The Mark Steel Lectures

The Mark Steel Lectures are a series of radio and television programmes. Written and delivered by Mark Steel, each scripted lecture presents arguments for the importance of a historical figure.

The lectures were originally broadcast on BBC Radio 4 over three series between 1999 and 2002. Many of the arguments were illustrated by miniature sketches. These sketches featured Mark Steel, Martin Hyder, Mel Hudson, Carla Mendonça, Femi Elufowoju Junior and Debbie Isitt. The first series was subtitled "A series of lectures about Englishmen who changed the course of history", with the remaining two changing this to "A series of lectures about people with a passion". The first series was produced by Phil Clark; the others by Lucy Armitage. The lecture on Ludwig van Beethoven was nominated for a Sony Radio Comedy Award.

The programme transferred to television in 2003, with an Open University series on BBC Four, which was later repeated on BBC Two. This variously featured:

⁕Gerard Logan as Lord Byron

⁕Martin Hyder as Isaac Newton, Sigmund Freud, Aristotle, Che Guevara, Oliver Cromwell, Ludwig van Beethoven and Charles Darwin

⁕Ainsley Harriott as Robert Boyle

⁕Linda Smith as Martha Freud

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Created By

Status

Ended

Original Name

The Mark Steel Lectures

First Air Date

October 7, 2003

Last Air Date

March 30, 2006

Seasons

Episodes

Language

English

Production Companies

Networks

BBC Four

S03E06

Ernesto 'Che' Guevara

Walk down any high street in this country and chances are at some point you’ll see somebody wearing a Che Guevara t shirt. Most of whom have absolutely no idea who he was and what he stood for. Still, it’s a nice image, and he was handsome… Che Guevara was born in Argentina in 1928; initially he trained to be a doctor but became politically conscious and abandoned his vocation in order to travel across South America on the back of a motorbike. It was in Mexico in 1955 that Che met a young Fidel Castro who with his brother Raul had been exiled from his Cuban homeland and was preparing for an uprising there by training a crack squad of rebels in the Mexican countryside. This was Che’s calling. It’s what he’d been waiting his whole life for. It was his destiny. In this latest edition of his BAFTA nominated series of lectures, writer and broadcaster Mark Steel travels to South America and turns his attentions to the life and revolutionary times of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara.

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