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Episode details

Radio 4,16 Nov 2013,58 mins

The Kennedy Book Depository

Archive on 4

Available for over a year

To mark the 50th anniversary President Kennedy's death, Mark Lawson looks at how his death has been reflected in novels, film and television. We'll probably never know with absolute certainty exactly what happened on November 22nd 1963 in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, but that very imprecision allows creative artists full rein to exercise their narrative muscles. Oliver Stone's film 'JFK' suggested that the death was a complex conspiracy; Charles McCarry's 'The Tears of Autumn' put it down to revenge for the death of a Vietnamese General; and Don Delillo's 'Libra' conjures the backstory of the supposed assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald. With archive recordings of Don Delillo and Oliver Stone and newly recorded contributions from veteran thriller writer and ex-CIA agent Charles McCarry and Richard North Patterson.

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