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Jonathan Miller

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Sir Jonathan Wolfe Miller, CBE (born 21 July 1934) is a British neurologist, theatre and opera director, author, television presenter, humorist and sculptor. He lives in Camden, North London.

History

Early life

Miller grew up in St John's Wood, London, in a well-connected Jewish family - his father Emanuel (1892-1970) was a psychiatrist specialising in child development, and his mother Betty (née Spiro) (1910–1965) was a novelist and biographer; his sister Sarah (d. 2006) worked in television for many years and retained an involvement with Judaism that her brother, an atheist (see below) eschewed.

He studied natural sciences and medicine at St John's College at the University of Cambridge and University College London, graduating in 1959 and worked as a hospital doctor for the next two years.

The Fringe and beyond

He was, however, also involved in the university drama society and the Cambridge Footlights and in 1960 he helped write and produce 'Beyond the Fringe' at the Edinburgh Festival which launched the careers of Alan Bennett, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. Miller quit the show shortly after its move to New York and took over as editor and presenter of the BBC's flagship arts programme Monitor. All of these appointments were unsolicited invitations in which Jonathan Miller was told he would "pick it up as he went along". In 1966, he wrote, produced and directed a film adaptation of Alice in Wonderland for the BBC, and in 1968 Whistle and I'll Come to You, an adaptation of M. R. James' ghost story, "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad".

During the later 1960s, he had a major falling-out with the magazine Private Eye that he attributes to implicit anti-semitism.

Career 1970–2000

In the 1970s he started directing and producing operas for the Kent Opera House and Glyndebourne, with a new production of The Marriage of Figaro for English National Opera in 1978. Despite only having seen a few operas and not knowing how to read music, he has become one of the world's leading opera directors with classic productions being Rigoletto and (operetta) The Mikado. For a time he was a vice president of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality.

Most of his work for television has been for the BBC, starting by producing a series of 12 Shakespeare plays between 1980 and 1982. Before that, in 1974, he famously directed Sir Laurence Olivier in The Merchant of Venice. He also wrote and presented several factual series drawing on his experience as a physician, for example The Body in Question (1978) (which caused some controversy for showing the dissection of a cadaver), States of Mind 1983, Who Cares and Born Talking.

2000–present

In 2004, he wrote and presented a series on atheism, Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief (on-screen title; but more commonly referred to as Jonathan Miller's Brief History of Disbelief) for BBC Four TV, exploring the roots of his own atheism and investigating the history of atheism in the world. Individual conversations, debates and discussions for the series that could not be included, due to time constraints, were individually aired in a six-part series entitled The Atheism Tapes. He also appeared on a BBC TWO programme in February 2004, called What the World Thinks of God appearing from New York. The original three-part series is slated to air on Public Television in the United States, starting May 4, 2007, cosponsored by the American Ethical Union, American Humanist Association, Centre for Inquiry, the HKH Foundation, and the Institute for Humanist Studies.

Jonathan Miller has recently directed The Cherry Orchard at The Crucible, Sheffield, his first work on the British stage for ten years. He is also directing Monteverdi's L'Orfeo in Manchester and Bristol, and Der Rosenkavalier in Tokyo and giving talks throughout Britain during 2007 called "An Audience with Jonathan Miller" in which he speaks about his life for an hour and then fields questions from the audience. He also curated an exhibition on camouflage at the Imperial War Museum. His recent appearances were at the Royal Society of the Arts in London on humour (4th July 2007) and the British Library on religion (3rd September 2007).

Miller is the subject of a biography In Two Minds by The Independent on Sunday's theatre critic Kate Bassett to be published in Decemmber 2008. The title refers to Miller's career which has embraced both medicine and the arts, and to his riven feelings and deep regrets about having given up working as a doctor to become an internationally renowned drama and opera director.

Medicine

Miller has formally returned to medicine on several occasions. He held a research fellowship in the history of medicine at University College, London from 1970 to 1973, and was a Research Fellow in Neuropsychology at Sussex University in 1985.

Honours

He is a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association, an honorary associate of the National Secular Society, and was appointed president of the Rationalist Association in 2006.

Miller was appointed a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) in 1983 and in 2003 was knighted for his services to the arts. He is also a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in London and Edinburgh, and a Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Parodies and representations

Miller has been the subject of several parodies:

  • Private Eye (which had a falling-out with Miller) occasionally lampooned him under the name 'Dr Jonathan', depicting him as a Dr Johnson-like self-important man of learning.
  • The satirical television puppet show Spitting Image portrayed Miller as an anteater (lampooning his large nose), as well as featuring a segment entitled "Talking Bollocks" (the 'A' in 'Talking' combining with the 'ollo' in "Bollocks" below to create a penis), in which he discussed, with Bernard Levin, various cultural matters in a ridiculously pretentious way.
  • In the film for television Not Only But Always about the careers of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, Jonathan Aris played Jonathan Miller as a young man.

Bibliography

Country of publication is the UK, unless stated otherwise

As writer, contributor or editor

Introduction or foreword contributed

  • Robert Lowell (1966). Old Glory, The: Endecott and the Red Cross; My Kinsman, Major Molineux; and Benito Cereno. (directors note)
  • Various (1999). More Viz Crap Jokes. John Brown Publishing. ISBN 1-902212-16-9. (introduction)
  • Julian Rothenstein (2000). The Paradox Box: Optical Illusions, Puzzling Pictures, Verbal Diversions. Redstons Press /Shambhala Publications (USA).
  • Linda Scotson (2000). Doran: Child of Courage. Macmillan.

Books about Miller

  • Kate Bassett (2007 forthcoming). In Two Minds. Methuen.
  • Ronald Bergan (1990). Beyond the Fringe...and Beyond: A Critical Biography of Alan Bennett, Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller, Dudley Moore. Virgin Books. ISBN 1-85227-175-2.
  • Michael Romain (Ed) (1992). A Profile of Jonathan Miller. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-40953-5.

Miller and the satire boom

  • Humphrey Carpenter (2000). That Was Satire, That Was: Beyond the Fringe, the Establishment Club, "Private Eye" and "That Was the Week That Was". Weidenfeld & Nicolson. ISBN 0-575-06588-5.
  • Robert Hewison (1983). Footlights! - A Hundred Years of Cambridge Comedy. Methuen. ISBN 0-413-51150-2.
  • Roger Wilmut (1980). From Fringe to Flying Cirus - Celebrating a Unique Generation of Comedy 1960-1980. Eyre Methuen. ISBN 0-413-46950-6.

References

See also

External links



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