Jonathan Meades on Edward Burra

Great Lives

BBC

History, Documentary, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.2 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 5 August 2014

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Writer Jonathan Meades nominates the English artist Edward Burra, who died in 1976, for "great life" status, arguing that he deserves to be better known. Burra painted sailors, drinkers and prostitutes in Toulon; jazz musicians in Harlem; surreal wartime pictures of soldiers in terrifying bird masks; and, in his later years, landscapes in which anthropomorphic and malevolent machines bite chunks out of the countryside. Disabled with rheumatoid arthritis from an early age, Burra barely went to school and so escaped the Edwardian upper class upbringing that would otherwise have been his destiny. At once camp yet apparently celibate, Burra was intensely private and disliked talking about either himself or art - or, as he called it, "fart". Matthew Parris chairs the discussion, and is joined by Burra's biographer Jane Stevenson. Producer: Jolyon Jenkins First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2014.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and I'd like to tell you a bit about the
0:03.8	podcast I work on. I'm Dan Clark and I commissioned factual podcasts at the BBC.
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0:45.8	This week's Great Life is a painter who's been described as the best British artist you've never
0:51.0	heard of. Or can you say that of an artist one of whose painting
0:55.2	sold at an auction for 2.1 million pounds a few years ago? His name is
1:00.1	Edward Borough. He may not have made a breakthrough into vulgar fame in the four decades
1:06.1	since he died, but his standing seems to be quietly growing. Maybe my guest Jonathan Meade's
1:12.4	who's chosen him can help it grow a bit more.
1:16.0	Jonathan Meads, you'll know, is a writer.
1:19.0	Many listeners will remember his restaurant reviews.
1:22.0	He's a journalist, he's an essayist, he's a filmmaker.
1:24.4	Jonathan, before we get into your great life, why did you give up on food writing?
1:28.8	I hated myself for doing it. I don't think one should write in bad faith. I didn't like being
1:38.3	associated with a particular genre of journalism. food came along in a rather serendipitous sort of way and I thought
	...

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