VPRO OVT Live

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One of the best listened-to programmes on Radio 1 is VPRO’s OVT (Simple Past Tense). Every Sunday morning the topicality of history takes centre stage. It has become something of a tradition for the programme to be broadcast live from the festival and therefore it relocates to The Hague. This time to be broadcast live for an audience, from the warm foyer of Theater aan het Spui.

Paul van der Gaag and Jos Palm are the hosts and there is live music by Neco Novellas. Ian Buruma,  Jacques Janssen and Nelleke Noordervliet are guests, among others.  Music by Neco Novellas. Members of the public are invited to come and both admission and coffee are free. But please, don't forget to book through the link at the top of this page.

Information

Date and time Sunday 19 January 2014 from 10:00 to 11:30 hrs
Location Theater aan het Spui - foyer

Ian Buruma

(The Hague, NL, 1951) is a sinologist, japanologist, journalist and writer. Asian culture, democracy, religion, politics, Islamic fundamentalism, and the aftermath of World War II are returning subjects in his vast body of work. His essays have appeared in publications such as The New York Times, The GuardianNRC and The New York Review of Books. Buruma grew up in The Hague, the child of a British mother and a Dutch father. His book Their Promised Land: My grandparents in times of love and war tells the story of his London-born, German-Jewish grandparents. He has been a professor of democracy, human rights and journalism in New York since 2003. He received the Erasmus Prize in 2008.
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Paul van der Gaag

(Netherlands, 1958) has produced and presented the VPRO radio programme OVT since 2002, a two-hour show about the historical roots of current events as well as newly released historical books, films, commemorations, and anything else related to history. The show features live interviews, reportage, columns and a weekly documentary during the last half hour. He was already linked to OVT since 1992 as a programmer and previously freelanced for other national Dutch broadcasters such as VARA and IKON.
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Nelleke Noordervliet

(Netherlands, 1945) writes novels, stories, essays, lectures and columns with a strong historical bent. She debuted with 1987's Tine of de dalen waar het leven woont (Tine, or the Valleys Where Life Lives), a fictitious biography of 19th-century Dutch writer Multatuli's first wife. Her book De naam van de vader (The Name of the Father) won the 1994 Multatuli Prize. In 2002 she wrote Pelican Bay, about slavery in the Caribbean and the Netherlands. Her essay collection Schatplicht (Tribute) appeared in 2013, and her 2016 novel Aan het eind van de dag (At the End of the Day) is simultaneously a portrait of a career woman and a snapshot of the second half of the 20th century. De val van Thomas G. (The fall of Thomas G.) tells about the publisher of a controversial book. Noordervliet's body of work was awarded the 2018 Constantijn Huygens Prize.
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Jos Palm

(Zeddam, NL, 1956) is a Dutch journalist, historian and radio presenter. He was founder and editor-in-chief of the Historical Newsletter and he worked for the University of Leiden newspaper Mare. Palm also writes for Trouw newspaper and the Groene Amsterdammer magazine. He has written books such as De vergeten geschiedenis van Nederland (The Forgotten History of The Netherlands); Oerend hard (Super Fast), about the musician Ben Jolink; and Moederkerk, de ondergang van rooms Nederland (Mother Church: The Decline of the Roman-Catholic Netherlands). After a Catholic upbringing he turned away from the religion. He was very active for years with the then-revolutionary SP socialist party. Among other things, he works for OVT, the history program of the VPRO public radio station.
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Neco Novellas

Singer/songwriter Neco grew up in Mozambique, in a family in which five out of ten children became musicians. He left for Portugal, studied classical guitar and singing, and then went to study at Codarts in Rotterdam. He travelled through Europe in order to perform, now and then accompanied by his brothers and sisters. From 2004 Neco Novellas became a real band of bothers and sisters. The catchy music has influences of South African choral music, reggae and rock, jazz and classical music, and the chopi music from the motherland.
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Ad van Liempt

(Utrecht, NL 1949) is the author of various non-fiction books on WWII and a maker of television programmes. He was editor-in-chief of Nova (a Dutch current affairs programme) and fouder and editor-in-chief of Andere Tijden, a history programme on Dutch national tv, heading the history department. He also headed the history department of NPS (Dutch public television). He wrote the script and did the final editing of the tv series De oorlog (The War). Previously he wrote Kopgeld, a shocking and revealing book on the activities of Jew hunters in 1943. In 2009 he was elected historian of the year. In January 2014 his new book appears: Na de bevrijding - de loodzware jaren 1945-1950 (After liberation - the difficult years 1945-1950). The book accompanies the seven-episode television series which NTR is broadcasting from January 2014.
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Jacques Janssen

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