Summary
Philip Dodd talks to actor Christopher Eccleston and historian Ruth Dudley Edwards and asks them for their views on the way identity and a sense of belonging are shifting.
Producer: Torquil MacLeod
You can hear Christopher Eccleston in BBC Radio 3's Drama Schreber, see him in the RSC Macbeth production as part of the BBC Culture in Quarantine season and in the latest series of the TV drama the A Word. Ruth Dudley Edwards' books include The Seven — The Lives and Legacies of the Founding Fathers of the Irish Republic and her latest crime fiction title Killing The Emperors
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right? |
| 0:23.3 | It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream. |
| 0:28.8 | Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:33.2 | BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts. |
| 0:36.9 | Hello, I'm Philip Dodd, and welcome to the Arts and Ideas Discussion Program from BBC Radio 3, |
| 0:42.8 | which brings together leading artists, writers and thinkers. |
| 0:46.9 | If you enjoy what you hear, do subscribe to the Arts and Ideas podcast, |
| 0:51.8 | and wherever you get your podcasts from, do rate and reviewers. It'll help |
| 0:56.9 | other people to find us. Hello, I don't belong anywhere, says the playwright Tom Stoppard. |
| 1:04.7 | I live in California, but have a place in Chile where I belong, claims the Chilean novelist Isabel Ayende, and the great Soviet |
| 1:13.3 | writer Alexander Soljjianitsyn sent to the Gulag said he belonged with a Russian criminal |
| 1:19.8 | class. Belonging. It's a word and an idea woven more and more visibly through our public and our private lives. |
| 1:29.3 | Over the last ten years the politics have been all about who belongs, where we belong, and who doesn't belong. |
| 1:36.3 | And the virus has only intensified this preoccupation. |
| 1:41.3 | Across the world, those not at home want to be repatriated to where they belong, |
| 1:47.0 | and for the rest of us well, we belong temporarily wherever we are. |
| 1:53.0 | I'm recording this programme from my flat by Kings Cross Station, where the roar of the traffic is now almost stilled. My guests are an actor and a historian, |
| 2:04.6 | with each talking about their sense of belonging. |
| 2:07.6 | Later we'll hear from the historian Ruth Dudley Edwards, |
| 2:11.6 | born in Dublin, into a Catholic nationalist family. |
| 2:15.6 | But she's been a good intellectual friend to the unionist position |
| 2:19.7 | in Northern Ireland and she says she's lived in London since the 60s that she feels culturally |
... |
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