1922 ........ ten stories about a seminal year .... on the wireless

 Now, it might be seen as contrived history to pick a year and seek to argue that this was a seminal moment in time.

Tutankhamun, 2016

But that is what Matthew Sweet has done for the year 1922, arguing that it was a crucial year for modernism which still has an impact in many different ways right up to today.*

The series has been going out on Radio 4 all this week.

The subjects covered in no particular order, include The discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb, Noserfartu, The Shabolovka Tower, Louis Armstrong goes to Chicago, Bertolt Brecht’s play Drums in the Night and the Wasterland.

And I have to say it is the sort of radio the BBC do so well.

I discovered it by accident, have missed the odd one but have always found each 15 minute broadcast, an excellent listen.

Yesterday’s was on Nosferatu, and Modernist Horror, and the day before the Discovery of Tutankhamun and Egyptomania, and because as much as I like on Nosferatu, I have always found that Egyptian King most fascinating.

The Shabolovka Tower, 1979

“The tomb of Tutankhamun was discovered in 1922, and this fuelled the Egyptomania that swept across Europe and America, influencing diverse aspects of culture from dance to music to architecture. Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre opened in Hollywood in this pivotal year, and the craze for the Egyptian style can still be seen in many British buildings from cinemas to pubs. 

Matthew explores how this exemplifies Modernism’s fascination with the distant past, the roots of civilisations, and their relics - with the historians Debbie Challis and Roger Luckhurst. Also, Egypt gained full independence from Britain in 1922, and the disintegration of Empire was another catalyst of Modernism.

Producer: Eliane Glaser

Readings by Rebecca Crankshaw and Michael Begley”

Location; 1922

Picture; The funerary mask of Tutankhamun, Roland Unger, 2016, Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Roland Unger Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled GNU Free Documentation License, and 32 kopeks postage stamp, USSR 1979, 50 years Radio Moscow, 1979, Postal Service of USSR, from  The Shukhov Tower, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shukhov_Tower

*1922; The Birth of Now, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0013r19/episodes/player