This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Reith Lectures. This lecture in the series

Runaway World, given by Anthony Giddens, was originally broadcast in 1999. Good evening and

welcome to the final programme in the 1999 series of Reith Lectures. This year's lecture is Anthony

Giddens, the eminent sociologist and director of the London School of Economics.

In the past few weeks, he's taken his theme of globalisation around the world.

Under the title, Runaway World, he's talked about risk in Hong Kong, tradition in Delhi and the family in Washington.

Tonight, we're back where we began, at the Royal Institution in London.

Our subject is democracy.

And here with me in the Michael Faraday Lecture Theatre is a distinguished audience of academics,

politicians, writers and others whose interests and expertise we hope to draw on.

Also this year, for the first time, there's been an email debate on the internet.

We've had hundreds of comments and questions from all around the world,

from countries as distant as Ethiopia, Malaysia, and Vietnam,

and many from the United States and, of course, the United Kingdom.

We'll be hearing some of these too.

So please welcome the BBC's 1999 Re-letcher, Anthony Giddens.

On November 9, 1989, I was in Berlin. On November 9, 1989, I was in Berlin, in what was then West Germany.

At the meeting, I'd come to take part in some of those present were from East Berlin.

One such person, who was away that afternoon, later came back in a state of

some excitement. He had been in the east and was told that the Berlin Wall was on the point of being

opened. A small group of us got down there very quickly.

Ladders were put against it and we started to climb up.

...