Animal Farm
In Our Time29 Syys 2016

Animal Farm

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Animal Farm, which Eric Blair published under his pen name George Orwell in 1945.

A biting critique of totalitarianism, particularly Stalinism, the essay sprung from Orwell's experiences fighting Fascists in Spain: he thought that all on the left were on the same side, until the dominant Communists violently suppressed the Anarchists and Trotskyists, and Orwell had to escape to France to avoid arrest.

Setting his satire in an English farm, Orwell drew on the Russian Revolution of 1917, on Stalin's cult of personality and the purges. The leaders on Animal Farm are pigs, the secret police are attack dogs, the supporters who drown out debate with "four legs good, two legs bad" are sheep.

At first, London publishers did not want to touch Orwell's work out of sympathy for the USSR, an ally of Britain in the Second World War, but the Cold War gave it a new audience and Animal Farm became a commercial as well as a critical success.

Featuring:

Steven Connor - Grace 2 Professor of English at the University of Cambridge

Mary Vincent - Professor of Modern European History at the University of Sheffield

Robert Colls - Professor of Cultural History at De Montfort University

Producer: Simon Tillotson

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in September 2016.

Jaksot(1085)

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss artificial intelligence. Can we create a machine that creates? Some argue so. And is consciousness, as we are, with headaches and tiffs and moods and small pleasures a...

29 Huhti 199928min

Fundamentalism

Fundamentalism

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the roots and the consequences of religious fundamentalism. It still surprises many Western liberal intellectuals that religion survives at all. That fundamentalism flo...

22 Huhti 199928min

Evolution

Evolution

Melvyn Bragg examines the future of gene therapy and advances in evolutionary biology. Are we continuing to evolve? If so, what are the signs and if not, why not? And those apes, so very very near us ...

15 Huhti 199928min

Writing and Political Oppression

Writing and Political Oppression

Melvyn Bragg examines how two writers’ work have been shaped by political oppression and explores whether writers have a political role in modern society. The connection between writers and politics h...

8 Huhti 199928min

Good and Evil

Good and Evil

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss whether religion can still be seen as a way of interpreting and judging good and evil in modern western civilisation and examines what the discoveries of Darwin and our...

1 Huhti 199928min

Architecture in the 20th Century

Architecture in the 20th Century

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rise in so-called spectacular architecture at the end of the 20th century. Is architecture to do with what we live in, where it’s located, the buildings that accomm...

25 Maalis 199927min

Animal Experiments and Rights

Animal Experiments and Rights

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the role of animals in humankind's search for knowledge. Since the Greek physician Galen used pigs for anatomical studies in the 2nd century, animals have been used by ...

18 Maalis 199928min

History as Science

History as Science

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the importance of geography and ecology in determining world history since civilisation began. The 18th century historian Thomas Carlyle said that world history was the...

11 Maalis 199927min

Suosittua kategoriassa Historia

olipa-kerran-otsikko
gogin-ja-janin-maailmanhistoria
mayday-fi
huijarit
mystista
rss-ikiuni
tsunami
totuus-vai-salaliitto
konginkangas
sotaa-ja-historiaa-podi
rss-i-dont-like-mondays-2
rss-sattuu-sita-suomessakin
rouva-diktaattori
rss-kirkon-ihmeellisimmat-tarinat
apinan-vuosi
rss-subjektiivinen-todistaja
tiedetta-ja-sirkushuveja-vanhojen-aikojen-podcast
rss-peter-peter
historian-nurkkapoyta
hippokrateen-vastaanotolla