Cate Haste is an author, biographer, historian and documentary film director.
Published Works
Cate has written eight books on social and political history and biographical subjects. Her latest work, Passionate Spirit. The Life of Alma Mahler (2019) re-evaluates the life of Alma Mahler (1979-1964), a legendary figure, one of the last of the European grandes dames, a composer in her own right, and muse to several creative giants of the era. These included her three husbands, composer Gustav Mahler, modernist architect Walter Gropius and writer Franz Werfel, with whom she escaped from the Nazi occupation of Austria to America, and her lover: expressionist artist Oskar Kokoschka. Artist Gustav Klimt was her first kiss.
Her first book, Keep the Home Fires Burning (1977) , reviewed as ‘a work of high journalism’ was about British propaganda to the home front in the First World War. Rules of Desire (1992) a history of British sexual mores in the 20th century was ‘as diverting and as suggestive as a very good novel.... temperate, balanced, subtle and humane’, according to Maureen Freely (Independent on Sunday).
Nazi Women: Hitler’s Seduction of a Nation (2001) examines how women were mobilised by Hitler to build the Third Reich – as collaborators or victims of Nazi Germany.
The Goldfish Bowl (2004) co-written with Cherie Booth, (then at No 10 Downing Street) examines the role of the Prime Minister’s spouse since the 1950s.
Clarissa Eden A Memoir: Churchill to Eden (Ed.) (2007) is a vivid record of the life and times of a remarkable woman, the wife of Anthony Eden and niece of Winston Churchill.
Cate then shifted focus to biography-monographs of artists: Cumbrian Expressionist landscape painter Sheila Fell in the prize-winning Sheila Fell: A Passion for Paint (2010) and idiosyncratic Scottish colourist Craigie Aitchison in Craigie Aitchison. A Life in Colour. (2014)
Film Career
In a career spanning forty years, and as one of the very few woman film producer-directors in television at that time, Cate worked as an independent documentary film director for the major television networks in UK and US. These included award-winning historical BBC TV series, Secret War, Thames TV’s ground-breaking political series The Day Before Yesterday, Munich: The Peace of Paper and Brook Associates’ The Writing on The Wall, The Churchills and Secret History: Death of a Democrat. She directed five films for Jeremy Isaacs Productions’ award-winning series, Cold War, Hitler’s Brides in the series Nazi Women, and Married to the Prime Minister, presented by Cherie Blair.
In the early 1980s Haste was a Director and Executive Producer for 51% Productions, one of the first all-woman independent film companies, and produced the series, Just Sex for Channel 4.
Personal Life
Born in Leeds in 1945, she attended grammar school near Bristol before studying for a BA Honours degree in English at the then newly established University of Sussex.
Cate is one of three remaining daughters of Eric and Margaret Haste, a civil engineer and a further education teacher. She spent seven early years (aged 4 to 11) in Australia, where the family emigrated after the Second World War in 1949. They returned to the UK in 1956 during the Suez Crisis.
Cate has a daughter, Alice, and a son, Tom, from her 45 year marriage from 1973 to 2018 to writer and broadcaster Melvyn Bragg (Lord Bragg). She divides her time between London and her cottage in the Chiltern Hills in Oxfordshire.
She is a member of English PEN, BAFTA, The Writer’s Guild of Great Britain and Directors UK and has been a trustee of the charities Index on Censorship and World Film Collective. She is an Honorary Fellow of the University of Cumbria.
Bibliography: Historian, Author, Biographer
Passionate Spirit. The Life of Alma Mahler (Bloomsbury UK 2019, Basic Books USA 2019)
Craigie Aitchison, A Life in Colour (Lund Humphries 2014)
Sheila Fell: A Passion for Paint (Lund Humphries 2010)
Clarissa Eden A Memoir: From Churchill to Eden ( Ed.) (Weidenfeld and Nicolson 2007)
The Goldfish Bowl, with Cherie Booth (Chatto & Windus 2004)
Nazi Women: Hitler’s Seduction of a Nation (Macmillan/C4, 2001)
Rules of Desire (Chatto and Windus, 1992)
Keep The Home Fires Burning (Allen Lane, 1977)
Filmography: Television documentary film Director and Producer
2005 Married to the Prime Minister (Flashback TV for Channel 4)
2000 Hitler’s Brides (Flashback TV for C4) in C4 series Nazi Women
1999 Millennium (Jeremy Isaacs Productions/CNN/BBC)
1998 Cold War (CNN)
1996-98 Cold War (Jeremy Isaacs Productions/CNN/BBC2) 24-part series:
6. Reds - The Enemy Within
9. The Wall - Building the Berlin Wall
14. Red Spring - Behind the Iron Curtain
19. Freeze 1977-1981
23. The Wall Comes Down 1985-1989
1995 The Churchills (Brook Associates for ITV Network/ WGBH,Boston)
1994 Secret History: Death of a Democrat: (Brook Associates for Channel 4/Arts and Entertainment)
1988 Munich: the Peace of Paper (Brook Associates for Thames Television/ WGBH, Boston)
1986 The Writing on the Wall. Britain in the 1970s (Brook Associates for Channel 4)
1985 Just Sex (51% Productions for Channel 4)
1984 End of Empire (Granada TV) 1985
1976 Secret War (BBC TV) 1975
Also:
Man Alive (BBC TV)
Second House (BBC TV)
The First Casualty (Thames TV)
The Day Before Yesterday (Thames TV)