Silence Grips the Town

The Reith Lectures

BBC

Society & Culture, Science, Government, Technology

4.2 • 770 Ratings

🗓️ 27 June 2017

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The story of how an obsessive relationship with history killed the young Polish writer Stanislawa Przybyszewska, told by best-selling author, Hilary Mantel. The brilliant Przybyszewska wrote gargantuan plays and novels about the French Revolution, in particular about the revolutionary leader Robespierre. She lived in self-willed poverty and isolation and died unknown in 1934. But her work, so painfully achieved, did survive her. Was her sacrifice worthwhile? "She embodied the past until her body ceased to be," Dame Hilary says. "Multiple causes of death were recorded, but actually she died of Robespierre."

Over the course of these five lectures, she discusses the role that history plays in our lives. How do we view the past, she asks, and what is our relationship with the dead? The lecture is recorded before an audience in the ancient Vleeshuis in Antwerp, a city which features in Mantel's novels about Thomas Cromwell and the cosmopolitan world of the early Tudors. The lecture is followed by a question and answer session chaired by Sue Lawley.

The producer is Jim Frank.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, it's Nicola Cocklin.
0:02.8	Young people have been making history for years, but we don't often hear about them.
0:06.6	My brand new series on BBC Sounds sets out to put this right.
0:10.6	In history's youngest heroes, I'll be revealing the fascinating stories of 12 young people
0:16.0	who've played a major role in history and who've helped shape our world.
0:19.8	Like Audrey Hepburn, Nelson Mandela,
0:22.5	Louis Braille and Lady Jane Grey, history's youngest heroes with me, Nicola Cochlin. Listen on BBC
0:28.9	Sounds. Hello, I'm novelist Hilary Mantell and I'd like to welcome you to the third of the 2017 BBC
0:37.2	Reith Lectures Podcasts.
0:40.1	In this lecture, I tell the story of a Polish writer whose efforts to work history
0:45.9	and fiction were so intense that they consumed and killed her. Was she a martyr to history,
0:53.0	or just wrongheaded?
0:58.8	Please join me in the dangerous place where commitment meets obsession,
1:01.9	where silence grips the tone.
1:15.5	Hello and welcome to the third of this year's wreath lectures with the author Hilary Mantel.
1:23.3	Today we're in the Flemish Port of Antwerp in Belgium at the Vlaisehurst, the Flesh House, the Butchers Guildhall.
1:39.8	Today it's home to a museum dedicated to music, but when it was built at the beginning of the 16th century and full of prosperous beef bushes, it was the highest secular building in Antwerp and helped put the city on the map as an economic powerhouse of Tudor times.
1:46.2	No surprise then that Hillary Mantell, best known for her novels of Henry the Eighth's court,
1:49.9	was keen to deliver one of her wreath lectures here in Antwerp,
1:55.1	where she spent time researching Thomas Cromwell, who would have visited this very building.
2:02.9	Hillary's been warning of the dangers of ignoring the complexity of history. She's talked about the role of history in our lives and she's explained how the art of fiction can shed light on its interpretation.
2:09.9	Today she tells a story of how obsession with the past can lead to tragedy. Her lecture is called
	...

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