Main content

Robert Redford's Career, Fiction within Fiction, Poet Fred D'Aguiar

In his final film Robert Redford plays - what else - a charming bank robber. Characters in books who read and what this tells us. Poet Fred D'Aguiar responds to history. All of it.

For his final role as an actor, Robert Redford plays a charming bank robber in The Old Man and the Gun, harking back to his early roles in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and The Sting. Tim Robey reviews.

Booker prize winning narrator of Anna Burns鈥檚 Milkman reads 19th century novels as she cannot bear the 20th century. What do other fictional characters read and what does it reveal about them, their authors and the period in which the books were written. John Bown, Professor of Literature at York university joins to discuss fiction within fiction

Poet Fred D'Aguiar's new collection, Translations from Memory, starts with Gilgamesh, the earliest poem and ends with with a response Kamau Brathwaite, the poet from Barbados, who is still alive. It includes responses to philosophers - Spinoza, Hume, Kant - to writers - Lorca, Akhmatova, Seferis - to scientists such as Marie Curie, to political leaders - Nelson Mandela - to religion - Islam - and great movements such as the Reformation. He talks to Samira Ahmed about writing
poems about what amounts to the whole of western civilisation and history.

Presenter: Samira Ahmed
Producer: Julian May

Available now

29 minutes

The Old Man and the Gun

The Old Man and the Gun

is in UK cinemas from December 2018, certificate 12A.

Images:

Main image above: Robert Redford in The Old Man and the Gun

Image to the left: Sissy Spaceky and Robert Redford in The Old Man and the Gun

Images credit: Eric Zachanowich/2018 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

What books fictional characters read

What books fictional characters read

Image: writer 听补苍诲

Images credits: Amanda Craig- Marzena Photography

John Bowen - Paul Shields

Amanda Craig's book, is available now.

Front Row's Jane Fonda programme

Fred D'Aguiar

Fred D'Aguiar

Fred D'Aguiar's poetry collection, is out now.

Image: Fred D'Aguiar

Broadcast

  • Mon 3 Dec 2018 19:15

大象传媒 Arts Digital

The best of British culture live and on demand.

Inspire

Inspire

A season discovering where artists find inspiration and helping listeners get creative.

Podcast