The History Of The Future

Juliet argues that a history of the future is really a history of anxiety, and begins her excavation of how the futurologists of their day foretold what was to come, and what these visions says about the pre-occupations of the time. How different were prophesies about the future at different points in history? What can ideas about the future tell us about the past?

People seek reassurance about the future, but that desire is rooted in their understanding of the present, with its specific predicaments, and it is these particularities that Juliet will be unearthing. Whose master plan does the future represent? Is it determined by God, or gods, or does man have the power to change what might seem predetermined?

This series of ten programmes will range from the Apocalyptic visions found in the New Testament Book of Revelation, to the enigmatic prophesies of Nostradamus in 16th century France to the science fiction dystopias of H G WELLS and George Orwell. In 5th Century BC Greece, the god Apollo and his Oracle at Delphi was central to the idea of the future. In a fragmented society made up of warring City States with no over-arching authority people flocked to the Oracle to see what the future held. The Priestess through whom the god Apollo would speak would greet a questioner seated on a tripod in an underground chamber chewing bay leaves and surrounded by the intoxicating vapours which escaped through the fault line in the earth on which the Temple was built. Juliet speaks to classicists Nick Lowe and Hugh Bowden, and visits a tarot card reader on Brighton Pier.

Produced by Victoria Shepherd

A Juniper Production for BBC Radio 4.

Juliet Gardiner begins her look at the futurologists of the past with the Oracle of Delphi

Series looking at how cultures of the past viewed the possibilities of the future

This late-18th century vision of the future came from an urgent problem Malthus identified, which threatened the future of the masses. The problem, as he saw it, was that population growth would outstrip man's ability to feed himself. Unless population was controlled by man, famine and disaster would inevitably result.

Malthus developed this theory in 1798 in his essay The Principle of Population. He was a man of God - the curate in a parish in rural Surrey from where he was well-placed to notice that he was christening more babies than he was burying, and became alarmed about levels of rural poverty on his doorstep. To modern ears his predictions seem startlingly prescient as we struggle with population explosion in many parts of the world, and fret about our ability to feed ourselves with finite resources, debating the merits of GM crops.

Juliet Gardiner digs down into the predictions to discover how the future looked from where Malthus stood. Where did his dark vision about future population come from in a society which had not yet conducted a census? Juliet speaks to Donald Winch and Niall O'Flaherty and visits the Surrey parish where Malthus preached, christened and buried the dead.

Produced by Victoria Shepherd

A Juniper production for BBC Radio 4.

Juliet considers the dire warnings on population growth from the 18th-century economist.

Series looking at how cultures of the past viewed the possibilities of the future

Juliet argues that a history of the future is really a history of anxiety, and begins her excavation of how the futurologists of their day foretold what was to come, and what these visions says about the pre-occupations of the time. How different were prophesies about the future at different points in history? What can ideas about the future tell us about the past?

People seek reassurance about the future, but that desire is rooted in their understanding of the present, with its specific predicaments, and it is these particularities that Juliet will be unearthing. Whose master plan does the future represent? Is it determined by God, or gods, or does man have the power to change what might seem predetermined?

This series of ten programmes will range from the Apocalyptic visions found in the New Testament Book of Revelation, to the enigmatic prophesies of Nostradamus in 16th century France to the science fiction dystopias of H G WELLS and George Orwell. In 5th Century BC Greece, the god Apollo and his Oracle at Delphi was central to the idea of the future. In a fragmented society made up of warring City States with no over-arching authority people flocked to the Oracle to see what the future held. The Priestess through whom the god Apollo would speak would greet a questioner seated on a tripod in an underground chamber chewing bay leaves and surrounded by the intoxicating vapours which escaped through the fault line in the earth on which the Temple was built. Juliet speaks to classicists Nick Lowe and Hugh Bowden, and visits a tarot card reader on Brighton Pier.

Produced by Victoria Shepherd

A Juniper Production for BBC Radio 4.

Juliet Gardiner on the Oracle of Delphi where Ancient Greeks heard their future predicted.

Series looking at how cultures of the past viewed the possibilities of the future

Druids held a crucial role in Britain, Ireland and Gaul until the first Century AD. Very little evidence of their mysterious culture remains and we might think of them now as the Roman writers portrayed them, wearing white robes and wreaths of mistletoe and oak leaves, making animal, even human sacrifices. One thing is for certain: their powers of prophesy were the sources of awe, fear and political threat to the conquering Romans who saw them as an alternative power base. The Druids are said to have predicted the Fall of the Roman Empire. Was this political expediency or something more mysterious? Juliet sees ancient spoons which may have been used by the Druids in divination ceremonies.

Produced by Victoria Shepherd

A Juniper Production for BBC Radio 4.

How the Druids' mysterious divining ceremonies foretold the future.

Series looking at how cultures of the past viewed the possibilities of the future

There is some dispute about its authorship but it is generally believed that the Revelations of Jesus Christ were communicated to a mystic, John, while in exile on the island of Patmos off the coast of Turkey. John wrote them down around AD 95 and some interpret the Book of Revelation as unveiling events that will take place in the future, when Satan will be cast out and the Second Coming will bring about paradise on earth, others see it as an allegory of the struggle between good and evil.

Juliet views the Douse Manuscript, a dazzling 15th century illuminated Book of Revelation from a period when there was a flowering of interest in this vision of future, with its images of beasts, fires and plagues. Why did the Book's predictions become so pertinent at this particular time? Was this connected to anxieties and political aspirations of the Crusades? Juliet speaks to Professor of Early Modern ideas, Justin Champion.

Produced by Victoria Shepherd

A Juniper Production for BBC Radio 4.

Juliet Gardiner on the apocalyptic visions of Divine judgement in the Book of Revelation.

Series looking at how cultures of the past viewed the possibilities of the future

The prophesies were an instant bestseller all across Europe and struck a chord in London too. Widespread fear in France of invasion by the Ottoman Empire made his prophesies with their reference to the Anti-Christ seem urgent and people were drawn to the predictions for clues to how to act in a war-torn present. Five hundred years later people still consult the almanacs of Nostradamus and find in its pages predictions that seem to have foreseen major current events, the most famous of which was the attack on the World Trade Centre on 9/11.

The prophesies are enigmatic, poetically vague and ripe for interpretation, but what is striking is that Nostradamus's words can represent the anxieties of the time in which they were written, and ours today. Juliet speaks to Nostradamus experts Peter Lemesurier and Mario Reading.

Produced by Victoria Shepherd

A Juniper Production for BBC Radio 4.

Juliet Gardiner looks at history's most famous futurologist, Nostradamus.

Series looking at how cultures of the past viewed the possibilities of the future

Produced by Victoria Shepherd

A Juniper Production for BBC Radio 4.

Juliet Gardiner looks at Renaissance visionary and polymath Leonardo da Vinci.

Series looking at how cultures of the past viewed the possibilities of the future

This late-18th century vision of the future came from an urgent problem Malthus identified, which threatened the future of the masses. The problem, as he saw it, was that population growth would outstrip man's ability to feed himself. Unless population was controlled by man, famine and disaster would inevitably result.

Malthus developed this theory in 1798 in his essay The Principle of Population. He was a man of God - the curate in a parish in rural Surrey from where he was well-placed to notice that he was christening more babies than he was burying, and became alarmed about levels of rural poverty on his doorstep. To modern ears his predictions seem startlingly prescient as we struggle with population explosion in many parts of the world, and fret about our ability to feed ourselves with finite resources, debating the merits of GM crops.

Juliet Gardiner digs down into the predictions to discover how the future looked from where Malthus stood. Where did his dark vision about future population come from in a society which had not yet conducted a census? Juliet speaks to Donald Winch and Niall O'Flaherty and visits the Surrey parish where Malthus preached, christened and buried the dead.

Produced by Victoria Shepherd

A Juniper production for BBC Radio 4.

Juliet Gardiner considers an 18th-century economist's warnings about population growth.

Series looking at how cultures of the past viewed the possibilities of the future

We have reached the middle of the 19th century and a very different vision of the future from those we have encountered along the way from Ancient Greece. This is a future that is predetermined - but not by God. For Karl Marx, predicting the future was informed by what he saw as the inexorable workings of economic forces in society.

Marx held that all societies progress through the dialectic of class struggle - a struggle between those who own the means of production and the workers who provide the labour to make goods. Marx predicted that Capitalism would inevitably produce internal contradictions and tensions that would lead to its self-destruction and replacement by the new system of Socialism, in which society would be governed by the working class.

Marx was born into a middle class family of Jewish origin in Trier in the Prussian Rhineland in 1818. In 1843, he arrived in Paris, a ferment of revolutionary ideas, and it was in the French capital that Marx met his collaborator Freidrich Engels. After attending the Communist League in December 1847, Marx and Engels produced The Communist Manifesto which fed into the demands for social and political change which culminated in the revolutions that swept Europe in 1848. Following the failure of these revolutions, the Marx family fled to London.

Juliet Gardiner visits the Red Lion pub in Soho where Marx used to hold political meetings and speaks to his biographer Gareth Steadman Jones, getting a sense of the revolutionary fervour that was in the air at the time Marx was in London, and how the future looked from there.

Karl Marx believed that the future was predetermined by inexorable economic forces.

Series looking at how cultures of the past viewed the possibilities of the future

Often called the 'father of science fiction' , Wells's most popular novels - The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds - gave a terrifyingly dark view of the future. An image of an army of belligerent Martians, of machines invading suburban England, of conflict in outer space, and of the mutation of species. Wells's future world is one where science has taken a wrong turn, where innovation is not used for the good of humanity but its destruction. It is not a vision of progress but a pessimistic prediction of decline and despair. Many of the imaginative scenarios he envisaged proved eerily prescient and some still haunt us today.

Juliet Gardiner tries to discover why there was so much interest in the future at the end of the nineteenth century. What current concerns was Wells reflecting in his prophecies about the future? Wells was a biologist by training. He had studied under TH Huxley, the man described as 'Darwin's bulldog', and it was Darwin's theories that had thrown not only religious belief but also the whole notion of time into a ferment - providing a whole new model of change, progress and evolution. If, according to the theory of natural selection, a species could change and adapt over millions of years and then die out, then the whole concept of the future of humankind was challenged.

Juliet continues to make the case that a History of the Future is a history of anxiety, speaking to Frank James and Roger Luckhust.

Produced by Victoria Shepherd.

A Juniper production for BBC Radio 4.

Juliet Gardiner looks at the dystopian predictions of the father of science fiction.

Series looking at how cultures of the past viewed the possibilities of the future

Orwell's most famous and most chilling exercise in fictional futurology is his novel 1984, which portrays a society at perpetual war, living at all times under the secret surveillance of the sinister all seeing, all powerful forces of The Party. This creates an almost hallucinatory vision of a paranoid, upside down future of mind control in which reality is denied. 1984's vision of Big Brother surveilling the population, penetrating its innermost sanctums, is evoked whenever 24 hour CCTV surveillance and other Civil Liberty issues are discussed. Orwell epitomises the modern view of the future which is an ambivalent one - suspicious even while optimistic about the march of progress.

George Orwell was seriously ill with tuberculosis on the remote Scottish island of Jura when he wrote 1984 in 1948, and he died just two years later aged 46. His book was part of a trend of dystopian literature in the 20th century.

His particular vision seems prescient and ahead of its time. There was a strong surge of optimism after the Second World War in Britain, a commitment to world government to ensure peace, and there was still lingering admiration of the Soviet Union and the part it had played in winning the war for the Allies, its darker side as yet largely unknown - or ignored. Juliet speaks to Orwell's biographer D.J. Taylore to discover how he seemed to foresee the horrors of later in the century and the Cold War.

Produced by Victoria Shepherd

A Juniper production for BBC Radio 4.

Juliet Gardiner considers George Orwell's haunting visions of the near-future.

Series looking at how cultures of the past viewed the possibilities of the future

Juliet speaks to James Martin and Ian Goldin of the Oxford Martin School, a research community of over 300 scholars working to address the most pressing global challenges and opportunities of the 21st century. From the governance of geo-engineering and the possibilities of quantum physics, to the future of food and the implications of our ageing population.

Produced by Victoria Shepherd

A Juniper production for BBC Radio 4.

Are we more, or less, anxious about what is to come than we ever were?

Series looking at how cultures of the past viewed the possibilities of the future