Radio
Identity crisisKate Chisholm
You may not listen to them every year. Or
even to every lecture in the current series.
But the survival of the annual Reith Lec-
tures on Radio 4 from the old days of the
Home Service and Radio 3 (they were
established in 1948 to honour what Reith
had done for the corporation) is crucial to
the existence of the BBC. Strictly Come
Dancing and The Fall might pay the bills
in overseas sales (not that a lecture series,
no matter how costly to stage, edit, pro-
duce and broadcast, is a great burden on
the licence fee) but without the Reith Lec-
tures, perceptively chaired by Sue Lawley, it
would be much harder to sell programmes
abroad because of the way such radio
stalwarts have created the BBC brand,
given it its leading edge as a broadcaster,
affirmed its credentials as an intellectual
powerhouse, and ensured the corporation
has retained its aura worldwide. And this
year’s series (produced by Jim Frank) is
no exception, because the philosopher and
writer Kwame Anthony Appiah has chosen
as his topic one of the most crucial ques-
tions facing not just those in the UK but
also audiences in Europe and around the
world: ‘Mistaken Identities’. What do we
mean by identity? How do we decide on an
identity? And especially so if, like Appiah
himself, your family crosses borders of race,
belief, nationality and culture.
His parents created a social storm in the
1950s when they got married because his
mother was the daughter of the politician
Stafford Cripps while his father was a Gha-
naian law student whose family is descended
from the chiefs of the Ashanti. As Appi-
ah explained in the course of his lectures,
‘It’s a long answer when people ask where
I’m from,’ going on to reveal that he now
has close family members living in Nige-
ria, Namibia, Ghana, Hong Kong, Britain
and the USA. This gives the professor (who
teaches at New York University) an author-
ity when he calls for a different understand-
ing of identity but also a relaxed approach
to the questions he addresses. When asked in
the question-and-answer session that follows
each talk (often teasing out the meaning and
relevance of that talk) what he thought of
Theresa May’s declaration that if you think
of yourself as a citizen of the world, you are
a citizen of nowhere, he could only laugh
and say, ‘No, perhaps... ’ For him, and for so
many others, this is a meaningless statement.
Appiah would like us to accept that weboth — it makes for gloriously compulsive,
maddening, fascinating viewing. And when
he forgets that his day job is to be the think-
ing pseud’s David Icke — Russell Brand is
a massive fan — Curtis sometimes makes
the most amazingly insightful connections
which give you genuine pause.
His thesis on Colonel Gaddafi, I thought,
was especially persuasive. Gaddafi, he
argued, was repeatedly exploited by the US
as the scapegoat for its problems with the
Middle East — not because Libya ever rep-
resented a serious threat, but rather because
the Americans felt more comfortable deal-
ing with a largely harmless cartoon villain
than they did with the real menace: Syria.
This would explain Reagan’s theatrical
1986 bombing raid on Tripoli; and also, of
course, the bizarre aftermath of the Lock-
erbie bombing when, mysteriously, the fin-
ger of blame shifted from Syria to Libya,
less because the evidence showed this than
because America willed it to be so. Hence,
too, the even weirder incident when Tony
Blair interrupted the BBC news with a live
announcement that his new friend Gaddafi
had renounced all his weapons of mass
destruction, and was henceforward to be
treated as a global third-way visionary. (At
least until it suited the West to scapegoat
Gaddafi yet again, blow up his convoy with
a drone, and allow him to be raped, brutal-
ised and killed by a lynch mob in the tradi-
tional Libyan way.)
Is it any wonder we’ve ceased trusting
our governments? From this perfectly rea-
sonable proposition, however, Curtis segues
to the rather more ambitious notion that
pretty much everything we know is a lie: our
politicians make everything up, so to escape
their lies we’ve retreated into our solipsistic
safe spaces on the internet, where we enter-
tain ourselves watching cats dressed in shark
outfits spinning round the kitchen floor on
Roomba robot vacuum cleaners.
When Curtis is good, he’s very, very good.
I still cherish his insights into the invention
of the environmental movement in his mar-
vellous All Watched Over by Machines of
Loving Grace. And he’s never, ever boring.
But like a restless sixth-former who’s just
too clever for his own good (bet he was real-
ly annoying at Sevenoaks), he has to go and
ruin everything by pushing his theories that
little bit too far into the realms of conspira-
cy-theory silliness.
Plus, his political insights — on the rare
occasions he deigns not to conceal them
behind layers and layers of ambiguity —
turn out to be pretty trite and tiresome.
His illustration of Brexit: reaction shots of
people staring aghast in the horror movie
Carrie. Yes, that’s just what Brexit was like,
have complex identities and to recognise
that these may change through time. Belief,
for instance, is not a question of a set of prin-
ciples cast in stone, but is mutable through
time, and depends on interpretation. Reli-
gious practice and community, he would
argue, is far more resonant, and more cru-
cial to the development and survival of the
major faiths, than the core beliefs on which
they are based. But human fallibility leads us
to search for certainty in the wrong places,
and the ways in which we define ourselves
are often misleading.
In a sense it’s not so much what Appiah
says that is new or revolutionary but the way
he puts his ideas together; his cogency and
ability to articulate what many of us might
be feeling but have difficulty in finding the
right words to express. The chance to listen
to them while in the comfort of your own
living room (rather than a draughty lecture
hall) is what gives radio its lasting power,
because it’s so much easier to concentrate on
what’s being said. I was at the first recording
but appreciated Appiah’s breadth of vision
and suppleness of thought much more when
listening at home.
Let’s hope the newly appointed director
of radio, Bob Shennan (formerly of Radio
2 with a track record in sport, live news and
popular music), also tuned in at home. His
job will be to complement the new overalldirector of radio and education, James Pur-
nell, who you may remember was appointed
a few weeks ago (in a radical reorganisation
of radio management) in spite of having no
editorial or production experience in radio
itself. Their challenge, it was also announced,
is to develop ‘the next chapter for BBC
Radio’, whatever that might mean. Will we
still be hearing talks like that by Professor
Appiah in 2026?
Meanwhile the BBC World Service has
just announced the winners of this year’s
international playwriting competition.
Unlike many literature prizes, this competi-
tion often attracts entries from people who
have never been published, let alone writ-
ten for radio. There were more than 1,000
entries from 112 countries, speaking richly
of the BBC’s reach across the globe and the
continuing power of radio to draw in listen-
ers, and the winners, Joanna Gutknecht from
Canada (in the English as a first language
category), Pericles Silveira from Brazil (for
English as a second language) and Erupe
Jude from Uganda (for the special prize
in memory of the World Service journalist
Georgi Markov), will each have their plays
recorded and broadcast in the new year.
This will give listeners across the world the
chance to hear different voices and alterna-
tive perspectives — a concrete example of
what Professor Appiah was talking about.Will we still be hearing the Reith
Lectures in 2026?Adam. Like a prom queen being doused
with buckets of pigs’ blood. Clever, probing,
insightful you!Curtis is never boring. But like
a restless sixth-former he pushes
theories that little bit too far