5 April 2006
Wednesday 5 April 2006 21:30-22:15 (Radio 3)
Night Waves Undercurrents: Philip Dodd and guests map out the cultural history of the soldier.
Playlist
Military Historian Richard Holmes' new book attempts to put the individual soldier back at the heart of the Iraq war reminding us that these are ordinary men and women in extraordinary circumstances. But are they? Night Waves undercurrents investigates the figure of the soldier both today and in history asking how both soldiers and the various ways we represent them have changed.
Richard Holmes, Classicist Edith Hall, Maj. General Patrick Cordingley and literary historian Murray Pittock discuss how you turn a citizen into a soldier, how you prevent legitimate force from becoming bloodlust and how a society reintegrates its ex-soldiers - ambivalent figures which have haunted culture from Odysseus to Travis Bickle - Robert de Niro's homicidal Vietnam veteran in the film Taxi Driver.
And as British soldiers refuse to return to Iraq we ask how the collective endeavours of the army will cope with a society increasingly based upon individual rights.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Richard Holmes book Dusty Warriors - Modern Soldiers at War is published on April 10 th by Harper Collins.
