Biography

John Bridcut is an award-winning film maker, with a string of varied documentaries to his name.   Much of his recent work has been with his own company, Crux Productions, but he also works as a freelance director and producer for other production companies.  He has also published two books and lectures on music and broadcasting.

His latest music documentary Delius: Composer, Lover, Enigma explores the pleasures of Frederick Delius, and was shown on BBC Four last May.  A week later A Jubilee Tribute to The Queen by The Prince of Wales was shown on BBC One three times, with a total audience of 10.3 million viewers.  His 2011 documentary, The Prince and the Composer, a film about Hubert Parry by The Prince of Wales, has now been released on DVD after its acclaimed screening on BBC Four.   

The third of Bridcut's composer-portraits, Elgar: the Man Behind the Mask, won the Czech Crystal Award for best documentary at the Golden Prague TV Festival in October 2010, and went on to secure the 2011 BAFTA Craft Award for Sound (Factual).  The Passions of Vaughan Williams (2008) and Britten’s Children (2004) have also won awards.  He complemented the Britten film with a book of the same title, which was published by Faber and Faber in 2006.  Since then, he has written a pocket guide to Britten, now updated as Essential Britten.  He has also produced film portraits of Roald Dahl, Hillary Clinton, Rudolf Nureyev, Mstislav Rostropovich and The Queen.

John Bridcut began his career as a journalist on the staff of The Spectator, and moved into broadcasting as a BBC news trainee.  After twelve years at the BBC, where he worked in national and regional newsrooms, and produced programmes such as The World at One, Newsnight and The Money Programme, he moved into independent production.  With Viewpoint, and later Mentorn, he produced a range of current affairs programmes for Channel 4 and the BBC, as well as several series on subjects of contemporary history.  For a total of more than ten years now, he has produced programmes through his own company, Crux Productions.

In 2007 he authored a report for the BBC Trust about the safeguarding of impartiality in the 21st century, entitled From Seesaw to Wagon Wheel.