Background
His father was Secretary General of the Chartered Insurance Institute, a professor who was an expert on insurance law and his mother a playwright.
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Michael Cockerell
Edit ProfileEducation
He was educated at Kilburn Grammar School and Corpus Christi College, Oxford where he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics (Group of the European People's Party (Christian-Democratic Group)).
Career
He is the British Broadcasting Corporation"s most established political documentary maker, with a long, Emmy award-winning career of political programmes spanning television and radio. Cockerell joined the British Broadcasting Corporation Africa service and for 12 years he was a reporter on the current affairs programme, Panorama, he now specialises in in-depth documentaries on the politics and players of Westminster. Most notably, he has made biographical profiles of Margaret Thatcher, Edward Heath, Alan Clark, Barbara Castle, Roy Jenkins, Michael Howard, David Cameron and most recently of Boris Johnson.
From the 1970s, there were Sir Ted: A Film Portrait of Edward Heath, How We Fell Foreign Europe (1975), The Lost World of the Seventies, Roy Jenkins: A Very Social Democrat, The Marketing Of Margaret Thatcher (1983), Blair"s Thousand Days - The Lady And The Lords, Life in Whips Office (1995), Inside 10 Downing Street (2000), Cabinet Confidential (2001), Denis Healey: The Best Prime Minister Labour never had?, Who is Editor Miliband? (on Newsnight), The Making of the Iron Lady (2008).
Among them are the How to Be trilogy (How to Be Chancellor, How to Be Foreign Secretary, How to Be Home Secretary). A three-part series on the history of Anglo-American, Anglo-German and Anglo-French relations.
An observational documentary on the workings of Alastair Campbell"s press office in News from Number 10. And a three-part analysis of Tony Blair"s 10 years in office as Prime Minister.
He has also presented a programme on How to be an ex Prime Minister, broadcast just before Blair"s resignation.
One of Cockerell"s recent series for the British Broadcasting Corporation is The Great Offices of State. lieutenant is a behind-the-scenes look at the Home Office, the Foreign Office, and the United Kingdom Treasury, three of the United Kingdom"s Great Offices of State. This was followed by the 2011 series The Secret World of Whitehall. in 2015 Cockerell did a six part series on the House of Commons for BBC2.
lieutenant took Cockerell six years to persuade the British Broadcasting Corporation to film inside the Commons.
That interview was widely reported on the front pages of British newspapers when Tony Blair accepted that the need to sustain the transatlantic "special relationship" meant a willingness to "pay the blood price". Michael was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of East Anglia in 2007.
Achievements
Politics
Besides the profiles, over the last decade he has made documentaries on particular political themes. The programme featured candid interviews with United States presidents and their advisers on the tricks of the debate trade. Cockerell has interviewed eight Prime Ministers – more than any other reporter in British political broadcasting.
Prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, he interviewed Tony Blair for his documentary on Britain"s relationship with the United States, Hotline to the President.
