David Dabydeen and Rachel Holmes
Monday 12 March 2007 21:45-22:30 (Radio 3)
On Commonwealth Day, poet David Dabydeen and historian Rachel Holmes join Matthew Sweet. Holmes new book, The Hottentot Venus, charts the life and times of Saartjie Baartman who was taken from Cape Town to London in 1810 and paraded as an exotic goddess to metropolitan society. The book tells her story and examines the sexual preoccupations of colonial Britain. David Dabydeen discusses his work on the Oxford Companion to Black British History: who's in it, who isn't and what it tells us about contemporary Black British life.
Playlist
Saartjie Baartman
Matthew is joined in the studio by historian Rachel Holmes to talk about Saartjie Baartman, a young Xhosian girl taken from Cape Town and displayed to London society as 'The Hottentot Venus'.
Her blend of exoticism and sexual allure, her ample and scantily clad body electrified English society - legal battles were fought over her status and after her death in Paris she was dissected by the great anatomist Georges Cuvier in the name of science.
It's a story of sex, race, show-business and moral fervour amid the contradictions of post-slavery Britain.
The Hottentot Venus: The Life and Death of Saartjie Baartman (Born 1789 - Buried 2002) by Rachel Holmes is published by Bloomsbury.
The Oxford Companion to Black British History
Sarah Baartman is just one of the entries in the new Oxford Companion to Black British History.
The editor of the companion is the poet and professor David Dabydeen who joins Matthew Sweet to show how Sarah fits in a long tradition of Black experience in Britain from
'Abolition' - celebrating it's 200th anniversary this year - to 'Zong' - an infamous British slave ship in the 18th century.
In between are, among others, African Auxiliries on Hadrian's wall; the black Florence Nightingale Mary Seacole, and John Edmonstone, who taught taxidermy to Charles Darwin. David tells Night Waves about the many people keeping Sarah company and how they came to be there.
The Oxford Companion to Black British History is published by OUP.
Milan Kundera
Also in the programme Czech novelist Milan Kundera, author of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, is the latest in a long line of literary greats to deliver his opinions on the novel - what it is and where it's going.
Writer Laurence Norfolk gives us the low down on Kundera's vision of the novel and whether he agrees with it.
The Curtain by Milan Kundera is published by Faber and Faber.
