Scenes from a Turbulent Year (1922): Nick Rennison
Nick Rennison, author of 1922: Scenes from a Turbulent Year
In our first episode of 2022, we’re travelling back exactly a hundred years ago to unpick three telling events in a deeply turbulent year.
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If you’re a regular listener you know we spend a lot of time on the podcast thinking about the significance of particular years.
Elsewhere, people often approach history by grouping together a series of events that took place over several years. But on the podcast, we like to deep dive into a particular moment or an intriguing vignette, and see what it can teach us about the spirit of the time.
That’s exactly what our guest today, Nick Rennison has done in his new book 1922: Scenes from a Turbulent Year in which he works through this extraordinary year in world history month by month – whether its sat around the table with James Joyce on the evening of the publication of Ulysses or in the courtroom where Mahatma Gandhi is being tried for sedition.
In this episode we visit three self-contained moments – the trial of Hollywood’s much-loved comedian ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle for the murder of Virginia Rappe, the assassination of the Weimer Republic politician Walther Rathenau and the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb. Each one sheds light on a different facet of the modern world that was 1922. While the Arbuckle trial provides insight into the dark side of Hollywood glamour and excess, Rathenau’s assassination serves as a foreboding glimpse into the violence and anti-semitism that would characterise European history later in the century.
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Show Notes
Scene One: November, 1922. Valley of the Kings, the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb
Scene Two: June, 1922. Berlin, the assassination of Walther Rathenau by right wing extremists
Scene Three: January, 1922. Hollywood, scandals such as the 'Fatty' Arbuckle trial and the murder of William Desmond Taylor which ultimately shaped the kind of films produced in America over the next four decades
Memento: A first edition copy of James Joyce's Ulysses
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Presenter: Artemis Irvine
Guest: Nick Rennison
Production: Maria Nolan
Podcast partner: Unseen Histories
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About Nick Rennison
Nick Rennison is a writer, editor and bookseller with a particular interest in modern history and crime fiction. He is the editor of six anthologies of short stories for No Exit Press - The Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, The Rivals of Dracula, Supernatural Sherlocks, More Rivals of Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock’s Sisters, and American Sherlocks – plus A Short History of Polar Exploration, Peter Mark Roget: A Biography, Freud and Psychoanalysis, Robin Hood: Myth, History and Culture and Bohemian London, published by Oldcastle Books. His other works include Sherlock Holmes: An Unauthorised Biography and The Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide to Crime Fiction. His crime novels, Carver’s Quest and Carver’s Truth, both set in nineteenth-century London, are published by Corvus. He is a regular reviewer for both the Sunday Times and Daily Mail.
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