Michael Cockerell

Early life

His father was Secretary General of the Chartered Insurance Institute, a professor who was an expert on insurance law and his mother a playwright. He was educated at Kilburn Grammar School and Corpus Christi College, Oxford where he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE).

Career

Cockerell joined the BBC 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.

Besides the profiles, over the last decade he has made documentaries on particular political themes. From the 1970s, there were Sir Ted: A Film Portrait of Edward Heath, How We Fell For 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 Ed 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 BBC is The Great Offices of State. It is a behind-the-scenes look at the Home Office, the Foreign Office, and the UK Treasury, three of the UK's Great Offices of State. This was followed by the 2011 series The Secret World of Whitehall. Cockerell also made the four-part series Inside the Commons for the BBC broadcast in 2015 for which had sought permission for six years.

In the run-up to the May 2010 elections, Cockerell released a documentary entitled How to Win the TV Debate in which he prophetically revealed the importance of Britain's first television debates in the outcome of the general election. The programme featured candid interviews with US 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. 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.

Family

Cockerell has been married three times and has seven children.

He married firstly, in 1970 (divorced 1981), Anne Christine Adriane Faber (1944–28 November 2002), eldest child and only daughter of Julian Faber and his wife Lady Caroline Faber (née Macmillan), a daughter of Harold Macmillan. They had one son and one daughter.

He married secondly, in 1984 (divorced by 1991), Bridget Alexandra Heathcoat-Amory (born 21 May 1952), daughter of Brigadier Roderick Heathcoat-Amory and his wife Sonia Myrtle Heathcoat-Amory (née Denison).

He married thirdly, in 2011, Anna Lloyd, by whom he has three daughters, with whom he lives in Notting Hill.