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That was the year that was

Kate Chisholm

Wednesday, 27th August 2008

1968: The Year of Revolutions (BBC Radio 4); The Golden Notebook (BBC Radio 4)

Somehow it was very moving to hear these people talking about what had happened to them, rather than simply being given well-chosen clips from the sound archives, so that I was drawn in as if I had been overhearing a conversation in a café, one of those occasions when you know what’s being talked about over there is far more interesting than anything going on at your own table. ‘It was creepy,’ said Dora Slaba, who was working for Radio Prague, ‘to have these soldiers all over the place; weaving my way behind the tanks to find a loaf of bread.’ What had most concerned her, though, she realised now, was not the end of those dreams for a new kind of socialism, one that really did work for the people and not against them, but the fact that she could no longer buy birdseed for her daughters’ two budgerigars. ‘It was the little details that worried us.’

I’ve been a bit sceptical of the great Radio Four series on 1968, which has been running day-by-day, recreating the events of that year. Was it really such a momentous time? Do we need any more false nostalgia for a decade that was really not so very different from any other? But being reminded of the Prague Spring in this evocative programme (produced by Louise Adamson) just as Russian tanks are refusing to leave Georgia has been like being on the express train of change only to have the emergency cord pulled.

As if on cue, this week the Woman’s Hour drama on Radio Four has begun a ten-part adaptation of Doris Lessing’s novel The Golden Notebook. Ten episodes is nowhere near enough to make the most of this mind-changing book. It tells of Anna Wulf, a writer, and her actress friend Molly, free-living women in 1950s London whose feminism was closely tied up with their membership of the Communist party. ‘The Russian Revolution? The Chinese Revolution? They’re nothing at all,’ declares Anna’s lover Michael as he’s about to dump her. ‘The real revolution of our time is women against men.’