Reith Revisited: Anand Menon on Robert Birley
The Reith Lectures
BBC
4.2 • 770 Ratings
🗓️ 27 September 2017
⏱️ 16 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Robert Birley's 1949 Reith Lectures series, "Britain in Europe", remain urgently topical today. Sarah Montague discusses the lectures with Professor Anand Menon.
The Reith Lectures began in 1948 on the Home Service, subsequently moving to Radio 4 and becoming a major national occasion for intellectual debate. As part of the celebrations of Radio 4's 50th anniversary, the network looks back at the first 10 years of the Reith Lectures to explore how they reflect the times in which they were delivered and how well they stand up now.
Robert Birley was headmaster of Eton who had worked in postwar Germany. In his lectures, he looked forward to what he described as a European Union and discussed how far Britain would become integrated in it. Sarah assesses his lectures with the help of Anand Menon, who heads The UK In A Changing Europe thinktank.
Producer: Neil Koenig Researcher: Josephine Casserley
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're about to listen to a BBC podcast, but this is about something else you might enjoy. |
| 0:05.4 | My name's Katie Lecky and I'm an assistant commissioner for on demand music on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:10.8 | The BBC has an incredible musical heritage and culture and as a music lover, I love being part of that. |
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| 0:35.0 | check out BBC Sounds. Thanks for downloading this edition of Reith Revisited, |
| 0:40.7 | part of the special programming celebrating BBC Radio 4's 50th birthday. |
| 0:45.9 | In this episode, Sarah Montague and Professor Arnon Menon |
| 0:49.7 | look back at the 1949 Reith Lectures by Robert Burley on a surprisingly topical subject, Britain in Europe. |
| 1:00.5 | Russia, the Atom and the West by George F. Kellyan. |
| 1:05.0 | This year is given by Dr. Nicholas Pilsner. Authority and the individual. and the speaker is the eminent philosopher Bertrand |
| 1:12.1 | Russell. We present the Reef Lectures, an annual series of broadcasts named in honour of the BBC's |
| 1:20.4 | first director general. After the Second World War, politicians across Europe called for unity. |
| 1:29.3 | Churchill famously said, we must build a kind of United States of Europe. |
| 1:34.3 | The prospect of a union gradually became ever more real, |
| 1:38.3 | first with the founding of the Council of Europe, then the European Coal and Steel community. |
| 1:43.3 | But if a European Union was to emerge, |
| 1:46.3 | what role, if any, should Britain play? That was the subject of Robert Burley's wreath lectures |
| 1:51.8 | in 1949. He'd just become headmaster of Eaton, but had been working in Germany helping to |
| 1:58.1 | rebuild its shattered education system. Robert Burley recognised that |
| 2:02.7 | even if the British were to become enthusiastic about Europe, there would be considerable challenges |
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