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Sir Jonathan Wolfe Miller, CBE (born 21 July 1934 ) is a British neurologist, Theatre and Opera director, Television presenter, humourist and sculptor. He lives in Camden , North London. HISTORY Early life Miller grew up in St Johns Wood , London , in a well-connected Jew ish family - his father Emanuel (1892-1970) was a Psychiatrist specialising in child development, and his mother Betty (née Spiro) (1910-1965) was a novelist and biographer; his sister Sarah (d. 2006) worked in television for many years and retained an involvement with Judaism that her brother, a self-declared atheist (see below) eschewed. He studied natural sciences and medicine at St John's College at the University Of Cambridge and University College London , graduating in 1959 and worked as a hospital doctor for the next two years. The Fringe and beyond He was, however, also involved in the university drama society and the Cambridge Footlights and in 1960 he helped write and produce ' Beyond The Fringe ' at the Edinburgh Festival which launched the careers of Alan Bennett , Peter Cook and Dudley Moore . Miller quit the show shortly after its move to New York and took over as editor and presenter of the BBC 's flagship arts programme '' Monitor ''. All of these appointments were unsolicited invitations in which Jonathan Miller was told he would "pick it up as he went along". In 1966 he wrote, produced and directed a film adaptation of '' Alice In Wonderland '' for the BBC , and in 1968 ''Whistle and I'll Come to You'', an adaptation of M. R. James ' ghost story, "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad". During the later 1960s, he had a major falling-out with the magazine '' Private Eye '' that he attributes to implicit Anti-semitism . Career 1970-2000 In the 1970s, he started directing and producing operas for the Kent Opera and Glyndebourne , with a new production of ''The Marriage of Figaro'' for English National Opera in 1978 . Despite only having seen a few operas and not knowing how to read music, he has become one of the world's leading opera directors with classic productions being '' Rigoletto '' and (operetta) '' The Mikado ''. For a time he was a vice president of the Campaign For Homosexual Equality .http://www.gaymonitor.co.uk/chehistory2.htm Most of his work for television has been for the BBC , starting by producing a series of 12 Shakespeare plays between 1980-1982. Before that in 1974, he famously directed Laurence Olivier in '' The Merchant Of Venice ''. He also wrote and presented several factual series drawing on his experience as a physician, for example ''The Body in Question'' (1978) (which caused some controversy for showing the dissection of a cadaver), ''States of Mind'' 1983, ''Who Cares'' and ''Born Talking''. 2000-present In 2004, he wrote and presented a series on '' (on-screen title; but more commonly referred to as ''Jonathan Miller's Brief History of Disbelief'') for BBC Four TV, exploring the roots of his own atheism and investigating the history of atheism in the world. Individual conversations, debates and discussions for the series that could not be included, due to time constraints, were individually aired in a six-part series entitled '' The Atheism Tapes ''. He also appeared on a BBC TWO programme in February 2004, called ''What the World Thinks of God'' appearing from New York. The original three-part series is slated to air on Public Television in the United States, starting May 4, 2007, cosponsored by the American Ethical Union , American Humanist Association , Centre For Inquiry , the HKH Foundation , and the Institute For Humanist Studies . Jonathan Miller has recently directed '' The Cherry Orchard '' at The Crucible, Sheffield , his first work on the British stage for ten years. He is also directing Monteverdi's '' L'Orfeo '' in Manchester and Bristol, and Der Rosenkavalier in Tokyo and giving talks throughout Britain during 2007 called "An Audience with Jonathan Miller" in which he speaks about his life for an hour and then fields questions from the audience. He also curated an exhibition on camouflage at the Imperial War Museum . His recent appearances were at the Royal Society of the Arts in London on humour (4th July 2007) and the British Library on religion (3rd September 2007). Miller is the subject of a biography ''In Two Minds'' by '' The Independent On Sunday's '' theatre critic Kate Bassett to be published in 2008. The title refers to Miller's career which has embraced both medicine and the arts, and to his riven feelings and deep regrets about having given up working as a doctor to become an internationally renowned drama and opera director. MEDICINE Miller has formally returned to medicine on several occasions. In the early 1970s he held a research fellowship in the history of medicine at University College, London and was a Research Fellow in Neuropsychology at Sussex University in 1985. HONOURS He is a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association , an honorary associate of the National Secular Society , and was appointed president of the Rationalist Association in 2006. http://www.newhumanist.org.uk/weblog.php?id=P2119 Miller was appointed a Commander Of The British Empire (CBE) in 1983 and in 2003 was Knighted for his services to the arts. He is also a Fellow of the Royal College Of Physicians in London and Edinburgh , and a Foreign Member of the American Academy Of Arts And Sciences . PARODIES AND REPRESENTATIONS Miller has been the subject of several parodies:
BIBLIOGRAPHY Country of publication is the UK, unless stated otherwise As writer, contributor or editor
Introduction or foreword contributed Books about Miller Miller and the satire boom REFERENCES SEE ALSO EXTERNAL LINKS
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