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The Reith Lectures

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Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Significant international thinkers deliver the BBC's flagship annual lecture series.

The Reith Lectures 2017

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The Reith Lectures: Hilary Mantel: Adaptation

Adaptation

Hilary Mantel

BBC Radio 4 - The Reith Lectures, Hilary Mantel, Adaptation

Hilary Mantel on how fiction changes when adapted for stage or screen.

Hilary Mantel analyses how fiction changes when adapted for stage or screen.

Hilary Mantel on how fiction changes when adapted for stage or screen. Each medium, she says, draws a different potential from the original. She argues that fiction, if written well, doesn't betray history, but enhances it. When fiction is turned into theatre, or into a film or TV, the same applies - as long as we understand that adaptation is not a secondary process or a set of grudging compromises, but an act of creation in itself. And this matters. "Without art, what have you to inform you about the past?" she asks. "What lies beyond is the unedited flicker of closed-circuit TV."

The programme is recorded in Stratford-Upon-Avon in front of an audience, with a question and answer session, chaired by Sue Lawley. The producer is Jim Frank.

The Reith Lectures: Hilary Mantel

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.

Novelist Dame Hilary Mantel discusses the role that history plays in our culture.

Best-selling novelist Dame Hilary Mantel discusses the role that history plays in our culture.

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