Henry Hardy, David Owen and Simon Callow on Bryan Magee

Bryan Magee – philosopher, writer, broadcaster, politician – died on 26 July at the age of eighty-nine. 

After his death, the three main broadsheets swiftly printed the oven-ready obituaries they had on file. But the BBC, where Magee’s reputation was cemented in the later decades of the twentieth century, failed even to mention his death, let alone look back at his life and work. What were Front Row and Last Word thinking of? Not the tiniest clip from the rich Magee broadcasting archive were we offered. 

Magee was (and still is) a household name among the chattering classes, rightly, and this was an astonishing failure of cultural memory on Auntie’s part. He was a consummate interviewer, and one of the most articulate and engaging expositors, especially of philosophy, who ever lived. The silence on the air waves at the end of his life was shameful.

Henry Hardy begins a piece for The Oldie with this complaint about the BBC's ignoring of Bryan Magee's death.

He goes on to give his own memories of him and is followed by David Owen (Magee was a Labour and then an SDP MP) and the actor Simon Callow.

I have my own reasons for being grateful to Magee.

His television series Men of Ideas, featuring interviews with many of the great philosophers of the day, was screened at the start of 1978 when I was being interviewed by universities because I hoped to study philosophy there.

And his superb short book on Karl Popper was a strong influence on my own thinking,

I respect him too as a man who knew the back streets of Market Harborough.