Paris 1974: a campaign is launched (photo, Judith Herrin)
BBC 3 presented a three-hour radio tribute to John Berger on Sunday, 23 July called Ways of Listening. Its centre-piece was a re-broadcast of the dramatization of his novel, To the Wedding, directed by Simon McBurney and created by Complicité. It included tributes, reminiscences and John Berger’s own broadcasts from the BBC archive. The producer Tim Dee asked me for a short reflection and I talked about the time shortly after I got to know him. Here it is in full, followed by the Booker Prize speech in full. The programme can be heard on iPlayer until 28 August 2017.
I want to talk about two episodes in the 1970s, which back then we might have referred to as being about the “conditions of production” of John’s work, and in these neoliberal days his “cash flow”. His getting the Booker prize, denouncing it but taking half the money. Second, his being funded to write novels about peasant life starting with Pig Earth.
