The African-American author of the internationally-acclaimed book The Color Purple has been a political activist for the civil rights and women’s movements since the early 1960s. Interviewed at the time of the publication of her controversial novel Possessing the Secret of Joy, Alice Walker discusses its subject – female genital mutilation. With archive film, dramatised extracts from the book and documentary sequences, this programme confronts a disturbing issue.
Edmund White On Jean Genet
Best known for his novels A Boy’s Own Story and The Beautiful Room is Empty, American writer Edmund White spent six years researching his biography of Genet. In this evocative and poetic film, shot on location in Paris, he presents a highly personal and intriguing portrait of Genet which shows how the writer’s homosexuality was the major influence on his work and his life.
Richard Price
Richard Price is one of America’s top novelists and script-writers. His gritty and violent, street-wise stories of New York have made him a cult hero, and his film credits include Sea of Love and The Color of Money. This programme focuses on his thriller Clockers, set in crime-ridden Jersey City, and it visits a typical American inner-city area with Price. Interviews with friends and fellow writers, readings by Price from his own works, and film clips combine to paint a fascinating picture of the writer and his material.
John Banville
Noted for his dense, thickly-textured prose and his very precise use of often rare and difficult language, the distinguished Irish writer is, by his own definition, “something between a novelist and a poet”. Recording an in-depth discussion between Banville and author Melvyn Bragg, this programme affords an opportunity to understand the motivation and method of this immensely gifted, profoundly literate contemporary writer. It includes visualised readings from Banville’s works, among them The Book of Evidence and Ghosts.
Dracula
Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula was first published in 1897. Since then, the Count and his fellow vampires have become some of the most familiar figures in horror movies and stories. This programme explores the social and psychological anxieties which lie behind Stoker’s book and its fascination with death, disease, social order and sexual repression. A wealth of film clips is included.
Arthur Miller
Arthur Miller is universally regarded as one of the world’s leading contemporary playwrights, with modern classics including Death of a Salesman and The Crucible to his credit. This interview with Miller was recorded as The Ride Down Mount Morgan opened in London. Written when he was seventy-six, it was his first full-length play in more than a decade. Miller talks about the piece, revealing not only his disenchantment with American theatre and culture, but also his deep concern for the moral and spiritual welfare of his country.
Colin Thubron
This programme follows the celebrated travel writer Colin Thubron into the Muslim republic of Uzbekistan. It gathers impressions of past and present, landscape and buildings, ordinary people and everyday customs. But, above all, it is a portrait of the writer himself, of the passions and hardships of his craft, of the peculiar mixture of robustness and sensitivity required of him.
Noel Coward
Noel Coward (1899-1973) left a legacy of more than fifty plays, four hundred songs, several volumes of prose and verse and twenty film appearances. Appraising the work of this consummate theatrical artist, this portrait includes contributions from friends and colleagues, and specially-staged excerpts from his best plays. Extensive interviews with Coward are featured, recorded at his homes in Jamaica and in England, and material from his private archive illustrates his story.
Douglas Adams
The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy established Douglas Adams (1952-2001) as a hugely successful comic writer. Filmed at his London home as he grappled with book five of the Hitch-Hiker ‘trilogy’, Adams discusses his work and his influences. His love of computers is reflected in the programme and, in addition to broadcast extracts from Hitch-Hiker, Adam’s literary creations invade his house, observing proceedings from their parallel universe.
R. S. Thomas
Born in 1913, the poet R. S. Thomas was for many years a parish priest in his native Wales. Known for his passionate Welsh nationalism, his more recent work has become increasingly inward, exploring the paradoxes and self-doubts of faith in writing of great simplicity and resonance. In this film, Thomas talks in interview and reads from his poetry, which is illustrated with stunning footage of the Welsh landscapes from which he draws inspiration.