DIMBLEBY
Jonathan

• 1. TV and radio career

Jonathan Dimbleby is a British presenter of current affairs and political radio and television programmes, author and historian. He is the son of Richard Dimbleby and younger brother of television presenter David Dimbleby.

TV and radio career

Dimbleby began his career at the BBC in Bristol in 1969. In 1970 he joined The World at One as a reporter, where he also presented The World This Weekend. In 1972 he joined ITV's flagship current affairs programme This Week and over the following six years reported on crises in many parts of the world. His coverage of the 1973 Ethiopian famine, The Unknown Famine, was followed by TV and radio appeals which raised a record sum nationally and internationally. His report, for which he won the SFTA Richard Dimbleby Award, was used by the incoming regime to justify the overthrow of the Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie.

In 1978 he wrote and presented the ITV series Jonathan Dimbleby in South America. In 1979 he joined Yorkshire Television, where he wrote and presented three ITV network series: Jonathan Dimbleby In Search of the American Dream (1976), The Bomb (1979), The Eagle and The Bear (1980) and The Cold War Game (1981). He also presented the ITV documentary series First Tuesday. In 1985 he joined TV-am as presenter of Jonathan Dimbleby on Sunday. In 1986 he returned to ITV as presenter of This Week.

In 1988 he joined the BBC to present the new flagship political programme On the Record (1988–1993). He wrote, presented and co-produced two documentary series: The Last Governor (BBC1 1997) about the final five years of British rule in Hong Kong, and Charles: The Private Man, the Public Role (ITV 1994), in which (the then) Prince Charles spoke about his first marriage and his relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles, now his wife and Queen of the United Kingdom and Commonwealth Realms.

From 1994 to 2006 he presented ITV's political programme, Jonathan Dimbleby. He anchored ITV's general election coverage in 1997, 2001 and 2005. He wrote and presented Russia with Jonathan Dimbleby (BBC2, 2008), An African Journey with Jonathan Dimbleby (2010), and A South American Journey with Jonathan Dimbleby (2011). In 2013 he wrote and presented Churchill's Desert War (BBC2) based on his book, Destiny in The Desert. In 2015 he wrote and presented the two-part series The BBC At War (BBC2).

From 1987 to June 2019 he presented Any Questions? on BBC Radio 4. He presented Any Answers? from 1989 to 2012. From 2016 to 2019, he was the main presenter of the BBC World Service monthly series World Questions.

In April 2020, Dimbleby wrote and presented the ITV documentary Return to Belsen with Jonathan Dimbleby about the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

In 2022, following the death of Queen Elizabeth II, Dimbleby wrote and presented the documentary Charles, the Monarch and the Man, which aired on ITV on 13 September 2022.