Archives in the culture wars

Dr Alison Searle speaks to New Generation Thinker Tom Charlton as part of BBC Radio 3's Sunday feature.

In this programme, originally broadcast on Sunday 6 June, Tom Charlton offers a personal account of how his academic research in various archives has become inadvertently and yet inextricably implicated in the current ‘culture wars’ being fought over how best to tell Britain’s history.

Dr Alison Searle, Associate Professor of Textual Studies at the School of English, provides a fascinating perspective on how archives can contain brutal and shocking stories, revealing the competing impulses between commercial, financial and charitable impulses in Britain’s complex history.

The Bahamian Anglican priest and Caribbean theologian, Revd Dr Carlton Turner, reflects on the potential ramifications today of a growing awareness that some of Britain’s Christian missionaries were funded on the back of slave labour.

Listen to the full episode at BBC Sounds.

Image credit: BBC