Main content

Depicting Disability

Depictions of disability in history and culture: What's changed? Eleanor Barraclough talks to researchers Clare Walker Gore, David Turner and Jessica Secmezsoy-Urquhart.

This November sees the 25th anniversary of the UK Disability Discrimination Act. As we consider what contemporary progress has been made we'll uncover the long history of disabled people鈥檚 political activism, look back at the treatment of disabled people in Royal Courts and at fictional portrayals of disability in 19th century novels from Dickens and George Eliot to Charlotte M Yonge and Dinah Mulock Craik. Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough presents.

Professor David Turner is the author of Disability in Eighteenth-Century England: Imagining Physical Impairment which won the the Disability History Association Outstanding Publication Award for the best book published worldwide in disability history. He teaches at Swansea University and was advisor on the 成人快手 Radio 4 series Disability: A New History. His latest book is Disability in the Industrial Revolution: Physical Impairment in British coalmining 1780-1880 (co-authored with Daniel Blackie)
Dr Clare Walker Gore has just published Plotting Disability in the Nineteenth-Century Novel. She teaches English at the University of Cambridge and is a 成人快手/AHRC New Generation Thinker.
Jessica Secmezsoy-Urquhart is at the University of St Andrews. They look at the disabled history of the royal court in Renaissance England and Scotland and the role of the Court Fool. They also make films and broadcasts for The Social on 成人快手 Scotland. /programmes/p07l3ldn

You might be interested 成人快手 Radio 3's curated playlist of Words and Music broadcast Sunday November 8th at 5.30pm which marks the anniversary with selections including readings from Janet Frame, Oliver Sacks, Sue Townsend and Milton; music by Amadou and Mariam, Robert Wyatt, Beethoven and performer Evelyn Glennie.

Producer: Helen Fitzhenry.

Available now

44 minutes

Last on

Wed 4 Nov 2020 22:00

Broadcast

  • Wed 4 Nov 2020 22:00

Featured in...

The Arts & Ideas Podcast

The Arts & Ideas Podcast

You can download all the past episodes of Radio 3's Free Thinking

Discussions and talks from the Free Thinking Festival 2019

Discussions and talks from the Free Thinking Festival 2019

Angry politics, what we can鈥檛 say, being diplomatic, weeping, emotion in music, film & TV

Click to listen to discussions, talks and music as the Free Thinking Festival 2019 Gets Emotional

Click to listen to discussions, talks and music as the Free Thinking Festival 2019 Gets Emotional

Angry politics, what we can鈥檛 say, being diplomatic, weeping, emotion in music, film & TV

CLICK to LISTEN & SEE programmes from the Free Thinking Festival 2018: The One & the Many

CLICK to LISTEN & SEE programmes from the Free Thinking Festival 2018: The One & the Many

We examine the fast-changing relationship between the individual & the crowd

CLICK to LISTEN & SEE all programmes, images, clips & features from 2017's festival

Free Thinking Festival 2017: The Speed of Life