Nostalgia Interviews With Chris Deacy

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