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The Herald Scotland
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
When the Scots were revolting: Do we need another Braveheart?
The latest in the Archive on 4 series, the programme dipped into the BBC's vintage recordings to follow the impact of the film on Scottish cinema, Scottish cultural and political life and, perhaps most importantly, on the tourist trade. Stirling is still seeing the benefits three decades later. Morrison went up the Wallace Monument at the Abbey Craig to discover that, yes, all the international visitors had indeed seen the movie. 'Who needs historical accuracy when you've got a gift shop?' she asked. The programme invariably touched on how the film was exploited by politicians at the time (notably by former SNP leader Alex Salmond, although the Tories also sought to tap into the film's popularity) and how it unleashed a wave of anti-English sentiment in cinemas. 'People were standing up and cheering English people getting killed,' historian Fiona Wallace pointed out to Morrison. Read more There's another question to be asked about Braveheart, perhaps. Is it any good? Not really. That's never stopped Scots embracing it though. You could say the same about Restless Natives, a sub-par Bill Forsyth simulacrum that's now been transformed into a musical, or The Wicker Man, a not-that-great horror movie that's been reclaimed as some kind of masterpiece (Morrison isn't a fan of the latter, we learn in passing). Maybe Scots in the past were just starved of films and TV about themselves that they'll embrace anything. The stereotypical Scotland on screen that existed prior to Braveheart, film lecturer Johnny Murray told Morrison, is a country that's an unspoiled wilderness, that's authentic, untameable and inhabited by noble savages. It's a recipe, he pointed out, that can either be served sweet - as in Whisky Galore! or Local Hero - or savoury, as in Braveheart. 'These are all very masculine, these stereotypes,' Morrison suggested. Indeed. At another point we are reminded that in Braveheart it takes 20 minutes before any of its female characters gets to say a line. Which suggests what? That we need less Mel Gibson, more Morven Callar maybe. Earlier in the day Radio Scotland's Sportsound had the excitement of a penalty shootout to bring us. When Aberdeen won it, a Sportsound reporter - I was in the car so I can't be sure, but I think it was Tyrone Smith - went pitchside to catch the jubilant victors. A couple of them, carried away in the moment swore, a little, prompting an apology from the presenter. Aberdeen players celebrate winning the penalty shoot-out during the Scottish Gas Men's Scottish Cup final at Hampden Park (Image: Andrew Milligan) You do wonder if interviewing players in a heightened state of emotion is a good idea if you are bothered by the odd swear word. Then again, was it the Scottish players who couldn't mind their language? Noble savages indeed. On Monday 5 Live had spent the day reporting from the joyous chaos of the Liverpool FC victory parade through the city. My sister lives in the city and had sent me photos of the players on the bus passing her home in the south of the city earlier in the day. At teatime 5 Live Drive presenter Chris Warburton was clearly enjoying the atmosphere in the city centre. And then everything changed when a car hit some of those in the parade. The sudden shift from joy to shock and horror could be heard in Warburton's voice. 'The mood since I last spoke to you has really changed now,' he said, trying to find the words when he still wasn't totally clear what had happened. Nicky Campbell spent his 5 Live phone-in show on Tuesday morning talking about the incident. The conversation was largely sensible. But now and then Campbell would read out comments from listeners speculating on the why. Campbell then added, 'We can't speculate on any motivation but I am just conveying to you what some people are saying. We don't yet know.' Hmm, why read them out then? Kenneth Cranham (Image: free) Listen Out For: The Essay: An Actor's Life, Radio 3, Monday to Friday, 9.45pm It's easy to forget that actor Kenneth Cranham - star of Shine on Harvey Moon and Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit and known for playing London gangsters on a regular basis - grew up in Dunfermline. In this series he talks to fellow actor Neil Dudgeon about working with Joe Orton and Harold Pinter
Yahoo
19-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Five years on, we're only just starting to understand how much lockdown damaged our children
One of the lovely things about the breadth of Radio 4 is the station's ability to take a single subject and, via its various programmes, examine it from many different angles. Over the past few days, though mainly on Monday, Radio 4 has been marking five years since the UK's first Covid lockdown and has managed to give us distinct perspectives on that momentous event from children, parents, teachers, doctors, scientists, farmers, arts professionals, dramatists, data crunchers, psychologists and an Icelandic concert pianist. If I have one complaint, it's that the station didn't go the whole hog and make every programme on Monday about the March 2020 restrictions – give us the comedic perspective, the literary perspective, the meteorological perspective, the culinary perspective, the Ambridge perspective. Heck, I'd have even listened to a Thought for the Day on the subject (well, perhaps not). Things kicked off on Saturday with the reliably excellent Archive on 4, which went over the events from December 13, 2019 (Boris Johnson wins a landslide) to March 23, 2020 (Boris Johnson tells us we can't leave the house any more) and stirred up all sorts of repressed memories – Johnson singing Happy Birthday as he washed his hands, racegoers at Cheltenham delighted the event wasn't cancelled, Patrick Vallance. It was a guilty listen in many ways – those poor people we heard in the clips had no idea what was about to hit them. It was hard to know what to do with all that hindsight. Far more illuminating, yet arguably even more depressing, was Monday's analysis of the long-term impacts of lockdown, particularly on children. On Woman's Hour we heard about babies not learning to point or wave; in the trio of reports titled Lockdown's Legacy, children, teachers and medics lined up to lay bare just how scarring that period of isolation was for the young; on Start the Week we learnt that adults whose mental health suffered in lockdown have largely recovered – but children haven't. 'We had this haloed image of kids doing Joe Wicks videos in the garden and sitting doing their homework,' said one doctor, 'but for many children that was just not the case.' Those children, he said, are the ones we should worry about. Later he spoke of seeing 'Victorian levels of abuse and neglect' when lockdown restrictions eased. The day was a parade of anecdotes about stunted development, poor educational attainment, malnutrition, mental health epidemics, spiralling standards of behaviour and a lost generation. We heard statements such as, 'Many believe this [lack of social development in reception-aged children] is because of Covid-19' and, 'It's clear a year out of traditional schooling will have lasting impacts', and while it was all largely convincing you yearned for a bit of roughage in your diet: where was the data to support all this? Step forward the excellent More or Less, Tim Harford's wonderfully clear-eyed, no bulls--t programme that sloughs away anecdote and asks what the numbers are actually telling us. It gave Monday's day of programming a spine of steel. It was, and I mean this as a compliment, quite boring at times. Harford was not about to allow an eye-catching statistic to go unchallenged or a strong statement to be uninspected. He wanted to know what damage we did to our young when, with the lockdown, we sought to protect the adults – the 'intergenerational transfer of harms' as Harford called it. It was bleak. For children who started school in 2020, there's an appreciable drop in learning attainment, just as there was for older primary-aged children (though the data showed the pupils could recover that loss). Absence has rocketed – 10.5 per cent of children missed 10 per cent or more of school days in 2019. In 2023, it was more than 21 per cent. Suspensions have doubled. The truly depressing aspect was how lockdown acted as an 'amplifier', with more affluent children coping well, while the disadvantaged suffered even more. 'A decade of progress in closing the educational attainment gap was wiped out,' said one academic. 'We should never, ever have closed the schools,' said a teacher. More or Less's refusal to supply easy headlines – on lockdown's impact on university students: 'We just don't know yet' – makes it all the more powerful when it finds hard evidence. Throughout the day we heard emotive stories about young people's mental health, and while they were affecting you wondered what the true picture was. More or Less had data to show it's every bit as bad as the anecdotes suggest, and it's getting worse: 'The figures are a gut-punch.' One in 10 young people showed signs of a mental health illness before the pandemic. Now it's one in five – and rising. Radio 4 gave us all sorts of perspectives on lockdown and, in the main, the farmers, parents, teachers, artists and Icelandic concert pianists have managed to roll with the punches. For the young, however, it came at an enormous cost. And we're only just beginning to learn how much. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
