16/06/2013 The Review Show


16/06/2013

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On The Review Show tonight, conniving queens,

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the allusion of fiction and elusive truths, Philip Glass sets

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an American icon to music, challenging art,

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and searching for Paradise.

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All that,

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and we've got music from Tim Burgess of The Charlatans in the studio.

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Welcome to The Review Show.

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Tonight my cultural jury is the crime writer Denise Mina, novelist

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and broadcaster Marcel Theroux and journalist Sarfraz Manzoor.

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Coming up, we'll be looking at new novels from Neil Gaiman

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and James Robertson,

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imagination and endeavour in two big summer exhibitions, Austrian

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director Ulrich Seidl's Paradise trilogy and Walt Disney: The Opera.

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But first, it seems you can't swing a sword these days without

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hitting another medieval drama series.

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With the success of big budget titles

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such as The Tudors, The Borgias and HBO's Game Of Thrones,

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bodices, battles and beheadings are big business.

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Well, now the BBC has joined the fight with home-grown ten-part

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summer blockbuster The White Queen.

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Based on Philippa Gregory's best-selling

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series of historical novels, The Cousins' War, it reinterprets

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the Wars of the Roses from the elusive female perspective.

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Welcome to Planet Plantagenet.

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The White Queen refers to Elizabeth Woodville,

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one of three women at the centre of a clandestine medieval matriarchy.

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Her translucent beauty is one of a host of weapons in her armoury,

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and it is not long before she captures the attention of a young King Edward IV.

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Your Grace, I cannot be your mistress.

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I may die in battle and this could be my last request.

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You would deny your king that?

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You will not die.

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You are quick and brave and lucky.

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This new drama imagines the battle lines drawn not by the men,

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but by the women at the heart of the royal court.

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Even now when I'm reading modern histories about the medieval period,

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I find I have to read through them to find these women

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and to find out what they're doing and what they're thinking,

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and in a sense, to read through that prejudice

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which even today we've inherited.

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This was the Middle Ages,

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when might and majesty were just a rebellion away.

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Family was fickle, and marriage merely a means to an end.

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We should find a purse of gold from the treasure room for His Grace.

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A purse of gold to wage war against King Henry?

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Woman, have you lost your wits?! Are we Yorkists now?

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Yes. If he wins.

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And he is likely to, for then he will control all our fortunes.

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And all the marriages.

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And there are many girls in the family, Richard.

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Sometimes, woman, you even scare me.

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They live in a world where women have no formal political

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opportunity at all.

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A woman cannot fight her own corner in any

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way except by manipulation, by sexual allure, by politicking,

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by rebelling in secrecy,

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and also by using witchcraft that these women have to deploy

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and secret art they can land their hands on in order to

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get their own way, because their is no open way to

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power for a woman - indeed, not just then but for a long time after.

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Sarfraz, do you think it's a credible perspective in history?

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I mean, there's so little documented about it.

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It's hard to say, but in a way it doesn't really matter.

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I think, in terms of the woman who wrote... Emma Frost, I think,

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she said, "Well, we're using history but this is actually drama,"

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so I don't think it necessarily matters.

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I thought this was royal history rewritten as rom-com,

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in the sense that, essentially, it's about a man who's kind of out

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there, he finds someone he wants to love,

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they've got to be coming from different camps,

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and the fact that it has got these female leads does make it more

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interesting, but also, the fact that most of these women who are

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watching drama and reading fiction, it makes sense as well.

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As you're saying, you're watching it,

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it's very obvious that the primary thing is drama, it's a drama,

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and it's kind of like The Tudors but much more accessible.

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The dialogue is very contemporary. You know...

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-"I'm mad for you."

-"I'm mad for you."

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So jarring when he says to her, "I'm mad for you."

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You know, the analysis of female power,

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it didn't really feel particularly like a feminist

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re-writing of history because it was really about them being pretty

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and getting married. It wasn't about who they controlled.

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It was about how they exercise power, isn't it?

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Also, the idea that Jacquetta, who is Elizabeth's mother,

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is also practicing witchcraft.

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Right. We know that women did exercise power in some way.

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You know, in the medieval period of Aquitaine, Henry II's wife made

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a lot of trouble for him.

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And I was longing to see how these women were going to

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exercise power. How is it?

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You don't have your hand on the gear stick as a woman

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in medieval England, so what are they going to do?

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Well, judging by this, you kind of, you look pretty

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and you hope the king takes a shine to you. I didn't see that.

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Lady Macbeth is a more interesting feminist icon

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than the women we met.

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It's because we don't know.

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The character Margaret Beaufort is kept apart from her son.

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She believes Henry VII, as it happens, is going to be king,

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and I thought her character was really strongly

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portrayed as a really intellectual, slightly unhinged, driven woman.

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I thought Edward's mother was a really interesting character as well.

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And in a way, I think, you know, for a dramatist, for a writer,

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it's actually quite nice that this is stuff that there isn't that

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much documentation of, cos it allows you to fill the gaps.

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The danger is just whether you believe any of it's true or not.

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It just wasn't medieval enough for me.

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I wanted something which had more of the stink

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and the regionalism of the Wars of the Roses.

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I mean, OK, we don't know much about them.

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We know quite a lot about some of it. There's a past in letters.

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There's that book She-Wolves by Helen Castor, which is

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about the women powerbrokers before Elizabeth.

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So we know something about them.

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We know they didn't sleep on beds exactly like that.

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We knew they don't have hair crimpers

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and we knew their personal hygiene wasn't exactly like what

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we saw in that thing,

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and I think they succumb to a tendency to Mills and Boon-ify it.

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Don't you think this is just at the service of drama, though?

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They're not trying to be literalists in that sense.

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If you think about the television of The Other Boleyn Girl,

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which was done with an absolutely tiny budget.

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I think they had, like, three walls and a bed,

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and it blew this out of the water.

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It was absolutely amazing in dramatical terms,

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in terms of the integrity, in terms of the sense that you

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had of the power play between all the different characters.

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And this is very superficial.

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But do you think it's because it's just started

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and the idea is that almost... Not exposition,

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but the first two episodes are setting up these

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series of women who then actually,

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-particularly Henry VII's mother, will come into play much more?

-No.

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I think it's kind of Tudors-lite, and it's War of the Roses,

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-which is quite baffling. It's going to be massive.

-Do you think so?

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I thought it was slow. It thought it built slowly,

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and I think we're now used to multi-part dramas which have a

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number of plot strands set up in the early episodes,

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and this really only had one going on in the first episode.

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I agree, Margaret Beaufort, right,

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she's the future mum of the future Henry VII.

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Really interesting character, really promising.

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She was unusual, she had a strange fanaticism,

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and I kind of wanted more of that. You know, these were strange times.

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There were religious wars going on.

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These people were like warlords, they were like gangsters,

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-they weren't like...

-But I think you get a bit of that from Janet McTeer.

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She absolutely dominates cos she is so brilliant.

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When she is in a scene, she kind of takes it over.

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We talked a bit about the magic,

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I think the magic thing could possibly be something which is going

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to grow as well, and I thought that was an added element

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and it struck me as, you know,

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you were saying I was sounding like an accountant,

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maybe I'm going to sound a bit like a commissioning editor here,

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but there is a sense that if you can get a bit of sci-fi

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in addition to the royal light...

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But what about this whole Downton effect?

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This is the next kind of Downton and, actually, it doesn't matter

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too much, as you say, what the literal niche of the story is.

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It's getting the personal drama.

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Being shallow, all these actors are very appealing to look at,

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they have a story that's quite interesting in there.

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This is also territory that most people are not as familiar with

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as they are with the Tudors,

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and I think the BBC are on to a good thing with this.

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Give me Horrible Histories.

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I found it quite hard to work out who they were,

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because they're all so good-looking and they've all got the same hairdo,

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and they all just blur into one.

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In fact, one person actually comments on how alike all the women are.

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The men are sort of identi-kit looking in the same way, I think.

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I wanted more. They've only had a bath once a year!

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The jackets they're all wearing,

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talking about the contemporary language,

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even the fashion is contemporary with those quilted jackets that the men

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-are wearing. It's something you could see out on the streets.

-Puffers.

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Puffers, puffer jackets in The White Queen.

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Well, The White Queen begins tonight on BBC One right after this show.

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This month, two new books also take real life events as a starting

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point to explore very different worlds.

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One the 21st of December, 1988, an aeroplane exploded over

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the Scottish town of Lockerbie, killing 270 people.

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James Robertson's latest book, The Professor Of Truth,

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is the tale of Dr Alan Tealing, who loses his wife and daughter

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when their aeroplane is brought down in a suspected terrorist

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attack, also killing 270 people.

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The story bears many similarities to that of Lockerbie,

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but The Professor Of Truth is very much a work of fiction.

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Fiction, I think can sometimes get at the truth in a way that

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the hard facts of journalism sometimes can't.

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With a novel you can boil some of that detail down to

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some of the more abstract essentials. You know, what is truth?

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What is justice?

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What happens to somebody who suffers that kind of loss,

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and then has to got through this long, emotional, psychological,

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philosophical journey in order to try to find some kind of answer at the end of it?

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"'Tell me, were you even alive before the bomb went off?' He said.

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"'I mean, really alive?' The anger surged again inside me.

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"'Yes, I was,' I said. 'You can keep death and pain.

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"'I was alive every day and I knew it.

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"'I was in love with my wife and I adored my beautiful daughter.'"

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Neil Gaiman has reached super stardom as a writer of graphic novels,

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children's books, adult fiction and, more recently, TV and film.

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The Ocean At The End Of The Lane is his first adult book in

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eight years, although it's told from the perspective of a young boy.

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The fantasy began when I was about eight or nine years old.

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And it was when I learned that the lane that I lived on, there was a

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farm at the end of the lane that had been mentioned in the Domesday Book.

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And I remember thinking at the time, "Wouldn't it be interesting

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"if the same people had lived there for a thousand years?"

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Gaiman's book blurs his real childhood memories of landscapes

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and events with his unique style of other world fantasy.

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His young protagonist's battle with dark magic is fought under

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the aegis of three protective women,

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one of whom is his centuries old 11-year-old neighbour,

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Lettie Hempstock.

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"Something shifted and the ragged thing looked down at us.

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"Lettie Hempstock said, 'Name yourself.'

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"There was a pause.

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"Empty eyes stared down.

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"Then a voice as featureless as the wind said,

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"'I am the lady of this place. I have been here for such a long time.

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"'Since before the little people sacrificed each other on the rocks.

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"'My name is my own, child, not yours.'"

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Denise, as Neil Gaiman said, it's his first adult book in eight years,

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does it read like an adult book?

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It does actually read like an adult book

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and I think one of the things I love about him

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and I think it's a very strong book from him, is that he writes...

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His fantasy is almost like a metaphor you can't quite grasp

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hold of. You can't quite see what he's drawing towards.

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It doesn't feel like abstract fantasy, it's not strange

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and otherworldly for no reason.

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It feels like a sort of dreamed metaphor, you know?

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Which I think is really enchanting.

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And he has this sort of Edwardian construction of childhood,

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which, you know, is really quite beautiful.

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Sarfaz, he said that what he wanted to do was write as an adult

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remembering what childhood really was.

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And he gives this great example where he says, actually,

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it's about adults move to places in straight lines.

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Children meander, wait behind bushes and find their own way.

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And that he is bringing that sensibility to the book.

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Yeah. I mean, I think, to be honest, the bits

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I liked most were the bits which felt like they were written for adults,

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which were his meditations and reflections on what's

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different about childhood as opposed to adulthood.

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And there's a lovely bit where I think Lettie says something like,

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grown-ups aren't really grown-ups on the inside.

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Actually they're all children and they're just pretending

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and I thought that really felt, that felt very true.

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But to be honest, I didn't find the fantasy stuff,

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whether it's a metaphor or not, that appealing.

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And I think it's only an adult book for people who have grown up

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loving sci-fi or fantasy or those kind of things.

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It doesn't really speak to me.

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And I know he's got 1.8 million followers on Twitter

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-or everything, but...

-You're so jealous.

-I would love that.

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But I just think that actually, it's only a book

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if you grew up loving that kind of writing for adults.

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But what about the way that he creates this wonderful

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family of women? Now they're strong women, the Hempstock women.

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Lettie, Mrs Hempstock and old Mrs Hempstock. All witches.

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Yes, they're all witches.

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For me, the pleasures of the book are the pleasures of magic,

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of goodies and badies and a kind of simplistic moral universe.

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And those are the pleasures of children's fiction to me.

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What it doesn't have is rounded characters,

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kind of strong writing, a really interesting character

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and a kind of moral sophistication. So, to me,

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I'm kind of puzzled that the book is billed as an adult novel.

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I know the framing action, the beginning and the end,

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is kind of where he makes the argument this is an adult novel.

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But for me the pleasure of the central section,

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the pleasures I got, they remind me of Susan Cooper,

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The Dark Is Rising or Wrinkle In Time, or Roald Dahl books.

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Well, to me it was Lolly Willowes, the Sylvia Townsend Warner book,

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because it just came alive in exactly the same way.

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You had this incredibly sympathetic portrayal of, these are white witches of course.

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But they were, you know, that isn't, that's not myth.

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He makes a picture in the book that it's a myth. To me that's fairy tale.

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Fairy tale is where there is an evil witch and there's a good witch.

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In a myth there's a witch and they're ambiguous

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and the struggle is what, are they good?

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But this is not a book where there's that kind of ambiguity.

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Isn't it adult in the sense that this is actually a child who's

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trying to process things that were going on which were real,

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but using the kind of imaginative world.

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Or did they even exist, or were they his imagination?

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Because really it centres around a suicide and his dad having an affair with the au pair,

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and this kid trying to make sense of it,

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and trying to understand from that perspective.

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But that's your interpretation of it. That's an interpretation.

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That's like me saying that Jack The Giant Killer is about

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some oedipal fantasy, but that's not on the page.

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But what about, I mean, you talk about the language,

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the way that he creates this perfectly, it seems, sensible idea

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that there's a hole in the boy's foot,

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which then comes in to the heart.

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That's a very difficult trick to pull off.

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I mean, he's so accomplished

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but if you don't get fantasy and it doesn't speak to you

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and you can't go there, it's not going to make any sense to you,

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but if you love that kind of thing, then...

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You have to be in the club beforehand.

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Well, is it a club? I don't know.

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I just think you have to kind of open a door in your mind...

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I do think his evocation of being a boy who sought solace

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in words and in books and sort of the interior world, I think

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that was really beautifully done,

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and that must have been quite autobiographical,

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but that felt quite true, didn't it? That the world outside

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is really kind of complicated, I'm going to go back in.

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Also, I don't find that Edwardian, slightly saccharine,

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-childhoody stuff all that appealing.

-Secret Garden.

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Yeah, I don't really find that terribly appealing,

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but I do love the idea of a child

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faced with quite traumatic events in the adult world,

0:24:000:24:03

trying to make sense of it with the wrong information

0:24:030:24:05

-and coming up with these...

-Because that happens all the time

0:24:050:24:08

in reality and fantasy, the wrong information, the wrong order.

0:24:080:24:11

But in the book, the problem is that

0:24:110:24:13

some evil force has broken in and they are a bit like a canvas sheet

0:24:130:24:17

and then with the help of these good witches, he has to solve the evil.

0:24:170:24:21

There's no sense in which

0:24:210:24:22

this is really about someone who is having trouble processing grief

0:24:220:24:25

or their dad having the affair with the au pair.

0:24:250:24:28

You have some anxiety, some ambivalence about his father.

0:24:280:24:31

I mean, to me, that territory for adult fiction would be,

0:24:310:24:34

"I have ambivalent feelings about my dad, is he a goodie or a baddie?"

0:24:340:24:38

I think if you buy into it,

0:24:380:24:39

I can totally see why it would be an absolutely delicious read.

0:24:390:24:42

I just feel like if you're not part of that, it can leave you cold.

0:24:420:24:45

If you're not 14, it's not a delicious read, I think.

0:24:450:24:48

Interesting, the next book we're going to talk about,

0:24:480:24:50

The Professor Of Truth.

0:24:500:24:52

James Robertson also writes children's fiction

0:24:520:24:54

and his starting point is the dreadful events of December 1988.

0:24:540:24:59

Can you turn fiction into a different kind of truth

0:24:590:25:03

-than the one that exists?

-That's what he's trying to do.

0:25:030:25:06

I'm a bit mystified by this, because in his interviews,

0:25:060:25:08

he basically says the argument that if you write something fictional,

0:25:080:25:11

you can reach a different truth than journalism can, etc.

0:25:110:25:14

But I think that's slightly demeaning journalism,

0:25:140:25:16

because in the book, he doesn't mention Lockerbie

0:25:160:25:19

and he doesn't mention Libya, he doesn't mention Megrahi,

0:25:190:25:22

-but the inference is there that that's what it is.

-Yeah.

0:25:220:25:25

But in the details, when he's talking about the loss of somebody

0:25:250:25:29

through a plane crash or about any of those things,

0:25:290:25:32

those are all things you could glean from very good non-fiction,

0:25:320:25:35

and also, when he talks about how in the book, what he wants to do

0:25:350:25:38

as part of the book is to reopen the case and look at it again,

0:25:380:25:41

it feels like he's kind of having his cake and eating it

0:25:410:25:44

as he's basically saying, "This is not anything to do with Lockerbie,

0:25:440:25:47

"but by the way, I'd like you to start looking at Lockerbie again."

0:25:470:25:50

And interestingly, he followed Lockerbie, as all of us here did,

0:25:500:25:53

very, very carefully.

0:25:530:25:55

Dr Jim Swire was, of course, the main campaigner who believes,

0:25:550:25:59

particularly after the trial, that Megrahi was innocent.

0:25:590:26:01

There was a great conversation between Robertson and Jim Swire

0:26:010:26:06

at Hay because James Robertson purposely never met Jim Swire

0:26:060:26:09

before he wrote the book, and the character of Alan Tealing,

0:26:090:26:12

Jim Swire says, gets as close as you will ever get

0:26:120:26:16

to writing fictionally about the emotions he felt.

0:26:160:26:19

I think the emotional hook is very interesting,

0:26:190:26:21

but I'm really fascinated by that tension between writing

0:26:210:26:25

about true events in a narrative way. I think it's fascinating

0:26:250:26:29

that the central character is a professor of English Literature

0:26:290:26:33

and the whole book for me is about narrative

0:26:330:26:36

and the power of narrative to alter and to rewrite,

0:26:360:26:40

and that history is a narrative, it is a constructed narrative.

0:26:400:26:43

And he posits that, basically,

0:26:430:26:45

the CIA and indeed the investigators here were creating a narrative that

0:26:450:26:50

-they needed to have.

-Yeah.

-Which essentially wasn't the right one.

0:26:500:26:54

To me, I wanted to see someone, I want to see that in non-fiction.

0:26:540:26:59

If someone has new evidence about Lockerbie,

0:26:590:27:01

I don't think a novel is the right place to address it.

0:27:010:27:03

What's interesting also is, in terms of imaginative leaps

0:27:030:27:06

and the idea of what fiction can do,

0:27:060:27:08

I was thinking about Martin Amis' The Second Plane,

0:27:080:27:10

the collection of writings about 9/11.

0:27:100:27:12

In one of them, I think he writes from the position of one

0:27:120:27:15

of the suicide bombers

0:27:150:27:16

and it struck me that if Robertson had written

0:27:160:27:19

a book from the position of a fictionalised Megrahi,

0:27:190:27:22

that could perhaps take you to a place where

0:27:220:27:24

non-fiction hasn't so far done.

0:27:240:27:26

But to take a position from someone like Jim Swire,

0:27:260:27:29

who is around and well-known,

0:27:290:27:30

didn't feel that much of a jump.

0:27:300:27:33

I thought it was a brilliant way to bring it up again,

0:27:330:27:35

talk about it and unpack it.

0:27:350:27:37

Lots of people don't want to talk about it, which is very interesting.

0:27:370:27:40

-A lot of Americans don't want to talk about it.

-Which you can fully understand.

0:27:400:27:43

People find the story that they need

0:27:430:27:45

but what I really loved about this book,

0:27:450:27:47

and the fact it was a fiction book,

0:27:470:27:49

was it looked at the purpose of law.

0:27:490:27:50

Justice is different from truth.

0:27:500:27:53

Justice is different and the law is not about achieving justice,

0:27:530:27:56

it's about resolving disputes

0:27:560:27:58

between two sides.

0:27:580:28:00

I really liked all that.

0:28:000:28:01

You're a crime writer. That wasn't news to you.

0:28:010:28:04

No, I knew that anyway, but it's nice to see it affirmed by somebody else.

0:28:040:28:08

I think the fact it takes you on an emotional journey in a way

0:28:080:28:11

that non-fiction will not and people who read non-fiction

0:28:110:28:14

are different than people who read fiction, so because it's fiction and is from a first-person account...

0:28:140:28:20

If it's oblique, do you think that what James Robertson is saying is,

0:28:200:28:25

"I want fiction to be a campaigning tool to reopen Lockerbie."

0:28:250:28:31

I think this is a strange tension. Everybody bases

0:28:310:28:34

fiction on true events but people are very

0:28:340:28:38

churlish about admitting it if there's a ghost of being sued.

0:28:380:28:40

I don't really understand what it's about.

0:28:400:28:43

I think if it has anything made up, it's fiction.

0:28:430:28:45

One drop of made-up stuff makes it fiction.

0:28:450:28:49

There might be people who read this that might not

0:28:490:28:51

read a non-fiction book about Lockerbie and that might ignite them to want to know more.

0:28:510:28:55

It will certainly send them to Wikipedia to say,

0:28:550:28:57

"What's he driving at?" It certainly sparked an interest in me

0:28:570:29:01

in reading more about what actually happened.

0:29:010:29:04

Neil Gaiman's novel is released this week

0:29:040:29:06

and James Robertson's The Professor Of Truth is available now.

0:29:060:29:10

Sadly, another of Scotland's finest writers, Iain Banks, died last weekend.

0:29:100:29:14

Humorous, thoughtful and witty to the last, you can see his final

0:29:140:29:17

interview in a Review Show special on BBC Two on Tuesday at ten o'clock.

0:29:170:29:22

Now to a filmmaker who has sent seismic shocks through

0:29:220:29:26

festival circuits and lists Werner Herzog and John Waters amongst his fans.

0:29:260:29:31

Austrian director Ulrich Seidl's provocative, uncompromising new

0:29:310:29:34

trilogy, Paradise: Love, Faith and Hope, provides a stark window into

0:29:340:29:39

the worlds of three women and their search for the personal paradise.

0:29:390:29:43

In the Paradise trilogy, Seidl underscores his ability to

0:29:540:29:57

create uncomfortable viewing through excruciatingly intimate

0:29:570:30:01

examination of his characters.

0:30:010:30:02

The first film, Love, takes us to the

0:30:150:30:17

heart of sexual tourism with middle-aged divorcee Teresa.

0:30:170:30:21

Teresa is faced with tensions between her desire

0:30:300:30:33

and the financial transactions demanded by her would-be young lovers.

0:30:330:30:36

Complex relationships with men

0:30:490:30:51

and religion run through the second instalment, Faith,

0:30:510:30:54

as a devout Catholic woman struggles with the return of her

0:30:540:30:58

estranged Muslim husband.

0:30:580:31:01

Hope, the final and more redemptive of the films, is set in a teenage diet camp.

0:31:010:31:06

It examines 13-year-old Melanie's crush on her doctor

0:31:080:31:11

and the sexualisation of romance at that confusing age.

0:31:110:31:14

Seidl's tableau imagery, mixed with long single-shot scenes,

0:31:180:31:21

create a window through which to reflect on his subject matter.

0:31:210:31:24

Although it often makes for awkward viewing.

0:31:260:31:28

Marcel, three very stark films, but let's look at Love first.

0:31:340:31:40

Were you uncomfortable watching this?

0:31:400:31:43

I was very uncomfortable watching it.

0:31:430:31:45

This is not a date movie.

0:31:450:31:47

I made the mistake of watching it with my dad

0:31:470:31:49

and I didn't know where to put myself.

0:31:490:31:51

There are longueurs,

0:31:510:31:53

it's challenging,

0:31:530:31:55

it's very sexually frank,

0:31:550:31:57

but I thought it was an amazing film.

0:31:570:32:00

I've never seen anything like it

0:32:000:32:02

and it will haunt me for a long time.

0:32:020:32:05

There's a naturalism, a nakedness about the characters

0:32:070:32:10

that you just don't see at the cinema.

0:32:100:32:12

Yes, it's a difficult European film

0:32:120:32:14

but I think we should salute it for that reason.

0:32:140:32:17

To echo Marcel,

0:32:170:32:18

it's uncomfortable viewing.

0:32:180:32:20

The director has a photography background

0:32:200:32:23

and you can see that in the way those shots are composed, in wide shots.

0:32:230:32:26

There's shots where you have the white Austrian women

0:32:260:32:29

in a row of sun-loungers

0:32:290:32:31

and on the other side you have a long line of African men waiting

0:32:310:32:34

and it's deeply uncomfortable.

0:32:340:32:37

The other thing that makes it uncomfortable

0:32:370:32:39

is these are amateurs and professionals working together...

0:32:390:32:43

The Kenyans are the amateurs.

0:32:430:32:45

Some of these are actually beach boys

0:32:450:32:48

and you don't quite know

0:32:480:32:51

how much they knew before the scenes began,

0:32:510:32:53

what level of improvisation there was.

0:32:530:32:55

I watched it on my own.

0:32:550:32:58

I was quite glad I did

0:32:580:32:59

because this felt like it was verging on quite uncomfortable,

0:32:590:33:03

ethically dubious territory.

0:33:030:33:06

I felt really implicated in the sex tours

0:33:060:33:08

and when I realised a lot of these guys are not professional actors.

0:33:080:33:11

It's incredibly explicit.

0:33:110:33:13

Is it exploitative, do you think?

0:33:130:33:15

I think it WAS exploitative and really quite soiling.

0:33:150:33:19

It's a long time since I watched a film

0:33:190:33:22

that made me feel that powerfully.

0:33:220:33:23

I feel it does implicate the audience

0:33:230:33:26

in the sexual exploitation of these men.

0:33:260:33:28

At the same time, it is quite beautiful

0:33:280:33:31

and a world you've never seen before.

0:33:310:33:33

I thought the inversion of the genders for sex tourism

0:33:330:33:36

really highlighted...

0:33:360:33:37

If they had been

0:33:370:33:39

fat, unattractive old men

0:33:390:33:41

and very beautiful young women, I wouldn't have been as uncomfortable

0:33:410:33:44

because it's so familiar.

0:33:440:33:46

What about the idea that it's kind of Rubenesque,

0:33:460:33:48

that there's a beauty their bodies as well?

0:33:480:33:51

I think if you point the camera

0:33:510:33:53

at anything for long enough, it becomes beautiful to your eye

0:33:530:33:56

and I think it's just so unfamiliar

0:33:560:33:58

and you realise

0:33:580:34:00

after ten minutes,

0:34:000:34:01

the actress is a very beautiful woman.

0:34:010:34:03

What did you think of her journey, though?

0:34:030:34:06

The idea was that this was her first

0:34:060:34:09

episode of sex tourism

0:34:090:34:11

but she became coarsened...

0:34:110:34:13

It's a great descent, great storytelling.

0:34:130:34:16

..towards these men.

0:34:160:34:17

She starts off wanting love, a man to look into her eyes

0:34:170:34:19

and then gets progressively disillusioned

0:34:190:34:21

as she has one bad experience after another.

0:34:210:34:23

We don't know how the movie

0:34:230:34:25

was made, but in terms of the film,

0:34:250:34:27

the exploitation is mutual -

0:34:270:34:29

the men get money, the women get sex.

0:34:290:34:31

It's hard to say who's benefiting but by the end,

0:34:310:34:35

she's become so coarsened by the experience that she takes...

0:34:350:34:38

You feel she really degrades someone who

0:34:380:34:42

is not part of this, without wanting to give the whole plot away,

0:34:420:34:46

she degrades someone who's not part of this whole system

0:34:460:34:49

and it's deeply troubling.

0:34:490:34:51

Then you have, in one other of the trilogy

0:34:510:34:54

the woman who's gone to Kenya's sister.

0:34:540:34:56

She has either the zeal of a convert

0:34:560:34:58

or is a very ardent Roman Catholic

0:34:580:35:00

who is evangelising.

0:35:000:35:03

What did you think about that?

0:35:030:35:04

This is a very Austrian form of Roman Catholicism.

0:35:040:35:07

It's not Irish Catholicism,

0:35:070:35:09

that's for sure.

0:35:090:35:11

It's very, very rigid

0:35:110:35:13

and I felt I really wanted to like the film

0:35:130:35:15

because it's very beautiful

0:35:150:35:17

and there's a lovely central relationship

0:35:170:35:19

and I really liked that character.

0:35:190:35:21

I think although they're very stark,

0:35:210:35:22

the characters are quite sympathetic

0:35:220:35:24

but at the same time I didn't feel it was anything to do with spirituality...

0:35:240:35:28

It's all to do with sex, isn't it?

0:35:280:35:31

It's all about repressed sexuality.

0:35:310:35:33

But she scourges herself...

0:35:330:35:35

in a very strange and sexual way,

0:35:350:35:37

trying to atone for the sins of others.

0:35:370:35:40

I felt that was a misunderstanding of a search for spirituality

0:35:400:35:43

through very rigid religion, which I think...

0:35:430:35:47

That ambiguous thing she does with the crucifix...

0:35:480:35:50

I felt that was a bit silly, to be honest.

0:35:500:35:52

I think there were some really interesting things in this film

0:35:520:35:55

in the sense that they had

0:35:550:35:57

this ardent Catholic

0:35:570:35:59

who is in a relationship with a Muslim guy

0:35:590:36:02

who comes back halfway through the film - her husband.

0:36:020:36:05

What I find quite interesting

0:36:050:36:07

and quite counter-intuitive

0:36:070:36:08

was that he is basically saying to her,

0:36:080:36:10

"You've gone a bit too far.

0:36:100:36:12

"What's up with your religion?"

0:36:120:36:14

That was quite clever, but I think in this film,

0:36:140:36:16

as in some of the other ones in the trilogy,

0:36:160:36:19

he creates interesting characters

0:36:190:36:21

and puts them in interesting scenes

0:36:210:36:22

but he sort of runs out of plot.

0:36:220:36:24

Yes, but just going back

0:36:240:36:26

to the nature of the Roman Catholicism,

0:36:260:36:28

this was shown

0:36:280:36:30

in Venice and there was an outcry

0:36:300:36:32

in the Roman Catholic Church

0:36:320:36:33

about the way this was being portrayed.

0:36:330:36:36

It's actual quite comical as well.

0:36:360:36:38

There's the scene where she goes into this elderly couple

0:36:380:36:40

and starts hectoring them because they're living in sin

0:36:400:36:43

and it felt a bit improvised.

0:36:430:36:46

It's actually quite funny.

0:36:460:36:47

It was done in a documentary style.

0:36:470:36:49

It looked like they had just sent her in to some non-actors.

0:36:490:36:52

The director does come from a documentary background...

0:36:520:36:54

Is that problematic in terms of creating drama?

0:36:540:36:56

Watching it and knowing about the beach boys,

0:36:560:36:59

then there's this really fantastic scene

0:36:590:37:01

of this really out-of-control, angry, alcoholic Russian woman.

0:37:010:37:05

And knowing about the beach boys, I was thinking, "This is very well improvised,"

0:37:050:37:08

then realising afterwards and thinking,

0:37:080:37:11

"She probably was a really angry, alcoholic Russian woman!"

0:37:110:37:14

We don't know.

0:37:140:37:16

We have to assume the filmmaker's working in good faith.

0:37:160:37:18

The third film is the daughter of the woman who's the sex tourist.

0:37:180:37:21

While she is off in Kenya,

0:37:230:37:24

her daughter has been sent to a diet camp.

0:37:240:37:26

I kept thinking of Stand By Me or something.

0:37:260:37:31

This seemed to be much more dramatic with a lovely narrative.

0:37:310:37:34

Until the paedophile plot kicked in...

0:37:340:37:38

You recognise the filmmaker's DNA after a while

0:37:380:37:42

and are kind of bracing yourself for the horrible

0:37:420:37:45

revelation that will take the plot in a weird direction, but of

0:37:450:37:49

all the stories, that is the one that has some redemption in it, I think.

0:37:490:37:53

It does say something about the trilogy that

0:37:530:37:55

a film about a 13-year-old and a much older doctor is the most

0:37:550:37:58

heart-warming film of the group.

0:37:580:38:00

What he does, incredibly, is capture teenage girls talking to each other.

0:38:000:38:06

He is absolutely brilliant.

0:38:060:38:07

There's a bit with the three girls lying on the bunk beds,

0:38:070:38:10

seen from their knees, playing with their DSs.

0:38:100:38:13

It's just really sweet and the relationship...

0:38:130:38:16

What he really captured, which I have never seen on film before,

0:38:160:38:19

is the girls' relationships are with one another.

0:38:190:38:22

And the love interest is just a prop. The doctor is a notional man.

0:38:220:38:27

There's a scene of when the women in love are on the lounger

0:38:280:38:32

and they are talking about their men...

0:38:320:38:34

I never thought of that.

0:38:340:38:35

It's basically the same thing and you wonder

0:38:350:38:37

whether that will happen to them in a couple of decades.

0:38:370:38:40

It's interesting that this is the younger kids,

0:38:400:38:42

the unsullied version, that kind of wide-eyed innocence, asking each

0:38:420:38:45

other questions cos they're really scared they don't know the answers.

0:38:450:38:49

Both of those scenes involve "what do you do with hair?" and things like that.

0:38:490:38:54

One of them is talking about it, their mother's talking about it

0:38:540:38:57

and the daughter's talking about it.

0:38:570:38:59

What do you think is the experience of having these three films together?

0:38:590:39:02

To watch them back-to-back is a pretty tough watch.

0:39:020:39:06

But he's saying something about paradise, I suppose.

0:39:060:39:10

To me, the strongest film is the first one

0:39:100:39:11

and the other two are less successful.

0:39:110:39:14

Love has the strongest narrative

0:39:140:39:15

and the biggest sense of the character of the journey.

0:39:150:39:18

The other two, I would find fault with.

0:39:180:39:21

Could you watch them together?

0:39:210:39:22

God, I wouldn't ask anybody to watch them back-to-back.

0:39:220:39:25

He wants people to watch them as a five-and-a-half-hour film.

0:39:250:39:29

I would watch them a month apart. I think you would just recover in time to watch the next one.

0:39:290:39:33

Werner Herzog said, "Never have I stared so directly into Hell,"

0:39:330:39:36

which I think could go on the poster. KIRSTY LAUGHS

0:39:360:39:38

Paradise: Love is in cinemas now,

0:39:380:39:40

with Hope and Faith following in July and August,

0:39:400:39:43

a month apart, as Denise says.

0:39:430:39:45

Next tonight, Tim Burgess is perhaps best known as lead singer

0:39:450:39:48

with The Charlatans.

0:39:480:39:50

But he's recently paired up with Kurt Wagner of Lambchop

0:39:500:39:52

for his latest solo album, Oh No, I Love You.

0:39:520:39:55

Here's Tim with The Economy.

0:39:550:39:58

# High noons and summers

0:40:170:40:20

# The twelfth of five

0:40:250:40:28

# We are no smoking

0:40:340:40:37

# Beyond the still and viewless package

0:40:400:40:44

# Ooh...

0:40:490:40:52

# Our economy

0:40:540:40:56

# We're so sorry, so sorry

0:41:030:41:07

# It takes more than that for us to disappear

0:41:070:41:13

# You can go there

0:41:190:41:21

# We can do this

0:41:210:41:24

# We'll pretend that we don't even need it

0:41:240:41:29

# We can tune a piano

0:41:360:41:39

# It's like everything we thought

0:41:390:41:43

# That sax would be

0:41:430:41:45

# Ooh...

0:41:540:41:58

# Our economy

0:41:590:42:02

# Ooh...

0:42:090:42:11

# Our economy

0:42:150:42:18

# Ooh

0:42:250:42:30

# Our economy

0:42:310:42:35

# It won't be wasted

0:42:440:42:47

# It won't be lost

0:42:520:42:55

# Always a poke

0:43:010:43:04

# And you

0:43:060:43:09

# Wore my clothes

0:43:100:43:12

# Ooh...

0:43:140:43:18

# Our economy

0:43:210:43:23

# Ooh...

0:43:300:43:33

# Our economy

0:43:370:43:40

# We're so sorry

0:43:400:43:42

# It takes more than that

0:43:420:43:44

# For us to disappear

0:43:440:43:48

# We're so sorry

0:43:480:43:50

# So sorry

0:43:500:43:52

# Our economy

0:43:520:43:56

# We're so sorry

0:43:560:43:57

# So...ooh... #

0:43:570:44:00

There'll be more from Tim later in the show

0:44:070:44:09

and his new remix album, Oh No, I Love You More,

0:44:090:44:11

is out now.

0:44:110:44:12

He'll also be performing a special one-off gig

0:44:120:44:15

with Lambchop at the Barbican on the 23rd of June.

0:44:150:44:19

Now, it's as much a symbol of the English summer

0:44:190:44:21

season as Wimbledon and the Henley Regatta.

0:44:210:44:23

The Royal Academy's annual summer exhibition

0:44:230:44:26

is a huge melee of art

0:44:260:44:27

which draws vast crowds

0:44:270:44:29

and both fulfils the dreams and dashes the hopes

0:44:290:44:31

of many amateur artists.

0:44:310:44:33

It's far from easy to get your canvases onto those hallowed walls

0:44:330:44:37

so elsewhere in the capital,

0:44:370:44:39

one gallery is showing art by those

0:44:390:44:40

who haven't been quite so lucky.

0:44:400:44:42

Meanwhile, the Hayward is displaying work

0:44:420:44:44

by individuals who create fantastical art

0:44:440:44:46

which is outside the mainstream.

0:44:460:44:49

The world's largest open-submission art competition

0:44:490:44:52

has been running since 1769.

0:44:520:44:56

This year, there were more than 12,000 entries

0:44:560:44:59

and rivalry is fierce,

0:44:590:45:01

with little more than 10% of the works

0:45:010:45:03

being approved by the hanging committee.

0:45:030:45:06

Once regarded as stuffy and staid,

0:45:060:45:08

in recent years, the summer exhibition

0:45:080:45:11

has tried to keep up with the times.

0:45:110:45:13

Amateurs deemed worthy of wall space

0:45:130:45:16

can see their portraits, abstracts or landscapes

0:45:160:45:19

alongside work by distinguished names.

0:45:190:45:22

The like of Frank Auerbach,

0:45:220:45:24

Michael Craig-Martin and Grayson Perry.

0:45:240:45:28

Everything is contemporary.

0:45:280:45:30

Everything has been produced in the last couple of years.

0:45:300:45:32

We have paintings people would describe as being traditional

0:45:320:45:35

because they're straightforward landscapes

0:45:350:45:37

or portraits or something like that,

0:45:370:45:40

alongside much more difficult, challenging contemporary work.

0:45:400:45:44

I think our sense is we need to make all of that work together.

0:45:440:45:48

In a mischievous retort to this august institution,

0:45:500:45:53

for the past 23 years,

0:45:530:45:55

a gallery in Waterloo

0:45:550:45:56

has been showing work rejected by the Royal Academy.

0:45:560:46:01

Not The Royal Academy

0:46:010:46:02

is inspired by the Salon De Refuses,

0:46:020:46:05

a Paris exhibition in 1863

0:46:050:46:07

which showed the work of artists such as Manet and Whistler

0:46:070:46:10

which had been rejected by the influential Salon committee.

0:46:100:46:14

Though this gallery, too, has selection criteria.

0:46:140:46:18

We don't like really ugly things.

0:46:180:46:21

Never have. We're totally escapist.

0:46:210:46:23

We live in a world that's full of ugly things

0:46:230:46:26

and when I go home and I look at my own paintings,

0:46:260:46:29

that have been painted by artists,

0:46:290:46:32

I would like to feel I'm looking at something beautiful and uplifting.

0:46:320:46:37

Nearby, the Hayward Gallery's

0:46:370:46:39

Alternative Guide To The Universe

0:46:390:46:41

celebrates work by people whose imaginations

0:46:410:46:43

have not been contaminated by traditional teaching.

0:46:430:46:47

Almost all of them are self-taught.

0:46:490:46:51

They didn't go to art school.

0:46:510:46:53

If they're physicists, they didn't study physics at university.

0:46:530:46:57

They learned things out of their own passion

0:46:570:47:00

and they've also imagined things that most of us take for granted

0:47:000:47:04

and decide we'll leave to the experts.

0:47:040:47:07

I think what you see in this work,

0:47:070:47:09

no matter how far-fetched or whimsical it may seem sometimes,

0:47:090:47:13

is the strength of this utter conviction.

0:47:130:47:16

These are people who believe in what they're doing,

0:47:160:47:18

and most of them are trying to make the world a better place.

0:47:180:47:21

So, Denise, beginning with the Hayward,

0:47:230:47:26

the kind of Outsider Art, so it's called,

0:47:260:47:28

often it's people on the edge of society who want to create a world that doesn't exist.

0:47:280:47:33

Did you find it beautiful?

0:47:330:47:35

I found it extraordinary and really, really stimulating.

0:47:350:47:38

You know, it's so interesting to go to something like this after

0:47:380:47:42

the Royal Academy because what it really highlights for me

0:47:420:47:45

is all those filters that stop art being shown or appreciated,

0:47:450:47:49

a lot of these people haven't been to art school,

0:47:490:47:52

they haven't been accepted. A lot of these people were not known until they died.

0:47:520:47:56

The work was not known until they died.

0:47:560:47:58

There's one particular woman who did self portraits

0:47:580:48:02

in kiosks in bus stations and it's Cindy Sherman.

0:48:020:48:05

Cindy Sherman bought her collection and then repeated it.

0:48:050:48:08

And then repeated it.

0:48:080:48:10

Sherman is a name who's presentable so she gets through the filters.

0:48:100:48:13

I find this so stimulating and I did think, you know,

0:48:130:48:16

we should look for art everywhere, not just in galleries.

0:48:160:48:19

But of course, often the kind of worlds they're creating,

0:48:190:48:22

of course, have theories, which are absolutely fantasy.

0:48:220:48:26

One of them was based on the idea that gravity doesn't exist

0:48:260:48:30

and the planet's going upwards. The other thing to pick up on,

0:48:300:48:34

I don't think a lot of these people think of themselves as artists.

0:48:340:48:37

They think of themselves as scientists or mathematicians

0:48:370:48:40

or philosophers and actually,

0:48:400:48:42

what I found quite interesting was that some of the ideas

0:48:420:48:45

behind the art was often more interesting

0:48:450:48:47

and more vivid than the art itself.

0:48:470:48:49

In a sense, this whole thing, it's not just the Academy is set up to keep these people out.

0:48:490:48:53

There's a kind of euphemism going on here.

0:48:530:48:55

A lot of these people have mental health problems.

0:48:550:48:58

This is art by people, some of whom have spent their whole life in institutions.

0:48:580:49:01

And I found the work very moving indeed.

0:49:010:49:05

I'd seen the Japanese outsider art the week before,

0:49:050:49:08

but one of the things that is moving about it is the sense

0:49:080:49:11

that these are not artists who are in control of what they're doing.

0:49:110:49:14

They're driven by obsessions, crazy theories that are palpably wrong...

0:49:140:49:18

Do you need the biography, do you think?

0:49:180:49:20

Well, I think that's part of the USP. I think it's implied.

0:49:200:49:25

I don't know. I mean, what you're saying there about an artist,

0:49:250:49:28

it's obsessive people, many of whom have mental illnesses,

0:49:280:49:32

people working on the basis of completely wrong ideas,

0:49:320:49:35

-that's most of us, isn't it?

-Well, no, no...

0:49:350:49:38

You know, monomaniacs, that's a definition of a human being.

0:49:380:49:42

I think the other thing is that often art is about

0:49:420:49:44

trying to create a vision and sharing that vision.

0:49:440:49:47

I think they do stand up. You don't necessarily need to know the biography.

0:49:470:49:50

What about the idea of "calendar savant", one is,

0:49:500:49:53

which is the repetition of numbers? Which in itself is utterly beautiful

0:49:530:49:56

and weirdly had echoes of Gilbert and George for some reason.

0:49:560:50:00

That order, creating, some kind of desperate need to create order.

0:50:000:50:04

There was another one, a woman who does things, I think she calls them painted prescriptions,

0:50:040:50:08

this idea of trying to create something from inside.

0:50:080:50:10

A lot of what was shown there is now actually quite old

0:50:100:50:13

and is now fetching money.

0:50:130:50:16

How quickly are the dealers going to move in

0:50:160:50:19

and already have moved in on some outsider art as commercial?

0:50:190:50:22

I think that's really worrying. One of the things about the way...

0:50:220:50:25

I think as, you know, people making things,

0:50:250:50:28

trying to make sense of the world by making things

0:50:280:50:31

and reconstructing reality by making things, that's an activity.

0:50:310:50:35

Selling things as a commodity is another activity

0:50:350:50:39

and I think it's important in some ways to try and keep them separate.

0:50:390:50:42

If you go to the Royal Academy

0:50:420:50:43

and you see, and I went there on Buyers' Day,

0:50:430:50:46

which was a really quite bizarre experience,

0:50:460:50:48

because you're there and everything is about what the price is,

0:50:480:50:51

who's got a future, what's going to be worth more in the future.

0:50:510:50:55

And you look at outsider art and you think, you know, a market,

0:50:550:50:59

-well, markets always build up.

-And an outsider artist should be able

0:50:590:51:02

to benefit from the market as much as anyone else.

0:51:020:51:04

It's not about value. The market is not value.

0:51:040:51:07

Outsider art has something special, because we get so bored. Money seems to have infiltrated the art world.

0:51:070:51:12

With outsider art, these people were compelled to create and that's what comes through.

0:51:120:51:16

It's unsullied by any mercenary motive. It's from the heart.

0:51:160:51:20

That's what Samuel Beckett called it, "the itch to make,"

0:51:200:51:23

you know, which is delicious, it's gorgeous.

0:51:230:51:26

So you go from the relative quiet of the Hayward Gallery

0:51:260:51:30

into the Royal Academy, 1,300 paintings, everywhere.

0:51:300:51:35

-Was it thrilling?

-It was more than thrilling.

0:51:350:51:38

The novelist Stendhal had a series of panic attacks

0:51:380:51:41

when he went to Florence because he was overwhelmed

0:51:410:51:43

by the amount of art and I had something of the same thing when I went into the Royal Academy.

0:51:430:51:47

It's so different, there are sculptures, light boxes, drawings

0:51:470:51:52

engravings, installations, and I had to go back, actually.

0:51:520:51:56

I went twice because the first time I was completely overwhelmed

0:51:560:51:59

by the amount of art on display. But after a while it becomes demystified

0:51:590:52:02

because it actually tells you the price of everything

0:52:020:52:05

and that somehow brings it back down to earth immediately,

0:52:050:52:09

when you go, "That's 1,500 quid. Not on your Nelly."

0:52:090:52:11

And you can see people going around doing concisely that.

0:52:110:52:14

There is not a space on the walls.

0:52:140:52:17

And of course it looks crazy but apparently it's curated.

0:52:170:52:21

-Did it feel curated?

-It didn't feel curated.

0:52:210:52:23

It is like TK Maxx on a Saturday for art lovers!

0:52:230:52:27

But it didn't really feel curated

0:52:270:52:29

and I was very interested in the curatorial statements

0:52:290:52:33

at the start of every room, because you did think, "This is a jumble sale!"

0:52:330:52:38

But what was really weird, you would look around

0:52:380:52:40

and you would see there's a big Sean Scully,

0:52:400:52:42

which bizarrely isn't for sale.

0:52:420:52:44

And of all the artists, Sean Scully I wouldn't have thought

0:52:440:52:46

would have wanted to have all these amateur artists around him,

0:52:460:52:49

with varying degrees of ability, I would say.

0:52:490:52:52

I think the only way it was curated was there were rooms

0:52:520:52:55

devoted to photography and to portraiture

0:52:550:52:58

and to sculpture, so in that way... You're looking unpersuaded,

0:52:580:53:01

but there is a little bit of that.

0:53:010:53:03

I found it absolutely overwhelming

0:53:030:53:05

and I think that in a way what you have to do is just literally...

0:53:050:53:08

In a way it's quite pure, though, because you walk around and say,

0:53:080:53:10

"What affects me? What's actually touching me?"

0:53:100:53:12

And because there is so much, you just look for the things that do.

0:53:120:53:15

I found I was looking at things and thinking, "Oh, I like that one.

0:53:150:53:18

"Oh, no, that's just the biggest one."

0:53:180:53:20

And also, "That one's a way up there,"

0:53:200:53:22

and you want to be able to just peacefully look at it

0:53:220:53:25

but you couldn't because people were banging into you.

0:53:250:53:27

Did you not find that the things that really struck

0:53:270:53:29

were the things which were a bit different? I found I got exhausted by the paintings

0:53:290:53:34

and it was actually things like... There's a car made of steel bars

0:53:340:53:38

by Ron Arad, and did you see the girl posting a letter

0:53:380:53:41

though the letterbox? It was a little sculpture.

0:53:410:53:44

-I just thought it was absolutely beautiful.

-It was nice to go around

0:53:440:53:47

and think, "I could actually... There's a picture there for 100 quid."

0:53:470:53:50

I know this is a tough economic time so you don't want to seem callous,

0:53:500:53:53

but 100 quid for a piece of art that you might treasure for the rest of your life, you think, "OK."

0:53:530:53:57

You start thinking, "This is not beyond...

0:53:570:53:59

"If I didn't need a new boiler, maybe I would be able to!"

0:53:590:54:02

And then you have the Tracey Emin limited editions

0:54:020:54:04

with all the different stickers all the way along.

0:54:040:54:06

Tracey Emin was certainly not going to get rejected.

0:54:060:54:08

Apart from anything else she's a Royal Academician so, therefore, she gets her place.

0:54:080:54:12

But if you were rejected, you can hightail it to Waterloo.

0:54:120:54:15

-That's right.

-And you can go into Not The Royal Academy.

0:54:150:54:18

-Was that any less crazy?

-It was not all the paintings.

0:54:180:54:22

They've rejected pictures too. And I found it really interesting.

0:54:220:54:27

One of the things I noticed,

0:54:270:54:29

one of the consistent themes of things that had been rejected

0:54:290:54:33

were views of places you can get to on Ryanair or easyJet.

0:54:330:54:37

It just made me think, there was like Sorrento,

0:54:370:54:39

"You're not getting in the Royal Academy."

0:54:390:54:41

It made me think that's so class-ridden.

0:54:410:54:43

It has to be a difficult place to get to, it can't be accessible.

0:54:430:54:46

Picking up on your thing about TK Maxx,

0:54:460:54:49

I thought there was an admiral purity to the exhibition

0:54:490:54:53

in that you had pictures that were stacked

0:54:530:54:56

according to the size of the canvas.

0:54:560:54:58

And I think also there was a sense that you could tell what they actually wanted.

0:54:580:55:02

You got it in the clip there, things that were pretty to look at.

0:55:020:55:05

I have to say, what I thought I was looking at was paintings,

0:55:050:55:08

-rather than art.

-Not at the Royal Academy.

0:55:080:55:10

It does say that the Royal Academy is representative of art now.

0:55:100:55:14

It's not art now, it's pictures you can buy now, pretty much,

0:55:140:55:16

-and some models.

-But the stuff that wasn't at the Royal Academy,

0:55:160:55:19

it's just pretty pictures. There's no engagement with the world.

0:55:190:55:22

-And what does that say about British taste?

-It says that people want something cosy

0:55:220:55:26

to put on their walls.

0:55:260:55:27

Well, you can enter the Hayward's alternative universe

0:55:270:55:30

or check out the art for sale at the Royal Academy

0:55:300:55:32

and Not The Royal Academy throughout the summer.

0:55:320:55:35

20th century American legends have provided much inspiration

0:55:350:55:38

for contemporary composers. Einstein, Nixon, Jackie Kennedy,

0:55:380:55:42

even Anna Nicole Smith have all been given the operatic treatment.

0:55:420:55:46

Now one of the greatest icons of popular culture,

0:55:460:55:49

the man behind an empire which has entertained most of us

0:55:490:55:52

at some time or another, is the subject of a new work

0:55:520:55:54

by one of the world's leading composers, Philip Glass.

0:55:540:55:58

Glass' 25th opera deconstructs Walt Disney,

0:56:000:56:03

the creator of some of the most familiar fairytales

0:56:030:56:06

and cartoon characters of all time.

0:56:060:56:09

The opera is based on a novel by Peter Stephan Jungk,

0:56:090:56:12

which reimagines Disney through the eyes

0:56:120:56:14

of a disgruntled former employee.

0:56:140:56:17

As Disney lies dying in a hospital bed,

0:56:180:56:21

he confides to a nurse he calls Snow White

0:56:210:56:24

that he hopes to have his body cryogenically frozen.

0:56:240:56:28

At one point he is saying,

0:56:280:56:30

"You know, I'm going to die,

0:56:300:56:32

"but Mickey and Donald will live forever."

0:56:320:56:35

And he seems almost jealous that his creation shall outlive him.

0:56:350:56:39

# I'll become a Messiah

0:56:420:56:44

# So that everyone who's afraid of death

0:56:440:56:49

# Will never say die. #

0:56:490:56:53

Disney is portrayed as a tyrant, a megalomaniac.

0:56:530:56:57

His views on communism and race are revealed

0:56:570:56:59

through a disagreement with an animatronic Abraham Lincoln.

0:56:590:57:03

# ..I ask you to come back to

0:57:030:57:06

# The truth in the Declaration of Independence

0:57:060:57:11

# I beg you Do not destroy

0:57:110:57:14

# An important emblem of humanity...

0:57:140:57:19

# Be freedom

0:57:230:57:26

# Become the political religion of our mission... #

0:57:260:57:34

'This is not a documentary.'

0:57:340:57:37

An opera is a form of poetry, so this is a... Oh, you can say...

0:57:370:57:43

an impression... an interpretation of a life.

0:57:430:57:47

OPERA SINGING

0:57:470:57:52

Marcel, we expect Philip Glass,

0:57:540:57:56

we have high hopes always of Philip Glass to come up with

0:57:560:57:59

an extraordinary take on a subject or a personality,

0:57:590:58:02

was this it on Walt Disney?

0:58:020:58:04

You know, I really love the music of Philip Glass

0:58:040:58:07

and one of the things I like about it is that it is open.

0:58:070:58:09

Those arpeggios are like someone restating a question over and over again

0:58:090:58:13

and expecting you to supply the answer.

0:58:130:58:15

The trouble with this was that it was telling us

0:58:150:58:17

what to think about Walt Disney, that he was a reactionary,

0:58:170:58:20

that he was a bigot, and that he was an unpleasant individual.

0:58:200:58:23

It didn't have the nuance that I think Philip Glass's music has.

0:58:230:58:26

Do you think it was problematic that they were not allowed to use

0:58:260:58:29

any of the Disney imagery? That they then created their own imagery?

0:58:290:58:32

-I thought they did that brilliantly.

-I don't think that was problematic at all.

0:58:320:58:36

As an opera, not just a biography,

0:58:360:58:38

I felt that the libretto did not work at all

0:58:380:58:40

and I kept wishing they would stop singing

0:58:400:58:42

so I could hear the music. I don't know if anyone else felt that way?

0:58:420:58:45

But it is just, you know, everyone is declaiming all the time.

0:58:450:58:48

It is organised in these vignettes - now we are here, now we are there,

0:58:480:58:51

and so they all have to tell you where they are and how they feel about that,

0:58:510:58:54

"I really like it here, and now I have got cancer." There is no interaction, there are no...

0:58:540:58:59

There was no poetry.

0:58:590:59:01

At one point they literally read out the train timetable, don't they?

0:59:010:59:04

-Yeah.

-Why do you think the libretto was so problematic?

0:59:040:59:07

I think...

0:59:070:59:09

To me it seemed like a very, very big star who may or may not

0:59:090:59:13

be a little bit moody and everybody trying not to do anything wrong.

0:59:130:59:17

It felt very, very staid

0:59:170:59:19

and it felt like a collaborative project with one person

0:59:190:59:23

with an awful lot of power

0:59:230:59:24

and everybody else tiptoeing around them.

0:59:240:59:26

The dialogue is absolutely awful

0:59:260:59:29

and this thing of having subtitles above the stage of an incredibly

0:59:290:59:32

beautifully staged thing, is so distracting and it is in English.

0:59:320:59:37

I went with my wife and she said, "Actually, stop listening to the words and just try and focus

0:59:370:59:41

"on the music instead and actually it will tell you the story better."

0:59:410:59:44

I think the subtitles actually did not help that

0:59:440:59:47

because you were reminded of how flat the libretto was.

0:59:470:59:49

But the question that it asks was also quite an interesting one,

0:59:490:59:52

about this idea of what is an artist?

0:59:520:59:54

At one point the disgruntled animator says,

0:59:540:59:57

"You are just an effective CEO rather than a real artist,"

0:59:571:00:00

and that is quite an interesting question to be asking.

1:00:001:00:03

But actually, Philip Glass said he wasn't doing a hatchet job.

1:00:031:00:06

What he was trying to do was show a man of his time from a small town

1:00:061:00:09

that then turned into Disneyland with all those racist, yes,

1:00:091:00:13

tones of the time.

1:00:131:00:15

You could make that argument, but I did not feel that I had left

1:00:151:00:18

and I had seen a nuanced portrait of a genius, I felt I'd been...

1:00:181:00:22

-And everything...

-Maybe he wasn't a genius, though.

1:00:221:00:24

-Walt Disney wasn't a genius?

-Maybe he wasn't, I don't know.

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You could say that somebody could be a product of their time

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and still be a genius. I think we got the bit that he was a product of his time.

1:00:291:00:33

I don't think we would have been persuaded on the basis

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of the opera that he was a genius.

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One of the central themes is the dispute with the employees,

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which is actually a much more interesting dispute.

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It is not just, "I worked for you..."

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-Intellectual property and all sorts.

-It's about ownership of the characters,

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which would have been a fantastic thing to get into

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and it is a dispute that is still going on in comics now.

1:00:491:00:52

It is that idea about whether you draw something or not matters, I guess, isn't it?

1:00:521:00:55

-Or it is character design.

-But Stan Lee is the same...

1:00:551:00:57

-But that would be the same for Damien Hirst, wouldn't it?

-It would be the same for Hirst

1:00:571:01:01

and the same for Stan Lee, who didn't actually draw Spiderman,

1:01:011:01:03

but it is still his character, and I think that actually, in a sense that,

1:01:031:01:07

you can't be lucky for as long as Walt Disney was lucky.

1:01:071:01:09

There has got to be some talent there underneath it as well.

1:01:091:01:12

But what he had was the talent to pick the right people...

1:01:121:01:14

-To pick the people around you.

-And that goes for lots of big businesses.

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Which is what he explains as a little kid at the end of the opera.

1:01:171:01:20

It is the same with Steve Jobs, isn't it?

1:01:201:01:22

The idea that Steve Jobs didn't come up with the iPad or whatever,

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but eventually, that is what you get identified with.

1:01:251:01:27

That is why I thought it was a hatchet job,

1:01:271:01:29

I didn't think they were fair to what he has given to the world.

1:01:291:01:32

Well, The Perfect American continues at the ENO until Friday, 28th June.

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Also that night, if you would like to see more modern opera,

1:01:361:01:39

George Benjamin's Written On Skin is on BBC Four at 7:30pm.

1:01:391:01:43

You can also hear it on Radio 3 on Saturday 22nd June at six o'clock.

1:01:431:01:47

Well, that is just about it for tonight.

1:01:471:01:50

If you want to find out more about everything we have discussed, do go

1:01:501:01:53

to our website and, of course,

1:01:531:01:54

don't forget to follow us on Twitter.

1:01:541:01:56

Thanks to my guests,

1:01:561:01:57

Denise Mina, Sarfraz Manzoor and Marcel Theroux.

1:01:571:02:00

Next month, Martha will be here

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discussing some of the exciting events on offer at the Manchester Festival,

1:02:021:02:06

including Kenneth Branagh's Macbeth.

1:02:061:02:08

To get us in the mood we will leave you with a Manchester classic.

1:02:081:02:11

Here is Tim Burgess again with his acoustic version of

1:02:111:02:14

The Only One I Know. Good night.

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# The only one I know

1:02:281:02:32

# Has come to take me away

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# The only one I know

1:02:381:02:42

# Is mine when she stitches me

1:02:421:02:49

# The only one I see

1:02:571:03:02

# Is mine when she walks down the street

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# The only one I see

1:03:071:03:12

# Has carved her name into me

1:03:121:03:19

# Everyone's been burned before

1:03:271:03:34

# Everybody knows the pain

1:03:381:03:43

# Everyone's been burned before

1:03:481:03:54

# Everybody knows the pain

1:03:581:04:04

# The only one I know

1:04:171:04:22

# Never cries Never opens her eyes

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# The only one I know

1:04:281:04:33

# Wide awake and then she's away

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# The only one I see

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# Is mine when she walks down the street

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# The only one I see

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# Has turned her tongue into me

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# Everyone's been burned before

1:05:121:05:20

# Everybody knows the pain

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# Everyone's been burned before

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# Everybody knows the pain

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# Everyone's been burned before

1:05:541:06:00

# Everybody knows the pain. #

1:06:041:06:10

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