Ways of Being: The Life of John Berger

In this edition of Suite (212), Juliet talks to former co-host Tom Overton about his long-awaited biography John Berger: From Life, published by Penguin. They discussed Tom’s encounter with the art critic, novelist, painter and poet Berger at the British Library, where he worked on Berger’s archives, and his approach to writing Berger’s biography. They also talked about how much Berger’s reputation rests on his seminal BBC television series Ways of Seeing (1972); Berger’s Booker Prize-winning novel G. and his decision to donate half the prize money to the Black Panthers; his ‘romantic Marxism’ and his responses to the Hungarian Uprising in 1956 and the Prague Spring in 1968; Berger’s staunch advocacy for Palestine; his consistent them of the relationship between the living and the dead; Berger’s later work amidst the end of cultural democracy, including his novel about the AIDS crisis, To the Wedding (1995); his works about migration and the peasantry; and the role of technology in Berger’s long life, from the advent of colour television to invention of the iPhone.

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