The British Museum is displaying the ‘Robben Island Bible’ as part of their Shakespeare: Staging the World exhibition – actually, it is the illicit copy of the Complete Works of Shakespeare, hidden from the guards for decades by Sonny Venkatrathnam who pasted images of Hindu deities upon the cover. Inmates underlined and signed passages which held significance for them which encapsulate the anti-apartheid struggle. Find out more on the exhibition on the BM website.
Have you seen the RSC/BBC/OU’s ground-breaking production of Julius Caesar, directed by Greg Doran, set in a modern African republic? Find out more, including Dr Edmund King’s exploration of how the histories of people reading, performing and witnessing Julius Caesar are surprisingly diverse, on OpenLearn.
Listen to Greg Doran and Sonny Venkatrathnam discuss the Robben Island Bible on BBC’s Today programme in this podcast.
Thank you for posting this story and podcast and putting a link where I found it serendipitously. I’m glad to know you value that Museum display, especially as Mandela’ 94th birthday was a couple of days ago.
I sailed past Robben Island on my way to teach science in Botswana in 1977 and was well aware that the heroes were there in prison while I was free. Now in retirement I recently completed A150 and was rather disappointed that in the section dealing with the marvellous drama ”The Island’ was not mentioned in the associated studies although it was very well presented in the textbook.