This morning's "In Our Time" on BBC Radio 4 was devoted to Anglo-German
relations in the nineteenth century. There is a shortened repeat this
evening at 9.30 (UK time), and the full-length programme can be
downloaded here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inourtime.shtml
DL
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BBC Radio 4
Thursday 12 June 2008
THE RIDDLE OF THE SANDS
In 1903 an Englishman called Charles Caruthers went sailing in the
North Sea and stumbled onto a German military plot. The cunning plan
was to invade the British Isles from the Frisian Islands using special
barges. The plucky Caruthers foiled the plot and returned to his
sailing holiday.
This is not history but fiction, an immensely popular book called *The
Riddle of the Sands*. It was a prescient vision of two nations soon to
fight the First World War but it went against the spirit of the
previous century. Brits and Germans had fought together at Waterloo and
had influenced profoundly each otherīs thought and art. They even
shared a royal family. Yet somehow victory at Waterloo and the shared
glories of Romanticism became the mutual tragedy of the Somme.
Contributors
Richard Evans, Professor of Modern History at the University of
Cambridge
Rosemary Ashton, Quain Professor of English Language and Literature at
University College London
Tim Blanning, Professor of Modern European History at Cambridge
University
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Professor Duncan Large
<[log in to unmask]>
School of Arts/German, Swansea University
Singleton Park, GB-Swansea SA2 8PP
http://www.swan.ac.uk/german/large.htm
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