The Listening Books Award for the Spoken Word 2006, goes to Lord Melvyn Bragg.

 
Melvyn Bragg is presented with The Listening Books Award
for the Spoken Word 2006, by James Naughtie,
before an audience of over 1000 people at
The Guardian Hay Festival, 3rd June 2006.
© Justin Williams 2006

Again, the task of judging this award was not made easy by the number of great nominees coming mostly from Listening Books members, but Melvyn Bragg stood out from them all.

Melvyn Bragg has been at the heart of British cultural life for more than 40 years. A familiar television face, especially on The South Bank Show , his distinctive voice is also instantly recognized, not least because of his frequent appearances on radio, a medium he clearly loves. His was one of the first distinctively regional accents to be accepted in serious broadcasting.

He wins this prize partly for the use of his own voice, and partly for his studies of the way other people use theirs. This is a tribute to his vocal performances on the audio tapes of his own novels, for such programmes as the erudite but accessible In Our Time, and for his epic analysis of a thousand years of spoken language in The Routes of English on Radio 4, and The Adventure of English on ITV. Most recently, again on Radio 4, he used new technology to explore the contents of our speech in Do You Know What You Are Saying? Through his championing of scientists on Start The Week and of historians and philosophers on In Our Time, he has made an unprecedented and unsurpassable contribution to the development of unashamedly intelligent conversation.

There can be no doubt that he is a worthy winner of this year's Listening Books Award for the Spoken Word. The sound of his voice has become a by-word - or a by-sound! - for an engaged and enquiring mind that has opened our lives to the biggest and most adventurous ideas on the planet. The cultural industries have few more eloquent advocates than Melvyn Bragg, and the Hay Festival, as have many, many others throughout the UK , has benefitted for twenty years from his generosity, encouragement and support.

Listen to James Naughtie talk about our charity and The Listening Books Award for the Spoken Word.