Simon Schama’s Story of Us: Our Contested Land

seizoen 1, aflevering 3

Vandaag 22:00 ‧ 1u

Simon Schama explores the work of artists who have taken inspiration from the British landscape, and expressed how vital it is to people's sense of who they are. He takes a look at Philip Larkin’s extraordinary poem Going, Going, conceived at the exact moment Britain and the world were waking up to the environmental cost of progress; the poetry of Seamus Heaney, which sought to find common ground in the Irish landscape in the midst of the violence of the Troubles; and the agitprop play The Cheviot, the Stag and the Black Black Oil, which asked profound questions about the Scottish people's relationship with their own land. Simon also visits Derek Jarman’s extraordinary garden in Dungeness, created as he was dying from Aids, which touches on a universal need to connect with nature as a consolation for mortality. And there's an interview with U2’s Bono about his deep affection for Seamus Heaney’s poetry and the role of culture in the run-up to the historic Good Friday Agreement.