The Reith Lectures

Geoffrey Hosking, Professor of Russian History at University College London, explores the issues of a collective memory in his second Reith lecture from his series entitled 'The Rediscovery of Politics'. In this lecture entitled 'The Return Of The Repressed', Professor Hosking describes how Soviet society is recovering from a state of communal amnesia. Only with a common history can a society move...

Geoffrey Hosking, Professor of Russian History at University College London, explores changes in Soviet behaviour his third Reith lecture from his series entitled 'The Rediscovery of Politics'. In this lecture entitled 'A Civil Society in Embryo', Professor Hosking examines a trend which could mark the beginning of the end of totalitarianism in the Soviet Union. He considers the civil rights movem...

Geoffrey Hosking, Professor of Russian History at University College London, explores national aspirations in the fourth of his Reith Lectures entitled 'The Rediscovery of Politics'. In this lecture entitled 'The Flawed Melting Pot', Professor Hosking discusses the national desires and ambitions of the various Soviet peoples. He explores how nationalism will affect the Soviet Union.

Geoffrey Hosking, Professor of Russian History at University College London, explores Soviet religion in the fifth of his Reith Lectures entitled 'The Rediscovery of Politics'. In this lecture entitled 'Religion and the Atheist State', Professor Hosking analyses what part religion has to play in reuniting the Soviet peoples and explores the recent easing of tensions between the Soviet state and th...

Geoffrey Hosking, Professor of Russian History at University College London, debates the role of pluralist politics in the sixth of his Reith Lectures entitled 'The Rediscovery of Politics'. In this lecture entitled 'The Paradox of Gorbachev's Reforms', Professor Hosking explores the role that Mikhail Gorbachev has played as the General Secretary of the Communist Party for the Soviet Union and wha...

French poet Jacques Darras delivers the first of his Reith Lectures entitled 'Beyond the Tunnel of History'. Taking inspiration from the formation of the Channel Tunnel, Durras looks back through the shared history of France and Britain and suggests that their respective national pasts will need to be reinterpreted in the light of a shared future. In his first lecture entitled 'The Time Traveller'...

French poet Jacques Darras delivers the second of his Reith Lectures entitled 'Beyond the Tunnel of History'. He explores the concept of multicultural cities and draws from examples. He highlights the city of Bruges during the Burgundian era as a beacon of advancement in European unification. In his second lecture entitled 'The Golden Fleece', Jacque Darras argues that the reason why it was such a...

French poet Jacques Darras delivers the third of his Reith Lectures entitled 'Beyond the Tunnel of History'. He argues that with the opening of the Channel tunnel a new age of mobility is within everyone's grasp. Many can now follow in the footsteps of the wealthy and literary by going on their very own 'Grand Tour' of Europe. This freedom, Darras argues, will bring cultures closer together and un...

French poet Jacques Darras delivers the fourth of his Reith Lectures entitled 'Beyond the Tunnel of History'. He explores the question: 'Have the enormities of the Second World War, like the Holocaust and the dropping the atomic bomb, caused us to ignore the lessons of the First?' In his fourth lecture entitled 'Remembering the Somme', Jacques Darras explores the memories of the First World War. H...

French poet Jacques Darras delivers his final Reith Lecture from his series entitled 'Beyond the Tunnel of History'. In his fifth and final Reith Lecture entitled 'Towards the Light', Jacques Darras finds a clue to our shared European future in an early cross-Channel cultural interaction: the 'School of Light'. The school was established by Irish monks in the medieval city of Laon and Jacque Darra...