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Great Lives

Simone de Beauvoir

Great Lives

BBC

Documentary, History, Society & Culture

4.21.3K Ratings

🗓️ 19 April 2011

⏱️ 26 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Actress Diana Quick tells Matthew Parris why she believes that existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir lived a great life, despite living in the shadow of Jean Paul Sartre.

Simone de Beauvoir was a brilliant writer and philosopher in her own right. Her study, The Second Sex, made her an iconic figure for the feminist movement, and she remained true to her intellectual honesty until her death in 1986, aged 78. Yet despite all of her achievements, she is chiefly remembered as the student of her lover and teacher, Jean Paul Sartre.

Joining Matthew Parris and Diana Quick in the studio is de Beauvoir biographer Lisa Appignanesi. The producer is John Byrne.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless

0:06.8

searching is a nightmare we want to help you on our brand new podcast off the

0:11.8

telly we share what we've been watching

0:14.0

Cladie Aide.

0:16.0

Load to games, loads of fun, loads of screaming.

0:19.0

Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige.

0:21.0

And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less searching

0:25.7

and a lot more watching. Listen on BBC Sounds. Thank you for downloading this great lives podcast from BBC Radio 4.

0:36.0

For more information and details of other podcasts, just visit BBC.co. UK slash radio4. K. quick. Eternally associated with playing English roses.

0:54.0

Diana's recent delve into her heritage has uncovered a mixed race family history,

0:59.0

which may explain her leaning towards playing Indian princesses, Algerian outcasts and other outsiders.

1:06.5

In truth, her eclectic resume includes both the classics and musical theatre, stage and screen, Brideshead revisited and Inspector Morse, and nominations

1:16.2

for both Emmys and BAFTA's.

1:18.4

Diana, whom have you chosen as your great life and why?

1:22.0

I chose as my great life Simon de Beauvoir, the French

1:25.4

philosopher and writer later in her life regarded as the poster girl for

1:30.1

feminism and I chose her because when I was a student in the late 1960s I became

1:39.2

involved in the first wave of feminism in Britain and one of the things that we were very

1:45.0

concerned with was to try and secure abortion on demand in this country which

1:50.6

there was an amendment going through Parliament I think in the very early 70s

1:54.0

and the great champion of abortion had been remarkably in Catholic France had been

1:59.8

Simon de Beauvoir and so from being aware of her in that context I started to be aware of her as somebody who had been really a beacon for women's rights and I went to read the second sex which had of course been

...

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