John Mitchinson on Bentham and Blake, at 5x15

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John Mitchinson on Bentham and Blake, at 5x15

15 Mar 2010

Speakers: John Mitchinson

"Two guys dressed in brown, and dead for over 180 years". John Mitchinson examines two characters who, although they lived immensely different lives, were remarkably similar. Similar for being revolutionaries. For being visionaries. For being “complete and utter nutters”. Mitchinson explores the obsessive liberalism of philosopher and legal reformer Jeremy Bentham, as well as the anarchic anti-establishment journey of William Blake, poet and painter; one an international celebrity, the other a nonentity in his lifetime. One slept with a pig in his bed and carried glass eyes in his pocket to prepare for his intended embalming. The other was a devoted but crazed husband and impossibly useless businessman. But both were marvellous, if utterly mad, humanists and educators.