April 21, 2016

Free Thinking - Sicily. John Hardyng's Chronicle. The London Library

45 minutes

As Sicily: culture and conquest opens at The British Museum, Anne McElvoy gathers three experts round the Free Thinking table - the historian of Sicily, John Julius Norwich, Helena Atlee who approaches the island from the point of view of its legendary citrus fruit and Anna Sergi, a criminologist at the University of Essex who explains how Cosa Nostra reflects much of the closed culture of the modern island.

Tom Stoppard drops by to celebrate The London Library at 175 and as the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death gathers pace, New Generation Thinker Sarah Peverley reveals her latest research on John Hardynge, the English soldier who lived through the Wars of the Roses and wrote a chronicle that may be an important source for the Bard's History plays.

Presenter: Anne McElvoy

Sicily: culture and conquest runs at the British Museum from 21 April – 14 August 2016

Guests: Helena Atlee: The Land Where Lemons Grow

John Julius Norwich: Sicily A Short History from the Greeks to Cosa Nostra

Sarah Peverley: John Hardyng, Chronicle: Edited from British Library MS Lansdowne 204. Edited by James Simpson and Sarah Peverley

Anna Sergi

Tom Stoppard

Producer: Jacqueline Smith

...more