Free Thinking: Tom McCarthy. Jacobitism; Satirical Indexes; A Museum of Modern Nature
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 20 June 2017
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Essayist Tom McCarthy joins presenter Anne McElvoy, academics Dennis Duncan + Peter Mackay and the curator of A Museum of Modern Nature.
As a new exhibition opens in Edinburgh, 'Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobites', poet and New Generation Thinker Peter Mackay explores the hundreds of artefacts gathered from home and abroad and gives us his reflections on the old old story of the Kings over the Water.
Dennis Duncan from The Bodleian Centre for the Study of the Book brings a tale of how indexes were used to expose British Jacobite sympathisers in the decades following the Glorious Revolution of 1688.
Plus a new exhibition called 'A Museum of Modern Nature' features objects offered by members of the public who were asked to reflect on what connected them to the natural world and their sense of the presence of nature in their own lives with Rosie Stanbury and Rebekah Shaman
Tom McCarthy's Essay Collection is called Typewriters, Bombs, Jellyfish. Bonnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobites: National Museum of Scotland 23 June - 12 November 2017 A Museum of Modern Nature: Wellcome Trust exhibition in London 22 June - 8 October 2017
Producer: Jacqueline Smith
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 | I'm Anne McHelvoy and thanks for downloading this episode |
| 0:35.0 | of Radio 3's Art and Ideas discussion program, |
| 0:38.5 | Free Thinking. |
| 0:39.3 | This is the BBC. |
| 0:41.4 | Tom McCarthy, award-winning novelist, has just released his first collection of essays. |
| 0:46.3 | He joins us to talk realism, reality and the real, and why almost everything is about trauma. |
| 0:52.9 | Summer exhibitions are opening up and down the country, so here |
| 0:56.1 | are two to peak your interest. In Edinburgh, the National Museum of Scotland has assembled the largest |
| 1:01.6 | collection of Jacobite relics ever shown. We hear what a Gallic-speaking pert makes of that, |
| 1:07.5 | while an expert on the book reveals the role that Index has played in outing Southern |
| 1:12.1 | Jacobite gentlemen, meanwhile in London, the Welcome Collection offers its thoroughly democratic, |
| 1:17.9 | a museum of modern nature. The objects on display have been supplied by members of the public |
| 1:23.3 | who are asked for personal artefacts to transmit their own sense of the natural world. |
| 1:28.4 | Well, be careful what you wish for. |
| 1:30.9 | My cat is a ginger cat, and when you brush him, lots of hair comes out. |
| 1:35.2 | So I took the hair and felt it into a tiny miniature cat. |
| 1:39.5 | So you brush the hair out and then take the hair, |
| 1:42.4 | and you stab it with a needle, which has got lots of little |
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