1922 - The Birth Of Now

4. Drums in the Night. When a culture finds itself in ruins, as Europe's did after the First World War, it faces, too, the possibility of new beginnings. Bertolt Brecht's play, first performed in 1922, introduced the concept of a very new kind of emotional alienation in theatre, something contemporary dramatists make powerful use of today. Brecht also looked back to theatre's Greek roots. Matthew Sweet and guests including the scholar of German literature and culture Karen Leeder, and the author Frances Stonor Saunders, explore Modernism's rejection of Victorian sentimentality and often its rejection of emotion altogether. Germany opened a Museum of Hygiene, and in Britain, the National Council for Mental Hygiene was formed in this key year, 1922. What did Modernists find unhygienic, how did they go about attempting to clean it up and how does this continue now?

Producer: Eliane Glaser

Bertolt Brecht's play Drums in the Night and the concept of alienation in the theatre

Matthew Sweet investigates objects and events from 1922, the crucial year for modernism.

10. Einstein, relativity, time, and indigenous Australian art.

In 1922, Albert Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize. In that same year, his work was popularised with the publication of Easy Lessons in Einstein. Time was shown to be a relative quality - and there is a link here to the indigenous Australian conception of time, which is also not a constant.

In the concluding episode of the series Matthew hears from the theoretical physicist Fay Dowker, who expains relativity and Margo Neale, Senior Indigenous Curator at the National Museum of Australia. Margo speaks about Australian aboriginal ideas of time, their relationship with Einstein's idea of relativity, and the expression of these in recent indigenous art, by painters such as Mick Kurbarkku, who was born in 1922, and Emily Kame Kngwarreye. Both have been described as aboriginal modernists.

Producer: Julian May

Einstein's ideas about time and parallels with the indigenous Australian conception of it.

Matthew Sweet investigates objects and events from 1922, the crucial year for modernism.

8. The H?sh? Aircraft carrier

Japan's H?sh? was the first purpose built aircraft carrier, launched in December 1922, combining land (well, something solid), sea and sky, and drawing on the Modernist fascination with speed and technology - think of the Italian Vorticists - for the purposes of war. Britain has invested in its largest warship ever, aircraft carriers HMS Queen Elizabeth , recently returned from making the UK's presence felt around the world, and HMS Prince of Wales. Matthew speaks to engineer naval architect Professor David Andrews and Japanese historian Dr Satona Suzuki about them, and considers the symbolic significance of the aircraft carrier.

With Modernism's obsession with speed it's no wonder that it was partly fuelled by cocaine, much of it, surprisingly, produced by Japan. Matthew looks into this, the fear of the use cocaine, and the consequent anti-orientalism that grew in 1922.

Producer: Julian May

H\u014dsh\u014d, the first aircraft carrier, and HMS Queen Elizabeth, the most recent.

Matthew Sweet investigates objects and events from 1922, the crucial year for modernism.

5. Louis Armstrong leaves New Orleans for Chicago in 1922, and works with King Oliver, a move that leads to him forming the Hot Five. Armstrong becomes the major figure as Jazz develops as an art and becomes the foremost cultural expression of African Americans, with profound influence, on the Harlem Renaissance and the poet Langston Hughes. When F. Scott Fitzgerald was searching for the definitive year of the jazz age, he said ‘may one offer in exhibit the year 1922!' Matthew Sweet talks to jazz journalist Kevin Legendre who likens Armstrong's journey from New Orleans to Chicago to James Joyce's from Dublin to Paris. Satchmo hits High Cs and almost splits your ears. There is scat singing, wordless sounds that suggest the breakdown of speech, but also something new, akin to Eliot's the Waste Land or the work of Edith Sitwell - godmother of rap? Critic Lisa Mullen cites Claude McKay's book Harlem Shadows,published in 1922, which deals explicitly and powerfully with the shadow-side of modernity, the hard-edged urban modernity which his African American subjects haunt like unquiet spirits or raging ghosts. Can we speak of a distinctly Black Modernism?

Producer: Julian May

Louis Armstrong leaves New Orleans for Chicago in 1922 a move with profound influence

Matthew Sweet investigates objects and events from 1922, the crucial year for modernism.

7. Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror. F. W. Murnau's 1922 gothic masterpiece is the first vampire movie. It is German Expressionism in cinematic form and still influences contemporary film-makers. It's also a film about disease: Count Orlok - a rip-off of Dracula that got Bram Stoker's family lawyers on the case - brings plague to Mittel Europe. What does this disease mean, in a Europe that has just survived war and pandemic? Matthew Sweet and guests including Dana Gioia, the award-winning poet and critic who wrote the libretto to composer Alva Henderson's Nosferatu: The Opera, first produced in 2004, and the literary scholars Roger Luckhurst and Lisa Mullen.

Producer: Julian May

Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, the first vampire film and its influence after a century

Matthew Sweet investigates objects and events from 1922, the crucial year for modernism.

9. Pirandello's Henry IV, first produced in 1922, is a play about a man who believes himself to be the Holy Roman Emperor, and lives in a fake palace with courtiers (in reality he's sane and knows that he is being humoured). It's the Truman Show with a great twist and illuminates the confusion and uncertainty of the 1920s - a decade full of swirling ideologies and manifestos, some distinctly fascist in character. The play, which has been translated by Tom Stoppard, has strong resonances in our own time, too: an era in which truth has become an oddly personalised concept. Matthew Sweet discusses truth, reality and fascist ideologies in 1922 and now, with guests including the drama critic Michael Billington, who has probably seen more productions of the play than anyone, and the historian Roger Griffin.

Producer: Julian May

Luigi Pirandello's 1922 play Henry IV and the idea that truth can be what we say it is.

Matthew Sweet investigates objects and events from 1922, the crucial year for modernism.

2. The Criterion. T. S. Eliot founded this literary magazine in which The Waste Land first appeared. It contained new voices - but some were speaking in the language of the dead. The Criterion also published Yeats and Proust, who were both interested in the occult, auras and voices from other worlds. Matthew Sweet explores some of the forgotten preoccupations of Modernism, such as the trauma of war, dirt, pollution and mysticism, that are still potent a century later, with writer Gary Lachman and critics including Lisa Mullen and Xine Yao.

Producer: Eliane Glaser

Readings: Neil McCaul and Michael Begley

Photograph courtesy of The Manhattan Rare Book Company

The Criterion, in which the seminal modernist poem The Waste Land first appeared.

Matthew Sweet investigates objects and events from 1922, the crucial year for modernism.

6. The tomb of Tutankhamun was discovered in 1922, and this fuelled the Egyptomania that swept across Europe and America, influencing diverse aspects of culture from dance to music to architecture. Grauman's Egyptian Theatre opened in Hollywood in this pivotal year, and the craze for the Egyptian style can still be seen in many British buildings from cinemas to pubs. Matthew explores how this exemplifies Modernism's fascination with the distant past, the roots of civilisations, and their relics - with the historians Debbie Challis and Roger Luckhurst. Also, Egypt gained full independence from Britain in 1922, and the disintegration of Empire was another catalyst of Modernism.

Producer: Eliane Glaser

Readings by Rebecca Crankshaw and Michael Begley

The discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun in 1922, sparking Egyptomania, that continues.

Matthew Sweet investigates objects and events from 1922, the crucial year for modernism.

1. The Shabolovka Tower and the Gherkin. In 1922 Vladimir Shukhov built a tower in Moscow radically modernist in purpose - to transmit radio - and in design. He used a diagonally intersecting framework, his diagrid system, which uses less steel and requires no columns. This was a catalyst of Soviet modernism. Norman Foster describes the Shabolovka Tower as `a structure of dazzling brilliance and great historic importance.` Inspired by it he used Shukhov's diagrid system in the design of 30 St Mary Axe - The Gherkin - from the top of which Matthew Sweet looks at the streets and churches T. S. Eliot mapped in The Waste Land.

Producer: Eliane Glaser

Readings: Neil McCaul

Matthew Sweet investigates objects and events from 1922, the crucial year for modernism.

1. The Shabolovka Tower and the Gherkin. In 1922 Vladimir Shukhov built a tower in Moscow radically modernist in purpose - to transmit radio - and in design. He used a diagonally intersecting framework, his diagrid system, which uses less steel and requires no columns. This was a catalyst of Soviet modernism. Norman Foster describes the Shabolovka Tower as `a structure of dazzling brilliance and great historic importance.` Inspired by it he used Shukhov's diagrid system in the design of 30 St Mary Axe - The Gherkin - from the top of which Matthew looks at the streets and churches T. S. Eliot mapped in The Waste Land.

2. The Criterion. T. S. Eliot founded this literary magazine in which The Waste Land first appeared. The Criterion also published Yeats and Proust, who were both interested in the occult. Matthew Sweet explores the forgotten preoccupations of Modernism: intellectuals and the masses, and antisemitism, that are still potent a century later.

3. The True Story of Ah Q, by Lu Xun. Matthew Sweet and writer and film-maker Xiaolu Guo and academic and author Gregory Lee, explore the first Chinese modernist short story. This text was to influence modernist literature in China and Britain, helping to shape the aesthetic style of poets such as Ezra Pound.

4. Louis Armstrong leaves New Orleans for Chicago in 1922. Kevin Legendre likens Armstrong's journey from New Orleans to Chicago to James Joyce's from Dublin to Paris, from entrenchment to cultural emancipation.

Producers: Eliane Glaser and Julian May

An omnibus edition of four things from 1922 with an impact a century later.

Matthew Sweet investigates objects and events from 1922, the crucial year for modernism.

3. The True Story of Ah Q, by Lu Xun. Matthew Sweet and guests, including the writer and film-maker Xiaolu Guo and academic and author Gregory Lee, explore the first Chinese modernist short story. Lu Xun wrote in vernacular language, itself a revolutionary act, and created the first existentialist story about a proletarian person. But the revolution does not benefit Ah Q. This text was to influence modernist literature and culture in both China and also Britain, helping to shape the aesthetic style of poets such as Ezra Pound. But Virginia Woolf and T. S. Eliot would not have been very in interested in the likes Ah Q, the ordinary man.

Reader: Daniel York Loh

Producer: Julian May

The True Story of Ah Q, by Lu Xun, China's first modernist work of literature

Matthew Sweet investigates objects and events from 1922, the crucial year for modernism.

The tomb of Tutankhamun was discovered in 1922. Egyptomania swept Europe and America, influencing culture from dance to architecture. The craze for the Egyptian style can still be seen in many British buildings. Matthew explores modernism's fascination with the roots of civilisations.

FW Murnau's 1922 gothic masterpiece Nosferatu, the first vampire movie, still influences film-makers. It's also about disease: Count Orlok brings plague to Mittel Europe. What does this mean, in a Europe that has just survived war and pandemic? Matthew is joined by the poet Dana Gioia, who wrote the libretto of Nosferatu: The Opera, and literary scholars Roger Luckhurst and Lisa Mullen.

Pirandello's Henry IV, first produced in 1922, is about a man who seems to believe himself to be the Holy Roman Emperor. In reality he's sane and knows that he is being humoured. It illuminates uncertainty of the 1920s - a decade of swirling ideologies, some distinctly fascist. The play speaks to us now, as truth has become a personalised concept. Matthew Sweet discusses this with the drama critic Michael Billington and the historian Roger Griffin.

In 1922, Albert Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize. Time was shown to be a relative quality. Matthew hears from theoretical physicist Fay Dowker and Margo Neale, Senior Indigenous Curator at the National Museum of Australia, who explains Australian aboriginal ideas of time, their relationship with Einstein's idea of relativity, and the expression of these in aboriginal art today.

Producers: Eliane Glaser and Julian May

An omnibus edition of four things from 1922 with an impact a century later.

Matthew Sweet investigates objects and events from 1922, the crucial year for modernism.