Constituency : Leyton 1974-82 ( Labour ), 1982-3 ( SDP )
Bryan joined the SDP in March 1982 after a couple of months as an independent.
Bryan was born in Hoxton and was an evacuee in World War Two. He was educated at Christ's Hospital School and Oxford with his national service in between. He worked in army intelligence. He was president of the Oxford Union then spent a year as a postgraduate at Yale. He stood at Mid Bedfordshire in 1959 and 1960. He then became a TV presenter on ITV's This Week. He made additional documentaries on social issues. His TV career continued after his election in 1974. He was particularly interested in making philosophy approachable by the layman and presented a radio series called Men of Ideas to this end. Harold Wilson remembered Bryan giving him a hard time in an interview and never considered him for office.
Although the local Liberals did not put up a candidate against Bryan, they gave him no support and he finished a poor third in 1983. He walked away from politics but his TV career continued with a big series for the BBC The Great Philosophers in 1987.
Bryan declined to rejoin Labour in 1995, commenting presciently that there were still elements of the "loony left" in the party.
Bryan is a prolific writer and a recognised expert on Schopenhauer. He has also published a biography of Wagner and a novel. He was successfully sued over his autobiographical Confessions of a Philosopher in 1997 over a claim that an associate of Bertand Russell was working for the CIA.
He is now 88 and living in a nursing hospital having lost the ability to walk.
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