The Statue of Liberty

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Statue of Liberty.”Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free”. With these words, inscribed inside her pedestal, the Statue of Liberty has welcomed immigrants to America since 1903. But the Statue of Liberty is herself an immigrant, born in Paris she was shipped across the Atlantic in 214 separate crates, a present to the Americans from the French. She is a token of friendship forged in the fire of twin revolutions, finessed by thinkers like Alexis de Tocqueville and expressed in the shared language of liberty. But why was this colossal statue built, who built it and what did liberty mean to the Frenchmen who created her and the Americans who received her?

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Robert Gildea 5 episodes
  Professor of Modern History at Oxford University
• Kathleen Burk 11 episodes
  Professor of Modern Contemporary History at University College London
• John Keane 6 episodes
  Professor of Politics at the University of Westminster

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Programme ID: b008xh3x

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b008xh3x

Auto-category: 900 (History & Geography)