"I have a funny name. I know it," Adam Gopnik starts out. "Don't say it isn't or try to make me feel better about it...If I ever google myself, I find myself as often as not as Adam Gropnik." He explains its unglamorous origins and it's contemporary Russian connotations of meaning "a drunken hooligan". But the trouble is, he says "like every writer, I would like my writing to last". Little chance of that with a name like Gopnik, he believes. He bemoans why he hasn't a name like Jane Austen or An...
Jul 06, 2012•10 min
Adam Gopnik reflects on our continuing obsession with the Nazis and ponders the place of the Second World War in our history. He writes: "A German friend once complained to me that educated Westerners often know far more about the German government in those five years of war than they do about all German governments in the sixty years of subsequent peace". Adam quotes a principle frequently used during internet discussions called "Godwin's Law". It states that "As an online discussion grows long...
Jun 29, 2012•10 min
Adam Gopnik ruminates on how to handle a bad review. He ponders the various options. The first is to ignore it and claim the high moral ground, "the Big Ignore" he calls it. The second is to write a late night letter - or three - to the offending publication. But he now has a third option - passed on by a friend just the other evening - which he promises will produce delightful results. An amusing guide on how to get your own back on your critics. Producer: Adele Armstrong....
Jun 22, 2012•10 min
"There is something eerie, fated, cosmic about the Beatles" writes Adam Gopnik, writer for The New York Times. "They appear in public as a unit on August 22nd 1962 and disappear as a unit, Mary Poppins like, exactly seven years later". In this talk, he ponders exactly what it is that makes their music endure. Why is it, he asks, that one of the things people never say is "I don't like the Beatles". For his children, he says, "the Beatles are as uncontroversial as the moon. Just there, shining on...
Jun 15, 2012•10 min
"One thing that is written into the human genome" says Adam Gopnik, "is that exactly at the age of thirteen, your child - in a minute, and no matter how close or sympathetic the two of you have been before - will discover that you are now the most ridiculous, embarrassing and annoying person on the planet". Ridiculous "because of your pretensions to be cool...in spite of the obvious truth that you are barely sentient, with one foot rooted in the dim, ancient past while with the other your toes a...
Jun 15, 2012•10 min
"The other day" Adam Gopnik writes, "my son was working his way through the text of Shakespeare's 'Henry V' with an eye to a student production". He read Canterbury's famous speech on how the well regulated kingdom is like a bee hive. "How could Shakespeare know that much about the division of bee-labour" he ponders "and not know that the big bee in the centre was -- a girl bee?" Gopnik takes us - via a bunch of bee experts - on a journey of "long and buzzing thoughts". He discovers a transgende...
Jun 01, 2012•10 min
Will Self reflects on the historical tradition of the Loyal Toast. A week before the Jubilee celebrations get underway, he muses on where deference is properly due. "I have never risen for the Loyal Toast, and unless some apoplectic patriot holds a gun to my head I doubt I ever will" he writes. He suggests we should turn our thoughts to who else we might raise a toast to....personally, he believes it should be his postwoman. In that case, he says "I'd be on my hind legs before you could scream '...
May 25, 2012•10 min
Will Self ponders the future of Europe as he stands by Berlin's Brandenburg gate. "As in Greek mythology" he writes, "the sun god Apollo Helios drives his chariot across the skies...so the charioteer and four horses that surmount the Brandenburg Gate...embody the idea of contemporary German nationhood". On his "quadriga-spotting tour", Will weaves his way through the complex history of this symbol and its relevance for the rest of Europe. In the end, he controversially asks whether "an end to th...
May 18, 2012•10 min
"Suppose you've spend the entirety of your working life pushing paper in an office and concocting ways of winning elections - then the heavy wooden door of Number 10 finally swings closed and....in the back garden, a couple of strapping fellows are parading up and down the lawn with Heckler & Koch machine guns around their necks, their mission: to stop the baddies scything you down". Will Self asks what can drive political leaders into the arms of the military. From the era of Margaret Thatc...
May 11, 2012•10 min
Fifteen years ago - Will Self writes - he had afternoon tea in the House of Lords with the late Conrad Russell. The distinguished historian was a hereditary peer who was entirely in favour of Lords' abolition. What Will Self remembers most about the encounter was the crumpets. "'Do have another crumpet" he'd say, 'they really are awfully good'". Fifteen years on, Will says: "Russell was right about the crumpets - and he was right about the hereditaries". He looks forward to the Queen's Speech, w...
May 04, 2012•9 min
"Could it be that human rights simply don't exist?" asks Will Self provocatively. To illustrate his point, he writes: "One man's extraordinary rendition is another man's license to torture, which in turn is a flagrant denial of a third man's human rights". And he ponders how we can conceive of a person having any human rights, unless effective sanctions are in place to stop them being violated. He turns his attention to Syria and its "vicious dictator...actively and consistently violating the hu...
Apr 27, 2012•10 min
Will Self says we should embrace the intellectual challenge of "difficult" books and art, and value works which are more taxing than our increasingly low-brow popular culture. "The most disturbing result of this retreat from the difficult is to be found in arts and humanities education, where the traditional set texts are now chopped up into boneless nuggets of McKnowledge, and students are encouraged to do their research - such as it is - on the web." Producer: Sheila Cook.
Apr 20, 2012•10 min
David Cannadine looks ahead to the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, reflecting on the history and significance of royal jubilees worldwide and, in particular, the celebrations for Queen Victoria. "Diamond jubilees... are very much a construction of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: both in terms of the grandiose ceremonials accompanying them, and also in terms of the narratives that have invariably been constructed to make some sort of sense of the six decades that are being commemorate...
Apr 13, 2012•10 min
David Cannadine reflects at Easter time on the architectural glories of cathedrals and the part these buildings have played in our national history and culture. He traces early and more recent traditions and identifies the world wide impact of Anglican cathedral building during the era of the British Empire. Producer: Sheila Cook.
Apr 06, 2012•10 min
David Cannadine reflects on the changing images of the typical policeman and our attitude towards the way they look in the light of a recent report that over half of the members of the Metropolitan Police are overweight. Producer: Sheila Cook.
Mar 30, 2012•10 min
David Cannadine recalls the heyday of cinema and television Westerns and wonders if the makers of a big screen adaptation of the Lone Ranger will capture a new audience when the film is released next year. Despite the decline in popularity of the Western, "the appeal of the mythical West has remained a powerful force in American political life." Producer: Sheila Cook.
Mar 23, 2012•10 min
Historian David Cannadine reflects on the power of the press, past and present, recalling how early twentieth century press barons attempted to influence politics. He recalls Stanley Baldwin's response to the campaign by Lords Rothermere and Beaverbrook to topple him as Conservative leader, accusing them of wielding "power without responsibility." Producer: Sheila Cook.
Mar 16, 2012•10 min
David Cannadine reflects on the enduring resonance of the important speeches which Winston Churchill delivered in colleges and universities in the United States. Westminster College, Fulton, has "become a shrine to Churchill and his 'iron curtain' speech" and Harvard was where he gave a speech on "Anglo-American Unity". Producer: Sheila Cook.
Mar 09, 2012•10 min
Historian David Cannadine compares the traditions of tie wearing on both sides of the Atlantic. He reflects on the social significance of this element of male dress and observes a recent phenomenon - that politicians seem to campaign in open neck shirts but govern wearing ties. Producer: Sheila Cook.
Mar 02, 2012•10 min
David Cannadine reflects on the history of monetary unions and what causes them to succeed or fail. Ancient Greece turns out to be a pioneer, whereas modern Greece has posed a threat to any monetary union it has joined. Producer: Sheila Cook.
Feb 24, 2012•10 min
David Cannadine reflects on current and historic attitudes towards bankers in America where opinion does not divide neatly along party lines. He sees today's criticism as mild by comparison with the attitude of Franklin D. Roosevelt who unleashed "a sustained and ferocious attack " during the era of the New Deal. Producer: Sheila Cook.
Feb 17, 2012•10 min
Awareness of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee and the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens may be widespread but fewer may know 2012 marks the two hundredth anniversary of the death of the only British prime minister to be assassinated. Producer: Sheila Cook.
Feb 10, 2012•10 min
Lisa Jardine reflects on the perils of sending over-hasty emails compared with the time allowed for reflection by old fashioned letter writing. Producer: Sheila Cook.
Feb 03, 2012•10 min
The historian Lisa Jardine reflects on the week's events. Producer: Sheila Cook.
Jan 27, 2012•10 min
Lisa Jardine reflects on her aversion to today's new sources of noise and traces the history of some attempts at noise abatement. Producer: Sheila Cook.
Jan 19, 2012•10 min
The historian Lisa Jardine recalls the seventeenth century Lord Chancellor, and keen gardener, Sir Francis Bacon as she reflects on the art of gardening, as both pure human pleasure and a means of self advancement. "Perhaps the innocence and sustaining consolation of gardens is not quite such a simple matter after all. The shadow of political self-interest falls across the sweet-smelling flowerbeds and shady bowers too." Producer: Sheila Cook.
Jan 13, 2012•10 min
The historian Lisa Jardine reflects that information overload is not a new problem. "By the seventeenth-century there was widespread anxiety that the sheer volume of available knowledge was getting out of hand." There were also fears that wars and unrest could obliterate knowledge through the destruction of archives. Nowadays, losing knowledge completely is harder thanks to the internet, but the need to sift it is as great as ever. Producer: Sheila Cook.
Jan 06, 2012•10 min
Lisa Jardine remembers 2011 for the spectacle of the Royal Wedding, reflecting on the historic power of regal glamour in times of austerity. Queen Elizabeth I "used ostentation and opulence in her dress as a political tool to increase national confidence in the solvency of her regime." Producer: Sheila Cook.
Dec 30, 2011•10 min
Simon Schama reflects on how the world - ten years on - remembered the events of 9/11. And he ponders why it's vital to remember. "Ten years is an aeon in tweet-time", he writes, but 9/11 "bleeds - in every sense - into today's front pages". Producer: Adele Armstrong.
Dec 29, 2011•14 min
Will Self reflects on the new landscape for the press Producer: Sheila Cook.
Dec 28, 2011•14 min
