Kate Chisholm

Points of view

Plus: why are Radio 4 cutting Something Understood from the schedules?

I suspect that whether or not you admire Neil MacGregor’s latest series for Radio 4, As Others See Us (produced by Paul Kobrak and Tom Alban), will depend on how you feel about Brexit. To my ears, it was shamelessly in favour of a Britain that stays in Europe and remains committed to its global role as the voice of moderation, a disseminator of liberal values, unusual in its ability to draw in other influences while retaining a strong sense of its own identity — and therefore to be cheered and recommended as essential listening. MacGregor is doing everything within his power to show us what we need to hear, before it’s too late, in these five intense and impassioned programmes.

He set off across the globe in search of an answer to that question ‘how do others see us?’, choosing Germany, Egypt, Nigeria, Canada and India as representative of widely differing connections to the United Kingdom, former enemies, subjects, compatriots. He wants us to know what others are taught about Britain in school, what they believe to be most important about us, which objects, events or persons are most representative of the British character or place in the world.

In Germany he was surprised to discover how much affection there is for Britain, beginning with that weird New Year’s Eve tradition beloved of Germans: the annual screening on TV of the black-and-white sketch, Dinner for One. In that absurd slapstick comedy (made in English by German TV in 1963 and starring Freddie Frinton and May Warden) many Germans see the quintessential British characteristics of nostalgia, class, faded grandeur, but perhaps above all an ability to poke fun at ourselves.

Hartmut Dorgerloh, director of the Humboldt Forum in Berlin (where MacGregor is founding director), grew up in communist East Germany in the 1960s and told us how he travelled to Britain in his imagination through listening to BBC radio.

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