One Pair of Eyes — Season 1, Episode 40: Raymond Williams: Border Country

Episode synopsis

Raymond Williams, novelist and lecturer, thinks university education should be fitted to the demands of real life. He believes that many of Britain's rebellious students are, like himself, inhabitants of what he calls 'the Border Country.' In this film Williams contrasts life in his working-class birth-place, Pandy, on the Welsh-English border, with academic Cambridge, where he teaches English literature. 'The journey between them is more than a physical journey. It's a journey between different kinds of life, different values. I cross that border in my mind almost every day. It seems to me important because the border country is everywhere. In so many places people are moving or being moved from old, settled ways into new, unprecedented ways which have to be felt, recognised, understood, responded to, altered.'

About One Pair of Eyes

A monthly series of highly personal documentary films in which individuals are given a platform to discuss issues close to their heart.

More episodes from Season 1

• E1James Cameron: Temporary Person Passing Through
• E2Dr Alex Comfort: A Traveller in the Dreamtime
• E3Anthony Howard: A City of Magnificent Intentions
• E4Nicholas Tomalin: No Worse Heresy
• E5James Cameron: The Road to Kingdom Come
• E6Jo Grimond: The Dead Hand of Democracy
• E7Peter Wilson: You've Got to Win
• E8Norman Parkinson: Stay Baby Stay
• E9Sir Tyrone Guthrie: Off to Philadelphia
• E10James Cameron: Berlin - The Haunted House
• E11Margaret Drabble: A Place Called Exile
• E12Claud Cockburn: One More River To Cross