Bragg looks forward to meeting his readership
The broadcaster will mourn its passing, especially as the decision has not been his.
"They are ending the South Bank Show, so I'm retiring – it's that way round," he says.
"It will be coming to an end in January or February and then I will see my contract through and leave in a year's time. When I leave it will be 33 years, so there's quite a lot of sadness. A bad day or sad day at Black Rock."
With ITV struggling financially, the programme has been a victim of budget cuts.
"They are clearly difficult times if they are dropping the South Bank Show," says Melvyn. "They must be in terrible trouble."
The 69-year-old has written, edited and produced The South Bank Show since 1978 and has been controller of arts at LWT since 1990. He's also had a long relationship with Radio 4 and is a successful writer of both fiction and non-fiction.
Most recently he has completed the fourth in a series of semi-autobiographical novels, Remember Me. And it's this side of his career that he will be examining at the Buxton Festival where he joins the Literary Series.
Remember Me has been a particularly difficult book for Melvyn to write. It deals with depression and suicide in a relationship that is meticulously charted. The author has himself suffered from depression and his first wife committed suicide.
"There has been a very strong autobiographical nature to my last four books starting with The Soldier's Return, which was set in 1946/47 and concerned my father's return from the war, right up to Remember Me," he says.
"I was very apprehensive about it because at the end of it was this tragic death and if I was going to carry on the line of autobiographical fiction then I would have to encounter that. And there were all sorts of difficulties; we had a daughter and she had to be taken into consideration; I had married again and there were more children. A lot had to be taken into account and it was extraordinarily difficult to write, very arduous."
Nor has the process of writing Remember Me proved cathartic.
"I feel much worse since I wrote it," says Melvyn. "I think sometimes you bury things, or try to because you never bury them completely. Sometimes you try to put them away, push them to one side and that may be the better way to proceed."
Melvyn will talk about the mixing of his own life with the characters in his books at Buxton.
"I openly declare this as autobiographical fiction," he says.
"There's a big tradition of it. Take Sons and Lovers by DH Lawrence – that is very strong autobiographical fiction, arguably more so than mine. But because I'm marginally well known people think they know me, which sometimes makes it more difficult."
But he's looking forward to talking with festival-goers in Derbyshire.
"It's very good to meet readers, not just of your own books, but all readers. It's still quite rare for novelists to meet audiences. Poets do it all the time; playwrights have people coming to see their work but for authors it's still relatively unusual.
"The development of literary festivals in the last 20 years has been amazing. They are now nationwide in small villages, towns or in the middle of the countryside and are very important. I'm looking forward to coming to Buxton.
"I will talk for 30 to 40 minutes and then take questions. And I never know what direction that will take us in. It's interesting for me, a nice change."
Born and brought up in Wigton on the edge of the Lake District, Melvyn always wanted to write.
"I was brought up in the war and 1940s," he says. "Reading books, listening to the wireless and going to the pictures, that was it. I always read, as much as I could; all the time. Comics, books from the library, everything offered to me. I read and read and read. From The Dandy and Beano to the New Testament. Even now I feel undressed if I don't have something to read in my hand when I go somewhere."
But becoming a successful writer was a long struggle.
"When I started writing there was not the slightest chance I could make a living out of it," he says.
"Not the way I wrote. Not a hope in hell so I had to have a job to subsidise the writing."
So he started as a BBC trainee in the early 1960s and has since mixed careers as an author of fiction and non-fiction with broadcasting.
"I like writing," Melvyn says. "Sitting there alone with paper and pen with hours in front of me. I love all that. Sometimes it's difficult, you don't write anything or think it's not very good.
"The next book I write is always what I want to write. It's not 'oh I haven't written a non-fiction book, I better catch up'.
"But the next book will be non-fiction.
"I don't want to write fiction at the moment. Remember Me took too much out of me."
MELVYN BRAGG
WHERE: Buxton Festival.
WHEN: July 25 (10.45am).
TICKETS: £9.
INFORMATION: 0845 12 72190 or visit www.buxtonfestival.co.uk.
eRA ENDS: Bragg's South Bank Show is ending.
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