Alan Saunders (broadcaster)

Early life and academic career

Saunders was born in London and raised in Harringay, North London. His father Sydney Saunders worked as a taxi driver and his mother Edith was a secretary in a school. Saunders' interest in gastronomy initially came about through childhood holidays abroad with his parents, who were adventurous eaters.

He gained a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy at the University of Leicester and a BSc from the London School of Economics, and was a Frances A. Yates Research Fellow at the Warburg Institute, University of London. In 1992, he was one of the first ever recipients of Australia’s Pascall Prize for Critical Writing and Broadcasting, and in 2007 was awarded the Special Media Prize by the Australasian Association of Philosophy. He gained his PhD from the Australian National University, with a dissertation on the 18th-century English philosopher Joseph Priestley.

Media career and writing

After a period of freelance work for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation while still based in London, Saunders moved to Sydney and joined Radio National in 1987. During his career he presented The Food Program, Screen, The Comfort Zone, By Design, and The Philosopher's Zone. He was a regular and occasional columnist for media outlets such as The Sydney Morning Herald, The Bulletin, The Australian Financial Review Magazine, Food Australia, Delicious Magazine and The Times Literary Supplement. He was also "the Critic" on the Granada TV series The Chopping Block.

Saunders was the author of A is for Apple (William Heinemann 1995), a collection of essays loosely revolving around food. Writing about this book for The Australian Financial Review Maria Trefely-Deutch praises Saunders for his ‘very real appreciation of popular culture. In discussing prohibitions against eating pigs, only Saunders can jump from Rabbi Moses Maimonides, the great Jewish philosopher of the Middle Ages to Arnold, Eva Gabor’s pet pig in the 60s sitcom, Green Acres’. His satirical novel Alanna (Penguin 2002) was described by critic Peter Pierce in The Sydney Morning Herald’s books pages as ‘… sportive and engaging, fast paced and unsparing of its targets. Saunders not only mocks the pretensions of the Australian literary world, but the wider community that is content to be deluded, to consume ersatz spirituality where and however it is peddled, to embrace the author as much as the book.’

Death and tributes

‘In June 2012, Saunders contracted a viral infection which developed into pneumonia. On 14 June, he was taken by ambulance from the ABC Studios, where he was recording his program The Philosopher’s Zone, to St Vincent’s Hospital in Darlinghurst. He died there the following day.

A retrospective edition of The Philosopher's Zone entitled Tribute to the Philosophical Alan Saunders was aired on Radio National on 24 June 2012.

The Age published an online obituary on 26 June 2012.

A Tribute Page has been set up on Facebook.