• Collectors: Denis Diderot

  • Jan 20 2025
  • Length: 15 mins
  • Podcast

Collectors: Denis Diderot

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  • Summary

  • Naomi Alderman looks at the remarkable way Denis Diderot connected ideas and people. In 18th-century Paris, he edited one of the very first encyclopaedias: twenty-eight volumes with tens of thousands of articles on everything from the concept of liberty to cutting-edge medical research, the manufacture of silk stockings and a recipe for apricot jam. Diderot was the perfect man for the job – energised by veering from one subject to the next and undeterred by fierce opposition from the Church or even a government ban on the entire project.

    Special thanks to Kate Tunstall, Professor of French and Sir Lindsay Owen-Jones Fellow in Modern Languages at Worcester College, University of Oxford.

    Produced by BBC Studios Audio in partnership with The Open University.
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