Nostalgia Interviews With Chris Deacy

My guest this week is Brendan McSharry, Editor of The Link, who studied History and English at Lampeter from 1968-71. He has received an OBE for services to education and culture in Iraq where he spent four years working for the British Council.  Born in North West London in 1949, Brendan explains why he wanted to study as far away as possible from the city, and he remembers the long train journey to Carmarthen and what happened when he travelled with a Welsh lorry driver who couldn’t speak a word of English. Brendan discusses his Irish background and how, from childhood, he can recall the fast pace of life in London and how he had hardly visited the countryside before going to Lampeter. In his family he was the first of his generation to go to university, and we find out what his parents did. Brendan discusses Carnaby Street and how he became a voracious reader in later years, as well as developed a love of classical music. He was Captain of the cross country club while at university. His school, on the o

Angela Puca joins me for this week’s fascinating Nostalgia Interview. Based at Leeds Trinity University, where she is a PhD student, Angela and I talk about how we can no longer have physical conferences during lockdown and why she moved to the UK from Italy in order to do her PhD.  We learn that Angela, who sticks to a daily writing schedule, has her own YouTube channel called Angela’s Symposium which is dedicated to the academic study of magic, paganism, witchcraft and esotericism: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPSbip_LX2AxbGeAQfLp-Ig. Angela tells me about the reasons for its inception. We discuss why the journey is more important than the final product, and Angela talks about her Italian background and how her academic journey began and why she is interested in contemporary work on witchcraft. We discover where her interest in magic comes from and how it is a way for people to connect beyond the five senses. Angela tells me why we create rather than find our own meaning, and we discover that s

It was a huge pleasure this week to interview Jessica Frazier from the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. We talk about representing the exotic, teaching religion and Jessica’s fascination with the meaning of life. Jessica was born in Washington D.C. and came to England when a child. Jessica reveals her apprehension of the different seasons, how she fantasized about going to Narnia as a kid, and we learn about the appeal of Thailand where it is always summer – indeed, a portal into something magical. Jessica talks about her love of ‘place’ and compares it to the love of a person. We talk about why she thinks humans are meant not to live in just one place, and we discuss idea of a place vs. the actuality. She reflects also on whether it is possible to impose nostalgia on an experience and how a change of perspective can reveal as well as romanticise the past. We talk about what solitude does to certain experiences and Jessica reflects on the notion of belonging and why she rues the day she first bought a c

My guest this week is Leslie de Vries, who is Lecturer in East Asian Traditions at the University of Kent. Born in Antwerp, Belgium, we learn why Les doesn’t really look back to his childhood. He has a sister who was very sporty while his parents lived quite different lives. He explains why he didn’t perceive his family situation as normal. Les’ father was involved in managing bands and football players and Les recalls once shaking hands with Lionel Richie. Les explains why he wanted to be a ‘normal kid’ and how he was a bit of a dreamer in school. He later became involved in playing music and we discover how he became interested in East Asia through martial arts. We talk about the band Won Ton Ton and how we end up following unexpected paths. We find out why Les was kicked out of his band as a bass player and why it wasn’t quite the right path for him. He practiced Chinese martial arts and was fascinated by the philosophy behind it which led to Les’ Chinese adventure and his PhD. Les talks about the

Richard King is Professor Emeritus of Buddhist and Asian Studies at the University of Kent and in this wide ranging interview Rich begins by talking us through the different places where he has worked. He never would have imagined having the career he does as no one in his family had stayed in education beyond the age of 14. We learn that he might have ended up as a road sweeper. His parents were aware of their class background and Rich talks about how the programmes he watched when he was young said something about one’s class. His earliest memories entail reading out the words in a newspaper and he remembers having the radio on in the house. He recalls swivelling his hips to Elvis and we learn that his first album was from The Police and that he has a particular fondness for 70s music. Rich became a Dr. Who fan in later years and he talks about how it became an important signifier of his identity when he was living away from the UK. We learn why Rich chose to go to the University of Hull and why he fe

My guest this week, in my first face-to-face interview since lockdown, is Justin Lewis-Anthony, Rector of Chingford. Justin talks about how he ended up doing a PhD with me and why the topic of leadership was something that made him angry. He refers to how cinema is the functioning mythological delivery system of the age and how many people expect Church leaders to function like John Wayne. Justin would rather teach people to be disciples.  We discuss Bonhoeffer and Pratchett and Jesus films and what counts as a historical fact and being taught by David Starkey. Justin speaks about nostalgia as one of the processes whereby we apply meaning to things that have happened and we learn why Justin is suspicious about authenticity, and he draws on Little House on the Prairie to illustrate his point. We learn why he’s bored by dark superheroes and we find out about the problem with thinking of authenticity as an empirical standard and why it’s not a goal for human flourishing. We look at Robin Hood, Led Zeppelin,

My guest this week is John Partridge, Honorary Lecturer in Linguistics at the University of Kent. John came to Canterbury from Bavaria in 1977 where he had taught English. We talk about how we once bumped into each other at a Gerry and the Pacemakers gig and about broaching conversations with idols. John tells us about his PhD on performative verbs and we discuss whether new forms of language have arisen since lockdown, and we learn why John is disinclined to use social media conventions. We discover how John regrets not having taken full advantage of the many cultural benefits available in Liverpool (though he did gain two qualifications and a wife). We find out that he had a happy time growing up in Sutton Coldfield and doing lots of outdoor activities e.g. mountaineering, and John discloses why he is quite a parochial kind of person. We learn that he meets up with friends from sixth form once or twice a year and we talk about how places mean different things to different people. John discuss

My guest this week is Gaye Morris who lives in North Carolina and was previously based in in the UK and with whom I collaborated about 15 years ago on a book called Theology and Film. We talk about our rationale in writing it and the relationship between the Christian and the secular world. It was a validation of working on popular culture and there is a fascinating moment when Gaye talks about how she got to talk with Linda Hamilton on a plane about a chapter on The Terminator that appeared in a previous theology and film book that she edited. Gaye taught public speaking and media and communication studies, and a few religion and film classes, at Augusta State University and now teaches public speaking to undergraduates. We learn that Gaye’s father was in the military and as a family they tended to move around. She remembers fooling around on a farm as a child and how she thought that Santa was asking her from the basement if she had been good. We talk about her magical memories of Christmas from when

My guest this week is Michael Gibson who lives in Athens, Georgia, and works as a Senior Editor at Lexington Books. He has written on Paul Schrader and Stanley Kubrick and we learn why film has been a significant part of Michael’s journey and why he is influenced by Schrader’s work on abundant vs. sparse cinema. We talk about Schrader’s contribution to film scholarship, and we learn why Schrader’s Affliction is very John Ford-ish. Two of Michael’s earliest memories are to do with film, including going to see The Empire Strikes Back and seeing the trailer on TV for The Shining. We learn how the Criterion Channel has kept him sane during lockdown and that Michael has been watching old Japanese films. Michael was a music buff as a child, and he explains why music is a soundtrack to his life and how our musical interests diverge from that of our parents. We learn about Michael’s career journey and how he wound up in publishing and how it keeps him in touch with his research interests, and the interdiscip

My guest this week is filmmaker, screenwriter and theologian Craig Detweiler who is based in Los Angeles. Craig grew up in North Carolina and went to film school in California where he has lived since. He has taught Destin Daniel Cretton, the director/screenwriter of Just Mercy (2019) which was the first movie in Hollywood to be made with an inclusion rider. We talk about Destin’s next project which will be a superhero movie. Craig discusses Black Lives Matter and the Equal Justice Initiative and the role of nostalgia in charting our lives from childhood. He explains that people who work in the film industry don’t take their successes for granted and see it as a privilege to tell stories for a living. We discuss how some of the best films have been made about people on the wrong side of Hollywood, e.g. P.T. Anderson’s Magnolia. We talk about the artifice and green screen dimension to films and compare it to the big Hollywood sets in previous generations recreating, say, ancient Egypt, and the repurposin

My guest this week is Heidi Campbell, Professor of Communications at Texas A&M University where she has been based for the last 15 years. Originally from Michigan, Heidi trained as a journalist and then morphed into a Religious Studies scholar where she does some pioneering, interdisciplinary work in media, religion and culture. Heidi has just edited an online collection on the coronavirus pandemic, Religion in Quarantine: The Future of Religion in a Post-Pandemic World (https://oaktrust.library.tamu.edu/handle/1969.1/188004), and she talks about churches which are streaming services and asks how people are adapting their use of technology. We learn about the rationale and the findings of her project, including whether religion needs to be embodied or disembodied and the relationship between events and communities. What does it mean for a Muslim, for example, who can’t practice their religion in a physical mosque? Heidi reflects on her career and talks about the role of classical music when she was

It is two years this week since my first Nostalgia Interview was broadcast, and, on the second anniversary, I am putting out my first interview to be recorded via Zoom. My guest is Chris Gordon who runs a podcast called Hellblazerbiz (https://www.hellblazerbiz.com/), in which he interviews people in the movie business. Chris tells us how he got into it and how he was once talked about on the red carpet at a premiere in Los Angeles. For his podcast Chris gets fans to ask questions to his guests and he talks about how the experience of interviewing has been likened to old friends catching up in a pub. We learn why independent actors are likely to want to put themselves out more and why Matthew Modine didn’t want to be interviewed by him. Chris studied German at Lampeter from 1994-8, which included a year in Germany, and he talks about why Lampeter was his coming of age and the place which set him up for the rest of his life. We learn that he came to Lampeter from North Wales and why he likens Lampeter to

My guest this week is Esther Weller, Chair of the Lampeter Society who was a student in Lampeter in the mid to late 90s. Esther was born in London but then moved to Wales when she was six months old and grew up in the South Wales Valleys. We learn that she wanted to find out about her family background before it is too late and we find out what she found out. Esther talks about her father’s Jewish background and about her family’s association with a betting club and the community aspect around Passover. In terms of earliest memories, Esther remembers her first day of school and having milk in the playground and how she was to lose a teacher to cancer. She has strong memories of her maternal grandmother and we discover what it was like to go to university from an all girls’ school where she wasn’t used to being around boys and why Lampeter was very much a ‘hidden gem’. We talk about the growth of coffee shop culture in recent years and how students don’t drink alcohol so much anymore. As a child she l

My guest this week is Alex Davis who is an MA Ancient History student at the University of Kent. Alex talks about growing up in Lydd and going to university as a mature student after working in her parents’ family business. She tells us how she went from working in the accounts department to doing a degree in Classics and Ancient History, where her passion for her subject came from and how she would have done something geosciences-based if she had gone to university straight from school. We talk about the value of doing a degree, and the critical skills that we acquire, and why deadlines are natural to her, before moving on to talk about Alex’s earliest memories and the music she used to listen to in the family car while growing up, such as from Queen and the way that music from, say, school discos pull us back. We learn that Alex is more of a book person and that she and her partner are currently re-reading the work of Terry Pratchett. Alex talks about the influence of her school Geography teacher, how

My guest this week is Linda Pike who works at BT HQ as a Project Manager and graduated from Lampeter in French in 1995. Linda reveals why Lampeter was like a pleasure dome, and how it wasn’t a judgemental place and how she embraced the ‘away from home’ experience. We talk about the ‘melting pot’ of people and how she would get paid to socialise by working down the bar. We find out about how she had access to the reject button on the jukebox, and when and how she would use it, and Linda likens Lampeter to Neapolitan ice cream. Linda was born in Essex but grew up in South Devon, and we learn that her earliest memories involve her cuddly lion called Leo. We discover that Linda is a kinaesthetic person and she talks about how she would go swimming on Sundays and that, today, her happiest state involves being at the seaside. When she was young she would record programmes off the radio and we find out that the first album she was given was Duran Duran’s 'Seven and the Ragged Tiger'. We find out why Linda prefers

My guest this week is John Loaring, whose claim to fame is that he invented PPI, and who was at Lampeter from 1964-67 while it made the transition from being an all-male theological college. He recounts how many of his contemporaries thought that having female students was an experiment that would fail and go away, and John recounts how he ended up going to Lampeter in the first place. We learn that he had previously been working for the Inland Revenue and as a porter for British Rail, and did train announcements at Cardiff General. We talk about the days when we were paid to go to university. His father worked for the railway for 38 years but was always classed as temporary staff. He recalls the days when there was a lot of mental bullying depending on one’s background and we discuss the concept of stepping outside of one’s comfort zone. He was the first in his family to go to university, and we learn about the role that rugby and drinking played in his student days. John used to write down what was on

My guest this week is Onyeka Nubia, author, historian and TV presenter. Onyeka works in the area of diversifying and developing a more inclusive university curriculum and teaching history in a way that means we can reframe British identity. In this very erudite and illuminating interview, Onyeka expresses his concern about how university programmes don’t always teach properly and are insufficiently inclusive and are inaccessible to those who don’t fit a certain demographic. We find out about some of the alternative ways in which he would deliver the curriculum. We talk about the problem with social media peer groups and how it affects our attention spans, as our reference points are being taken away. Onyeka paints a picture of how these days students want to know the answer without understanding the journey that produces the result. An aggressive conservatism is making them conform and their world revolves around their telephones – to the point that it’s the ‘thing’ they worship. Many students fear accessi

My guest this week is Heidi Colthup who works in the Department of English Language and Linguistics at the University of Kent. We learn about the unusual criteria she uses to remember how long she has been here and we discover that Heidi has also worked as a freelance journalist and trained as a primary school teacher. Heidi talks about why she felt powerless in that profession apart from when she was actually teaching and we learn why all of her careers have been creative and why she is an ‘intellectual butterfly’. Heidi was married to a farmer and has twin boys and we find out how she combined fine art with driving tractors and how she ended up channelling her talents through writing. We learn why books have always been a sanctuary for Heidi and why the reader gets to lead a thousand lives, and we have an extended discussion around trashy novels and ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ and the notion of ‘counterpoint’. Heidi talks about being a child of the 1970s with Scottish ancestry and we learn about how and wh

My guest this week is Murray Smith, Professor of Film in the School of Arts at the University of Kent where he has been based since 1992. We talk about the concept of ‘trading places’ in academia and about how love is part of how he ended up at Kent and whether we’d be the same people now if we’d made different choices at 18. Murray grew up in Potters Bar and he talks about what he did in response to his environment being quite culturally barren. His parents were born in the 1920s and they had children relatively late, and we discuss the concepts of ‘Protestant frugality’ and ‘rebellion through conformity’. We learn that Murray has fragmented memories of his earliest years and we talk about the difficulty of distinguishing memories from old photos. Murray discusses how 14-16 are quite formative ages and we learn that music was and still is the most important form of culture (more than film) for him. His parents were into ballroom dancing and Herb Alpert and I correctly guess what was no. 1 in the UK Sin

My guest this week is Marion Stuart who studied Divinity at Lampeter in the 1980s and talks about the oddity of being in the same peer group as her lecturers. She reflects on how she took a subject which her parents wouldn’t really have approved of and she remembers the legendary DP Davies. From childhood Marion recalls the bombs that dropped during the Second World War and when the Crystal Palace grounds opened up. She tells us why she was ‘teacher’s favourite’ and how she had to deal with bullying. Marion remembers the rules of grammar school and how different it is from today, and she reflects on the difference between public and private school and her experience of working in a Lebanese refugee school in Cyprus. In terms of growing up, without pop music, Marion’s music was the school choir. She also learned songs from musicals and we talk about the concept of pop music being ‘of the Devil’ as well as how singing was her thing. Marion became a Reader in the Church in Wales and she talks about bein