John Selwyn Winzer Gilbert (born 17 March 1943) is a BAFTA nominated British television scriptwriter, director and producer who joined the BBC in 1969 as a Production Director to help to set up the Open University and who between 1979 and 1983 made a number of documentaries about the excavation and raising of the Mary Rose.[1][2]
While at the BBC, Gilbert also produced an arts magazine programme called Mainstream, a programme described by The Sunday Times TV critic as 'the worst programme in the history of television'; it is a comment Gilbert still treasures.[5]
Between 1979 and 1983, Gilbert made documentaries about the excavation and raising of the Mary Rose.[9] The first of these documentaries was cited by the British Association for the Advancement of Science and the Outside Broadcast when the Mary Rose was raised was nominated for a BAFTA award.[1] Through his involvement in the Mary Rose project Gilbert learned to dive and organised and supervised all the underwater filming. He completed 114 working dives on the Mary Rose before the hull was raised.
After leaving the BBC in 1983, Gilbert set up his own film company, JSG Productions, producing films for Channel 4, London Weekend Television and others until 1998. He also bought and ran a successful restaurant in Bristol from 1988 to 1996. It was featured in the Good Food Guide and the Guide's Editor described Gilbert as resembling 'a cross between Patrick Moore and Keith Floyd.'[5]
Recent years
Gilbert aboard the replica of HM Bark Endeavour with Cape Horn in the background (16 April 2002). Only another 8,500 miles to go ....
Later, Gilbert sailed around the world and appeared in a series of BBC documentary films called The Ship about a 21st-century volunteer crew on a six-week journey from the east coast of Australia to Bali, Indonesia, retracing a section of the famous first voyage of James Cook aboard a replica of HM Bark Endeavour. The series was broadcast in 2002,[7] by which time Gilbert had helped to sail the Endeavour replica from Western Australia to Whitby in Yorkshire, around Cape Horn. The photograph (right) shows a happy but exhausted Gilbert at Cape Horn, the half-way point between Australia and Whitby. In retirement, post 2008, Gilbert spends much of his time teaching and tutoring children with learning difficulties. In 2019 he published a series of short videos about Dealing with Dyslexia - the Parent's Guide which are intended to help a few people to mitigate the feelings caused when parents find their clever children cannot master reading and writing.
The John Selwyn Gilbert Collection of 69 boxes of files relating to media projects Gilbert worked on from 1967 to 1986 was donated to The National Archives at Kew.[10] Copies of many of Gilbert's television programmes and films were donated to the British Film Institute Production Board Library in 1996 and are available for the use of bona fide students or researchers.[5]
Selected credits
1989–91 Spaceship Earth – ten half-hour programmes for Channel 4 (Series Producer and Director)
1987 GEC Centenary Film (Writer/Producer/Director)
1985–86 The World – A Television History – a 26 part series for Channel 4 (Director for the last eight episodes)
1984 David Bintley – A New Ballet at Sadler's Wells – a filmed profile for LWT's The South Bank Show (Writer/Producer/Director)
1983 Life and Death in Ancient Egypt – a film for BBC Two's Chronicle series (Writer/Producer/Director)
1982 Raising the Rose – 11 hours and 25 minutes of live outside broadcasting transmission. The production team was nominated for a BAFTA for "Best Actuality Coverage" (Producer/Presenter)
1982 Beardsley and his Work – a documentary linked to a play about Aubrey Beardsley (Aubrey), also by Gilbert, on the same BBC channel. (Producer/Director/Writer/Narrator)
