News and Events

Light at the end of the Chunnel

23 March 2007

BU Professor of Radio, Sean Street, will explore the Channel Tunnel archives in a programme for BBC Radio 4’s ‘Archive Hour’.

‘Light at the End of the Chunnel’ (to be broadcast at 8.00pm on Saturday 7 April) will examine the history and symbolic significance of the tunnel.

Since 1802, when Frenchman Albert Mathieu first suggested an undersea passage between Britain and France, the idea of a fixed link with the continent has roused conflicting emotions.

During the programme Professor Street explores the history of the channel tunnel, through aborted excavations and political machinations.

He draws on a cast of ‘witnesses’ for the broadcast including Queen Victoria, William Gladstone and Margaret Thatcher.

The French poet Jacques Darras – who grew up on the other side of ‘La Manche’ (the Channel) – also features as a keen observer of English attitudes towards freedom, movement and the continent of Europe.

Professor Street revisits the arguments for and against re-establishing a physical connection with the European mainland and listens again to some of the key moments in the realisation - nearly two hundred years on - of Mathieu’s dream.

With location recordings from various sites relating to the project’s evolution and expert opinion from, amongst others, the political commentator Anthony Howard, Professor Street considers the metaphorical, as well as political and engineering significance, of the tunnel.

Light at the End of the Chunnel can be heard in the Archive Hour on Saturday 7 April at 8.00 pm on BBC Radio 4.