1922: The Birth of Now

Original version

BBC Radio 4 LW

Documentaries

Factual

Factual: History

Matthew Sweet investigates objects and events from 1922, the crucial year for modernism.

Matthew Sweet investigates objects and events from 1922, the crucial year for modernism, that have an impact today.

BBC Radio 4 FM

1922: The Birth of Now: Tutankhamun and Egyptomania; Nosferatu; Pirandello's Henry IV; Einstein, Time and Aboriginal Modernism

Tutankhamun and Egyptomania; Nosferatu; The First Aircraft Carrier; Einstein, Time and Aboriginal Modernism

Tutankhamun and Egyptomania; Nosferatu; Pirandello's Henry IV; Einstein, Time and Aboriginal Modernism

BBC Radio 4 - 1922: The Birth of Now, Tutankhamun and Egyptomania; Nosferatu; Pirandello's Henry IV; Einstein, Time and Aboriginal Modernism

An omnibus edition of four things from 1922 with an impact a century later.

Four things from 1922 with an impact a century later: the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb; Nosferatu; Pirandello's Henry IV; Einstein, time and indigenous Australian modernism.

1922: The Birth of Now - Ten programmes in which Matthew Sweet investigates objects and events from 1922, the crucial year for modernism, that have an impact today. An omnibus edition of four programmes broadcast this week. 

The tomb of Tutankhamun was discovered in 1922. Egyptomania swept Europe and America, influencing culture from dance to architecture. The craze for the Egyptian style can still be seen in many British buildings. Matthew explores modernism’s fascination with the roots of civilisations.

FW Murnau's 1922 gothic masterpiece Nosferatu, the first vampire movie, still influences film-makers. It’s also about disease: Count Orlok brings plague to Mittel Europe. What does this mean, in a Europe that has just survived war and pandemic? Matthew is joined by the poet Dana Gioia, who wrote the libretto of Nosferatu: The Opera, and literary scholars Roger Luckhurst and Lisa Mullen. 

Pirandello’s Henry IV, first produced in 1922, is about a man who seems to believe himself to be the Holy Roman Emperor. In reality he’s sane and knows that he is being humoured. It illuminates uncertainty of the 1920s - a decade of swirling ideologies, some distinctly fascist. The play speaks to us now, as truth has become a personalised concept. Matthew Sweet discusses this with the drama critic Michael Billington and the historian Roger Griffin.

In 1922, Albert Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize. Time was shown to be a relative quality.  Matthew hears from theoretical physicist Fay Dowker and Margo Neale, Senior Indigenous Curator at the National Museum of Australia,  who explains Australian aboriginal ideas of time, their relationship with Einstein's idea of relativity, and the expression of these in aboriginal art today.

Producers: Eliane Glaser and Julian May

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

1922: The Birth of Now

Tutankhamun and Egyptomania; Nosferatu; Pirandello's Henry IV; Einstein, Time and Aboriginal Modernism

Genres

Brand

BBC Radio 4 LW

About BBC Radio 4