One Pair of Eyes

An evocation of great British journalist James Cameron's love affair with Nehru's India thirty years after it's birth. The film inaugurates important BBC series, ONE PAIR OF EYES,...

"We've learned how to think. Now we've got to re-learn how to feel - if we are going to survive." A highly personal view of modern Britain, inhabited by men and women whose emotion...

Once the river Tiber washed the walls of the self-styled capital of the western world. Later it was the Thames. Today it is an American river - the Potomac. But behind the cherry b...

Personal power - how do those who have it feel about using it? Did they seek it? Has it changed them? Was it worth it? With contributions from: The Rt. Hon. Barbara Castle, M.P. Mi...

"Man is the only animal who knows he is going to die. It therefore became imperative to live without despair. Thus was created God." James Cameron, who describes himself as a perma...

"The British are one of the least enthusiastic people in the world. They don't believe in their party system; they don't like socialism. They are in grave danger of being alienated...

Peter Wilson, who has seen more big-time sport than almost anyone in Britain, feels that something has gone wrong with our success rate.

Norman Parkinson, the distinguished fashion photographer, focuses his expert eyes on women. With Vanessa Redgrave, Twiggy, Raquel Welch, Marisa Mell, Celia Hammond, Kay Thompson. "...

When, if ever, will the tide of emigration turn, which now ebbs so fast from rural Ireland?

"Why do I dislike Berlin? Why does the place arouse in me all the prejudiced emotions I so resent in other people? And yet why do we all respond to those old hypnotic rhythms of na...

Margaret Drabble narrates this documentary about her own life. The cameras follow her as she revisits the places where she grew up and was educated and ponders the events that have...

People always say 'Shut-up, be quiet, pie in the sky, you'll get there in the end' - but you know, and I know, and everybody knows that it doesn't really happen. What happens is, y...

"I have always had a certain loathing of schoolmasters, feeling them to be a corrupt body of creatures on the whole... I'm not an educated man: I'm a drop-out. I left school at six...

The Member of Parliament for South Worcestershire, who has been described by others as 'the most famous back-bencher on either side of the House' and by himself as 'an unashamed tr...

"In matters of great importance it's style not sincerity that counts. In law, in politics, in the church... not just in the theatre... actors and performers dominate. In fact, we a...

First transmitted in 1968, singer and actress Georgia Brown revisits her old childhood home in Whitechapel, East London and notes the fading presence of the Jewish immigrant commun...

The sheer ferocity of a Scarfe cartoon, stripping his subjects of any human dignity and reducing them to a kind of sub-animal level, provokes a violent reaction in many people. "I...

"My generation was liberated by Oxford: but it also confined us and marked us for life. Nothing has ever topped the exhilaration and privilege I felt then. Today's Oxford is like a...

Through the long days of a Swedish summer "to be flesh in contact with sun is to know fulfilment." The landscape is breathtaking, and the blondes are the most beautiful in Europe....

Do we just like travel for its own sake? Are we increasingly obsessed with the desire for encapsulated movement? As members of the moving world, do we believe ourselves to be super...

You can have wealth without sophistication, but can you have sophistication without wealth? Charlotte Bingham, daughter of Lord Clanmorris, had a taste of the rich life until she w...

Dom Moraes, poet and journalist, examines his situation as a coloured Englishman who suddenly feels he is an immigrant. "On April 20, 1968, Enoch Powell made his notorious speech i...

Joe Tilson is one of Britain's foremost contemporary artists and is obsessed with the problems of flesh and blood human beings living in a mechanical, scientific world. Using the a...

Romance stopped being romantic when they all started calling it sex. Women are no longer treated as the gentle sex; chivalry is old hat; it's 'Happy now - to hell with ever after.'...

The decisions of businessmen affect every one of us. At last a successful tycoon reveals the principles that have guided his business career and how he personally has been able to...

Patrick Moore takes a look at independent thinkers including flat earthers, hollow earthers, belief in a cold sun and many more interesting people.

Hero worship is an essential part of our lives - without heroes we have no great deeds to emulate, we can achieve nothing. How big a part do heroes play in our everyday lives? John...

What makes you laugh? It is always easier to describe humour than to analyse it. Marty Feldman, for many years a successful comedy writer before his more recent activities as a per...

Sir Con O'Neill is one of Britain's top diplomats - British Charge d'Affaires in Peking, British Ambassador to Finland, and, more recently, British Ambassador to the Common Market....

"The nature of a man's life, the nature of a man's mind, depends very largely on the kind of shocks and jokes to which he is subject. In Wales an industry was dying, a massive popu...

Television, radio, computers, and jet aeroplanes may seem to bring the world to our hearthrug but they also increase the danger of mistaking the image for reality. The volume of to...

Prostitution - pornography - drugs - driving - are all fields in which the law has failed to achieve satisfactory results. Professor Camps, the well-known pathologist who has worke...

Cars have always been dream symbols for the working American. But today it is not the mass-produced model from Detroit which dominates the lives of thousands of Californians but th...

Can a woman look after her husband, her children, and her job without one of the three suffering? Shirley Conran, designer and journalist, thinks not. Our man-orientated society, s...

For the past eight years Yvonne Mitchell, the actress and novelist, has lived on the French Riviera. She has watched her 13-year-old daughter Cordelia receive a very different educ...

The novelist and sports writer Brian Glanville fears that the real value of sport is being undermined by the demands and tensions of our competitive society. The danger-signals are...

Until a few years ago Dr Spock, the legendary baby doctor, was known only for his book on bringing up children, a work which enjoyed world sales rivalling those of the Bible. But w...

At 61, John Creasey, creator of such world-famous figures as 'The Toff' and 'Gideon of the Yard,' is the world's most prolific writer. He has written to date 543 books. His world s...

Raymond Williams, novelist and lecturer, thinks university education should be fitted to the demands of real life. He believes that many of Britain's rebellious students are, like...

The prophets of doom who predict our imminent starvation are wrong. Man can easily feed himself. Miracle wheats, mammoth rice harvests, overall increases in the protein content of...

Once upon a time there was a middle class who believed that they were part of the ruling system. Mergers, take-overs, computerisation, the growth of huge industrial combines - all...

At the age of 16 he left India to make his home in England. At 20 he won the Hawthornden Prize for poetry while still at Oxford. After spending half a lifetime in this country he h...

"Today we are not as dependent on animals as we once were. Our approach to animals is largely based on sentiment - we like to credit them with human intelligence - and animal art h...

Idries Shah, writer and traveller, descendant of the prophet Mahomet, sees our Western way of life through eyes trained in the Oriental Sufi tradition, which is based on a thousand...

A generation of Communist rule changes many things - but not the real character of the people. George Mikes, writer, humorist, and traveller, left his native country in 1938 and se...

Mai Zetterling gives her own provocative views on the world as she sees it - views on marriage, on the pressures of contemporary society, on women and on her own attempts to live w...

"Pessimism about the future is very fashionable - and very profitable. But if I could have any period of history to live in, I would choose to be living right now". So says John Cr...

Headmaster of Lancing when he was only 33, now headmaster of Marlborough, John Dancy "believes a public school can only be successful if it offers its pupils a vision - a vision of...

Up to the beginning of this year, 30-year-old Des Wilson was the director of Shelter, the charity which has done so much to draw attention to the homeless and their needs. Now an O...

Anthony Grey was the Reuters correspondent in Peking at the height of China's Cultural Revolution. He was arrested by the Chinese Government, as a political hostage, and held priso...

Himself of Afrikaans origin, and as a young man one of the first to oppose racialism in South Africa, writer and explorer Laurens van der Post has long sought to discover the cause...

This weekend, between 8,000 and 10,000 people each day will visit Lord Montagu's-home at Beaulieu in Hampshire. Is this taking commercialisation too far? Would it not be more digni...

In this personally authored documentary, John Braine, who is probably best remembered for his first novel, Room at the Top, discusses his work and the beliefs that inform it. Brain...

Starting from zero, says Leonardo Ricci, 'is the point every man should arrive at. A man is a man when he finds himself alone and has to survive.' Ricci is an Italian architect, pa...

What useful purpose is served by the creative artist in society? In a harsh world where millions starve, do poems or paintings or symphonies have any relation to events which actua...

It's not unusual for people to come back from Los Angeles with horror stories about violence, pollution and the sheer unmanageable size of the place. But not Reyner Banham, Profess...

Now that Britain has lost her empire is there a role for us in the world? Lord Caradon, formerly Sir Hugh Foot, who became internationally famous as Governor of Cyprus, and was for...

'Almost everybody I know has firm opinions about almost everything. It's better to have halitosis than to have no opinion. The characteristic position I find myself in is one of ca...

'The core of Christianity is the Resurrection,' says Dooley, 'because the Resurrection is about hope and life.' Arthur Dooley, the internationally famous Liverpool sculptor, believ...

Mark Boxer is the resident cartoonist ('Marc') of The Times, and Associate Editor of the Sunday Times Magazine which he launched in 1962. At 41 he has achieved a degree of success...

'The only thing worth having,' David Franklin asserts, 'is something you've worked to get and can take pride in.' Words and music have been the cornerstones of Franklin's life and...

Spike Milligan is a very funny serious man and a very serious funny man. For him life's problem is to tiptoe through the chaos he sees around himself. When it all becomes too much...

Allan Prior is a writer of fiction - novels, films, TV plays - but he is probably best known for his scripts for Z Cars and Softly, Softly. He portrayed policemen and criminals as...

In our so-called 'Permissive Society', discipline is an unfashionable concept. The emphasis on personal freedom and the pressure for abolition of all restraints are, Lord Soper bel...

Lady Antonia Fraser is the best-selling biographer of Cromwell and Mary Queen of Scots. To her, biography is a special and important art, with unusual responsibilities and dangers....

Alan Garner, the brilliantly successful author of books that dazzle and haunt children - and haunt adults, too - is a man obsessed by violence; in the universe, in the ground, most...

During the lifetime of most of us Britain has moved into the ranks of the second-class powers. The decline in our power and influence continues. You could say we're on the road to...

In the course of an exotic and adventurous journey the wife of the Poet Laureate, astride an Indian hill pony, carries out her own crusade against progress among the foothills of t...

Australian actress Diane Cilento seeks spiritual answers on a communal farm run by followers of GI Gurdjieff, including the philosopher JG Bennett.

The friendship between Australia and Britain is dead, declares Australian author Russell Braddon , who has lived here since 1949. In this protest at the recent loosening of ties, h...

Restaurateur and writer, American-born Robert Carrier, illustrates through his own lifelong enjoyment of good eating that food is love.

Adventure, travel, the challenge of the unpredictable: these are the ingredients of Eric Newby's life. As a boy he sailed round the world, apprentice on the last of the four-masted...

A country childhood. A strict religious upbringing. A very English addiction to cricket. A profound love of music, particularly organ music. The discovery - as a schoolboy of 15 -...