 |
|
|
|
|
Radio 4 marks the 40th anniversary of the death of
John F Kennedy
|
|
When the World was Young
Saturday 15 November, 10.30am
What was it about President Kennedy, his glamorous wife and the Kennedy family which so captured the public imagination, especially in Britain?
In interviews with such figures as Lady Antonia Fraser, the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire and Shirley Williams, this richly evocative portrait of the Kennedy magic reveals just why the loss caused by the assassination resonated so powerfully. In 1960 there'd been a palpable sense of a torch being passed to a new generation in power. The youngest elected President came from the officer class of the Second World War, personifying energy and vitality. He was accompanied by Hollywood-esque glamour and style at the White House, formidable brains in the corridors of power and buttressed by a proto-cult which saw the President's photograph displayed in buildings across the world. All this captured the public imagination, along with the carefully-cultivated Kennedy myth of being outside the Establishment.
Britons were specially privileged onlookers of Camelot. The Kennedy children had been part of London society in the 1930s and early 1940s, and their frequent post-war visits to Britain, close links with fashionable aristocracy and the political class gave them unique appeal. The programme charts the seemingly irresistible Kennedy seduction of the public heart and rude shattering of the illusion that a new era had begun.
Presenter: When still in his twenties, the writer and broadcaster Godfrey Hodgson was made Washington Editor of the Observer in 1962. He met and travelled with the President and First Lady up to November 1963 and has remained in contact with Kennedy intimates.
|
|
|
|
|
The Friday Play: Oswald in Russia by Graham White
Friday 21 November, 9.00pm
Set in the 1950's and the Russia of the Cold War, this revealing drama-doc deals with a strange episode in the life of Lee Harvey Oswald as a young man, before his assassination of President Kennedy.
It centres on the trip that Oswald took from the United States to Moscow at the age of 19 in the late 1950s. And from there his meeting with a sympathetic young female tour-guide, and eventual 'defection'.
Told through the perspectives of a patchwork of characters whose paths he crossed, 'Oswald In Russia' is the tragi-comic portrait of a young man's slide from confident idealism into confused disillusionment as he struggles through a new world which is both suspicious of and fascinated by him, and turns out to be considerably less perfect than he'd hoped.
Oswald arrives in Russia determined to be a force in history, and to be recognised by both the nation he's left and the one in which he's arrived as a significant figure. A turbulent childhood and a difficult, bullied time in the US military has turned him against the country he grew up in. To Anna, the young Intourist guide he first meets as he claims asylum he is an intriguing but strange personality, exotic and impulsive. She is surprised by his reckless behaviour, and his insistence on breaking away from her tours of stodgy revolutionary landmarks and model farms. She is scared to get to close to him as he struggles to find the truth of his new setting, and risks her own position and freedom to help him settle and try to become a 'true Russian'. She turns to Henry Granton, a shadowy US businessman living in Moscow to help. This only confirms Oswald of his hatred of the US.
Cast
Oswald - TOM BURKE
Henry Granton - BILL HOOTKINS
Maria - ANNABELLE APSION
|
|
|
|
|
Secrets at Camelot
Saturday 22 November, 10.30am
President Kennedy was regarded exactly as his advisors and image-makers wanted him to be seen - young, stylish, wise and strong, but this sparkling image is facing revision. In 'Secrets At Camelot' the journalist and broadcaster Anthony Howard, who followed Kennedy's glittering career closely, talks to members of Kennedy's most intimate circle, from his speechwriter Ted Sorensen to the doctor whose diagnosis of Kennedy was never made public. These contributors as well as new research sheds fresh light on the reality of life in the White House.
With his public martyrdom in Dallas, Kennedy became canonised into a central part of the American Dream. But his assassination wiped clean a personal and political slate that carried some heavy marks. `Secrets at Camelot' examines the political and moral climate then and now and asks why the press at the time ignored the rumours of corruption, promiscuity, illness and scandal, both before and after Dallas.
President Kennedy was in office only a short time, however, he took his country to the brink of a third world war; he was a serial womaniser; he had connections with organised crime; and he covered up his health problems. But given all those facts he is still regarded as being a greater president than Lincoln, Washington and Roosevelt, but why? This programme provides some of the answers.
|
|
|
|
|
The Archive Hour: Something is Terribly Wrong
Saturday 22 November, 8.00pm
On 22nd November 1963 John F. Kennedy was assassinated. The Archive Hour brings the details of that day vividly to the listener as the shocking news unrolled on local radio station KLIF and through newsflashes. New interviews with those who were there adds to the picture of chaos and disbelief, first with the assassination itself and then two days later when Lee Harvey Oswald was shot in front of the world press in Dallas City Jail by Jack Ruby. Dallas became the most hated city in America and an industry of books pamphlets, films and documentaries were born, founded on speculation, conjecture, rumour, and as often as not misinformation.
Alan Thompson returns to Dallas and the scene of the crimes with the men and women who were there. He uncovers exactly what happened hour by hour. No "historians", no "experts", only the people who saw and heard what happened and knew those involved at the time. People like Nellie Connolly the Governor's wife who was in the President's car when he was shot. Jim Leavelle, a detective with the the Dallas homicide department, the man who was handcuffed to Oswald when he was shot. People like Dallas Morning News man Hugh Aynesworth, eye witness to the President's shooting, Oswald's arrest and murder. Ken Dowe and Garry De Laune (De Laune broke the story on air) from Dallas radio station KLIF 1190 which became the central point of information for hundreds of newspapers, radio and TV stations all over the World. Finally Roy Nichols, who was at the hospital when Kennedy was pronounced dead.
With archive from the three days, some not heard for 40 years, including original KLIF reports, also original police radio reports 'Something is Terribly Wrong' builds a gripping reconstruction of three murders over three days, forty years on.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
