With question marks still hanging over his health and future as leader of Cuba, Philip Dodd looks back at the early life of Fidel Castro. A new book attempts to trace the collective story of Castro and his fellow pupils, 70 years after they were photographed together at one of Cuba's top schools. What do their lives tell us about one of the last bastions of Communism and about its revolutionary head of state?
Wave Breaking by Maggi Hambling Copyright The Artist
![Wave Breaking by Maggie Hambling]()
Waves Breaking by Maggi Hambling
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Philip Dodd looks at the life of Fidel Castro through the eyes of thirteen students who went to school with the Cuban leader, as described by American writer Patrick Symmes in his new book, 'The Boys from Dolores.' Philip discusses with Patrick how this group of students ended up today, divided - sometimes brother against brother, and in exile of one kind or another, and how this group views the legacy of Fidel Castro today.
Philip will also be joined by political columnist Peter Hitchens to discuss his views on the intellectual roots of current Conservative thinking under leader David Cameron. In a forthcoming TV documentary he argues that Cameron has abandoned a hardline rural Tory philosophy for an opportunistic, modernising one, adopting many of the beliefs of New Labour. He'll be in discussion with Tory housing spokesperson Michael Gove MP.
Plus Philip will be in conversation with British painter and sculptor Maggi Hambling, who currently has two exhibitions of her work on show in Cambridge and London. They will discuss her life and work, in portraiture and more recently of landscapes of Suffolk where she lives, and where she created a controversial four-metre high steel sculpture on the beach of two interlocking scallop shells.
'Rag Tag' will be showing at the BFI in London on March 30th and April 2nd.
'Waves - Works on Paper by Maggie Hambling' will be showing at Marlborough Fine Art from 15th March - 5th April 2007
Maggie Hambling No Straight Lines continues at The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge until 29th April 2007 after which it tours to the Victoria Art Gallery in Bath, and the Abbot Hall art Gallery in Cumbria
'The Boys from Dolores' is published by Constable and Robinson
