The Time Traveller
The Reith Lectures
BBC
4.2 • 770 Ratings
🗓️ 22 November 1989
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
French poet Jacques Darras delivers the first of his Reith Lectures entitled 'Beyond the Tunnel of History'. Taking inspiration from the formation of the Channel Tunnel, Durras looks back through the shared history of France and Britain and suggests that their respective national pasts will need to be reinterpreted in the light of a shared future. In his first lecture entitled 'The Time Traveller', Jacque Darras asks the question, now that their destinies are increasingly converging within a wider Europe, how will the two cultures reconcile with each other? To answer this question he explores the embodiment of democracy within the civic squares of Europe. He uses the historic architectural landmarks to evaluate how France and Britain might still form a multicultural Europe.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Reith Lectures. |
| 0:04.3 | This lecture in the series Beyond the Tunnel of History, |
| 0:07.7 | given by Jacques Daris, was originally broadcast in 1989. |
| 0:12.9 | I have been living by the Touretel, the Eiffel Tower, as you say, |
| 0:18.6 | in Paris for the past year, working with my previous provincial connections. |
| 0:25.5 | And it has come as a surprise, not only to myself, but I mean to a lot of Parisians, |
| 0:32.0 | to be reminded in this year that the Touretrefer had been built for the first centenary of the French Revolution, |
| 0:41.7 | that is, in 1889. We had tended to forget about it, and it came as a surprise and almost as a shock, |
| 0:52.0 | since we didn't quite see what connection |
| 0:54.2 | there might have been between that technological tire made of iron, |
| 1:00.0 | Victorian iron, and the political and social movement |
| 1:05.1 | that had taken place a hundred years before. |
| 1:08.4 | It came as a surprise to be reminded of that connection for us Frenchmen, because |
| 1:12.9 | the Tour-EFL is primarily a symbol of Paris, of the popularity of Paris all over the world, |
| 1:21.9 | and at the same time it means the radio, because the radio is placed and located on top of the tower. |
| 1:30.3 | Therefore, the Tour-FEL is a symbol of radio communications. |
| 1:34.3 | And I think it is not too artificial and even a quite fitting emblem to celebrate both at the same time the French Revolution and the wreath lectures. |
| 1:47.4 | Yet I would say that 1989 is perhaps not the most crucial of dates to us. |
| 1:56.6 | Quite ironically speaking, I think that we Frenchmen are more aware of the date coming in 1992 |
| 2:04.6 | and 1993, which are to mark the coming into power of Europe as such and the lifting up of barriers, |
| 2:14.6 | so that this lifting up of barriers sounds ominous and rather disquieting |
| 2:22.3 | to our ears as though it was going to be some sort of knife or some sort of guillotine falling down |
... |
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