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Last broadcast on Mon, 9 Nov 2009, 21:30 on BBC Radio 4 (see all broadcasts).
Synopsis
Andrew Marr sets the cultural agenda for the week. He talks to writer Tony Marchant about crime, law and Georgian London, Hans Ulrich Obrist about the art of the curator, Shlomo Sand about his controversial unravelling of Jewish history, and Sue Brown about Keats's deathbed companion, Joseph Severn.
HANS ULRICH OBRIST
The top spot in Art Review magazine’s “Power 100” has gone to the curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, co-director of exhibitions at London’s Serpentine Gallery. Curators have significantly overtaken artists in this year’s list of the most influential people in the art world, but why are curators thought to wield so much clout and what do they actually do? Hans Ulrich Obrist believes that the art of the curator is undergoing a renaissance. He explains how this is affecting the art world and the future for exhibitions.
SHLOMO SAND
In The Invention of the Jewish People, the Israeli historian Shlomo Sand unravels the mythologised history of the Jewish people to claim that the Israelites were never exiled from the “promised land”, and that most Jews are descended from converts. What does that mean for the State of Israel? And how far are Palestinian Arabs the true heirs of the biblical Jews? Shlomo Sand argues that a new analysis of the history of the Jews is vitally important for the future of Israel and all its inhabitants.
The Invention of the Jewish People is published by Verso.
TONY MARCHANT
The phrase “innocent until proven guilty” is a cornerstone of the British legal system, but the man who coined it, trail-blazing 18th Century barrister William Garrow, has been largely forgotten. In a new BBC courtroom drama, Garrow’s Law, Tony Marchant brings William Garrow’s revolutionary approach to the legal system to life. Based on real cases from the Old Bailey archive, the series explores issues of rights and justice at a time of social upheaval.
Garrow’s Law: Tales from the Old Bailey continues on Sunday 15 November on BBC 1.
SUE BROWN
“Poor Keats keeps me by him – and shadows out the form of one solitary friend – he opens his eyes in great horror and doubt – but when they fall upon me – they close gently and open and close until he falls into another sleep”. So wrote the painter Joseph Severn as he tended Keats on his deathbed in Rome. The Victorians hailed Severn as the selfless friend of the young poet and he was later buried next to Keats. But in the 20th century he was attacked as a sentimental and unreliable witness. In a new biography, Sue Brown reassesses the life of Severn, arguing that he was more than just a footnote to Keats.
Joseph Severn, A Life: The Rewards of Friendship is published by Oxford University Press.
Broadcasts
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Mon 9 Nov 200909:00
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Mon 9 Nov 200921:30
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