Kate Chisholm

Uncomfortable truths

The Trial and Death of Socrates (BBC Radio 3); The Jazz Baroness (BBC Radio 4)

issue 16 February 2008

There was something ironic about a play entitled The Trial and Death of Socrates being broadcast on the weekend that our own great thinker, Rowan Williams, was undergoing what may turn out to be the biggest trial of his career. Maybe he tuned in on Sunday evening to Drama on 3 and heard Joss Ackland as Socrates manfully refusing to kowtow to the tyranny of wilful ignorance by declaring, ‘Would I have chosen this path for myself…if I did not believe I had a duty…to raise you from your complacency?’

Radio, very far from being the dinosaur among the new technologies, is becoming cutting-edge — in spite of the demise of some of the new DAB stations like Oneword and TheJazz. Digital Audio Broadcasting may still be struggling to win the largest share of the old analogue audience, but I doubt whether listening by laptop (or via the TV) will ever take over completely.

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