Tim Marlow Meets Terry Jones, Sky Arts

He may be a writer, a director, an actor, a historian, and, of course, a former member of Monty Python, yet rather than being a Renaissance man, Terry Jones is clearly a mediaevalist at heart. We know this not only because he has written well-received books on Chaucer and medieval history, but an amiable half hour spent in his company at the National Gallery shows us just where his sensibilities lie. He was the first guest in a series inviting celebs to talk about their favourite artworks and Tim Marlow, whose televisual style is so effortlessly smooth and mellow that you might mistake him for a brand of instant (decaff) coffee were it not for his serious, but never heavily worn erudition, proved to be the perfect host: unlike more excitable presenters in the genre of television arts, he never upstages his guests.

He may be a writer, a director, an actor, a historian, and, of course, a former member of Monty Python, yet rather than being a Renaissance man, Terry Jones is clearly a mediaevalist at heart. We know this not only because he has written well-received books on Chaucer and medieval history, but an amiable half hour spent in his company at the National Gallery shows us just where his sensibilities lie. He was the first guest in a series inviting celebs to talk about their favourite artworks and Tim Marlow, whose televisual style is so effortlessly smooth and mellow that you might mistake him for a brand of instant (decaff) coffee were it not for his serious, but never heavily worn erudition, proved to be the perfect host: unlike more excitable presenters in the genre of television arts, he never upstages his guests.