There were many poignant moments in Aung San Suu Kyi's first Reith Lecture (Radio 4), but one of the most powerful things about it was that as she spoke eloquently about freedom, you remembered that these lectures had to be smuggled out of Burma.
So it was a Reith Lecture without a lecturer present in front of an audience. This didn't matter to those of us listening on the radio and in fact echoed the role radio played for San Suu Kyi (right) in her years of incarceration. "When I was officially un-free," she said at the beginning of her lecture, "it was the BBC that spoke to me."
It was by any standards a great Reith Lecture, and the most moving I can recall. In her somehow still serene voice, San Suu Kyi quoted from the literature of resistance and political prisoners, compared Burma to the Arab Spring ("Yes, we do envy them their quick and peaceful transitions," she said of Tunisia and Egypt) and set an example of conviction that was humbling to hear. "We learned to be free," she said, meaning that the mind can never be imprisoned.
To coincide with her lectures, the BBC has made available transcripts and audio of Reith Lectures from 1948-2010. Exploring these, and hearing the first 2011 lecture, are both luxurious freedoms to cherish.
