My life through a lens

Celebrities share the stories behind their favourite photos. This week: writer and presenter Dame Joan Bakewell, 85

1954

Michael Bakewell was my first husband. We met as students at Cambridge and we shared an interest in drama. We married soon after we graduated, like many of my generation did. You met, you went out together, you got married and you had children: everything was very routine. We stayed married for 17 years and had two lovely children. We divorced and he has been happily married to the other Mrs Bakewell for more than 30 years. But I have fond memories of the early years we spent together.

1990

A few weeks after Nelson Mandela was freed from prison after 27 years, he went to Stockholm to meet his fellow former prisoner Walter Sisulu. I was working on the TV show Heart Of The Matter and they said we could have 40 minutes with him so I flew over to interview him (pictured). We transmitted the whole thing unedited. He was very poised but resolute about the future. He’d made friends with his warder and said he missed him because he’d seen him daily.

1963

When my first child Harriet was small we went to the Lido in Venice a good number of times. In the mornings, we’d spend time on the beach (pictured), then in the afternoons we’d do art. Harriet has two children and is now in her 50s, while my son Matthew is also in his 50s and has four children. Family is very important to me and it gets more important as you grow older.

1998

This photograph was taken on Primrose Hill in London, near where I’ve lived for nearly 50 years, with my grandchildren Louis and Max. They are my daughter Harriet’s children and grew up in Bristol, and are now in their 20s. My son Matthew lives in Dorset. All of my six grandchildren now tower over me and I have become the little old lady of the family.

1950

I absolutely loved my time at Stockport High School For Girls. We all hated the headmistress but we were bound together by the fact that we loved learning. She was snobbish and favoured the girls with wealthier parents. I met her as an adult and she was sad and lonely. I was terrible at chess, you can see I’m not concentrating here, but I did enjoy it.

1938

My dad was an engineer, and when I was five I sailed to South America when he went there on business – this is me on board. We set off from Southampton to Lisbon, Rio, then Buenos Aires, where we stayed for nine months. I was spoiled by all the grown-ups – I liked showing off. There was a jazz band on board led by Harry Roy – I’d never met glamorous figures before and I became a mascot for them.

1969

This is me interviewing Harold Pinter on Late Night Line-Up – we remained friends long after our seven-year affair was over. I owe my career to that show, which I did from 1964 to 1972 on BBC2, which was fairly unusual for a woman in those days. I’d do four programmes a week. I’d get the children off to nursery, and go in for a 10.30am meeting; then come home to do homework on the guests and be there when the children came in to give them their tea, play with them, bathe them and read a bedtime story, then I’d go back to work. What I really missed out on was a social life with my then husband, Michael.

2012

Here I am at the State Opening of Parliament. The ladies in the front wearing diamond tiaras are the wives of peers, but in our row are the lady peers, the baronesses. When I went to hire a gown for the State Opening they had run out. I rang my friend Tim Angel, who runs Angels Costumes, and asked if he had any costumes from a Gilbert & Sullivan opera which has a scene set in the House of Lords. He did, so I actually went in a theatrical costume.

Landscape Artist Of The Year, Tuesday, 8pm, Sky Arts. Celebrity Portrait Artist Of The Year, Tuesday 18 December, 8pm, Sky Arts. As told to Susan Gray.