The Reith Lectures

This year's Reith lecturer is the Booker prize-nominated author Marina Warner. A writer of fiction, criticism and history, her works include novels and short stories as well as studies of art, myths, symbols, and fairytales. Her series of Reith Lectures entitled 'Managing Monsters' explore how myths express and shape our attitudes. In her final Reith Lecture, Marina Warner looks at the relationship between myths of national identity and the home, and argues that at the heart of nationalism lies the interdependency of home, identity, heritage and women, and that this mythology of the hearth continues to flourish in the present nationalist revival.

This year's Reith lecturer is the Booker prize-nominated author Marina Warner. A writer of fiction, criticism and history, her works include novels and short stories as well as studies of art, myths, symbols, and fairytales. Her series of Reith Lectures entitled 'Managing Monsters' explore how myths express and shape our attitudes. In her penultimate lecture, Marina Warner explores myths of cannibalism from The Tempest to Hannibal Lecter. She argues that it is really only in the last decade that historical study has established how deeply fantasy has shaped the story and the chronicles of conquest. She explores how the imagery of forbidden ingestion masked other powerful longings and fears such as that of mingling and hybridity, fears about a future loss of identity and about the changes that history itself brings, and how their message of 'either we eat them or they eat us' helped to justify the presence of the invader, the settler and the trader bringing civilisation.

This year's Reith lecturer is the Booker prize-nominated author Marina Warner. A writer of fiction, criticism and history, her works include novels and short stories as well as studies of art, myths, symbols, and fairytales. Her series of Reith Lectures entitled 'Managing Monsters' explore how myths express and shape our attitudes. The desire for closeness to animal power may still stimulate the breeding of fighting dogs, but it also drives the rise in the variety of soft toys. Even dinosaurs are transformed by plush fabric and stuffing into reassuring, cuddly, domestic creatures and nursery talismans. Marina Warner examines the ancient, mythological roots of the symbolic value of the wild and looks at how these are intertwined with the definition of humanity's virtue.

This year's Reith lecturer is the Booker prize-nominated author Marina Warner. A writer of fiction, criticism and history, her works include novels and short stories as well as studies of art, myths, symbols, and fairytales. Her series of Reith Lectures, entitled 'Managing Monsters', explores how myths express and shape our attitudes. In her third lecture, Marina Warner examines the burden of dreams that children bear from Peter Pan to Poltergeist. The yearning desire to work back to a pristine state of goodness, an Eden of lost innocence, has focused on children. But Marina Warner argues that appalling social problems can arise from the concept that childhood and adult life are separate, when they are in fact, inextricably intertwined.

This year's Reith lecturer is the Booker prize-nominated author Marina Warner. A writer of fiction, criticism and history, her works include novels and short stories as well as studies of art, myths, symbols, and fairytales. Her series of Reith Lectures, entitled 'Managing Monsters', explores how myths express and shape our attitudes. In her second lecture, Marina Warner examines the threads linking ancient myths and modern machismo and argues that ideas about masculinity are not naturally inculcated. Does the warrior ethic fit the needs of our civil society? Why does an age which believes in medical and scientific intervention, co-exist with a determinist philosophy about human nature and gender?

This year's Reith lecturer is the Booker prize-nominated author Marina Warner. A writer of fiction, criticism and history, her works include novels and short stories as well as studies of art, myths, symbols, and fairytales. Her series of Reith Lectures, entitled 'Managing Monsters', explores how myths express and shape our attitudes. In the first of six lectures, Marina Warner examines the role of the bad mother in myth. From Medea to Jurassic Park, she looks at how the 'she-monster' has been depicted in fiction and the effect of those myths on society today.

This year's Reith lecturer is the Palestinian American academic, political activist, and literary critic Edward Said. He joined the faculty of Columbia University in 1963 where he is now Professor of English and Comparative Literature. Regarded as one of the founders of post-colonial theory, his 1978 book Orientalism is one of the most influential scholarly books of the 20th century. In his sixth and final lecture, Edward Said considers how far an intellectual should participate in the public sphere. He examines the dilemma of loyalty to a cause, the nature of belief, and the problems faced by those who publicly recant. The hardest aspect of being an intellectual, he says, is to represent what you profess through your work and interventions, without turning into an institution or acting at the behest of a system or method.

This year's Reith lecturer is the Palestinian American academic, political activist, and literary critic Edward Said. He joined the faculty of Columbia University in 1963 where he is now Professor of English and Comparative Literature. Regarded as one of the founders of post-colonial theory, his 1978 book Orientalism is one of the most influential scholarly books of the 20th century. In his fifth lecture, Edward Said considers the basic question for the intellectual: how does one speak the truth? Is there some universal and rational set of principles that can govern how one speaks and writes? He examines the difficulties and sometimes loneliness of questioning authority, and argues that intellectuals should present a more principled stand in speaking the truth to power.

This year's Reith lecturer is the Palestinian American academic, political activist, and literary critic Edward Said. He joined the faculty of Columbia University in 1963 where he is now Professor of English and Comparative Literature. Regarded as one of the founders of post-colonial theory, his 1978 book Orientalism is one of the most influential scholarly books of the 20th century. In his fourth lecture, Edward Said examines the possibility of amateur intellectuals and their influence on society. He explores the notion of the 'non-academic intellectual' and considers some of the current pressures on intellectuals to be marketable and uncontroversial as well as in areas of specialisation, political correctness and authority.

This year's Reith lecturer is the Palestinian American academic, political activist, and literary critic Edward Said. He joined the faculty of Columbia University in 1963 where he is now Professor of English and Comparative Literature. Regarded as one of the founders of post-colonial theory, his 1978 book Orientalism is one of the most influential scholarly books of the 20th century. In his third lecture, Edward Said looks at intellectuals both as expatriates and as people on the margins of their own society. He examines how exile inspires their thinking and considers representations of the intellectual as the permanent exile.