The Brain and the Mind
8pm, Friday 30th October
An audience with neurosurgeon Henry Marsh and psychologist Stephen Grosz
Chaired by Dr Gavin Francis.
Henry Marsh CBE: Do No Harm: Stories of Life, Death and Brain Surgery
An unforgettable insight into a life dedicated to operating on the human brain. The exhilarating drama of surgery, the moving triumphs, harrowing disasters, haunting regrets, moments of black humour, amid the chaos and confusion of a modern hospital. And the need for hope when faced with life’s most agonising decisions.
A Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons since 1984 Henry Marsh retired as Consultant Neurosurgeon St George’s Hospital in London this year. As well as the Emmy award-winning The English Surgeon he is the subject of Your Life in Their Hands, which won the Royal Television Society Gold Medal.
Stephen Grosz: The Examined Life, How We Lose and Find Ourselves.
We create stories to make sense of our lives. But it is not enough to tell tales. There must be someone to listen. As a practicing psychoanalyst, Stephen Grosz has spent twenty-five years uncovering the hidden feelings behind our most baffling behaviour. The Examined Life distils over 50,000 hours of conversation into pure psychological insight. An extraordinary book about an ordinary process: talking, listening, and understanding.
Born in America, educated at the Universities of California and Oxford, he teaches at the Institute of Psychoanalysis and in the Psychoanalysis Unit at University College London. He lives in London. A Sunday Times bestseller, this is his first book.
The English Surgeon, Henry Marsh
6.15pm, Friday 30th October
Documentary, Geoffrey Smith, 2009, 93m.
Winner of 10 International Awards, about neurosurgeon (Henry Marsh) on his personal mission to save lives in the Ukraine, the overwhelming dilemmas he faces and the burden he has to carry throughout his profession. One of the most moving films you will ever see. (Followed by a personal appearance.)
Cuimhneachan: Remembrance
6pm, Friday 30th October
Library
Jo MacDonald and Annella MacLeod
The first ever anthology of Gaelic verse from the First World War: An authentic and poignant view of the war as experienced by Gaelic speakers, from patriotic verse composed in 1914 to heartrending poems composed following the Iolaire tragedy of New Year’s Day 1919 with the loss of over 200 returning servicemen.
H is for Hawk, Helen Macdonald
5pm, Friday 30th October
A modern classic of nature writing: It’s an unflinching account of the author’s struggle with grief following the death of her father, the all-consuming challenge of taming a goshawk and her own un-taming. A powerful testament about memory, nature and nation, and reconciling death with life and love, it won the 2014 Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction, the 2014 Costa Book of the Year Award and was a Sunday Times best-seller.
Helen was a Research Fellow at Jesus College, Cambridge from 2004 to 2007 and is an Affiliated Research Scholar at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge.
Get Carter
2.30pm, Friday 30th October
Mike Hodges, film, 1971, 112m
A chilly, brutally efficient Michael Caine as an avenging gangster in 1970s Newcastle. When his brother dies under mysterious circumstances in a car accident, Jack Carter returns home from London to investigate. Britain’s finest gangster movie.
The Sign, Thomas de Wesselow
8.30pm, Thursday 29th October
The Shroud and the Resurrection
The Shroud of Turin is the most holy relic in Christendom. Widely thought to be a mediaeval fake, it is, in fact, authentic. And it holds the key to the greatest mystery in human history. Thomas de Wesselow is an Art Historian who specialises in tackling intractable problems and spent seven years of deep research on Christian origins and the Shroud. His startling conclusions are summarised in his book The Sign. He was educated at Edinburgh University and lives in Cambridge.
Severed, Frances Larson
7pm, Thursday 29th October
A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found.
From shrunken heads to war trophies, from grave-robbers to scientists, from head-hunters to Islamic State, Severed explores our macabre fixation with detached heads through history. The Sunday Times called it, ‘lively, original, important, astounding, well-written: first class in every way.” A doctor of anthropology from the University of Oxford, Frances is interested in the stories objects tell, and how the material world shapes people’s lives, relationships and ideas. Her biography of Henry Wellcome, An Infinity of Things was chosen as a Sunday Times Book of The Year, and as a New Scientist Best Book of 2009.
Badlands
5pm, Thursday 29th October
Terence Malick, film, 1973, 95m
An impressionable small town teenage girl (Cissy Spacek) and her older boyfriend (Martin Sheen) go from killing-to-killing in the South Dakota badlands. Based on Charles Starkweather who murdered eleven people in the states of Nebraska and Wyoming between December 1957 and January 1958.
In Cold Blood
2pm, Thursday 29th October
Richard Brooks, film, 1967, 135m
Based on Truman Capote’s true account of the inexplicable, brutal murders of Herbert Clutter, a mid west farmer, his wife and two of their four children in 1959. The film is remarkably faithful to the book, not just in the content and the narrative, but in that it uses the real-life locations of the events. It also features actual participants including the jurors and the hangman. In 2008, the film was selected for preservation in the USA by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant”.
FACLAN 2015: Fuil: Blood (Programme)
View or download the programme as a PDF:
- Faclan 2015 FUIL:BLOOD (PDF)