The Cultural Revolution

12/17/20 • 48 min

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Chairman Mao and the revolt he led within his own party from 1966, setting communists against each other, to renew the revolution that he feared had become too bourgeois and to remove his enemies and rivals. Universities closed and the students formed Red Guard factions to attack the 'four olds' - old ideas, culture, habits and customs - and they also turned on each other, with mass violence on the streets and hundreds of thousands of deaths. Over a billion copies of Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book were printed to support his cult of personality, before Mao himself died in 1976 and the revolution came to an end.

The image above is of Red Guards, holding The Little Red Book, cheering Mao during a meeting to celebrate the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution at Tiananmen Square, Beijing, August 1966

With

Rana Mitter Professor of the History and Politics of Modern China and Fellow of St Cross College, University of Oxford

Sun Peidong Visiting Professor at the Center for International Studies at Sciences Po, Paris

And

Julia Lovell Professor in Modern Chinese History and Literature at Birkbeck, University of London

Produced by Simon Tillotson and Julia Johnson

The image above is of Red Guards, holding The Little Red Book, cheering Mao during a meeting to celebrate the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution at Tiananmen Square, Beijing, August 1966

With

Rana Mitter Professor of the History and Politics of Modern China and Fellow of St Cross College, University of Oxford

Sun Peidong Visiting Professor at the Center for International Studies at Sciences Po, Paris

And

Julia Lovell Professor in Modern Chinese History and Literature at Birkbeck, University of London

Produced by Simon Tillotson and Julia Johnson

Previous Episode

John Wesley and Methodism

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss John Wesley (1703 - 1791) and the movement he was to lead and inspire. As a student, he was mocked for approaching religion too methodically and this jibe gave a name to the movement: Methodism. Wesley took his ideas out across Britain wherever there was an appetite for Christian revival, preaching in the open, especially the new industrial areas. Others spread Methodism too, such as George Whitefield, and the sheer energy of the movement led to splits within it, but it soon became a major force.

With

Stephen Plant Dean and Runcie Fellow at Trinity Hall at the University of Cambridge

Eryn White Reader in Early Modern History at Aberystwyth University

And

William Gibson Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Oxford Brookes University and Director of the Oxford Centre for Methodism and Church History

Produced by Simon Tillotson and Julia Johnson

Next Episode

Eclipses

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss solar eclipses, some of life’s most extraordinary moments, when day becomes night and the stars come out before day returns either all too soon or not soon enough, depending on what you understand to be happening. In ancient China, for example, there was a story that a dragon was eating the sun and it had to be scared away by banging pots and pans if the sun were to return. Total lunar eclipses are more frequent and last longer, with a blood moon coloured red like a sunrise or sunset. Both events have created the chance for scientists to learn something remarkable, from the speed of light, to the width of the Atlantic, to the roundness of Earth, to discovering helium and proving Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity.

With

Carolin Crawford Public Astronomer based at the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge and a fellow of Emmanuel College

Frank Close Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford

And

Lucie Green Professor of Physics and a Royal Society University Research Fellow at Mullard Space Science Laboratory at University College London

Producers: Simon Tillotson and Julia Johnson