Add
Private Notes
Joe Tilson is one of Britain's foremost contemporary artists and is obsessed with the problems of flesh and blood human beings living in a mechanical, scientific world. Using the analogy of a computer, he explains what he calls the 'hardware/software scene.' Hardware, or technology, solves the physical problems of the world but not the human ones. These human, or software, problems remain largely unsolved. Joe Tilson has his own peculiar way of illustrating his reaction to the problem.
Romance stopped being romantic when they all started calling it sex. Women are no longer treated as the gentle sex; chivalry is old hat; it's 'Happy now - to hell with ever after.' Marjorie Proops, Britain's best-known woman columnist, lays bare our unromantic age, and yet she believes that deep down there's a bit of romance left in all of us.
The decisions of businessmen affect every one of us. At last a successful tycoon reveals the principles that have guided his business career and how he personally has been able to reconcile socialism and capitalism. Lord Campbell talks to businessmen and workers, union leaders, left-wing politicians, and right-wing journalists. He concludes that there is a deep and dangerous split in our society between idealism and materialism which can and must be healed. Business can never be loved but it can be respected. It is up to businessmen whether business is worthy of understanding and respect.
Patrick Moore takes a look at independent thinkers including flat earthers, hollow earthers, belief in a cold sun and many more interesting people.
Hero worship is an essential part of our lives - without heroes we have no great deeds to emulate, we can achieve nothing. How big a part do heroes play in our everyday lives? John Dankworth believes that mass hero worship is largely un-constructive and thinks it is our private heroes who matter most.
What makes you laugh? It is always easier to describe humour than to analyse it. Marty Feldman, for many years a successful comedy writer before his more recent activities as a performer, prefers to look at humour through the people who create it, comparing their traditions, motivations, and anxieties with his own. Among the people he talks to are: Peter Sellers, Sandy Powell, Eric Morecambe, Peter Brough and Archie Andrews, Dudley Moore, Annie Ross and Jon Hendricks, Johnny Speight, Denis Norden, Barry Took.
Sir Con O'Neill is one of Britain's top diplomats - British Charge d'Affaires in Peking, British Ambassador to Finland, and, more recently, British Ambassador to the Common Market. He revisits Belgium, Finland, Sweden, and the Republic of Ireland to illustrate his experiences of Britain's image abroad. Sir Con thinks there is only one way to prevent Britain from 'sinking giggling into the North Sea.'
'We are liked enormously - for our record in war and for our happy attitude to life. And yet there are doubts - we are losing the world's confidence in our ability to keep our promises in both industrial and political fields. Our casual outlook puts us in danger of losing our status as a successful nation. Happiness or success - the choice must be made.'
"The nature of a man's life, the nature of a man's mind, depends very largely on the kind of shocks and jokes to which he is subject. In Wales an industry was dying, a massive popular religion was dying. It was these things that held my eye and drove my pen."
Television, radio, computers, and jet aeroplanes may seem to bring the world to our hearthrug but they also increase the danger of mistaking the image for reality. The volume of today's instant words and pictures is so overwhelming that, to make sense of them, we take refuge in stereotype attitudes, rely on new myths - and in doing so, we erect still more unreal images of the world
