London on the Line
Seriously...
BBC
4.1 • 885 Ratings
🗓️ 7 June 2022
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This summer marks a decade since the 2012 Olympics - a moment of national pride when London represented Britain on the global stage. Ten years on from those Olympian heights, the capital is struggling. Scarred by the pandemic and entrenched inequality, London faces challenges which are often overlooked or ignored. Meanwhile a cultural backlash, an anti-Londonism, threatens a crisis of confidence - at a time when the city's success looks far from guaranteed. London expert Dr Jack Brown, who was born and still lives in the Olympic borough of Waltham Forest, talks to fellow residents about life in the capital. He hears from those who defy the 'liberal metropolitan elite' stereotypes - those who stay local and rarely, if ever, venture into Zone One, those of deep faith, and the gentrifiers who now can't afford their rent. He asks why London has attracted, magnet-like, so many negative associations, and how views of the city might change. Can London recapture the spirit of 2012? Can capital and country be at ease again? Producer: Emily Craig Executive producer: Leala Padmanabhan
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This was an impregnable fortress. The only way you get out was in a wooden box. |
| 0:05.0 | The controversial maximum security prison impossible to escape from. |
| 0:09.0 | And one of the duties of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.0 | The IRA inmates who found a way. of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.5 | The IRA inmates who found a way. |
| 0:14.5 | I'm Carlo Gableer and I'll be navigating a path |
| 0:19.5 | through the disturbing inside story of the biggest jailbreak in British and Irish history. |
| 0:25.0 | The narrative that they want is that this is a big achievement by them. |
| 0:28.5 | Escape from the maze, listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:35.0 | BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
| 0:39.0 | Hello, this is seriously from BBC Radio 4, and I'm Vanessa Casile. |
| 0:46.0 | This podcast finds the world's best audio documentaries and puts them all in one place. |
| 0:52.0 | Here's a little something to expand your mind. |
| 0:57.9 | This is London's moment, |
| 1:01.4 | and perhaps it won't come again in our lifetimes but we will have |
| 1:06.8 | the feeling for the rest of our lives. Well, this is it. In just a few hours time, London's 2012 Olympics will officially get underway. |
| 1:20.0 | Brick by brick, idea, it just sort of, you know, came together. |
| 1:27.0 | It must have been the modern equivalent of like the moon landing or something. We were all crowded around our telly |
| 1:33.9 | watching the opening ceremony. I have a particular memory because my partner was a volunteer at the Olympics in 2012. |
| 1:42.4 | Any excuse to get a flag out? |
| 1:44.0 | The Olympic torch, |
| 1:46.0 | I remember that coming through the middle of Rotterman, |
... |
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