David Dimbleby (born 28 October 1938) is an English journalist and former presenter of current affairs and political programmes, best known for having presented the BBC topical debate programme Question Time. He is the son of broadcaster Richard Dimbleby and elder brother of Jonathan Dimbleby, of the Dimbleby family. Long involved in the coverage of national events, Dimbleby hosted the BBC Election Night coverage from 1979 to 2017, as well as United States presidential elections on the BBC until 2016. He has also presented and narrated documentary series on architecture and history. Biography Early life Dimbleby was born in Surrey, the son of the journalist and Second World War war correspondent Richard Dimbleby, by his marriage to Dilys Thomas, from Wales. His younger brother is Jonathan Dimbleby, also a television current affairs presenter. David Dimbleby was educated at two independent schools, the Glengorse School in Battle, East Sussex, and Charterhouse in Godalming, Surrey, where he was a contemporary of the journalist Adam Raphael. The two younger Dimblebys both made their television débuts in the 1950s in the BBC's first holiday programme Passport, at a time when the whole family would visit resorts in Switzerland or Brittany. A holiday programme for the home counties, called No Passport, was also broadcast. After learning French in Paris and Italian in Perugia, Dimbleby read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Christ Church, Oxford and graduated with a third-class degree. While at Oxford he was President of the Christ Church Junior Common Room, a member of the Bullingdon Club – a socially exclusive student dining and drinking society – and also editor of the student magazine Isis. Early career Dimbleby joined the BBC as a news reporter in Bristol in the 1960s and has appeared in news programmes since 1962, early on co-presenting the televised version of the school quiz Top of the Form, and was a reporter on the BBC's coverage of the 1964 general election with his father as linkman. Richard Dimbleby died the following year. On 24 July 1967, Dimbleby was one of seventy signatories to an advertisement in The Times advocating the decriminalisation of cannabis use, which had been written by campaigner Stephen Abrams. An incident in 1969 led to Dimbleby, then freelance, being called in by the BBC's Director of Television. During U.S. President Richard Nixon's visit to the UK, a reference by Dimbleby to UK and US government heads' "'expensively