Silent Spring

'Silent Spring', written by Rachel Carson and published in 1962, is widely credited with having launched the environmental movement. Serialised in The New Yorker, it caused a furore. The first chapter presents a fictionalised portrait of the devastating effects that chemicals could have on a thriving farming community "Some evil spell had settled on the community; mysterious maladies swept the flocks of chickens; the cattle and sheep sickened and died. Everywhere was a shadow of death."?
But what has been happening to environmental thinking since Silent Spring?

Here, five key figures in the world of environmentalism deliver essays on Silent Spring and some of the important works that followed it.

In episode one, writer and academic Jules Pretty of the University of Essex kicks off the series with a look at Silent Spring itself and then key figures in the environmental world will explore some of the texts that have followed on from Silent Spring.

Producer: Neil Rosser.