Hilary Mantel Speaks at BBC's Reith Lectures

In 1948, in order to mark historic contributions made to public service broadcasting, the BBC brought us the Reith Lectures.

The talks were named for Sir John Reith (who later became a Lord), the British Broadcasting corporation’s first Director-General.

Every year because of Reith’s ideals the BBC brings in a leading figure who delivers a range of radio lectures on intellectual and thought-provoking subjects. Reith had always maintained that broadcasting should be a public service, enriching both intellectual and cultural life of the United Kingdom.

The very first of these Reith Lectures was philosopher Bertrand Russell, who spoke about “Authority and the Individual”. since that first episode we have seen such greats as Robert Oppenheimer, Eliza Manningham-Buller, Grayson Perry, and Stephen Hawking.

The lectures have been presented by the wonderful Sue Lawley since 2002. This year we have seen the author Hilary Mantel lecture us on topics such as a Polish writer’s obsession with history and how it led to their death, constructing pictures of the past, and how art brings the dead back to life. Her lectures continue through July 2017 and will be available on the BBC Radio Player for the foreseeable future.

Lord Reith (image credit: Getty Images)

Full episodes are available on the BBC Radio Player site however, we have a select few clips of Hilary Mantel speaking at the Reith Lectures in June and July 2017. She discusses the role of history (her forte!) in our culture throughout her five lectures.

We begin in mid-June at Hilary’s first lecture in Manchester ‘The Day Is For Living’, in which Hilary argues that art can bring the dead back to life.

“We sense the dead have a vital force still,” she says. “They have something to tell us, something we need to understand. Using fiction and drama, we try to gain that understanding.” She describes how and why she began to write fiction about the past, and how her view of her trade has evolved. We cannot hear or see the past, she says, but “we can listen and look”.

The next clip is taken from Hilary Mantel’s lecture held in the ancient Vleeshuis in Antwerp, a city featured in Mantel’s novels about Thomas Cromwell.

In this lecture Mantel tells the story of the young Polish writer Stanislawa Przybyszewska and her obsessive relationship with history. Przybyszewska wrote immense plays and novels about the French Revolution and revolutionary Robespierre while living in poverty and away from others. She unfortunately died, unknown, in 1934, however her work survived her.

“She embodied the past until her body ceased to be,” Dame Hilary says. “Multiple causes of death were recorded, but actually she died of Robespierre.”

If you can catch one of Hilary Mantel’s full lectures on the BBC Radio, let us know what you thought, and if it inspired anything within you.
Perhaps take a look/listen at previous lectures- artist Grayson Perry’s were my particular favourites, and no one can deny Stephen Hawking would be a wonderful lecturer!

Don’t forget to let us know what you thought here, on Twitter, or Facebook.