A series of four programmes
To some extent the past is always used as a deposit of experience or wisdom; but attitudes towards it vary from time to time, and also in different spheres of human activity. Some of the inheritance-in the form of ceremonies and institutions-is common to all spheres; some is craft-knowledge. At present there is, it seems, a fairly general impatience with tradition. What is it that the impatient ones want to reject? Can they do it? Frank Kermode discusses such questions with people variously expert in the arts and professions.
2: The Use of the Past
† FRANK KERMODE , Professor of English Language and Literature, University of Manchester presents conversations with DERYCK COOKE , music critic
STEPHEN SPENDER , poet and author of The Struggle oj the Modern
DONALD DAVIE , poet and Professor of Literature, University of Essex
M. I. FINLEY , University Lecturer in Classics at Cambridge