The Reith Lectures: Securing Freedom
The Reith Lectures is a series of annual radio lectures given by leading figures of the day, commissioned by the BBC and broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and the BBC World Service. In July, Aung San Suu Kyi spoke at length about her life and what has inspired her activism.
From the NewStatesmen, this caught my eye:
At a screening of the first lecture at Broadcasting House, it was mesmerising to sit and watch ASSK speaking at length (the footage had been recently smuggled out of Burma). Traditional peach silk top. Blue flowers in her hair. A slash of orange lipstick. She is resolutely not a spin-doctored, slick operator. Two things stood out: her use of the old-fashioned word gallantry, and her repeated use of the word passion.
Though ASSK is clearly unbowed, at one point during the live Q&A down the line from Rangoon she admitted that the lights had been switched off by the authorities and she was sitting at the telephone in the dark. How fitting that she had, just minutes earlier, quoted from Ratushinskaya’s prison poem that ends: “It isn’t true, I am afraid, my darling!/But make it look as though you haven’t noticed.”