HG Wells/The Pacific/Slum Cities/No Greater Love
Philip Dodd and his guests ask if sprawling slum cities are the future of urban life around the world. He also discusses a new revisionist biography of HG Wells.
Philip Dodd examines the life of H.G. Wells. Known as the father of science fiction, Wells was a respected social commentator with views that were ahead of his time, on human rights for example, but he also held some opinions seen as abhorrent to today's sensibilities. Philip will be talking to Michael Sherborne who has just published a new biography, based in part on correspondence with Wells' mistresses and his illegitimate daughter, which challenges how he has been perceived in recent years.
Historian Laurence Rees and journalist Michael Goldfarb review a new dramatisation of the American campaign in the Pacific during World War II and ask - has producer Tom Hanks become an unofficial chronicler of American history?
And there's a look at the cities are growing and changing globally - Lagos in Nigeria or Sao Paulo in Brazil are developing their own models of city life as the outer poorer districts, with their slums and shanty towns are shaping the urban future. Discussing slum cities are Patrick Wakely, co-author of The Challenge of the Slums,
the playwright Gabriel Gbadamosi, and architect and novelist Lesley Lokko who grew up in Ghana and is currently working in Johannesburg, South Africa.
And film director Michael Whyte talks about his latest documentary No Greater Love about a group of Carmelite nuns living in seclusion in London's Notting Hill Gate.