Podcast

A unique meeting between the authors of two moving books based on their mothers’ contrasting experiences of the Japanese occupation of Shanghai. Betty Barr will discuss Ruth’s Record, an annotated version of her American mother’s wartime diary, which provides a gripping account of life in Lunghua internment camp. Keiko Itoh’s My Shanghai 1942-46 is a sensitively-observed, fictionalised account of her Christian Japanese mother’s struggle to come to terms with her privileged position in a city at war, and the growing conflict between her loyalty to her country and her own values. Moderated by Duncan Hewitt.

The twin shocks of Brexit in the UK and President Trump in the US have made clear that large swathes of western societies feel they have been left behind by globalisation. Countries such as China and Russia believe these populist outpourings are confined to western-style democracies. They see Brexit and President Trump’s isolationism as self-inflicted wounds resulting from the weakness of “too much” democracy. Has the global wave of democratisation that accelerated in the late 20th century now peaked? Has western democracy been discredited in the eyes of people living in non-democratic countries? Lucy Hornby, Roula Khalaf, Victor Mallet, Demetri Sevastopulo, John Thornhill and Feng Wang will discuss. Moderated by Jamil Anderlini.