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Five Hundred Years of Friendship

Five Hundred Years of Friendship: Families of Choice

Families of Choice

BBC Radio 4 - Five Hundred Years of Friendship, Families of Choice

How 1970s gender politics changed friendship and how popular culture reflected this change

How 1970s gender politics changed friendship and how it was reflected in popular culture. Dr Thomas Dixon's history. From 2014.

Dr Thomas Dixon brings his major history of friendship up to the 1970s, when gender politics began to change friendships once again, and considers how popular culture both reflected and influenced this change. 

Professor Barbara Taylor shares her personal memories of how the second-wave feminist movement of the 1970s altered women's friendships in the way that Mary Wolstonecraft had discussed right back in the eighteenth century. 

Thomas Dixon also explores the growing freedom of gay men and lesbian women to establish their own "families of choice". 

And - somewhat excitedly - he debates with the cultural critic Matthew Sweet how television reflected friendships between men. While Thomas confesses to an erstwhile love of the phenomenally successful American sit-com, Friends, Matthew Sweet makes an expansive claim for British television's The Likely Lads, comparing the depth of Terry and Bob's friendship to that of Tennyson and Hallam. 

Meanwhile, slightly extending a quotation of the 17th Century poet, George Herbert, Thomas declares: "David had his Jonathan, Christ his John, Eric had his little Ern, Ant his Dec."

Producer: Beaty Rubens

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in April 2014.

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A history of the changing meaning of friendship over the centuries.

Dr Thomas Dixon presents a history of the changing meaning of friendship over the centuries.

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