Michel de Montaigne
Great Lives
BBC
4.2 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 21 September 2010
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Michel de Montaigne is one of the most influential writers of the French Renaissance. He is known for popularising the essay as a literary genre and became famous for his ability to fuse intellectual speculation with casual anecdotes and autobiography. Montaigne's work continues to influence writers to this day.
Championing his life is the surgeon, scientist, broadcaster and politician Professor Robert Winston and providing expert witness is the writer Sarah Bakewell, whose recent biography, How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer, was recently published to great acclaim.
Producer: Paul Dodgson.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
| 0:04.7 | My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds. |
| 0:08.5 | As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices. |
| 0:18.0 | What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars, |
| 0:24.6 | poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples. |
| 0:29.7 | If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds. |
| 0:37.0 | Thank you for downloading this great lives podcast from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:41.0 | For more information and details of other podcasts just visit BBC.co. |
| 0:45.6 | UK slash Radio 4. |
| 0:48.3 | My guest today is a scientist who achieved prominence in the field of human fertility. |
| 0:53.1 | He was made a life peer in 1995 and is professor of science and society |
| 0:58.0 | at Imperial College London. |
| 1:00.1 | He's a familiar face on television too having presented groundbreaking series like The Human Body and Child of Our Time, and he's an author as well. |
| 1:09.0 | He is Professor Robert Winston. |
| 1:11.0 | Whom might such a man choose as his great life, a famous scientist, a doctor |
| 1:17.0 | from history perhaps? |
| 1:19.0 | Lord Winston, whom have you chosen? |
| 1:21.5 | Who was he? And why have you chosen him? |
| 1:24.0 | Well, I've chosen Michel de Montee because this is a man who is a humanist above all. He understands the human condition. He is born in 1533 and he writes these most extraordinary essays which are as modern now I think in many ways as anything written currently |
| 1:47.8 | and he's funny he's witty he understands happiness sadness all sorts of human emotions and human experience. |
| 1:55.0 | And his book, his essays can be dipped into or read in their entirety. |
| 2:03.7 | Beautiful thing is that they are wildly entertaining |
... |
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