history

Germany: Memories of a Nation

“A History of the World in 100 Objects” marked a transformative moment for the British Museum. A groundbreaking project devised in 2010 with BBC Radio 4, it included a 100-part radio series voiced by the museum’s director, Neil MacGregor. Now “Germany: Memories of a Nation”, a similar collaboration developed to mark the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, sees Mr MacGregor’s erudite, entertaining voice returning to the airwaves. He narrates another project that again hopes to make its audience reassess stories they thought they knew and consider those they never knew at all. This combination of radio series, book and exhibition seems particularly deserving of attention in a year that also marks the centenary of the outbreak of the first world war, an anniversary that has not necessarily encouraged a thoughtful examination of German history.

Ken Burns on The Dust Bowl — and “the Ken Burns effect”

Perhaps you think you’ve never heard of Ken Burns. But if you’ve ever been to a wedding, say, and watched a montage of photographs where the camera seems to pan in and around the still images, creating the illusion of movement, you’re watching what’s called “the Ken Burns effect”. And in every Apple computer for the past decade you’ll find the effect available in iMovie. “It’s saved countless millions of bar mitzvahs, vacations and weddings from descending into boredom,” Burns laughs as we talk on the phone. He’s in Boston and has agreed to speak to me at 6.30am — his time — so busy are this film-maker’s days. He says he knows what he’s doing pretty much every day up to 2019.