Utopia

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the concept of Utopia. Both the idea of, and the longing for a perfect society have been in our imagination for centuries, even millennia. Utopian dreams have driven fantasy, Fascism and fine feeling.Utopias, by definition, do not exist. The literal meaning of the Greek is “nowhere”. And yet, we are still enthralled by its allure. Why do some of us still believe in it - after the devastation wreaked this century by the utopian ideals that gave rise to Fascism and Communism? And what do utopias in fiction tell about the present - and even future?

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Guests

• Dr Anthony Grayling 10 episodes
  Lecturer in philosophy at Birkbeck College, London and Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford
• John Carey 7 episodes
  Merton Professor of English, Oxford University

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Programme ID: p005462n

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/p005462n

Auto-category: 321.07 (Ideal states)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello, I'm joined today by John Carey and Anthony Grayling to look at Utopia as real and fictional in the past, present and future.