Free Thinking - Aphra Behn. 1066 and the South Coast. Mark Thompson

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 13 September 2016

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Playwright, poet, spy. Anne McElvoy discusses Aphra Behn with Professor Elaine Hobby and director Loveday Ingram who has given Behn's play The Rover a South American carnival setting at the RSC. Plus Iain Sinclair and Professor David Bates on the events of 1066 which changed the course of English history. And an interview with Mark Thompson, former Director General of the BBC and current Chief Executive Officer of The New York Times Company.

The Rover runs in rep at The Swan Theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon from September 8th until February 11th 2017. The Root 1066 festival runs until October 16th at a variety of venues. www.1066contemporary.com Mark Thompson is the author of Enough Said: What's Gone Wrong with the Language of Politics

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

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
0:27.0	when it's out of ice cream.
0:28.8	Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds.
0:32.0	Welcome to the Arts and Ideas download from the free-thinking team at the BBC.
0:37.3	Hello, we're back from our summer break with an overlooked 17th century playwright
0:42.3	and an almost universally familiar 11th century event.
0:46.3	Afra Ben's restoration comedy The Rover is being revived by the RSC.
0:51.3	Director Love Day Ingram and literary historian Elaine Hobby
0:55.4	will be discussing Ben's colourful life and the significance of her work.
1:00.7	Delving further back, the 950th anniversary of the Norman Conquest is almost upon us.
1:06.8	Historian David Bates and psychogeographer Ian Sinclair will be explaining why most of what we know about 1066 is wrong and drawing links from William and Harold to Brexit Britain.
1:18.9	We begin, though, with a burst of political rhetoric.
1:22.5	Big business, elite media and major donors are lining up behind the campaign of my opponent because
1:32.3	they know she will keep our rigged system in place.
1:38.3	They are throwing money at her because they have total control over every single thing she does.
1:50.6	She is their puppet and they pull the strings.
1:57.4	Donald Trump on typically trenchant form.
2:00.2	But New York Times chief executive Mark Thompson
2:03.1	worries that the language being used to conduct and report contemporary politics is doing
2:08.4	democracy a disservice. As he argues in his new book, Enough Said. Politicians distorting
2:14.5	the truth, well, I never. So I asked him, what's different now?
	...

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