Broadcast on BBC Radio 3 for the Free Thinking Festival in 2008
The unPC cultural Gene meme
The truth depends on where you’re standing, and when.
Culture changes, from year to year and from place to place. Attitudes in one postcode can be markedly different to those in the next. From SW2 (Brixton) to SW3 (Chelsea); in Liverpool from L8 (Toxteth) to adjoining L17 (Sefton Park).
Twenty years ago, when I announced I was moving to Liverpool, people said: ‘Are you mad?’ Brought up in rural West Sussex, I suppose I was an unlikely convert, especially in 1988 when this was a pariah city, the epitome of political and economic disaster; but I found it charming, and inspiring, hot-headed and warm-hearted. I love it…. (read more)
Liverpool en fete
Colour in black and white 