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Cate Haste
Cate Haste in Prague while making part of the 1998 TV documentary series Cold War
Cate Haste in Prague while making part of the 1998 TV documentary series Cold War

Cate Haste obituary

This article is more than 2 years old
Historian, biographer and documentary film-maker whose subjects ranged from the cold war to sexual freedom in Britain

As historian, biographer and documentary film-maker, Cate Haste, who has died aged 75 of lung cancer, explored remarkable lives and how people relate to each other, both historically and personally.

For Jeremy Isaacs’s 24-part series Cold War (1998) for BBC Two/CNN, covering the period from 1945 to 1991, she made five episodes. They told of how fear was mobilised both in the west and in eastern Europe, life behind the iron curtain, how the Berlin Wall was built, and in 1989 how it came down. Filming took her to the US, where President George HW Bush was a contributor, and to Prague, with Václav Havel, to recount how the Prague spring thaw in the Soviet bloc was crushed by invading tanks in 1968.

Central Europe also provided the backdrop for her eighth and final book, Passionate Spirit: The Life of Alma Mahler (2019). Cate wanted to look beyond the “femme fatale” image of Alma, who was married to the composer Gustav Mahler, the architect Walter Gropius and the writer Franz Werfel, and had lovers including the artist Oskar Kokoschka. Alma’s artistic intelligence had been critical in attracting their love, but she was also a gifted composer whose musical ability was frustrated.

This was a gargantuan task, partly because Alma was already the subject of several books, and because large parts of her diaries had been published – in German. Cate’s would be the first book written for English readers, though with the advantage of access to unpublished diaries. Her own knowledge of German was limited, but she persevered with the help of the occasional translator and sometimes myself.

Alma became part of Cate’s life: she could talk and speculate about her endlessly; she researched more carefully than ever. She grew to like her, even if she became preoccupied with Alma’s perceived antisemitism. There was no way of disputing that she had made antisemitic remarks. But Cate became convinced she was merely aping views that she had inherited from her family: the fact of her marriage to Mahler and some of her subsequent relationships suggested that what she said in this regard was superficial.

Cate Haste with George HW Bush, who was a contributor to the Cold War series.

Sexual freedom in Britain was an area that Cate explored in six documentaries, Just Sex (1985), for Channel 4, with the independent group of female film-makers she helped set up, 51% Productions.

Her book Rules of Desire (1992) addressed the history of sex from after the first world war. It traced the revolution in the 1960s back to the first assaults on traditional beliefs about sexuality by innovators including Sigmund Freud, the Webbs, Marie Stopes and George Bernard Shaw. Meticulously researched, like all Cate’s work, it explored change in sexual desire, HIV/Aids, the pill, gay relationships and the law.

Cate was not tempted to update Rules of Desire in the light of more recent views on sexuality and gender. Nor did she have any general conclusions to share publicly about her often demanding marriage to the broadcaster and writer Melvyn Bragg, which lasted from 1973 until their divorce in 2018. They parted amicably, and remained in touch.

Intimate aspects of the broad sweep of history came into focus in her Channel 4 film Hitler’s Brides and book Nazi Women: Hitler’s Seduction of a Nation (both 2001). Keen to explore the lives and fate of women in different social situations, Cate set out to analyse, explain and illustrate how Hitler managed to draw German women into the bizarre moral universe of the Third Reich by wooing them to become the bearers of the next purified generation. She posed a challenge: did the women become willing collaborators or were they victims?

Born in Leeds, Cate (Catherine) was the daughter of Margaret (nee Hodge), a technical college lecturer, and Eric Haste, a civil engineer. When she was four, the family emigrated to Australia, returning seven years later, in 1956. From Thornbury grammar school, Bristol, Cate went to Sussex University, where in 1966 she gained an English degree. She then took a postgraduate diploma in adult education at Manchester University.

Her entry into television came through working as a researcher and associate producer on The Day Before Yesterday (1969-70), a six-part series on Britain from 1945 to 1959 produced by Phillip Whitehead for Thames. In Isaacs’ view it set standards for subsequent historical documentary on TV.

After working on programmes including Man Alive, the BBC’s groundbreaking series on social and political issues, Cate got to direct her first series, The Secret War (BBC, 1977), on the scientific and engineering aspects of the second world war. Her first book, Keep the Home Fires Burning (also 1977), explored British propaganda to the home front in the first world war.

Films produced and directed for Brook Associates and Channel 4 included The Writing on the Wall (1986), continuing the thread of British political history, now through the 1970s, over six episodes; Drink: Under the Influence (1990), on problem drinking; Secret History: Death of a Democrat (1992), presenting new evidence about the death of the Czechoslovakian foreign minister Jan Masaryk in 1948, as communism took hold in eastern Europe; and the second of three parts of The Churchills (1995), on Winston Churchill’s return to government after the wilderness years of the 30s.

The Goldfish Bowl (2004), a book co-written with Cherie Booth, then resident at 10 Downing Street as the wife of Tony Blair, examined the role of the prime minister’s spouse since the 1950s. Booth presented the related Channel 4 film that Cate produced, Married to the Prime Minister (2005), which included interviews with Mary Wilson and Norma Major.

Another interviewee was Clarissa Eden, which led to Cate’s collaboration with her through the editing of the book Clarissa Eden: A Memoir – Churchill to Eden (2007), a record of the life and times of the niece of Winston Churchill who was married to prime minister Anthony Eden. Cate kept in regular touch with Clarissa and they retained a great fondness for each other.

A Passion for Paint (2010) detailed the work of the expressionist Cumbrian lands- cape artist Sheila Fell, and Cate became an avid collector of her work. It was followed by Craigie Aitchison: A Life in Colour (2014), on the Scottish artist.

Cate and I first met when she was working on Cold War. I had been commissioned to write one of the episodes and she was my producer. It became a firm friendship.

In 2018, on the 20th anniversary of Cold War, Cate hosted a reunion of the team in her cottage in Turville in the Chilterns. The convivial gathering, for which she cooked excellently, reflected how popular and widely admired she was – generous, loyal and a free spirit, a star among female journalists and writers.

The paintings on the walls pointed to her interest in British contemporary art. A favourite was the artist Julian Cooper, whose work was a reminder of Cate’s great love for Cumbria, where she and Melvyn had owned a house.

She is survived by her children, Tom and Alice, step-daughter, Marie-Elsa, and her sisters Frances and Helen.

Cate (Catherine Mary) Haste, writer and film-maker, born 6 August 1945; died 29 April 2021

This article was amended on 9 May 2021. Cate Haste produced the TV film Married to the Prime Minister, but did not direct it. Though Denis Thatcher was featured in that programme, it did not include an interview with him.

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