Programme Details

Next week, President Bush returns to Europe, a couple of years after one of the most hostile receptions an American leader has ever met on this side of the Atlantic. And it seems too much to hope that the visit will heal the present rift between Europe and America. Night Waves: Undercurrents cuts through the ongoing talk about this "Crisis of the West" to investigate what lies beneath that longstanding but elusive concept - "the West". Isabel Hilton will be joined by the philosopher John Gray, contemporary historian Timothy Garton Ash and writer Ziauddin Sardar to find out where, when and why this idea emerged and what use it is to us now. And Isabel will also be joined from New York by Avishai Margalit, co-author of Occidentalism: A Short History of Anti-Westernism.

Join Isabel and her guests for Night Waves: Undercurrents live at 9.30pm, here on Radio 3.


Presenter: Isabel Hilton
Producer: Phil Tinline



Additional Information:
Free World: Why a Crisis of the West Reveals the Opportunity of Our Time by Timothy Garton Ash is published by Penguin in paperback on 31st March 2005.
Occidentalism: A Short History of Occidentalism by Ian Buruma and Avishai Margalit is published by Atlantic Books.
American Dream, Global Nightmare by Ziauddin Sardar, Merryl Wyn Davies Icon Books. 
Al Qaeda and What It Means to Be Modern by John Gray is published by Faber & Faber Ltd.