Jonathan Dimbleby

After four decades of reporting from the continent, Jonathan Dimbleby returns to Africa on a 7,000-mile journey to discover how it is changing.

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The time is the late '80s, a crucial period in the history of South Africa. President P.W. Botha is hanging on to power by a thread as the African National Congress (ANC) takes up arms against apartheid and the country tumbles toward insurrection. A British mining concern is convinced that their interests would be better served in a stable South Africa and they quietly dispatch Michael Young, their head of public affairs, to open an unofficial dialogue between the bitter rivals. Assembling a reluctant yet brilliant team to pave the way to reconciliation by confronting obstacles that initially seem insurmountable, Young places his trust in ANC leader Thabo Mbeki and Afrikaner philosophy professor Willie Esterhuyse. It is their empathy that will ultimately serve as the catalyst for change by proving more powerful than the terrorist bombs that threaten to disrupt the peaceful dialogue.

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Filmmaker Richard Symons asks members of the British government to support his campaign for truth in the Houses of Parliament, and attempts to get a pledge from MPs that they will never tell a lie. (Storyville)

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Biting political satire starring Robert Lindsay as a beleaguered Tony Blair, who stubbornly refuses to see the danger he faces from a Special Tribunal on Iraq that has been set up to investigate war crimes

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After Michael Heseltine announced his retirement from the House of Commons and to tie in with the publication of his memoirs 'Life in the Jungle' in September 2000, LWT made a two part documentary telling his story.

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In three fifty minute films,this series reveals the deals and the betrayals,the polite letters from palace press secretaries and the bollockings from tabloid editors,the telephone calls to the BBC Governors and the intercepted mobile phone calls from royal paramours which form the recent history of the relationship between the Royal Family,politicians and the media.

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Documentary which examined the killing of three Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) members in Gibraltar in March 1988 by the British Special Air Service (codenamed "Operation Flavius"). "Death on the Rock" presented evidence that the IRA members were shot without warning or with their hands up. It was condemned by the British government and denounced in the press as sensationalist. After one of its witnesses retracted his statement, "Death on the Rock" became the first individual documentary to be the subject of an independent inquiry, in which it was largely vindicated.

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First Tuesday or This World is a monthly television documentary strand, shown in the United Kingdom on the ITV network and was produced by Yorkshire Television. The subject matter was mainly social issues and current affairs stories from around the world. It ran from 5 April 1983 to 2 November 1993, with programme being shown on the first Tuesday of the month, hence the title. In 1993, Network First was a part replacement for First Tuesday.

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Newsreels from the '30s constitute the bulk of this fascinating documentary, clearly illustrating that the public was fed an extremely biased view of events: straight propaganda, the stricture to provide entertainment, and the attempt to be objective all contributing to this. Lewis and producer Elizabeth Taylor-Mead have constructed their argument well, but it is Jonathan Dimbleby's brief comments towards the end that contain the crucial lesson: forty years on, the same forces work to distort our view of Northern Ireland. The film only indicates this to be the case, but it is precise and coherent enough to make the point with considerable force.

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Jonathan Dimbleby’s landmark 1973 documentary “The Unknown Famine” stands as a pivotal moment in Ethiopian history—a journalistic endeavour that not only exposed a humanitarian crisis but inadvertently helped precipitate the end of Africa’s oldest monarchy. The footage was broadcast by ITV for its flagship affairs series named "This Week".

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World in Action was Granada Television’s flagship ITV current affairs series, running from 7 Jan 1963 to 7 Dec 1998, and built a reputation for film-led investigative reporting and a forceful editorial stance. Its journalism produced major public and political repercussions—including investigations associated with miscarriages of justice such as the Birmingham Six—and it also served as a platform for landmark documentary projects, including the first broadcast of “Seven Up!” as part of the strand in 1964.

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