{{short description|British television producer and author|bot=PearBOT 5}} {{Use dmy dates|date=April 2014}} {{Use British English|date=April 2014}} '''Denys Blakeway''' is a British television producer and author who is best known for documentaries and books about contemporary history.
In 1994, he set up Blakeway Productions, a television company based in London.<ref>Blakeway Productions' website [http://www.blakeway.tv www.blakeway.tv] details past and present programming</ref> Before establishing himself as an independent producer, Blakeway wrote and directed a number of documentaries for the BBC and Channel 4, including ''Primo Levi: The Memory of the Offence'',<ref>BBC 2 and WNET, 1992. The film used excerpts from Levi's writing and memories of those who knew him. It won a Sandford St. Martinaward</ref> ''The Falklands War'';<ref>Channel 4, 1992, a four-part series which included the testimony of senior military commanders and politicians from both sides of the 1982 conflict between Britain and Argentina over the Falkland Islands/Las Malvinas</ref> and ''Thatcher - The Downing Street Years''.<ref>BBC 1 1993. Margaret Thatcher, former colleagues and world leaders (including Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan) remembered and debated her years as Britain's prime minister</ref> He has also been responsible for several documentaries about former British prime ministers, all made with their participation: Edward Heath,<ref>A Very Singular Man, BBC2, 1998 - written and presented by Michael Cockerell</ref> John Major<ref>The Major Years, BBC 1, 1998</ref> and Tony Blair<ref>The Last Days of Tony Blair, Channel 4, 2007 - written and presented by Will Hutton.</ref>
Since setting up Blakeway Productions, Blakeway has produced numerous programmes for British radio and television, including many documentaries about the British royal family, the Second World War, several series with historians Christopher Clark, Max Hastings, Niall Ferguson and David Reynolds, and arts programmes with artist and critic Matt Collings. In 2004, Blakeway Productions was acquired by the Ten Alps plc media group.
Latter television productions include a number of programmes about the causes of the First World War, including ''The Necessary War'', written and presented by ''Max Hastings'', which argued that the British were right to enter the conflict against Germany, and ''Royal Cousins at War'', which told the story of the tensions between the royal houses of Europe in the years leading up to the war, both for BBC 2.<ref>BBC 2, January and February 2014, Producers Karen McGill (The Necessary War) and Richard Sanders (Royal Cousins at War)</ref>
Past productions include profiles of King George V and Queen Mary for BBC 2, ''George and Mary: The Royals who Rescued the Monarchy"<ref>BBC 2, 3rd and 4th January 2012, Produced and Directed by Rob Coldstream</ref>'' and an award-winning ninety-minute programme about the artist Lucian Freud, ''Lucian Freud: Painted Life'', also for BBC 2.<ref>BBC 2, 19 February, Produced and Directed by Randall Wright. Royal Television Society award Best Arts Documentary. BAFTA nomination</ref> A three-part series about Queen Victoria's fraught relations with her children was broadcast on BBC2 in January 2013,<ref>BBC 2, 2nd, 3rd, 4 January 2013. Series Producer Lucy McDowell</ref> and Blakeway was responsible for the BBC's 90 minute official obituary of Margaret Thatcher, ''Margaret Thatcher: Prime Minister'', which was transmitted on BBC1<ref>BBC1 8 April 2013</ref> on the day that her death was announced. The obituary was subsequently shown by television stations around the world.<ref>Distributed by BBC Worldwide</ref>
Blakeway made a 2012 video, ''The Plot to Topple a King'', about the abdication of Edward VIII, in which Blakeway attributes the abdication to the machinations of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Cosmo Lang.{{citation needed|date=August 2024}}
Blakeway is the author of ''The Last Dance'',<ref>John Murray, London, 2010 {{ISBN|978-0-7195-2383-0}}</ref> an account of the turbulent year of 1936,''The Falklands War''<ref>Sidgwick & Jackson with Channel 4 Television, London 1992 {{ISBN|978-0-283-06101-1}}</ref> and ''Fields of Thunder-Testing Britain's Bomb<ref>George Allen & Unwin, London, 1985 {{ISBN|0-04-341029-4}}</ref>''.
Blakeway has also written and presented numerous programmes for BBC Radio 4, including the Peabody award-winning ''The Unspeakable Atrocity'', a documentary about the BBC and the Holocaust, produced by Nigel Acheson, and ''Remembrance'', an archive based documentary about changing attitudes to remembering British war dead.<ref>BBC Radio 4, Archive on 4, 10 November 2011</ref> In May 2013, Blakeway presented ''The Longest Suicide Note in History'', a documentary about the Labour Party's disastrous 1983 general election campaign.<ref>BBC Radio 4, ''The Archive Hour'', 1 June 2013, producer Melissa FitzGerald</ref>
==References== {{reflist|2}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Blakeway, Denys}} Category:British television producers Category:Living people Category:Year of birth missing (living people)