Mark Tully

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Sir Mark Tully was born in Kolkata (then Calcutta), India in 1935. He was the Chief of Bureau, BBC, New Delhi for 22 years. Schooled in England, he stayed mostly in India covering all major incidents in South Asia during his tenure. He was awarded the Order of the British Empire in 1985 and the Padma Shree in 1992, a rare exception for a non-Indian. He was knighted in the 2002 New Year Honours.

Tully was the son of a wealthy accountant. He was brought up by a strict European nanny and did not come to Britain until he was ten. "England struck me as a very miserable place", he later recalled, "dark and drab, without the bright skies of India." He was educated at Marlborough College (a public school) and Cambridge University, where he read History and Theology.

After Cambridge, he considered becoming a priest in the Church of England but abandoned his vocation after just two terms at Lincoln Theological College admitting later that he had doubts about "trusting [his] sexuality to behave as a Christian priest".

Very soon after joining the BBC, Tully became India Correspondent in 1964. Whether it was dodging the bullets on the India-Pakistan border, describing the poverty of Kolkata's street beggars or detailing the horrific aftermath of the Bhopal chemical disaster, he gave a unique insight into the life of the subcontinent. He left the BBC in 1997 following public criticism of the then Director General (Sir John Birt)'s approach to management in general and to the changes proposed for the BBC World Service in particular.

More recently, he has presented a BBC television series, The Lives of Jesus, using India, as well as the Holy Land, to explain the mysteries of Christ's divinity. He has also written several books based on India including India in Slow Motion (jointly with Gillian Wright), No Full Stops in India, The Heart of India, Divide and Quit, India – 50 years of Independence. In the area of religion Sir Mark has authored The Lives of Jesus to accompany the BBC series and Four Faces: A Journey in Search of Jesus the Divine, the Jew, the Rebel, the Sage.

He is a regular presenter of the BBC Radio 4 programme Something Understood, which has themes and music on religion, spirituality, and the human condition.

Sir Mark divides his time between India and London. When in India he lives with his girlfriend Gillian Wright, whilst in London he shares a house with Margaret, his wife and mother of their four children.

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