Doris Lessing
Wednesday 14 May 2008 21:45-22:30 (Radio 3)
Paul Allen talks to the Nobel Prize-winning author Doris Lessing about her new book Alfred and Emily, partly a memoir and partly a fictionalised account of her parents' lives. In the fictional part of the book, Lessing imagines the lives they might have lived had World War I never happened, before going on to explore their marriage and the impact it had on a young girl growing up in Africa.
Playlist
Doris Lessing
Paul Allen talks to Doris Lessing about the book she says she had to write. Alfred and Emily explores the lives of her parents, both of them irrevocably damaged by the Great War.
In a novella, the author imagines what her parents' lives might have been like had there been no war - after which a disturbing memoir reflects on the reality of their lives, lived in the shadow of conflict and what might have been.
Alfred and Emily by Doris Lessing is published by Fourth Estate.
Manufactured Landscapes
A chance encounter with a landscape utterly transformed by mining set a path for Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky, whose work has chronicled man's impact on his environment.
Now an award-winning documentary observes Burtynsky at work amid some of the most surreal landscapes of the 21st century: from China's mountains of computer waste to whole towns disappearing underneath the Yangtze River in the flooding caused by the Three Gorges Dam.
Edward Burtynsky talks to Paul Allen about the difficulty of showing the effects of industry without seeming to make value judgments.
To see a list of the venues screening Manufactured Landscapes (certificate U), please visit the BFI website.
Virago Modern Classics
Virago Modern Classics celebrates its 30anniversary this year. Over the course of three decades the feminist imprint published several hundred books by women writers new, classic and forgotten.
The writer and broadcaster Sarah Dunant will be looking back at the distinctive green paperbacks and remembering the impact they made in 1977.
The Good Soul of Szechuan
Susannah Clapp will be reviewing the first night of David Harrower's new translation of Bertolt Brecht's 'The Good Soul of Szechuan' - Jane Horrocks plays good-hearted prostitute Shen Te.
The Good Soul of Szechuan is at the Young Vic Theatre in London from 8 May - 28 June 2008.
