Arena — Season 1, Episode 239: My Son the Novelist
Documentary • 90 min • 3 seasons, 689 episodes • ★ 7.2/10
Episode synopsis
Howard Jacobson the eldest son of MAX JACOBSON the Manchester conjuror, made a late but successful start in the world of fiction. At the age of 41 he published Coming from Behind a scabrous satire of polytechnic life; and now, with his sexual comedy Peeping Tom he has established himself as an important new voice in English fiction. Tonight Arena looks at this Leavisite polytechnic lecturer, shopkeeper and original Jewish humorist on the move from Manchester, Wolverhampton, Cornwall and Australia.
About Arena
Arena is a British television documentary series, made and broadcast by the BBC. Voted by leading TV executives in Broadcast as one of the top 50 most influential programmes of all time, it has run since 1 October 1975 with over five hundred episodes made, directed by the likes of Martin Scorsese, Alan Yentob, Roly Keating, Frederick Baker, Volker Schlondorff and Vikram Jayanti. Arena's subjects are a roll-call of the world's best known cultural figures from the 20th and 21st centuries, from singers Bob Dylan and Amy Winehouse to academics Edward Said and Eric Hobsbawm, from writers Jean Genet and V S Naipaul to artists Francis Bacon and Louise Bourgeois. The current series editor is Anthony Wall.