Free Thinking – Writing Love: Jonathan Dollimore, Heer Ranjha. Queer Icons: Sappho. Part of Gay Britannia

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 6 July 2017

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Punjabi "Romeo and Juliet" is explored at Bradford Lit Fest plus New Generation Thinker Catherine Fletcher talks to Jonathan Dollimore about his memoir and the influence of the Centre for the Study of Sexual Dissidence which he set up at Sussex University. The Greek poet Sappho is championed by Professor Margaret Reynolds as part of Queer Icons - a project to mark the 50th anniversary of the decriminalisation of homosexuality in which 50 leading figures choose an LGBT artwork that is special to them. And Rohit Dasgupta from Loughborough University talks about his research published in Digital Queer Cultures in India.

Jonathan Dollimore's Memoir is called Desire. Waris Shah's Heer Ranja is discussed at Bradford Lit Fest by Mahmood Awan, Avaes Mohammad and Pritpal Singh on Saturday, 8th July 2017 2:45 pm - 4:00 pm at Bradford College - ATC. One of the definitive works of the Sufiana tradition it's an epic love poem set in 18th-century undivided Punjab.

You can find more information about Queer Icons on the Front Row website. You can hear Catherine Fletcher chairing a Free Thinking discussion about Women's Voices in the Classical World recorded with Bettany Hughes, Paul Cartledge and Colm Toibin at the Hay Festival on the Free Thinking website. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08rsrlt

You can find the BBC's Gay Britannia season of programmes on radio and tv collected on the website. They include documentaries, Drama on 3, episodes of Words and Music and more editions of Free Thinking including Philip Hoare on Cecil Beaton, Jake Arnott on Joe Orton and Sophie-Grace Chappell on Plato.

Producer Craig 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
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.
0:32.1	Hello, I'm Catherine Fletcher. Thank you for downloading this edition of Radio 3's Arts and Ideas
0:36.7	discussion program, free thinking.
0:39.6	Hello, 50 years after the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 partially decriminalised sex between men,
0:46.8	the author Jonathan Dolomore is here as my guide to the gay subcultures of the decades that followed.
0:52.7	His memory is from New York to Brighton to Sydney
0:55.2	are put to page in his new autobiography, Desire. Here on BBC Radio 3 and 4, we've been asking
1:02.6	leading figures to pick their queer icons to mark that 50th anniversary. The author of the
1:08.4	Sappho Companion and the Sappho History, Peggy Reynolds,
1:11.6	is here to tell us why the original lesbian from Lesbos deserves to be put on a pedestal.
1:17.6	And from the Greek islands to the Indian subcontinent, we'll hear from Rohit Dasgupta
1:22.6	about how technology is changing the gay scene in India.
1:31.1	Plus, a celebration of the Punjabi Romeo and Juliet.
1:55.0	Waris Shah's poem, Here, Ranja. Music Musician Nittin Sorni's version of the epic Sufi poem here. More on the Punjabi poetry of love and loss later.
1:59.0	Now, Jonathan Dolomore left school at 15 and went to work at the
2:02.7	Vauxhall Factory in Luton, quite a long way distant from the gay bars of New York, where he probably
2:08.7	didn't meet the French philosopher Michel Foucault in a back room, but it was dark, so you never know.
2:15.0	And it was distant too from the radical chic of the University of Sussex,
2:18.9	where in 1990, just two years after local authorities were banned
2:23.2	from promoting homosexuality under Section 28,
	...

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