Cecil Day-Lewis
Cecil Day-Lewis, star poet of the Thirties. His first biographer, Peter Stanford, talks to Philip Dodd.
Playlist
Colin St. John Wilson
The death has been announced of Colin St.John Wilson, the architect of the British Library.
Richard MacCormac, his friend, fellow architect and former student, pays tribute to his life and work.
Politeness
Is 'polite society' becoming a contradiction in terms?
Are we becoming ruder and ruder to each other? If so, why? And is it really a problem?
As the Government's Respect Agenda and Anti-Social Behaviour legislation continues to stir controversy, Philip Dodd is joined by historian Larry Klein, sociologist Stuart Waiton and former Head of Policy at Downing St Matthew Taylor to explore the history that lies behind the idea of 'politeness', and how open it is to political intervention.
Cecil Day-Lewis
WH Auden, Louis MacNeice and Stephen Spender: these are the names which spring to most people's minds when they think of poetry in the Thirties but at the time that list included a fourth name: Cecil Day-Lewis.
In a new biography published this week - the first ever - Peter Stanford argues that Day-Lewis deserves to be better remembered - not just for his poetry, but for his thrillers, written as 'Nicholas Blake', and for an extraordinary life, full of passion and political engagement.
Joe Strummer and the legacy of The Clash
Music critic Robert Sandall reviews a new documentary about former Clash frontman Joe Strummer and evaluates the cultural impact of the band then and now.
Split Screen
Is splitting the screen into multiple images, once an experimental oddity, becoming as much a staple of film-making as more traditional techniques of editing?
A new romantic comedy, Conversations With Other Women, mirrors the leading couple's fractured relationship with a vertically split screen throughout.
Does this mark the arrival of split screen as a sophisticated part of mainstream cinema? Helen de Witt of the British Film Institute joins Philip to uncover the history of this strange device - which began in the Nineteen Twenties...
