John Berger, The British Library & Audioboo
I first came across John Berger as a teenager when reading “A Fortunate Man“, a remarkable book about the social role of a country doctor. Later on, when studying photography, his “Ways of Seeing” was already required reading.
So it was already of interest to me to hear from The Guardian that he had agreed to donate, at the age of 82, his entire lifetime archive to The British Library. With one caveat. They would have to come to his home high in the French Alps to both sort the papers and transport them back. So Jamie Andrews, the Library’s head of modern manuscripts, has set off equipped with the perfect tool for the job: Audioboo.
You can access the recordings he’s already done on audio. I also thought it would be nice to take the RSS feed from their account and visualise it on Google Maps. Since every audioboo feed has geolocation data in it as standard, it’s a quick copy and paste job to get a live, auto updated visual like the one below.
John Berger is an authentic and true writer, and a quiet but strong critic of mankind : his essays in novel, and stories on social behaviour are a patrimony. The ultimate proof of his penetrating view is that he is almost invisible to the (un)ruling class of today. Bravo Audioboo !