Free Thinking - Alberto Manguel

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 598 Ratings

🗓️ 28 April 2015

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Matthew Sweet interviews Alberto Manguel about his new book, Curiosity. As Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland turns 150 and a new exhibition opens at the Museum of Childhood in London, New Generation Thinker Naomi Paxton, and curator Kiera Vaclavik, consider the cultural impact of the Mad Hatter's Tea Party. And as Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd is released in the cinema, we ponder the Victorian writers who fall in and out of fashion in the modern era with Will Abberley.

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, it's 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 at some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?
0:23.4	It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music
0:27.0	when it's out of ice cream.
0:28.9	Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds.
0:35.4	Once upon a time, there were three little sisters, and their names were Elsie, Lacey and Tilly,
0:41.6	and they lived at the bottom of a well, a treacle well.
0:45.3	What's the difference between a raven and a writing desk?
0:48.3	Oh, I'm glad you've begun asking riddles.
0:50.3	I believe I can guess that one.
0:51.8	Do you mean you think you can find the answer to it?
0:53.9	Exactly so. Then why don't you say what you mean? I do. At least I mean guess that one. Do you mean you think you can find the answer to it? Exactly so.
0:54.9	Then why don't you say what you mean?
0:56.8	I do.
0:57.5	At least I mean what I say.
0:59.1	That's the same thing, you know.
1:00.6	One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small.
1:08.2	It's 150 years since the publication of Alice in Wonderland, so we're warming the pot and buttering our watches for our own mad tea party here in the studio.
1:18.7	Why is a raven like a writing desk? We'll answer that question live here on BBC Radio 3.
1:24.2	We'll also discover why Charles Lutwidge Dodgson is close to us, why D.H. Lawrence is a very, very long way away, and why Thomas Hardy might be moving back into orbit, though not so close as he was in 1967, the year that Terence Stamp and Julie Christie went off to a hollow amid the ferns, and Jefferson Airplane were putting words into the mouth of Lewis Carroll's Dormouse.
1:48.0	Carol's Dormouse. Carol is also a spirit guide for the first person I want to introduce to you tonight,
2:04.6	Alberto Manguel, whose work is a conceptual wonderland
2:08.3	that can be reached without the use of drinks or cakes or mushrooms,
	...

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