Joan Bakewell

Bakewell was born on 16 April 1933 in Heaton Moor, Stockport, Cheshire, England, and moved to Hazel Grove before she was three.[1] Both her grandfathers were factory workers: the Rowlands branch stemmed from the lead mining villages of the Ystwyth valley, in Wales. Her great-grandfather moved to Salford, where he was a preacher in the Church Army. Her grandfather was an iron turner. On the maternal side, her grandfather was a cooper in Ardwick Brewery. The family lived in Gorton, a district of Manchester.[2]

Bakewell was educated at Stockport High School for Girls, a grammar school in local authority control, where she became head girl. She won a scholarship and attended Newnham College at the University of Cambridge, where she studied Economics, then History,[3] and joined the Marshall Society[4] and the Mummers Acting Society.

She is chairman of the theatre company Shared Experience.

It was announced in November 2010 that she would be awarded a life peerage, joining the Labour benches. She was created Baroness Bakewell, of Stockport in the County of Greater Manchester, on 21 January 2011,[14] and formally introduced to the House of Lords on 25 January 2011[15][16] supported by fellow Labour peers Lord Puttnam and Baroness Kennedy.

In September 2017, Bakewell was elected co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Humanist Group, the cross-party group which represents humanists in Parliament.[17]

In 2008, Bakewell criticised the absence of older women on British television. She said: "I think the fact that people are phased out, people like Moira Stuart and Selina [Scott] – out of the public eye – when they become a certain age is a real disadvantage to serious broadcasting. There's a whole segment of the British population that does not see its equivalent in serious broadcasting and that is women over 55. Now, that is not healthy for a broadcasting organisation's relationship with its audience. The public should be represented on the screen in various colours, forms, sexualities, whatever."[18]

In 2010, Bakewell criticised the side effects of the sexual revolution of the 1960s. She said: "I never thought I would hear myself say as much, but I'm with Mrs Whitehouse on this one. The liberal mood back in the '60s was that sex was pleasurable and wholesome and shouldn't be seen as dirty and wicked. The Pill allowed women to make choices for themselves. Of course, that meant the risk of making the wrong choice. But we all hoped girls would grow to handle the new freedoms wisely. Then everything came to be about money: so now sex is about money, too. Why else sexualise the clothes of little girls, run TV channels of naked wives, have sex magazines edging out the serious stuff on newsagents' shelves? It's money that's corrupted us and women are being used and are even collaborating."[19]

In August 2014, Bakewell was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian expressing their hope that Scotland would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom in September's referendum on that issue.[20]

In March 2016, she commented in The Sunday Times that anorexia is connected with a general narcissism in 21st century western culture, and that "no-one has anorexia in societies where there is not enough food".[21] Despite agreement with her assessment in some media,[22][23] her comments also provoked strong criticism from social and print media, and an apology for hurt caused from Bakewell herself.[24][25]

In April 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Bakewell said that the Government should stop treating the elderly like "a crazy old people's club" and let them work out how to keep safe from coronavirus themselves.[26][27]

She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1999 Birthday Honours[28] and was Chairman of the British Film Institute from 2000 to 2002. She was promoted to Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2008 Birthday Honours.[29]

In 2007 She was awarded the Honorary degree of Doctor of Letters (D.Litt) from the University of Chester.[30] On 20 July 2011, Bakewell was made an honorary graduate at the University of Essex (DU Essex).

Bakewell has also received honorary degrees from Queen Margaret’s University Edinburgh (2005), Royal Holloway London, University of the Arts (2008), Staffordshire University (2009), Lancaster University (2010), Newcastle University (2011), Open University (2010) and Manchester Metropolitan University (2013). She was made an Honorary Fellow of Newnham College, Cambridge in 2016.[31]

In 2017, the charity Humanists UK awarded Bakewell its prize for Humanist of the Year, in recognition of her achievements in broadcasting and services to humanism and other good causes.[32] In 2011 she was appointed Baroness Bakewell of Stockport.

Bakewell's autobiography, The Centre of the Bed, was published in 2003 and concentrates on her experiences as a woman in the male-dominated media industry. It also details the extramarital affair Bakewell had with playwright Harold Pinter (between 1962 and 1969), while she was married to Michael Bakewell (the marriage lasted from 1955 to 1972) and Pinter was married to the actress Vivien Merchant. The affair was the basis for Pinter's 1978 play Betrayal, adapted in 1983 as a film.[33][34] In 2017, Keeping in Touch, a play first written by Bakewell in 1978 in response to Betrayal, premiered on BBC Radio 4.[35]

In 1975, she married Jack Emery, a British director, writer and producer for stage, TV and radio, who was 12 years her junior. The couple divorced in 2001. Bakewell said, "The age difference did matter, but other things mattered more."[36]

In January 2023, Bakewell announced that she had been diagnosed with colon cancer.[37]

The Joan Bakewell Archive is housed at the British Library. The papers can be accessed through the British Library catalogue.[38]

• Joan Bakewell at IMDb
• "Lost voices", John Mullan, The Guardian, 18 June 1999.
• Listen to an audio slideshow interview with Joan Bakewell talking about her first novel All the Nice Girls on The Interview Online.
• Joan Bakewell at Knight Ayton Management
• Joan Bakewell Official Website