Politics in the 20th Century

Melvyn Bragg talks to Gore Vidal and Alan Clarke about the future of the nation-state; is the concept dead and buried? And what is the relationship between politics and morality - have salaciousness and self-righteousness taken over where seriousness of intent and a strong nerve left off, or was it ever thus?

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Guests

• Gore Vidal No other episodes
  American writer, commentator and author of The Smithsonian Institution
• Alan Clarke No other episodes
  Historian, politician and author of The Tories: Conservatives and the Nation State, 1922-97

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Programme ID: p005456z

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/p005456z

Auto-category: 320.1 (The state)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello, my guests today are the novelist and commentator Gore Vidal, whose new novel The Smithsonian Institution is published this week.