Radio Times

Review by:

Jane Anderson

According to Sigmund Freud in his 1919 paper The Uncanny, the German word for this unsettling feeling is “unheimlich” or “unhomely”. Is it this feeling of encountering something unexpected in the most familiar of settings — our own home — that is so terrifying?

Academic and author Hugh Haughton speaks to novelist AS Byatt, writer and actor Mark Gatiss, psychotherapist and essayist Adam Phillips, architect and critic Anthony Vidler and composer Tarik O’Regan on their personal experience of the uncanny.

Their responses range from a dark fondness for having their nerves shot to pieces (Gatiss, of course) through to a spine-tingling tale told by AS Byatt of what she imagines might be up in the loft of her little French house. Don’t listen to this on your own . . .

About this programme

Hugh Haughton explores the concept of the uncanny. Drawing on a 1919 essay by Sigmund Freud, he considers the influence of responses to the unfamiliar and of feelings of unease in fiction, film, architecture and art.

Cast and crew

Cast

Presenter

Hugh Haughton

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