Night Waves - Julia O'Faolain
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 598 Ratings
🗓️ 12 March 2013
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Matthew Sweet talks to Booker-nominated novelist Julia O’Faolain about her new memoir and growing up with her father, a celebrated writer and a radical dissident. Helen Wallace reviews George Benjamin’s and Martin Crimp’s new opera, ‘Written on Skin’. Professor Nora Crook explains how she discovered who really censored Shelley’s notorious poem, ‘The Revolt of Islam’. Marcus Chown reviews The Challenger, a new docu-drama about the investigation into the 1986 space shuttle disaster. And we debate whether the use of words like ‘unacceptable’ and ‘inappropriate’ are part of a tendency to avoid casting strong moral judgements.
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, it's 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 | that 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 | This is a download from the BBC. For more information and our terms of use, go to BBC.co.uk slash radio three. |
| 0:40.6 | Tonight, we look for the blue pencil marks in the work of Percy Bischelli |
| 0:44.7 | and uncover a 200-year-old case of censorship. We've a cover-up at NASA, too. |
| 0:50.2 | Marcus Chown is here to tell us about the lies they told and their impact on the space shuttle challenger disaster. |
| 0:57.1 | The writer Julia O'Feylawn tells us about her father's relationship with the truth, |
| 1:02.4 | both as the IRA's press relations man and the lover of the novelist Elizabeth Bowen. |
| 1:07.3 | And we'll give you the real deal on a brand new opera, with its roots in the 13th century. |
| 1:12.9 | Honest. |
| 1:17.2 | I've given where my mind. |
| 1:22.8 | I've given me the mouth. I'm trying to. Barbara and Beaux-Mill-Maw. |
| 1:28.1 | The music is here, written it into air-written into air. First, critic Helen Wallace is here to review it by talking into |
| 1:45.5 | air. First, though, we'll try to say what we mean and mean what we say. Corruption, abuse, |
| 1:51.5 | sexual harassment. We know what they are. So why is it that when those in public life attempt |
| 1:56.7 | to talk about them, they're much more likely to use words like inappropriate or unacceptable behaviour. |
| 2:02.9 | The Liberal Democrat peer, Lord Renard and Cardinal O'Brien, both stand accused of inappropriate behaviour. |
| 2:09.7 | It's inappropriate to put a spoon in the knife drawer, but this isn't what they're alleged to have done. |
| 2:14.9 | Remember Lieutenant General Sir John Kezziseli? He said it would be |
| 2:18.5 | inappropriate to remain as President of the British Legion after being filmed schmusing |
| 2:23.5 | arms dealers by the Sunday Times. Did he mean grotesque, perverse? Or how about the BBC's |
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