James MacTaggart

James MacTaggart (25 April 1928 – 29 May 1974) was a Scottish television producer, director and writer. He worked in London from 1961.

Early life MacTaggart was born in Glasgow and served in the Royal Army Service Corps from 1946, rising to the rank of Captain by the time he was demobbed in 1949. After his military service, he studied Political Economy and Social Economics at the University of Glasgow, from which he graduated with an MA in 1954. MacTaggart aimed to break down the use of naturalism in television drama: "We were going to destroy naturalism", Kennedy Martin once said, "if possible, before Christmas". In a television career of almost 20 years, MacTaggart wrote, directed or produced nearly 100 plays or episodes.

Legacy A lecture in his memory is delivered annually at the Edinburgh International Television Festival each August. In an interview for The Guardian published in October 2019, Ken Loach said of MacTaggart: "Jimmy was an iconoclast, constantly trying to knock down authority. The people giving the lecture are the authority that MacTaggart would have cut off at their knees. Now they use it as a mouthpiece for the establishment."