This week

Terry Eagleton
Marcel Theroux
Jimi Tenor
Nick Drake
Pink Martini
Bjork

The difference between false memories and true ones

is the same as for jewels: it is always the false ones that look the most real, the most brilliant.

Salvador Dali

12.08 East of Bucharest raises a great many questions about the nature of memory and the different interpretations of a single event from the varying perspectives within and without it. In this case, the flight of the Ceaucescu’s in December 1989, and the question(s) of the varying degrees of involvement of individuals in the events in a provincial Romanian town.

I found this particulary interesting, not least because (I thought) the images of the dead President and his wife are one of my clearest memories of the collapse of the Communist regimes, along with the fall of the Berlin Wall. The question, however, for me, at least, is how much of this I have (re)created after the event - in fact, I m no longer even sure that the footage of the two dead bodies actually appeared on British TV, and I can’t find a copy on YouTube or anywhere else to check, and even if I did, I couldn’t be sure that it wasn’t simply fulfilling the expectations I have having read about the footage in a number of other sources.

This period, or rather the UK media’s coverage of it, was one of the major influences that has fired (and, of course continues to fire) my passion for all parts of the former Soviet Bloc. So, dear readers, can any of you confirm, either way, whether or not the footage appeared on the Beeb?