Free Thinking

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The ideas shaping our lives today - with leading artists and thinkers in extended interview and debate.

Free Thinking: Picnics

Picnics

BBC Radio 4 - Free Thinking, Picnics

From Picnic at Hanging Rock to an Iron Curtain Pan European picnic

Anne McElvoy talks to food and art historians and to the author of a new book about the picnic in 1989 which helped end the cold war.

In 1989 the demilitarized zone between East and West was the venue for a gathering which was titled the Pan-European picnic. Matthew Longo's new book explores the Hungarian, East German and Russian politics which led to this happening and how it contributed to the ending of the cold war. He joins historians of art and food in a conversation hosted by Anne McElvoy which ranges across picnics in ancient Greece, French impressionist painting, country house opera events like Glyndebourne and celebrating the arrival of the cherry blossom season. 

Matthew Longo is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Leiden and author of The Picnic

Monika Hinkel is an art historian based at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London

Kirsty Sinclair Dootson is a lecturer in Film and Media at University College London

Pen Vogler is a food writer and the author of Scoff: A History of Food and Class in Britain

Producer: Ruth Watts

The Picnic: An Escape to Freedom and the Collapse of the Iron Curtain by Matthew Longo is out now 
You can find other discussions about German and cold war history on the Free Thinking programme website and available as the Arts and Ideas podcast.

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

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