About
In this episode, a conversation with Tom Overton, author of a new biography, John Berger: From Life.
John Berger was one of the most distinctive and influential writers, critics and thinkers of the twentieth century. An artist, novelist, essayist, poet and committed political radical, his work crossed disciplines and genres, but was united by an enduring interest in how we see, understand and relate to the world around us.
For many, Berger is best known for Ways of Seeing, his groundbreaking 1972 BBC television series and accompanying book, which transformed the language of art criticism and challenged the ways images, culture and power intersect. That same year, he won the Booker Prize for his experimental novel G., famously donating half the prize money to the British Black Panthers. Across a career spanning more than six decades, he wrote extensively about art, photography, migration, the lives of peasants and workers, and the political struggles of his time, often in collaboration with artists, photographers and filmmakers.
Berger was also a complicated, sometimes contradictory figure. A lifelong Marxist who was deeply suspicious of institutions and authority, he nevertheless became something of an institution himself. His political convictions were unwavering, occasionally contentious, and his life was marked by a series of departures, reinventions and close personal relationships that informed both his writing and his understanding of the world.
In John Berger: From Life, a major new biography published in the centenary year of Berger's birth, writer and archivist Tom Overton offers a remarkably intimate portrait of this singular figure. Having first encountered Berger through the cataloguing of his archive at the British Library, Overton went on to work closely with him, editing several collections of his writing, before spending fifteen years tracing the many threads of his life and work.
Drawing on previously unseen archival material, personal recollections and extensive research, Overton's biography is both an examination of Berger's extraordinary intellectual and artistic life, and an attempt to understand the person behind the work, without overlooking his contradictions.
Enjoyed what you heard? Click here to purchase the book: https://www.readings.com.au/product/9780241262528/john-berger--tom-overton--2026--9780241262528
John Berger was one of the most distinctive and influential writers, critics and thinkers of the twentieth century. An artist, novelist, essayist, poet and committed political radical, his work crossed disciplines and genres, but was united by an enduring interest in how we see, understand and relate to the world around us.
For many, Berger is best known for Ways of Seeing, his groundbreaking 1972 BBC television series and accompanying book, which transformed the language of art criticism and challenged the ways images, culture and power intersect. That same year, he won the Booker Prize for his experimental novel G., famously donating half the prize money to the British Black Panthers. Across a career spanning more than six decades, he wrote extensively about art, photography, migration, the lives of peasants and workers, and the political struggles of his time, often in collaboration with artists, photographers and filmmakers.
Berger was also a complicated, sometimes contradictory figure. A lifelong Marxist who was deeply suspicious of institutions and authority, he nevertheless became something of an institution himself. His political convictions were unwavering, occasionally contentious, and his life was marked by a series of departures, reinventions and close personal relationships that informed both his writing and his understanding of the world.
In John Berger: From Life, a major new biography published in the centenary year of Berger's birth, writer and archivist Tom Overton offers a remarkably intimate portrait of this singular figure. Having first encountered Berger through the cataloguing of his archive at the British Library, Overton went on to work closely with him, editing several collections of his writing, before spending fifteen years tracing the many threads of his life and work.
Drawing on previously unseen archival material, personal recollections and extensive research, Overton's biography is both an examination of Berger's extraordinary intellectual and artistic life, and an attempt to understand the person behind the work, without overlooking his contradictions.
Enjoyed what you heard? Click here to purchase the book: https://www.readings.com.au/product/9780241262528/john-berger--tom-overton--2026--9780241262528