This week Andrew Marr is joined by Felicity Lawrence, William Dalrymple, James Cuno and Jean Aitchison.
The campaigning journalist FELICITY LAWRENCE has been tracing the connections between big business, governments and shoppers to assess the cost of what we eat. The low nutritional content of industrialized food, its social and environmental costs mean that something must change now, she argues. Eat Your Heart Out: Why the Food Business is Bad for the Planet and Your Health is published by Penguin.
The Islamic world is now united against the West more forcefully than at any time since the Suez Crisis, argues the historian WILLIAM DALRYMPLE. But it hasn’t always been thus, he says, and accuses ‘Islamophobic’ commentators who write about a ‘clash of civilisations’ between East and West of making the conflict worse. William Dalrymple will be delivering a lecture on ‘Islam and Islamophobia’ on Wednesday 18 June as part of the Primrose Hill Lectures at St Mary’s Church, London. He’ll also be lecturing on his latest book The Last Mughal in Southampton on Tuesday 17 June and the British Museum on Thursday 19 June.
Where should one of the ancient world’s most valued treasures, the Elgin Marbles, rightfully be preserved? In the British Museum in London where they are currently housed? Or a new museum near the Parthenon in Athens from where the sculptures were removed in the early 1800s? Director of the Art Institute of Chicago JAMES CUNO argues that the current trend towards returning antiquities to the countries where they were found is actually damaging and often disingenuous. Who Owns Antiquity? Museums and the Battle Over Our Ancient Heritage is published by Princeton University Press.
We live in a time when new technologies such as email, chatrooms, instant messaging and texting have revolutionised language, laying down new rules which are being taken up at alarming speed. But will it change the English language for the worse? Linguist JEAN AITCHISON argues that such change - and the accompanying outcry - is nothing new. Jean Aitchison will be taking part in the ‘Talking in Text’ event at the ICA in London on Tuesday 17 June.
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