Night Waves - 21/05/2008

Philip Dodd is joined by historian Tony Judt to discuss his theory that we have entered an age of forgetting, sacrificing much of the West's post-war history. He argues it's a time of myth-making over understanding and denial over memory. As the death tolls from China's earthquake and Burma's cyclone continue to mount, Philip and guests discuss the relationship between natural disaster and democracy. Is the very term 'natural disaster', a cop-out and how much truth is there in the theory that natural disasters can expose sham government and strengthen pro-democracy movements in the process? Now that a 14-foot silkscreen print of Chairman Mao by Andy Warhol is going on sale in Hong Kong, and may fetch over a hundred million dollars, artist and sculptor David Mach and journalist Jonathan Fenby look at how the image of Mao has become detached from the reality of the man and his treatment of the Chinese people. And Rupert Cornwall pays tribute to a quiet hero of the struggle for civil rights in America, who died in May 2008.