Fintan O'Toole

Ruth Padel

Heather Jones

Elif Shafak

David Edgerton

Sara LeFanu

How great artists and their work were shaped by the First World War

The complete BBC Radio 3 series exploring how great creative minds responded to the First World War in individual works of art and scholarship 
 
World War I saw an unprecedented loss of life in Western Europe, and destruction on a scale no one alive had ever seen. All those who experienced it were irrevocably changed, including many writers and artists upon whose oeuvre it left an indelible mark. 
 
This captivating series examines the impact of the war on artists and thinkers through the prism of their great works. In each episode, a leading figure from the worlds of science, culture and the arts reflects on a single iconic piece, and discusses how the events of 1914-18 shaped its creation. 
 
The 29 artworks in this collection comprise paintings, plays, books, films, sculptures and cartoons. Ian Christie appraises Eisenstein's seminal Soviet drama Battleship Potemkin; Dame Gillian Beer considers Virginia Woolf's masterpiece Mrs Dalloway; Fintan O'Toole decodes James Joyce's epic modernist novel, Ulysses; and Dr Heather Jones looks at the controversy and war connections around Marcel Duchamp's notorious 'Fountain'. 
 
Key texts such as Sigmund Freud's twin essays Thoughts for the Time on War and Death; Rabindranath Tagore's Nobel Lectures; and Siegfried Sassoon's celebrated 1917 protest letter to The Times are analysed by Dr Michael Shapira, Santanu Das and Joanna Bourke; and a panoply of other pieces, among them Kathe Kollwitz's 'The Grieving Parents', Sean O'Casey's The Silver Tassie and Rudyard Kipling's Epitaphs are discussed by experts including Ruth Padel, Elizabeth Kuti and Janet Montefiore. 
 
Powerful, moving, thought-provoking and often shocking, these landmark works are all, in their very different ways, a response to the horrors of World War I and its aftermath - one that vividly demonstrates the transformative effects the conflict had on the collective artistic psyche. 
 
Production credits 
Presented by Allan Little, Sara LeFanu, Martin Rowson, Prof David Edgerton, Michal Shapira, Dr Heather Jones, Ian Christie, Lyse Doucet, Santanu Das, Ruth Padel, Arthur Smith, Prof Gillian Beer, Richard Cork, Sasha Dugdale, Fintan O'Toole, Gerald Dawe, John D McHugh, Elizabeth Kuti, Tarek Osman, Joanna Bourke, Elif Shafak, Dr Imaobong Umoren, Janet Montefiore, Jane Potter and Alex Walton 
Produced by Beaty Rubens, Benedict Warren, Emma Kingsley, Simon Elmes and Sarah Bowen 
 
Episode list: 
1. Paths of Glory 
2. Non-Combatants and Others 
3. Der Krieg 
4. The Memorandum on the Neglect of Science 
5. Thoughts for the Times on War and Death 
6. Le Feu 
7. Battleship Potemkin 
8. Fighting France, from Dunkerque to Belfort 
9. The Broken Wing 
10. The Grieving Parents 
11. Tagore's Nobel Lectures 
12. Tzara's Dada Manifesto 
13. Woolf's Mrs Dalloway 
14. Parade 
15. Akhmatova's July 1914 
16. James Joyce's Ulysses 
17. Elizabeth Bowen's The Last September 
18. Francis Ledwidge's poem O'Connell Street 
19. Father Browne's Photograph of a Wounded Soldier 
20. Sean O'Casey's The Silver Tassie 
21. Marcel Duchamp 
22. Gertrude Bell 
23. Siegfried Sassoon's Letter to The Times 
24. Mata Hari's Final Performance 
25. Isaac Rosenberg's Dead Man's Dump 
26. WEB Dubois' Returning Soldiers 
27. Rudyard Kipling's Epitaphs 
28. Mary Borden's The Forbidden Zone 
29. Isobel Rae 
 
© 2022 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd (P) 2022 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd

Fintan O'Toole

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