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A piece about Louis Armstrong’s What A Wonderful World for the BBC.

It’s also irrepressibly public-spirited, people shaking hands on the street are, apparently, ‘saying I love you’ – illustrated in the Attenborough video, oddly, by two hippopotamuses fighting each other in the Okavango river.

And this is not the first time What A Wonderful World’s generosity of spirit has been juxtaposed with less-than-cheerful imagery.

No room, sadly, for Armstrong’s 1957 refusal to join a goodwill visit to the Soviet Union, saying: “The way they are treating my people in the South, the government can go to hell.”

• Smashed Hits on perhaps-unlikely politics: Down Under; Two Little Boys
• Bright blessed day photograph taken in Richmond Park; dark sacred night in Almondsbury – both in voguish Pano format Accidentally permanently deleted and replaced with Mont St Michel

Tags: america, bbc, bbcnews, louisarmstrong, musc, politics, race, riots, smashedhits, writing

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