Is the countryside more English than the city?
Thursday 14 June 2007 21:45-22:30 (Radio 3)
Playlist
Is the countryside more English than the city?
Matthew Sweet hosts a public debate in front of a live audience in Kendal, Cumbria, exploring the question 'Is the countryside more English than the city'?
Matthew and guests will be discussing whether there is still a thriving rural culture, or whether the city is now utterly predominant.
What are the origins of the idea that the countryside is the heart of England? Are our dreams of the countryside and the city now more vivid than the reality? Can the culture help us bring these imaginings up to date?
With growing debate about multiculturalism, and resentment in the countryside about the dominance of the cities, now is the perfect time to hammer out where the heart of English culture really lies.
On the panel are urban novelist Tim Lott, writer Sukhdev Sandhu, Clive Aslet, Editor-at-Large of Country Life, Cumbrian novelist Sarah Hall and Alun Howkins, author of The Death of Rural England.
