John Read

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.

A contemporary of Henry Moore, Yorkshire-born Barbara Hepworth has made Cornwall her home. This film by John Read examines how the Cornish landscapes have influenced Hepworth's work, and the artist takes us through the planning stages in the creation of her sculptures.

The epic of the earliest days of Britain's railways and the men who built them. It concentrates on the achievements of George and Robert Stephenson and Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who built the first railway lines in the world in this country. Portraits, paintings, engraving and prints are used together with live shooting to evoke the atmosphere and illustrate the construction of the railways and the locomotives which ran on them.

A documentary on the work of artist Henry Moore.

A series of short-form documentaries portraying various independent craftspeople.

British abstract painter Ben Nicholson, whom artist and critic Patrick Heron claimed 'was the greatest English painter since Turner' and director John Read extolled as "the man who re-drew the map of English painting', is presented through the eyes of his closest friends, as they take us on a tour of his career and reflect on his art.

The life and work of British Impressionist painter, Walter Sickert (1860-1942).

Speaking from Henry Moore's own studio in Perry Green, Hertfordshire, John Read shares his personal memories of the artist he filmed six times over 28 years.

Study of the artist John Piper, who shows the development of his work, from preliminary sketches to final oil painting.

A study of the artist, who finds balance in his work likened to the taste of bitter-sweet fruit. The film shows many of Sutherland’s most important works, including his portraits of Somerset Maugham and Lord Beaverbrook, and presents scenes in Wales and the South of France in relation to his landscape paintings.

BAFTA nominated BBC documentary about the acclaimed British artist L.S. Lowry.