Melvyn Bragg's Memoir of Wadham Years Out Now
Date Published: 26.02.2026
‘Another World’ provides a rich portrait of the esteemed author and broadcaster’s early adulthood, and of Wadham and the University of Oxford in the late 1950s.
Today, February 26, marks the publication of the second of Wadham alumnus, Melvyn Bragg’s, memoirs. Melvyn Bragg is a peer in the House of Lords; the author of many books, including the Cumbrian Trilogy; and was the host of Radio 4’s In Our Time from 1998-2025.
The Wadham community will find this second volume of special interest. Titled Another World; The Oxford Years, the narrative covers Bragg’s time at Wadham. The book tells the complete story of how, aided by a scholarship, Melvyn Bragg left his hometown of Wigton and took up History at the College in 1958.
As described by publisher, Sceptre, “over three formative years – as his tutors, his studies and the people around him all expand his horizons and his sense of what is possible – he takes his next steps into adulthood, surrounded by the old, imposing buildings and libraries (and protests and parties) of the ‘city of dreaming spires.’”
Another World provides a rich portrait of the esteemed author and broadcaster’s early adulthood, and of Wadham and the University of Oxford in the late 1950s. Bragg’s descriptions of Wadham animate the College afresh in the imagination:
“It was modest but classical, seventeenth century, plain, perfect. When I went through the gates I felt that I had arrived in an unthreatening place for work. Centuries of it built to outlast and reshape all who entered.”
Impressions from his younger self, preserved in letters, describe Nicholas and Dorothy Wadham, the College’s founders, as “childless West Country religious philanthropists” and then Warden, Maurice Bowra, as someone who “speaks to everyone as if he were addressing a public meeting, but he’s kind-hearted, supportive, cheerfully steamrolling through life.”
The Guardian writes, “the young Bragg is a winning protagonist, who presents much like his older self: thoughtful, open and generous in celebrating his contemporaries’ talents, while forgiving their foibles.”
The Times writes, “Bragg writes beautifully about his uncomplicated, loving male friendships, which began randomly by bumping into each other on a shared college stairwell and lasted a lifetime…”
Wadham congratulates Melvyn Bragg on the publication and looks forward to further memoirs.