oxford (1995), University of Wales (1996), Doctor of Literature, South Bank University London (1997), Doctor of Science Brunel (2000), Doctor of Literature, Leeds (2000) and Sunderland (2001). He was both writer and speaker of BBC's Radio 4 Start the Week for ten years up to 1998.
- IMDb mini biography by: Tonyman 5
- SpousesGabriel Clare-Hunt(September 21, 2019 - ?)Cate Haste(1973 - 2018) (divorced, 2 children)Lisa Roche(1961 - 1971) (her death, 1 child)
- Children
- He has served as a Labour peer in the House of Lords since 1998. He is also close friends with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, although he publicly opposed his government's legislation against fox hunting.
- He studied Modern History at Wadham College, Oxford.
- He is a prolific and critically respected author. He won the WH Smith Literary Award (2000) for his acclaimed book "The Soldier's Return".
- He was named after Melvyn Douglas by his mother.
- I will be a short-haired person from now on. I think my hair has delighted the British public for long enough.
- We need the BBC not only to celebrate and sanctify the past, we need it to use the documentary form to look at and take risks with the present.
- I'm not a great writer. I am a writer who has moments.
- Sometimes I am baffled by the lack of intellectual ambition in British television. Am I alone in feeling that there is not so much a dumbing down as a failure to engage at the highest level? British television is still led by some extremely able people, and yet at times they can seem like thoroughbreds happy to pull milk carts. Am I alone in believing that here, as elsewhere, trash television is welcomed because there are those in the opinion-forming seats who still feel that all television is trash, and all proofs to that absurd theory are welcome?
- Bryan Cowgill was a feisty, original and immensely successful top television executive. He had the great talent of taking on other peoples' ideas, backing them and seeing them through, often to the benefit of all - most especially the viewers who were always his chief concern.
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