William Crawley
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
William Crawley is a BBC journalist and broadcaster. He is the presenter of BBC Northern Ireland's weekly late-night television interview series "William Crawley Meets ...". The current series features face-to-face intreviews of 30 minutes in duration with leading thinkers and social reformers from across the world, including the philosopher Peter Singer, the scientist Richard Dawkins, and the gay bishop Gene Robinson.
Other television presenting roles include: Frozen North (BBC One Northern Ireland), a documentary examining the possible future impact of global warming on Northern Ireland; Festival Nights (BBC Two Northern Ireland), television coverage of the 2005 and 2006 Belfast Festival at Queens; Hearts and Minds (BBC One), as a reporter on BBC Northern Ireland's television political review programme; What's Wrong With ...?" (BBC One), a six-part round-table current affairs discussion programme; and More Than Meets The Eye (BBC Two), a four-part series about folklore in contemporary Ireland.
On 26 February 2007, he presented Sorry For Your Trouble (BBC One), a one-hour documentary about death and dying, in which he spoke openly about a "struggling" relationship with his late father and made a visit to his father's grave for the first time in two decades. This documentary also gained access behind the scenes at Northern Ireland's only crematorium, the first time cameras were permitted to film there.
On radio, he presents BBC Radio Ulster's weekly Sunday Sequence programme, and Not the Nolan Show, a weekly current affairs phone-in programme. His other regular radio presenting roles include: Talk Back, BBC Radio Ulster's flagship news and current affairs programme; Evening Extra, the station's drive-time news programme; The Book Programme, a literary review programme; and Arts Extra, a daily arts review programme.
Past programmes include: A Sky Full of Voices, a series of six programmes which explored the BBC's contribution to life in Northern Ireland; The Land, a six-part documentary series on how the people in Ireland relate to the land they inhabit; The Bonfire Makers (for BBC Radio Four), an examination of Northern Ireland's controversial annual Loyalist bonfire tradition, and an extended radio essay about George Bernard Shaw for BBC Radio Three.
He writes a BBC blog entitled "Will & Testament".
In December 2006, Crawley's blog named the Oxford scientist Richard Dawkins as its Person of the Year, a choice which proved controversial with some American fundamentalist groups. The organisation American Vision responded by naming the blog and its author (along with Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris) as part of a postmodern conspiracy. On 10 December 2006, Dawkins broke with his declared opposition to sharing a debating platform with creationist spokesmen and debated the British creationist Andrew McIntosh on a live radio programme, The Creation Wars, hosted by Crawley. After this exchange, Dawkins published a letter in The Guardian calling for Leeds University to reconsider its claims that McIntosh's creationist views are entirely seperate from his teaching abilities.
Crawley was born and raised in north Belfast, the youngest of seven children, and was the first in his family to go to university. Prior to his career in the media, he worked as a university lecturer in philosophy and theology and as Presbyterian chaplain at the University of Ulster at Jordanstown. He was educated in Belfast and Princeton and was awarded a doctorate in philosophy (Ph.D.) for a dissertation entitled, "Faith and warrant : a study of Alvin Plantinga's epistemology of religious belief".
