Saturday Morning for Saturday 20 May 2017

 

 

 

8:13 Tommy Rhattigan - Bread, jam and terror

Tommy Rhattigan was a seven-year-old Manchester boy when he was lured to the house of Myra Hindley and Ian Brady with a promise of bread and jam.  Born the eighth of 13 children, he'd been sent out by alcoholic parents to beg on the streets of Hulme, a rundown suburb of Manchester, when he was targeted by the pair - later to be known as the Moors Murderers.  He escaped out a window at some point in the encounter - an action he believes saved him from becoming the sixth murder victim. Rhattigan, who's now based in Kent, kept his story secret until 2013, and published a book on that encounter and his life, 1963: A slice of bread and jam earlier this year.  Ian Brady died this week at the age of 79 at a high-security hospital on Merseyside in North West England after battling a lung and chest condition. Myra Hindley died in prison in 2002.

 

8:45 - Charles Lane - Trump vs the FBI 

Charles Lane is an opinion writer for the Washington Post. He was a finalist for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in editorial writing, and is the author of The Day Freedom Died: The Colfax Massacre and The Supreme Court and the Betrayal of Reconstruction, and is a frequent commentator on television and radio.  He talks to Kim about an extraordinary week in US politics, which has seen President Donald Trump increasingly under pressure over the ongoing investigation into possible links between his associates and Russia.

 

 

9:05 Max Gimblett - The Quatrefoil King 

One of New Zealand's most successful and internationally prominent living painters, Max Gimblett has been living in North America since 1962. He took refuge in the teachings of Buddhism, and is a Rinzai Zen Priest - taking his vows in 2006. He is known for creating quatrefoil-shaped paintings and Sumi Ink 'enso' works. Gimblett has developed a reputation for shouting and stomping whilst painting in an attempt to be completely spontaneous and as an expression of the immediacy of Zen Buddhism. His work is in the collections of many of the world's leading museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the National Gallery of Art, and the Auckland Art Gallery Toi O Tamaki. A documentary about his life, Max Gimblett: Original Mind, will play on the closing night of the Doc Edge International Film Festival in both Wellington (May 21st, Roxy Cinema) and Auckland (June 5th, Q Theatre).

 

The work of Max Gimblett 

 

 

10:05 Ariel Levy - The rules do not apply 

Ariel Levy is a journalist and writer based in New York.  She joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 2008, tackling topics such as  the world's reaction to intersex South African runner Caster Semenya, and Edith Windsor, the plaintiff in the Supreme Court case that brought down the Defense of Marriage Act. Levy won a National Magazine Award in 2013 for the essay "Thanksgiving in Mongolia", where she details a miscarriage in a hotel room while on assignment in Ulaanbaatar.  The loss caused Levy to examine the unravelling of her life, a process that led her to author the New York Times best-seller The Rules Do Not Apply (2017).  Her first book was Female Chauvinist Pigs (2006), which looked at the rise of 'raunch' culture.

 

10:35 Daniel Falconer - On the trail of Sasquatch

Daniel Falconer is a designer and author at Weta Workshop in Wellington.  He's been with the company for 20 years, working as part of the design team on such projects as The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, and has written 12  behind-the-scenes books about the work he and his colleagues have done on a number of films. Falconer's hobbies take in art, science, natural history and fantasy, and he also harbours a curiosity concerning the North American bigfoot mystery, a fascination that has seen him join US-based amateur researchers and scientists in the field a number of times in areas reputed to be hotspots for supposed encounters. His obsession helped spark a theatre production of Sasquatch, which will be performed for the first time during Lōemis, Wellington's Winter Solstice Festival, June 15 - 21.  

 

 

 

11:05 - David Dolan - Please don't stop the music 

Lecturers at the Waikato University School of Music fear proposed staff cuts will see the school's demise, with University management preparing to restructure the faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and proposing to cut the full time staff numbers in the music department from eight to five. David Dolan is a concert pianist, researcher and  a professor both at the Yehudi Menuhin School and at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in the UK, and he is dedicated to the revival of the art of classical improvisation. He has weighed in to efforts to try and save the facility, describing it as a "rare and precious" world class centre of excellence, with a standard of teaching he has rarely witnessed anywhere in his travels. 

 

Books mentioned in this episode

1963: A slice of bread and jam 
by Tommy Rhattigan

Mirror Books

ISBN13 9781907324604

 

The Rules Do Not Apply 
by Ariel Levy

Random House

ISBN 0812996933

 

Female Chauvinist Pigs
by Ariel Levy 

Free Press

ISBN 0743284283

 

 

Music played in this show

Artist: Ryan Adams
Song: In My time of Need
Composer: Ryan Adams
Album: Heartbreaker
Label: Cooking Vinyl
Played at: 9:55

Artist: Gorillaz
Song: Doncamatic
Composer: Daley, Damon Albarn
Label: Parlophone R 6827
Played at: 10:30

Artist: David Dolan
Song: Fantasy in D Minor
Composer: Mozart
Label: From David Dolan's website
Played at: 11:05

Artist: David Dolan and Thomas Carroll
Song: Fantasy pieces Opus 73
Composer: Schumann
Played at: 11:55