If Dr Johnson, who was born 300 years ago on Friday (at least according to the post-1752 Gregorian calendar, which overnight lost 11 days from British life), had been around today he would most probably have been a radio star, and been paid a fortune for it, unlike the pittance he earned as a writer. Conversation was for him the breath of life, not just as the antidote to the depression that never really left him but as the surest way to discover the truth. In talk (not chitchat), Johnson could flex his intellectual muscle, wrestle with ideas, and satisfy his hugely competitive desire for victory. But he was also full of fun, delighting in wordplay, making up rhymes, flashing his wit. He would have outdone Paul Merton on Just a Minute and yet also excelled on Round Britain Quiz. John Humphrys would have been cast in the shade by Johnson’s presence on the airwaves, and if Melvyn Bragg hadn’t already established his In Our Time discussion programme, Johnson would have tried to rob him of this Radio Four prize.
As Dr Freya Johnston suggested on this week’s The Essay: Johnson Now (Radio Three), which gave us five alternative views of the legacy of the dictionary-maker, poet, author of Rasselas and creator of some of the most memorable quotations in the English language, you might even argue that speaking was Johnson’s real vocation, rather than writing.
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