Night Waves - Timbuktu and Beyond

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 1 February 2013

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Anne McElvoy discusses the libraries of Timbuktu, and what they teach us about literacy and book culture in Africa, with Dr Shamil Jeppie, Dr Marion Wallace, Head of African Collections at the British Library, and the novelist Aminatta Forna. Susannah Clapp delivers a first-night review of a revival of Harold Pinter’s play, Old Times. Historian Paul Kennedy delves into the story of the problem solvers of the Second War, the subject of his new book The Engineers of Victory. And Karl Sharro gives us his reflections from the top of The Shard.

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 at 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. This is a download
0:32.8	from the BBC. For more information and our terms of use, go to BBC.co.uk slash radio three.
0:40.4	Hello, and tonight on the programme, we bring you a first-night review of Harold Pinter's enigmatic role swapper old times.
0:47.6	As Timbuktu's precious manuscripts narrowly escaped destruction, we'll be exploring the treasures of Africa's libraries and what they reveal.
0:54.7	The historian Paul Kennedy celebrates the forgotten heroes of the Second World War in a new book,
0:59.8	and I'll be talking to him later.
1:01.5	And we'll be heading up the shard to see London from Renzo Piano's Dizzy Heights.
1:06.0	It's really high.
1:08.1	I haven't been in any observation platforms that are that high and I think that
1:12.4	brings a completely different dynamic to it. Architect and critic Carl Scharrow with his head in the
1:18.5	clouds. But first Harold Pinter was renowned for his absorption in the tense triangles of adult
1:23.5	emotion from betrayal to his 1971 play Old Times. The teasing mystery of the drama
1:29.7	is that even the events that unfold on stage are disputed. There are things I remember which
1:34.8	may never have happened, but as I recall them, so they take place, says Anna, visiting her old
1:40.0	frenemy Kate as memories, dalliances and discarded dreams spill forth between the old friends.
1:46.2	In a new version at London's Pinter Theatre, the paths of Kate and Anna switch between Kristen Scott Thomas and Leah Williams.
1:52.5	Rufus Sewell is Kate's conflicted controlling husband, Daly.
1:56.0	Well, our industrious theatre critic, Susanna Clap, has seen both versions.
2:00.3	Susanna, is this role swap an interesting gimmick,
2:03.3	or does it bring something to our understanding of an enigmatic play?
	...

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