114. Sathnam Sanghera; Empire, Racism and Legacy, Brits Abroad and Boris Johnson’s Therapy
Release Date: 02/02/2021
125. Christmas Special 2021; Sathnam Sanghera, Lisa Jewell, Matt Forde, Anne Sebba, Olly Mann, Greenham Common and more
The Big Travel Podcast
Authors Anne Sebba on the Royal abdication, Sathnam Sanghera's dismal Christmas restaurant, Lisa Jewell's Boney M in Barbados, adventurer Jamie Douglas-Hamilton rowing to the Antarctic, satirist Matt Forde in an NYC Irish bar, podcaster Olly Mann’s disappointing LA Santa, artist Firouz FarmanFarmaian Muslim Catholic Christmas in Marrakesh, adventurer Sam McManus's ancient Spanish fiesta, Festival promoter Huw Win's Thai rainforest & Nobel Peace Prize winner Rebecca Johnson's Christmas at Greenham Common.
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124. Firouz FarmanFarmaian; Escaping Tehran, Kashmiri Houseboats, Trekking Kyrgyzstan, Rock Bands and Contemporary Art
The Big Travel Podcast
Born in Tehran, the descendent of a nomadic tribe, Contemporary Artist Firouz FarmanFarmaian's family scattered after the Islamic Revolution. He grew up trekking mountains and deserts, touring with his Indie rock band and now with his internationally acclaimed art. With a gallery in Tarifa, Spain, and a new base in Athens, he travels the globe sourcing ideas and materials with craftswomen in remote regions and will be representing Kyrgyzstan at the Venice Biennale with the exhibition Gates of Turan.
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123. On Location in Marbella Old Town with Tour Guide Javier Gonzalez
The Big Travel Podcast
A journey through the maze of Marbella's 16th Century cobbled lanes surrounding the old 'Orange Square', encountering flamenco singers and opera stars and sampling some of the coast's most wonderful tapas. With tour guide Javier Gonzalez and staying at the stunning Anantara Villa Padierna Palace, with its classical Italian design and sophisticated yet arty vibe.
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122. Matt Forde; Billy Connolly in New York, Liam Gallagher in Berlin and Nick Leeson's Worldwide 'British Scandal' Jaunt
The Big Travel Podcast
Comedian, political satirist and Spitting Image star Matt Forde talks accosting Billy Connolly in New York, 'dying' on stage in Luxemborg, pints of Carling in ex-pat clubs in Bahrain, Nick Leeson's luxury hotel dash around the world, spending 3 months locked in a first floor flat, an emotional pilgrimage to the Ghostbusters fire station, being the voice of Boris Johnson and Donald Trump (yes he does give us some excellent impressions) and posh people behaving badly on the podcast British Scandal.
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121. Sam McManus; Adventure Travel When the World Closes, Costa Rica, Green Northern Spain and the Unexpected Pull of Home
The Big Travel Podcast
Just as the world was closing Sam McManus from YellowWood Adventures took a daunting gamble and hopped on a plane to Costa Rica. We talk about how the pandemic can change travel (even for the better), tourism being potentially a means for good, eco-tourism and re-forestation, surfing, small pueblos in the green hills of Northern Spain, his wonderful travelogue about his explorations - Wax and Gold Journeys in Ethiopia & Other Roads Less Travelled - and feeling the pull of friends, family and home.
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120. UK TRAVEL UPDATE; Travel Opens Up, Vaccines, Quarantine and a Call to Action to The Government
The Big Travel Podcast
Good news at least for those people who have had two UK administered vaccines. From 19th July we can now go to amber list countries without quarantining on return. BUT at the moment this is just for UK administered vaccines meaning the country is not yet open to inbound tourism. Travel needs to be two-way! We need people in the UK to support our business too. Whilst we are aware it needs to be done safely we also need to get aviation and travel moving even further.
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119. UK TRAVEL UPDATE; New Rules, Traffic Lights, Vaccinations
The Big Travel Podcast
A Big Travel Podcast special on the latest UK Travel Update; the new rules, the changes in the traffic light ratings, vaccinations soon to be taken into account and much more. A ten minute episode of essential listening.
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118. Olly Mann; Guns On Trucks in Malawi, Swim-Up Bar Piña Coladas, Greyhounds and The American Dream
The Big Travel Podcast
Olly Mann, from Answer Me This podcast fame, his new The Retrospectors and much more, loves nothing more than researching trivia especially with travel. We talk Wrigley’s chewing gum and decapitation, leaving your baby outside a pub, people who get erections on public transport, a love for Luton Airport, the misleading American Dream, cocktails worth shortening your life for, having a bottom accident on an African roadside (yes this episode does feature the S word) and much more.
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117. Huw Wyn; Arabian Nights in Cairo, Hitching Through Nepal, Tibetan Medicine in Scotland and Tom Hardy Dropping into his Festival
The Big Travel Podcast
Into The Wild Festival promoter Huw Wyn grew up in his mother’s hotel in Wales then moved to Spain. We talk growing up feral in Andalucia, hitchhiking across Europe, fish-packing in the Netherlands, Glastonbury, Arabian Nights in Cairo, the poetic side of being a London bin man, orphanages in India, Mother Theresa in Calcutta, meeting the Dalai Lama, studying Tibetan medicine in Scotland, the remote Buddhist kingdom in Ladakh, hitching 2000 miles through Nepal, Tom Hardy at his festival and much
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116. Anne Sebba; Parisian Women and Nazis, Film Stars in Rome, ‘Communists’ in Sing Sing Prison
The Big Travel Podcast
The author of one of Lisa’s favourite books, Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved and Died in the 1940s, Anne Sebba explores the lives of women ‘writers and fighters’. As a journalist and author she's worked in film-star-filled 70s Rome, moved to New York with a baby, camped in the Mexico desert with Wallis Simpson’s free-diving step-son, had her camera film thrown into the Ganges while tracing Mother Theresa and, for her most recent book on Ethel Rosenburg, to Belarus and Sing Sing
info_outlineIt was winning a Radio 1 competition age 15 to fly to LA that first piqued Sathnam Sanghera’s taste for travel and indeed journalism. His latest book EmpireLand: How Modern Britain is Shaped by its Imperial Past explores how the British Empire, genocidal as it often was, still shapes who we are. As well as the Empire, racism, Enoch Powell, Cambridge, 80s popular culture, the history of Brits Abroad and Boris Johnson needing therapy we chart Sathnam’s own journey from his Sikh community in Wolverhampton to journalist for The Times and more.
On this episode we cover:
Selective amnesia and nostalgia
Conquering the world
We see ourselves as the people who won WW2
But actually Empire was often genocidal white supremacy
500 years of differing history
More useful to talk about the modern legacies of empire
Much we haven’t faced up to
The book being accidentally timely with Black Lives Matter
Statues not mattering
Multi-culturism being much more important
Our racism being explained by empire
Our dysfunctional politics being explained by empire
British travelling almost more than any other nation
Statue toppling getting middle England angry
How statue toppling can weaponise the right wing
Massacres, genocide and the creation of modern racism
Lisa being a product of British Colonialism indentured labour
Where British moved millions of Indian people around the world
British changing stereotypes of what races were good and bad at
The Sikhs being made to be a martial race
His parents arriving in Wolverhampton the same year as Enoch Powell’s rivers of blood speech
Sikhs having a good record of integration
Integration and multicultural being an inversion of racial hierarchy’
Lisa recording podcasts with Lord Mountbatten’s daughter Lady Pamela Hicks
Empire not being that long ago
Textbooks with offensive racial generalisations being used into the 1980s
Lisa’s Indian-Fijian father marrying her white mother in the 1960s
Lisa growing up with no Indian culture whatsoever
Growing up in a Sikh community in Wolverhampton
Most of his classmates being brown or black
Being ‘Enoch Powell’s nightmare’
Hiding in a Sikh temple when far right yobs attacking houses
Wolves fans wearing KKK hoods
A scholarship to a private school changing his life
The school fees being more than his parents earned in a year
The inspirational headteacher who believed in him
Going from someone who barely talked in class to being head boy
Education distancing him from his family
Cutting off his top knot being quite a statement
His wonderful education also being a form of colonisation
Indian Princes being sent to British schools
His father and sister having schizophrenia
Briefly deleted his heritage
But appreciating his amazing childhood surrounded by cousins (52!)
Factory work as a child for up to 90 hours a week
Being poor in money but truly rich in love
Poverty meaning you need other people more
You can sense when someone hasn’t been loved as a child
And quite often they end up in politics
Boris Johnson needing years of therapy
Boris Johnson saying crazy things about British Empire;
‘Water melon smiles’ and an obsession with being world-beating
Jacob Rees-Mogg also being obsessed with Empire
Not really understanding the people at Cambridge
Cambridge being ‘socially confusing’
Rich people pretending to be poor
Not feeling sentimental about being working class
Becoming middle class as quickly as he could
Regretting not be more sociable at Cambridge
Is Sathnam now part of the establishment working for The Times…?
Doing anti-networking journalism
Asking people rude and difficult questions
Feeling it’s a duty to be honest to the reader
Strategy is to not say much – people struggle to handle silence
The connection between Empire and travel
The British love of travel going back directly to Empire
We have the largest number of emigrants overseas
How drunk ‘Brits Abroad’ are actually following a long tradition of Empire
The British Empire being famously drunk
Eating a full English breakfast in the middle of Rome
Our tradition of dressing quite badly abroad
Enoch Powell in a three piece suit in the heat of India
Reverse missionaries – where we spread Christianity and now foreign nations are more religious
British Expats being obsessed with a British education
The Grand Tour, sons of wealthy families travelling for culture, art and freedom
Going to Empire having been financially lucrative
The real risk of death and disease in Empire
Spending a year in the USA for the Financial Times
Hating travelling in his 20s and being very homesick
Lockdown cancelling world trips to promote his book
How often the best part of travelling is coming back home
Feeling he knows his home town better now he’s moved out
Loving the diversity and excitement in London
Winning a Radio 1 competition to see Michael Jackson
Age 15, having barely left Wolverhampton he ended up in LA
Flying to LA with Jackie Brambles
Being pictured with Michael Jackson at the Superbowl