Globalisation:London
The Reith Lectures
BBC
4.2 • 770 Ratings
🗓️ 7 April 1999
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The 1999 Reith Lecturer is Professor Anthony Giddens. Professor Giddens was Director of the London School of Economics and his writings have been used by world leaders, including Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, to develop ideas on what become known as 'The Third Way' in politics. He was Professor of Sociology at the University of Cambridge from 1986-96 and took up the post as Director of the London School of Economics in 1997. He has been described as 'Britain's best-known social scientist since Keynes'.
The lectures are delivered from five major cities around the world, locating the lectures themselves within the cultural variety of the world across which they were broadcast.
In his first lecture, delivered from London, Professor Giddens examines the concept of globalisation and how it has affected our lives.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Reith Lectures. This lecture in the series |
| 0:05.9 | Runaway World, given by Anthony Giddens, was originally broadcast in 1999. Good evening and |
| 0:14.6 | welcome to the 99 series of Reith Lectures. Every year the BBC invites a major figure to |
| 0:19.6 | survey the landscape of current thought. |
| 0:22.2 | Few surveys will have taken in more, been more sweeping, than that of this year's lecturer |
| 0:27.1 | Anthony Giddens, the eminent sociologist and director of the London School of Economics. |
| 0:32.8 | His recent book, The Third Way, earned him the title of Tony Blair's favourite guru. |
| 0:38.9 | His influence a generation of students and made his mark on the wider political debate, and through the LSE he hopes |
| 0:44.2 | to create a resource of thought for the future. His theme tonight, and for the next five weeks, |
| 0:50.1 | is globalisation, and his title, Runaway World. This year, for the first time, the wreath |
| 0:56.7 | lectures will be broadcast in keeping with their theme from around the globe. Tony Giddensig, |
| 1:01.9 | is that we're the first generation living in the new globalized world, and we'll be going |
| 1:06.6 | to Hong Kong, to Delhi, and to Washington. We begin tonight in London at the Royal Institution. |
| 1:13.6 | Here with me in the Michael Faraday Lecture Theatre |
| 1:16.0 | is a distinguished audience of academics, politicians, writers and others |
| 1:20.3 | whose interests and expertise we hope to draw on later. |
| 1:23.9 | Also this year, for the first time, |
| 1:26.0 | there's been an email debate on the internet. |
| 1:28.7 | We've had comments from countries as distant as Papua New Guinea, Brazil and Ethiopia, |
| 1:33.7 | and many from the United States, and a lot of course from the UK. |
| 1:37.6 | We'll be hearing from some of these too. |
| 1:40.5 | So please welcome the BBC's 1999 wreath lecturer Anthony Giddens. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.