Original version

BBC Radio 4 LW

In Our Time

Discussion & Talk

Podcasts

Factual: History

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, people and events that have shaped our world.

BBC Radio 4 FM

In Our Time: Memory

Memory

29/05/2003

BBC Radio 4 - In Our Time, Memory

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the function and significance of memory.

Melvyn Bragg discusses the significance of memory. Is it a repository of events waiting to be plucked to consciousness?

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the function and significance of memory. The great writer of remembrance, Marcel Proust, declared “We are able to find everything in our memory, which is like a dispensary or chemical laboratory in which chance steers our hand, sometimes to a soothing drug and sometimes to a dangerous poison”. The memory is vital to life and without it we could not be the people we are, but can it really contain the sum of all our experience? Is it a repository constantly mounting events waiting to be plucked to consciousness, or if not, then under what criteria are memories turfed out?With Martin Conway, Professor of Psychology at Durham University; Mike Kopelman, Professor of Neuropsychiatry at King's College London and St Thomas’ Hospital; Kim Graham, Senior Scientist at the Medical Research Council’s Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit.

BBC Radio 4

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

In Our Time

Memory

Genres

Brand

BBC Radio 4 LW

About BBC Radio 4