26 January 2006
Thursday 26 January 2006 21:45-22:15 (Radio 3)
As an adaptation of her novel Nights at the Circus opens at the Lyric Hammersmith in London, Matthew Sweet and guests discuss the vivid prose of Angela Carter.
Programme Details
It may be hard to imagine now but in the seventeenth century America was as remote as outer space. It was just as mysterious and just as dangerous but above all it offered that most intoxicating emotion - hope.
The European discovery of America is the historical context of Terrence Malick's latest film - The New World - but its real subject seems to be the wonder and fear engendered by the encounter with anything truly new and alien. Matthew Sweet talks to the writer Sarah Dunant about this experience and Malick's place in contemporary cinema.
Night Waves reviews Nights at the Circus - the stage version of Angela Carter's magical book which is playing at the Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith.
And two ardent fans of the Victorian age - the biographer, D.J.Taylor and the League of Gentleman's Mark Gatiss will be discussing the pleasures and the pitfalls of adopting the fictional idiom of Thackeray and Conan Doyle in the age of Celebrity Big Brother.
Additional information:
Kept by D.J.Taylor is published by Chatto and Windus
The Vesuvius Club by Mark Gatiss is published by Simon and Schuster
The New World by Terrence Malick is released on Friday. Certificate 12A
Nights at the Circus is at the Lyric Theatre in Hammersmith, London
