Melvyn Bragg, 76, splits from wife of 43 years
HIS 43-year marriage has weathered its fair share of storms, including two alleged affairs.
Now broadcaster Melvyn Bragg and his wife, the author Cate Haste, have finally decided to call it a day.
Lord Bragg, who presented ITV’s flagship arts programme The South Bank Show for more than 30 years, said yesterday: ‘Cate and I have agreed to an amicable separation after many years of marriage. We will be making no further comments.’
He is understood to be living with former film assistant Gabriel ClareHunt, 60, with whom he was first reported to have had an affair more than 20 years ago.
Lord Bragg, now 76, and Lady Bragg, who turned 70 last year, have two grown-up children together, filmmaker Alice, 38, and science journalist Tom, 36.
The family home is a multimillion pound house in Hampstead, North London. The broadcaster also has a daughter, Marie-Elsa, 50, who is a Church of England priest, from his first marriage to Marie-Elisabeth Roche.
Miss Roche, who was known to friends as Lise, killed herself in 1971, a tragedy Bragg has admitted he still ‘can’t get over’ and which has cast a ‘long shadow’ over his life.
In 1995 it was reported that he had had an affair with Miss Clare-Hunt, who was then a secretary at London Weekend Television where Bragg was arts controller. He was said to have been ‘besotted’ with Miss Clare-Hunt, who worked as an assistant to Lord Bragg’s friend, the late Oscar-winning director Lord Attenborough.
The broadcaster is also reported to have had an eight-year affair with Lady Jane Wellesley, Prince Charles’s former girlfriend, which is believed to have ended in 1987. Lady Jane is the daughter of the 8th Duke of Wellington.