Writer and broadcaster Lord Bragg, 79, and his wife Catherine Haste have been granted a divorce after a 44-year-marriage.

Judge Anne Hudd granted a decree nisi at a 50-second hearing in the Central Family Court in London.

Neither Catherine Haste nor Melvyn Bragg were present at the hearing.

Paperwork showed their marriage was solemnised at a register office in Hampstead in December 1973.

Lord Bragg’s wife had petitioned for divorce on the grounds of “two years’ separation by consent.”

Lord Bragg consented to divorce on the grounds that the marriage had “broken down irretrievably.”