11 May 2005
Wednesday 11 May 2005 21:30-22:15 (Radio 3)
Night Waves:Undercurrents - We attribute great meaning to individual moments in history and attach great significance to anniversaries and remembering single events. But just how realistic and useful is this way of reading our past? Join Isabel Hilton and guests at 9.30pm Wednesday.
Programme Details
We attribute great meaning to individual moments in history and attach great significance to anniversaries and remembering single events. We claim that certain events can actually define and change the course of history.
But just how realistic and useful is this way of reading our past? By loading metaphor and meaning onto single events - the fall of the Berlin Wall, the events of VE day - are we in danger of cheapening our understanding of history and do we lose sight of the wider, long term forces that really shape historical change? Are we simply in allure of the storytelling element in individual moments and do the moments we pick actually tell us more about the present than the past?
In tonight's Night Waves:Undercurrents, Isabel Hilton brings together four leading historians, of different periods and disciplines, to explore the ways in which we use and celebrate individual moments in history. Around the Night Waves table are ... Lisa Jardine, author of a new book exploring the first assassination of a head of state with a handgun; Sander Gilman, author of over 70 books including histories of smoking and ascetic surgery; Juliet Gardener, who has recently written about wartime Britain through the eyes of children; and Gwyn Prins; whose speciality is European politics and the world at war.
Night Waves: Undercurrents, live at 9.30pm presented by Isabel Hilton.
Presenter: Isabel Hilton
Producer: Anthony Denselow
