David Perry

Writer in Residence

Profile

After studying English at the University of Cambridge, David travelled down the Nile to East Africa to explore aural literary traditions and then worked in Paris before joining the BBC where he produced documentaries for TV and Radio. His Prix Italia nominated feature Harlem Speaks was followed by a 52-part history of jazz music for Radio 3 and the book Jazz Greats for Phaidon Press. There followed a Sony Radio Gold Award for his programme Landscape of Fear about the fate of artists under the occupation of France in WWII.

David's programme Sins of the Father brought together for the first time, late in life, Hilde Speer, daughter of Albert Speer and Miriam Finkelstein a sometime inmate of Buchenwald, who by extraordinary coincidence had both been fostered, but at different times, by the same Quaker family in New York State in the years after WWII.

David produced the Woolf Institute podcast series An A-Z of Believing and the discussion series Encounter in which he also participates as a panel member. He produced the Woolf Institute instigated BBC Radio 4 documentary, We Do Do God which was broadcast in April 2019, and the consequent four podcasts expanding some themes that we could only touch on in the BBC broadcast: Of Courts and Creeds; Golden Age Thinking; Mission; and Engagement.

Along with Claire Curran he produced the Woolf Institute's podcast series, Naked Reflections.

He recently published an article on music for THE NEW STATESMAN magazine



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