Live from Salford, during the Conservative Party conference in neighbouring Manchester, Sir David Cannadine argues that Victorian Britain was never far from revolution. He tells Andrew Marr how a century seen as conservative was actually troubled by political upheaval. Britain may have been the world's greatest empire but it was riven by self-doubt. Novelist Anthony Powell depicted the turbulence of the 20th century in his series A Dance to the Music of Time. Powell is seen as the arch-conservative, but biographer Hilary Spurling argues that he was fascinated by power and people at every level of society. Jane Green tracked the 2017 General Election as co-director of the British Election Study. She explains how the public judges those in power, and why political reputations are hard to shake. And Phillip Blond, director of the think tank ResPublica, helped shape recent Conservative ideas including the "big society" and the "northern powerhouse". He fears the Conservative Party could become irrelevant unless power is shared out.Producer: Hannah Sander.
Kultur & Gesellschaft
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Weekly discussion programme, setting the cultural agenda every Monday
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Folge vom 02.10.2017Power, the People and the Party
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Folge vom 25.09.2017Hard work and sweet slumberFrancine Stock talks to the sleep scientist Matthew Walker whose latest book is a clarion call to get more sleep, as the latest research confirms that sleeping less than six or seven hours has a devastating impact on physical and mental health. Armed with proof that shift work is detrimental for workers, political strategist and chief executive of the RSA Matthew Taylor considers what responsibility companies have to their staff in making sure they get enough sleep and whether since industrialisation modern working practices militate against this. Concerns about lack of sleep and remedies for improving it are nothing new: the historian Sasha Handley looks back to early modern sleep patterns and advice, and wonders why so many of our forebears slept in two distinct phases with an hour in the early hours set aside for sex, housework or reading. The latest exhibition at the National Gallery, Reflections, co-curated by Susan Foister, shows how the medieval painter van Eyck had a huge influence on the Pre-Raphaelite painters, whose work stood in opposition to creeping industrialisation and harked back to a by-gone era of knights and sweet slumber.Producer: Hannah Sander.
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Folge vom 18.09.2017Orhan Pamuk on competing mythsAndrew Marr talks to the Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk about his latest novel, The Red-Haired Woman. Set in Istanbul in the 20th century, it's a family drama which weaves together competing foundation myths of patricide and filicide and pits tradition against modernity; east and west. There are more competing ideologies in Jon Sopel's 'Notes from Trump's America' which paints a picture of a country riven by divisions between black and white, rich and poor, the urban and the rural. Reality and fantasy play a part in the choreographer Shobana Jeyasingh's critique of the orientalist ballet La Bayadere. She looks back to the moment in the 19th century when genuine Indian dancers were rejected in favour of the idealised exotic version of the temple dancer in the Western imagination. 'What Shadows' is a play that tells the story of Enoch Powell's famous 'rivers of blood' speech from 1968, and its impact on the country decades later. The play's director Roxana Silbert says the play shows how prejudice can be found across the political spectrum. Producer: Katy Hickman.
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Folge vom 22.08.2017Les Misérables: novel of the century?On Start the Week Andrew Marr talks to David Bellos about Victor Hugo's Les Misérables. Bellos argues that this 19th century masterpiece is the novel of the century, which demonstrates the drive to improve human life both morally and materially. Dinah Birch compares what was happening in literature on the other side of the channel, reflecting the breadth of society in Britain. Simon Callow makes the case for the composer of the century, Richard Wagner, while the singer Barbara Hannigan explains how a 12th century legend has been given a contemporary twist in the opera Written On Skin. Producer: Katy Hickman.