Afterwords - Susan Sontag

In 'Afterwords' we explore the ideas of great writers in their own words - as archive recordings in which they articulate their approach is interwoven with the thoughts of contemporary writers, academics and activists.

Through the 1960s and '70s up to her death in 2004, Susan Sontag was the embodiment of the fashionable, metropolitan, 'public intellectual'. Her writings on 'camp', on photography, on illness (she endured cancer at a time when the 'C word' was almost taboo) and the suffering of others, together with her activism and her art, came to be shared with millions through the medium for which she had very little time as a viewer - television. And her radio interviews on the BBC and elsewhere cemented her reputation.

With contributions from her West Coast friend and scholar Terry Castle, the war correspondent Allan Little who got to know her well during the Siege of Sarajevo, the writer and broadcaster Lisa Appignanesi who achieved a rare intimacy in one interview for Radio 3's Night Waves, Andrew Bolton (curator of the exhibition called 'Camp: Notes on Fashion' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York), the journalist, critic and Sontag 'fan-boy' Boyd Tonkin and the writer Elif Shafak who continues to work in Sontag's long shadow, we take a close listen to the American writer and examine her legacy.

(Including archive from Studs Terkel Radio Archive, courtesy Chicago History Museum and WFMT Radio Network.)

Produced Alia Cassam and Alan Hall

A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 3

A fragmentary look at the writer Susan Sontag through her own words and those of her peers