In the epsiode, Chris and Murray talk about the concept of ‘trading places’ in academia and about how love is part of how Murray ended up at Kent and whether we’d be the same people now if we’d made different choices at 18.
Murray grew up in Potters Bar and he talks about what he did in response to his environment being quite culturally barren. His parents were born in the 1920s and they had children relatively late, and we discuss the concepts of ‘Protestant frugality’ and ‘rebellion through conformity’.
We learn that Murray has fragmented memories of his earliest years and we talk about the difficulty of distinguishing memories from old photos. Murray discusses how 14-16 are quite formative ages and we learn that music was and still is the most important form of culture (more than film) for him. We find out how Murray got into movies as an undergraduate in Liverpool (where he studied English) and how music then came back in a big way towards the end of his graduate student days.
We learn how he’s more of an aesthetician than a strictly film studies scholar these days and we discuss Canterbury scene heritages and Murray recounts the time when he proposed Robert Wyatt for an honorary degree.