Stirring memories of Grace

Former ‘South Bank Show’ presenter Melvyn Bragg’s latest novel delves into his past, writes Carl Dixon.

ONE of the difficulties in interviewing Melvyn Bragg, who will appear at the West Cork Literary Festival in Bantry on Thursday, Jul 11, is knowing where exactly to start. From humble beginnings, he received a scholarship to Oxford before coming to prominence as the very charming and erudite presenter of various arts programmes on television and radio, including the long running South Bank Show. He has written numerous books, both fiction and non-fiction, on subjects ranging from science to arts, and has written screenplays for both plays and films. Technically Lord Bragg of Wigton, he became a life peer in 1998.

In his latest and largely autobiographical novel, Grace and Mary, an earnest man in his 70s named John visits his mother Mary who is suffering from dementia in a nursing home. Using songs and photographs, he prompts her to journey into the past and explore her relationship with her mother Grace. It is a restrained, elegant book which is tinged with sorrow, and a genuine appreciation for Bragg’s real life mother Mary and grandmother Belle and their courage and stoicism. “My mother Mary, with whom I was very close and spoke to every day, had dementia for five years before she died,” he says. “When I visited from London she often didn’t know who I was. Yet she could remember all the words of the old songs I sang with her. I remember showing her a book of old photographs and she came alive again. A lot of the detail in the book is very true to life. However, the character of Mary in the book doesn’t provide a cohesive narrative of her life and neither did my mother. Therefore many elements of the story are completely imagined.”