2025-06-04
47 分钟This is The Guardian. The Guardian Archive Long Read.
Hello, I'm Sam Knight and I'm the author of Alan Yentog, The Last Impresario.
which was published in December 2016.
So I was intrigued by Alan Yentob, both him as a person and as a figure in the culture.
At the time that I wrote the story,
Yentob had been cast out of his role as creative director of the BBC because of his involvement with a charity called kids' company.
He'd sort of had this fall from grace,
which had been wildly celebrated in some parts of the British media.
And I was just a bit confused why.
And I also wanted to understand who he was and the imprint that he'd made on British television and culture at large.
Yentob died last month at the age of...
And I've obviously been thinking a lot about him since then and his legacy.
And I think that he embodied a time when making art and making television for the British public,
subsidised by taxpayers' money, was an accepted part of what we did.
He was kind of amazing at it.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy.
This article contains strong language.
On a cold spring morning earlier this year,
I met Alan Yentop in the Eurostar departure lounge at St Pancras International Station in London.
It was about 6am and we were on our way to the jungle refugee camp just outside Calais.