Colin McCabe looks at the quality and impact of British television in the 1960s and considers ways in which the best traditions and standards of the medium can be preserved. His specially-prepared lecture is amply illustrated with memorable clips.
Paul Bowles
A compulsive traveller for much of his life, the American writer and composer Paul Bowles (1910-99) confirmed his position as an outsider, both in his life and in his writing, in choosing Morocco as his home some fifty years ago. This film journeys through North Africa to explore Bowles’s powerful novels and the inspiration he discovered there. Bowles gives a major television interview in the programme, which includes dramatisations from his work.
George Barker
This film was made with George Barker (1913-91), the charismatic English poet, novelist and critic, a few years before he died. It looks back over his prolific writing career, traces his full and extraordinary life, and includes Barker reading from his own work.
Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal has long been a thorn in the side of the American establishment, which he goads constantly with his liberal opinions, his controversial political analyses and his incisive wit. In interview, Vidal – as outspoken as ever – discusses his work and the birth and death of the American empire.
Sir Georg Solti
At the age of seventy-five, fifty years after he was forced to leave Hungary because of its anti-semitic regime, maestro Solti (1912-97) went back to conduct his country’s State Symphony Orchestra for the very first time. This film records his emotional return to his homeland. It centres on a searching interview about his early life, accompanies him to landmarks of his youth, such as the Franz Liszt Music Academy where he studied, and shows rehearsals for the triumphant concert he gave.
Bernardo Bertolucci
Shot on location in China, this programme looks at the making of Bertolucci’s Oscar-winning epic, The Last Emperor. The director is seen filming various sequences, including the coronation scene in the Forbidden City in Beijing, for which he used thousands of extras from the Red Army. He also talks about the particuiar challenge of this huge multi-national production and his fascination with the story of Pu Yi, the last Chinese emperor. An interview with Peter O’Toole, who plays the young emperor’s tutor, is included.
George Bernard Shaw
For biographer Michael Holroyd the writer George Bernard Shaw is an all-consuming passion. This programme follows Holroyd’s detective processes, his research through paperwork and visits to locations where Shaw spent time, to get under the skin of the renowned playwright and political theorist. Rare archive footage of Shaw is used as Holroyd considers to what extent Shaw’s life fed his art – and vice versa. The writer’s role as biographer also comes under scrutiny.
Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison, winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize for Literature, has established herself as a leading chronicler of the black experience in America and as one of the country’s finest novelists. She talks in interview about her highly-acclaimed novel, Beloved. Based on a true story, it tells how a mother murders her baby rather than have it taken into slavery. Morrison talks about the problems of dealing with such painful material.
J. M. W. Turner
Master of the landscape genre and one of the finest painters Britain has ever produced, Turner (1775-1851) bequeathed a huge body of his work to the nation. In 1987, a permanent Turner exhibition finally went on display, in a newly-built wing, at London’s Tate Gallery. An exclusive preview of this collection forms the framework for this celebration of the artist’s life and work, which includes contributions from critics and painters – Patrick Heron, Howard Hodgkin and Peter Blake among them.
George V. Higgins
In a series of literary thrillers, starting with The Friends of Eddie Coyle, Higgins (1939-99) drew a convincingly tough, cynical and humorous picture of crime and politics in Boston. His ear for authentically scabrous dialogue was unmatched as he blurred the distinction between the illicit dealings of the underworld and the outwardly respectable goings-on in the city’s State House. This film, shot in Boston, features an interview with Higgins, visits locations he used and dramatises extracts from his novels.