Nicola Baldwin’s film, "The Nervous State", (on which Julie Gottlieb was executive producer) dramatises F.L Lucas’s rediscovered ‘Journal Under the Terror, 1938’ (1939), a year in which this Cambridge scholar, writer, and anti-fascist public intellectual reflected on living in a world experiencing collective nervous breakdown. While he originally intended to chronicle the cultural and political events of his day, his young wife Prudence’s nervous breakdown (coinciding with the Munich Crisis) resulted in a very different kind of text, and provided the future with a history from within of the international crisis.
Gottlieb will first speak about the historical context, the opportunities and challenges of collaboration between artist and historian, and the making of the film, before screening “The Nervous State”. This will be followed by discussion and Q&A.
