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Memory, The Wasp Factory, New Generation Thinker Rebecca Steinfeld

Philip Dodd examines anxieties surrounding memory in the digital age through a new exhibition at London's V&A. Plus Iain Banks's The Wasp Factory and historian Rebecca Steinfeld.

Can we choose what we want to remember and what we want to forget? "Memory Palace" is a new exhibition at the Victoria and Albert museum inspired by Hari Kunzru's book of the same name. It presents a dystopian world in which remembering the past has been banned. Philip Dodd goes to the V&A to speak to Hari Kunzru about his new work, and discusses manipulation of memory, and our anxieties about forgetting, with the actor Edward Petherbridge, the historical novelist Lawrence Norfolk, and memory expert Professor Giuliana Mazzoni.

On the sixteenth of February 1984 a first book by an unknown writer hit the bookshelves. The story of murder and mayhem told by sixteen year old Frank Cauldhame was called The Wasp Factory and it was met with a mixture of admiration and disgust. Thirteen years later The Wasp Factory was included in a list of one of the top one hundred books of the twentieth century. The writer Val McDermid talks to Philip Dodd about this remarkable book and its impact, and her friend and fellow writer Iain Banks.

And historian, Rebecca Steinfeld, one of Radio 3's New Generation Thinkers, on "the war of the wombs" in Israel, a battle that pits Jewish against Arab reproductive power.

Available now

45 minutes

Chapters

  • Hari Kunzru

    Philip Dodd goes to the V&A to speak to Hari Kunzru about his new work, Memory Palace

    Duration: 10:41

  • Memory

    Edward Petherbridge, Lawrence Norfolk & Giuliana Mazzoni discuss manipulation of memory

    Duration: 16:57

  • Rebecca Steinfeld

    One of Radio 3's New Generation Thinkers, on "the war of the wombs" in Israel

    Duration: 05:35

  • Iain Banks

    Val McDermid talks to Philip about The Wasp Factory and her friend Iain Banks

    Duration: 11:13

Hari Kunzru

Hari Kunzru

exhibition is on at the V&A, London until 20th October.

The exhibition was inspired by 听novel, Memory Palace, published by the V&A.

Broadcast

  • Wed 19 Jun 2013 20:00

Free Thinking

Free Thinking

Radio 3鈥檚 new home for arts and ideas.

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