Ah, the BBC and its 'messages'...
Last night's Front Row on Radio 4 previewed The Last Kingdom, the BBC's new epic drama/attempt to cash in on the success of Game of Thrones. It concerns the Vikings' invasion of Anglo-Saxon England. BBC historian Dr Janina Ramirez talked to Kirsty Lang about it.
According to Dr Ramirez, it looks as if it might 'express' a familiar BBC point:
And there's some very important questions being asked about identity - something we still need to ask ourselves today. It's a truism that we trace English heritage back to the Anglo-Saxons but that in fact...it was a mixed, culturally-diverse place, very cosmopolitan, and this series, I think expresses that very well.I bet it does.
*****
Away from bias,
Front Row also talked haiku.
New finds, old poet.
Two hundred haiku
by eighteenth century great
Yosa Buson found.
Show's guest compared it
to discovering lost Keats'
notebook, miracle.
Guest, wise as water,
Translated one found Buson
For us. Petals fell.
"The torn paper um-
brella has just become a
ghoul with moonlit eyes".
Tip for Halloween:
Must tear paper umbrella,
scare trick or treaters.
