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Start the Week

Discussion & Talk

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Weekly discussion programme, setting the cultural agenda every Monday

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Tom Sutcliffe

Chris Patten

Tessa Blackstone

James Graham

Kerry-Anne Mendoza

Katy Hickman

Start the Week: Power: Fleet Street and Whitehall

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26/06/2017

Power: Fleet Street and Whitehall

BBC Radio 4 - Start the Week, Power: Fleet Street and Whitehall

Tom Sutcliffe with Chris Patten, Tessa Blackstone, James Graham and Kerry-Anne Mendoza.

Cultural discussion programme. Tom Sutcliffe discusses politics and the media with Chris Patten, Tessa Blackstone, James Graham and Kerry-Anne Mendoza.

On Start the Week Tom Sutcliffe talks to the former Conservative MP and last Governor of Hong Kong, Chris Patten, on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China. In a candid memoir Patten looks back at his political life. He lost his seat in the 1992 election, despite the Sun newspaper claiming the Tory landslide with the headline, "It's The Sun Wot Won It". James Graham's new play goes back to the birth of this ruthless 'red top' tabloid, when a young and rebellious Rupert Murdoch burst on to Fleet Street, to launch a newspaper devoted to giving the people what they want. Fleet Street is no more and following this month's general election some critics have questioned the continuing influence of the mainstream media. Kerry-Anne Mendoza is the Editor-in-chief of the left-wing political blog, The Canary, and believes new forms of media online are disrupting the status quo in the UK. Baroness Tessa Blackstone was regarded as a kaftaned radical in the 1970s by the Whitehall establishment when she was part of a review of Central Policy which challenged the very workings of Britain's powerful diplomatic corps. 
Producer: Katy Hickman

Image: The Sun daily newspaper on June 14, 2016, with a headline urging readers to vote 'Leave' in the June 23 EU referendum. Credit: DANIEL SORABJI /AFP/ Getty Images.

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