 | | | | | | | | | |
| | | EXCESS BAGGAGE
|  | |  | MISSED A PROGRAMME?
Go to the Listen Again page | | | | | |  | | | | |
 Listen to Excess Baggage for
27 SEPTEMBER 2008
IRAN
Iran is a country of extraordinary antiquity, great science and art, yet it also presents to the West a somewhat ambiguous image via the prism of news bulletins and the occasional television or radio documentary.
John McCarthy is joined by Amelia Stewart, whose company specialises in desert travel and who will take her first group for a tour of Iran this weekend and Mary Emma Adams, the wife of the British Ambassador to Iran who has been living there for the past two and a half years. They discuss their experiences as women travellers in Iran.
CHINA
Journalist and writer Simon Winchester reveals a very different China through the life and achievements of the brilliant, eccentric biochemist Joseph Needham (1900-1995). Simon talks about the significance of Needham’s life long work about China and shares tales of his Chinese travels.
Presented by John McCarthy
Photo: Unnamed mosque in Esfahān, Iran. 1970
This week's guest:
Amelia Stewart is a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and the founder of Simoon Travel which leads tours to Libya, Oman and Algeria and expanding to Iran. This Saturday Amelia is leading her first tour to Iran, having done her first ever visit earlier in May. Amelia talks about her experiences of travelling in Iran as a woman acquainting herself with the culture, history and people of the country.
Mary Emma Adams is a freelance writer and the wife of the British Ambassador to Tehran. She likes to travel around Iran as much as possible with her friends and her children.
Iran 30 Years On
13 September – 10 January
London Exhibitions; Film & video screenings; Lectures; Plays & live performances; Seminars & symposiums
The Foreign & Commonwealth Office
Travel Advice Notices aim to ensure that British travellers are well prepared before departure.
Simon Winchester is a Foreign Correspondent and author of several bestselling biographies and non fiction- notably The Surgeon of Crowthorne and The Map that Changed the World. Simon has travelled extensively from bases in New Delhi and Hong Kong; he’s lived in Africa, Ireland, India and China.
Simon’s latest book Bomb, Book and Compass: Joseph Needham and the Great Secrets of China is a biography of the young biochemist Joseph Needham who, in 1943, was sent by the British Government on a diplomatic mission to China to find out why China had been overtaken by the West in science and technology. Joseph Needham is remembered for his work on the history of Chinese science which he later compiled in a twenty-four-volume masterpiece, ‘Science and Civilization in China’.
Bomb, Book and Compass: Joseph Needham and the Great Secrets of China
Publisher: Viking
ISBN-10: 0670913782
ISBN-13: 978-0670913787
The Needham Question
BBC Radio 4 In Our Time (19 October 2006)The BBC cannot be held responsible for
the content of external sites | | | | | | PRESENTER BIOGRAPHIES | | | | |
 John McCarthy is a widely travelled journalist and presenter with a particular interest in the Middle East. | |
| |
|
