Sarah Perry, The Cry, Cultural First Aid

Sarah Perry discusses Melmoth, her eagerly awaited novel after her award-winning The Essex Serpent. Her new novel is about an English translator who, hiding from her past in Prague, uncovers the legend of Melmoth – a woman in black who wanders the world bearing witness to humanity’s worst crimes.

BBC1’s new Sunday night drama is a television adaptation of Helen Fitzgerald’s novel The Cry, in which the abduction of a baby leads to the psychological disintegration of a young woman. Emma Bullimore reviews The Cry and considers why child abduction or disappearance is such a recurring theme in contemporary television drama, with series such as Missing, Kiri and Save Me.

What is ‘cultural first aid’? And why is it so important to save heritage in the face of natural disaster, fire, flood and conflict emergencies? Biovanni Boccardi of UNESCO alongside Aparna Tandon and Jose Luiz Pedersoli from ICCROM join Samira to discuss, and also to look at how cultural first aid is being used to help the National Museum of Brazil after the recent devastating fire.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed Producer: Kate Bullivant