 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
In Our Time
|
 |
|
 |
MISSED A PROGRAMME?
Go to the Listen Again page |
|
|
|
|
|
|
PROGRAMME INFO |
|
|
|
|
|
The big ideas which form the intellectual agenda of our age are illuminated by some of the best minds. Melvyn Bragg and three guests investigate the history of ideas and debate their application in modern life. |
|
|
|
|
LISTEN AGAIN |
|
|
|
|
PRESENTER |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
BIOGRAPHY
|
|
|
|
| "I'm fascinated by the fact that we live in a time when so many people are doing fantastic work, and thinking in areas which it's not remotely possible for me to keep up with & and these people are prepared to talk about it. They're prepared to come on In Our Time and other programmes on Radio 4 and try and talk to the rest of us ..." |
|
|
|
|
|
|
PROGRAMME DETAILS |
|
|
|
 |
|
GEORGE WASHINGTON AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
Read audience reactions to this programme
In 1774 a tobacco farmer from Virginia with nice manners and a quiet lifestyle was moved to put himself forward as the military leader of the most massive rebellion the British Empire had ever suffered. George Washington had been a stout upholder of the status quo, regularly lending money to his ne’r-do-well neighbour simply to keep him in the plantation to which he had become accustomed. He even wrote a book on how to behave properly in polite society.
What drove him to revolution? Washington may have been a moral man, but by anyone’s account he was no scholar; the American constitution is one of the great Enlightenment documents, who provided its intellectual inspiration?
Contributors
Carol Berkin, Professor of History at The City University of New York and author of A Brilliant Solution: Inventing the American Constitution (Harcourt, 2002)
Simon Middleton, Lecturer in American History at the University of East Anglia
Colin Bonwick, Professor Emeritus in American History at Keele University
|
|
|
RELATED LINKS
|
|
|
|
|
| | | | |
|
