Free Thinking - Richard Hakluyt; Man Booker Prize; Chickens in the Anthropocene; Shirley Jackson.
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 25 October 2016
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Richard Hakluyt who died on 23 November 1616 was an English writer whose writings promoted the British colonisation of North America by the English. Nandini Das talks to Matthew Sweet about Hakluyt's travels and his legacy. Alex Clark reports live from the prize ceremony for this year's Man Booker Prize. We discuss new research into the signficance of chickens in the Anthropocene and ahead of Halloween we look at the haunting writing of Shirley Jackson as a new biography of her life is published.
Hakluyt@400 events include two exhibitions: Hakluyt and Geography in Oxford 1550–1650 at Christ Church, Oxford, and The World in a Book: Hakluyt and Renaissance Discovery, at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. A two-day international conference Richard Hakluyt and the Renaissance Discovery of the World, taking place in Oxford on 24-25 November. In addition, on Sunday 27 November there will be a commemorative service in his parish at All Saints Church, Wetheringsett, Suffolk.
Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Frank is out now. You can find more haunting fiction over on BBC Radio 4 and 4Extra as part of Fright Night. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03328l0
Producer: Luke Mulhall
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 |
| 0:21.2 | it. It's a long time ago, right? It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream |
| 0:26.1 | van plays music when it's out of ice cream. Listen to evil genius on BBC sounds. Welcome to the |
| 0:32.6 | Arts and Ideas podcast from the free thinking team at the BBC. Tonight we ask if it's time for Britain to recolonise America, or if doing it once was a |
| 0:42.2 | mistake. We'll decide by consulting the work of the 16th century explorer Richard Hacklett. |
| 0:47.6 | We'll also chart the terrifying world of Shirley Jackson and reveal how chickens are the key |
| 0:53.7 | to the last thousand years of human history |
| 0:56.3 | and its possible future. First, though, we'll bring you news of the winner of Britain's most |
| 1:01.2 | prestigious literary award, the Man Booker Prize for Fiction. Will it be David Saloy's All That |
| 1:07.2 | Man is, a tapestry of short stories about men in Europe and in trouble. |
| 1:12.1 | Or Paul Beatty's The Sellout, an American satire with a protagonist called Me, |
| 1:17.3 | or Deborah Levy's mother and daughter story, Hot Milk. |
| 1:20.7 | Will it be the bestseller on the list, Graham McCrae Burnett's His Bloody Project? |
| 1:24.6 | Or the bookie's favourite, Do not say we have nothing by the Canadian |
| 1:28.8 | novelist Madeline Tien. Or will it be Eileen by a Tessa Mosfeg, a debut novelist who says |
| 1:35.0 | she doesn't want to win because it'll be all downhill from there. Well, we could have asked |
| 1:39.8 | an eminent critic to make a prediction, but as tonight we are in thrall to the power of the chicken, |
| 1:45.4 | we sought the view of an eminent exhibition Cuckoo Pekin. |
| 1:49.7 | Does he have a name? |
| 1:50.7 | No. |
| 1:52.3 | Oh, I think he just said it then. |
| 1:54.4 | Could you please lower him down onto the table? |
... |
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