Why Trespassing Is the Right Way To Go

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 3 April 2019

⏱️ 20 minutes

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Summary

Have you ever been somewhere you shouldn't? In this essay, New Generation Thinker Ben Anderson creeps around, and explains how trespassers in the early-twentieth century helped create new attitudes to nature by stepping off the path.

Descriptions of late-nineteenth century trespass and rock-climbing show how different experiences of nature led to fights with landowners and gamekeepers for the rights of urban people. People going off-piste also led to efforts to expose environmental inequalities in the Alps, and calls for the protection of wilderness as a playground for hard men. At a time of ever increasing awareness of the environment, walk your thoughts around how our own, personal experience of nature defines what we come to value, and what we might fight to protect, alter or ‘improve’.

Ben Anderson lectures in twentieth century history at Keele University. The Essay was recorded at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead and - like all the Essays this week - a longer version including audience questions is available as an Arts& Ideas podcast.

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select 10 academics each year who can turn their research into radio.

Producer: Jacqueline Smith

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, 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	it. 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.
0:33.3	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Hi, Eleanor Rosamund Berikov here, with a BBC Arts and Ideas podcast recorded at this year's Radio
0:43.1	Three Free Thinking Festival. It's a talk from Ben Anderson, one of a series given by New
0:49.7	Generation Thinkers. New Generation Thinkers is an annual scheme run by the Arts and Humanities Research
0:55.7	Council and the BBC. The 10 speakers at this year's festival overcame stiff competition to get here,
1:02.7	and we're grateful to them for sharing their research freely with us. Ben Anderson is an environmental
1:09.6	historian at Keel University, a subject he admits
1:12.9	tailors neatly with his enthusiasm for mountains, rock climbing and outdoor sports.
1:18.9	He's interested in where our cultural perceptions of the uses and transformation of the
1:23.8	countryside come from. So welcome to the stage, Ben Anderson, going off track.
1:33.3	I can't tell you where I am, but I can tell you that I don't want to be seen. I'm not meant to be here,
1:41.5	but that makes me all the more aware that I am.
1:45.4	My feet feel their way to the ground.
1:48.4	My hams steady me on bushes and trees.
1:52.0	My eyes search for quiet spots.
1:55.7	Though I shouldn't know this place, I'm submerged in it.
1:59.0	In a way I would seldom otherwise know. I invite you to accompany me
2:05.0	trespassing in Europe a hundred years ago. We're going to the Eastern Alps and English Moorlands.
2:12.8	We'll meet all manner of dubious individuals and learn about their peculiar philosophies for protecting nature.
2:19.7	But be careful, we don't want to be seen.
	...

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