A brief CV...

Royal Television Society ‘television personality’ 2000.

“not a curriculum vitae……………

                 ……just a historian’s recent history”

In his time he’s been a nurse, a drayman, school caretaker and prison teacher, tour guide and TGWU shop steward, barman, busker and night-club bouncer.

Since graduating in English History and Landscape Archaeology  in 1981, Bryan has enjoyed a successful career as a broadcaster, writer and lecturer.

He has an unusually refreshing and entirely natural enthusiasm; his witty, observant writing and delivery make him an accomplished and unforgettable raconteur.

Bryan’s first network television appearances were as writer and presenter of four series of ‘The Historyman’. The programmes had over three hundred transmissions on BBC1 and BBC2. They frequently captured audiences in excess of a  million viewers in the UK and scored unfailingly high ratings of between 70%-84% in the BBC’s Appreciation Index.

They were also hugely popular with the Armed Forces Network, SSVC… a fact unknown to Bryan until a couple of tattooed ‘thugs’ from 2 Para scared the life out of him by cornering him in a bar… but only  to buy him a beer and say how much they enjoyed the show! 

His more recent performances continue that tradition of making audiences feel they’re chatting with an old friend. At Anglia TV his weekly ‘Town and Country’ programme achieved an unprecedented 25% audience share up against ‘Neighours’. It also won Bryan the RTS Regional Television Personality Award…. which cheered him enormously as the night previously he’d been beaten into second place at the RTS West Country Awards by an animated duck!!

His popularity was further underscored when BBC East ‘poached’ him to do a one-off, “Invader Shore” as part of  a nationwide series of ‘serious’ programmes on multiculturalism; the programme won the largest UK audience of the night, comprehensively beating much larger regions and outperforming them all in the Appreciation Index. Reviewing it nationally, in the Radio Times, Polly Toynbee’s ‘Reviewers Choice’ lamented the fact the BBC had not given it a network screening.

Bryan’s secret is that he sees history as a performing art rather than a mild sedative! His popularity clearly underlines his ability to involve and infect viewers with his enthusiasm and knowledge. Shakespeare called it

 ‘tricking into knowledge with anecdote’,

Bryan calls it

‘education by stealth!’

Either way, when it comes to bringing the past to life, he has very few equals.

Bryan’s work extends far beyond television. He’s frequently asked to provide historical consultation to a surprisingly diverse group of clients…Arts Festivals to Beer Festivals, advertising and PR companies to theatrical companies. All of them value his wide-ranging knowledge and unabashed ebullience… though some have wondered if he wasn’t a little too enthusiastic - the notoriously and horribly authentic ‘Elizabethan cat-burning’ he was asked to stage for BBC 1’s ‘Cats’ series produced one of the largest and most outraged postbags ever seen by ‘Points of View’.

Bryan has lectured for The National Trust  and over six thousand people attended his lectures at historic sites as part of the English Heritage Special Events Programme. For several years he has conducted annual ‘residential field trips’ at Burton Manor College. He has written regular columns for The Eastern Daily Press, The British Tourist Authority’s In Britain and various magazines within the Archant Group notably as a columnist and features writer for their family history magazine Roots, their lifestyle magazine Norfolk and as a regular contributor to the sailing magazine Afloat.

Bryan’s landscape photography is handled by PriorITas Digital Arts and Peterborough Museum holds a permanent exhibit of his ‘historical portraits’ in their Norman Cross Gallery.  

Recent Television and Education Work

2005

Granada Television: Bryan's Upstairs Downstairs

Burton Manor College: residential seminars and associated field trips on The English Civil Wars.

2004

Granada Television/Yorkshire Television: Eight programmes about people choosing to marry in historical costume

Granada Television : Bryan's Olde and Bitter: Six programmes on the social history of beer and inns…. every programme comprehensively out-performed the network average with audiences averaging in excess of half a million viewers

University of East Anglia: teaching two, double-semester, outreach courses on  ‘East Anglian Churches’  and  ‘English Monasticism’ for The Centre for Education.

 Burton Manor College: residential seminars and associated field trips on The castles of the Anglo-Welsh Marches.

2003

Anglia Television: Riddles on the Road. Once again, every episode outperformed the network average.

Burton Manor College: residential seminars and associated field trips on Cistercian Monasticism.

2002

Anglia Television, Meridian Television and The History Channel: Bloody Crimes

Burton Manor College: residential seminars and associated field trips on The Medieval Parish Churches of North Wales.

2001

Anglia Television: Riddles of the River

Granada Television: Dead Interesting People

Carlton West Country Television: Tales From The Dungeon

Anglia Television: Riddles of the River 2. The previous series consistently outperformed the network average against  the ‘Eastenders shooting episodes’ prompting a further six programmes to be commissioned.  

Burton Manor College: residential seminars and associated field trips on The Edwardine Castles of Wales.

2000

Anglia Television: Town & Country. Forty-nine half-hour programmes. 

Winner of RTS Television Personality 2000

1999

HTV and West County Television: Sacred Landscapes

1998

The History Channel and West Country Television: Time Travels 

Winner of Silver Medal, Houston Worldfest

Winner of Silver Medal, Celtic Film Festival

The History Channel: Spilt Blood

BBC2: The Invader Shore

1997

BBC2: Don't Be An Anorak

BBC2: Country Walks to Curious Places

West Country Television: Fire and Steel

 

 

 

 

   

Copyright  MMVI Bryan McNerney