Leslie Megahey, known for his 1968 BBC documentary Tolkien in Oxford, will be the Guest Speaker at the Tolkien Society’s 2015 Annual Dinner to be held in Arundel on 11th April 2015.
As the producer of the BBC documentary, Megahey spent two days working and filming with J.R.R. Tolkien and will regale attendees with personal insights of the man himself whilst giving us all the behind-the-scenes gossip of the documentary itself.
Tolkien in Oxford, first shown on BBC 2 on 30 March 1968, is one of the few television shows (and recorded interviews) featuring Tolkien himself. Although Tolkien confessed in a letter to Donald Swann that he wasn’t entirely happy with the documentary, he did refer to the producer – Megahey – as “a very nice, very young man and personally equipped with some intelligence and insight“.
Leslie Megahey’s official biography:
Leslie Megahey has written, produced and directed TV arts and drama films since the late 1960s. His film of Bartok’s opera Bluebeard’s Castle won the Italia Prize, and his 2-part documentary The Orson Welles Story is regarded as the definitive TV interview with Welles. He served twice as editor of BBC1’s Omnibus series, for which he won a BAFTA award, and was BBC’s head of Music and Arts programmes from 1988-91. He wrote and directed the 1994 cinema film The Hour of the Pig (USA title The Advocate) starring Colin Firth, Donald Pleasance and Ian Holm. He directed the Olivier Award-nominated stage play Jack, co-written with its star Nicol Williamson, in London’s West End and on Broadway. He was given a retrospective and lifetime achievement award at the Montreal FIFA festival in 2001. His ‘lost’ cult film, the ghost story Schalcken the Painter, was rediscovered and restored by the BFI in 2013 and released as a classic DVD/Blu-ray.
Book Now, to attend the Tolkien Society’s Annual Dinner 2015.
