Nostalgia Interviews With Chris Deacy

My guest this week is Becky Jefcoate, who like me was at university in Lampeter from 1991-94 where she studied Archaeology and English Literature. We find out how Becky ended up there and why her school teacher had misgivings about doing Archaeology as a single honours subject. We talk about how Lampeter was a place you knew pretty quickly whether you were going to fit in or not and how it attracted a certain type of self-sufficient person. After university, Becky moved to London and we learn about her time working at the Cartoon Museum as well as in a theatre and at the Royal Opera House. We talk about the collections in the Cartoon Museum, exploring with different audiences what the relevance was to them personally of the likes of Hogarth and Bagpuss. There was a specific Nostalgia exhibition, and we learn how it affected Becky, and the therapeutic possibilities involved when recording people’s memories. Becky has always kept a diary including from her Lampeter days, and we talk about the efficacy of dia

My guest this week is Alexander Ornella, Senior Lecturer in Religion at the University of Hull where he has been since 2011. Alexander talks about his work, and how he has moved into sociology and criminology in addition to religious studies. His PhD, which he undertook in his native Austria, was on Catholic theology and looked at film and modern art. We find out about the traditional Catholic theology degree that Alexander did in the 1990s and how he wanted to become a priest. Alexander has always seen himself as navigating different disciplines, and he talks about how he follows through on students’ interests in, say, sport. We also discuss how the way of accessing data has changed since his own undergraduate days, in terms of technological change. We hear about Alexander’s childhood in the south of Austria. He remembers drives to Italy when young and how his father was into sport and nature. If he hadn’t wanted to become a priest (he was an altar boy for many years) Alexander would have studied Economics

Maggie Webster is my fantastic guest this week, five years to the day since I broadcast my first Nostalgia Interviews podcast episode. Maggie teaches Religious Education at Edge Hill University in Lancashire, and we learn that she did a PhD in Lampeter which explored how people become witches on social media. Maggie discusses her fieldwork in which she interviewed 13 witches who ranged in age from 20 to 70, and how among other things they fought back against stereotypes. We talk about how there was a coming out of the broom cupboard in the 1990s, through magazine articles, films and TV series but how even today it is very difficult to find in-person covens. We find out how Maggie was destined to do this research on contemporary witchcraft, we learn about her research drivers and how it was as much a hobby as work as she would read all fiction and watch films about witches in her downtime. We talk about Witch Lit and The Witches of Eastwick and how films today are less heteronormative than they were a few

My guest this week is journalist, editor and poet Susan Norvill, who like me was in Lampeter in the early 1990s where she read Victorian Studies and English Literature. We find out about Susan’s love of Victorian literature and what drew her to Lampeter, and how the place exerts such a hold over those who went there, and how the people are still there for us. Susan grew up in Weston-super-Mare and went to a convent school in Bristol, and we find out about her first job after leaving university as a mortgage counsellor. Susan worked at the Albert Hotel in Weston in the summer holidays while she was at university and recounts the time when she bumped into Anthony Hopkins while he was filming The Remains of the Day. We discover that Susan was offered a job as an extra and find out why she unfortunately had to decline. We talk about Susan’s earliest memories and her love of Anne of Green Gables. She did a teacher training course in Scarborough after graduating, and we talk about the literary connections in th

My guest this week is Mina Radovic, archivist, curator, film historian and founder of the international charitable organization Liberating Cinema. I met Mina at the Spaces of Memory conference he helped to organize at the University of Vienna in March 2023. Mina is also a PhD student at Goldsmiths, University of London, on German linguistics and film studies, studying the framing of totalitarian language and film in 1930s Germany. We learn how the films from that era included musicals and comedies which are not the ones we might expect to hear about, though some of the films are still banned. We find out about the antecedents to this project including the ‘worldbuilding’ cinema of Douglas Sirk, and about Mina’s masterclasses during lockdown as part of Liberating Cinema. Mina reveals who has been part of his series, including filmmakers from the Czech Republic and the former Yugoslavia. Born in Belgrade, Mina grew up during the civil war in the former Yugoslavia and he talks about the role of Pretty Village

My guest this week is Anne-Sophie Ouattara who, until March 2023, was the National Portrait Gallery intern at The Beaney House of Art & Knowledge in Canterbury. Anne-Sophie is really interested in nostalgia as a teacher of French literature and language and a curator. She has curated her first exhibition called Rooted in Fabric – an exploration of African and black identities through fabric, and is working on a display of three remarkable women of Canterbury. Anne-Sophie talks about finding ways of touching an audience today, connecting the past and the present. We find out how Anne-Sophie loves getting into other people’s lives but hates writing about herself whereas she loves photography and making images, and the authenticity that comes with that. Anne-Sophie looks at the gaps in our history as part of her curation work where most of the people have been rich, white and powerful, and so the exhibition has been about acknowledging those who have been forgotten. We learn about the founder of the Unive

My guest this week is Rhiannon Grant, who teaches in Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre in Birmingham. We learn about Rhiannon’s work, which includes recently having had an edited book published featuring a range of international academics and lay writers. Rhiannon grew up in Watford, did her first degree in Philosophy and Theology in Nottingham, has an MA from Leeds and a PhD, which she also undertook at Leeds, in uses of Quaker language. We find out that Rhiannon was into reading and writing from a young age and was, indeed, writing before she started reading, and had read The Lord of the Rings while in primary school. We learn how Rhiannon takes book recommendations from her PhD students as much as the other way around, and we talk about changes in the way education has evolved over the years and the way certain texts e.g. The Matrix have become canonical. We discuss also the use of pop culture in seminars. We discuss the reading records that exist via Goodreads which Rhiannon uses to log all the books she

My guest this week is Dereck Daschke whom I had the great pleasure of interviewing in Salt Lake City when we were both reviewing films at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2023 for the Journal of Religion and Film. Dereck teaches Religious Studies at Truman State University in Missouri and, like me, works in the area of religion and film. We find out about Dereck’s dissertation in Graduate School on Freud and the apocalypse and Dereck reflects on whether film can be a stand in for religious experience. We also discuss apocalyptic revenge fantasies and the Mad Max films. Dereck talks about his Lutheran upbringing in the Chicago suburbs and we find out why he has always been drawn to academia. He has a seminal memory of seeing 2001: A Space Odyssey in the basement of his local public library. We find out why this film made such an impact. The psychology of transcendence has always interested Dereck, and we learn about Dereck’s interest in Bob Dylan and his memories of seeing Dylan and Tom Petty in concer

Matt Batten works for the Llandaff Diocese of the Church in Wales as Director of Communications and we first met in the early 2000s when Matt did a Masters in Ecumenical Studies at Trinity College Carmarthen. Based in Cardiff, Matt talks about how going to university was the making of him. We talk about reunions and why Matt is not keen to go back, and the concept of ‘going out’ and how it was not enjoyable prior to his university days during which he never missed a lecture. We learn why Matt is glad not to have had social media back in the 90s, and why he bought a disposable camera for evenings out in those days – and we reflect on why we didn’t tend to take photos from our lectures. Matt is doing a Masters in Digital Theology and talks about why he has stopped live Tweeting at conferences and doesn’t take as many photos at gigs as he used to. We talk about my film reviews and whether they should be posted (I have acted on Matt’s very kind advice), and we talk about the genres he watches irrespective of

My guest this week is Revd. Edward Owen, Vicar in the South Cardiff Ministry area, the most multicultural area of Wales, who like me did his degree in Lampeter in the early 1990s. We learn that Edward’s grandmother’s brother was Richard Burton and he talks about a photo from when he was aged three of him with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor taken in his grandmother’s front room. We find out how Edward ended up in Lampeter and we talk about the overlap between St. David’s University College and the Church in Wales. We talk about what might be said to comprise the hub of Lampeter and how it has changed but also remained the same, and how Lampeter had a connection which bigger universities lacked. We discuss why nostalgia is important for one’s own development and why Edward has chosen to be an inner city parish priest. He talks about the concept of ‘intentional community’, misremembering the past and our capacity to cling to a past that is not real. Edward identifies the importance of belonging and the

My guest this week is Justin Pugh with whom I went to school in the 1980s. Justin recalls those days of playing cricket at lunchtimes and the two of us reflect on our years at the Bishop of Llandaff Church-in-Wales High School in Cardiff. Justin talks about how Cardiff has changed since the 1970s when it had a much lower profile, and how since the 1990s Cardiff suddenly became cool, and Justin refers to how the city flows through his veins. We reflect on the devolution campaign of 1997 and how Justin speaks Welsh as a second language. Justin has been fascinated by the cause of the Liberal Party since he was young and we learn why David Lloyd George and Harold Wilson are among his political heroes, and why he thinks David Steel was misrepresented on Spitting Image, as well as how some politicians can grow on us when they are out of office. Justin has always liked classical music and ska and he talks about what he thinks is the golden age of cinema and how Julie Christie was a teenage heartthrob of his. Jus

My guest this week is Emma Astra, based in Leicester, who is writing a Diary of a Disabled PhD student. We talk about pilgrimage journeys and the notion of doing a PhD as a pilgrimage journey. Emma talks about her chronic illness and how it impacts on her ability to travel to places. We learn about her three wheelchairs and all the different makes and models she has had to navigate, and Emma talks about an artist who is making a non-disabled person feel like they are in the shoes of a disabled person. Emma also reflects on how technology has opened up a whole new world for disabled people. We learn how the return to physical meetings and classes has posed a problem for Emma, and we discuss how technology will evolve post-Covid. We talk about the days of queuing up to use the phone and renting TVs, and Emma shares a wonderful anecdote about hiding from the TV rental man. We learn about Emma’s PhD and how she has done something really innovative. She talks about referencing academics who wrote about a counc

My guest this week is David Mannion, weightlifter and astronomer, who often gives cruise ship lectures on astronomy. He was a teacher for over 30 years, and Head of Physics at a grammar school in Kent. We find out how David got into astronomy, and he reflects on whether we will ever go to Mars and we learn about his specific driver for space interest, as well as about how we calculate the age of the universe, of which we know only five per cent. David discusses his thoughts around teaching, and why teachers should be paid more, and we find out about the educational journey that follows, and why he doesn’t think that university is necessarily right for everyone. We discuss too the 11-plus and the concept of being 'in the middle of the road', as well as why Brian Cox is quite an atypical astronomer. We talk about how we measure happiness, and whether people who do well at interviews are necessarily good at the job they subsequently go on to do. We discuss how money doesn’t always reflect someone’s worth, as i

My guest this week is Dr Nikolaos Karydis, Senior Lecturer in Architecture at the University of Kent. Nikos and I have a twin passion for cinema and radio, and we begin our conversation by talking about the way architecture is represented in movies and why films tend to present alternative architect lives to what happens in the real world. Nikos grew up in Athens before moving to the UK, and we hear about what attracted him to architecture in the mid-1990s via furniture design, and about how his field now is architectural history and the architecture of churches. We discuss the concept of the journey of discovery and whether we could ever have anticipated the final destination, as well as about the role of serendipity in shaping us. Nikos and I talk about the way limitations can sometimes generate great creativity, and why improvisation is essential, before moving on to discuss classical music and especially the piano, and the use of such music in Kubrick’s cinema, together with the use of contrasts and cou

My guest this week is Wendy Dossett, whom I have known for around 30 years from when we were both based at the University of Wales, Lampeter. Wendy is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Chester, specializing in Buddhism, and has more recently been studying Addiction Recovery Spirituality. Wendy grew up in Hastings and we talk about what it is like to return to the place of one’s birth and the teachers who actively chose to teach in a school with challenges. We find out about Wendy’s love of live music, the first gigs she went to, and how she got into American protest music, Bob Dylan and Two-Tone. We talk about pop nostalgia and the importance of lyrics and the ‘moment in timeness’ of seeing an artist live as well as about cover versions and how they match up. Wendy discusses why she studied English and Religious Studies at university. Her mum was an Anglican and her dad was interested in the paranormal, and we find out about her interest in ‘meaning of life’ questions and against

My guest this week is Joanne Pettitt, Lecturer in Comparative Literature at the University of Kent. Jo and I begin by talking about the art of teaching and the feeling of history that one gets from reading a physical book and the nostalgia of children’s books. Jo comes from what she describes as a typical British working class background in Nottingham against the backdrop of the miners’ strikes. She didn’t grow up in an academic environment, and Jo reflects on developing consciousness at university. She developed quite a strong liberal agenda at university, and talks about how this doesn’t always fit with going back. Jo talks about being a really nostalgic person but having a terrible memory and how university comprises the building blocks of her life. We also discuss whether it is good to go to another institution after graduating for postgraduate study and why some institutions don’t always accommodate people from particular socioeconomic backgrounds. We learn about Jo’s work in Holocaust Studies, what s

My guest this week – and for the second time – is Nichola Zacher, a children’s story writer from Ontario, Canada (see http://marleysdream.com/). Nichola talks about her English roots and how her father worked on the railroad and her mother was a secretary for the Teachers’ Federation. When she was born, Nichola had an operation and she was written off and told she wouldn’t be able to go to school or live independently. But, she overcame her disability and received extra support in schooling from her father, particularly in maths.  We learn about her earliest memories and about why Nichola wants to help other children, and she speaks about the importance of unconditional love. We learn how she used to spend her summers and about the music she listened to, including Olivia Newton-John. We learn about the time when Nichola taught in a hospital day care environment and about the value she places on reading to children. We discover who the teachers were who inspired her, and the role of Christmas and churches

My guest this week is Linda M. James, an author, poet, screenwriter and creative writing tutor, originally from Swansea. Linda (who explains the significance of the initial M) tells us why she is nomadic and about to make her 48th move. Linda has been running writing classes for 20 years, and we find out about her MAs and her historical novels set in the Second World War, especially involving Spitfires. We learn about her flying experience, too – all part of the inspiration for her writing – and she discusses how she draws on her life experiences in her novels. Linda explains how she had a good singing voice in school but, as a left-handed Protestant in a Catholic school, was told by the nuns who taught her at the age of 11 why she was ‘doubly damned’. This leads us to talk about these unhappy teachers, how it was a harsh environment, but that she had close friends with whom she is still in contact. We discuss what education is about, and how the discipline she had at school made her something of a rebel.

My guest this week is Chris Hamilton, with whom I went to school in Cardiff over 30 years ago. Chris is a full time professional (and award-winning) musician and composer who started his career as a lawyer, having gone to Oxford to study Law and worked in the City for a big corporate firm in London and New York. We talk about having gone ‘full circle’ as Chris learned the piano when very young. We talk about our schooldays and the importance of learning and how Chris loved standing up and performing from a young age. We talk about how school can be a traumatic experience whether you were on the A list or Z list (and we reference a film that is very much a guilty, or not so guilty, pleasure for us both – Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion). We are here because of the past and Chris says that he wouldn’t change any of it. Chris explains why we are the lucky generation in that we have memories of life pre-social media. He talks about going to India and Egypt on a one way ticket and whether that would be fe

My guest this week is James Kloda who works at the University of Kent in technical support, where he has worked since 2011. James has a background in live events (technical management) and, as we discover, cinema has always been a part of his life. James talks about how he went to the University of East Anglia to study Drama and English, where he managed to direct his own play. James reflects on the importance of film when growing up in Wolverhampton, when he used to record films off the TV. He was into horror films from the age of 11, and James talks about the joy of using the Radio Times to see what was showing and tick off the films he wanted to watch. We talk about the solitary nature of cinemagoing and our apprehension of Official Competition (Mariano Cohn & Gastón Duprat, 2021) and whether James has ever considered writing a film blog. James talks about avoiding reviews before a film as he likes ‘the shock of the new’, and we talk about Marvel movies. He discusses his apprehension of Amélie (Jean