Jonathan Meades
Encyclopedia
Jonathan Turner Meades (born 21 January 1947) is a British writer on food, architecture, and culture, as well as an author and broadcaster
. He is an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society
and a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association
.
Wiltshire
, and educated at King's College, an independent school in the market town of Taunton
in Somerset. He studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
(RADA) in 1968.
for many years, and was specifically the restaurant critic of The Times newspaper between 1986 and 2001. He was voted Best Food Journalist in the 1999 Glenfiddich Awards. Having thrown in the napkin in 2001 after being the Times restaurant critic for 15 years in an interview with Restaurant magazine, Meades estimated that he put on 5 lb a year during his reviewing period, which works out around an ounce per restaurant. By his own admission in the series Meades Eats, after being pronounced 'morbidly obese' he subsequently managed to lose a third of his body weight over the course of a year.
's Soviet Union
, Joe Building.
Meades has also written and presented a documentary called Surreal Film (2001) for BBC Two
(although the onscreen title was "tvSSFBM EHKL", the words encoded in appropriately surreal fashion), which sought to expound on surrealism in a manner that fitted the subject. Perhaps inevitably, given Meades' approach and his choice of topic, some found it bewildering and often psychedelic. However, it was nevertheless distinctive and humorous in a field often populated only by de rigueur and comme il faut offerings.
Jonathan Meades : Abroad Again in Britain was shown on BBC Two
in May 2007. It is a sequel to his 1990s series exploring British architecture. The film examines Salisbury Cathedral
, Edinburgh Castle
, Cragside
, Brighton Pavilion and Portsmouth Dockyard. It uses his familiar style of jaunty camera angles often showing him from behind, going down escalators, sitting on walls or even not at all as he is walking away from the camera. He talks directly to the camera and often his speeches are split up from different angles or positions. There are times of silence or with only music where shots of the building he is talking about are shown. Equally he often uses scathing remarks to criticise other buildings such as an occasion when he refers to the Millennium Dome
as a "Museum of Toxic Waste".
In 2008 a two-part documentary, Magnetic North, was screened by BBC Four
. In the programme, Meades celebrates the culture of Northern Europe, and wonders why the North suffers in the English popular imagination compared to the South. Meades travelled through the slag
heaps of northern France, Belgian cities and to the redlight district of Hamburg
, musing on the architecture, food and art of the places in which he finds himself. The programme features the expected stylistic flourishes and quirks of presentation now associated with him. It was subsequently re-edited into four half-hour episodes and shown on BBC Two. Writing in The Daily Telegraph
, James Walton praised the programme as "Sparkling, thought-provoking, constantly challenging the accepted view, Meades seemed at times inspired, at others deranged. The only thing he never was, thank heaven, was obvious."
A 9-DVD box set collecting his various Abroad... series was due for release in April 2008 but was then reduced to a 3-Disc "Best of..." due to licensing problems/expense of the music used in the programmes.
In 2009, Meades toured Scotland in a three part BBC Scotland
series Off Kilter. He visited the Granite City (Aberdeen
), the Isle of Rust (Lewis and Harris
) and a number of less-renowned Scottish footballing towns, guided by his "Scotnav". A new series about "a more or less occluded France" will air on BBC4 in early 2012. Meades contributes to the United Kingdom edition of The Huffington Post
. Meades book 'Museum Without Walls' is being published on the Unbound crowd-funding site .
A new book, "Museum Without Walls", collating his television scripts, will be published by Unbound.co.uk after enough support has been garnered.
Presenter
A presenter, or host , is a person or organization responsible for running an event. A museum or university, for example, may be the presenter or host of an exhibit. Likewise, a master of ceremonies is a person that hosts or presents a show...
. He is an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society
National Secular Society
The National Secular Society is a British campaigning organisation that promotes secularism and the separation of church and state. It holds that no-one should gain advantage or disadvantage because of their religion or lack of religion. It was founded by Charles Bradlaugh in 1866...
and a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association
British Humanist Association
The British Humanist Association is an organisation of the United Kingdom which promotes Humanism and represents "people who seek to live good lives without religious or superstitious beliefs." The BHA is committed to secularism, human rights, democracy, egalitarianism and mutual respect...
.
Education
Meades was born in SalisburySalisbury
Salisbury is a cathedral city in Wiltshire, England and the only city in the county. It is the second largest settlement in the county...
Wiltshire
Wiltshire
Wiltshire is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire. It contains the unitary authority of Swindon and covers...
, and educated at King's College, an independent school in the market town of Taunton
Taunton
Taunton is the county town of Somerset, England. The town, including its suburbs, had an estimated population of 61,400 in 2001. It is the largest town in the shire county of Somerset....
in Somerset. He studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art is a drama school located in London, United Kingdom. It is generally regarded as one of the most renowned drama schools in the world, and is one of the oldest drama schools in the United Kingdom, having been founded in 1904.RADA is an affiliate school of the...
(RADA) in 1968.
Food writing
Meades wrote reviews and articles for The TimesThe Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
for many years, and was specifically the restaurant critic of The Times newspaper between 1986 and 2001. He was voted Best Food Journalist in the 1999 Glenfiddich Awards. Having thrown in the napkin in 2001 after being the Times restaurant critic for 15 years in an interview with Restaurant magazine, Meades estimated that he put on 5 lb a year during his reviewing period, which works out around an ounce per restaurant. By his own admission in the series Meades Eats, after being pronounced 'morbidly obese' he subsequently managed to lose a third of his body weight over the course of a year.
Television work
He is well known to British television audiences for his series about architecture Abroad in Britain and its sequels Further Abroad with Jonathan Meades, Even Further Abroad With Jonathan Meades, Abroad Again in Britain and Abroad Again. These innovative, "slightly bonkers" documentaries look at neglected forms of British architecture such as caravan parks and golf courses, and at the place that famous buildings hold in the British popular imagination. Meades' television work also includes two separate one-off documentaries about the architectural legacy of both the Third Reich, Jerry Building, and Joseph StalinJoseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
's Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, Joe Building.
Meades has also written and presented a documentary called Surreal Film (2001) for BBC Two
BBC Two
BBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...
(although the onscreen title was "tvSSFBM EHKL", the words encoded in appropriately surreal fashion), which sought to expound on surrealism in a manner that fitted the subject. Perhaps inevitably, given Meades' approach and his choice of topic, some found it bewildering and often psychedelic. However, it was nevertheless distinctive and humorous in a field often populated only by de rigueur and comme il faut offerings.
Jonathan Meades : Abroad Again in Britain was shown on BBC Two
BBC Two
BBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...
in May 2007. It is a sequel to his 1990s series exploring British architecture. The film examines Salisbury Cathedral
Salisbury Cathedral
Salisbury Cathedral, formally known as the Cathedral Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary, is an Anglican cathedral in Salisbury, England, considered one of the leading examples of Early English architecture....
, Edinburgh Castle
Edinburgh Castle
Edinburgh Castle is a fortress which dominates the skyline of the city of Edinburgh, Scotland, from its position atop the volcanic Castle Rock. Human habitation of the site is dated back as far as the 9th century BC, although the nature of early settlement is unclear...
, Cragside
Cragside
Cragside is a country house in the civil parish of Cartington in Northumberland, England. It was the first house in the world to be lit using hydroelectric power...
, Brighton Pavilion and Portsmouth Dockyard. It uses his familiar style of jaunty camera angles often showing him from behind, going down escalators, sitting on walls or even not at all as he is walking away from the camera. He talks directly to the camera and often his speeches are split up from different angles or positions. There are times of silence or with only music where shots of the building he is talking about are shown. Equally he often uses scathing remarks to criticise other buildings such as an occasion when he refers to the Millennium Dome
Millennium Dome
The Millennium Dome, colloquially referred to simply as The Dome or even The O2 Arena, is the original name of a large dome-shaped building, originally used to house the Millennium Experience, a major exhibition celebrating the beginning of the third millennium...
as a "Museum of Toxic Waste".
In 2008 a two-part documentary, Magnetic North, was screened by BBC Four
BBC Four
BBC Four is a British television network operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation and available to digital television viewers on Freeview, IPTV, satellite and cable....
. In the programme, Meades celebrates the culture of Northern Europe, and wonders why the North suffers in the English popular imagination compared to the South. Meades travelled through the slag
Slag
Slag is a partially vitreous by-product of smelting ore to separate the metal fraction from the unwanted fraction. It can usually be considered to be a mixture of metal oxides and silicon dioxide. However, slags can contain metal sulfides and metal atoms in the elemental form...
heaps of northern France, Belgian cities and to the redlight district of Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...
, musing on the architecture, food and art of the places in which he finds himself. The programme features the expected stylistic flourishes and quirks of presentation now associated with him. It was subsequently re-edited into four half-hour episodes and shown on BBC Two. Writing in The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
, James Walton praised the programme as "Sparkling, thought-provoking, constantly challenging the accepted view, Meades seemed at times inspired, at others deranged. The only thing he never was, thank heaven, was obvious."
A 9-DVD box set collecting his various Abroad... series was due for release in April 2008 but was then reduced to a 3-Disc "Best of..." due to licensing problems/expense of the music used in the programmes.
In 2009, Meades toured Scotland in a three part BBC Scotland
BBC Scotland
BBC Scotland is a constituent part of the British Broadcasting Corporation, the publicly-funded broadcaster of the United Kingdom. It is, in effect, the national broadcaster for Scotland, having a considerable amount of autonomy from the BBC's London headquarters, and is run by the BBC Trust, who...
series Off Kilter. He visited the Granite City (Aberdeen
Aberdeen
Aberdeen is Scotland's third most populous city, one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas and the United Kingdom's 25th most populous city, with an official population estimate of ....
), the Isle of Rust (Lewis and Harris
Lewis and Harris
Lewis and Harris in the Outer Hebrides make up the largest island in Scotland. This is the largest single island of the British Isles after Great Britain and Ireland.-Geography:...
) and a number of less-renowned Scottish footballing towns, guided by his "Scotnav". A new series about "a more or less occluded France" will air on BBC4 in early 2012. Meades contributes to the United Kingdom edition of The Huffington Post
The Huffington Post
The Huffington Post is an American news website and content-aggregating blog founded by Arianna Huffington, Kenneth Lerer, and Jonah Peretti, featuring liberal minded columnists and various news sources. The site offers coverage of politics, theology, media, business, entertainment, living, style,...
. Meades book 'Museum Without Walls' is being published on the Unbound crowd-funding site .
Published works
- This is Their Life (1979) ISBN 0-86101-045-0
- The Illustrated Atlas of the World's Great Buildings (1980) ISBN 0-86101-059-0
- Filthy English (1984) ISBN 0-224-02145-1 (Short stories)
- English Extremists (Blueprint Monographs) (1988) ISBN 0-947795-68-5
- Peter Knows What Dick Likes (1989) ISBN 0-586-20148-3
- Pompey (1993) ISBN 0-09-930821-5
- Architectural Expressions (2001) ISBN 0-471-49667-7
- "The Times" Restaurant Guide 2002 ISBN 0-304-35939-4
- Incest and Morris Dancing (2002) ISBN 0-304-35938-6
- The Fowler Family Business (2002) ISBN 1-85702-904-6
A new book, "Museum Without Walls", collating his television scripts, will be published by Unbound.co.uk after enough support has been garnered.
TV works
- The Victorian House (1986) Channel 4Channel 4Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
- Abroad in Britain with Jonathan Meades (1990) BBC TwoBBC TwoBBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...
- Further Abroad with Jonathan Meades (1994) BBC TwoBBC TwoBBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...
- Jerry Building – Unholy Relics of the Third Reich (1994) BBC TwoBBC TwoBBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...
- Without Walls: J'Accuse – Vegetarians (1995) Channel 4Channel 4Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
- Even Further Abroad with Jonathan Meades (1996) BBC TwoBBC TwoBBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...
- Heart By-Pass, Jonathan Meades in Birmingham (1998) BBC TwoBBC TwoBBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...
- Travels with Pevsner (1998) BBC TwoBBC TwoBBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...
- Victoria Died in 1901 and Is Still Alive Today (2001) BBC TwoBBC TwoBBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...
- tvSSFBM EHKL (2001) BBC KnowledgeBBC KnowledgeBBC Knowledge was an early BBC digital television channel, available by cable, satellite, or terrestrial digital broadcasting, providing a programme of documentary, cultural and educational television.-Launch:...
- Pevsner Revisited (2001) BBC FourBBC FourBBC Four is a British television network operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation and available to digital television viewers on Freeview, IPTV, satellite and cable....
- Meades Eats (2003) BBC FourBBC FourBBC Four is a British television network operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation and available to digital television viewers on Freeview, IPTV, satellite and cable....
- Abroad Again in Britain (2005) BBC FourBBC FourBBC Four is a British television network operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation and available to digital television viewers on Freeview, IPTV, satellite and cable....
- Joe Building: The Stalin Memorial Lecture (2006) BBC FourBBC FourBBC Four is a British television network operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation and available to digital television viewers on Freeview, IPTV, satellite and cable....
- Abroad Again (2007) BBC TwoBBC TwoBBC Two is the second television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It covers a wide range of subject matter, but tending towards more 'highbrow' programmes than the more mainstream and popular BBC One. Like the BBC's other domestic TV and radio...
- Jonathan Meades: Magnetic North (2008) BBC FourBBC FourBBC Four is a British television network operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation and available to digital television viewers on Freeview, IPTV, satellite and cable....
- Jonathan Meades: Off Kilter (2009) BBC FourBBC FourBBC Four is a British television network operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation and available to digital television viewers on Freeview, IPTV, satellite and cable....