Modern Culture

Melvyn Bragg and guests debate the state of Modern Culture in the 20th century. Culture used to be a word we mocked, a concept too foreign for the stout empiricists of Britain, a species of foreign flummery. Now it is all around us. We have a ministry for it and a newspaper section boldly called Culture.Is contemporary culture evidence of a moral and aesthetic decline in our civilisation this century? Or does it show a society richer and more diverse than it has ever been?

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Guests

  • Will Self No other episodes
    Writer and novelist
  • Roger Scruton 4 episodes
    Novelist, philosopher and Former Professor at Birkbeck College, London

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Programme ID: p00545bs

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00545bs

Auto-category: 306 (Culture and institutions)

Hello (First sentence from this episode) Hello, in the week in which Charles Saatchi launches his new invention, a school of contemporary British artists he calls the young neurotics, and James Joyce's Ulysses has been voted this century's classic novel in a national poll, I'm joined by the philosopher Roger Scruton and the writer Will Self to debate the state of modern culture in the 20th century.