The Glasshouse

As part of the 2019 Free Thinking Festival, this year exploring the theme of Emotions, Matthew Sweet charts the history of the cinematic love theme, looking at some of the ways and whys it works. He also looks back on the film career of French composer Francis Lai who died at the end of last year, who wrote for over a hundred films, but who is arguably best remembered for the 1970 Ali MacGraw/Ryan O’Neal weepie, Love Story.

Matthew Sweet is the author of Shepperton Babylon: The Lost Worlds of British Cinema – a history of the British film business from the silent days and has presented TV and radio programmes exploring film, including Premium Bond with Mark Gatiss for BBC Four and A Profile of Ken Adam and Poetry and Film for BBC Radio 3. He has written TV films and series Silent Britain, Checking into History, British Film Forever, The Rules of Film Noir and A Brief History of Fun, as well as several Doctor Who audio plays and short stories.