Month: September 2017

Andrew Marr talks to the Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk about his latest novel, The Red-Haired Woman. Set in Istanbul in the 20th century, it's a family drama which weaves together competing foundation myths of patricide and filicide and pits tradition against modernity; east and west. There are more competing ideologies in Jon Sopel's 'Notes from Trump's America' which paints a picture of a country riven by divisions between black and white, rich and poor, the urban and the rural. Reality and fantasy play a part in the choreographer Shobana Jeyasingh's critique of the orientalist ballet La Bayadere. She looks back to the moment in the 19th century when genuine Indian dancers were rejected in favour of the idealised exotic version of the temple dancer in the Western imagination. 'What Shadows' is a play that tells the story of Enoch Powell's famous 'rivers of blood' speech from 1968, and its impact on the country decades later. The play's director Roxana Silbert says the play shows how prejudice can be found across the political spectrum. Producer: Katy Hickman.