“Summits”

Christ’s Fellow Professor David Reynolds and alumnus Russell Barnes (m. 1987) have teamed up again to make a series of films entitled “Summits”.

Ranging from Chamberlain and Hitler to Reagan and Gorbachev, this three-part series will air on BBC4 on Wednesdays at 9pm, starting on Wednesday 30 January, with repeats probably on Thursdays and Saturdays.

It is linked to David’s book “Summits: Six Meetings That Shaped the Twentieth Century” (Penguin). Russell’s other work includes a series of films about Darwin, written and presented by Richard Dawkins, to be screened at the end of 2008.

  • Read the Christ’s College magazine article on David & Russell (PDF).
  • 2 thoughts on ““Summits”

    1. A superb programme. Excelent delivery. But what was the music used in the programme?

      Does anybody know?

      Wayne//

    2. Will try & find out. In the meantime the Independent had an amusing view of Dr Reynolds:

      “Reynolds’s hour-by-hour account of the negotiations was engrossing and occasionally excruciating, not because the tension rose too high but because he sometimes coloured his third-person account of the conversations with first-person histrionics, channelling Hitler and Chamberlain through the person of a bespectacled and balding Cambridge academic. He’s not the first telly historian to get tempted by am-dram – Simon Schama is prone to drop into character while quoting a historical document – but it doesn’t work any better for him than it does for anybody else. Hide your eyes and hum loudly through those bits, but the rest is fascinating.”

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