One small advantage of being in depths of documentary repeat season is the chance to catch up on favourite progs. I’ve frequently rambled on about Professor Richard Clay’s marvellous three-part series “Utopia: In Search of the Dream“, and so I was very pleased to note that the show is making a welcome return to BBC4 in the wee small hours starting tonight.

“Utopia” takes as its starting point the classic book by Sir Thomas More of the same name and goes on to cover myriad variations on that theme, from utopian visions that go wrong, the dystopian flip-sides, searching for your own personal inner fulfilment, how architecture affects our vision of life and so much more. It’s an exceptionally wide-ranging set of programmes, full of thought-provoking stuff; I highly recommend it and if you have access to BBC4 and/or the iPlayer you can give it a look starting from 00.30 tonight/tomorrow.

The Prof has an intriguing new documentary in the pipeline on the subject of the art of the meme, which sounds equally fascinating. It’s still awaiting a transmission date, and when it goes live I shall be covering it on the Ramblings in depth with some special posts – so watch this space… 😉

*****

As an aside…

I was reminded that I picked up a copy of More’s book back in April (I had one decades ago, but who knows where it went?); and as I posted at the time I was vaguely thinking about setting myself up a little utopian reading list, drawing on some suggestions in the Happy Reader magazine. I revisited that magazine and went on a rampage (oh, all right, a gentle rummage) around the house trying to find what books I already had that fitted into that list. And then I found a few more. And then I couldn’t find some I know I have somewhere (“Flatland”; “Looking Backwards”). And for those of you who love gratuitous pictures of books, I came up with this:

As you can see, there are some awfully interesting books on the pile – here they are without Thomas More blocking them. Yes, I *know* I have duplicates of “We”, “Nineteen Eighty-Four” and “Brave New World” (and there are at least two more copies of the Orwell somewhere in the house) – I’m afraid I have a congenital affliction that prevents me being able to get rid of multiple book copies…. (ahem)

However, what occurs to me looking at the pile is that many of the books suggested by the HR mag (and not all are here) were actually dystopian, not utopian. Admittedly, they began their list with “We”, and that’s certainly not a jolly book. Still – I do wonder if we are naturally drawn to the negative; it does seem that we as a race have trouble in dealing with the concept of perfection and a happy life. But as I’ve said before, we are questing, searching beings and maybe the ideal world would be just a teeny bit boring…

Anyway, one thing the rummage did was produce this behemoth (as in a big book, not a big cat):

I had totally forgotten I have “The Faber Book of Utopias“; it came out in 1999 and I suspect was a gift at the time and I couldn’t tell you if I’ve read it. However, it looks absolutely fascinating, with extracts from all manner of books, from More himself through to modern writers like Julian Barnes. I was very pleased to see that Margaret Cavendish’s “The Blazing World” is in there too, as I’ve been keen to have a look at her work. It’s 500 or so large format pages – I could be in there for some time…

So there you are. Another potential reading project, at which I will no doubt fail. Perhaps I should put the French Revolution and Utopia books in a room together and just let them fight it out, a la Swift’s “Battle of the Books“. Or give up work and sleep. Or stop buying books and thinking about reading projects and just damn well read! 🙂