From the Fringe to well beyond

· Jonathan Miller was born in London in 1934. His father was a distinguished child psychiatrist and his mother a novelist. Even as a child he was outspoken: Stevie Smith once wrote a short story featuring a gabby child said to be based on the young Miller.

· Miller read natural sciences at St John's College, Cambridge, and qualified as a doctor. A future in medicine beckoned.

· While at university a talent for comedy and the theatre emerged when he performed as a member of Cambridge Footlights. He was talked into co-writing and appearing in Beyond the Fringe with Alan Bennett, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore in the early 1960s which played at the Edinburgh festival, then in London and on Broadway.

· When he returned from New York, Miller was made editor of the BBC arts programme Monitor.

· In 1978 he produced the BBC's scientific series The Body in Question, and the following year began masterminding the corporation's memorable series of Shakespeare plays. By this time he had also made a name for himself in the world of theatre. Laurence Olivier had made him associate producer of the National Theatre in London. However, Miller did not get on with Olivier's successor, Peter Hall, and subsequently became artistic director of the Old Vic.

· Latterly he is best known for his work in opera. He learned much of his trade with Kent Opera before moving on to the English National Opera. But by the end of the 1980s he was speaking of feeling "excluded" in Britain and began to concentrate on working abroad. His work has been produced at many of the world's leading opera houses, including La Scala.