William Crawley
Encyclopedia

Television presenter

He recently presented Blueprint, a three-part television natural history series, which ran from 31 March 2008, as the centre-piece of the most ambitious multi-platform broadcasting project in the history of BBC Northern Ireland. The Blueprint season united TV, radio and online to explore 600 million years of Ireland's natural history. For this reason, the series provoked complaints to the BBC from young earth creationists ahead of transmission. The series was shortlisted for the Celtic Film and Television Awards. Other TV presenting roles include BBC Northern Ireland's weekly late-night television interview series "William Crawley Meets ...", face-to-face interviews of 30 minutes in duration with leading thinkers and social reformers from across the world, including the philosopher Peter Singer
Peter Singer
Peter Albert David Singer is an Australian philosopher who is the Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the University of Melbourne...

, the scientist Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL , known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author...

, the writer and broadcaster Melvyn Bragg
Melvyn Bragg
Melvyn Bragg, Baron Bragg FRSL FRTS FBA, FRS FRSA is an English broadcaster and author best known for his work with the BBC and for presenting the The South Bank Show...

, and the gay bishop Gene Robinson
Gene Robinson
Vicki Gene Robinson is the ninth bishop of the Diocese of New Hampshire in the Episcopal Church in the United States of America. Robinson was elected bishop in 2003 and entered office in March 2004...

. He presented Frozen North (BBC One Northern Ireland
BBC One Northern Ireland
BBC One Northern Ireland is the national variation for BBC Northern Ireland of the network BBC One service broadcast by the BBC. The service is broadcast in Northern Ireland from Broadcasting House in Belfast...

), a documentary examining the possible future impact of global warming
Global warming
Global warming refers to the rising average temperature of Earth's atmosphere and oceans and its projected continuation. In the last 100 years, Earth's average surface temperature increased by about with about two thirds of the increase occurring over just the last three decades...

 on Northern Ireland; Festival Nights (BBC Two Northern Ireland), television coverage of the 2005, 2006 and 2007 Belfast Festival at Queens; Hearts and Minds (BBC One
BBC One
BBC One is the flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution...

), a television political review programme; What's Wrong With ...?" (BBC One
BBC One
BBC One is the flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution...

), a six-part round-table current affairs discussion programme; and More Than Meets The Eye (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...

), a series investigating folklore in contemporary Ireland. In 2010, he presented a "Spotlight" television investigation about the Catholic clerical abuse crisis from Rome.

In his televised interview with the evolutionary biologist and atheist
Atheism
Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities...

 Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL , known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author...

, Crawley challenged the use of the term "delusion
Delusion
A delusion is a false belief held with absolute conviction despite superior evidence. Unlike hallucinations, delusions are always pathological...

" in Dawkins's best-selling book The God Delusion
The God Delusion
The God Delusion is a 2006 bestselling non-fiction book by British biologist Richard Dawkins, professorial fellow of New College, Oxford, and inaugural holder of the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford.In The God Delusion, Dawkins contends that...

. Dawkins accepted that likening the term "delusional" with mental illness may infer the wrong connotations.

On 26 February 2007, he presented Sorry For Your Trouble (BBC One
BBC One
BBC One is the flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution...

), a one-hour documentary about death and dying, in which he spoke openly about a "struggling" relationship with his late father and made a visit to his father's grave for the first time in two decades. On 15 September 2008, he presented a follow-up documentary, Dying For A Drink ([BBC One]), which examined Northern Ireland's relationship with alcohol, and in which he discussed the his father's alcoholism. Crawley also got drunk on-screen as part of a binge-drinking experiment. In 2010, he was credited as "Associate Producer" on the network BBC One Sunday Morning Live programme fronted by Susanna Reid.

Radio presenter

On radio, he presents BBC Radio Ulster
BBC Radio Ulster
BBC Radio Ulster is one of two Northern Irish BBC radio stations, the other being BBC Radio Foyle located in the city of Derry. BBC Radio Ulster is located at Broadcasting House in the Ormeau Avenue area of Belfast city centre...

's weekly Sunday Sequence programme and is part of the presenting team for Radio 4's Sunday. He also presents The Book Programme, a literary review programme, for Radio Ulster. Crawley's special edition of Sunday Sequence from Cape Town won the Andrew Cross Award for UK speech radio programme of the year. His other regular radio presenting roles include: Talk Back, BBC Radio Ulster's daily news and current affairs programme; Evening Extra, the station's drive-time news programme and Arts Extra, a daily arts review programme. Previous radio programmes include: The Bonfire Makers (for BBC Radio Four), an examination of Northern Ireland's controversial annual loyalist
Ulster loyalism
Ulster loyalism is an ideology that is opposed to a united Ireland. It can mean either support for upholding Northern Ireland's status as a constituent part of the United Kingdom , support for Northern Ireland independence, or support for loyalist paramilitaries...

 bonfire tradition, and an extended radio essay about George Bernard Shaw for BBC Radio Three.

On 22 May 2009, the Hollywood screen legend Tony Curtis
Tony Curtis
Tony Curtis was an American film actor whose career spanned six decades, but had his greatest popularity during the 1950s and early 1960s. He acted in over 100 films in roles covering a wide range of genres, from light comedy to serious drama...

 had to apologise to the BBC radio audience after he used three swear words in a six-minute interview with William Crawley on the BBC's Talk Back programme. William Crawley also apologised to the audience for 'that little bit of Holywood realism'. Curtis explained that he had forgotten that the interview was live.

Major interviews

Crawley's major set-piece interviews with leading cultural figures before live audiences include: the Nobel laureates Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney
Seamus Heaney is an Irish poet, writer and lecturer. He lives in Dublin. Heaney has received the Nobel Prize in Literature , the Golden Wreath of Poetry , T. S. Eliot Prize and two Whitbread prizes...

 and Amartya Sen
Amartya Sen
Amartya Sen, CH is an Indian economist who was awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his contributions to welfare economics and social choice theory, and for his interest in the problems of society's poorest members...

, the political activist Noam Chomsky
Noam Chomsky
Avram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years. Chomsky has been described as the "father of modern linguistics" and...

, the current Irish President Mary McAleese
Mary McAleese
Mary Patricia McAleese served as the eighth President of Ireland from 1997 to 2011. She was the second female president and was first elected in 1997 succeeding Mary Robinson, making McAleese the world's first woman to succeed another as president. She was re-elected unopposed for a second term in...

, her predecessor Mary Robinson
Mary Robinson
Mary Therese Winifred Robinson served as the seventh, and first female, President of Ireland from 1990 to 1997, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, from 1997 to 2002. She first rose to prominence as an academic, barrister, campaigner and member of the Irish Senate...

, politicians Ian Paisley
Ian Paisley
Ian Richard Kyle Paisley, Baron Bannside, PC is a politician and church minister in Northern Ireland. As the leader of the Democratic Unionist Party , he and Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness were elected First Minister and deputy First Minister respectively on 8 May 2007.In addition to co-founding...

 and Martin McGuinness
Martin McGuinness
James Martin Pacelli McGuinness is an Irish Sinn Féin politician and the current deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland. McGuinness was also the Sinn Féin candidate for the Irish presidential election, 2011. He was born in Derry, Northern Ireland....

, the writers John Banville
John Banville
John Banville is an Irish novelist and screenwriter.Banville's breakthrough novel The Book of Evidence was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, and won the Guinness Peat Aviation award. His eighteenth novel, The Sea, won the Man Booker Prize in 2005. He was awarded the Franz Kafka Prize in 2011...

, Edna O'Brien
Edna O'Brien
Edna O'Brien is an Irish novelist and short story writer whose works often revolve around the inner feelings of women, and their problems in relating to men and to society as a whole.-Life and career:...

, Alexander McCall Smith
Alexander McCall Smith
Alexander "Sandy" McCall Smith, CBE, FRSE, is a Rhodesian-born Scottish writer and Emeritus Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh. In the late 20th century, McCall Smith became a respected expert on medical law and bioethics and served on British and international committees...

, Michael Longley
Michael Longley
Michael Longley, CBE is a Northern Irish poet from Belfast.-Life and career:Longley was educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution and subsequently read Classics at Trinity College, Dublin, where he edited Icarus...

 and Ian Rankin
Ian Rankin
Ian Rankin, OBE, DL , is a Scottish crime writer. His best known books are the Inspector Rebus novels. He has also written several pieces of literary criticism.-Background:He attended Beath High School, Cowdenbeath...

, the film-maker Ken Russell
Ken Russell
Henry Kenneth Alfred "Ken" Russell was an English film director, known for his pioneering work in television and film and for his flamboyant and controversial style. He attracted criticism as being obsessed with sexuality and the church...

, former hostage and writer Brian Keenan, musicians Phil Coulter
Phil Coulter
Phil Coulter is an artist with an international reputation as a successful songwriter, pianist, music producer, arranger and director. His success has spanned four decades and he is one of the biggest record sellers in Ireland...

 and Brian Kennedy
Brian Kennedy (singer)
Brian Edward Patrick Kennedy is an Irish singer-songwriter and author, known for his ballads, and has represented Ireland at Eurovision 2006. He is the younger brother of musician Bap Kennedy.-Personal life:...

, the historian Roy Foster
R. F. Foster (historian)
Robert Fitzroy Foster FBA FRHistS FRSL - generally known as Roy Foster - is the Carroll Professor of Irish History at Hertford College, Oxford in the UK.-Background and education:...

, and the rugby legend Jack Kyle
Jack Kyle
John Wilson Kyle OBE , commonly referred to as Jack Kyle or Jackie Kyle, is a former rugby union player who played for Ireland, the British Lions and the Barbarians during the 1940s and 1950s...

. In 2010, he launched the inaugural Belfast Media Festival, which included a keynote address by, and interview with, Sir Bob Geldof
Bob Geldof
Robert Frederick Zenon "Bob" Geldof, KBE is an Irish singer, songwriter, author, occasional actor and political activist. He rose to prominence as the lead singer of the Irish rock band The Boomtown Rats in the late 1970s and early 1980s alongside the punk rock movement. The band had hits with his...

.

On Film

In August 2010, Crawley curated 'Sex and the City of God', a season of films at the Queen's Film Theatre in Belfast. Writing in The Guardian's film guide, Steve Rose wrote of the season: "It's not often you'll find a movie season where you're offered Charlton Heston receiving the word of God one moment and a man supple enough to fellate himself the next, but such are the broad-minded tastes of William Crawley, journalist and BBC Northern Ireland presenter, who curates his own season here. A former Presbyterian minister and philosophy lecturer, Crawley's eclectic themes are summed up in the title, although the city in question is not Belfast but New York, which he regards as "a kind of urban divinity". So as well as the aforementioned The Ten Commandments and Shortbus
Shortbus
Shortbus is a 2006 comedy-drama film written and directed by John Cameron Mitchell. The plot revolves around a sexually diverse ensemble of colorful characters trying desperately to connect in New York City. The characters converge in a weekly Brooklyn artistic/sexual salon loosely inspired by...

, we get crowd-pleasing Twin Towers doc Man On Wire
Man on Wire
Man on Wire is a 2008 British documentary film directed by James Marsh. The film chronicles Philippe Petit's 1974 high-wire walk between the Twin Towers of New York's World Trade Center. It is based on Philippe Petit's book, To Reach the Clouds, recently released in paperback with the new title...

 and stirring autobiopic Tarnation, alongside more overtly spiritual choices Inherit The Wind
Inherit the Wind
Inherit the Wind may refer to:* Inherit the Wind , a 1955 play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee* Inherit the Wind , directed by Stanley Kramer; starring Spencer Tracy, Fredric March, and Gene Kelly...

and Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev
Andrei Rublev
Andrei Rublev is considered to be the greatest medieval Russian painter of Orthodox icons and frescoes.-Biography:...

." He is a member of the board of the Belfast Film Festival and has presented story and production analysis event for the Festival on Inherit the Wind
Inherit the Wind
Inherit the Wind may refer to:* Inherit the Wind , a 1955 play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee* Inherit the Wind , directed by Stanley Kramer; starring Spencer Tracy, Fredric March, and Gene Kelly...

and 12 Angry Men
12 Angry Men
12 Angry Men is a 1957 American drama film adapted from a teleplay of the same name by Reginald Rose. Directed by Sidney Lumet, the film tells the story of a jury made up of 12 men as they deliberate the guilt or acquittal of a defendant on the basis of reasonable doubt...

.

Blogging

Crawley writes a BBC blog entitled "Will & Testament", and has also presented a radio documentary on the blogging revolution for the BBC.

Awards and Memberships

Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts (FRSA). Fellow of the British-American Project. Winner of Andrew Cross Award for speech broadcaster of the year 2006, and other programme content awards. Named Thinker and Explainer of the Year in the Slugger O'Toole/Channel 4 Poliitical Awards 2011.

Biography

William Crawley was born and raised in north Belfast. Prior to his career in the media, he worked as a university lecturer in philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

 and theology
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...

 and, having been licensed, then, subsequently ordained into the ministry of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland in the mid-90's, worked as assistant minister in First Presbyterian Church, New York City, and Fisherwick Presbyterian Church, Belfast, before serving as Presbyterian chaplain at the University of Ulster
University of Ulster
The University of Ulster is a multi-campus, co-educational university located in Northern Ireland. It is the largest single university in Ireland, discounting the federal National University of Ireland...

. He later resigned from the ordained ministry and from membership of the church before beginning his career as a journalist. William Crawley was educated at Grove Primary School, Belfast; Dunlambert Secondary School, Belfast; Belfast Royal Academy
Belfast Royal Academy
The Belfast Royal Academy is the oldest school in the city of Belfast, Northern Ireland. It is a co-educational, non-denominational voluntary grammar school situated in north Belfast. The Academy is one of eight Northern Irish schools whose Headmaster is a member of the Headmasters' and...

; Queen's University, Belfast, where he read philosophy (B.A., M.Phil.); Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton Theological Seminary is a theological seminary of the Presbyterian Church located in the Borough of Princeton, New Jersey in the United States...

, where he read theology (M.Div.). He earned a doctorate
Doctorate
A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder to teach in a specific field, A doctorate is an academic degree or professional degree that in most countries refers to a class of degrees which qualify the holder...

 in philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...

 (Ph.D.
Doctor of Philosophy
Doctor of Philosophy, abbreviated as Ph.D., PhD, D.Phil., or DPhil , in English-speaking countries, is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities...

) for a dissertation on the epistemology of the American philosopher Alvin Plantinga
Alvin Plantinga
Alvin Carl Plantinga is an American analytic philosopher and the emeritus John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He is known for his work in philosophy of religion, epistemology, metaphysics, and Christian apologetics...

from Queen's University, Belfast. He has described himself as "a lapsed Protestant."

External links

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