In our new series 'Afterwords', we explore the ideas of great writers in their own words - as archive recordings in which they articulate their approach interweave with the thoughts of contemporary writers, academics and activists.
Through the '60s and '70s up to her death in 2004, Susan Sontag was the embodiment of the fashionable, metropolitan, 'public intellectual'. Her writings on 'camp', on photography, on illness (she survived and then died from cancer at a time when the C word was almost taboo) and the suffering of others, together with her activism and her art, came to be shared with millions through the medium for which she had very little time as a viewer - television. And her radio interviews on the BBC and elsewhere cemented her reputation.
With contributions from her West Coast friend and scholar Terry Castle, the war correspondent Allan Little who got to know her well during the Siege of Sarajevo, the writer and broadcaster Lisa Appignanesi who achieved a rare intima...
