Jonathan Miller

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This article is about the British physician, theatre and opera director, and television presenter; for other people named Jonathan Miller, see Jonathan Miller (disambiguation).

Miller (far left) with the Beyond the Fringe cast

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

1 History
2 Medicine
3 Honours
4 Parodies and representations
5 Bibliography
6 References
7 See also
8 External links

[edit] History

[edit] Early life

Miller grew up in Hampstead 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, a self-declared 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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] Career 1970-2000

In the 1970s, he started directing and producing operas for the Kent Opera 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 Rigeletto and (operetta) The Mikado. For a time he was a vice president of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality.^[1]

Most of his work for television has been for the BBC, starting by producing a series of 12 Shakespeare plays between 1980-1982. Before that in 1974, he famously directed 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.

[edit] 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 program in February 2004, called What the World Thinks of God appearing from New York. The original three-part series is slated for airing on Public Television in the United States, starting May 4, 2007, cosponsored by the American Ethical Union, American Humanist Association, Center for Inquiry, the HKH Foundation, and the Institute for Humanist Studies.

Jonathan Miller is currently directing 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 Der Rosenkavalier in Tokyo and giving talks throughout England 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.

Miller is the subject of a biography In Two Minds by The Independent's theatre critic Kate Bassett to be published in October 2007. The title refers to Miller's view, influenced by the attitude of his father, that drama compared with medicine is not real work, and his father's question, when Miller was some way into adulthood, as to wherher he had yet decided what he wanted to do with his life.

[edit] Medicine

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

[edit] Honours

He is an honorary associate of the National Secular Society, and was appointed president of the Rationalist Association in 2006. ^[2]

Miller was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1983, is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in London and Edinburgh, and a Foreign Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was knighted in 2002.

[edit] 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.

[edit] Bibliography

Country of publication is the UK, unless stated otherwise

[edit] As writer, contributor or editor

Jonathan Miller with Alan Bennett, Peter Cook, and Dudley Moore (1963). Beyond the Fringe. A Revue. Souvenir Press/Samuel French.
Jonathan Miller (Ed) (1968). Harvey and the Circulation of Blood: A Collection of Contemporary Documents. Jackdaw Publications.
Jonathan Miller with Margaret Drabble, Richard Hoggart, Adrian Mitchell, Mary Quant et al. (1969). The Permissive Society. Panther.
Jonathan Miller (1970). McLuhan. Fontana Modern Masters series.
Jonathan Miller (1971). Censorship and the Limits of Personal Freedom. Oxford University Press.
Jonathan Miller (1972). Freud: The Man, His World and His Influence. Weidenfeld and Nicolson.
Jonathan Miller (1974). The Uses of Pain (Conway memorial lecture). South Place Ethical Society.
Jonathan Miller (1978). The Body in Question. Jonathan Cape.
Jonathan Miller (1982). Darwin for Beginners. Writers and Readers Comic Book/2003 Pantheon Books (USA). ISBN 0-375-71458-8. (republished in 2000 as Introducing Darwin and Evolution Icon Books (Faber))
Jonathan Miller (1983). The Human Body. Viking Press. (1994 Jonathan Cape [pop-up book])
Jonathan Miller (1983). States of Mind. Conversations with Psychological Investigators. BBC/Random House. — participants include Jerome Bruner, Daniel Dennett, Brian Farrell, Jerry Fodor, Thomas Szasz
Jonathan Miller (1984). The Facts of Life. Jonathan Cape. (pop-up book intended for children)
Jonathan Miller (1986). Subsequent Performances. Faber.
Jonathan Miller with Alan Bennett, Peter Cook, and Dudley Moore (1987). The Complete Beyond the Fringe. Methuen. ISBN 0-413-14670-7.
Jonathan Miller & John Durrant (1989). Laughing Matters: A Serious Look at Humour. Longman.
Jonathan Miller (1990). Acting in Opera. Applause Theatre & Cinema Books. (The Applause Acting Series)
Jonathan Miller (Ed) (1990). Don Giovanni Book. Myths of Seduction and Betrayal. Faber.
Jonathan Miller (1992). The Afterlife of Plays. San Diego State Univ Press. (University Research Lecture Series No. 5)
Robert B Silvers (Ed) (1997). Hidden Histories of Science. Granta Books. — Contributors Jonathan Miller with Stephen Jay Gould, Daniel J Kevles, RC Lewontin, Oliver Sacks
Jonathan Miller (1998). Dimensional Man. Jonathan Cape. [kit / model book]
Jonathan Miller (1998). On Reflection. National Gallery Publications/Yale University Press (USA). ISBN 0-300-07713-0.
Jonathan Miller (1999). Nowhere in Particular. Mitchell Beasley. ISBN 1-84000-150-X. [collection of his photographs]
Robert B. Silvers (Ed) (2000). Doing It : Five Performing Arts. New York Review of Books (USA). ISBN 0-940322-75-7. — Essays by Jonathan Miller Geoffrey O'Brien, Charles Rosen, Tom Stoppard and Garry Wills
BBC. Great Composers of the World. Jonathan Miller appears on the Puccini and Bach DVDs of this BBC series.
PBS. Vermeer: Master of Light. Jonathan Miller appears in this one-hour program on the painter
BBC. Alice in Wonderland DVD. Jonathan Miller has a director's commentary track.

[edit] 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.

[edit] Books about Miller

Kate Bassett (2007 forthcoming). Jonathan Miller Biography (working title). 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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] References

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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