Night Waves

Author and columnist Will Self gives the opening lecture for Free Thinking 2008, BBC Radio 3 and BBC Radio Merseyside's festival of ideas, recorded in front of a live audience at Liverpool's Bluecoat arts centre. Self argues that the way the mind is portrayed in novels is preposterous. Why are we so resistant to attempts to represent the mind as we really experience it, in all its terror, exhilaration and confusion? Are many of our finest novels designed to reassure us that we are 'normal'? Introduced by Matthew Sweet.