Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, people and events that have shaped our world.
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The Novel
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the development and the future of the novel. D.H. Lawrence was proud of his job, he said: “I am a man, and alive…for this reason I am a novelist. And being a novelist, I consider myself superior to the saint, the scientist, the philosopher, and the poet, who are all great masters of different bits of man alive, but never get the whole hog”. Fiction pours from the presses and in number of titles, this must be the most prolific of novel-producing ages. But are they as good as in the golden age, or the silver, or the bronze, or the steam age? And do they signify? Is technology marginalising the novel or is it still the greatest way of telling a story?Despite many premature declarations of its demise, (stretching back almost to the date of its birth), the novel has been ‘getting the whole hog’ for hundreds of years. But what makes a novel different from other literature, and can we expect it to be still around, ‘getting the whole hog’ into the next century? With D J Taylor, novelist, critic, biographer of Thackeray and author of After the War; Gillian Beer, King Edward VII Professor of English Literature, Cambridge University and Chairman of the Booker Prize judges 1997.
Education
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history and the modern purpose of education. Nobody - would argue with the fact that education is of central importance to the people we are. And there seems to be no doubt at all that fine skills, flexible life-long learning and cultivated intelligence are the keys to all our futures. So how do we tackle what was until recently - just two hundred years ago - a unique preserve of the few, the privileged or the plucked out exceptions? Plato made his priorities in education plain when he inscribed over the entrance to the Academy “Let no one ignorant of mathematics enter here”. He prized learning that revealed what he called “eternal reality, the realm unaffected by the vicissitudes of change and decay”, and this became the objective of education in Europe for thousands of years - vocational education, concrete skills, was hardly dreamed of. But was he right? What is education for: is its role to teach us the nature of reality, or to give us the tools to deal with it?With Mary Warnock, philosopher and educationalist; Ted Wragg, Professor of Education, University of Exeter.
Atrocity in the 20th Century
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the widespread and chilling atrocities of the 20th century. Just over a hundred years ago, in the ‘Genealogy of Morals’, Nietzsche wrote “there can be no doubt that morality will gradually perish: this is the great spectacle in a hundred acts reserved for the next two centuries in Europe”. What if he is right? Certainly the twentieth century can claim the bitter palm of being the century with the biggest body count, the most advanced savagery, the finest of death delivery systems and, in that sense, the true Dark Ages of humankind. For inhumanity there has never been a century like it in the history of man: 58 million people died in the slaughter of two world wars. Stalinist Russia killed 20 million of its own people. The Nazis killed 6 million Jews. 2 million people were killed in Vietnam, 3 million in Korea, and in 1994 in Rwanda 1 million ordinary people were suddenly turned on and killed by their neighbours. And all the while in this bloody century the private and individual murder of one human by another has risen inexorably.What are the conditions that allow man to be inhuman to man on such a scale? And can a scientific study of the mind ever uncover the routes of inhumanity or evil?With Jonathan Glover, philosopher and Director of the Centre of Medical Law and Ethics, King’s College, London; Dr Gwen Adshead, consultant psychiatrist, Broadmoor Special Hospital.
The Individual
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of the concept of the individual. The Renaissance gave birth to the concept of the individual. Shakespeare defined this individual in language which accepted the primacy of the male gender: “What a piece of work is a man! How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! In form, in moving, how express and admirable! In action how like an angel! In apprehension how like a God!” According to Michel Foucault, French philosopher, polar opposite of Shakespeare and backed as he thought by Marx and Freud, our century killed the individual off. But has it? Was the individual born a mere six hundred years ago and has the century tolled its bell? And what is the individual?With Richard Wollheim, Professor of Philosophy, University of California in Berkeley; Jonathan Dollimore, Professor of English, York University.
The Nation State
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Nation State. When we speak of our island story which island do we mean? When did England elide with Britain and why does it sit uneasily alongside the United Kingdom? At the end of the 20th century, the identity of one of the most forceful countries of the millennium is subject to scrutiny, doubt and criticism. What is England now? When did it act as England and not Britain, or the UK, or the British Isles? And how does its new role fit in with the idea of the Nation State which has dominated the internal and, more dramatically, the external behaviour of many powerful countries over the last few centuries? Yet despite its mighty past the Nation State itself can now seem powerless against the forces of globalisation. With Norman Davies, Emeritus Professor, London University and author of The Isles: A History; Andrew Marr, former editor of The Independent and author of Ruling Britannia: the Failure and Future of British Democracy.
Utopia
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the concept of Utopia. Both the idea of, and the longing for a perfect society have been in our imagination for centuries, even millennia. Utopian dreams have driven fantasy, Fascism and fine feeling.Utopias, by definition, do not exist. The literal meaning of the Greek is “nowhere”. And yet, we are still enthralled by its allure. Why do some of us still believe in it - after the devastation wreaked this century by the utopian ideals that gave rise to Fascism and Communism? And what do utopias in fiction tell about the present - and even future?With Dr Anthony Grayling, human rights campaigner, lecturer in philosophy at Birkbeck College, London and Fellow of St Anne’s College, Oxford; John Carey, distinguished critic, journalist, broadcaster, Merton Professor of English, Oxford University and editor of, The Faber Book of Utopias.
Maths and Storytelling
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the relationship between maths and storytelling. Is there a hidden mathematical logic in stories? The American mathematician John Allen Paulos thinks so. It’s an intriguing thought. Patterns, measurement, the logic of jokes, numerology from Leviticus to Alice in Wonderland, but does it really go to the square root of fiction? According to anthropologists, both have similar origins - in our prehistoric ancestors’ need to measure and assess the world around them. Both mathematics and stories need a shape and structure to make any sense. But does it go further than that? Is it possible to apply mathematical logic to literature or to reduce a joke to an algebraic equation? Or are literary imagination and scientific substance irreconcilable?With John Allen Paulos, Presidential Scholar of Mathematics, Temple University, Philadelphia and author of Once Upon a Number - The hidden mathematical logic of stories; Marina Warner, novelist, historian, critic, former Reith Lecturer and Visiting Professor at Birkbeck College, London.
Genetic Determinism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the theory of Genetic Determinism. In the middle of the last century two men - Gregor Mendel, an Austrian monk, and Charles Darwin, an English naturalist, established the central theories of modern biology and changed the world forever. Darwin’s On the Origin of Species has been described as the book of the Millennium, “the only best-seller to change man’s conception of himself”. Through the rediscovery of Mendel’s work in the early decades of our century, evolutionary theory was transformed by the emergence of genetics as a science. Crick and Watson found DNA at Cambridge and announced that they had discovered the secret of life in a local pub, and the rest has been the most compulsive element in the intellectual history of the twentieth century. It seems as if almost every week we read about another gene which claims to determine our fate - whether it governs our intelligence, personality or sexual orientation. Many rail against what they see as “genetic determinism” - the idea that genes are the destiny we can do nothing about. Others willingly blame their anti-social behaviour on “criminal genes” - thus absolving themselves of any responsibility. Genetics may be all about inheritance but is inheritance all about the genes? With Steve Jones, Professor of Genetics, University College, London and author of Almost Like a Whale: The Origin of Species Updated; Matt Ridley, science journalist, chairman of the International Centre for Life and author of Genome: The autobiography of a species in 23 chapters.
Pain
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss pain; something of which everyone has an individual experience. What causes it, how do we cope with it, what mechanisms are involved, what is the traditional view of pain and how is that being challenged today? Do we experience pain in the same way and how is emotional pain different from physical pain? What can our experience of pain tell us about ourselves and human consciousness? Is each individual human experience unique or are there experiences we can say apply across all of human consciousness? Is science a blunt instrument for examining subjective experience?With Patrick Wall, Professor of Physiology at St Thomas’ Hospital, London and author of Pain: The Science of Suffering; Semir Zeki, Professor of Neurobiology at University College, London.
Truth, Lies and Fiction
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss truth, lies and fiction. In 1995 a book appeared which brought its author great acclaim from serious critics, won prizes, stunned its readers and was thought to add significantly and profoundly to the literature of the Holocaust. The book was called Fragments, its author, Binjamin Wilkomirski. But recently the veracity of the account told in Fragments has been questioned by Elena Lappin, the author of an investigative essay published in the literary magazine Granta. When it was exposed as a fiction - or should it be called a lie? - it triggered many arguments, one of which is that of the value of authenticity and the supremacy of originality in the culture of the late twentieth century. Does it really matter if literature isn’t entirely truthful? And is the idea of authenticity in writing a recent invention?With Elena Lappin, novelist and author of an investigative essay published in Granta called ‘Truth and Lies’, where she questions the veracity of the account of the Holocaust in the book Fragments by Binjamin Wilkomirski; Dr Nick Groom, lecturer in English, University of Exeter.
Africa
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Africa. It could be seen as the great test of the West; economically, intellectually, spiritually. The "dark continent" was seen as a source of power for the West through its natural resources, a place of harvest for western religious missionaries, a prize area for anthropologists - a dark continent to be illuminated by our western lights. Now, darker, all but extinguished some think, by the attentions of its invaders, Africa is outside the take-up of the twentieth century it seems. But is this received view is merely clichéd and too easily pessimistic. With Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr, Chair of the Afro-American Studies Department, Harvard University and presenter of the BBC 2 series Into Africa; Anthony Sampson, writer, journalist and author of Mandela: The Authorised Biography.
Intelligence
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss a question that has stalked the twentieth century: Intelligence. Since the first IQ tests were invented in 1905, the question of what makes Homo Sapiens stupid and what makes him clever has involved human kind in sterilisation, racism and misery. How do we define intelligence, how do we measure it; what are its origins and how do we uncover it? But are we any closer to understanding what this elusive quality of intelligence is? The debate still rages as to whether we are born with it or whether intelligence is something we develop as we grow, and evidence for either camp seems to pile up almost daily. With Dr Ken Richardson, educational psychologist, former Senior Lecturer, Open University and author of The Making of Intelligence; Professor Michael Ruse Philosopher of Biology, University of Guelph, Ontario and author of Mystery of Mysteries: Is Evolution a Social Construction?
Capitalism
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss capitalism throughout the last two centuries. In 1848 Karl Marx in The Communist Manifesto described the dynamic force of capitalism as it swept through the 19th century: Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation. ‘All that is solid melts into air’. Was Karl Marx, in criticizing capitalism, actually responsible for defining it? From Marx’s critique of capitalism in the 19th Century through to the collapse of Communism at the end of the twentieth century, have we witnessed the triumph of capitalism? Or are we only now learning the full costs and the social impact of unfettered capitalism?With Anatole Kaletsky, economics commentator and Associate Editor of The Times, and author of The Costs of Default and In the Shadow of Debt; Edward Luttwak, Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington DC and author of Turbo Capitalism: Winners and Losers in the Global Economy.
The Great Disruption
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the shift that has gone on through the 20th century from our being an industrial society to what is often called ‘the information society’. Francis Fukuyama’s book, The Great Disruption talks of the third great shift in the whole history of humankind. Along with all the technological and economic changes, in the past thirty years we have seen massive social changes. What has been the cause of this shift and how will we recover the social cohesion that preceded it? With Francis Fukuyama, Hirst Professor of Public Policy, George Mason University, Washington DC and author of The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order; Amos Oz, author and Professor of Hebrew Literature, Ben-Gurion University, Beer-Sheva.
The Monarchy
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the British monarchy. In the last two hundred and fifty years, we’ve beheaded one king, exiled another, hired a distant German-speaking dynasty to fill the monarch’s role, and then mocked and ignored them, suffered a mad man and then a lavish sensualist, threatened a young queen, and then, over a century ago, invented a pageantry which brought majesty to a monarchy which is now tilting at the twenty first century against many and mighty odds. How has the monarchy survived since the execution of Charles the First two hundred and fifty years ago and what relevance does it have in a devolved Britain?With Professor David Cannadine, Director of the Institute of Historical Research, London and former Lecturer in History and Fellow, Christ’s College, Cambridge; Bea Campbell, sociologist, journalist and author of Diana, Princess of Wales.