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Front Row: Hieroglyphs at the British Museum, Emily Brontë biopic, Shehan Karunatilaka

13/10/2022

Hieroglyphs at the British Museum, Emily Brontë biopic, Shehan Karunatilaka

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Hieroglyphs at the British Museum, Emily Brontë biopic, Shehan Karunatilaka

Hieroglyphs at the British Museum, Emily Brontë biopic, Shehan Karunatilaka.

Hieroglyphs: unlocking ancient Egypt at the British Museum, Emily Brontë biopic, Shehan Karunatilaka on his Booker Prize shortlisted novel, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida.

Emily  is a new film starring Emma Mackey (of Sex Education fame) as  the author of Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë. Emily is as wild as the windswept moorland she lives in; her relationships with her sisters, Anne and Charlotte, her dissolute brother, Branwell, and her lover, the curate Weightman, are as raw as the relentless rain, and as tender as the flashes of sunshine. But writer and Director Frances O’Connor’s debut film is very much an imagined life. So, what will reviewers Samantha Ellis, author of a biography of Emily’s sister, Anne,  and the archaeologist Mike Pitts make of it?

Samantha and Mike will also review Hieroglyphs: unlocking ancient Egypt. The new exhibition at the British Museum brings together more than 240 objects, some shown for the first time, and some very famous -the Rosetta Stone, Queen Nedjmet’s Book of the Dead - to tell the story of the decipherment of Egyptian hieroglyphs. Exhibitions about ancient Egypt tend to focus on the dead – mummies,  Tutankhamun – this one is about how the Egyptians lived, wrote, and spoke.

Lord Vaizey, former Conservative Culture Minister from 2010- 2016 has been appointed Chair of the Parthenon Project advisory panel.  He joins Front Row to discuss the campaign to return the “Elgin Marbles” to Greece.  

Concluding Front Row's interviews with all of this year's Booker Prize shortlisted novelists is Shehan Karunatilaka.  He discusses his second novel, The Seven Moons of Maali Almedia, a dark satire set against the backdrop of a civil war-ravaged Sri Lanka.

Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe
Producer: Kirsty McQuire

Main Image:  Temple lintel of King Amenenhat III, Hawara, Egypt, 12th Dynasty, 1855 - 08 BC. © The Trustees of the British Museum.

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