Michael Cockerell

Michael Roger Lewis Cockerell (born 26 August 1940) is a British broadcaster and journalist. He is the BBC's most established political documentary maker, with a long, Emmy award-winning career of political programmes spanning television and radio.

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).

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.

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