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The Cultural Frontline: Culture and Heritage

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Culture and Heritage

23/04/2016 GMT

BBC World Service - The Cultural Frontline, Culture and Heritage

How the past informs contemporary national cultures

How the past informs contemporary national cultures in India, Colombia and England.

On the 400th anniversary of the death of Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes, Colombian novelist Juan Gabriel Vasquez considers the small twist of fate which led Cervantes away from a life in Colombia and enabled him to write Don Quixote, widely considered the first European novel.

Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge’s visit to India caused a stir after they visited the Taj Mahal, the location where Prince Charles and Diana’s marriage crisis first became apparent. Writer Sandip Roy considers why India maintains a cultural fascination for the Raj, nearly 70 years after Independence. 

Poet Dean Atta reflects on St George’s Day, celebrated in the UK on April 23rd, and imagines what the dragon that St George famously slayed might have thought of the tradition today.

Actress and playwright Carmen Aguirre moved from Chile to Canada as a child. She explains how despite the multicultural make-up of her home city of Vancouver, the city’s theatre scene remains difficult to crack for non-white actors, something she documented in her book Mexican Hooker #1.

(Photo: Statue of Miguel de Cervantes near Madrid, Spain. Credit: Curto de la Torre/AFP/Getty Images)

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