1118 avsnitt • Längd: 15 min • Veckovis: Torsdag
Leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond, themed across a week – insight, opinion and intellectual surprise.
The podcast The Essay is created by BBC Radio 3. The podcast and the artwork on this page are embedded on this page using the public podcast feed (RSS).
Irish poet Michael Longley, who died on 22nd January 2025, was described by Seamus Heaney as 'a keeper of the artistic estate, a custodian of griefs and wonders.' He devoted a lifetime to the art of poetry and won numerous poetry prizes.
He is recognised as a very fine love poet and in this episode of Michael Longley's Life of Poetry, first broadcast in 2024, he reads poems that address the gift of a decades-long love and marriage and the inevitability of ageing. After a lifetime dedicated to poetry, he says, 'I can't imagine that I would be alive now if I hadn't had poetry propelling me forward.'
He reads his poems The Pattern, The Linen Industry and Age from his collection Ash Keys: New Selected Poems (Cape Poetry), published to mark his 85th birthday on 27th July 2024, and Foam from his collection The Slain Birds.
Presenter: Olivia O'Leary Producer: Claire Cunningham Executive Producer: Regan Hutchins
Michael Longley's Life of Poetry is a Rockfinch production for BBC Radio 3.
The Irish poet Michael Longley, who died on 22nd January 2025, was described by Seamus Heaney as 'a keeper of the artistic estate, a custodian of griefs and wonders.' He devoted a lifetime to the art of poetry and won numerous poetry prizes.
In this episode of The Essay, first broadcast in 2024, he described his refuge from the city streets of Belfast in County Mayo, in one of the most remote and beautiful parts of the west of Ireland. He had been writing about its nature and landscape for over 50 years and it provided endless inspiration for poems. In more recent years he recognised the threat of climate change and he expresses the hope that younger generations will take greater care of the world.
He reads his poems The Leveret, Remembering Carrigskeewaun, Stonechat and The Comber from his collection Ash Keys: New Selected Poems (Cape Poetry), published to mark his 85th birthday on 27th July 2024, and Merlin from his collection The Slain Birds.
Presenter: Olivia O'Leary Producer: Claire Cunningham Executive Producer: Regan Hutchins
Michael Longley's Life of Poetry is a Rockfinch production for BBC Radio 3.
The Irish poet Michael Longley, who died on 22nd January 2025, was described by Seamus Heaney as 'a keeper of the artistic estate, a custodian of griefs and wonders.' He devoted a lifetime to the art of poetry and won numerous poetry prizes.
In 1968, violence erupted in Northern Ireland, the beginning of 30 years of the Troubles. In the third episode of this series of The Essay, first broadcast in 2024, he talked about writing poems that remembered some of those who were victims of the the violence and his most famous poem, Ceasefire, which looks to Homer's great epic poem The Iliad as it reflects on the cost of peace.
As well as Ceasefire, he reads his poems The Troubles, The Ice-cream Man, and All of these People from the collection Ash Keys: New Selected Poems (Cape Poetry), published to mark his 85th birthday on 27th July 2024.
Presenter: Olivia O'Leary Producer: Claire Cunningham Executive Producer: Regan Hutchins
Michael Longley's Life of Poetry is a Rockfinch production for BBC Radio 3.
The Irish poet Michael Longley, who died on 22nd January 2025, was described by Seamus Heaney as 'a keeper of the artistic estate, a custodian of griefs and wonders.' He devoted a lifetime to the art of poetry and won numerous poetry prizes.
In the second episode of this series of The Essay, first broadcast in 2024, he talked with presenter Olivia O'Leary about his World War 1 poems, many of which were inspired by his own father's experience of having fought in the war, although he rarely talked about it. Michael's poems link the Great War and the Northern Ireland Troubles.
He reads his poems Citation, Harmonica, The Sonnets and Wounds from the collection Ash Keys: New Selected Poems (Cape Poetry), published to mark his 85th birthday on 27th July 2024.
Presenter: Olivia O'Leary Producer: Claire Cunningham Executive Producer: Regan Hutchins
Michael Longley's Life of Poetry is a Rockfinch production for BBC Radio 3.
The poet Michael Longley, who died on 22nd January 2025 at the age of 85, was described by Seamus Heaney as 'a keeper of the artistic estate, a custodian of griefs and wonders.' He devoted a lifetime to the art of poetry and won numerous poetry prizes.
In Episode 1 of this series of The Essay, first broadcast in 2024 and recorded to mark his 85th birthday, he talked with presenter Olivia O'Leary about his home town of Belfast and his love of jazz, saying that, 'Good poetry for me combines two things: meaning and melody.' He also loved the classics, which he studied at Trinity College Dublin, where he met his wife, Edna, a distinguished literary critic. He was one of a group of young poets that emerged from Northern Ireland in the 1960s and he describes the mutual support, rivalry and excitement of that time.
He reads his poems Elegy for Fats Waller and an extract from his poem River and Fountain from a new collection, Ash Keys: New Selected Poems (Cape Poetry), published to mark his 85th birthday on 27th July 2024. He also reads Bookshops from his collection Angel Hill and Poem from The Slain Birds.
Presenter: Olivia O'Leary Producer: Claire Cunningham Executive Producer: Regan Hutchins
Michael Longley's Life of Poetry is a Rockfinch production for BBC Radio 3.
'Be not afeard. The isle is full of noises, Sounds, and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not. Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments Will hum about mine ears...'
There is an idea that what Caliban is describing is gamelan music, and that Shakespeare had heard accounts of it as he wrote The Tempest from sailors who had recently returned from a voyage to the Spice Islands - Indonesia.
The village of Tihingan in Bali is full of noises because the chief occupation there is making gongs for gamelans, the wonderful gong orchestras of Bali and Java. Ade Mardiyati, a journalist who reports for the BBC's Indonesian service, visits Tihingan - Indonesia's Tin Pan Alley - the learn about the craft. Two crucial skills are involved; that of the smith who forges the gongs, and that , the tuner who works them to ensure they give the right note. In a sonically rich essay, recorded while these masters work, Ade explores the past, present and future of gamelan making, and music.
Presenter: Ade Mardiyati Producer: Julian May
The journalist Guy Hedgecoe, who covers Spain for the BBC, visits Felipe Conde's shop and workshop in Centro, Madrid. Conde is the fourth generation of his family to make classical and flamenco guitars. Many of the great flamenco musicians - Moraito, Paco de Lucia, Tomatito - have played Conde guitars, as have artists from other traditions - Leonard Cohen, Lenny Kravitz, Cat Stevens. And Paco de Lucia gave one to Michael Jackson. Guy meet Antonio Gonzalez, one of Conde's customers, who tell him what qualities he is looking for - and plays. And he watches while Felipe Conde works on a new instrument. Guy explores the state of the craft of making, the art of playing and the place of the classical guitar and flamenco music in Spain, and around the world, today.
Presenter: Guy Hedgecoe Producer: Julian May
Ochanomizu means 'tea water' because of its proximity to the Kanda River, which in the Edo period provided water for the Shogun's tea. Now it is a university area - Meiji University, Tokyo Medical and Dental University, and Juntendo University all have campuses in Ochanomizu. Phoebe Amoroso reports on the way teahouses have given way to musical instrument shops. There are more than 70 in Ochanomizu's 'Guitar Street' . But you can buy harmonicas and accordions, too. In such a competitive space shops survive by specialising. Almost all the instruments sold are western, but made with Japanese materials, craftsmanship and attention to detail.
Presenter: Phoebe Amoroso Producer: Julian May
Galip Dede Street in Istanbul used to be famous for its antique, philatelic and book shops. But over the past 30 years more and more music shops have opened and now the street has more than 30. Esra Yalcinalp talks to the shopkeepers who sell instruments of all kinds, all the orchestral instruments. Here, too, she finds musicians who might buy a bağlama or saz, like a mandolin with a very long neck, and a kemençe or lyra, a bowed instrument, used in Ottoman classical and Turkish folk music. She gets a demonstration of the different rhythms a master can play on the darbuka, the goblet shaped drum used in Turkish classical music. She meets, too, a French musician seeking strings for her Syrian oud. Can she find these in Galip Dede? Of course. No problem.
There is a problem, though - tourism. It's driving up rents and driving out specialist music shops, which are replaced by hotels and T shirt shops. Presenter: Esra Yalcinalp Producer: Julian May
The original Tin Pan Alley was in Fifth and Sixth Avenue in Manhattan, New York, where music publishers set up shop in the late 19th century, attracting songwriters and coming to dominate American popular music. Since then Tin Pan Alley has come to mean a quarter where there are music shops and where musicians gather. Cities all over the globe have Tin Pan Alleys of their own. For instance, if you wanted to buy a bass guitar in London, you'd head to the UK's Tin Pan Alley, Denmark Street.
In this week's series of the Essay BBC correspondents from Madrid to Tokyo explore the Tin Pan Alleys of their towns, talking to musicians trying out the instruments before they buy, and to the shopkeepers selling them. They explore the state of the musical culture, and culture more generally, of the countries they are reporting from.
The series begins in Beijing where Stephen McDonell visits Xinjiekou Street, where the shops sell Chinese traditional instruments: the erhu, a two string fiddle; the pipa, a pear shaped lute; the guzheng, a zither...and several others. He discovers that there is renewed enthusiasm for them and their music, and meets some musicians playing in a tunnel, not for the acoustic but because, in an odd reversal of the norm, if they play in the street young people object to the noise and shop them to the cops. Presenter: Stephen McDonell Producer: Julian May
Scotland has been blessed with some of the most exciting of gemstones, but knowing where to find them is the secret.
Kenneth Steven was given a piece of amber when he was a child, found supposedly on Iona. This is the story of amber and where it actually comes from.
Kenneth tells the story of amber in Scotland and in Ireland. Amber necklaces from Ireland are somewhere in the region of three thousand years old. Those necklaces are usually found in bogland hoards and in caves. Perhaps they were kept there for safety, or as offerings to the river or to water deities. It’s surely a sign of the value that was ascribed to them that these amber relics are most often found close to gold. This would suggest that amber was a status symbol for the wealthy and powerful.
Presenter Kenneth Steven Producer Mark Rickards
A Whistledown Scotland production
The first stone Kenneth Steven began collecting in childhood was serpentine from the beaches of the island of Iona. Here he tells the story of the search for the finest gems.
It was Kenneth's mother who’d taught him to search for serpentine. She explained to him the difference between these waxy, much softer pebbles and stones made of marble. Those are duller; they don’t polish the same, and once out of water they have a drabness about them. You can tell a piece of serpentine because as soon as it’s absorbed the oils from your hand it’s polished, glimmering.
Presenter Kenneth Steven Producer Mark Rickards
A Whistledown Scotland production
The great Victorian collector of minerals Matthew Heddle mentions two places in particular for the finding of aquamarine in Scotland, one the island of Arran and the other a mountain in the Cairngorms. But locating these gems is another story.
The Cairngorm mountains are a kind of fortress. There is nowhere else like them in Scotland. You enter their world from one side or another and thereafter are inside them until you withdraw once more. You become aware of other noises than the ones that dominate our days: you hear streams, the breeze lifting the pine trees, the wind in the high hills once you have climbed into them. It’s an elemental place: pure and to all intents and purposes undamaged, undisturbed.
Kenneth Steven explores the history of this semi-precious stone and reflects in poetry on his finds.
Presenter Kenneth Steven Producer Mark Rickards
A Whistledown Scotland production
Scotland has been blessed with some of the most exciting of gemstones, but knowing where to find them is the secret. A rare edition of 'Scottish Gem Stones' by W J McCallien led Kenneth to the discovery of the riches to be found on Scotland's mountains and shores.
The mineralogist Matthew Heddle, the great 19th century collector of Scottish gemstones. was particularly fond of agates. The wonderful thing about banded agate is that each one is unique; you’ll never know from looking at the outside what the heart of it may reveal. The counties of Angus and Fife have fabulous banded agates on the shores and in the fields, but finding them is about more than just luck.
Kenneth Steven goes in search of the precious stones and reflects on his finds in poetry.
Presenter Kenneth Steven Producer Mark Rickards
A Whistledown Scotland production
Scotland has been blessed with some of the most exciting of gemstones, but knowing where to find them is the secret. A rare edition of 'Scottish Gem Stones' by W J McCallien led Kenneth to the discovery of the riches to be found on Scotland's mountains and shores.
In the first episode, Kenneth tells the story of Scotland's short-lived gold rush in 1869, when 600 gold miners made their way to Sutherland in the hope of a major find.
Kenneth searches for the elusive treasure himself, and reflects on his experiences in poetry.
Presenter Kenneth Steven Producer Mark Rickards
A Whistledown Scotland Production
Phil Hebblethwaite examines five classical musical hoaxes and controversies, from the early twentieth century to the modern day. These are origin stories that have fooled and perplexed some of the greatest experts. In an age of misinformation, when faking it has never been more prevalent, the series unravels the stories of some of the most brazen and confounding composer controversies. What is the appeal of engineering a hoax? And why do we fall for them so easily? It’s a journey that raises questions about scholarship, authenticity and our faith in expert opinion.
Mamoru Samuragochi became famous in the 2000s as the ‘Japanese Beethoven’ – a deaf composer whose music touched millions of classical fans and crossed over to a mainstream audience by being used in computer games. But was Samuragochi actually deaf and was he even composing his own works? In his last essay in the series, Phil considers the impact of hoaxes on our trust in authenticity and celebrity.
Written and presented by Phil Hebblethwaite Producer: Jo Glanville Editor: Joanne Rowntree Researcher: Heather Dempsey Studio Engineer: Dan King A Loftus Media Production for BBC Radio 4
Phil Hebblethwaite examines five classical musical hoaxes and controversies, from the early twentieth century to the modern day. These are origin stories that have fooled and perplexed some of the greatest experts. In an age of misinformation, when faking it has never been more prevalent, the series unravels the stories of some of the most brazen and confounding composer controversies. What is the appeal of engineering a hoax? And why do we fall for them so easily? It’s a journey that raises questions about scholarship, authenticity and our faith in expert opinion.
More than 20 years ago, critics began to acclaim the recordings of the pianist Joyce Hatto. One described her as the greatest living pianist. When the fraud was later revealed, it turned out to be one of the greatest instances of plagiarism in the history of the record industry. Phil explores the story of a digital deception.
Written and presented by Phil Hebblethwaite Producer: Jo Glanville Editor: Joanne Rowntree Researcher: Heather Dempsey Studio Engineer: Dan King
With thanks to Nicholas Cook and Jessica Duchen
A Loftus Media Production for BBC Radio 4
Phil Hebblethwaite examines five classical musical hoaxes and controversies, from the early twentieth century to the modern day. These are origin stories that have fooled and perplexed some of the greatest experts. In an age of misinformation, when faking it has never been more prevalent, the series unravels the stories of some of the most brazen and confounding composer controversies. What is the appeal of engineering a hoax? And why do we fall for them so easily? It’s a journey that raises questions about scholarship, authenticity and our faith in expert opinion.
Thirty years ago, the classical music world hailed the discovery of six lost Haydn sonatas. Only it soon turned out that they probably weren’t written by Haydn at all, and the finger of suspicion was pointed at an obscure German musician. In this third essay of the series, Phil explores the fallout from the scandal. Can a work of art still have value if it's not authentic?
Written and presented by Phil Hebblethwaite Producer: Jo Glanville Editor: Joanne Rowntree Researcher: Heather Dempsey Studio Engineer: Dan King
With thanks to Michael Beckerman and Frederick Reece
A Loftus Media Production for BBC Radio 4
Phil Hebblethwaite examines five classical musical hoaxes and controversies, from the early twentieth century to the modern day. These are origin stories that have fooled and perplexed some of the greatest experts. In an age of misinformation, when faking it has never been more prevalent, the series unravels the stories of some of the most brazen and confounding composer controversies. What is the appeal of engineering a hoax? And why do we fall for them so easily? It’s a journey that raises questions about scholarship, authenticity and our faith in expert opinion.
The second essay explores the story of one of the most widely recognised pieces in classical music - Albinoni’s Adagio in G minor. But was Albinoni even involved with the composition of the work? Phil gets to the bottom of a story that has perplexed classical scholars for years and asks how much authenticity actually matters.
Written and presented by Phil Hebblethwaite Producer: Jo Glanville Editor: Joanne Rowntree Researcher: Heather Dempsey Studio Engineer: Dan King
With thanks to Michael Talbot, Donald Greig and Frederick Reece
A Loftus Media Production for BBC Radio 4
Phil Hebblethwaite examines five classical musical hoaxes and controversies, from the early twentieth century to the modern day. These are origin stories that have fooled and perplexed some of the greatest experts. In an age of misinformation, when faking it has never been more prevalent, the series unravels the stories of some of the most brazen and confounding composer controversies. What is the appeal of engineering a hoax? And why do we fall for them so easily? It’s a journey that raises questions about scholarship, authenticity and our faith in expert opinion.
In the first essay, Phil tells the story of Fritz Kreisler - the virtuoso violinist who passed his own works off as compositions by forgotten Baroque composers. It took 30 years before the hoax was revealed. How did Kreisler manage to fool so many people for so long?
Written and presented by Phil Hebblethwaite Producer: Jo Glanville Editor: Joanne Rowntree Researcher: Heather Dempsey Studio Engineer: Dan King A Loftus Media Production for BBC Radio 4
Kate Kennedy meets musicians who, like her, had to stop playing after injury and reconsider their relationship with their instruments.
We all know that listening to music can have a positive impact on wellbeing and mental health. But what about the performer? The truth is, for anyone wanting to turn professional, this is a highly competitive and pressurised environment often driven in part by fear and anxiety. It's a problem that can have a disproportionate effect on young people - which is why trumpeter Rebecca Toal and cellist Hattie Butterworth started their podcast, Things Musicians Don't Talk About, to try to break the taboo of not acknowledging the difficulties with mental illness that many musicians face. They talk to Kate about their personal experience of 'the system' for training musicians that can so easily break down, often resulting in crippling anxiety and burn-out. Obsessive behaviour and eating disorders are not uncommon as people try to gain some control over the endless cycle of practice and performance. By creating the podcast, Rebecca and Hattie have found a creative way to use their experiences to forge a new and less damaging path for themselves, but also to help others by sharing musicians' experiences honestly.
Presenter: Kate Kennedy Producer: Erika Wright Production Coordinator: Elisabeth Tuohy Executive Producer: Rami Tzabar Healing Musicians is a TellTale Industries production for BBC Radio 3
Kate Kennedy meets musicians who, like her, had to stop playing after injury and rethink their lives.
As principal cellist of the Berlin Philharmonic for three decades, Ludwig Quandt performed with conductors Claudio Abbado and Sir Simon Rattle until an injury unrelated to performing nearly ended his career. He reveals what being forced to confront silence means for a musician's relationship with their instrument and the innovative solution he found on the other side of the world from an unlikely source.
Presenter: Kate Kennedy Producer: Erika Wright Production Coordinator: Elisabeth Tuohy Executive Producer: Rami Tzabar Healing Musicians is a TellTale Industries production for BBC Radio 3
Kate Kennedy meets musicians who, like her, had to stop playing after injury and rethink their lives. What does being forced to fall silent mean for a musician's relationship with their instrument?
Robin Graham reached her dream as the first woman to earn a principal French horn position in a major American orchestra by audition. She shares her story of how painful injury caused her to leave in 2003 and the grief at being unable to play in the centre of a big orchestral sound.
Presenter: Kate Kennedy Producer: Erika Wright Production Coordinator: Elisabeth Tuohy Executive Producer: Rami Tzabar Healing Musicians is a TellTale Industries production for BBC Radio 3
Kate Kennedy meets musicians who, like her, had to stop playing after injury and rethink their lives. What does this mean for a musician's relationship with their instrument?
Aged 11, Stephen Marquiss was labelled an exemplary piano scholar. Gaining a music specialist place in 1990 Stephen promptly attained the highest ABRSM exam mark in the country and reached the televised semi-final of BBC Young Musicians. But then injury forced him to pull out. At 18, his career was all but over, having struggled with recurring RSI, musculo-skeletal issues, which destroyed his confidence and mental health. Ironically, this crisis forced him to address fundamental aspects of how piano is taught and played - and now at 45, Stephen has his own school of playing called Piano Portals, which seeks to rewrite how practice is approached. Kate takes him back to his practice rooms, to help us understand the intensity and the fear of failure that drove him to injury and we learn how his new approach to playing unfolded.
Presenter: Kate Kennedy Producer: Erika Wright Production Coordinator: Elisabeth Tuohy Executive Producer: Rami Tzabar Healing Musicians is a TellTale Industries production for BBC Radio 3
Kate Kennedy meets musicians who, like her, had to stop playing after injury and reshape their lives. What does being forced to fall silent mean for a musician's relationship with their instrument?
"My name is Julian Lloyd Webber and I am an ex-cellist". The internationally renowned performer, Julian Lloyd Webber talks for the first time in detail to Kate about the moment he realised his 40-year career could be over mid-recital: "Suddenly I lost power in my right arm - I thought I was going to drop the bow. I had never experienced anything like it - I didn't know what was wrong or what to do. I was genuinely frightened". Julian shares the sense of bereavement he felt after his prestigious career of four decades ended due to a herniated disc in his neck.
Over the next few weeks, Julian tried to pretend everything was normal. His manager was calling him with engagements he had always wanted to undertake, such as a performance of Shostakovich's First Cello Concerto in Moscow. But the wear and tear of Julian's performing career on his body was too much - he learned that the herniated disc was pressing on a nerve which was causing a loss of power in his arm. Doctors told him that he could have an operation, but with little guarantee of success, and with high risks attached. He had a young family at the time, so chose to sacrifice the cello.
He has never played since. Julian and Jiaxin, his wife and fellow cellist, reflect on the last fateful concert they played together and how they've found positives in silence.
Presenter: Kate Kennedy Producer: Erika Wright Production Coordinator: Elisabeth Tuohy Executive Producer: Rami Tzabar Healing Musicians is a TellTale Industries production for BBC Radio 3
"Les petites girls Anglaises" was the nickname given by a French journalist to the elaborately costumed and rhythmic Tiller Girls troupe. Adjoa Osei is a research fellow at the University of Cambridge and a former performer herself, and she's been exploring the complexities involved in being a dancing girl in 1930s Paris, appearing on stage alongside the likes of Josephine Baker and French nude dancers. Her essay focuses on the lives of Marjorie Rowland and Mignon Harman. You can find another Radio 3 Essay building on Adjoa's research as a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker called A Brazilian Soprano in Jazz-Age Paris available on BBC Sounds.
Producer: Katy Hickman
1574, and a baby girl on board a ship fleeing from France, arrives in London. Esther Inglis went on to become a successful Tudor bookmaker and artist and Eleanor Chan argues that the inclusion of psalm music in the self portraits created by Inglis is a coded way of symbolising belonging at a time of religious strife. The essay draws on research done by New Generation Thinker Eleanor Chan, who has been working as a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Manchester and the Warburg Institute.
Work by Esther Inglis is included in the exhibition Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520–1920 which runs at Tate Britain until October 13th 2024
You can hear more about Tudor music and art in a Free Thinking episode called a Lively Tudor World which features Eleanor Chan and Christina Faraday. It's available on BBC Sounds. You can also find Eleanor Chan's Essay about another Tudor composer - The discordant tale of Thomas Weelkes.
Producer: Luke Mulhall
"Millons be Free" is a Jacobin song which originally celebrated the idea of the French Revolution, whose tune became the American national anthem. Oskar Jensen sings us the melody and tells us a story involving Alexander Hamilton, the advocate of women's rights Mary Wollstonecraft, Haydn and Hummel at a drinking society, a Liverpool lawyer William Roscoe and William Pirsson, a Chelmsford bookseller who immigrated to the USA.
Oskar Jensen is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, based at Newcastle University working on a project called The Invention of Pop Music: Mainstream Song, Class, and Culture, 1520–2020. His books include Vagabonds: Life on the Streets of Nineteenth-Century London and he also worked on The Subversive Voice research project. You can find more from his research on BBC Sounds in episodes of the Arts & Ideas podcast called Victorian Streets, Napoleon in Fact and Fiction and Eliza Flower and non-conformist thinking.
Producer: Jayne Egerton.
How musician Robert Hales and a witty song helped Robert Cecil, Elizabeth I's counsellor, win back the Queen's favour. Documents show us that Cecil supported many musicians, paid for a full-time consort, and had to temporarily dismiss one player for "lewdness". New Generation Thinker Christina Faraday tells the story and explores what we know about the role of music at the Tudor court.
Christina Faraday is a Research Fellow at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge and is the author of the book Tudor Liveliness: Vivid Art in Post-Reformation England. You can hear her discussing Tudor history in several Essays and episodes of Free Thinking available as Arts & Ideas podcasts.
Producer: Natalia Fernandez
Teresa del Riego's work was a staple of early Prom seasons but the anthem she premiered for the suffrage movement in 1911, at the Criterion restaurant Piccadilly Circus, which had 1,000 copies of the song distributed around the country, has not been heard recently. Naomi Paxton shares her research into the compositions of del Riego (1876-1968) and the music making of the suffrage circle. Singer Lucy Stevens performs The Awakening (with lyrics by American poet Ella Wheeler Wilcox) alongside Elizabeth Marcus at the piano.
Naomi Paxton is a BBC/Arts and Humanities Research Council New Generation Thinker on the scheme which helps early career academics share research on radio. You can find her more of her work on suffragette history as Arts & Ideas podcasts, Sunday features and Essays on BBC Sounds.
Lucy Stevens and Elizabeth Marcus have recorded Songs and Ballads by Dame Ethel Smyth and rehearsed this del Riego song especially for The Essay recording.
Producer: Lisa Jenkinson
In the depths of lockdown during 2020 multi-award winning musician Karine Polwart offered to play a private gig for neighbour and local legend Al Beck just weeks before he would die from cancer.
The resulting correspondence became an unexpectedly rewarding collaboration as they shared their love of music through Al's choice of songs. In this final essay recounts the night of "Beckstival" and how this joyous night tinged with sadness made her reassess the scale and nature of her work.
"More depth, less breadth. More local, less scattered. More conversational, less performative. And always, always more collaborative and connective."
Written and Presented by Karine Polwart Producer by Peter McManus Mixed by Sean Mullervy
In the depths of lockdown during 2020 multi-award winning musician Karine Polwart offered to play a private gig for neighbour and local legend Al Beck just weeks before he would die from cancer.
The resulting correspondence became an unexpectedly rewarding collaboration as they shared their love of music through Al's choice of songs. As the evening of the gig approaches Karine begins to understand how her discussions with Al are opening up conversations not just with her but also with his family.
Written and Presented by Karine Polwart Producer by Peter McManus Mixed by Sean Mullervy
In the depths of lockdown during 2020 multi-award-winning musician Karine Polwart offered to play a private gig for neighbour and local legend Al Beck just weeks before he would die from cancer.
The resulting correspondence became an unexpectedly rewarding collaboration as they shared their love of music through Al's choice of songs. In this essay Karine reflects on the strange purposelessness she felt at the time, with no one to play for or with what use was she? The offer of to play in Al's back garden became as much a gift to her as him.
Written and Presented by Karine Polwart Producer by Peter McManus Mixed by Sean Mullervy
In the depths of lockdown during 2020 multi-award winning musician Karine Polwart offered to play a private gig for neighbour and local legend Al Beck just weeks before he would die from cancer.
The resulting correspondence became an unexpectedly rewarding collaboration as they shared their love of music through Al's choice of songs. In this essay Karine considers the power of song to transport us to a place and time conjuring up important moments in our lives.
Written and Presented by Karine Polwart Producer by Peter McManus Mixed by Sean Mullervy
The multi-award-winning folksinger, songwriter and storyteller, Karine Polwart, crafts an elegy in song for Al Beck, a local legend of rural East Lothian.
The songs - were Al's choices for ‘Beckstival' a back garden celebration co-created in the depth of lockdown during June 2020, just weeks before Al's death from cancer. The music ranged from 60s psychedelia and pop classics to a traditional pipe march.
The tender and witty email correspondence between the two gives voice to Al himself, and underpins Karine's week-long meditation on the role that song plays in each of our stories of living and dying - as lullaby and love letter, memory marker and memorial.
In this first essay Karine describes making the offer of the private gig and being overwhelmed by Al's response, starting what would be remarkable collaboration for them both.
Written and Presented by Karine Polwart Producer by Peter McManus Mixed by Sean Mullervy
A five-part series of essays that explore the dichotomy between being a deaf professional and working with music. Each essayist tells their own story from across the deaf spectrum, including a sign language performer with a passion for music, a violinist who switched to classical piano after a cochlear implant, and a flautist who uses visual art to describe music to deaf children. From horn players to punchy performance artists, all of the essayists consider music from a deaf perspective with illuminating results.
From her childhood immersed in music to her early career as a professional violinist, Elizabeth Elliott's passion for classical music endured even as she became deaf. Despite the shock of losing her hearing, she muses on how she found solace in teaching and performing in smaller groups, before concentrating on bringing up her young family.
In middle age, she had a cochlear implant fitted, and she describes how this felt - reclaiming her ability to hear note by musical note. Filling us all in with a very different way to listen, Elizabeth details how through careful trial and error she pieces together a piano piece and drills herself to perform it to a high standard. She shares with us how it felt to once again be able to perform music publicly, through dedication and technology.
A Different Way to Listen is produced by Sophie Allen and Emma Glassar with Mark Rickards as Executive Producer. It is a Flashing Lights Media production for BBC Radio 3. A British Sign Language version was filmed, edited and subtitled by Fifi Garfield.
A five-part series of essays that explore the dichotomy between being a deaf professional and working with music. Each essayist tells their own story from across the deaf spectrum, including a sign language performer with a passion for musicals, a violinist who switched to classical piano after a cochlear implant, and a flautist who uses visual art to describe music to deaf children. From horn players to punchy performance artists, all of the essayists consider music from a deaf perspective with illuminating results.
Professional music sign language performer Paul Whittaker OBE explains how he has carved out a unique space in the classical musical world by being a pioneer in the field of sign language performance. Despite initial scepticism, he pursued a career in music starting with a degree from Oxford, before founding 'Music and the Deaf' to promote musical accessibility. With meticulous preparation and passion, Paul talks us through how he translates complex musical pieces into expressive sign language, capturing the essence of each composition. He details how he makes his sign language performance ‘sing’ in genres stretching from iconic musicals to Handel’s Messiah and how he hopes his interpretations enhance the audience's understanding and enjoyment, bridging the gap between deaf and hearing communities.
A Different Way to Listen is produced by Sophie Allen and Emma Glassar with Mark Rickards as Executive Producer. It is a Flashing Lights Media production for BBC Radio 3. A British Sign Language version was filmed, edited and subtitled by Fifi Garfield.
A five-part series of essays that explore the dichotomy between being a deaf professional and working with music. Each essayist tells their own story from across the deaf spectrum, including a sign language performer with a passion for musicals, a violinist who switched to classical piano after a cochlear implant, and a flautist who uses visual art to describe music to deaf children. From horn players to punchy performance artists, all of the essayists consider music from a deaf perspective with illuminating results.
Chisato Minamimura shares her journey of exploring sound and music. Growing up in Japan before later moving to the UK, Chisato lost her hearing at seven months, yet despite this she learned the piano - becoming the star pupil.
Inspired by artists like John Cage and Tōru Takemitsu, Chisato delves into the concept of sound and music from a deaf perspective. She details how she began creating visual scores based on mathematical algorithms, turning dancers into her instruments. And she explains how she innovates new ways to interact with sound, such as feeling vibrations with her teeth or using Woojer strap to create multi-sensory experiences.
Throughout her work, she invites audiences to explore the rich tapestry of sound and music through a deaf lens, opening up new possibilities for artistic expression. Dreaming of experiencing phenomena like whale songs first hand, Chisato imagines translating these experiences into tactile vibrations, further expanding her exploration of sound.
A Different Way to Listen is produced by Sophie Allen and Emma Glassar with Mark Rickards as Executive Producer. It is a Flashing Lights Media production for BBC Radio 3. A British Sign Language version was filmed, edited and subtitled by Fifi Garfield.
A five-part series of essays that explore the dichotomy between being a deaf professional and working with music. Each essayist tells their own story from across the deaf spectrum, including a sign language performer with a passion for musicals, a violinist who switched to classical piano after a cochlear implant, and a flautist who uses visual art to describe music to deaf children. From horn players to punchy performance artists, all of the essayists consider music from a deaf perspective with illuminating results.
Horn and Wagner tuba player Nigel Braithwaite looks back at his musical life and gives a humorous take on his time as a semi-professional musician. How did he continue to play in the face of mitochondrial disease which robbed him of his ability to hear the very low notes in which he specialised as a player? How did traumatic brain injury affect his ability to find his place in an orchestral setting? What else could possibly go wrong? A semi-professional musician throughout his whole life, he tackles his travails with honesty and humour, musing on what it takes to get through life’s challenges and how key musical tracks along with his family and friends have got him safely through.
A Different Way to Listen is produced by Sophie Allen and Emma Glassar with Mark Rickards as Executive Producer. It is a Flashing Lights Media production for BBC Radio 3. A British Sign Language version was filmed, edited and subtitled by Fifi Garfield.
A five-part series of essays that explore the dichotomy between being a deaf professional and working with music. Each essayist tells their own story from across the deaf spectrum, including a sign language performer with a passion for music, a violinist who switched to classical piano after a cochlear implant, and a flautist who uses visual art to describe music to deaf children. From horn players to punchy performance artists, all of the essayists consider music from a deaf perspective with illuminating results.
Ruth Montgomery is a profoundly deaf professional flautist and flute teacher who grew up the only deaf person at home. In her essay she details the challenges of her early years, and how being introduced to the flute at her secondary school; a school for deaf children, led to her becoming a professional musician and music educator. She describes the hurdles she faced to be taken seriously, and the dedication that this fostered in her to help other deaf children gain musical appreciation and skills as a vital part of life. Ultimately Ruth has created her own musical education programme, as a way of inspiring deaf children, blending art and music as a way to address the huge gaps she discovered in this field. A Different Way to Listen is produced by Sophie Allen and Emma Glassar with Mark Rickards as Executive Producer. It is a Flashing Lights Media production for BBC Radio 3. A British Sign Language version was filmed, edited and subtitled by Fifi Garfield.
During his less than stellar acting career Michael Goldfarb spent a lot of time watching from the wings waiting to go on for his single scene. In this series, he talks about the plays he appeared in, their histories, and the lives of the actors who performed them.
In this essay, he's understudying in K2: a play about two climbers trapped on an ice ledge, having fallen on their way down from the summit of the mountain. It wasn't a very good play but had an amazing set with the capacity for near cinematic feats of climbing and falling.
The play made it to Broadway for a brief Tony-winning run and Michael talks about performing in a show where a huge Styrofoam mountain was the star and the jostling for supremacy among actors, directors and set designers.
Preparation for a performance on stage goes beyond just memorising lines, learning blocking and hoping it will be alright on the night. A diligent actor studies the history of the period of the play, learns about the intentions of the playwright, and absorbs from older colleagues knowledge of how the play has been done in the past.
In his less than stellar career as an actor, Michael Goldfarb went through this process many times.
In this essay, Michael recalls his admiration for John Gielgud. He remembers The Motive and the Cue, the play about John Gielgud directing Richard Burton in Hamlet. He also had a chance meeting with the legendary actor at the stage door of the Apollo theatre in London when Gielgud was starring in David Storey's 'Home'.
Preparation for a performance on stage goes beyond just memorising lines, learning blocking and hoping it will be alright on the night. A diligent actor studies the history of the period of the play, learns about the intentions of the playwright, and absorbs from older colleagues knowledge of how the play has been done in the past.
In his less than stellar career as an actor, Michael Goldfarb went through this process many times.
In this episode, it's the story of The Count of Monte Cristo, as performed by James O'Neill, father of playwright Eugene O'Neill. It was the play that made him rich and his family miserable, as depicted in Long Day's Journey Into Night. Nearly fifty years ago, it was revived by the Jean Cocteau Repertory Theatre, located on the Bowery in New York. The Cocteau was the only rotating rep theatre in New York and Michael Goldfarb was part of the company.
Preparation for a performance on stage goes beyond just memorising lines, learning blocking and hoping it will be alright on the night. A diligent actor studies the history of the period of the play, learns about the intentions of the playwright, and absorbs from older colleagues knowledge of how the play has been done in the past.
In his less than stellar career as an actor, Michael Goldfarb went through this process many times.
In this essay, he appears in Maxim Gorki's Summerfolk, a play about the Russian upper-middle classes at their summer homes, as their country teeters on the brink of revolutionary catastrophe. He remembers Russian theatre, theatrical friendships and after-show drinking.
Preparation for a performance on stage goes beyond just memorising lines, learning blocking and hoping it will be alright on the night. A diligent actor studies the history of the period of the play, learns about the intentions of the playwright, and absorbs from older colleagues knowledge of how the play has been done in the past.
In his less than stellar career as an actor, Michael Goldfarb went through this process many times. He recalls meeting John Gielgud at the theatre door and understudying in a play where a huge Styrofoam mountain was the star of the show.
In this essay: theatrical superstition says you shouldn’t mention the play Macbeth, by name. But how else to speak of the play on which Michael finally got his equity card?
Gold sequins, silk and vibrant colour threads might not be what you expect to find in a sampler stitched by a Quaker girl in the seventeenth century. New Generation Thinker Isabella Rosner has studied examples of embroidered nutmegs and decorated shell shadow boxes found in London and Philadelphia which present a more complicated picture of Quaker attitudes and the decorated objects they created as part of a girl's education.
Dr Isabella Rosner is a textile historian and curator at the Royal School of Needlework on the New Generation Thinker scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to highlight new research. You can hear more from her in Free Thinking episodes called Stitching stories and A lively Tudor world
Producer: Ruth Watts
Who's Holding the Baby? was the title of an exhibition organised to highlight a lack of childcare provision in East London in the 1970s. Was this feminist art? Bobby Baker, Sonia Boyce, Rita Keegan and members of the photography collective Hackney Flashers are some of the artists who've been taking part in an oral history project with New Generation Thinker Ana Baeza Ruiz. Her essay presents some of their reflections on what it means to make art and call yourself a feminist.
Dr Ana Baeza Ruiz is the Research Associate for the project Feminist Art Making Histories (FAMH) at Loughborough University and a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the BBC and the AHRC to showcase new research into the humanities. You can hear her in Free Thinking episodes on Portraits and Women, art and activism available as an Arts & Ideas podcast.
Producer: Ruth Watts
Canvey Island: cradle of innovation for gas heating and home to music makers Dr Feelgood, who drew inspiration from the Mississippi Delta. New Generation Thinker Sam Johnson-Schlee is an author and geographer based at London South Bank University. His essay remembers the influence of Parker Morris standards on heating in the home, songs written by Wilko Johnson and the impact of central heating on teenage bedrooms, record listening and playing instruments.
Producer: Julian Siddle
You can hear more from Sam in Free Thinking episodes exploring Dust and Sound, Conflict and Central Heating New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to put research on radio
Gold sequins, silk and vibrant colour threads might not be what you expect to find in a sampler stitched by a Quaker girl in the seventeenth century. New Generation Thinker Isabella Rosner has studied examples of embroidered nutmegs and decorated shell shadow boxes found in London and Philadelphia which present a more complicated picture of Quaker attitudes and the decorated objects they created as part of a girl's education.
Dr Isabella Rosner is a textile historian and curator at the Royal School of Needlework on the New Generation Thinker scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to highlight new research. You can hear more from her in Free Thinking episodes called Stitching stories and A lively Tudor world
Producer: Ruth Watts
A 1660s board game made by a Jesuit missionary sent to the Mohawk Valley in North America is the subject of New Generation Thinker Gemma Tidman's essay. This race game, a little like Snakes and Ladders, depicts the path of a Christian life and afterlife. Gemma explores what the game tells us about how powerful people have long turned to play, images, and other persuasive means to secure converts and colonial subjects. Dr Gemma Tidman is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Queen Mary University London and a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to put research on radio. You can hear more from her in Free Thinking discussions about Game-playing, and Sneezing, smells and noses.
Producer: Torquil MacLeod
The A13 runs from the City of London past Tilbury Docks and the site of the Dagenham Ford factory to Benfleet and the Wat Tyler Country Park. As he travels along it, talking to residents about their ideas of community and change, New Generation Thinker Dan Taylor reflects on the history of the area and different versions of hopes for the future.
Dr Dan Taylor lectures in social and political thought at the Open University and is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the BBC and the AHRC to share insights from academic research on radio. You can hear him in Free Thinking discussions about Essex, and discussing medieval bestiaries in Beast and Animals. He is also the author of a book Island Story: Journeys Through Unfamiliar Britain and you can hear him in a Free Thinking episode discussing the county Essex.
Producer: Torquil MacLeod
From 1922, between 10-30,000 women and girls are thought to have been incarcerated at the Magdalene laundries which operated in Ireland. New Generation Thinker Louise Brangan has been reading the testimonies of many of the girls who survived these institutions. As the Irish state tries to come to terms with this history, how should it be spoken about? Is a language of legal blame and guilt enough to make sense of this history?
Dr Louise Brangan is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Strathclyde and is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (part of UKRI) to put research on radio. You can find her contributing to Free Thinking discussion episodes looking at Ireland's hidden histories and secret stories
Producer in Salford: Olive Clancy
Two years living at sea taught New Generation Thinker Kerry McInerney values which she wants to apply to the development of AI. Her Essay explores the "sustainable AI" movement and looks at visions of the future in novels including Waste Tide by Chen Qiufan and Larissa Lai’s Salt Fish Girl. Dr McInerney is a Research Associate at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge and a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the BBC and the AHRC to put academic research on radio.
Producer: Julian Siddle
You can hear more from Kerry in Free Thinking and New Thinking episodes available as Arts & Ideas podcasts called AI, feminism, human/machines and Yellowface, AI and Asian stereotypes.
Why do babies say "daddy" earlier and what might it mean when a baby does call for "mum" or "anne"? Dr Rebecca Woods, from Newcastle University, calls upon her training in linguistics and observations from her own home to trace the way children’s experiences shape their first words and the names they use for their parents.
Rebecca Woods is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to put academic research on radio.
Producer: Ruth Watts
You can hear more from Rebecca Woods in a Free Thinking discussion about childhood and play when Young V&A opened - it's available from the programme website and as an Arts & Ideas podcast
Canvey Island: cradle of innovation for gas heating and home to music makers Dr Feelgood, who drew inspiration from the Mississippi Delta. New Generation Thinker Sam Johnson-Schlee is an author and geographer based at London South Bank University. His essay remembers the influence of Parker Morris standards on heating in the home, songs written by Wilko Johnson and the impact of central heating on teenage record listening and playing instruments.
Producer: Julian Siddle
You can hear more from Sam in Free Thinking episodes exploring Dust and Sound, Conflict and Central Heating New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to put research on radio
Two years living at sea taught New Generation Thinker Kerry McInerney values which she wants to apply to the development of AI. Her Essay explores the "sustainable AI" movement and looks at visions of the future in novels including Waste Tide by Chen Qiufan and Larissa Lai’s Salt Fish Girl. Dr McInerney is a Research Associate at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge and a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the BBC and the AHRC to put academic research on radio.
Producer: Julian Siddle
You can hear more from Kerry in Free Thinking and New Thinking episodes available as Arts & Ideas podcasts called AI, feminism, human/machines and Yellowface, AI and Asian stereotypes
Looking at the way human and animal bodies were treated in death and used in rituals prompts New Generation Thinker and archaeologist Marianne Hem Eriksen, from the University of Leicester, to ask questions about the way humans, animals and spirit worlds were understood. Her Essay shares stories from a research project called Body-Politics’: presenting worlds where elite men could shape-shift into animals — and some people’s bones ended up in rubbish pits.
This Essay is part of the BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinkers scheme which puts academic research on radio.
Producer: Luke Mulhall
You can hear Marianne discussing insights from her research in episodes of Free Thinking called The Kitchen and in one broadcasting next week looking at Attitudes towards death.
Amalia Holst's defence of female education, published in 1802, was the first work by a woman in Germany to challenge the major philosophers of the age, including Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Immanuel Kant. Unlike Mary Wollstonecraft writing in England, Holst failed to make headway with her arguments. New Generation Thinker Andrew Cooper teaches in the philosophy department at the University of Warwick. His essay explores the publishing of Holst's book On The Vocation of Woman to Higher Intellectual Education.
Andrew Cooper is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI.
Producer: Luke Mulhall
You can hear more from Andrew in a Free Thinking discussion about The Sorrows of Young Werther by Goethe available as an Arts & Ideas podcast and on BBC Sounds.
Why do babies say "daddy" earlier and what might it mean when a baby does call for "mum" or "anne"? Dr Rebecca Woods, from Newcastle University, calls upon her training in linguistics and observations from her own home to trace the way children’s experiences shape their first words and the names they use for their parents.
Rebecca Woods is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to put academic research on radio.
Producer: Ruth Watts
You can hear more from Rebecca Woods in a Free Thinking discussion about childhood and play when Young V&A opened - it's available from the programme website and as an Arts & Ideas podcast
Traditional Variety has been a lifelong fascination for poet and playwright Amanda Dalton. She grew up in a family that included several amateur and professional entertainers and from an early age the world of Variety Theatre was ‘in her blood’... During WW2, her dad organised and performed in a night of entertainment at King Farouk’s palace in Cairo, She recalls her mum tap dancing in the kitchen as the dinner burnt. One of her most precious and prized possessions is a poster, retrieved from her uncle’s home, for a variety show at the New Hippodrome, Darlington in 1938 - acts including Waldini’s Famous Gypsy Band, Billy Brown Upside Down and his wonderful dog Lady and her uncle himself, Barry Phelps. With Idina Scott Gatty, Entertainer. As a child, Amanda never missed Sunday Night at the London Palladium or the Good Old Days on TV. Variety shows were her parents’ favourites - her obsession with them is perhaps not surprising.
The acts that have always most fascinated her are those ‘speciality’ acts that disturb even as they entertain, designed to bamboozle the audience and mess with the mind. These essays will explore Amanda’s relationship with the different kinds of acts that thrived as UK Variety emerged from the embers of Music Hall (1930s – 1950s). Listeners are introduced to some of the key performers, a fascinating collection of unusual and striking characters with extraordinary skills and showmanship.
Essay 5: How Did They Do That? Magic and Mesmerism
In this final essay, Amanda explores the world of magicians and hypnotists - the blurred line between acts of illusion and the apparently paranormal, the moment when the solidity of our logical, rational narrative of the world starts to fall away and we enter a state of bewilderment. The essay springs from Amanda’s memories of her own childhood fascination with magic and her desire for it to be ‘real’, despite her terror of psychic phenomena - a fascination that is still with her today and continues to inform her writing. “That’s entertainment??” asks the essay, as it ponders the connections between amusement, thrill, escapism and fear.
Writer and reader, Amanda Dalton Producer, Polly Thomas Exec Producer, Eloise Whitmore
A Naked Production for BBC Radio 3.
Biog Amanda Dalton is poet, playwright and essayist based in West Yorkshire. She has written extensively for BBC Radio 4 and 3 and for theatres including Manchester’s Royal Exchange, Sheffield Theatres, and Theatre By The Lake, Keswick who are premiering her radical adaptation of Francis Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess during Winter 2023-4. Her poetry collections are published by Bloodaxe Books and she has pamphlets with Smith|Doorstop and ARC. A new collection – Fantastic Voyage – is forthcoming from Bloodaxe in May 2024 and includes some poems about magic!
Traditional Variety has been a lifelong fascination for poet and playwright Amanda Dalton. She grew up in a family that included several amateur and professional entertainers and from an early age the world of Variety Theatre was ‘in her blood’... During WW2, her dad organised and performed in a night of entertainment at King Farouk’s palace in Cairo, She recalls her mum tap dancing in the kitchen as the dinner burnt. One of her most precious and prized possessions is a poster, retrieved from her uncle’s home, for a variety show at the New Hippodrome, Darlington in 1938 - acts including Waldini’s Famous Gypsy Band, Billy Brown Upside Down and his wonderful dog Lady and her uncle himself, Barry Phelps. With Idina Scott Gatty, Entertainer. As a child, Amanda never missed Sunday Night at the London Palladium or the Good Old Days on TV. Variety shows were her parents’ favourites - her obsession with them is perhaps not surprising.
The acts that have always most fascinated her are those ‘speciality’ acts that disturb even as they entertain, designed to bamboozle the audience and mess with the mind. These essays will explore Amanda’s relationship with the different kinds of acts that thrived as UK Variety emerged from the embers of Music Hall (1930s – 1950s). Listeners are introduced to some of the key performers, a fascinating collection of unusual and striking characters with extraordinary skills and showmanship.
Essay 4: Girls! Girls! Girls! Women in Variety
For today’s essay, Amanda turns her attention to female variety acts including those frequently unnamed, scantily clad ‘glamorous assistants.’ Built around the rediscovery of her mum’s 1920s and 30s scrapbook which charts her ventures into the world of entertainment, Amanda considers the role and frequently disturbing representation of women in old Variety Theatre, and her own mum’s journey through this landscape.
Writer and reader, Amanda Dalton Producer, Polly Thomas Exec Producer, Eloise Whitmore
A Naked Production for BBC Radio 3.
Biog Amanda Dalton is poet, playwright and essayist based in West Yorkshire. She has written extensively for BBC Radio 4 and 3 and for theatres including Manchester’s Royal Exchange, Sheffield Theatres, and Theatre By The Lake, Keswick who are premiering her radical adaptation of Francis Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess during Winter 2023-4. Her poetry collections are published by Bloodaxe Books and she has pamphlets with Smith|Doorstop and ARC. A new collection – Fantastic Voyage – is forthcoming from Bloodaxe in May 2024 and includes some poems about magic!
Traditional Variety has been a lifelong fascination for poet and playwright Amanda Dalton. She grew up in a family that included several amateur and professional entertainers and from an early age the world of Variety Theatre was ‘in her blood’... During WW2, her dad organised and performed in a night of entertainment at King Farouk’s palace in Cairo, She recalls her mum tap dancing in the kitchen as the dinner burnt. One of her most precious and prized possessions is a poster, retrieved from her uncle’s home, for a variety show at the New Hippodrome, Darlington in 1938 - acts including Waldini’s Famous Gypsy Band, Billy Brown Upside Down and his wonderful dog Lady and her uncle himself, Barry Phelps. With Idina Scott Gatty, Entertainer. As a child, Amanda never missed Sunday Night at the London Palladium or the Good Old Days on TV. Variety shows were her parents’ favourites - her obsession with them is perhaps not surprising.
The acts that have always most fascinated her are those ‘speciality’ acts that disturb even as they entertain, designed to bamboozle the audience and mess with the mind. These essays will explore Amanda’s relationship with the different kinds of acts that thrived as UK Variety emerged from the embers of Music Hall (1930s – 1950s). Listeners are introduced to some of the key performers, a fascinating collection of unusual and striking characters with extraordinary skills and showmanship.
Essay 3: It's The Animal In Me: Animal Acts in Variety Theatre
In this third essay of the series Amanda looks not only to the dancing dogs, disappearing doves and rabbits pulled from hats, but to the wild animal acts that at one time were a regular feature of Variety. A lifelong animal lover who grew up in a houseful of pets, she recalls her uneasy childhood experiences of watching animals on stage – something she loved and hated in equal measure - and asks what is the appeal of watching animals ‘perform’ and what can the lens of Variety reveal of our attitudes to other species and ourselves?
Writer and reader, Amanda Dalton Producer, Polly Thomas Exec Producer, Eloise Whitmore
A Naked Production for BBC Radio 3.
Biog Amanda Dalton is poet, playwright and essayist based in West Yorkshire. She has written extensively for BBC Radio 4 and 3 and for theatres including Manchester’s Royal Exchange, Sheffield Theatres, and Theatre By The Lake, Keswick who are premiering her radical adaptation of Francis Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess during Winter 2023-4. Her poetry collections are published by Bloodaxe Books and she has pamphlets with Smith|Doorstop and ARC. A new collection – Fantastic Voyage – is forthcoming from Bloodaxe in May 2024 and includes some poems about magic!
Traditional Variety has been a lifelong fascination for poet and playwright Amanda Dalton. She grew up in a family that included several amateur and professional entertainers and from an early age the world of Variety Theatre was ‘in her blood’... During WW2, her dad organised and performed in a night of entertainment at King Farouk’s palace in Cairo, She recalls her mum tap dancing in the kitchen as the dinner burnt. One of her most precious and prized possessions is a poster, retrieved from her uncle’s home, for a variety show at the New Hippodrome, Darlington in 1938 - acts including Waldini’s Famous Gypsy Band, Billy Brown Upside Down and his wonderful dog Lady and her uncle himself, Barry Phelps. With Idina Scott Gatty, Entertainer. As a child, Amanda never missed Sunday Night at the London Palladium or the Good Old Days on TV. Variety shows were her parents’ favourites - her obsession with them is perhaps not surprising.
The acts that have always most fascinated her are those ‘speciality’ acts that disturb even as they entertain, designed to bamboozle the audience and mess with the mind. These essays will explore Amanda’s relationship with the different kinds of acts that thrived as UK Variety emerged from the embers of Music Hall (1930s – 1950s). Listeners are introduced to some of the key performers, a fascinating collection of unusual and striking characters with extraordinary skills and showmanship.
Essay 2: Gokkle o’ Geer: Ventriloquists and their Dummies
Fascinated by the ‘speciality’ acts that disturb even as they entertain, in this second essay of the series Amanda turns her attention to ventriloquism. Rooted in Amanda’s personal experience, she considers ventriloquism’s extraordinary relationship with the human gut and traces its origins to the ancient belly prophets – or gastromancers. What might the anarchic truth-speaking of the ventriloquist’s doll have to tell us about both our physiology and our minds?
Writer and reader, Amanda Dalton Producer, Polly Thomas Exec Producer, Eloise Whitmore
A Naked Production for BBC Radio 3.
Biog Amanda Dalton is poet, playwright and essayist based in West Yorkshire. She has written extensively for BBC Radio 4 and 3 and for theatres including Manchester’s Royal Exchange, Sheffield Theatres, and Theatre By The Lake, Keswick who are premiering her radical adaptation of Francis Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess during Winter 2023-4. Her poetry collections are published by Bloodaxe Books and she has pamphlets with Smith|Doorstop and ARC. A new collection – Fantastic Voyage – is forthcoming from Bloodaxe in May 2024 and includes some poems about magic!
Traditional Variety has been a lifelong fascination for poet and playwright Amanda Dalton. She grew up in a family that included several amateur and professional entertainers and from an early age the world of Variety Theatre was ‘in her blood’... During WW2, her dad organised and performed in a night of entertainment at King Farouk’s palace in Cairo, She recalls her mum tap dancing in the kitchen as the dinner burnt. One of her most precious and prized possessions is a poster, retrieved from her uncle’s home, for a variety show at the New Hippodrome, Darlington in 1938 - acts including Waldini’s Famous Gypsy Band, Billy Brown Upside Down and his wonderful dog Lady and her uncle himself, Barry Phelps. With Idina Scott Gatty, Entertainer. As a child, Amanda never missed Sunday Night at the London Palladium or the Good Old Days on TV. Variety shows were her parents’ favourites - her obsession with them is perhaps not surprising.
The acts that have always most fascinated her are those ‘speciality’ acts that disturb even as they entertain, designed to bamboozle the audience and mess with the mind. These essays will explore Amanda’s relationship with the different kinds of acts that thrived as UK Variety emerged from the embers of Music Hall (1930s – 1950s). Listeners are introduced to some of the key performers, a fascinating collection of unusual and striking characters with extraordinary skills and showmanship.
In That’s Entertainment...? Variety and Me, Amanda revisits some of the acts that made up this form of light entertainment, exploring how they connected with her own family’s life and considering their personal and cultural meaning for her both as a child and as the writer she is today.
Essay 1: Singing, Dancing and Having a Laugh: The Backbone of Variety.
The first essay of this series introduces listeners to the world of Variety as it morphed from Music Hall and journeyed into televised entertainment. It considers the backbone of the Variety Show – song, dance and comedy – through the lens of Amanda’s personal memories of growing up in a rather unusual family.
Writer and reader, Amanda Dalton Producer, Polly Thomas Exec Producer, Eloise Whitmore
A Naked Production for BBC Radio 3.
Biog Amanda Dalton is poet, playwright and essayist based in West Yorkshire. She has written extensively for BBC Radio 4 and 3 and for theatres including Manchester’s Royal Exchange, Sheffield Theatres, and Theatre By The Lake, Keswick who are premiering her radical adaptation of Francis Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess during Winter 2023-4. Her poetry collections are published by Bloodaxe Books and she has pamphlets with Smith|Doorstop and ARC. A new collection – Fantastic Voyage – is forthcoming from Bloodaxe in May 2024 and includes some poems about magic!
Essay 5: Christmas Pudding
A new series of essays written and read by the very popular Fiona Stafford, Professor of Literature at Somerville College, Oxford, following her much praised series of essays The Meaning of Trees and Composers and their Dogs. Here Fiona explores some of the world’s favourite puddings, all of which have surprising stories and have become symbols far beyond the pudding bowl.
Christmas pudding. A British icon, supposedly a classless, medieval religious symbol but which owes its modern prominence to Dickens. Exported as Empire Pudding, it is loved around the Commonwealth. There are surprising local adaptations in Asia (especially India) and the Caribbean, adding spices and exotic elements and renaming it as their own Christmas tradition. Thus it symbolises the reverse appropriation of imperialism. Key ingredient: dried fruit. Dates back to 4000 BC, much older than any religion, hence its role in nearly all of them. Christmas pudding is an example of the Victorians inventing many of our “traditions” we think of as older. Charles Dickens was a major creator of modern ideas of Christmas, with Mrs Beeton’s recipe for 'Exceedingly Good Plum Pudding' (later Christmas pudding) whether flambéed or teetotal, establishing the British idea of Christmas centring on particular foods. Literary examples include Edward Lear's wacky villain, 'The Plum Pudding Flea'. Seeing and eating a Christmas pudding is like breaking into hot earth, a sweet, steaming mound of loam that looks rich enough to plant and grow the healthiest of Christmas trees; a universal substrate for a global festival. And then … there’s the tooth-breaking sixpence-in-the-pudding tradition.
Producer – Turan Ali A Bona Broadcasting production for BBC Radio 3
Essay 4: Pavlova
A new series of essays written and read by the very popular Fiona Stafford, Professor of Literature at Somerville College, Oxford, following her much praised series of essays The Meaning of Trees and Composers and their Dogs. Here Fiona explores some of the world’s favourite puddings, all of which have surprising stories and have become symbols far beyond the pudding bowl.
Pavlova is a much-disputed national symbol claimed by rival neighbours. A crisp meringue with whipped cream and fruit, it has become a source of pride and national identity for New Zealand and Australia; both claim its creation with disputed historical citations. For both it is their Christmas dessert. But the pavlova symbolises the re-writing of history. Actually, it’s a 1700s Austrian Habsburger dessert, long before ballerina Pavlova's 1926 Australian tour (a story of celebrity hysteria) supposedly inspired it. The USA documented an almost identical dessert in 1896 with another name. Thus Australia or New Zealand can only claim to have renamed it. Key ingredient: egg white. We explore its amazing properties and health benefits. Addressing a pavlova is like looking into a huge cloud at sunset, the surface bright with warm colours (strawberries, passion fruit); breaking it open reveals the white fluffy interior one expects (whipped cream). No wonder the world recognises and loves this pudding.
Producer – Turan Ali A Bona Broadcasting production for BBC Radio 3
Essay 3: Crème Brûlée
A new series of essays written and read by the very popular Fiona Stafford, Professor of Literature at Somerville College, Oxford, following her much praised series of essays The Meaning of Trees and Composers and their Dogs. Here Fiona explores some of the world’s favourite puddings, all of which have surprising stories and have become symbols far beyond the pudding bowl.
Crème brûlée (meaning burnt cream) - a pudding thought of as a French creation (1697). But its surprising backstory saw British food historians claim it as a creation by the chefs at Trinity College, Cambridge (founded in 1546), prompting French academics to then cite their version from the early 1500s, with literary references. French aristocracy’s fervent embracing of it as a wealth and status symbol put this pudding on the international map, but post-revolution the French abandoned it as a decadent symbol of the rejected gentry, with expensive cream, eggs and scarce refined sugar. For two centuries it was in obscurity until a New York chef championed it in 1980, creating a new worldwide favourite. A phoenix rising from the blow torch that caramelises its sugary lid. Key ingredient: refined sugar, connecting it to slavery, and we explore the complex science of brittle caramel. Breaking into a crème brûlée is like cracking the carapace of a well-protected creature, breaching its security to scoop out its warm brain, a dramatic audible pudding that turns us into diggers for liquid gold. Producer – Turan Ali A Bona Broadcasting production for BBC Radio 3
Essay 2: Summer Pudding
A new series of essays written and read by the very popular Fiona Stafford, Professor of Literature at Somerville College, Oxford, following her much praised series of essays The Meaning of Trees and Composers and their Dogs. Here Fiona explores some of the world’s favourite puddings, all of which have surprising stories and have become symbols far beyond the pudding bowl.
Summer pudding, supposedly quintessentially English, (mixed berries encased in juice-soaked stale bread) began life as a symbol of health food for weight conscious American women over a century ago. It’s an invention from Victorian times, originally called ‘hydropathic pudding’, (low-calorie dessert for US health spas). Key ingredients: berries, sugar and stale bread. The changing variety of berries charts the growth of global trading and capitalism. Through this relatively low-calorie dessert we explore how, before refined sugar, desserts were not seen as an especially unhealthy course. Poorer families would have soup and a hearty dessert, as their main meal, with desserts much more likely to be fruit and wholegrain based. Summer pudding symbolises millennia of puddings that were not calorie bombs of refined, hyper-processed ingredients with little nutritional value, quite the reverse. The colours in summer pudding are a large part of its enduring success. Cutting into a summer pudding is like conducting a surgical operation; oozing with deep purple and blood-red syrupy fruit juices; a dramatic pudding that impresses and surprises us all; gory theatre on the dinner table.
Producer – Turan Ali A Bona Broadcasting production for BBC Radio 3
Essay 1: Tapioca
A new series of essays written and read by the very popular Fiona Stafford, Professor of Literature at Somerville College, Oxford, following her much praised series of essays The Meaning of Trees and Composers and their Dogs. Here Fiona explores some of the world’s favourite puddings, all of which have surprising stories and have become symbols far beyond the pudding bowl.
Tapioca is equally loved and loathed; this hot and cold 'frogspawn' pudding’s story is reverse imperialism; an east Asian dessert with many guises, seen as old-fashioned in Britain, now hyper-trendy, conquering new global markets as 'pearls' in bubble tea. Key ingredient: starch from cassava. It is native to South America, taken to Asia and Africa by Portuguese merchants, it is also made into alcoholic drinks. Tapioca, a global staple food, bringing British school dinners many comic tales of revulsion. symbolises one of many puddings that came to Europe from 'the colonies' and was embraced and customised in the UK. Haters will easily believe it is used as a biodegradable plastic substitute (a renewable, reusable, recyclable eco-product) to make bags, gloves and aprons and as the starch used for starching shirts before ironing. Seeing tapioca is a primeval experience; it is viewing the elements that combine to form new life, the ova, the massive spawn of fish or frogs, the quantity ensuring some survive; speaking to us all with wonder or disgust.
Producer – Turan Ali A Bona Broadcasting production for BBC Radio 3
Khadijah Ibrahiim’s essay, A Journey of Things Past and Present, looks at how Leeds’s built environment has changed and what that tells us about it as a society. Leeds is a rich north England city in a beautiful rural setting, but only the former is reflected in its physical development. The starting point is a much-loved mural that Khadijah contributed to as part of a school art project about the city’s historical and modern architecture. Khadijah still lives in the city and has watched as the skyline has become blotted out by high rise buildings, changing the view and creating a sort of forest of grey trees. She is struck by how beautiful the countryside is around the city, as are many of its historical buildings.
The essay will consider what the built city tells us about its identity and why/how the landscape is developed, then move us into the future, talking about the imminent David Oluwale memorial sculpture by Yinka Shonibare, Hibiscus Rising, in currently empty open space down near the river.
Khadijah Ibrahiim is a literary activist, theatre maker and published poet/writer. She is the Artistic director of Leeds Young Authors, and executive producer of the award-winning documentary ‘We Are Poets’. Recently work includes writing and directing ‘Sorrel & Black cake’ A Windrush Story, a Heritage Lottery funded program as part of GCF. ‘Dead and Wake’ Opera North 2020 Resonance and Leeds Playhouse Connecting Voices.
Writer/reader, Khadijah Ibrahiim Sound designer, Alisdair McGregor Producer, Polly Thomas
Looking at Leeds is a co-commission between BBC Radio 3 and The Space with funding from Arts Council England. A Thomas Carter Project for BBC Radio 3.
In his essay, Paradoxopolis, Ian Duhig is inspired by a painting by 'Leeds’s Lost Modernist', the reclusive Joash Woodrow, and the former local synagogue, now the Northern School of Contemporary Dance, both sited on the road north out of Leeds, built by Blind Jack Metcalf, iconic Leeds roadmaker of the Victorian era.
Ian says: "When I first moved here about 50 years ago, Leeds was still advertising itself as The Motorway City of the Seventies and as much as its natural resources of clay and coal, its central location between London and Scotland. and England’s east and west coasts, was a major influence on its development. Immigrants, itinerant labour and roadmakers have built this city and its economy, something I propose to show by inviting you all to join me now on a virtual poetic journey through it on one road, Blind Jack Metcalf’s due north where we will come to understand something of that extraordinary civil engineer and what Virginia Woolf meant when she once wrote in a TLS review: “Personally, we should be willing to read one volume about every street in the city, and should still ask for more”.
The essay touches on the many different populations that have lived and still live in Leeds - Jewish, Irish, Caribbean, Indian, Russian, Polish, Portuguese and their rich cultural manifestations.
Ian Duhig became a full-time writer after working with homeless people for fifteen years. He has published eight collections of poetry, held several fellowships including at Trinity College Dublin, won the Forward Best Poem Prize once, the National Poetry Competition twice and been shortlisted four times for the T.S. Eliot Prize. His New and Selected Poems was awarded the 2022 Hawthornden Prize for Literature. He is currently finishing his next book of poetry, ‘An Arbitrary Light Bulb’, due from Picador in 2024.
Writer/reader, Ian Duhig Sound designer, Alisdair McGregor Producer, Polly Thomas
Looking at Leeds is a co-commission between BBC Radio 3 and The Space with funding from Arts Council England. A Thomas Carter Project for BBC Radio 3.
In her essay, Both Arms, Michelle Scally Clarke writes about the statue of that name by William Kenneth Armitage CBE, a Leeds sculptor known for his semi-abstract bronzes. It is a powerful public image of compassion, support and welcome, created as a monument to friendship. It resonates for Michelle about her own life journey as a mixed race care leaver who was welcomed and held by Leeds as a child and now an adult. ‘Both Arms” also holds great pride and nostalgia for Michelle, a visual symbol of Leeds as a city of hope for now and the future. Her essay explores Leeds as a city of welcome in multiple contexts - adoption and adaptation; migrants and refugees; traders and artists; students; and Nelson Mandela’s iconic visit to the city in the 1990s.
Michelle Scally Clarke is a writer and performer of drama, creative writing, and poetry. Work includes BBC Contains Strong Language 2023, Space2 2016 performance and workshop focusing on mental health ‘Suitcase’, 2018 cross-cultural play ‘Jeans, Whose Genes?’ and now peer-led Clear Out Your Closer poetry group, focusing on writing for wellbeing.
Writer/reader, Michelle Scally Clarke Sound designer, Alisdair McGregor Producer, Polly Thomas
Looking at Leeds is a co-commission between BBC Radio 3 and The Space with funding from Arts Council England. A Thomas Carter Project for BBC Radio 3.
The world of magic and enchantment that Jeremy Dyson remembers from the Leeds of his childhood are epitomised by the three intricately carved clocks with life size human figures that still keep time in the Edwardian and Victorian shopping arcades in the city centre, now hemmed in by shopping malls and fast food outlets. From discussing the three clocks, he takes us back to the Victorian architectural splendour and status of the city, with its bronze and stone carved animals in Leeds Central Library and a plea to remember the value of spending money on public art.
Jeremy Dyson is the co-creator and co-writer of the multi-award winning comedy show The League of Gentlemen, the BAFTA-nominated comedy drama Funland and the Rose-d’or winning all female sketch show Psychobitches. His play Ghost Stories, co-written with Andy Nyman was nominated for an Olivier award);
Writer/reader, Jeremy Dyson Sound designer, Alisdair McGregor Producer, Polly Thomas
Looking at Leeds is a co-commission between BBC Radio 3 and The Space with funding from Arts Council England. A Thomas Carter Project for BBC Radio 3.
The city of Leeds seen through public art past, present and future. In this edition, Malika Booker considers an architectural sculptural frieze located on Abtech House, 18 Park Row, Leeds (formerly West Riding Union Buildings) created in 1900 by the stonemason and sculptor Joseph Thewlis. The sculpture depicts emblematic figures related to Leeds commerce at the time, linked to the abundance of textile industry and mills in Yorkshire and Leeds.
As a member of the Caribbean community living in Chapeltown, she is particularly interested in the Minerva Goddess presiding over these figures, as well as the figures depicting the bank's relationship with empire. She is caught by the multicultural portrayal of figures representing different aspects of Industry and the world, but of particular interest is the depiction of an enslaved African figure lifting and bending over bales of cotton.
This lyrically poetic essay considers the changing visual, political, social and environmental changes that the sculptural frieze has witnessed and the ways in which the world has moved away from this depiction of black bodies.
Malika is and international writer, double winner of Forward Prize for Poetry and Douglas Caster Cultural Fellow at University of Leeds.
Writer/reader, Malika Booker Sound designer, Alisdair McGregor Producer, Polly Thomas
Contains some historical racial terminology.
Looking at Leeds is a co-commission between BBC Radio 3 and The Space with funding from Arts Council England. A Thomas Carter Project for BBC Radio 3.
"Each remembered moment is a keyhole. Time doesn't 'flow like a river', doesn't exist in Odesa at all; the numbers of years, 1986 or 1989 or 2006 are like signs hanging about the corner grocery shop, with names of owners, swaying. In these streets, everything is ever-present. There are places like this on the planet: you can stop in the middle of the street and stick a finger into the skin of time, tear a hole, and see through."
Across a week of personal essays, the Ukrainian-American poet Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic, writes about the city of his birth and reflects on fatherland, mother tongue, memory, Deafness, exile and oppression. He writes about the Odesa of his childhood and his family's flight from Ukraine to the USA in the early 1990s. He writes of invasion, war, regimes and revolution. Of Odesa's poets, past and present (editing their poems in the bomb shelters). Of the statues in the city squares - Leo Tolstoy, Taras Shevchenko, Catherine the Great.
In his final essay, Ilya visits the Jewish cemetery in Odesa to check on the family graves. He reflects on nation, language, home and exile. "The “New” Jewish cemetery still exists. But the “Old” one is razed. In its place stands park surrounded by apartment buildings, some of which have walls made of brick intermingled with old Jewish tombstones. Yes, the walls of apartments are built out of my people’s tombstones, and inside these buildings people watch soccer battles on TV and drink beer. And that is why juxtaposition, repetition, and fragmentation are my literary devices: like these walls made out of bricks and Jewish gravestones. Inside paragraphs: people shall live again, adopt foundlings, tango during the war, tell stories. I turn and toil giving many answers, but the truth is simple: I bring fragments of our past here because it is a way to read Kaddish for my people."
Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odesa, Ukraine in 1977, and arrived in the United States in 1993, when his family was granted asylum by the American government. He is the author of Deaf Republic (Graywolf Press) and Dancing In Odessa (Tupelo Press) and co-editor and co-translated many other books, including Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (Harper Collins), In the Hour of War: Poems from Ukraine (Arrowsmith), and Dark Elderberry Branch: Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva (Alice James Books). He currently teaches in Princeton and lives in New Jersey.
Read by Ilan Goodman, with introductions by the author
Producer: Mair Bosworth for BBC Audio Assistant Producer: Melanie Pearson Mixing Engineer: Ilse Lademann
"Each remembered moment is a keyhole. Time doesn't 'flow like a river', doesn't exist in Odesa at all; the numbers of years, 1986 or 1989 or 2006 are like signs hanging about the corner grocery shop, with names of owners, swaying. In these streets, everything is ever-present. There are places like this on the planet: you can stop in the middle of the street and stick a finger into the skin of time, tear a hole, and see through."
Across a week of personal essays, the Ukrainian-American poet Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic, writes about the city of his birth and reflects on fatherland, mother tongue, memory, Deafness, exile and oppression. He writes about the Odesa of his childhood and his family's flight from Ukraine to the USA in the early 1990s. He writes of invasion, war, regimes and revolution. Of Odesa's poets, past and present (editing their poems in the bomb shelters). Of the statues in the city squares - Leo Tolstoy, Taras Shevchenko, Catherine the Great.
In his fourth essay, he tells the story of a visit to Ukraine during the early months of the 2022 invasion: "At the border, an endless line of cars. Between them weave women wheeling bulky suitcases, children following behind, dragging their stuffed toys which look both curious and afraid. Grannies in wheelchairs sit at the side of the road, drowsing off as soldiers check their papers. Two women spread their breakfast on the hood of a parked Zhiguli. The line is going so slowly I can see what they are eating—brinza cheese, bread, cups of coffee, and hard-boiled eggs. Next to them, a couple of stray cats begging. They’re everywhere: atop anti-tank fortifications, under the bushes, in the arms of the children. Pretty soon, we’re motioned forward, but the women and the cats remain behind us. Perhaps they’re still waiting."
Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odesa, Ukraine in 1977, and arrived in the United States in 1993, when his family was granted asylum by the American government. He is the author of Deaf Republic (Graywolf Press) and Dancing In Odessa (Tupelo Press) and co-editor and co-translated many other books, including Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (Harper Collins), In the Hour of War: Poems from Ukraine (Arrowsmith), and Dark Elderberry Branch: Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva (Alice James Books). He currently teaches in Princeton and lives in New Jersey.
Read by Ilan Goodman, with introductions by the author
Producer: Mair Bosworth for BBC Audio Assistant Producer: Melanie Pearson Mixing Engineer: Ilse Lademann
Kenneth Steven considers the introduction of wild animals into the Highlands of Scotland and the impact on rural life, reflecting in poetry at the end of each Essay.
Kenneth Steven recounts the story of American bison introduced in Victorian times to Scotland by William Stewart.
‘They were enclosed in a paddock with a circumference of five or six miles, but had become completely tame – they were however healthy and with an addition of two calves.’ Those buffalo were obviously still there when Queen Victoria and Albert famously came to visit Taymouth Castle in 1842 for she makes mention of them too: ‘We saw part of Loch Tay and drove along the banks of the Tay under fine trees and saw Lord Breadalbane’s American buffaloes’.
What we’re actually talking about here are American bison, very different from the buffalo that live in Africa and Asia. American bison live only in North America. It may be that early French fur trappers inadvertently coined the name buffalo when they used the French word ‘boeufs’ for these huge animals because they resembled giant oxen. Over time ‘boeufs’ became ‘buffalo’. Confusing, too, because the word that William Stewart and everyone else at that time would have used to describe them was buffalo.
Presenter Kenneth Steven
Producer Mark Rickards
A Whistledown Scotland production for BBC Radio 3
Kenneth Steven considers the introduction of wild animals back into the Highlands of Scotland and the impact on rural life, reflecting in poetry at the end of each Essay.
There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that at one time beavers were distributed widely throughout mainland Scotland. That would seem no great surprise, given the wealth of rivers and lochs in the country, and when you think how much native woodland was present in earlier centuries. But it would seem that by the 12th-century beavers were growing rare in Scotland; a record suggests they were to be found in just one river, though it’s impossible to know how reliable that record was. The last time we hear of them is in the 1526 ‘Cronikils of Scotland’ where beavers are mentioned as being abundant in the Loch Ness area. At some point after that they’re reckoned to have died out.
In 2009, beavers were re-introduced into the Knapdale forest, Argyll, in the west of Scotland. Sixteen beavers from Norway were released during the first year and a further family the next. More than four hundred years after they were pushed to extinction, there are again wild beavers in the country. Now they have been reaffirmed as a native species and afforded protection.
Presenter Kenneth Steven
Producer Mark RIckards
A Whistledown Scotland production for BBC Radio 3
Kenneth Steven considers the introduction of wild animals into the Highlands of Scotland and the impact on rural life, reflecting in poetry at the end of each Essay.
Kenneth Steven explores his visit to an island in the largest of freshwater lakes, Loch Lomond.
There was nothing; possibly the soft murmur of birdsong, but precious little more than that. I walked on until I must have been about the middle of the island and then I stopped again, looked around me. And all at once, to my amazement and my great joy, were exactly what I had come to find, and the last thing in the world you would ever imagine: wallabies. There were perhaps half a dozen with me in the glade, and they were watching me. They were standing upright and probably they’d have come up to the height of my thighs: somehow akin to giant rabbits; furry-faced and doe-eyed. And as I stood there watching them one or two bounced about between the growing patches of sunlight. And now I knew at last I had proved the story true after all: there were indeed wallabies on the island of Inchconnachan on Loch Lomond.
Presenter Kenneth Steven
Producer Mark Rickards
A Whistledown Scotland production for BBC Radio 3
Kenneth Steven considers the introduction of wild animals back into the Highlands of Scotland and the impact on rural life, reflecting in poetry at the end of each Essay.
At one time sea eagles are likely to have been revered in Scotland. The Tomb of the Eagles, a Neolithic burial site in Orkney, is testament to that, as are the carved Pictish stones depicting what’s hard not to believe have to be sea eagles. For all that, they most certainly became a hated species in more recent centuries, after the Clearances in the Highlands when the era of the Victorian hunting estate had been ushered in.
When they were reintroduced, Rum was the location chosen by the then Nature Conservancy Council for the release of the first sea eagles in 1975. It’s somehow an island made for eagles, and set in a wider wildscape designed for them every bit as much. Across the water from Scotland, Norway had and has a very healthy population of the birds. So it was eaglets were collected at 6-8 weeks of age from nests in Norway: over the next 10 years a total of 82 eaglets (39 males and 43 females) were brought to Scotland.
Presenter Kenneth Steven
Producer Mark Rickards
A Whistledown Scotland Production for BBC Radio 3
Kenneth Steven considers the introduction of wild animals into the Highlands of Scotland, reflecting in poetry at the end of each Essay.
A consignment of eight reindeer landed at Clydebank near Glasgow on April 12th in 1952 thanks to a Swedish Sami Mikel Utsi who hailed from a long line of reindeer herders. There were eight reindeer and they were from Mikel Utsi’s own family herd in Arctic Sweden. The crossing had taken four days and by all accounts it had been pretty rough. Those first eight beasts spent the next month in quarantine at Edinburgh Zoo and then they completed their journey to Highland Scotland and the area of ground that had been granted for them. There are echoes of the old stories of attempted re-introductions of reindeer: low and wet ground, the prevalence of insects. It took time, but in 1954 Mikel Utsi was given permission for free grazing up to the summits of the northern corries of the Cairngorms: in other words, where they needed to be. Further clusters of reindeer were introduced in 1952, 1954 and 1955.
Several hundred reindeer were born in Highland Scotland between 1953 and 1979, that year when Mikel Utsi passed away. Wild reindeer were again living freely in the country that had been theirs centuries before. And the herder who’d brought them here, whose dream had come true, he was able to bring people out into what might just have been another piece of his childhood landscape and tell them of the ways and the stories of the Sami.
Presenter Kenneth Steven Producer Mark Rickards
A Whistledown Scotland production for BBC Radio 3
Writer and musician Kate Kennedy takes a personal look at five lost cellos, and what they can tell us of those who played and loved them and how our identities are shaped by the physical, social and psychological impacts of performance.
What happens when you re-imagine what a cello can be? From pieces of derelict instruments, and offcuts of wood, along with cutting edge technology, Kate Kennedy is making a prototype of a new, hybrid cello, that looks nothing like we might expect. This is a cello whose story is yet to begin.
Working amidst the wood shavings and priceless instruments in the historic workshop of Hill and Sons, the cello parts are destined for a youth orchestra in Argentina and designed to be easily reassembled by the young players. Every aspect of the instrument has been re-imagined. As Kate stumblingly creates the very first cello for them, getting to know a cello’s every contour, she reflects on perhaps the weirdest cello ever made, and its role as an instrument for the future, shaping young lives, and telling new stories.
Producer: Adrian Washbourne Technical production by Mike Sherwood Executive Producer: Rami Tzabar A TellTale Industries production for BBC Radio 3
Writer and musician Kate Kennedy takes a personal look at five lost cellos, and what they can tell us of those who played and loved them and how our identities are shaped by the physical, social and psychological impacts of performance.
Destroyed and resurrected, how does an instrument's identity change? The 'Mara' Stradivarius is one of the greatest cellos in the world, but in the 1960s it was completely destroyed when the Trieste Trio nearly drowned jumping with it from a burning boat in thick fog into the River Plate. In travelling to Trieste, Kate Kennedy discovers how the Trio’s mental escape into a world of music during the second world war, shutting out the massacres around them, helped them to survive the accident that killed 55 others. She reflects on the cello’s unlikely rescue and lengthy reconstruction and how in the aftermath of its turbulent history its sound is considered by many to be better than ever.
Producer: Adrian Washbourne Technical production by Mike Sherwood Executive Producer: Rami Tzabar A TellTale Industries production for BBC Radio 3
Writer and musician Kate Kennedy takes a personal look at five lost cellos, and what they can tell us of those who played and loved them and how our identities are shaped by the physical, social and psychological impacts of performance.
What does it mean to be saved by an instrument? Anita Lasker-Wallfisch became known as the cellist of Auschwitz. Her beloved Ventepane cello disappeared at the same time as her parents were taken by the Nazis from her home in Breslau (now Wroclaw). When she was sent to Auschwitz, she narrowly avoided death by being recruited to the camp orchestra and filling the vacant role of cellist. Kate Kennedy working with archivists, finds the hut in which Anita practised with the other musicians, seeking answers as to why there was cello in Auschwitz, who had previously played it - whilst reflecting on how being saved by a cello, changes your relationship to the instrument.
Producer: Adrian Washbourne Technical production by Mike Sherwood Executive Producer: Rami Tzabar A TellTale Industries production for BBC Radio 3
Writer and musician Kate Kennedy takes a personal look at five lost cellos, and what they can tell us of those who played and loved them and how our identities are shaped by the physical, social and psychological impacts of performance.
An abandoned cello rescued from a skip stands alone under a pergola in an orchard of a stately home on the outskirts of Nottingham. In an eccentric experiment, created by one of the world experts in honeybees, apiarist and physicist Prof. Martin Benscik has donated the instrument to 400,000 bees who now live very happily inside the cello. Kate Kennedy reflects on how the colony has 'improved' the cello's design by gluing wax onto specific resonant parts whilst the intelligent bees’ buzzing, duets with the cello as the wind whistles through its strings in its exposed location. This is the story of sharing vibrations with them, sharing music, and learning what a cello means to a community of bees.
Producer: Adrian Washbourne Technical production by Mike Sherwood Executive Producer: Rami Tzabar
A TellTale Industries production for BBC Radio 3
Writer, musician and broadcaster Kate Kennedy takes a personal look at five lost cellos, and what they can tell us of those who played and loved them and how our identities are shaped by the physical, social and psychological impacts of performance.
Can a cello hold its player's soul? Jewish-Hungarian Pal Hermann was hailed as 'the next Pablo Casals' in the 1930s. He is now completely forgotten. Kate Kennedy retraces his steps across Europe, with his unique Gagliano cello as he attempted to escape the Nazis, from Berlin to Paris, to Toulouse and finally to Lithuania. Hermann’s cello has been lost since 1952, but the key to finding it, she discovers, is an inscription burnt into the side of it. 'I am the soul of music'. She reflects on her quest to find Hermann's soul, his cello, and how near we can get to recovering a great and neglected musician himself.
Producer: Adrian Washbourne Technical production by Mike Sherwood Executive Producer: Rami Tzabar A TellTale Industries production for BBC Radio 3
"Each remembered moment is a keyhole. Time doesn't 'flow like a river', doesn't exist in Odesa at all; the numbers of years, 1986 or 1989 or 2006 are like signs hanging about the corner grocery shop, with names of owners, swaying. In these streets, everything is ever-present. There are places like this on the planet: you can stop in the middle of the street and stick a finger into the skin of time, tear a hole, and see through."
Across a week of personal essays, the Ukrainian-American poet Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic, writes about the city of his birth and reflects on fatherland, mother tongue, memory, Deafness, exile and oppression. He writes about the Odesa of his childhood and his family's flight from Ukraine to the USA in the early 1990s. He writes of invasion, war, regimes and revolution. Of Odesa's poets, past and present (editing their poems in the bomb shelters). Of the statues in the city squares - Leo Tolstoy, Taras Shevchenko, Catherine the Great.
In his third essay, Ilya revisits the early months of 2022 - watching the news of Ukraine from the United States: "I am watching friends waiting to lose what my family lost in 1993: a city, a language, a home."
Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odesa, Ukraine in 1977, and arrived in the United States in 1993, when his family was granted asylum by the American government. He is the author of Deaf Republic (Graywolf Press) and Dancing In Odessa (Tupelo Press) and co-editor and co-translated many other books, including Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (Harper Collins), In the Hour of War: Poems from Ukraine (Arrowsmith), and Dark Elderberry Branch: Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva (Alice James Books). He currently teaches in Princeton and lives in New Jersey.
Read by Ilan Goodman, with introductions by the author
Producer: Mair Bosworth for BBC Audio Assistant Producer: Melanie Pearson Mixing Engineer: Ilse Lademann
"Each remembered moment is a keyhole. Time doesn't 'flow like a river', doesn't exist in Odesa at all; the numbers of years, 1986 or 1989 or 2006 are like signs hanging about the corner grocery shop, with names of owners, swaying. In these streets, everything is ever-present. There are places like this on the planet: you can stop in the middle of the street and stick a finger into the skin of time, tear a hole, and see through."
Across a week of personal essays, the Ukrainian-American poet Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic, writes about the city of his birth and reflects on fatherland, mother tongue, memory, Deafness, exile and oppression. He writes about the Odesa of his childhood and his family's flight from Ukraine to the USA in the early 1990s. He writes of invasion, war, regimes and revolution. Of Odesa's poets, past and present (editing their poems in the bomb shelters). Of the statues in the city squares - Leo Tolstoy, Taras Shevchenko, Catherine the Great.
In his second essay of the week, Ilya reflects on his complicated relationship with the country of his birth. In 1993 Ilya's family fled the anti-Semitism of post-Soviet Ukraine and was granted asylum by the American government: "The story of our coming to America begins with a burning door."
Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odesa, Ukraine in 1977, and arrived in the United States in 1993, when his family was granted asylum by the American government. He is the author of Deaf Republic (Graywolf Press) and Dancing In Odessa (Tupelo Press) and co-editor and co-translated many other books, including Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (Harper Collins), In the Hour of War: Poems from Ukraine (Arrowsmith), and Dark Elderberry Branch: Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva (Alice James Books). He currently teaches in Princeton and lives in New Jersey.
Read by Ilan Goodman, with introductions by the author
Producer: Mair Bosworth for BBC Audio Assistant Producer: Melanie Pearson Mixing Engineer: Ilse Lademann
"Each remembered moment is a keyhole. Time doesn't 'flow like a river', doesn't exist in Odesa at all; the numbers of years, 1986 or 1989 or 2006 are like signs hanging about the corner grocery shop, with names of owners, swaying. In these streets, everything is ever-present. There are places like this on the planet: you can stop in the middle of the street and stick a finger into the skin of time, tear a hole, and see through."
Across a week of personal essays, the Ukrainian-American poet Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic, writes about the city of his birth and reflects on fatherland, mother tongue, memory, Deafness, exile and oppression. He writes about the Odesa of his childhood and his family's flight from Ukraine to the USA in the early 1990s. He writes of invasion, war, regimes and revolution. Of Odesa's poets, past and present (editing their poems in the bomb shelters). Of the statues in the city squares - Leo Tolstoy, Taras Shevchenko, Catherine the Great.
In the first essay of the week, Ilya remembers his childhood years: "Pretty much all my childhood and adolescence was spent watching the Soviet Union fall apart, but I couldn't hear, so I followed the century with my eyes. I didn't know anything different, but now I understand that I was seeing in a language of images.
"What I remember most of all is washing Leo Tolstoy's ears. The year is 1989, the mornings of Revolution, the year when my birth-country began to fall apart. His ears are larger than my head, and I am standing on the shoulders of a boy who is standing on the shoulders of another boy. I am scrubbing the enormous bearded head on a pedestal - in the center of Tolstoy Square, one block from our first apartment."
Ilya lost most of his hearing at the age of four: "Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet dictator, is giving his speech. His mouth moves, the crowd claps, I hear nothing. I am raising the TV volume, Brezhnev makes another pronouncement, I do not hear it. It is on the day Brezhnev dies that my mother learns of my deafness, and the odyssey of doctors and hospitals begins. Strangers wear black clothes in public and I think it's for me. Thus begins the history of my deafness."
Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odesa, Ukraine in 1977, and arrived in the United States in 1993, when his family was granted asylum by the American government. He is the author of Deaf Republic (Graywolf Press) and Dancing In Odessa (Tupelo Press) and co-editor and co-translated many other books, including Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (Harper Collins), In the Hour of War: Poems from Ukraine (Arrowsmith), and Dark Elderberry Branch: Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva (Alice James Books). He currently teaches in Princeton and lives in New Jersey.
Read by Ilan Goodman, with introductions by the author
Producer: Mair Bosworth for BBC Audio Assistant Producer: Melanie Pearson Mixing Engineer: Ilse Lademann
In this series of The Essay, five leading cultural voices choose a great work of art and talk about a small, under-appreciated aspect of the piece that carries great meaning for them.
Art historian and author of The Story of Art Without Men, Katy Hessel draws our attention to the spine as a symbol of feminine strength and survival in Frida Kahlo's Broken Column. No matter how ambitious and brave she was in her painting, life was a constant battle: in love, in her physicality, and her struggle to be taken seriously as a woman and as an artist. Kahlo was stunted by her life – from her operations to her heartbreak, her miscarriage to her constant fight to be heard – Broken Column is a message to us that justice will come; life will be reborn.
Producer:
Mohini Patel
Essays on the underappreciated aspects of well known pieces of culture. Writer Sarfraz Manzoor describes a moment from the film Field of Dreams and what it means to him.
It’s in the minutiae of masterpieces that we feel their thrill and power.
In this series of The Essay, five leading cultural voices choose a great work of art and talk about a small, underappreciated aspect of the piece that carries great meaning for them.
Spectator Literary Editor Sam Leith explores his fascination with a background figure in Judith Kerr’s classic picture book ‘The Tiger Who Came to Tea’.
Producer: Sam Peach
Michael Goldfarb looks at five authors and their books on the receiving end of cancel culture in liberal America of the 1960s. Each author and the work being discussed was the subject of a controversy that altered their lives and deeply affected their careers.
In this essay, he focuses on Joan Williams and her novel Old Powder. After her first novel was shortlisted for the National Book Award, this one failed. Did her former lover William Faulkner have something to do with it? For much of the 60s, literary fiction remained a male preserve, Joan Williams looked like being the person to break that mould, then she disappeared. Why?
Michael Goldfarb looks at five authors and their books on the receiving end of cancel culture in liberal America of the 1960s. Each author and the work being discussed was the subject of a controversy that altered their lives and deeply affected their careers.
In this essay, he focuses on Philip Roth. Roth became permanently alienated from American Jews and even his own mother asked him if he was anti-Semitic. In light of his continuous production and the miraculous late flowering of his art, from The Counterlife to The Plot Against America, it's easy to forget that Portnoy’s Complaint, despite its sales, nearly destroyed his career within his own community. It also coloured how he was seen until his death: as a misogynist who, depending on one's view, had to be forgiven because of his talent, or could not be forgiven, because of his talent. The irony is that while many Jews at the time would like to have had Portnoy's Complaint pulled from bookshops and libraries and pulped, his authorised biography, published in 2021, actually was pulled from sale and pulped because the author, Blake Bailey, was accused of sexual assault.
Michael Goldfarb looks at five authors and their books on the receiving end of cancel culture in liberal America of the 1960s. Each author and the work being discussed was the subject of a controversy that altered their lives and deeply affected their careers.
In this essay, he focuses on Norman Mailer. His reputation as a novelist had gone down the toilet before he reinvented himself with the non-fiction novel. But there was a cost. Writers should be read and not heard was the ethos of the profession. But mass media provided authors with many different platforms to reach the public. Mailer was on all of them, courting controversy - too successfully. Mailer was a monstrous misogynist before Harvey Weinstein and #metoo. For a while his talent gave him a pass, and then it didn't.
Michael Goldfarb looks at five authors and their books on the receiving end of cancel culture in liberal America of the 1960s. Each author and the work being discussed was the subject of a controversy that altered their lives and deeply affected their careers.
This essay looks at Amiri Baraka previously known as LeRoi Jones. He was seen as a genuine heir to James Baldwin. A decade younger than Baldwin, Jones/Baraka arrived in Greenwich Village just as the Beat scene was reaching its zenith. He wrote poetry and award-winning off-Broadway plays that dealt with race with the greater fire and frankness the 60s demanded. Then in one public appearance, he cancelled himself with comments about the Jewish young men Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, who were murdered with James Chaney in Mississippi. The story of a career ruined and a notorious evening that split the liberal coalition in New York, a fracture that continues to this day.
The 1960s are celebrated for the paradigm shift in American society. This shift was reflected in art and culture as well as politics. But these great changes were not accomplished without controversy. Even in the most slow-flowing art form, literature, great controversies burst out that are now forgotten, but they anticipate what is going on with today's cancel culture. They occurred without the multiplier effect of social media but dominated not just book pages but the society at large.
Michael Goldfarb looks at five authors and their books on the receiving end of this cancel culture in liberal America of the 1960s. Each author and the work being discussed was the subject of a controversy that altered their lives and deeply affected their careers.
In this essay, he focuses on William Styron and his book 'The Confessions of Nat Turner' and asks can a white man write about a black revolutionary hero? Is this taking cultural appropriation too far? Styron was a southerner writing about an important event in his local history. The story was part of his culture, as well. But as a white man does he have the right to imagine the thoughts of an enslaved black man?
Writers choose a Black Country scene to reveal something of this strangely hidden region. Roy McFarlane is revealing secrets about the area of Bilston in the Black Country. His focus is on Big Lizzy, an enormous blast furnace that dominated the skyline of the Black Country for decades. And also the black-owned Rising Star Night Club and Major's iconic Bilston chip shop.
Roy was born in Birmingham but spent many years living in the Black Country. He’s a Poet and Playwright; has held the role of Birmingham Poet Laureate and is currently the Canal Laureate for Britain. His debut poetry collection, Beginning With Your Last Breath, was followed by The Healing Next Time which was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes award and longlisted for the Jhalak Prize.
Producer: Rosie Boulton A Must Try Softer Production A co-funded project between the BBC, The Space and Arts Council England.
Writers choose a Black Country scene to reveal something of this strangely hidden region.
R.M. Francis is sharing the secret world of Wren’s Nest in Dudley. Once a site of intense mining, this was the UK’s first urban nature reserve. It’s world-famous geologically for its well-preserved Silurian coral reef fossils and is considered the most diverse and abundant fossil site in the British Isles. Surrounded by council houses, takeaways, pubs and supermarkets, Wren’s Nest is a very surprising place.
RM Francis is a writer from the Black Country. He’s a lecturer in Creative and Professional Writing at the University of Wolverhampton and is currently the poet in residence for the Black Country Geological Society. He's the author of five poetry Chapbook collections plus novels and novellas.
Producer: Rosie Boulton A Must Try Softer Production A co-funded project between the BBC, The Space and Arts Council England.
Writers choose a Black Country scene to reveal something of this strangely hidden region.
Brendan Hawthorne is revealing his hidden childhood world of Tipton. Think cooling towers, high-rise flats, scrapyard cranes and angel fish in the canal.
Brendan is a poet, playwright, writer and musician who was born in Tipton in the Black Country. He’s released five collections of poetry and had two plays produced locally. He stood on Antony Gormley's Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square and appeared on BBC One's The One Show, translating Shirley Bassey lyrics into Black Country dialect to the Dame herself! Brendan is Poet Laureate of Wednesbury, his adopted home town.
Producer: Rosie Boulton A Must Try Softer Production A co-funded project between the BBC, The Space and Arts Council England.
Writers choose a Black Country scene to reveal something of this strangely hidden region. Emma Purshouse is introducing a new visitor to St Barts Church which stands on the hill in Wednesbury. Think cock fights, an unimpeded wind from the Urals and orange chips.
Emma was born in Wolverhampton and is a freelance writer, novelist and performance poet. She’s a poetry slam champion and performs regularly at spoken word nights including at The Cheltenham Literature Festival, Ledbury Poetry Festival, Shambala, Womad, Latitude and Solfest. She was Wolverhampton’s first Poet Laureate.
Producer: Rosie Boulton A Must Try Softer Production A co-funded project between the BBC, The Space and Arts Council England.
Writers choose a Black Country scene to reveal something of this strangely hidden region. Poet Liz Berry is taking a nighttime drive to the top of a hill in the Black Country to visit the ghosts of her childhood in Sedgley.
Liz’s first book of poems, Black Country, a ‘sooty, soaring hymn to her native West Midlands’ (Guardian) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, received a Somerset Maugham Award, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Award and Forward Prize for Best First Collection. Liz's pamphlet The Republic of Motherhood was a Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice and the title poem won the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. In her latest book, The Home Child, a novel in verse, Liz reimagines the story of her great aunt Eliza Showell, one of the many children forcibly migrated to Canada as part of the British Child Migrant schemes.
Producer: Rosie Boulton A Must Try Softer Production A co-funded project between the BBC, The Space and Arts Council England.
Five writers go on five reflective, restorative and often playful journeys in search of the final resting places of their literary heroes.
In this final essay of the series, Geoff Dyer retraces a pilgrimage to New Mexico, where DH Lawrence’s ashes were supposedly built into a concrete shrine near Taos at the request of his estranged wife Frieda. But were they actually his ashes?
Dyer is a multi-award winning novelist and non-fiction writer. His many books include Out of Sheer Rage: In the Shadow of D.H. Lawrence, and his latest The Last Days of Roger Federer: And Other Endings, which was published in 2022.
Producer: Ciaran Bermingham
Five writers go on five reflective, restorative and often playful journeys in search of the final resting places of their literary heroes.
Today Brandon Taylor travels uptown through a racially-charged Manhattan to Harlem, where Langston Hughes is buried in a library - literally underneath his prophetic words.
Taylor is a New York-based fiction writer and essayist originally from Alabama. His novels include the Booker-shortlisted Real Life and The Late Americans, and he has also published a widely-praised short story collection, Filthy Animals.
Producer: Ciaran Bermingham
Five more writers go on five reflective, restorative and often playful journeys in search of the final resting places of their literary heroes.
Today Helen Mort ventures up a Yorkshire hill to find Sylvia Plath’s much-vandalised gravestone, a battleground for those claiming the American poet's contested legacy.
Born in Sheffield, Mort is an award-winning poet and novelist.
Producer: Ciaran Bermingham
Five more writers go on five reflective, restorative and often playful journeys in search of the final resting places of their literary heroes.
Today Tracy Chevalier strolls to Stinsford, the Dorset village where Thomas Hardy’s heart is poetically buried separately from his body at Poets' Corner, Westminster – echoing the writer’s divided self.
Chevalier was born in America but now lives in Hardy's beloved home county, Dorset. She has written 12novels, including Girl with a Pearl Earring which was adapted into a film of the same name, and most recently The Glassmaker.
Producer: Ciaran Bermingham
Five more writers go on five reflective, restorative and often playful journeys in search of the final resting places of their literary heroes.
Today in the first essay of a new series, Naomi Alderman goes in search of Mary Wollstonecraft's tomb in Old St Pancras churchyard - reputedly the spot where, among other things, Wollstonecraft’s daughter Mary Shelley learnt to write. She sheds light on the life of this important feminist pioneer, offering a moving personal reflection on mother-daughter relationships.
Alderman is an award-winning author whose books include Disobedience and The Power, recently adapted into a nine-part TV series.
Producer: Ciaran Bermingham
Jerry Brotton listens for the voices and tells the stories of the ‘other Tudors’: ten men and women from across the world that lived, worked, worshipped and died in Tudor England.
The popular fascination with the Tudors tends to concentrate on the lives of white, elite, English-born men (and the occasional woman). But Tudor England also saw Muslims, Jews, Africans and Native Americans come and go from the Russia, Persia, Morocco, Italy, Spain, Portugal and the Americas, making their homes and careers here, and in the process transforming the nature of early English culture and society. This series tells the stories of ten individuals that reveal a very different story of the Tudor period as a time of multicultural exchange, encounter and ordinary working people living alongside each other.
10. Emilia Lanyer
Presenter Jerry Brotton, Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary, University of London
Producer Mark Rickards
A Whistledown Scotland production
Jerry Brotton listens for the voices and tells the stories of the ‘other Tudors’: ten men and women from across the world that lived, worked, worshipped and died in Tudor England.
The popular fascination with the Tudors tends to concentrate on the lives of white, elite, English-born men (and the occasional woman). But Tudor England also saw Muslims, Jews, Africans and Native Americans come and go from the Russia, Persia, Morocco, Italy, Spain, Portugal and the Americas, making their homes and careers here, and in the process transforming the nature of early English culture and society. This series tells the stories of ten individuals that reveal a very different story of the Tudor period as a time of multicultural exchange, encounter and ordinary working people living alongside each other.
9. Mohammed al-Annuri
Presenter Jerry Brotton is Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary, University of London.
Producer Mark Rickards
A Whistledown Scotland production
Jerry Brotton listens for the voices and tells the stories of the ‘other Tudors’: ten men and women from across the world that lived, worked, worshipped and died in Tudor England.
The popular fascination with the Tudors tends to concentrate on the lives of white, elite, English-born men (and the occasional woman). But Tudor England also saw Muslims, Jews, Africans and Native Americans come and go from the Russia, Persia, Morocco, Italy, Spain, Portugal and the Americas, making their homes and careers here, and in the process transforming the nature of early English culture and society. This series tells the stories of ten individuals that reveal a very different story of the Tudor period as a time of multicultural exchange, encounter and ordinary working people living alongside each other.
8. Roderigo Lopez
Presenter Jerry Brotton, Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary, University of London
Producer Mark Rickards
A Whistledown Scotland production
Jerry Brotton listens for the voices and tells the stories of the ‘other Tudors’: ten men and women from across the world that lived, worked, worshipped and died in Tudor England.
The popular fascination with the Tudors tends to concentrate on the lives of white, elite, English-born men (and the occasional woman). But Tudor England also saw Muslims, Jews, Africans and Native Americans come and go from the Russia, Persia, Morocco, Italy, Spain, Portugal and the Americas, making their homes and careers here, and in the process transforming the nature of early English culture and society. This series tells the stories of ten individuals that reveal a very different story of the Tudor period as a time of multicultural exchange, encounter and ordinary working people living alongside each other.
7. Mary Fillis
Presenter Jerry Brotton, Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary, University of London
Producer Mark Rickards
A Whistledown Scotland production
Jerry Brotton listens for the voices and tells the stories of the ‘other Tudors’: ten men and women from across the world that lived, worked, worshipped and died in Tudor England.
The popular fascination with the Tudors tends to concentrate on the lives of white, elite, English-born men (and the occasional woman). But Tudor England also saw Muslims, Jews, Africans and Native Americans come and go from the Russia, Persia, Morocco, Italy, Spain, Portugal and the Americas, making their homes and careers here, and in the process transforming the nature of early English culture and society. This series tells the stories of ten individuals that reveal a very different story of the Tudor period as a time of multicultural exchange, encounter and ordinary working people living alongside each other.
6. Chinano 'the Turk'
Presenter Jerry Brotton, Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary. University of London
Producer Mark Rickards
A Whistledown Scotland production
Jerry Brotton listens for the voices and tells the stories of the ‘other Tudors’: ten men and women from across the world that lived, worked, worshipped and died in Tudor England.
The popular fascination with the Tudors tends to concentrate on the lives of white, elite, English-born men (and the occasional woman). But Tudor England also saw Muslims, Jews, Africans and Native Americans come and go from the Russia, Persia, Morocco, Italy, Spain, Portugal and the Americas, making their homes and careers here, and in the process transforming the nature of early English culture and society. This series tells the stories of ten individuals that reveal a very different story of the Tudor period as a time of multicultural exchange, encounter and ordinary working people living alongside each other.
5. Manteo
Presenter Jerry Brotton, Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary, University of London
Producer Mark Rickards
A Whistledown Scotland production
Jerry Brotton listens for the voices and tells the stories of the ‘other Tudors’: ten men and women from across the world that lived, worked, worshipped and died in Tudor England.
The popular fascination with the Tudors tends to concentrate on the lives of white, elite, English-born men (and the occasional woman). But Tudor England also saw Muslims, Jews, Africans and Native Americans come and go from the Russia, Persia, Morocco, Italy, Spain, Portugal and the Americas, making their homes and careers here, and in the process transforming the nature of early English culture and society. This series tells the stories of ten individuals that reveal a very different story of the Tudor period as a time of multicultural exchange, encounter and ordinary working people living alongside each other.
4. Aura Soltana
Presenter Jerry Brotton, Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary, University of London
Producer Mark Rickards
A Whistledown Scotland production
Jerry Brotton listens for the voices and tells the stories of the ‘other Tudors’: ten men and women from across the world that lived, worked, worshipped and died in Tudor England.
The popular fascination with the Tudors tends to concentrate on the lives of white, elite, English-born men (and the occasional woman). But Tudor England also saw Muslims, Jews, Africans and Native Americans come and go from the Russia, Persia, Morocco, Italy, Spain, Portugal and the Americas, making their homes and careers here, and in the process transforming the nature of early English culture and society. This series tells the stories of ten individuals that reveal a very different story of the Tudor period as a time of multicultural exchange, encounter and ordinary working people living alongside each other.
3. John Cabot
Presenter Jerry Brotton, Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary, University of London
Producer Mark Rickards
A Whistledown Scotland production
Jerry Brotton listens for the voices and tells the stories of the ‘other Tudors’: ten men and women from across the world that lived, worked, worshipped and died in Tudor England.
The popular fascination with the Tudors tends to concentrate on the lives of white, elite, English-born men (and the occasional woman). But Tudor England also saw Muslims, Jews, Africans and Native Americans come and go from the Russia, Persia, Morocco, Italy, Spain, Portugal and the Americas, making their homes and careers here, and in the process transforming the nature of early English culture and society. This series tells the stories of ten individuals that reveal a very different story of the Tudor period as a time of multicultural exchange, encounter and ordinary working people living alongside each other.
2. John Blanke
Presenter Jerry Brotton, Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary, University of London
Producer Mark Rickards
A Whistledown Scotland production
Jerry Brotton listens for the voices and tells the stories of the ‘other Tudors’: ten men and women from across the world that lived, worked, worshipped and died in Tudor England.
The popular fascination with the Tudors tends to concentrate on the lives of white, elite, English-born men (and the occasional woman). But Tudor England also saw Muslims, Jews, Africans and Native Americans come and go from the Russia, Persia, Morocco, Italy, Spain, Portugal and the Americas, making their homes and careers here, and in the process transforming the nature of early English culture and society. This series tells the stories of ten individuals that reveal a very different story of the Tudor period as a time of multicultural exchange, encounter and ordinary working people living alongside each other.
1. Lucy Baynham
Presenter Jerry Brotton, Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary, University of London
Producer Mark Rickards
A Whistledown Scotland Production
400 years after the publication of William Shakespeare's First Folio, five writers are each asked to pick a speech from one of the Folio's plays, tell it what they think it means, and what it means to them. In the last essay of this series, award-winning writer and historian Professor Dame Marina Warner chooses a speech from Othello - from Act 1, Scene 3 of the play. She tells us why it raises questions about stories and history as well as ideas about heroism, prejudice and fantasy.
As a writer who has often grappled with the truthfulness of stories, myths and fairy tales, Marina reveals she selected the speech because in the passage, Shakespeare is reflecting on the ways imagination makes things real. At this point in the play, Othello is setting out to clear himself after Brabantio, the father of his new wife, Desdemona, has railed against the 'practices of cunning hell' which Othello must have used to make her fall in love with him. Marina reflects on the reciprocal projections exchanged between tellers of tales and their audiences and considers how suggestible Othello and Desdemona are.
Produced by Camellia Sinclair for BBC Audio in Bristol Mixed by Suzy Robins
400 years after the publication of William Shakespeare's First Folio, five writers are each asked to pick a speech from one of the Folio's plays, tell it what they think it means, and what it means to them. This time, award-winning playwright, screenwriter and director David Hare chooses a speech by Macbeth in Act 5, Scene 3 of the play.
David tells us how Shakespeare perfected his gift for the lone monologue to help reveal what is going on inside a character's head. In Act 5, Scene 3 of Macbeth, the lead character waits for news of an English army which has been assembled in an attempt to destroy him. As he waits, he gives a speech in which he thinks about what life will be like if he makes it to old age. It's a speech which moves David. He ponders what makes the play so hard to perform, in an essay which takes us from Quentin Tarantino to Philip Larkin.
Produced by Camellia Sinclair for BBC Audio in Bristol Mixed by Suzy Robins
400 years after the publication of William Shakespeare's First Folio, five writers are each asked to pick a speech from one of the Folio's plays, tell it what they think it means, and what it means to them. In the second essay of this series, Michelle Terry, actor and artistic director at Shakespeare's Globe, chooses a speech by Rosalind - a character she played.
Rosalind appears in As You Like It - a play which was first printed in the 1623 Folio. In the scene Michelle selects, Rosalind is disguised as Ganymede and is speaking to her estranged love Orlando in the Forest of Arden. She tests his love for her by posing as a love doctor and offering to cure him of his love.
Michelle tells us how she first found the part a challenge but when she delved into the text and into the Folio, she found subtle clues which revealed an "intelligent and now liberated woman tumbling her way through long sentences." She reveals how when she played Rosalind, she learned to trust Shakespeare and to trust the words on the page.
Produced by Camellia Sinclair for BBC Audio in Bristol Mixed by Suzy Robins
400 years after the publication of William Shakespeare's First Folio, five writers are each asked to pick a speech from one of the Folio's plays, tell it what they think it means, and what it means to them. This time, the author, curator and broadcaster Professor Islam Issa chooses a speech from Act 2, Scene 2 of Julius Caesar. It's a speech which he says is full of masterful language, can leave us with surprising take-homes about everyday life, and has a fascinating performance history.
In an essay which takes us from the Roman Empire to Robben Island prison, Islam shows us how much a short speech from early in the play can teach us about humanity and every day life. Drawing on reflections and quotes from Islamic scholar and mystic Jalal al-Din Rūmi and the father of the Japanese chanoyu (the tea ceremony) Sen no Rikyu, Islam reveals how a passage from a play which is over 400 years old might say something about mindfulness in the present moment.
Produced by Camellia Sinclair for BBC Audio in Bristol Mixed by Suzy Robins
400 years after the publication of William Shakespeare's First Folio, five writers are each asked to pick a speech from one of the Folio's plays, tell it what they think it means, and what it means to them. In the first essay of this series, award-winning theatre and film director Sir Richard Eyre chooses a speech from his favourite Shakespeare play: King Lear.
Richard's choice is a speech by Lear from Act 5, Scene 3 of the play. At this point, Lear and his daughter Cordelia are reunited but are about to be dragged off to prison. Richard reveals why he finds Lear's words so moving - after sound and fury, there's quiet: "birds in a cage" and "gilded butterflies." Richard tells us when he first encountered Shakespeare and about when he first felt ready to direct King Lear. He explores how directors have to pick and choose between the Folio version and the Quarto text of the play. He reflects on the power of Lear and Cordelia's relationship and how it evolves through the play.
Produced by Camellia Sinclair for BBC Audio in Bristol Mixed by Suzy Robins
An ancient Japanese Buddhist ritual which involves a red baby bib, a small statue and water, has been taken up by women wanting to have some way of marking a miscarriage and the life not lived. New Generation Thinker Sabina Dosani is a psychiatrist and writer doing research at the University of East Anglia. Her essay looks at the language we use for unborn children who die and at what we can learn about mourning rituals from the work of the nineteenth century French sociologist Emile Durkheim, to modern services performed by Rabbis, in cathedrals and in peoples' back gardens.
Producer: Ruth Watts
The trial of sisters begging on the streets of South London led to donations sent in by Victorian newspaper readers and an investigation by the Mendicity Society. New Generation Thinker Oskar Jensen, from Newcastle University, unearthed this story of the Avery girls in the archives and his essay explores the way attitudes to former slaves and to the reform of criminals affected the sisters' sentencing.
Producer: Ruth Watts
An 8 year old who condemns his own mother to execution in 1582: New Generation Thinker Emma Whipday, who researches Renaissance literature at Newcastle University, has been reading witch trial records from Elizabethan and Jacobean England to explore how they depict single mothers. And she finds chilling echoes of their language in newspaper articles in our own times.
Producer: Ruth Watts
Len Johnson, barred from fighting title bouts, had his career stopped short by a ‘colour bar’, but went onto fight against racism outside the ring. A campaign in Manchester is seeking to erect a statue to commemorate his success both in boxing and activism, which led to the ending of a ban in local pubs which had meant he was being refused service. His story of resistance is explored in this Essay from New Generation Thinker Shirin Hirsch, who is based at Manchester Metropolitan University and the People's History Museum.
Producer: Ruth Thomson.
Shirin Hirsch is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year to share their research as radio. You can hear more from her in a Free Thinking discussion about May Day Rituals and you can find a whole series of features, essays and discussions with New Generation Thinkers drawn from the scheme, which has been running for more than a decade, on the Free Thinking programme website.
From "dull" to "feeble-minded" - the qualities associated with stupidity altered during the Victorian period alongside changes to schooling and education policies. Dr Louise Creechan, from Durham University, looks at the findings of the 1861 Newcastle Commission and at a range of characters in novels. We hear about the sibling rivalry of Maggie and Tom Tulliver and different ideas about male and female capabilities expressed in George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss (1860) and ideas about education and teaching in Charles' Dickens Our Mutual Friend (1864-65) and Hard Times (1854).
Producer: Luke Mulhall
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to turn research into radio. You can hear Louise Creechan discussing her research in episodes of Free Thinking called How We Read https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001cgks and Teaching and Inspiration https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00169jh
An ancient Japanese Buddhist ritual which involves a red baby bib, a small statue and water, has been taken up by women wanting to have some way of marking a miscarriage and the life not lived. New Generation Thinker Sabina Dosani is a psychiatrist and writer doing research at the University of East Anglia. Her essay looks at the language we use for unborn children who die and at what we can learn about mourning rituals from the work of the 19th-century French sociologist Emile Durkheim, to modern services performed by Rabbis, in cathedrals and in peoples' back gardens.
Producer: Ruth Watts
Sabina Dosani is one of the ten New Generation Thinkers chosen in 2022 to work with BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to share their research. You can hear her in Free Thinking discussion episodes called Mental Health, Stepmothers and Depicting AIDS in Drama. All episodes of Free Thinking and this Essay series from New Generation Thinkers are available on BBC Sounds and to download as Arts & Ideas podcasts.
Known for madrigals, organ playing and disorderly conduct - Thomas Weelkes wrote his first published pieces when young and went on to work in Winchester college and Chichester cathedral. 400 years after his death, New Generation Thinker Ellie Chan, from the University of Manchester, digs beneath the mythology surrounding his life and music.
Producer: Luke Mulhall
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten early career academics each year who turn their research into radio. You can find a collection of discussions, essays and features focusing on their new research on the Free Thinking programme website and you can hear more from Ellie Chan in an episode called The Tudor Mind.
"Cancel culture" is used to describe debates which touch on freedom of expression today but what can we learn if we look back at events after the 1789 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen? Clare Siviter, who lectures on the French Revolution and theatre at the University of Bristol, takes us through the experiences of playwrights and authors, Marie-Joseph Chénier, Olympe de Gouges, Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Suard and Destutt de Tracy, who wrote about how ideas spread.
Producer: Torquil MacLeod
You can find a collection of essays, discussions and features which showcase the research of New Generation Thinkers on the Free Thinking programme website. The Arts and Humanities Research Council has worked with BBC Radio 3 on the scheme since 2012.
The trial of sisters begging on the streets of South London led to donations sent in by Victorian newspaper readers and an investigation by the Mendicity Society. New Generation Thinker Oskar Jensen, from Newcastle University, unearthed this story of the Avery girls in the archives and his essay explores the way attitudes to former slaves and to the reform of criminals affected the sisters' sentencing.
Producer: Ruth Watts
Ten New Generation Thinkers are selected each year to share their research on radio as part of the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. You can find a collection of discussions, essays and features from academics who have been part of the scheme over the past ten years on the Free Thinking programme website.
You can hear more from Oskar in a Free Thinking programmes called Victorian Streets, Busking and Billy Waters. His book Vagabonds: Life on the Streets of Nineteenth-century London is out now.
An 8-year-old who condemns his own mother to execution in 1582: New Generation Thinker Emma Whipday, who researches Renaissance literature at Newcastle University, has been reading witch trial records from Elizabethan and Jacobean England to explore how they depict single mothers. And she finds chilling echoes of their language in newspaper articles in our own times.
Producer: Ruth Watts
Emma Whipday is a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker 2022 on the scheme which puts research on the radio. You can find her sharing her thoughts on Free Thinking episodes about Lady Macbeth, Shakespeare, Cross-dressing, Step-mothers, and Tudor families.
The noisy Victorian world annoyed the mathematician, philosopher and inventor Charles Babbage, who came up with the idea of a programmable computer. He wrote letters complaining about it and a pamphlet which explored ideas about whether the sea could record its own sound, had a memory and could broadcast sound. New Generation Thinker Joan Passey, from the University of Bristol, sets these ideas alongside the work done by engineers cabling the sea-bed to allow communication via telegraph and Rudyard Kipling's images of these "sea monsters."
Producer: Torquil MacLeod
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the Arts and Humanities Research Council in partnership with BBC Radio 3. Ten early career academics are chosen each year to share their research on radio. You can find a collection of discussions, features and essays on the Free Thinking programme page.
Joan Passey can be heard in Free Thinking episodes discussing Cornwall and Coastal Gothic, Oceans and the Sea at the Hay Festival 2022, Vampires and the Penny Dreadful.
Race relations aren't always thought of as being linked with the experimental writing and art promoted by the Bloomsbury set in 1920s Britain but New Generation Thinker Jade Munslow Ong, from the University of Salford, argues that without a group of South African authors who came to Britain we might not have Virginia Woolf's Orlando. But Roy Campbell, William Plomer and Laurens Van der Post weren't the only writers from that country with a Bloomsbury connection. A founder of the Native National Congress - later the ANC - was also hard at work on a novel which depicted an interracial friendship.
Producer: Ruth Thomson
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year to turn their research into essays, features and discussions. You can find a collection featuring their insights on the Free Thinking programme page, available on BBC Sounds and to download as the Arts and Ideas podcast. You can hear more from Jade in discussions called Modernism around the World and South African writing.
There are 43 tidal islands around the UK, accessible just briefly each day, along beguiling and perilous paths.
As the tide retreats, five writers walk their favourite causeway to islands of refuge, pilgrimage, magic and glamour.
Today, WN Herbert follows in the footsteps of pilgrims to Lindisfarne and reflects on the causeway connecting to a meditational space and how we are all now connected by various versions of a tidal causeway, advancing and retreating through social media.
Across the series:
Claire McGowan sees time change as she enters the freezing waters off Burgh Island and sips cocktails in the art deco hotel bar.
Ben Cottam almost gets stuck in the mud as he searches for the grave of a black slave and questions his family’s past at Sunderland Point.
And between kite surfers and dog walkers, Patrick Gale is suspended between two worlds as he follows the S shaped causeway, shaped by relentless tides and currents to St Michael’s Mount.
Evie Wyld boards the ferry at Lymington pier and retraces a path well-travelled in her childhood -the Western Yar on the Isle of Wight.
As sea levels rise and the sands shift, causeways are in flux. The essayists draw us down onto the sands, revealing what these liminal routes mean to both them and the cultural history of the UK.
Producer: Mohini Patel
Five Bicycle-Shaped Musings from writer, raconteur and life-long cyclist Andrew Martin
Today Andrew Martin discusses all the reasons there are to get cycling. Today just 2 per cent of journeys are made by bike in the UK although our European neighbours in Holland and Belgium put us to shame with far higher levels of enthusiasm for the humble velocipede. But cycling used to be the default method of transport for many in the UK and with all the health and environmental benefits that cycling brings, there is now a stronger movement than ever to encourage us all to get back on our bikes.
Written and read by Andrew Martin Produced by Karen Holden
Five Bicycle-Shaped Musings from writer, raconteur and life-long cyclist Andrew Martin
On a visit to bucolic Derbyshire, Martin pootles happily along a disused railway on a Sustrans National Cycle Network. Early cyclists resisted dedicated cycle lanes; today cycle lanes are regularly created to foster the new cycling boom.
Written and read by Andrew Martin Produced by Karen Holden
Five Bicycle-Shaped Musings from writer, raconteur and life-long cyclist Andrew Martin
In this episode the sport of cycling and the problem of the MAMIL (Middle-Aged Man in Lycra) as scrutinised by staunch utility cyclist Andrew Martin. He is amused to discover that Lycra endows a speed advantage of 0.0001% over a three-piece tweed suit and a pipe.
Written and read by Andrew Martin Produced by Karen Holden
Five Bicycle-Shaped Musings from writer, raconteur and life-long cyclist Andrew Martin
Today how socialism and cycling conjoined. A traditionally working-class transport mode is counterpointed with the idea of the cyclist as supreme individualist, riding on pavements and ignoring red lights. Cycling clubs today focus on environmentalism and sociability rather than socialism, but their slogan is still ‘Fellowship is Life.’
Written and read by Andrew Martin Produced by Karen Holden
Five Bicycle-Shaped Musings from writer, raconteur and life-long cyclist Andrew Martin.
Growing up in York, a flat cycling town, despite failing his Cycling Proficiency Test, Martin had about 30 bikes in the 1970s. Crossbars have since become top tubes, oil become lube, cycle clips become trouser bands. He resisted mountain bikes in the 80s as ugly and pompous and anyway never cycled up mountains. He currently owns a Dawes racer, aka road bike, and still cycles daily, finding himself now engaged in – thanks to congestion, environmentalism and Covid – a fashionable pursuit.
Written and read by Andrew Martin Produced by Karen Holden
Ben Cottam puts on full waterproofs to cross the causeway to Sunderland Point, in search of the grave of a black slave.
There are 43 tidal islands around the UK, accessible just briefly each day along beguiling paths. Across the series, five writers journey across a favourite causeway to islands of refuge, pilgrimage, magic and glamour.
Wheels spin wildly and Ben peers anxiously through mud-sprayed windscreen as he tries to drive to Sunderland. There is no real boundary between land and sea, the coastline as fluid as the tide. The danger signs escalate and he remembers tales of insidious rising waters, drilled into him as a child by coastguards from Morecambe Bay.
He treks to what is uncomfortably called Sambo’s grave, the resting place of young black slave. Abandoned there by a sea captain in the 18th century, Ben wonders how his own family might have treated him and is heartened to find fresh tributes marking a lost life.
Producer: Sarah Bowen
Claire McGowan enters the freezing waters off Burgh Island, connected at low tide to the mainland by a short sandy causeway.
There are 43 tidal islands around the UK, accessible just briefly each day along beguiling and perilous paths. Across the series, five writers walk their favourite causeway to islands of refuge, pilgrimage, magic and glamour.
Claire grew up with the mythology of the giant Finn McCool flinging rocks at a rival in Scotland and building the Giant’s Causeway. Arriving at Burgh Island, she steps into tranquil 1920s glamour, to sip Agatha Christie inspired cocktails in the Art Deco hotel bar. In this time capsule, Claire explores our relationship with Golden Age Crime and her own past; as the tide retreats, past relationships disappear with the waves and time simultaneously changes and stays still.
Producer: Sarah Bowen
There are 43 tidal islands around the UK, accessible just briefly each day, along beguiling and perilous paths.
As the tide retreats, five writers walk their favourite causeway to islands of refuge, pilgrimage, magic and glamour.
Today, Evie Wyld boards the ferry at Lymington pier and retraces a path well-travelled with her family during school holidays - across the Freshwater Causeway on the Isle of Wight. Her route takes her past ghost benches, a graveyard, World War Two pill boxes on a journey through grief, memory and what survives the tide.
Across the series:
Claire McGowan sees time change as she enters the freezing waters off Burgh Island and sips cocktails in the art deco hotel bar.
Ben Cottam almost gets stuck in the mud as he searches for the grave of a black slave and questions his family’s past at Sunderland Point. WN Herbert follows in the footsteps of pilgrims to Lindisfarne and reflects on the causeway leading to a meditational space.
And between kite surfers and dog walkers, Patrick Gale is suspended between two worlds as he follows the S shaped causeway, shaped by relentless tides and currents to St Michael’s Mount.
As sea levels rise and the sands shift, causeways are in flux. The essayists draw us down onto the sands, revealing what these liminal routes mean to both them and the cultural history of the UK.
Producer: Mohini Patel
There are 43 tidal islands around the UK, accessible just briefly each day, along beguiling and perilous paths.
As the tide retreats, five writers walk their favourite causeway to islands of refuge, pilgrimage, magic and glamour.
Patrick Gale joins those seemingly walking on water as they cross to St Michael’s Mount in this first episode. Between kite surfers and dog walkers, he is suspended between two worlds as he follows the S shaped causeway, shaped by relentless tides and currents. He is joined by Lord St Leven who tells him about the near impossible task of maintaining the route to the Mount, his family’s home since the 17th century. And from the tidal walk emerge the stories and myths that have built up around Karrek Loos yn Koos, first visited by Archangel Michael, and now by hundreds of thousands of tourists.
Across the series: Evie Wyld retraces a childhood walk across the Freshwater Causeway on the Isle of Wight, finding graveyards and ghost benches. Claire McGowan sees time change as she enters the freezing waters off Burgh Island and sips cocktails in the art deco hotel bar. Ben Cottam almost gets stuck in the mud as he searches for the grave of a black slave and questions his family’s past at Sunderland Point. And WN Herbert follows in the footsteps of pilgrims to Lindisfarne.
As sea levels rise and the sands shift, causeways are in flux. The Essayists draw us down onto the sands, revealing what these liminal routes mean to both them and the cultural history of the UK.
Producer: Sarah Bowen
Margaret Heffernan explores how art can help us deal with uncertainty in our lives. Without uncertainty, there is no freedom. How do artists learn how to use this freedom to act, to make something, to have original ideas? Modern life feels increasingly uncertain, to the point of making us uncomfortable. Most people hate uncertainty. We feel calmer knowing something bad is definitely coming (say, an electric shock) than when there's a possibility we might escape it. New technology sometimes seems to have the goal of eliminating uncertainty, but is this really desirable? Margaret argues that an element of uncertainty is a necessary part of the creative process, a catalyst which can help us find ways of meeting the challenges of the future.
Margaret Heffernan is a writer and entrepreneur, author of the award-winning 'Uncharted: How to Map the Future'. Here, she takes inspiration from artists who embrace uncertainty.
Producer: Mary Ward-Lowery
Margaret Heffernan explores how art can help us deal with uncertainty in our lives.
How does an artist know when a piece is finished? Or more precisely, when they should stop work and launch it into the world? Margaret Heffernan is a writer and entrepreneur, author of the award-winning 'Uncharted: How to Map the Future'. Here, she takes inspiration from artists who embrace uncertainty.
Producer: Mary Ward-Lowery
Margaret Heffernan explores how art can help us deal with uncertainty in our lives. How do artists tolerate the fear that uncertainty creates? Modern life feels increasingly uncertain, to the point of making us uncomfortable. Most people hate uncertainty. We feel calmer knowing something bad is definitely coming (say, an electric shock) than when there's a possibility we might escape it. New technology sometimes seems to have the goal of eliminating uncertainty, but is this really desirable? Margaret argues that an element of uncertainty is a necessary part of the creative process, a catalyst which can help us find ways of meeting the challenges of the future.
Artists deal with uncertainty all the time: starting work nobody asked for, rarely sure where the work will go, when it’s finished or whether it will connect with a public. This can be deeply frightening: Tracey Emin sketches before having enough courage to paint; Sebastian Barry fears the next word won’t come. To the frequent dismay of fans, artists change direction before they have to. They have agency, independence, but they take a risk each time they begin. Margaret Heffernan is a writer and entrepreneur, author of the award-winning 'Uncharted: How to Map the Future'. Here, she takes inspiration from artists who embrace uncertainty.
Producer: Mary Ward-Lowery
Margaret Heffernan explores how art can help us deal with uncertainty in our lives. How do artists begin a new project? The point is to be open to the world, and to have 'an eye that is always watching'. Modern life feels increasingly uncertain, to the point of making us uncomfortable. Most people hate uncertainty. We feel calmer knowing something bad is definitely coming (say, an electric shock) than when there's a possibility we might escape it. New technology sometimes seems to have the goal of eliminating uncertainty, but is this really desirable? Margaret argues that an element of uncertainty is a necessary part of the creative process, a catalyst which can help us find ways of meeting the challenges of the future.
Artists deal with uncertainty all the time: starting work nobody asked for, rarely sure where the work will go, when it’s finished or whether it will connect with a public. This can be deeply frightening: Tracey Emin sketches before having enough courage to paint; Sebastian Barry fears the next word won’t come. To the frequent dismay of fans, artists change direction before they have to. They have agency, independence, but they take a risk each time they begin. Margaret Heffernan is a writer and entrepreneur, author of the award-winning 'Uncharted: How to Map the Future'. Here, she takes inspiration from artists who embrace uncertainty.
Producer: Mary Ward-Lowery
Margaret Heffernan explores how art can help us deal with uncertainty in our lives. Modern life feels increasingly uncertain, to the point of making us uncomfortable. Most people hate uncertainty. We feel calmer knowing something bad is definitely coming (say, an electric shock) than when there's a possibility we might escape it. New technology sometimes seems to have the goal of eliminating uncertainty, but is this really desirable? Margaret argues that an element of uncertainty is a necessary part of the creative process, a catalyst which can help us find ways of meeting the challenges of the future.
Artists deal with uncertainty all the time: starting work nobody asked for, rarely sure where the work will go, when it’s finished or whether it will connect with a public. This can be deeply frightening: Tracey Emin sketches before having enough courage to paint; Sebastian Barry fears the next word won’t come. To the frequent dismay of fans, artists change direction before they have to. They have agency, independence, but they take a risk each time they begin. We love their work because it shows a truth we avoid. We want evidence for every decision, proof that our project will be successful before it starts, ratings, sales numbers and prizes to prove our worth. Data to promise certainty before we dare try anything. But maybe this craving for certainty constrains our imagination and leaves us passive, because there are no datasets from the future. Perhaps an addiction to certainty suppresses our capacity for exploration and discovery in ourselves and in the world.
Margaret Heffernan is a writer and entrepreneur. Here, she takes inspiration from artists who embrace uncertainty.
Producer: Mary Ward-Lowery
Perhaps above all, the artistic quality we prize most is imagination. Psychologist Professor Victoria Tischler explores the enigmatic work of ceramicist Shinichi Sawada.
Shinichi's sculptures look like small demons or monsters. The organic forms are covered with clay studs that resemble spikes, some forming mask-like facial figures, like totem poles.
As an artist with autism, Shinichi is largely non-verbal, so he can't explain the meaning of his work, allowing the viewers' imagination to run riot. The best way to experience any art.
Writer and broadcaster Lindsay Johns completes his exploration of South African food, as he discusses the national dish, and what it says about the Rainbow Nation.
South African cuisine is as varied as South Africa itself, and in this set of Essays, Lindsay has delved into its different cuisines for five personal and lyrical ruminations on what these foods evoke for him. Each Essay - covering one of South Africa's racial groups - offers distinct memories of different aspects of his many experiences in South Africa. We'll sample the different cuisines, and experience these nuanced and complex communities through Lindsay's eyes, ears, and taste buds.
In today's final Essay, Lindsay strolls through the picture postcard community of Bo-Kaap in Cape Town, on his way to eat a personal favourite - tomato bredie. His lunch companion, meanwhile, orders bobotie - a meal which originated in the country's Cape Malay community but has now become the national dish. And as he reflects on the series, Lindsay wonders what this development says about finding a balance between acknowledging South Africa's troubling past and making a future together.
Producer: Giles Edwards
In this essay on untrained and self-taught artists, psychologist Professor Victoria Tischler focuses on devotion and the important role of faith and belief and how it manifests artistically.
Now considered one of the most important folk artists of the 20th century, Minnie Evans was born in 1892 in a cabin in North Carolina, the great-granddaughter of a slave from Trinidad.
She attributed much of her inspiration to religious visions she began having as a child. “God has sent me an angel that stands by me. It stands with me and directs me what to do”. But from these humble beginnings, Evans work has gone on to grace the central pavilion at the Venice Biennale in the summer 2022.
Writer and broadcaster Lindsay Johns explores the food of South Africa.
South African cuisine is as varied as South Africa itself, and in this set of Essays, Lindsay will delve into the foods of the Rainbow Nation for five personal and lyrical ruminations on what these foods evoke for him. Each Essay - covering one of South Africa's racial groups - offers distinct memories of different aspects of his many experiences in South Africa. We'll sample the different cuisines, and experience these nuanced and complex communities through Lindsay's eyes, ears, and taste buds.
In today's Essay, Lindsay introduces Bunny chow, a dish made from a hollowed-out loaf of bread filled with curry, which was created in Durban, and is today the most famous dish of Durban’s Indian community – one of the largest in the world outside India itself. Born at a time when Indian restaurateurs were prevented by law from serving food to black workers - the dish was served surreptitiously so that passing police forces would see only a loaf of bread - today it is a national staple.
Producer: Giles Edwards.
Writer and broadcaster Lindsay Johns explores the food of South Africa.
South African cuisine is as varied as South Africa itself, and in this set of Essays, Lindsay will delve into the foods of the Rainbow Nation for five personal and lyrical ruminations on what these foods evoke for him. Each Essay - covering one of South Africa's racial groups - offers distinct memories of different aspects of his many experiences in South Africa. We'll sample the different cuisines, and experience these nuanced and complex communities through Lindsay's eyes, ears, and taste buds.
For his third Essay, Lindsay will describe the cuisine he knows, and loves, the best: Cape Coloured cuisine. We'll learn about snoek (barracuda), pickled fish, mince and cabbage stew and the Gatsby steak sandwich. It is, he says, the quintessential poor man’s fusion cuisine - and the most under-rated and overlooked food in the whole country.
Producer: Giles Edwards
Writer and broadcaster Lindsay Johns explores the food of South Africa.
South African cuisine is as varied as South Africa itself, and in this set of Essays, Lindsay will delve into the foods of the Rainbow Nation for five personal and lyrical ruminations on what these foods evoke for him. Each Essay - covering one of South Africa's racial groups - offers distinct memories of different aspects of his many experiences in South Africa. We'll sample the different cuisines, and experience these nuanced and complex communities through Lindsay's eyes, ears, and taste buds.
For his first Essay, Lindsay invites listeners to join him as he samples the cuisine of South Africa’s Xhosa and Zulu township communities – smiley (a boiled sheep’s head in a drum), amangina (chicken, cow, pig, lamb and sheep’s feet served with hot sauce), and pap – a cornmeal porridge so popular it appears on the menu at South African branches of KFC. Lindsay says it does what it ought to do - "placate the belly and nourish the soul."
Producer: Giles Edwards
Writer and broadcaster Lindsay Johns explores the food of South Africa.
South African cuisine is as varied as South Africa itself, and in this set of Essays, Lindsay will delve into the foods of the Rainbow Nation for five personal and lyrical ruminations on what these foods evoke for him. Each Essay - covering one of South Africa's racial groups - offers distinct memories of different aspects of his many experiences in South Africa. We'll sample the different cuisines, and experience these nuanced and complex communities through Lindsay's eyes, ears, and taste buds.
For this second Essay, we find Lindsay walking up Table Mountain in Cape Town, and munching on biltong, what he calls "the most regal and masculine of all amuse-bouches". We'll hear, too, about the importance of the braai, and about the central place of meat in white South African cuisine. But as Lindsay chews this all over, he mulls an important question: for many years this cuisine was seen as the ‘Oppressors’ food’ – so should he still be reluctant to eat it?
Producer: Giles Edwards
Few artists can rival Mary Barnes for the sheer honesty of experience conveyed in paintings she created while in the grips of psychosis. Her 'IT' series of paintings are a brutal depiction of severe mental illness, and some of the best visual examples of the pathos and terror of the experience.
In later life when her mental health recovered she began to exhibit her work and to give lectures on mental health, psychotherapy, and the importance of creativity in her recovery.
For psychologist Professor Victoria Tischler she's drawn to Mary’s work as it is more than an illustration of mental illness but also a story of the power of honesty to find truth, hope and salvation.
Unconventionality is a quality celebrated in art, and no-one demonstrates it better than Madge Gill. Psychologist Prof Victoria Tischler explores this mesmerising artist's work.
Her embroidered calicos, some 40 metres in length are full of elegant black lines filling every space of the fabric, in patterns that appear to form a winding staircase and chequerboard tiles, similar to those that would have been fashionable in the Victorian and Edwardian times in which she lived.
The fact that Gill became an artist at all was unconventional enough. Born out of wedlock in the working class east end of London, she was sent to Canada aged nine as part of a child labour scheme. It was just one of the many tragedies and hardships to befall her in her life, yet her artistic output is testimony to her efforts not to be defined by them.
Psychologist Professor Victoria Tischler celebrates 'outsider art.' Art created by the marginalised, the untrained, those outside the establishment.
She begins with an essay on 'the Picasso of psychotic art' Adolf Wölfli. He called himself The Holy St Adolf the Second, master of algebra, military commander in chief, and chief music director, giant theatre director, captain of the almighty giant steamship and doctor of arts and sciences. Confined to the Waldu asylum in Switzerland for more than half his life, the Surrealist artist André Breton referred to Wölfli’s art as one of the three or four most important bodies of works of the twentieth century.
Wölfli's output was prodigious and it's this compulsion to create that Victoria wants to explore - was painting a release from his mental anguish or was the urge part of the torment?
As she travels the world and prepares to become a mother, the narrator of Olivia Wenzel’s novel reflects on her upbringing as a queer, Black woman in a white family, with her mother, a rebellious East German punk who was mostly absent, and her grandmother who was loyal to the socialist regime. Her father, an Angolan student, left shortly after she was born and her twin brother died when they were 17. For Queer History Month, New Generation Thinker Tom Smith looks at the ideas of queer family life explored in 1000 Serpentinen Angst, now available in an English translation by Dr Priscilla Layne as 1000 Coils of Fear.
Producer: Ruth Watts
Soldiers fighting in the Crimean War lapped up this story and it also influenced the young William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones who read it at Oxford. The Heir of Redclyffe, published in 1853, reflects the mid-Victorian trend for medievalism and resurgence of High Church Anglicanism, combining gothic melodrama with sharply observed social realism, sprightly dialogue and wry humour. Although Charlotte M Yonge came to be associated mainly with domestic realism, in her long career (1823–1901) she worked across a wide range of genres, writing biographies, histories, children's books, and novels from historical epics to long-running family sagas. In Yonge's bicentenary year, New Generation Thinker Clare Walker-Gore argues that now is the time to rediscover this brilliant and neglected woman writer.
Producer: Torquil MacLeod
Urbanisation, migration and ‘folk language’ are explored in the 1984 novel by Latife Tekin. The story is a carnivalesque fusion of contrasts like its title – where ‘Berji’ conjures images of an innocent shepherdess and ‘Kristin’ of a sex worker. There’s blind old Güllü Baba, rumoured to cure the ills caused by a nearby factory’s chemical wastewater. There’s Fidan of Many Skills, rumoured to know all the ‘arts of the bed’. There’s the rumour of roads, jobs, and clean water coming to Flower Hill: they never materialise. In his foreword to Berji Kristin: Tales from the Garbage Hills, John Berger crowns ‘rumour’ its ultimate storyteller. New Generation Thinker Sarah Jilani looks at the way the inhabitants of Flower Hill make sense of their disorienting transition from village life to shantytown in the story from one of Turkey's most influential female authors writing today.
Producer: Torquil MacLeod
Poet, abolitionist, and activist for women’s rights, Frances EW Harper was one of the first African American women to be published in the United States, producing 80 poems, various articles, sketches, serialised books and short stories and a novel printed when she was aged 67. New Generation Thinker Xine Yao looks at her career, focusing on this 1892 novel Iola Leroy. It tells the story of a Black mixed race woman who survives the Civil War, experiences romances and has to navigate the post-emancipation world and it explores ideas about science, education, evolving forms of anti-Black racism, and women's social responsibilities.
Producer: Luke Mulhall
Arrested by military intelligence, Philip Wylie (1902-1971) went on to become an adviser to the chairman of the Joint Congressional Committee for Atomic Energy. At least nine films have been made out of stories he published which ranged across topics including ecology, science fiction and the threat of nuclear holocaust. New Generation Thinker Sarah Dillon reads his short story The Paradise Crater.
Producer: Luke Mulhall
Great empty buildings, which only a few decades ago were bustling convents, tower over most towns and villages in Ireland, but they represent a world which is disappearing along with the once all-powerful Irish Roman Catholic Church. In this series of The Essay, Olivia O'Leary, convent-educated and a lapsed Catholic, asks where all the Irish nuns have gone.
Olivia's final essay is about the end of the tradition of religious orders. Ireland has fallen out of love with the Catholic Church. Hardly a month goes by without more revelations of harsh treatment of girls in institutions run by nuns and of sexual abuse of boys in institutions run by brothers and priests. Nuns have to deal with being despised in a country that used to see them as saints. ‘Before, we were on a pedestal we didn’t deserve’ one nun said to Olivia. ‘Neither do we deserve the gutter. But we took the pedestal, so now we have to take the gutter.’
Presenter Olivia O'Leary Producer Claire Cunningham A Rockfinch production for BBC Radio 3
Great empty buildings, which only a few decades ago were bustling convents, tower over most towns and villages in Ireland, but they represent a world which is disappearing along with the once all-powerful Irish Roman Catholic Church. In this series of The Essay, Olivia O'Leary, convent-educated and a lapsed Catholic, asks where all the Irish nuns have gone.
In her fourth essay, about nuns and politics, Olivia describes the conservative Roman Catholic state Ireland was in the Sixties. Communism was seen as the greatest enemy and hospitals and schools were run by Catholic nuns as a way of imposing church rule and keeping the state out of people’s lives. However, it was nuns who swung to the left when the second Vatican Council pushed for a more modern, liberal church, and missionaries coming back from South America preached that the church should be siding with the poor. Many nuns left their comfortable convents to live with the poor. They sat down in front of trucks coming to evict Travellers. They protested against President Ronald Reagan’s 1984 visit because of his support for right-wing regimes in Central and South America. They criticised governments and demanded social justice. They abandoned respectability and many of the more conservative priests and bishops thought they were making a show of themselves. They continued to make a show of themselves.
Presenter Olivia O'Leary Producer Claire Cunningham A Rockfinch production for BBC Radio 3
Great empty buildings, which only a few decades ago were bustling convents, tower over most towns and villages in Ireland, but they represent a world which is disappearing along with the once all-powerful Irish Roman Catholic Church. In this series of The Essay, Olivia O'Leary, convent-educated and a lapsed Catholic, asks where all the Irish nuns have gone.
In her third essay, about class in the Irish Catholic Church, she describes how girls from poor backgrounds, particularly young pregnant girls, suffered harsh mistreatment in the institutions the nuns ran and felt the sharp end of their obsession with purity. How could the nuns who had been so good to Olivia belong to the same orders who punished girls whose only ‘sin’ was that they were poor or illegitimate, or that they got in trouble?
Presenter Olivia O'Leary Producer Claire Cunningham A Rockfinch production for BBC Radio 3
Great empty buildings, which only a few decades ago were bustling convents, tower over most towns and villages in Ireland, but they represent a world which is disappearing along with the once all-powerful Irish Roman Catholic Church. In this series of The Essay, Olivia O'Leary, convent-educated and a lapsed Catholic, asks where all the Irish nuns have gone.
In her second essay, Olivia describes the education which the nuns gave her, which was first class. These were almost the only university-educated professional women she and her classmates knew, and they wielded power. They ran big organisations and took a real interest in Irish women’s education when the state did not. They were often more ambitious for girls than their parents were.
Presenter Olivia O'Leary Producer Claire Cunningham A Rockfinch production for BBC Radio 3
Great empty buildings, which only a few decades ago were bustling convents, tower over most towns and villages in Ireland, but they represent a world which is disappearing along with the once all-powerful Irish Roman Catholic Church. In this series of The Essay, Olivia O'Leary, convent-educated and a lapsed Catholic, asks where all the Irish nuns have gone.
In her first essay, Olivia recalls her 12-year-old view of nuns: their long black clothes, their heads encased in stiff linen, their obsession with prayer and the Virgin Mary and purity - and making sure that girls would never see one another naked. Olivia is one of the last generation who went to a boarding school run by nuns and, like many other Irish families, she had an aunt who was a nun.
Presenter Olivia O'Leary Producer Claire Cunningham A Rockfinch production for BBC Radio 3
Environmental historian Bathsheba Demuth travels to the Arctic ice and tundra to look for the ways people and animals shape each other’s lives.
In this episode, she journeys to the Yukon River, to see how the history of salmon connects to the present - and shows how even those of us living far away have a relationship with the fish of this great river.
Bathsheba Demuth is an environmental historian and writer who spends much of her time in Arctic communities across Eurasia and North America. Her work draws on archives, ecology, and experience of the landscape to ask how places and people change each other.
Her interest in northern environments and cultures began when, at 18, she moved to the village of Old Crow in the Yukon. For two years, she mushed huskies, hunted caribou, fished for salmon, tracked bears, and otherwise learned to survive in the taiga and tundra.
In this essay series she brings us into the intertwined pasts of people and animals of the lands and waters around the Bering Strait - the ice-studded stretch of ocean between Alaska and the Russian far east.
She shows how dogs, whales, walruses, caribou, and salmon have helped make history - and in turn, how people have changed how they value and relate to creatures finned and furred. From shifts in the culture of whales to how reindeer flummoxed Soviet plans and dogs’s emotions mattered to the British Empire, each essay is a journey into how paying attention to the environment and the animals within it helps us better understand history, the nature of change, and our place in the world.
Writer and reader Bathsheba Demuth Producer Natalie Steed A Rhubarb Rhubarb Production for BBC Radio 3
A story about how not even superpowers can escape ecological context.
In this episode Bathsheba Demuth looks at how reindeer are deeply sensitive to the climate, and how that sensitivity thwarted plans to make them part of capitalist and socialist economies.
Bathsheba Demuth is an environmental historian and writer who spends much of her time in Arctic communities across Eurasia and North America. Her work draws on archives, ecology, and experience of the landscape to ask how places and people change each other.
Her interest in northern environments and cultures began when, at 18, she moved to the village of Old Crow in the Yukon. For two years, she mushed huskies, hunted caribou, fished for salmon, tracked bears, and otherwise learned to survive in the taiga and tundra.
In this essay series she brings us into the intertwined pasts of people and animals of the lands and waters around the Bering Strait - the ice-studded stretch of ocean between Alaska and the Russian far east.
She shows how dogs, whales, walruses, caribou, and salmon have helped make history—and in turn, how people have changed how they value and relate to creatures finned and furred.
From shifts in the culture of whales to how reindeer flummoxed Soviet plans and dogs’s emotions mattered to the British Empire, each essay is a journey into how paying attention to the environment and the animals within it helps us better understand history, the nature of change, and our place in the world.
Writer and reader Bathsheba Demuth Producer: Natalie Steed A Rhubarb Rhubarb Production for BBC Radio 3
Environmental historian Bathsheba Demuth travels to the Arctic ice and tundra to show how humans and animals together have shaped its landscape and history.
In this episode she looks at how the human relationship to walruses has changed and changed again, from seeing them as ancestors to part of the socialist future, offering an example of how what we value can endanger—or save—a species.
Bathsheba Demuth is an environmental historian and writer who spends much of her time in Arctic communities across Eurasia and North America. Her work draws on archives, ecology, and experience of the landscape to ask how places and people change each other.
Her interest in northern environments and cultures began when, at 18, she moved to the village of Old Crow in the Yukon. For two years, she mushed huskies, hunted caribou, fished for salmon, tracked bears, and otherwise learned to survive in the taiga and tundra.
In this essay series she brings us into the intertwined pasts of people and animals of the lands and waters around the Bering Strait - the ice-studded stretch of ocean between Alaska and the Russian far east.
She shows how dogs, whales, walruses, caribou, and salmon have helped make history—and in turn, how people have changed how they value and relate to creatures finned and furred.
From shifts in the culture of whales to how reindeer flummoxed Soviet plans and dogs’ emotions mattered to the British Empire, each essay is a journey into how paying attention to the environment and the animals within it helps us better understand history, the nature of change, and our place in the world.
Writer and reader: Bathsheba Demuth Producer: Natalie Steed Whale recordings: Kate Stafford, Oregon State University A Rhubarb Rhubarb Production for BBC Radio 3
A story of how animal cultures come to matter.
In this episode Bathsheba Demuth heads to the country of bowhead whales to examine how different people in the Arctic have valued these creatures. She shows how these whales responded to commercial hunting by changing their culture and how their choices pushed into the domain of people.
Bathsheba Demuth is an environmental historian and writer who spends much of her time in Arctic communities across Eurasia and North America. Her work draws on archives, ecology, and experience of the landscape to ask how places and people change each other.
Her interest in northern environments and cultures began when, at 18, she moved to the village of Old Crow in the Yukon. For two years, she mushed huskies, hunted caribou, fished for salmon, tracked bears, and otherwise learned to survive in the taiga and tundra.
In this essay series she brings us into the intertwined pasts of people and animals of the lands and waters around the Bering Strait - the ice-studded stretch of ocean between Alaska and the Russian far east.
She shows how dogs, whales, walruses, caribou, and salmon have helped make history—and in turn, how people have changed how they value and relate to creatures finned and furred.
From shifts in the culture of whales to how reindeer flummoxed Soviet plans and dogs’ emotions mattered to the British Empire, each essay is a journey into how paying attention to the environment and the animals within it helps us better understand history, the nature of change, and our place in the world.
Writer and reader: Bathsheba Demuth Producer: Natalie Steed A Rhubarb Rhubarb Production for BBC Radio 3
Bathsheba Demuth is an environmental historian and writer who spends much of her time in Arctic communities across Eurasia and North America. Her work draws on archives, ecology, and experience of the landscape to ask how places and people change each other.
Her interest in northern environments and cultures began when, at 18, she moved to the village of Old Crow in the Yukon. For two years, she mushed huskies, hunted caribou, fished for salmon, tracked bears, and otherwise learned to survive in the taiga and tundra.
In this essay series she brings us into the intertwined pasts of people and animals of the lands and waters around the Bering Strait - the ice-studded stretch of ocean between Alaska and the Russian far east. She shows how dogs, whales, walruses, caribou, and salmon have helped make history—and in turn, how people have changed how they value and relate to creatures finned and furred.
From shifts in the culture of whales to how reindeer flummoxed Soviet plans and dogs’s emotions mattered to the British Empire, each essay is a journey into how paying attention to the environment and the animals within it helps us better understand history, the nature of change, and our place in the world.
In this episode she looks at the shifting historical relationship between humans and dogs and the impact of that intimacy on commerce and imperial aspiration.
Writer and reader: Bathsheba Demuth Producer: Natalie Steed A Rhubarb Rhubarb Production for BBC Radio 3
A very personal essay series about communication, listening, performance and British Sign Language (BSL).
Sophie Stone considers her own life, career as an actor and identity as a deaf person, through the role of communication, both spoken and in BSL. Hers is an unusual and vivid life – she was sometimes homeless as a child, became a young single mother, broke new ground as the first deaf acting student at RADA, enjoys a successful actor career, and maintains strong activist roots.
Each essay describes a formative stage in Sophie’s life and career, incorporating historical figures, the challenges and achievements of deaf and hard of hearing people since the 19th century and her own personal experience.
Essay 5: Unspoken Communication
Sophie eloquently speaks about being the child of addicts and finding a safe place to express emotions in the theatre. She talks about her relationship to her absent father and her unspoken grief held in silence after his death.
Listen Harder broadcast on BBC Radio 3 will be accompanied by an animated transcript and BSL translation on BBC Sounds website, increasing accessibility.
Sophie Stone is a leading actor who grew up in east London and has been Deaf since birth. She was the first deaf student at RADA. Since graduating, theatre includes: Othello (The Watermill Theatre); The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night Time (NT/Frantic Assembly Tour); The Living Newspaper (The Royal Court); The New Tomorrow (The Young Vic); The Beauty Parade (Wales Millennium Centre); As You Like It (Shakespeare’s Globe); Emilia (Shakespeare’s Globe/ West End); Jubilee (Lyric, Hammersmith/ Manchester Royal Exchange); The Greatest Wealth (The Old Vic); Herons (Lyric, Hammersmith); Mother Courage and Her Children (National Theatre); and In Water I’m Weightless (National Theatre of Wales). Television includes: The Chelsea Detective (2), Moving On, Two Doors Down (2), Shakespeare & Hathaway, Shetland, The Crown, Doctor Who, Mapp and Lucia, Moonstone, Marchlands, Midsomer Murders (2), Small World, Holby City, Casualty (2) and FM. Film includes: Name Me Lawand, Retreat (Sophie was awarded Best Actress Award, Clin d’Oeil Festival), My Christmas Angel, Confessions and Coming Home.
She is co-founder of the Deaf & Hearing Ensemble Theatre Company, associate Artist for The Watermill Theatre, Pentabus Theatre and works as a consultant for several TV, Film and Theatre companies.
Sophie had a lead role in Beethoven Can Hear You for BBC Radio 3 in 2020. Her essay for Radio 3 in 2020 for the Five Kinds of Beethoven series, was a critical success. It was accompanied by an animated transcript to increase accessibility.
Writer and reader Sophie Stone Recording engineer Mat Clarke at Sonica Studios Sound designer Eloise Whitmore Producers Polly Thomas and Mina Anwar
A Naked Production for BBC Radio 3
A very personal essay series about communication, listening, performance and British Sign Language (BSL).
Sophie Stone considers her own life, career as an actor and identity as a deaf person, through the role of communication, both spoken and in BSL. Hers is an unusual and vivid life – she was sometimes homeless as a child, became a young single mother, broke new ground as the first deaf acting student at RADA, enjoys a successful actor career, and maintains strong activist roots.
Each essay describes a formative stage in Sophie’s life and career, incorporating historical figures, the challenges and achievements of deaf and hard of hearing people since the 19th century and her own personal experience.
Essay 4: Ownership of Communication
Sophie talks about finding and owning her authentic voice. She discusses her years as an actor in a profession that sadly lacked space for disabled actors to own their own experiences without being seen as less than able. Sophie explores a brief history of Sign Language from around the world and its importance as a vital communication tool.
Listen Harder broadcast on BBC Radio 3 will be accompanied by an animated transcript and BSL translation on BBC Sounds website, increasing accessibility.
Sophie Stone is a leading actor who grew up in east London and has been deaf since birth. She was the first deaf student at RADA. Since graduating, theatre includes: Othello (The Watermill Theatre); The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night Time (NT/Frantic Assembly Tour); The Living Newspaper (The Royal Court); The New Tomorrow (The Young Vic); The Beauty Parade (Wales Millennium Centre); As You Like It (Shakespeare’s Globe); Emilia (Shakespeare’s Globe/ West End); Jubilee (Lyric, Hammersmith/ Manchester Royal Exchange); The Greatest Wealth (The Old Vic); Herons (Lyric, Hammersmith); Mother Courage and Her Children (National Theatre); and In Water I’m Weightless (National Theatre of Wales). Television includes: The Chelsea Detective (2), Moving On, Two Doors Down (2), Shakespeare & Hathaway, Shetland, The Crown, Doctor Who, Mapp and Lucia, Moonstone, Marchlands, Midsomer Murders (2), Small World, Holby City, Casualty (2) and FM. Film includes: Name Me Lawand, Retreat (Sophie was awarded Best Actress Award, Clin d’Oeil Festival), My Christmas Angel, Confessions and Coming Home.
She is co-founder of the Deaf & Hearing Ensemble Theatre Company, associate Artist for The Watermill Theatre, Pentabus Theatre and works as a consultant for several TV, Film and Theatre companies.
Sophie had a lead role in Beethoven Can Hear You for BBC Radio 3 in 2020. Her essay for Radio 3 in 2020 for the Five Kinds of Beethoven series, was a critical success. It was accompanied by an animated transcript to increase accessibility.
Writer and reader Sophie Stone Recording engineer Mat Clarke at Sonica Studios Sound designer Eloise Whitmore Producers Polly Thomas and Mina Anwar
A Naked Production for BBC Radio 3
A very personal essay series about communication, listening, performance and British Sign Language (BSL).
Sophie Stone considers her own life, career as an actor and identity as a Deaf person, through the role of communication, both spoken and in BSL. Hers is an unusual and vivid life – she was sometimes homeless as a child, became a young single mother, broke new ground as the first deaf acting student at RADA, enjoys a successful actor career, and maintains strong activist roots.
Each essay describes a formative stage in Sophie’s life and career, incorporating historical figures, the challenges and achievements of deaf and hard of hearing people since the 19th century and her own personal experience.
Essay 3: Visibility of Communication
Sophie talks candidly about the fear and isolation she felt as a deaf child, how seeing other deaf people, finding a community experiencing the world in similar ways, encouraged her to realise she was not alone. In challenging limiting beliefs and fighting for Deaf rights, Sophie describes finding the courage to carve out new pathways and opportunities in her life and career, creating opportunities for deaf voices to be integral to the creative process, and carving space for deafness to be made visible.
Listen Harder broadcast on BBC Radio 3 will be accompanied by an animated transcript and BSL translation on BBC Sounds website, increasing accessibility.
Sophie Stone is a leading actor who grew up in east London and has been Deaf since birth. She was the first deaf student at RADA. Since graduating, theatre includes: Othello (The Watermill Theatre); The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night Time (NT/Frantic Assembly Tour); The Living Newspaper (The Royal Court); The New Tomorrow (The Young Vic); The Beauty Parade (Wales Millennium Centre); As You Like It (Shakespeare’s Globe); Emilia (Shakespeare’s Globe/ West End); Jubilee (Lyric, Hammersmith/ Manchester Royal Exchange); The Greatest Wealth (The Old Vic); Herons (Lyric, Hammersmith); Mother Courage and Her Children (National Theatre); and In Water I’m Weightless (National Theatre of Wales). Television includes: The Chelsea Detective (2), Moving On, Two Doors Down (2), Shakespeare & Hathaway, Shetland, The Crown, Doctor Who, Mapp and Lucia, Moonstone, Marchlands, Midsomer Murders (2), Small World, Holby City, Casualty (2) and FM. Film includes: Name Me Lawand, Retreat (Sophie was awarded Best Actress Award, Clin d’Oeil Festival), My Christmas Angel, Confessions and Coming Home.
She is co-founder of the Deaf & Hearing Ensemble Theatre Company, associate Artist for The Watermill Theatre, Pentabus Theatre and works as a consultant for several TV, Film and Theatre companies.
Sophie had a lead role in Beethoven Can Hear You for BBC Radio 3 in 2020. Her essay for Radio 3 in 2020 for the Five Kinds of Beethoven series, was a critical success. It was accompanied by an animated transcript to increase accessibility.
Writer and reader Sophie Stone Recording engineer Mat Clarke at Sonica Studios Sound designer Eloise Whitmore Producers Polly Thomas and Mina Anwar
A Naked Production for BBC Radio 3
A very personal essay series about communication, listening, performance and British Sign Language (BSL).
Sophie Stone considers her own life, career as an actor and identity as a deaf person, through the role of communication, both spoken and in BSL. Hers is an unusual and vivid life – she was sometimes homeless as a child, became a young single mother, broke new ground as the first deaf acting student at RADA, enjoys a successful actor career, and maintains strong activist roots.
Each essay describes a formative stage in Sophie’s life and career, incorporating historical figures, the challenges and achievements of deaf and hard of hearing people since the 19th century and her own personal experience.
Essay 2: Forms of Communication
Sophie looks at different forms of communication, and how her relationship to sounds and her other senses and has shaped her work as a deaf actor. She talks about the challenges and possibilities of shaping a more authentic representation of disability on stage and screen. The essay explores the ways deaf artists have perceived their own deafness and how this impacts their own creativity.
Listen Harder broadcast on BBC Radio 3 will be accompanied by an animated transcript and BSL translation on BBC Sounds website, increasing accessibility.
Sophie Stone is a leading actor who grew up in east London and has been deaf since birth. She was the first deaf student at RADA. Since graduating, theatre includes: Othello (The Watermill Theatre); The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night Time (NT/Frantic Assembly Tour); The Living Newspaper (The Royal Court); The New Tomorrow (The Young Vic); The Beauty Parade (Wales Millennium Centre); As You Like It (Shakespeare’s Globe); Emilia (Shakespeare’s Globe/ West End); Jubilee (Lyric, Hammersmith/ Manchester Royal Exchange); The Greatest Wealth (The Old Vic); Herons (Lyric, Hammersmith); Mother Courage and Her Children (National Theatre); and In Water I’m Weightless (National Theatre of Wales). Television includes: The Chelsea Detective (2), Moving On, Two Doors Down (2), Shakespeare & Hathaway, Shetland, The Crown, Doctor Who, Mapp and Lucia, Moonstone, Marchlands, Midsomer Murders (2), Small World, Holby City, Casualty (2) and FM. Film includes: Name Me Lawand, Retreat (Sophie was awarded Best Actress Award, Clin d’Oeil Festival), My Christmas Angel, Confessions and Coming Home.
She is co-founder of the Deaf & Hearing Ensemble Theatre Company, associate Artist for The Watermill Theatre, Pentabus Theatre and works as a consultant for several TV, Film and Theatre companies.
Sophie had a lead role in Beethoven Can Hear You for BBC Radio 3 in 2020. Her essay for Radio 3 in 2020 for the Five Kinds of Beethoven series, was a critical success. It was accompanied by an animated transcript to increase accessibility.
Writer and reader Sophie Stone Recording engineer Mat Clarke at Sonica Studios Sound designer Eloise Whitmore Producers Polly Thomas and Mina Anwar
A Naked Production for BBC Radio 3.
A very personal essay series about communication, listening, performance and British Sign Language (BSL).
Sophie Stone considers her own life, career as an actor and identity as a deaf person, through the role of communication, both spoken and in BSL. Hers is an unusual and vivid life – she was sometimes homeless as a child, became a young single mother, broke new ground as the first deaf acting student at RADA, enjoys a successful actor career, and maintains strong activist roots.
Each essay describes a formative stage in Sophie’s life and career, incorporating historical figures, the challenges and achievements of deaf and hard of hearing people since the 19th century and her own personal experience.
Essay 1: Communication Withheld
Sophie talks candidly about her early years as a deaf child, denied access to language and communication through an inadequate education system teaching oralism above any other form of communication. Sophie describes her rebellious teenage years and how through finding BSL and the language of theatre, she began to find deeper more authentic ways to communicate.
Listen Harder broadcast on BBC Radio 3 will be accompanied by an animated transcript and BSL translation on BBC Sounds website, increasing accessibility.
Sophie Stone is a leading actor who grew up in east London and has been deaf since birth. She was the first Deaf student at RADA. Since graduating, theatre includes: Othello (The Watermill Theatre); The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night Time (NT/Frantic Assembly Tour); The Living Newspaper (The Royal Court); The New Tomorrow (The Young Vic); The Beauty Parade (Wales Millennium Centre); As You Like It (Shakespeare’s Globe); Emilia (Shakespeare’s Globe/ West End); Jubilee (Lyric, Hammersmith/ Manchester Royal Exchange); The Greatest Wealth (The Old Vic); Herons (Lyric, Hammersmith); Mother Courage and Her Children (National Theatre); and In Water I’m Weightless (National Theatre of Wales). Television includes: The Chelsea Detective (2), Moving On, Two Doors Down (2), Shakespeare & Hathaway, Shetland, The Crown, Doctor Who, Mapp and Lucia, Moonstone, Marchlands, Midsomer Murders (2), Small World, Holby City, Casualty (2) and FM. Film includes: Name Me Lawand, Retreat (Sophie was awarded Best Actress Award, Clin d’Oeil Festival), My Christmas Angel, Confessions and Coming Home.
She is co-founder of the Deaf & Hearing Ensemble Theatre Company, associate Artist for The Watermill Theatre, Pentabus Theatre and works as a consultant for several TV, Film and Theatre companies.
Sophie had a lead role in Beethoven Can Hear You for BBC Radio 3 in 2020. Her essay for Radio 3 in 2020 for the Five Kinds of Beethoven series, was a critical success. It was accompanied by an animated transcript to increase accessibility.
Writer and reader Sophie Stone Recording engineer Mat Clarke at Sonica Studios Sound designer Eloise Whitmore Producers Polly Thomas and Mina Anwar
A Naked Production for BBC Radio 3
The BBC has had a powerful influence on our musical taste, and in this BBC centenary year, Nicholas Kenyon, a former controller of Radio 3 and director of the Proms, delves into the archives to explore the BBC’s role in reviving the centuries of early music from before the 18th century.
In his final essay, Kenyon looks at how in the early 1970s, the popularity of medieval and renaissance music increased hugely with the success of the Early Music Consort led by the dynamic David Munrow. He became a key figure in the BBC’s broadcasting on Radio 3 with his eclectic series of short programmes called Pied Piper, and his colleague Christopher Hogwood presented The Young Idea, similarly mixing new and old. Then the emphasis in the revival of early music shifted from simply rediscovering the music of the past and playing it on modern instruments, to reinventing the ways of playing that music in line with historical evidence. Hogwood’s Academy of Ancient Music led the way with many broadcasts, and recordings in period style were soon high in the charts with Pavarotti. Early music had entered the mainstream of our musical life.
Presented by Nicholas Kenyon Produced by Melissa FitzGerald
The BBC has had a powerful influence on our musical taste, and in this BBC centenary year, Nicholas Kenyon, a former controller of Radio 3 and director of the Proms, delves into the archives to explore the BBC’s role in reviving the centuries of early music from before the 18th century.
Today Kenyon explores how in the creative years of the 1950s and 1960s, the revival of early music had a sense of adventure; new orchestras were established like the Academy of St Martin-in-the-Fields which explored the repertory in broadcasts and recordings. He highlights the work of three contrasted pioneers: Imogen Holst, who programmed concerts of medieval music at Aldeburgh, promoted by the BBC Transcription Service; Denis Stevens, the musicologist and conductor who broadcast and worked for the BBC Third Programme but became a hugely controversial figure because of his argumentative nature; and William Glock, who became the BBC’s Controller of Music in 1959 and transformed the repertory of the Proms, welcoming in a whole range of earlier music that had never been heard before at the Proms.
Presented by Nicholas Kenyon Produced by Melissa FitzGerald
The BBC has had a powerful influence on our musical taste, and in this BBC centenary year, Nicholas Kenyon, a former controller of Radio 3 and director of the Proms, delves into the archives to explore the BBC’s role in reviving the centuries of early music from before the 18th century.
In his third essay, Kenyon explores how the launch of the BBC’s cultural Third Programme in 1946 rapidly advanced the revival of early music on the BBC. From Alfred Deller singing Purcell in the opening concert of the network, to huge and difficult undertakings like the History in Sound of European Music, the Third supported the scholarly exploration of earlier repertories. Leading figures on the staff were experts in early music, and worked with a new generation of emerging performers who were interested in performing the music of the past: Julian Bream on the lute and George Malcolm on harpsichord, Neville Marriner on the violin, and Arnold Goldsborough conducting chamber orchestras. In the title of one 1948 series featuring the violinist Norbert Brainin, leader of the Amadeus Quartet, they were creating ‘new life for old music’.
Presented by Nicholas Kenyon Produced by Melissa FitzGerald
The BBC has had a powerful influence on our musical taste, and in this BBC centenary year, Nicholas Kenyon, a former controller of Radio 3 and director of the Proms, delves into the archives to explore the BBC’s role in reviving the centuries of early music from before the 18th century. In five programmes he looks at the rare repertory which the BBC broadcast, from its small beginnings in the 1920s to its acceptance in the mainstream during the 1970s. Drawing on entertaining and illuminating extracts from the BBC archives, with original music recordings, Kenyon shows the way in which early music and period-style performance gradually became part of our musical consciousness and an essential part of our listening.
In his second essay, Kenyon explores how by the 1930s the BBC had become a powerful influence on national taste and there were strong voices urging it to do more for British music. In 1934 it broadcast a 13-week series of English music ‘From plainsong to Purcell’ curated by the scholar, conductor and editor Sir Richard Terry. He argued for ancient music on the grounds that ‘our forefathers were human beings like ourselves. Music which held human appeal for them cannot be devoid of interest for us.’ Terry edited music for broadcast which had never been broadcast before, and some of which, like the sixty secular madrigals of Peter Philips, had never been heard in modern times. Early music came to form a part of national ceremonial like the Coronation of George VI in 1937, with the BBC leading the way in its celebratory concerts.
Presented by Nicholas Kenyon Produced by Melissa FitzGerald
The BBC has had a powerful influence on our musical taste, and in this BBC centenary year, Nicholas Kenyon, a former controller of Radio 3 and director of the Proms, delves into the archives to explore the BBC’s role in reviving the centuries of early music from before the 18th century. In five programmes he looks at the rare repertory which the BBC broadcast, from its small beginnings in the 1920s to its acceptance in the mainstream during the 1970s. Drawing on entertaining and illuminating extracts from the BBC archives, with original music recordings, Kenyon shows the way in which early music and period-style performance gradually became part of our musical consciousness and an essential part of our listening.
In his first essay, Kenyon explores how in the 1920s there was a new approach to performing the music of past, which tried to recreate the scale and sound of the music when it was written. Pioneers on the radio included Percy Warlock (pen-name of the composer Philip Heseltine) who broadcast ‘Old Ayres and Keyboard Music’, and claimed that ‘there is no such thing as progress in music. A good work of 300 years ago is just as perfect now as it was on the day it was written’. The quirky Violet Gordon Woodhouse, who famously lived with four men, was the first to record and broadcast on the harpsichord. The violinist André Mangeot, who was fictionalised in a book by Christopher Isherwood, worked with Warlock to revive viol music of Henry Purcell from 1680. But there were internal BBC controversies as to whether this early music was of real interest to listeners.
Presented by Nicholas Kenyon Produced by Melissa FitzGerald
Once upon a time, a Shakespeare play on BBC Radio would inevitably feature actors with perfect received pronunciation. Now that has all changed. Actor Samuel West, no stranger to Shakespearian roles, is joined by Dr Andrea Smith to hear how horizons have widened and productions enriched by new voices and new settings for the plays. We'll hear about plays set in India, plays recorded in Welsh, those with characters clearly from Africa or the Caribbean and voices that are far from the cut glass of RP.
Presented by Samuel West and Dr Andrea Smith Produced by Susan Marling A Just Radio Production
By the time the BBC had come of age in the 70s and 80s, radio production had become a creative art. The Radiophonic Workshop could famously transport listeners to imagined worlds and this was certainly the case with productions of Shakespeare. Actor Samuel West and Dr Andrea Smith celebrate the creativity that gave us everything from the magic of Puck and Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream to battle scenes and the horrors of the gouging of eyes in King Lear.
Presented by Samuel West and Dr Andrea Smith Produced by Susan Marling A Just Radio Production
Actor Samuel West, who has played many Shakespearian roles - some of them on the radio - is joined by Dr Andrea Smith as they take a trip through 100 years (nearly) of Shakespeare on the 'wireless'.
Today they focus on one returning character - Juliet from Romeo and Juliet. This is without doubt the most popular play and there are wonderful very early clips of actors such as Fay Compton taking the role in 1944. We hear how sometimes the part of 14-year-old Juliet was taken by an actor old enough to be her grandmother and about the snobbery attached to the idea of how exactly Shakespeare should be spoken.
Presented by Samuel West and Dr Andrea Smith Produced by Susan Marling A Just Radio Production
Actor Samuel West is joined by Dr Andrea Smith in a journey through 100 years (nearly) of Shakespeare on the radio. You might think that the years of the Second World War would have given listeners a thirst for history plays and great stirring speeches such as those in Henry V. But in fact it was pastoral comedy that was most popular - a reminder perhaps of the idealised, imagined Britain that people were fighting to protect. We hear too how production techniques gained sophistication and that theatricality slowly gave way to realism.
Presented by Samuel West and Dr Andrea Smith Produced by Susan Marling A Just Radio Production
Soon after the BBC was born came the ambition to broadcast Shakespeare plays on 'the wireless'. Theatres refused to allow recording of stage versions so the BBC had to go it alone. The BBC's first Director-General, Lord Reith, thought radio well suited to the task of producing Shakespeare:
‘The plays of Shakespeare fulfil to a great extent the requirements of wireless, for he had little in the way of setting and scenery, and relied chiefly on the vigour of his plot and the conviction of the speakers to convey his ideas. It is not at all unlikely that wireless will render a highly important service in popularising Shakespeare.’
Our series looks at how well Reith's ambition was realised. We have brilliant clips from some of the country's best loved actors who have performed Shakespeare on the radio as productions grew more sophisticated, as acting styles changed and as radio's production values allowed the listener to experience Shakespeare's world in the most imaginative way.
Presented by Samuel West and Dr Andrea Smith Produced by Susan Marling A Just Radio Production
Five writers and artists not normally associated with classical music, discuss a specific example of Vaughan Williams’s work to which they have a personal connection, and why it speaks to them.
Following on from the successful Five Kinds of Beethoven Radio 3 essay series in 2020, where a wide range of Beethoven fans shared their personal relationship to the composer and his work, this new series gives similar treatment to Vaughan Williams.
Our essayists share their unexpected perspective on Vaughan Williams’s work, taking it outside the standard ‘English pastoral’ box, in a series of accessible essays, part of the Vaughan Williams season on Radio 3.
Essay 5: Amanda Dalton – poet/dramatist
As a teenager in a 1970s working-class Coventry family, Amanda Dalton had a flamboyant favourite Uncle Gordon. He introduced Amanda to Vaughan Williams through embarrassing trips to the record shop after school. Amanda remembers the utter mortification of walking through Coventry city centre in her school uniform, Uncle Gordon sweeping along in a dramatically, her schoolmates giggling behind them. Once at the shop, Uncle Gordon waxed lyrical about his favourite composers. He bought Amanda a record of the Sea Symphony. She took it home, played it and was transported. It has remained significant to her ever since, summoning up her childhood, culture and class and what it is to be an outsider. Amanda Dalton is a poet and playwright, tutor, theatre artist and consultant. She is currently a Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund, Associate Artist at Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre and a Visiting Teaching Fellow (Script and Poetry) at MMU’s Writing School. Amanda has two poetry collections with Bloodaxe, How To Disappear and Stray, and Notes on Water came out in 2022. Her poetry has won awards and prizes in major competitions including the National Poetry Competition and she has been selected as one of the UK’s top 20 “Next Generation Poets”. Amanda writes regularly for BBC Radio 3 and 4 – original writing includes a number of original dramas and adaptations. For most of her career, she also worked in the worlds of Education and Creative Engagement. After 13 years as an English and Drama teacher and Deputy Head in comprehensive schools in Leicestershire, she left the formal education sector to be a Centre Director for the Arvon Foundation before becoming a senior leader at Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre, working for 18 years in the field of creative learning.
Writer and reader Amanda Dalton Sound designer Paul Cargill Producers Polly Thomas and Yusra Warsama Exec producer Eloise Whitmore
A Naked Production for BBC Radio 3
Five writers and artists not normally associated with classical music, discuss a specific example of Vaughan Williams’ work to which they have a personal connection, and why it speaks to them.
Following on from the successful Five Kinds of Beethoven Radio 3 essay series in 2020, where a wide range of Beethoven fans shared their personal relationship to the composer and his work, this new series gives similar treatment to Vaughan Williams.
Our essayists share their unexpected perspective on Vaughan Williams’ work, taking it outside the standard ‘English pastoral’ box, in a series of accessible essays, part of the Vaughan Williams season on Radio 3.
Luke Turner – nature writer and music journalist The Wasps – Aristophanic Suite was an EMI and John Player Special cassette tape that Luke’s family listened to on long car journeys in the 1980s. Obviously the cassette opens with The Lark Ascending, but like a pop smash hit drawing your attention to an album, that piece was merely the introduction to The Wasps - Aristophanic Suite on the second side, played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Vernon Handley. It became the soundtrack to Luke’s growing awareness of the English landscape as it passed by the windows, not in a simple, bucolic way, but the complexities of the place, the baked bean orange of traffic lights on the M62 over the Yorkshire Moors, the strange Cold War military installations that seemed to be everywhere, motorway reservations and the endless traffic jams around the Kings Lynn Roundabout. The piece also captures for Luke an awareness of how music works, how it combines with emotion and experience to become integral to memory, how something called The Wasps could have next to nothing to do with the insects, how his young mind could place onto this music whatever his imagination brought forward. It feels like many of his generation and certainly in his profession as a music journalist see Vaughan Williams as quite an establishment figure or quite conservative, but The Wasps was psychedelic music that made inroads into Luke’s imagination, and unleashed the possibilities of sound connecting to place. Luke Turner is a writer and editor. He co-founded the influential music website The Quietus where he runs a regular podcast and radio show. He has contributed to the Guardian, Dazed & Confused, Vice, NME, Q, Mojo, Monocle, Nowness and Somesuch Stories, among other publications. His first book, Out of the Woods, was shortlisted for the Wainwright Prize. Born in Bradford, he lives in London.
Writer and reader Luke Turner Sound designer Paul Cargill Producers Polly Thomas and Yusra Warsama Exec producer Eloise Whitmore
A Naked Production for BBC Radio 3
Five writers and artists not normally associated with classical music, discuss a specific example of Vaughan Williams’s work to which they have a personal connection, and why it speaks to them.
Following on from the successful Five Kinds of Beethoven Radio 3 essay series in 2020, where a wide range of Beethoven fans shared their personal relationship to the composer and his work, this new series gives similar treatment to Vaughan Williams.
Our essayists share their unexpected perspective on Vaughan Williams’s work, taking it outside the standard ‘English pastoral’ box, in a series of accessible essays, part of the Vaughan Williams season on Radio 3.
Essay 3: Adrian McNally - producer/arranger/pianist for The Unthanks Self-taught and raised in a South Yorkshire pit village, Adrian McNally is pianist, composer and band leader for The Unthanks. From humble beginnings to scoring for his band to perform with Charles Hazelwood's Army of Generals, Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band and the BBC Concert Orchestra for The Proms, McNally has sought confidence and inspiration along the way from Ralph Vaughan Williams. He finds kinship in a quest to prove that the people's music is anything but common, to draw out and elevate the beauty and truth present in those folk songs fondly but unfairly known as low culture. In his essay, McNally looks at VW's thoughts on National Music and the inescapable relationship between place, community and creativity. At the centre of his essay will be Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis. It was born out of a tune Vaughan Williams was preoccupied with - a love letter to something that already existed, that inspired him to make something more.
Self-taught and raised in a South Yorkshire pit village, Adrian McNally is pianist, composer, record producer and band leader for The Unthanks. From humble beginnings to scoring for performances with Charles Hazelwood's Army Of Generals, the Royal Liverpool Phil, Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band and the BBC Concert Orchestra for The Proms.
Writer and reader Adrian McNally Sound designer Paul Cargill Producers Polly Thomas and Yusra Warsama Exec producer Eloise Whitmore
Photographic Image by Sarah Mason
A Naked Production for BBC Radio 3
Five writers and artists not normally associated with classical music, discuss a specific example of Vaughan Williams’s work to which they have a personal connection, and why it speaks to them.
Following on from the successful Five Kinds of Beethoven Radio 3 essay series in 2020, where a wide range of Beethoven fans shared their personal relationship to the composer and his work, this new series gives similar treatment to Vaughan Williams.
Our essayists share their unexpected perspective on Vaughan Williams’s work, taking it outside the standard ‘English pastoral’ box, in a series of accessible essays, part of the Vaughan Williams season on Radio 3.
The Lark Ascending is Dr Rommi Smith’s favourite piece by Vaughan Williams. It has accompanied her all over the world in her travels as a poet and teacher, reminding her of her Englishness and her home, even when as a Black woman, she is often not ‘seen’ as being English. The piece is a key part of her English DNA. This was brought home to her vividly when the violinist Tai Murray, a Black American woman, played the piece during the Proms in 2018. There was subsequent racist twitter comment, saying she had only been ‘let in’ because she is Black. Dr Rommi Smith considers her own connection to The Lark Ascending and how who performs it is significant.
Dr Rommi Smith is an award-winning poet, playwright, theatre-maker, performer and librettist. A three-time BBC Writer-in-residence, she is the inaugural British Parliamentary Writer-in-Residence and inaugural 21st century Poet-in-Residence for Keats’ House, Hampstead. A Visiting Scholar at City University New York (CUNY), she has presented her research and writing at institutions including: THE SEGAL THEATRE, THE SCHOMBURG CENTER FOR RESEARCH IN BLACK CULTURE and CITY COLLEGE NEW YORK. Rommi’s performance at THE SCHWERNER WRITERS’ SERIES in New York was at the invitation of Tyehimba Jess, Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry. Rommi is a Doctor of Philosophy in English and Theatre. Her academic writing was first published by NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS as part of the groundbreaking book IMAGINING QUEER METHODS (2019). Her poetry is included in publications ranging from OUT OF BOUNDS (Bloodaxe) to MORE FIYA (Canongate). She is recipient of a HEDGEBROOK Fellowship (Cottage: Waterfall, 2014) and is a winner of THE NORTHERN WRITERS’ PRIZE for Poetry 2019 (chosen by the poet Don Paterson). She was recently awarded a prestigious CAVE CANEM fellowship in the US. Rommi was selected a SPHINX30 playwright; a prestigious programme of professional mentoring for – and by - contemporary women playwrights, led by legendary company, SPHINX THEATRE. Rommi is a contributor to BBC radio programmes including: FRONT ROW, THE VERB and the radio documentary INVISIBLE MAN: PARABLE FOR OUR TIMES?, marking 70 years since the publication of Ralph Ellison’s iconic novel. Rommi is poet-in-residence for the WORDSWORTH TRUST, Grasmere. www.rommi-smith.co.uk Twitter: @rommismith Soundcloud: RommiSmith Instagram: Rommi Smith
Writer and reader Rommi Smith Sound designer Paul Cargill Producers Polly Thomas and Yusra Warsama Exec producer Eloise Whitmore
Photographic Image by Lizzie Coombes
A Naked Production for BBC Radio 3
Five writers and artists not normally associated with classical music, discuss a specific example of Vaughan Williams’s work to which they have a personal connection, and why it speaks to them.
Following on from the successful Five Kinds of Beethoven Radio 3 essay series in 2020, where a wide range of Beethoven fans shared their personal relationship to the composer and his work, this new series gives similar treatment to Vaughan Williams.
Our essayists share their unexpected perspective on Vaughan Williams’s work, taking it outside the standard ‘English pastoral’ box, in a series of accessible essays, part of the Vaughan Williams season on Radio 3.
Essay 1: Clare Shaw – poet/dramatist
Clare considers the role that Vaughan Williams’ setting to music of the Welsh hymn Rhosymedre has played in their life. They first played it as a teenager on the viola, for the Burnley Youth Orchestra. It symbolised an expression of beauty, love and hope, a sense of voice and connection to place and possibility... It is also that rare moment in music where the viola gets to carry the melody. Then, in Clare’s fifties, when their mother (a cellist) died, the piece became a conduit for overwhelming grief, a way of holding the horrific and sublime experience of being present at the moment of death. Clare came home after their mother had died and played Rhosymedre, then wrote this poem about her and the music.
Clare Shaw is a poet and performer, tutor and trainer. They have four poetry collections from Bloodaxe: Straight Ahead (2006), Head On (2012), Flood (2018) and Towards a General Theory of Love (2022). Clare is a regular tutor with a range of literary organisations - including the Poetry School, the Wordsworth Trust and the Arvon Foundation - delivering creative writing courses, workshops and mentoring sessions in a variety of different settings, with individuals at all levels of ability, confidence and experience. They work with the Royal Literary Fund and the Writing Project, supporting the development of writing skills in academic settings and workplaces. Clare is the co-director of the Kendal Poetry Festival - and involved in a range of innovative projects with artists and practitioners in other disciplines, including psychology, visual arts and music. Clare is also a mental health educator. All their work is underpinned by a deep faith in language: words have the power to harm and help us, and powerful language can transform us as individuals, communities and societies.
Writer and reader Clare Shaw Sound designer Paul Cargill Producers Polly Thomas and Yusra Warsama Exec producer Eloise Whitmore
A Naked Production for BBC Radio 3
Poet, editor and writer Alvin Pang loves Singapore. It’s just that he doesn’t necessarily want to be in Singapore. He loves it, but the cause for this is a wanderlust and a need for movement which has given him an instinct to push down walls. He explores how the Singapore mindset of the convivial host can set a writer in good stead for a creative life. Presented by Alvin Pang Produced by Kevin Core
Anil Pradhan says he is defined by his “inbetween-ness”. As a gay, Indian, Nepali poet he considers the strange duality - that while English may be linked with the colonial mindset that defined India – it is also a language that allows him to express his true self. This episode was recorded at the BBC Contains Strong Language Festival in Birmingham.
Presented by Anil Pradhan Produced by Kevin Core
Isabelle Baafi has a unique take on healthcare, forged by the Caribbean origins of a succession of female healers in her family. Reaching back in time from her own childhood visit to A&E, Isabelle explores her mother’s adage – that to heal someone is to change their destiny. Presented by Isabelle Baafi Produced by Kevin Core
Roy McFarlane, former Birmingham Laureate, recalls the mask worn by his Jamaican late father – a mask designed to help him integrate into his new UK home. But did it work? Roy recalls the dignity of a man who worked hard to put money on the table – and encyclopaedias on the shelves. His essay was recorded at the BBC's Contains Strong Language Festival in Birmingham.
This essay contains strong racist language which some may find offensive.
Presented by Roy McFarlane Produced by Kevin Core
The Indian writer and dancer Tishani Doshi considers the impact of her mother’s upbringing thousands of miles away in the UK and how her imagination returns to the exotic idea - of a row of small terraced houses in the seemingly endless summer nights of Wales. Her essay was recorded at the BBC's Contains Strong Language Festival in Birmingham.
Presented by Tishani Doshi Produced by Kevin Core
Poet and writer Casey Bailey is returning to Birmingham after a holiday and reliving memories of his childhood in Nechells.
Casey is the Birmingham Poet Laureate 2020-2022. He’s a writer, performer and educator born and raised in Nechells, Birmingham. Casey has performed nationally and internationally, spent time on a residency with the Royal Shakespeare Company. His debut poetry pamphlet ‘Waiting at Bloomsbury Park’ was published in 2017. His first full collection of poetry ‘Adjusted’ in 2018 was followed by his second collection Please Do Not Touch in 2021.
Producers: Rosie Boulton and Melvin Rickarby A Must Try Softer Production A co-commission between BBC Radio 3 and the Space with funding from Arts Council England.
Poet Naush Sabah is re-visiting her childhood home in Sparkbrook, Birmingham
Naush is a poet, writer, editor, critic and educator based in the West Midlands. In 2019, she co-founded the Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal where she is currently Editor and Publishing Director. Naush also co-founded Pallina Press where she is Editor-at-Large and she currently serves as a trustee at Poetry London. Her writing has appeared in The Poetry Review, the TLS, PN Review, The Dark Horse, Modern Poetry in Translation, and elsewhere. She was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature’s 2021 Sky Arts Writers Award. Her debut pamphlet Litanies was published by Guillemot Press in November 2021. She's a visiting lecturer in creative writing at Birmingham City University.
Producers: Rosie Boulton and Melvin Rickarby A Must Try Softer Production A co-commission between BBC Radio 3 and the Space with funding from Arts Council England.
Writer Professor Thomas Glave has been in London and is returning on a train at night to his home city of Birmingham.
Thomas was born in the Bronx and grew up there and in Kingston, Jamaica. His work has earned many honours, including the Lambda Literary Award in 2005 and 2008, an O. Henry Prize, a Fine Arts Center in Provincetown Fellowship, and a Fulbright fellowship to Jamaica. He's the author of Whose Song? and Other Stories, Words to Our Now: Imagination and Dissent, The Torturer's Wife, and Among the Bloodpeople: Politics and Flesh. Thomas has been Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Professor at MIT, a Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the University of Warwick, a Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge and writer-in-residence at the University of Liverpool. He lives in the Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham.
Producers: Rosie Boulton and Melvin Rickarby A Must Try Softer Production A co-commission between BBC Radio 3 and the Space with funding from Arts Council England.
Writer Dr Shahed Yousaf is driving home to Birmingham from a very demanding day at work in prison.
Shahed is a GP who works in prisons, substance misuse centres and with the homeless community. He has just published a memoir: Stitched Up. He spends his time running between emergencies - from overdoses to assaults, from cell fires to suicides - with one hand always hovering over the panic button. He was shortlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Prize 2016 and commended for the Faber & Faber FAB Prize 2017. Shahed won a place on to the Writing West Midlands Room 204 Mentoring scheme and the Middle Way Mentoring Project in 2019.
Producers: Rosie Boulton and Melvin Rickarby A Must Try Softer Production A co-commission between BBC Radio 3 and the Space with funding from Arts Council England.
Writer Helen Cross is remembering how clubbing in 90s Birmingham and an encounter with an oil painting in Birmingham's Museum and Art Gallery led her to feel at home in this city.
Helen is the author of novels, stories, radio plays and screenplays. Her first novel, My Summer of Love, won a Betty Trask Award and became a BAFTA award-winning feature film. Her recent work includes a BBC Afternoon Play The Return of Rowena The Wonderful and a five-part audio drama series: English Rose. Helen teaches creative writing at various international venues, at UK universities and on many online and community courses. Helen lives in Kings Heath, Birmingham.
Producers: Rosie Boulton and Melvin Rickarby A Must Try Softer Production A co-commission between BBC Radio 3 and the Space with funding from Arts Council England.
For the final essay in the series, architectural designer Christopher Laing gives a personal account of how he started Signstrokes, which introduces standardised sign language for architecture. Deaf people are not new to architecture, however they face significant barriers because the sign language vocabulary of the profession is not standardised and lacks terms to express architectural concepts uncommon in everyday language.
Christopher, drawing upon his own difficult experience at university, where he suffered the consequence of few deaf people before him studying architecture anywhere. The knock-on effect was that very few British Sign Language interpreters knew architectural terms or context, having never worked in the field before. Christopher had to take on the additional responsibility, on top of his degree, of helping the university interpreters familiarise themselves with the jargon and signs to use when interpreting the lectures.
Christopher collaborated with Adolfs Kristapsons to create the corpus dictionary of architect signs that everyone could use. Christopher shares with us the long, laborious process of creating new signs. Christopher asserts that not only are these signs useful for the deaf community - but actually seeing what words mean, helps everyone understand each other. Christopher hopes that Signstrokes will inspire other deaf professionals to persevere with their chosen dreams; and show how it is possible to get creative with jargon. Christopher maintains that ultimately we all want to understand the world we live in, and each other, and language shouldn’t be a barrier to that.
A Flashing Lights Media production for BBC Radio 3.
Dr Robert Adam is an assistant professor at Heriot-Watt University and a lecturer in Linguistics, British Sign Language and Deaf Studies.
In the course of his essay, Robert asks, who are the arbiters of British Sign Language? How can its evolution be managed?
Robert shares how fewer deaf children are learning British Sign Language at school, and more are now learning it later in life, as young adults. From an outsider’s perspective this may seem relatively harmless, but this language deprivation and dispersal of deaf people from each other, means that deaf children do not get the chance to develop extensive peer groups, or learn to sign from a fluent or native signer.
Robert goes on to explore the colonial history of British Sign Language and how there is no single country that ‘owns’ the one language, and British Sign Language is certainly not owned solely by the British Deaf community. He talks wryly of the irony of deaf people in the UK continuing to struggle with equal access to information and participation in broader society and yet BSL is a colonising language.
Robert talks frankly of how on various platforms we are now witnessing astonishing bastardisations of sign language, to the point that a BSL Watchdog has recently been established by a group of concerned deaf people. There are also concerns about sign language gradually being eroded as new generations of deaf children are denied access to it through what Robert sees as misguided attempts at so-called “inclusion” in education. Will so-called, ‘proper sign language’ become a thing of the past?
A Flashing Lights Media production for BBC Radio 3.
Deepa Shastri, an actress, sign song performer and British Sign Language consultant.
Deepa explores how Deaf culture and sign language being represented in the arts is so important to the deaf community but also how the arts and sign language naturally go hand in hand - due to the visual and expressive nature of sign language. Back in the 80s, when Marlee Matlin became the first deaf Oscar winner for her performance in 'Children of a Lesser God', things were about to become very exciting for the deaf arts.
Fast forward a few decades, Deepa shares how we are now entering a new era where deaf people are being represented on screen and on stage with the likes of Rose Ayling-Ellis picking up the Glitterball, Sophie Stone appearing in Dr. Who and Nadeem Islam making waves on series such as ITV's 'The Bay'. Theatre companies such as Deafinitely Theatre were and continue to be the breeding ground of deaf talent.
Within the context of exploring Deafinitely Theatre's work, Deepa explores the complex process of translating Shakespeare plays to British Sign Language and how BSL has its limitations; we do not have signs for every word that exists in the English Dictionary which makes translation difficult. Still, the positives outweigh the limitations. Sign language is very poetic which bodes well for Shakespeare plays in sign language.
Deepa concludes that she believes we're entering the golden age for deaf performers as sign language and deaf performers are appearing on all platforms to show the beauty of sign language and how it elevate a performance or a production.
A Flashing Lights Media production for BBC Radio 3.
Tina Kelberman shares her experience of growing up in a large deaf Jewish family. Her family has inherited deafness for six generations now and are probably also the biggest Deaf Jewish family in the UK. Whilst their culture is steeped in history, spanning back almost two centuries, it's been a rocky road for them - as Tina shares. She hated the feeling of people watching her family communicate in sign language. Her parents also hated it and so did her grandparents- to the point where their signs were smaller and more secretive when out in public. 70 years on, not much has changed. But Tina talks of how we are bolder these days, and how her own children stare right back until the people staring look away.
Tina talks candidly about how sign language is like any other language and so it evolves. Tina gives us examples of the evolution such as the telephone - how signs evolved from the candlestick phone to the mobile phone as we know it today. Tina used to correct her mother’s signing, just like all kids groan at their parents' seemingly outdated or uncool words.
With her children being two of the last deaf, Jewish people from a large deaf family, she worries about what the future holds for them. Tina admits that her children don’t know the Jewish signs for Hanukkah and Passover, or understand why these words are signed as they are. She wonders if it is maybe it is time for her to take them to the Jewish Deaf Association to remind them of their heritage and to use signs that have been passed on to them.
A Flashing Lights Media production for BBC Radio 3.
Dr Robert Adam is an assistant professor at Heriot-Watt University and a lecturer in Linguistics, British Sign Language and Deaf Studies.
In his essay, 'Sign Language through the Ages', Robert explores the rich and layered history of British Sign Language. He recalls the first time he read a piece of deaf history - his father’s school published ‘Utmost for the Highest’ for its centenary in 1962, and was full of black and white photos of stern looking people and impressive edifices. The faces and names of long-dead deaf people leapt out at Robert and made him wonder what was life like for those deaf people then? They achieved so much but would have had to find their way in times where there were no anti-discrimination laws.
Robert shares with us how Deaf people and sign languages have existed since antiquity. Quintus Pedius, a painter in the first century AD, is the first recorded deaf person in history. The first clear record of sign language being used was a wedding in Leicester in 1575.
So why is sign language still viewed as a 'new' language by some? Robert shares the story of the fated Milan Congress held in September 1880 which was attended by mostly hearing educators from around the world who resolved to stop the use of sign language in the classroom. After Milan, sign language went 'underground' till the 20th century where it began to gain traction again - largely due to programmes such as 'Vision On' and 'See Hear' which graced our screens.
Within the context of the historical discourse, Robert concludes that deaf people are pioneers in their field and their work has had an impact on our lives today.
A Flashing Lights Media production for BBC Radio 3.
In 1945, when World WarII finally ended and while Europe's artistic centres smouldered, in New York City an artistic renaissance, in music, painting, theatre, and literature, burst forth out of the city’s bohemia.
Most of this work was generated in a single neighbourhood of Manhattan: Greenwich Village.
World War II in America was a time of national unity, a singleness of purpose where non-conformity had no place in military or civilian life. Yet somehow as soon as the war ended, a full-blown non-conformist bohemia exploded in New York. Membership of this Bohemia, for men at least, was signified by wearing an undergarment - the T-shirt - in public. Today that means nothing. In 1945, in a society that was still mobilized with military single-mindedness, it was shocking.
In this series for The Essay, Michael Goldfarb explores the how and why of this extraordinary eruption through the stories of some of T-shirt Bohemia's key figures: Marlon Brando, Jackson Pollock, James Baldwin, Charlie Parker and Jack Kerouac.
In this episode, the influence of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, two T-shirt wearing Columbia University students, and the events that propelled them towards the writing that would become known as Beat.
In 1945, when World War II finally ended and while Europe's artistic centres smouldered, in New York City an artistic renaissance, in music, painting, theatre, and literature, burst forth out of the city’s bohemia.
Most of this work was generated in a single neighbourhood of Manhattan: Greenwich Village.
World War II in America was a time of national unity, a singleness of purpose where non-conformity had no place in military or civilian life. Yet somehow as soon as the war ended, a full-blown non-conformist bohemia exploded in New York. Membership of this Bohemia, for men at least, was signified by wearing an undergarment - the T-shirt - in public. Today that means nothing. In 1945, in a society that was still mobilised with military single-mindedness, it was shocking.
In this series for The Essay, Michael Goldfarb explores the how and why of this extraordinary eruption through the stories of some of T-shirt Bohemia's key figures: Marlon Brando, Jackson Pollock, James Baldwin, Charlie Parker and Jack Kerouac.
In this episode, the importance of Charlie Parker and Miles Davis and how the war created the space for jazz to evolve into America's unique form of classical music.
In 1945, when World War II finally ended and while Europe's artistic centres smouldered, in New York City an artistic renaissance, in music, painting, theatre, and literature, burst forth out of the city’s bohemia.
Most of this work was generated in a single neighbourhood of Manhattan: Greenwich Village.
World War II in America was a time of national unity, a singleness of purpose where non-conformity had no place in military or civilian life. Yet somehow as soon as the war ended, a full-blown non-conformist bohemia exploded in New York. Membership of this Bohemia, for men at least, was signified by wearing an undergarment - the T-shirt - in public. Today that means nothing. In 1945, in a society that was still mobilised with military single-mindedness, it was shocking.
In this series for The Essay, Michael Goldfarb explores the how and why of this extraordinary eruption through the stories of some of T-shirt Bohemia's key figures: Marlon Brando, Jackson Pollock, James Baldwin, Charlie Parker and Jack Kerouac.
In this episode, the story of Jackson Pollock, a keen T-shirt wearer, as he struggles towards his abstract vision and the role of Pollock's wife, Lee Krasner, an artist in her own right, in his success.
In 1945, when World War II finally ended and while Europe's artistic centres smouldered, in New York City an artistic renaissance, in music, painting, theatre, and literature, burst forth out of the city’s bohemia.
Most of this work was generated in a single neighbourhood of Manhattan: Greenwich Village.
World War II in America was a time of national unity, a singleness of purpose where non-conformity had no place in military or civilian life. Yet somehow as soon as the war ended, a full-blown non-conformist bohemia exploded in New York. Membership of this Bohemia, for men at least, was signified by wearing an undergarment - the T-shirt - in public. Today that means nothing. In 1945, in a society that was still mobilised with military single-mindedness, it was shocking.
In this series for The Essay, Michael Goldfarb explores the how and why of this extraordinary eruption through the stories of some of T-shirt Bohemia's key figures: Marlon Brando, Jackson Pollock, James Baldwin, Charlie Parker and Jack Kerouac.
In this episode, Michael focuses on James Baldwin, Marlon Brando's wartime roommate in Greenwich Village, and the slow integration of American letters by African American authors.
In 1945, when World War II finally ended and while Europe's artistic centres smouldered, in New York City an artistic renaissance, in music, painting, theatre, and literature, burst forth out of the city’s bohemian.
Most of this work was generated in a single neighbourhood of Manhattan: Greenwich Village.
World War II in America was a time of national unity, a singleness of purpose where non-conformity had no place in military or civilian life. Yet somehow as soon as the war ended, a full-blown non-conformist bohemia exploded in New York. Membership of this Bohemia, for men at least, was signified by wearing an undergarment - the T-shirt - in public. Today that means nothing. In 1945, in a society that was still mobilised with military single-mindedness, it was shocking.
In this series for The Essay, Michael Goldfarb explores the how and why of this extraordinary eruption through the stories of some of T-shirt Bohemia's key figures: Marlon Brando, Jackson Pollock, James Baldwin, Charlie Parker and Jack Kerouac.
In this episode, he focuses on Marlon Brando and Stanley Kowalski whose T-shirts were designed by Lucinda Ballard, for the original production of A Streetcar Named Desire.
Joanna Robertson argues that it's the regular, everyday moments and rituals that make up and frame the fabric of our lives. The details of dress or speech that shape and project an identity. Painters capturing an essence in time, like that of Madame Cezanne in Provence, dressed in blue, hair pulled tautly back into a bun, sitting next to a table with a white cup and saucer, spoon standing upwards in the cup. Or the myriad details, from by-passers to snippets of conversations to the design of a chair or cafe interior, which, when well observed, can turn the instant of taking the first sip of a milky coffee in that same cafe to the level of a miracle, where all surroundings coalesce into one, soul-sweetening moment.
Written and presented by Joanna Robertson Series Producer: Arlene Gregorius Series Editor: Penny Murphy Sound engineer: Nigel Appleton Production Coordinator: Janet Staples
Joanna Robertson believes it's the everyday moments that shape, frame and colour our lives. That includes observing, or imagining, the lives of others around us.
Are portraitists creating a mere image, or capturing the authentic selves of their subjects? The celebrated Belle Epoque painter Giovanni Boldini became a darling of Parisian society with his glamorous portrayals of society women, but a spontaneous portrait of a wealthy couple's gardener in eastern France, possibly painted for Boldini's own eyes only, inside the lid of his paintbox, gloriously reveals the gardener's inner life.
And what about the people we meet or see ourselves? Take the new neighbours who moved into a flat opposite. Their daily rituals, from their apparently perfect breakfast to their equally apparently perfect dinner, with all five regulation courses, every night, all seen through the windows. Why is observing them, with the resulting questioning of Joanna's own habits, such a vivid part of her and her daughters' daily life?
And then Joanna actually meets the family. How do they compare to their imagined selves?
Written and presented by Joanna Robertson Producer: Arlene Gregorius Editor: Penny Murphy Sound engineer: Nigel Appleton Production Coordinator: Janet Staples
'It's only the minutiae of life that are important,' wrote the Austro-Hungarian author Joseph Roth, announcing that he was 'going for a walk'. Joanna Robertson feels, and does, the same, and finds that far from small, the minutiae are actually infinite. Just walking from her Paris flat to a nearby bakery, yields so many observations, memories and encounters, that they conjure up the life of the whole street. From the homeless man sleeping, and dying, on the monastery's front steps, to the blazing row (and withering put-downs) of two usually tolerant ladies of Polish and Russian heritage respectively. Not to mention the rivalry between Joanna's dogs and those of a well-known model and designer, who every day claim each others' territory in ways only dogs will....
Written and presented by Joanna Robertson Producer: Arlene Gregorius Editor: Penny Murphy Sound engineer: Nigel Appleton Production Coordinator: Janet Staples
The minutiae of the everyday frame, shape and colour our lives. Joanna Robertson lives in Paris, and finds that the views from her fourth-floor flat have a real influence on her daily life. Looking out over the neighbourhood of Montparnasse, her windows let her eye and mind wander over the sites of much recent and not so recent cultural history.
Former residents whose residences she can still see, range from Irish playwright Samuel Beckett to Austro-Hungarian writer Joseph Roth. And, following in the footsteps of painter John Constable, Joanna too goes "skying", as he called it: observing the sky and its cloudscapes through the window. What's beyond the glass is both separate from, yet also inextricably part of her life.
Written and presented by Joanna Robertson Producer: Arlene Gregorius Editor: Penny Murphy Sound engineer: Nigel Appleton Production Coordinator: Janet Staples
The minutiae of life have always fascinated Joanna Robertson. Moments like opening the curtains or shutters in the morning, putting the key in the lock when returning home, making dinner, or smelling the cooking of the neighbours. The author Virginia Woolf dismissed everyday repetitive rituals as 'moments of non-being', by contrast to epiphanies of experience or understanding that she saw as 'moments of being'.
Joanna Robertson argues that on the contrary, the deceptively insignificant everyday is actually what our lives are made of. They shape, frame and colour our waking moments. Other writers, like Proust, or painters like Vermeer or van Hooch, appear to agree, and have captured the essence of the everyday in their art.
Written and presented by Joanna Robertson Producer: Arlene Gregorius Editor: Penny Murphy Sound engineer: Nigel Appleton Production Coordinator: Janet Staples
Five writers go on five reflective, restorative and often playful journeys in search of the final resting places of their literary heroes.
Concluding the series, Paterson Joseph retraces the footsteps of pioneering writer, composer and abolitionist Ignatius Sancho through Westminster to a lost grave beneath the still-pulsing streets.
Producer: Ciaran Bermingham
Five writers go on five reflective, restorative and often playful journeys in search of the final resting places of their literary heroes.
Today, Anita Sethi journeys to the grave of her heroine Anne Brontë, overlooking the sea she so loved, and considers why she was buried high on a hill in Scarborough, away from her better known sisters. Her grave has over the years been neglected and ravaged by the elements, but more recently - like her reputation - restored.
Producer: Ciaran Bermingham
Five writers go on five reflective, restorative and often playful journeys in search of the final resting places of their literary heroes.
Today, Diana Souhami steps into the tomb of Radclyffe Hall in London’s Highgate Cemetery, where The Well of Loneliness author resides with her lover, her lover’s husband and their dog Tulip – an aptly unconventional set-up in death as in life.
Producer: Ciaran Bermingham
Five writers go on five reflective, restorative and often playful journeys in search of the final resting places of their literary heroes.
Today Paul Muldoon recalls numerous pilgrimages to the rugged west coast of Ireland, where the remains of WB Yeats may or may not be buried, as per his poetical final request.
Producer: Ciaran Bermingham
Five writers go on five reflective, restorative and often playful journeys in search of the final resting places of their literary heroes.
Today Lauren Elkin finds Oscar Wilde in Pere Lachaise, Paris - where the outsider in life overshadows in death the greats of French literature who jostle for space in the famous cemetery.
Producer: Ciaran Bermingham
From full stops to emojis, a Tudor letter to texting - how has the use of punctuation marks developed over the centuries? Florence Hazrat thinks about the way brackets help us understand the pandemic. The first parentheses appear in a 1399 manuscript by the Italian lawyer Coluccio Salutati, but - as her essay outlines - it took over 500 years for the sign born at the same time as the bracket, the exclamation mark (which printers rather aptly call “bang”) to find its true environment: the internet.
Florence Hazrat is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, University of Sheffield. She is a 2021 New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year to turn their research into radio.
Producer: Robyn Read
Xangô (the god of thunder) and Paso Ñañigo’, composed by the Cuban Moises Simons, were two of the numbers performed by Elsie Houston in the clubs of Paris in the 1920s. Also able to sing soprano in Portuguese, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Russian, Elsie's performances in Afro-Brazilian dialects chimed with the fashion for all things African. Adjoa Osei's essay traces Elsie's connections with Surrealist artists and writers, (there are photos of her taken by Man Ray), and looks at how she used her mixed race heritage to navigate her way through society and speak out for African-inspired arts.
Adjoa Osei is a researcher based at Trinity College, Cambridge. She was selected as a 2021 New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to turn research into radio. You can hear her discussing the career of another singer Rita Montaner in this episode of Free Thinking https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0010q8b and taking part in this Free Thinking discussion From Blackface to Beyoncé https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000tnlt
Producer: Ruth Watts
Africa's first filmmakers boldly revealed how, and why, colonialism lived on after the independences. Sarah Jilani takes a closer look at the works of Ousmane Sembène and Souleymane Cissé. The Malian director's 1982 film Finye (the Bambara word for wind) considers students as the winds of change, whilst Sembène's Mandabi, made in 1968, takes its title from a Wolof word deriving from the French for a postal money order – le mandat postale. Adapting his own novel about the frustrations of bureaucracy, the Senegalese director made the decision to make the film in the Wolof language.
Sarah Jilani teaches at City, University of London and was chosen as a 2021 New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council which makes research into radio. You can hear her discussing another classic of African cinema on Free Thinking in this episode about Touki Bouki https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0013js4 and Satyajit Ray's Indian Bengali drama Jalsaghar, which depicts a landlord who would prefer to listen to music than deal with his flood ravaged properties https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000v9gj
Producer: Torquil MacLeod
In 1821, Thomas de Quincey's Confessions of an Opium Eater paved the way for drug memoirs, but how do contemporary novelists help us see the global opium trade in a different way? Fariha Shaikh's essay looks at the novel An Insular Possession published in 1986 by Timothy Mo, and at Amitav Ghosh's trilogy which began in 2008 with Sea of Poppies. She also quotes from her researches into The Calcutta Review, Fraser's Magazine for Town and Country and the book Tea and Coffee written by the campaigning vegetarian William Alcott as she make links between tea, sugar, opium, addiction and trade.
Dr Fariha Shaikh teaches in the Department of English Literature at the University of Birmingham. She is a 2021 New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to turn research into radio.
Producer: Robyn Read
What made him great? Celebrated as a military leader, Alexander took over an empire created by the Persians. Julia Hartley's essay looks at two examples of myth making about Alexander: The Persian Boy, a 1972 historical novel by the English writer Mary Renault and the Shānāmeh or ‘Book of Kings’, an epic written by the medieval Persian poet Abdolghassem Ferdowsi.
Julia Hartley lectures at King's College London. She was selected in 2021 as a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council which turns research into radio. You can hear her in this Free Thinking discussion Dante's Visions https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000zm9b and in another episode about Epic Iran, Lost Cities and Proust https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000xlzh
Producer: Torquil MacLeod
Sculptures like mouldy fruit, sea creatures that look like oil, blocks of ice carved from a melting glacier and transported to a gallery, reforesting a disused quarry: Vid Simoniti looks at different examples of environmental art and asks whether they create empathy with nature and inspire behaviour change or do we really need pictures of loft insulation and ground source heat pumps displayed on gallery walls?
Vid Simoniti lectures at the University of Liverpool. He hosted a series of podcasts Art Against the World for the Liverpool Biennial 2021. He was selected as a New Generation Thinker in 2021 on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council which turns research into radio. You can hear him taking part in this Free Thinking discussion about Who Needs Critics? https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000w5f3
Producer: Luke Mulhall
An 1856 portrait shows a 40-year-old man from Benin who managed to secure his freedom after being captured. Dasalu was taken from Dahomey to Cuba, alongside over five hundred adults and children in the ship Grey Eagle. Once in Havana, he worked for the Count of Fernandina but managed to get a letter to a missionary Charles Gollmer back in Africa. Jake Subryan Richard's essay traces the way one man’s migrations reveal the shifting boundaries of slavery and freedom.
Jake Subryan Richards teaches at the London School of Economics and was chosen as a New Generation Thinker in 2021 on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Council, which turns research into radio. You can hear him discussing his research in a Free Thinking episode called Dr Johnson's Circle https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000vq3w and in another episode looking at Ships and History https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001626t
Producer: Ruth Watts
The discovery of goffering irons, the tools used to shape ruffs, by an archaeological dig in North America, gives us clues about the way the first English settlers lived. Lauren Working's essay looks at the symbolism of the Elizabethan fashion for ruffs. Now back in fashion on zoom, they were denounced by Puritans, shown off in portraits of explorers like Raleigh and Drake, and seen by the Chesapeake as a symbol of colonisation, whilst the starch was used for porridge at a time of scarcity and war.
Lauren Working teaches at the University of York and was chosen in 2021 as a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council which turns research into radio. You can find another Essay by Lauren called Boy with a Pearl Earring https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0014y52 and hear her in a Free Thinking discussion about The Botanical Past https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000wlgv
Producer: Luke Mulhall
Images of Cyril and Methodios adorn libraries, universities, cathedrals and passport pages in Slavonic speaking countries from Bulgaria to Russia, North Macedonia to Ukraine. But the journeys undertaken as religious envoys by these inventors of the Cyrillic alphabet have led to competing claims and political disagreements. Mirela Ivanova's essay considers the complications of basing ideas about nationhood upon medieval history.
Mirela Ivanova teaches at the University of Sheffield and was selected as a New Generation Thinker in 2021 on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council, which turns research into radio. You can hear her discussing Sofia's main museum in this episode of Free Thinking https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000wc3p
Producer: Luke Mulhall
Comrade or "marra" in north east dialect, and the "dharma" or the way - were put together in a portmanteau word by poet Bill Martin (1925-2010). Poet and New Generation Thinker Jake Morris-Campbell reflects on this idea of Marradharma and what it offers to future generations growing up in the post-Brexit and post-industrial landscape of the north east. In his essay, Jake remembers the pilgrimage he made in 2016 carrying Bill Martin's ashes in a ram's horn from Sunderland (Martin was born in a nearby pit village) to Durham Cathedral.
Jake Morris-Campbell teaches at Newcastle University and was selected as a New Generation Thinker in 2021 on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. You can find him discussing ideas about darkness in a Free Thinking discussion recorded at Sage Gateshead as part of Radio 3's After Dark festival, and looking at mining, coal and DH Lawrence https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000xmjy
Producer: Torquil MacLeod
"Delight in disorder" was celebrated in a poem by Robert Herrick (1591-1674) and the long hair, flamboyant dress and embrace of earrings that made up Cavalier style has continued to exert influence as a gender fluid look. Lauren Working's essay considers examples ranging from Van Dyck portraits and plays by Aphra Behn to the advertising for the exhibition called Fashioning Masculinities which runs at the Victoria and Albert museum this spring.
Fashioning Masculinities: The Art of Menswear is at the V&A from March 19th 2022. Radio 3 broadcast a series of Essays from New Generation Thinkers exploring Masculinities which you can find on BBC Sounds https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00061jm Lauren Working is a Lecturer in Early Modern Literature at the University of York and a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to turn academic research into radio. You can hear her discussing The Botanical Past in a Free Thinking discussion https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000wlgv
Producer: Luke Mulhall
Image: Anthony van Dyck Lord John Stuart and his Brother, Lord Bernard Stuart (about 1638) Oil on canvas The National Gallery, London. Bought, 1988 © The National Gallery, London.
From school to work to the military – uniforms can signal authority and belonging. But what happens when uniforms are worn by those whom institutions normally exclude? Or when they’re used out of context? New Generation Thinker Tom Smith explores playful, creative and queer uses of uniforms, from the cult film Mädchen in Uniform, recently released in the UK by the BFI, to documents he discovered in German archives, to his take on the styles embraced in subcultures today.
Producer: Ruth Watts
Tom Smith is a Senior Lecturer at the University of St Andrews. You can find other Essays by him for Radio 3 exploring Berlin, Detroit, Race and Techno Music https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000kfjt and Masculinities: Comrades in Arms https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00061m5 and hear him in this Free Thinking episode debating New angles on post-war Germany and Austria https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0006sjx
Image: Joanna Lumley as Patsy (Left) and Jennifer Saunders as Edina (Right) wearing school uniform in BBC 1 Absolutely Fabulous, 1992.
Fashion from the 1990s to the 1790s and back again: Jade Halbert traces the history of Droopy & Browns, a fashion business renowned for the flamboyant and elegant work of its designer, Angela Holmes. While many British designers of the late twentieth century looked to replicate a lean, monochromatic, almost corporate New York sensibility, Angela Holmes gloried in drama and historicism. A favourite of actresses, artists, writers, and stylish women everywhere, the closure of the business soon after Angela’s death, aged 50, in 2000 marked the end of an era in British fashion.
Producer: Jessica Treen
Jade Halbert lectures at the University of Huddersfield and is a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker on the scheme which turns academic research into radio. You can find another Essay called Not Quite Jean Muir about learning to make a dress on BBC Sounds https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000kgwq and a short Radio 3 Sunday feature on the state of high street fashion shopping https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000gvpn
Image: Jade Halbert
Oscar Wilde's famous line from The Importance of Being Earnest focuses on what we might not expect to find - Shahidha Bari's essay considers the range of objects we do carry around with us and why bags have been important throughout history: from designs drawn up in 1497 by Leonardo to the symbolism of Mary Poppins' carpet bag in PL Travers' novel to the luggage carried by refugees travelling across continents often in what's called a Ghana Must Go bag.
Producer: Ruth Watts
Shahidha Bari is a writer, critic, Professor of Fashion Cultures and Histories at London College of Fashion and presenter of Free Thinking. She was one of the first New Generation Thinkers on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year to share their research on the radio. You can find a playlist featuring essays, discussions and features by New Generation Thinkers on the Free Thinking website and a whole host of programmes presented by Shahidha. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0144txn
Image: Artist Yayoi Kusuma at a Louis Vuitton fashion shoot
"My lady's corselet" was developed by a pioneer of free verse on the frontlines of feminism, the poet Mina Loy. Celebrated in the 1910s as the quintessential New Woman, her love of freedom was shadowed by a darker quest to perfect the female body, as her unusual designs for a figure-correcting corset show. Sophie Oliver asks how she fits into a history of body-correcting garments and cosmetic surgery, feminism and fashion. Working on both sides of the Atlantic writing poetry and designing bonkers body-altering garments: like a bracelet for office workers with a built-in ink blotter, or her ‘corselet’ to correct curvature of the spine in women - in the end Mina Loy couldn’t stop time, and her late-life poetry is full of old clothes and outcast people from the Bowery, as she reckons with – and celebrates – the fact that she has become unfashionable.
Producer: Torquil MacLeod
Image: Mina Loy, Designs for a ‘corselet’, or ‘armour for the body’, c.1941. Mina Loy papers, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Courtesy of Roger L. Conover, Mina Loy's editor and executor.
Sophie Oliver teaches English Literature at the University of Liverpool and is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council which turns academic research into radio programmes. You can find a collection of essays, discussions and features with New Generation Thinkers on the Free Thinking programme website under the playlist Ten Years of New Generation Thinkers https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08zhs35
Five Irish writers each take a passage from James Joyce’s Ulysses and, through a close reading, explore its meaning and significance within the wider work, as well as what it means to them. Reading Ulysses is a famously challenging experience for most readers, so can our Essayists help?
In the final essay of the series, novelist Nuala O'Connor chooses the last episode of the book - Penelope - which is the one Nuala discovered first. In Penelope, we hear Molly Bloom, the wife of the novel's main protagonist, speak to us.
In the extract Nuala selects, Molly lies in bed, top to tail with her husband. We hear Molly consider him and his antics - and muse on what husbands, and men in general, mean to her. Nuala examines some of her favourite phrases from the passage; she reveals some of the parallels she can see in Joyce's own biography; and she tells us why the novel's final words might prove the ultimate key to unlocking the book.
First broadcast in February 2022 to mark 100 years since the publication of Ulysses.
Presenter: Nuala O'Connor Producer: Camellia Sinclair
Five Irish writers each take a passage from James Joyce’s Ulysses and, through a close reading, explore its meaning and significance within the wider work, as well as what it means to them. Reading Ulysses is a famously challenging experience for most readers, so can our Essayists help?
In the fourth essay of the series, novelist and short story writer Mary Costello selects an excerpt from an episode full of questions and answers, known as Ithaca. The episode sees Leopold Bloom, the novel's main character, and his friend Stephen Dedalus walk back to Bloom's house in the middle of the night.
In the passage which Mary selects, Bloom has got home and turns on the tap to fill the kettle. Mary says that what follows is a "magnificent, bird's eye view of the water's journey from County Wicklow" all the way through the city to the Mr Bloom's sink. Mary argues that Ithaca is compelling not just because of the maths, science and language contained within it but also because of the fuller picture it paints of Mr Leopold Bloom.
First broadcast in February 2022 to mark a centenary since the novel's publication.
Presenter: Mary Costello Producer: Camellia Sinclair
Five Irish writers each take a passage from James Joyce’s Ulysses and, through a close reading, explore its meaning and significance within the wider work, as well as what it means to them. Reading Ulysses is a famously challenging experience for most readers, so can our Essayists help?
In the third essay of this series, acclaimed Irish writer Colm Tóibín talks about the role of songs and singing in the novel. He says that in early twentieth century Dublin, professional and amateur concerts and operatic singing flourished - and he argues that many of the characters in Ulysses are connected by music and song.
Colm selects a passage from the Sirens episode of the book which sees the character, Simon Dedalus, sing in his rich tenor voice. Colm examines the parallels between the character of Simon Dedalus and Joyce's own father, John Stanislaus Joyce - both good singers. Colm argues that all the "badness" in Simon "is washed away by his performance as singer" and he explores how the reverberations of Simon's song echo later in book.
First broadcast in February 2022 to mark a centenary since the novel's publication.
Presenter: Colm Tóibín Producer: Camellia Sinclair
Five Irish writers each take a passage from James Joyce’s Ulysses and, through a close reading, explore its meaning and significance within the wider work, as well as what it means to them. Reading Ulysses is a famously challenging experience for most readers, so can our Essayists help?
In the second essay of the series, young Irish writer John Patrick McHugh selects the fourth episode of the novel: Calypso. In it we encounter the novel's main character: Leopold Bloom. John gives us a close reading of its opening which sees Mr Bloom make breakfast for his wife and feed his cat. John says it's a chapter that "smells both of melted butter and defecation" and explores Joyce's unique description of a cat's miaow. He tells us about feeling light-headed when he first encountered Ulysses and how his experience of the book has changed on re-reading it.
First broadcast in February 2022 to mark the centenary of the novel's publication.
Presenter: John Patrick McHugh Producer: Camellia Sinclair
Five Irish writers each take a passage from James Joyce’s Ulysses and, through a close reading, explore its meaning and significance within the wider work, as well as what it means to them. Reading Ulysses is a famously challenging experience for most readers, so can our Essayists help?
In the first essay of the series, award-winning Irish writer Anne Enright explores the first couple of pages of Joyce's epic. She examines the characters of Buck Mulligan and Stephen Dedalus - the two men we first meet at the top of a tower overlooking Dublin Bay. She tells us from where Joyce drew his inspiration in creating his protagonists and she reveals a little about how she first discovered the famous tome.
First broadcast in 2022 to mark the centenary of the novel's publication.
Presenter: Anne Enright Producer: Camellia Sinclair
Since its creation a century ago, perceptions of Northern Ireland have often been dominated by stories of conflict and political unrest. But as anyone who lives there or who has visited knows, it’s a picture that’s far from complete.
Five essays reveal Another Northern Ireland in its centenary year - the idiosyncrasies of the everyday, hidden histories and untold stories, which outsiders rarely get to hear about but which each of these writers inhabits, lives and understands.
Novelist Glenn Patterson takes us into the Belfast hairdressers, clothes shops and clubs that assumed an urgent significance during the Northern Ireland Troubles.
Written and read by Glenn Patterson Producers: Ophelia Byrne and Conor Garrett
Since its creation a century ago, perceptions of Northern Ireland have often been dominated by stories of conflict and political unrest. But as anyone who lives there or who has visited knows, it’s a picture that’s far from complete.
Five essays reveal Another Northern Ireland in its centenary year - the idiosyncrasies of the everyday, hidden histories and untold stories, which outsiders rarely get to hear about but which each of these writers inhabits, lives and understands.
After discovering a message chalked on a wall, writer Claire Mitchell peels back the layers of her County Down hometown to discover a hidden radical history.
Written and read by Claire Mitchell Producers: Ophelia Byrne and Conor Garrett
Since its creation a century ago, perceptions of Northern Ireland have often been dominated by stories of conflict and political unrest. But as anyone who lives there or who has visited knows, it’s a picture that’s far from complete.
Five essays reveal Another Northern Ireland in its centenary year - the idiosyncrasies of the everyday, hidden histories and untold stories, which outsiders rarely get to hear about but which each of these writers inhabits, lives and understands.
Poet Mícheál McCann has always believed that, for queer people like him, to leave for the big city is not just a verb but a commandment. But at a traditional rural Northern Ireland wake, a mourning rite for his uncle, he reconsiders his understanding of ‘home’ and asks if it could come to mean something different.
Written and read by Mícheál McCann Producers: Ophelia Byrne and Conor Garrett
Since its creation a century ago, perceptions of Northern Ireland have often been dominated by stories of conflict and political unrest. But as anyone who lives there or who has visited knows, it’s a picture that’s far from complete. Five essays reveal Another Northern Ireland in its centenary year - the idiosyncrasies of the everyday, hidden histories and untold stories, which outsiders rarely get to hear about but which each of these writers inhabits, lives and understands.
Poet Gail McConnell talks about Northern Ireland’s connection to the sea and its inspiration in the poet Louis MacNeice’s work and life as well as her own.
Written and read by Gail McConnell Producers: Ophelia Byrne and Conor Garrett
Since its creation a century ago, perceptions of Northern Ireland have often been dominated by stories of conflict and political unrest. But as anyone who lives there or who has visited knows, it’s a picture that’s far from complete.
Five essayists reveal Another Northern Ireland in its centenary year - the idiosyncrasies of the everyday, hidden histories and untold stories, which outsiders rarely get to hear about but which each of these writers inhabits, lives and understands.
Author Jan Carson talks about the women who kept her Presbyterian church supplied with tea and traybakes when she was growing up - and reveals what they taught her about finding her own voice.
Written and read by Jan Carson Producers: Ophelia Byrne and Conor Garrett
For many of us, isolation is disconcerting and challenging, but for wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson, it is something he actively seeks, so he can fully immerse himself in a place and capture its unique sounds in his recordings.
In the last of five illustrated essays, Chris vividly recalls his quest to capture the sounds of isolation when he goes in search of the entrance to the centre of the earth. Inspired by Jules Verne’s novel he travels from sea level to volcanic crater drawn by the unique sounds of Iceland.
Produced by Sarah Blunt for BBC Audio in Bristol.
For many of us, isolation is disconcerting and challenging, but for wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson, it is something he actively seeks, so he can fully immerse himself in a place and capture its unique sounds in his recordings.
In the fourth of five illustrated essays, Chris recalls his quest to record wild voices in the darkness and isolation of Dryburn Moor in Northumberland. It can be a real challenge to find a truly isolated place in the UK, but here on the high Pennines, Chris was rewarded with a serenade of birds, which he can hear but can’t see until the night evolves into day.
Produced by Sarah Blunt for BBC Audio in Bristol.
For many of us, isolation is disconcerting and challenging, but for wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson, it is something he actively seeks, so he can fully immerse himself in a place and capture its unique sounds in his recordings.
In the third of five illustrated essays, Chris vividly recalls his quest to capture the voices of a black throated diver or, 'musta kuikka', on an isolated lake in Finland having been inspired by a painting of Lake Keitele by Akseli Gallen-Kallela. Surrounded by a vast forest, he experiences a powerful sense and spirit of place as he watches, waits and listens.
Produced by Sarah Blunt for BBC Audio in Bristol.
For many of us, isolation is disconcerting and challenging, but for wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson, it is something he actively seeks, so he can fully immerse himself in a place and capture its unique sounds in his recordings.
In the second of five illustrated essays, Chris recalls an exhausting and chilling climb to the pinnacle of Skellig Michael, an isolated rock which rises over 700ft out of the Atlantic Ocean off the south west coast of Ireland to capture the wailing cries of the inhabitants which return here at night under the cover of darkness.
Produced by Sarah Blunt for BBC Audio in Bristol.
For many of us, isolation is disconcerting and challenging, but for wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson, it is something he actively seeks, so he can fully immerse himself in a place and capture its unique sounds in his recordings.
In the first of five illustrated essays, Chris recalls a trip to Antarctica, to a landscape which has been described as ‘The Great White Silence’ to record one of the greatest transitional events on the planet; the sounds of a glacier being transformed over the Antarctic summer from a solid mountain of freshwater ice into the salt water of the Ross Sea.
Produced by Sarah Blunt for BBC Audio in Bristol. Photo courtesy Chris Watson.
The early powerful ruler who summoned spirits as well as armies. Christopher Harding portrays the lives of five colourful characters from Japan's past to answer the question, "Who are the Japanese"? Beginning in the twentieth century, he works backwards through time to reveal different dimensions of Japanese identity, encompassing sport, art, culture, politics, warfare and religion. In his final essay, Dr Harding reveals his sense of the transience of life inspired by Mount Fear on the northernmost tip of Japan's main island of Honshu. It prompts him to recall the first known named person in Japanese history, the shaman-queen Himiko.
"By the time of Himiko's birth, attempts to grapple with the strangeness of life and to find ways of belonging in the world had resolved into the role of the shaman. Himiko was likely regarded, by dint of family or force of personality, as a shaman of particular potency." She received lavish gifts from the Wei Emperor in China and, "It seems ...that alongside mustering small armies she could also summon spirits. It may have been these that her enemies feared more."
Dr Christopher Harding is Senior Lecturer in Asian Studies at the University of Edinburgh. His books include, "The Japanese: A History in Twenty Lives" and "A History of Modern Japan: In Search of a Nation, 1850 – the Present".
Producer: Sheila Cook Editor: Hugh Levinson
The 11th-century courtier who wrote what is thought to be the world's first novel. Christopher Harding portrays the lives of five colourful characters from Japan's past to answer the question, "Who are the Japanese"? Beginning in the 20th century, he works backwards through time to reveal different dimensions of Japanese identity, encompassing sport, art, culture, politics, warfare and religion. In his fourth essay, he compares Japan and the UK as mirror images of each other: two island nations, "both known for a certain reserve in their national characters, and both enjoying the stability that comes with constitutional monarchy." Murusaki Shikibu, who wrote "The Tale of Genji", had a ringside seat as lady-in-waiting to the eleventh century imperial court. "Here was a society blessed both with an almost impossible level of sophistication - in its poetry, pastimes, dress and general comportment and with female chroniclers capable of wringing every last delicious detail out of the personal foibles, fashion faux-pas and social missteps of those who inhabited it."
Dr Christopher Harding is Senior Lecturer in Asian Studies at the University of Edinburgh. His books include, "The Japanese: A History in Twenty Lives" and "A History of Modern Japan: In Search of a Nation, 1850 – the Present"
The quoted translations are taken from "The Diary of Lady Murasaki" (Penguin, 1996) by Professor Richard Bowring.
Producer: Sheila Cook Editor: Hugh Levinson
The terrifying warlord who brought much of Japan under his control. Christopher Harding portrays the lives of five colourful characters from Japan's past to answer the question, "Who are the Japanese"? Beginning in the twentieth century, he works backwards through time to reveal different dimensions of Japanese identity, encompassing sport, art, culture, politics, warfare and religion. The subject of the third essay is the ruthless sixteenth century warlord Oda Nobunaga. Living at a time when order had broken down into warring fiefdoms, he paved the way for unified secular rule in Japan by attacking the military and political influence of the Buddhist sects. A fearsome warrior steeped in samurai culture, "Nobunaga was imagining its re-unification by identifying it with himself."
Dr Christopher Harding is Senior Lecturer in Asian Studies at the University of Edinburgh. His books include, "The Japanese: A History in Twenty Lives" and "A History of Modern Japan: In Search of a Nation, 1850 – the Present".
Producer: Sheila Cook Editor: Hugh Levinson
The creator of Atom Boy, who brought Japanese cartoons to the world. Christopher Harding portrays the lives of five colourful characters from Japan's past to answer the question, "Who are the Japanese"? Beginning in the twentieth century, he works backwards through time to reveal different dimensions of Japanese identity, encompassing sport, art, culture, politics, warfare and religion. In his second essay, he describes how the artist Tezuka Osamu helped shape post-war Japanese pop culture through manga and anime, Japan's instantly recognisable style of comic books and animated films, that he made famous worldwide. Dr Harding places Tezuka in Japan's centuries' old tradition of satirical art, though reflects that his Disney inspired creations such as Atom Boy may leave him "one day remembered for fostering a form of popular culture that was insufficiently angry, satirical or creatively critical of politics."
Dr Christopher Harding is Senior Lecturer in Asian Studies at the University of Edinburgh. His books include, "The Japanese: A History in Twenty Lives" and "A History of Modern Japan: In Search of a Nation, 1850 – the Present".
Producer: Sheila Cook Editor: Hugh Levinson
The brutal coach who achieved a gold medal for Japan's women's volleyball team at the 1964 Olympics. Christopher Harding portrays the lives of five colourful characters from Japan's history to answer the question, "Who are the Japanese"? Beginning in the 20th century, he works backwards through time to reveal different dimensions of Japanese identity, encompassing sport, art, culture, politics, warfare and religion. In his first essay, Dr Harding recalls the first time Tokyo was due to host the Olympic Games in 1940. War intervened, the Games were cancelled and the young Daimatsu "The Demon" Hirobumi found himself in the army, learning tough lessons in survival. Postwar, he forged a career as the fearsome coach of the women's national volleyball team, pushing them to win gold at the Tokyo Olympics in 1964. "As the scale of destruction visited upon Asia and the Pacific by Japan became clear in the years after war's end, national self-questioning had turned into a painful business - a matter not so much of 'Who are we' as 'Is this who we are?' The opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics, in October 1964, was a precious opportunity for the Japanese to offer the world - and themselves - a more hopeful account."
Dr Christopher Harding is Senior Lecturer in Asian Studies at the University of Edinburgh. His books include, "The Japanese: A History in Twenty Lives" and "A History of Modern Japan: In Search of a Nation, 1850 – the Present".
Producer: Sheila Cook Editor: Hugh Levinson
It's the mid-1990s. Joanna Robertson lives in tumultuous Albania, where she's moved to be a journalist. King Leka Zogu returns from exile in a quest to regain his throne. Joanna meets the king as he campaigns in rural, monarchist strongholds ahead of a national referendum. But the country is unpredictable and dangerous, still in the throes of anarchy and violence, largely controlled by armed criminal groups. Does Joanna now know too much? When she’s the target of a shooting, and is later ambushed at gunpoint, she has to ask - has the time come to leave?
Presenter: Joanna Robertson Producer: Arlene Gregorius
Photo: 'Theth - waiting for transport’ by Stan Sherer, from the book ‘Long Life to Your Children!’
It's the mid-90s, and Joanna Robertson has moved to Albania to be a foreign correspondent, on a hunch that something major was about to happen there. And it has: multiple pyramid schemes collapse, leaving many destitute. In the resulting uprising, the military's arms depots are looted - 2.7 billion items of weaponry, ammunition and explosives now in the hands of a population of 3.4 million, over half of whom are under 15. The country descends into violence and anarchy, the capital Tirana gets a record number of international visitors, in the shape of the world's media - but Joanna is well ahead of them, landing her scoop.
Presenter: Joanna Robertson Producer: Arlene Gregorius
Photo: 'Theth - waiting for transport’ by Stan Sherer from the book, ‘Long Life to Your Children!’
It's the mid-90s and Joanna Robertson explores Albania's traditional north, where she finds lives are still led according to ancient rules codified in the 'Kanun'. It's a place where innocent young men are doomed to live in hiding to avoid being killed in blood feuds, and where for a woman to be unmarried is either a deep shame, or an honour - if she lives life as a man, in the absence of male siblings.
In the country's south, the collapse of a pyramid scheme in which many lost everything leads to an anti-government uprising in the city of Vlore. When demonstrators are killed, Vlore swears revenge.
Presenter: Joanna Robertson Producer: Arlene Gregorius
Photo: 'Theth - waiting for transport’ by Stan Sherer from the book, ‘Long Life to Your Children!’
It's the mid-1990s, and Joanna Robertson is settling in her new home: a crumbling flat in Albania's capital Tirana. The country is falling into crisis - miserably poor and with outbreaks of disease so bad that the World Health Organisation feels compelled to intervene. Plenty of material for Joanna to start filing her first news stories - from a bugged phone booth in a hotel, where the call has to be paid for in advance with a pile of painstakingly counted-out banknotes.
Presenter: Joanna Robertson Producer: Arlene Gregorius
Photo: 'Theth - waiting for transport’ by Stan Sherer from the book, ‘Long Life to Your Children!’
It's the mid-1990s, Albania is in turmoil after decades of communist isolation. Drawn by the mystery of a country she knows little about, Joanna Robertson sets off to go and live there. In a used car and with only essential equipment, all bought with a business loan thanks to an understanding bank manager, she buys a one-way boat ticket for a place that she only has second-hand knowledge of, gleaned from an almost-empty Albanian shop in London's Covent Garden and exiles in a Soho coffee shop.
Presenter: Joanna Robertson Producer: Arlene Gregorius
Photo: 'Theth - waiting for transport’ by Stan Sherer from the book, ‘Long Life to Your Children!'
Nobel laureate Naipaul began his career working in radio for the BBC, and it is also where writer Colin Grant met him towards the end of his life half a century later. How had the giant of Trinidadian literature changed during that time since being told to "write like a West Indian" and quickly becoming the precocious editor of Caribbean Voices? This polemical exploration celebrates his contributions, as well as examining his many contradictions.
Seventy-five years ago, the revolutionary Caribbean Voices strand was established on the Overseas Service by trailblazing Jamaican broadcaster Una Marson. Every week for over a decade, it gave exposure on radio to emerging writers from the region such as Sam Selvon, Derek Walcott and George Lamming - many for the first time. Delving into the BBC's Written Archives, five writers go in search of five important figures who contributed to the programme throughout the 1940s and 50s, each of whom changed the literary landscape in a different way. This series is part archival treasure hunt, part cultural history and part personal reflections on the people behind a landmark institution.
Producer: Ciaran Bermingham
During his time as a producer on the BBC's landmark radio programme, Henry Swanzy was credited with showcasing some of the 20th century's biggest Caribbean literary voices. His collaborator Gladys Lindo, however, has been forgotten. Academic and writer Jen McDerra finds her hidden in the archives.
Seventy-five years ago, the revolutionary Caribbean Voices strand was established on the Overseas Service by trailblazing Jamaican broadcaster Una Marson. Every week for over a decade, it gave exposure on air to emerging writers from the region such as Sam Selvon, Derek Walcott and VS Naipaul - many for the first time. For this series, five writers go in search of five important figures who contributed to the programme throughout the 1940s and 50s, each of whom changed the literary landscape in a different way.
Image: The above photo of Gladys R. Lindo is the first to be featured in the public domain. It was given to Jen McDerra by Gladys' grandaughter in Kingston, Jamaica in June 2021 and is reproduced here with the permission of her family
Producer: Ciaran Bermingham
The poet, folklorist and performer ‘Miss Lou’ made waves on air on both sides of the Atlantic. Coming to study at Rada in London shortly after WWII, her dialect verse was picked up and celebrated on the BBC through radio programmes like Caribbean Voices. For writer Kei Miller, who lovingly recalls the magic her words worked on his mother, she is rightly seen as a hero back home in Jamaica.
75 years ago, the revolutionary Caribbean Voices strand was established on the Overseas Service by trailblazing Jamaican broadcaster Una Marson. Every week for over a decade, it gave exposure on radio to emerging writers from the region such as Sam Selvon, Derek Walcott and VS Naipaul - many for the first time. Delving into the BBC's Written Archives, five writers go in search of five important figures who contributed to the programme throughout the 1940s and 50s, each of whom changed the literary landscape in a different way. The result is part archival treasure hunt, part cultural history and part personal reflection on the people behind a landmark institution.
Producer: Ciaran Bermingham
Arriving in Britain as part of the Windrush Generation, Andrew Salkey made vital contributions to the BBC's Caribbean Voices programme as a presenter, writer and reader of others work. But author of Rainbow Milk, Paul Mendez, knew little about him before coming across a striking image of man at the centre of the mid-20th century's black literary scene. Here he draws on that picture, following Salkey's journey from reading the work of other authors on air, to penning his own forgotten queer classic, Escape to an Autumn.
75 years ago, the revolutionary Caribbean Voices strand was established on the BBC's Overseas Service by trailblazing Jamaican broadcaster Una Marson. Every week for over a decade, it gave exposure on radio to emerging writers from the region such as Sam Selvon, Derek Walcott and VS Naipaul - many for the first time. Delving into the BBC's Written Archives, five writers go in search of five important figures who contributed to the programme throughout the 1940s and 50s, each of whom changed the literary landscape in a different way. The result is part archival treasure hunt, part cultural history and part personal reflection on the people behind a landmark institution.
Producer: Ciaran Bermingham
Trailblazing Jamaican broadcaster Una Marson is rightly celebrated for being the BBC's first black producer and founding an innovative radio programme. But why has her own poetry been neglected? Author of The Confessions of Frannie Langton, and herself no stranger to the airwaves, Sara Collins goes in search of Marson's voice.
75 years ago, the revolutionary Caribbean Voices strand was established on the BBC's Overseas Service. Every week for over a decade, it gave exposure to emerging writers from the region such as Sam Selvon, Derek Walcott and VS Naipaul - many for the first time. Delving into the BBC's Written Archives, five writers explore five important literary figures who contributed to the programme throughout the 1940s and 50s. The result is part archival treasure hunt, part cultural history and part personal reflection on the people behind the landmark institution.
Producer: Ciaran Bermingham
Opera singer Peter Brathwaite shares his passion for five very different singers whose voices, artistry and lives inspire and move him, and whose stories he needs to tell.
If you've listened to much pop music this century, you've almost certainly heard the voice of Alabama folk singer Vera Hall - though you might not know it. Brilliantly sampled by Moby in his single Natural Blues, Hall's extraordinary voice was recorded several times by renowned American ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax in the 1930s. To conclude his series, Peter explores what it is that makes this pretty much unknown woman's voice so particularly powerful, and reflects on why the singing human voice has the capacity to transcend time, space and situation and speak to us so deeply.
Opera singer Peter Brathwaite shares his passion for five very different singers whose voices, artistry and lives inspire and move him, and whose stories he needs to tell.
If you're asked to think of a groundbreaking singer called McFerrin, it's likely that Bobby springs to mind. But this undisputed vocal genius is in fact following in the footsteps of his father, Robert McFerrin Snr: the first ever African American man to sing at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
For Peter, Robert McFerrin's beautiful baritone voice, and his experiences singing on the global opera stage, resonate down generations of black men singing in opera. He both acts as a role model and offers insight into the cyclical nature of conversations about race and representation in classical music.
Opera singer Peter Brathwaite shares his passion for five very different singers whose voices, artistry and lives inspire and move him, and whose stories he needs to tell.
Tonight we take an unexpected turn, moving away from the world of opera and world-renowned singers into more modest, but no less impactful, territory. Eric Bentley was a renowned theatre critic and writer, but he also performed cabaret songs, especially those of his friends Bertolt Brecht and Hanns Eisler. Peter explains why Bentley's untrained but completely committed voice has always captivated him, a fellow Lancastrian, and uncovers the profound effect Bentley's work has had on his own career.
Opera singer Peter Brathwaite shares his passion for five very different singers whose voices, artistry and lives inspire and move him, and whose stories he needs to tell.
Soprano Leontyne Price was the first African American opera singer who attained true superstar status, becoming one of the most celebrated voices of all time. Peter relives his discovery of her peerless spinto soprano voice through a pile of old library vinyls, and digs deep into what made her voice so exquisite and her artistry so compelling.
Opera singer Peter Brathwaite shares his passion for five very different singers whose voices, artistry and lives inspire and move him, and whose stories he needs to tell.
‘A voice like yours is heard only once in a hundred years’: so said conductor Arturo Toscanini to Marian Anderson, the African American contralto whose concert on Easter Sunday concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1939 became a defining moment in America's civil rights movement. Peter invites us to dive with him into Anderson’s extraordinary voice, exploring its sonic qualities as well as its cultural and historical importance, and why for him, a black opera singer in 2021, Marian Anderson’s voice still resonates so deeply.
Why are mountains linked with uplifting feelings? Noreen Masud's Essay conjures the vast skies of Norfolk and the fantasy of hope felt by Kazuo Ishiguro's characters in his novel Never Let Me Go, the idea of openness described by Graham Swift in his fenland novel Waterland and the feeling of freedom felt by poet Stevie Smith who declared: "I like … flatness. It lifts the weight from the nerves and the mind."
Producer: Luke Mulhall
Dr Noreen Masud teaches literature at Durham University. You can hear her exploring aphorisms in this Sunday Feature https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000rtxb and debating Dada in this Free Thinking discussion https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000k9ws She is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who turn their research into radio.
Eight churches were set on fire, and a taste for occult rituals and satanic imagery spiralled into suicide and murder in the Norwegian Black metal scene of the 1990s. Lucy Weir looks at the lessons we can take from this dark story about the way we look at mental health and newspaper reporting.
Producer: Emma Wallace
Dr Lucy Weir is a specialist in dance and performance at the University of Edinburgh. You can hear her discussing the impact of Covid on dance performances in this Free Thinking discussion about audiences https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000nvlc and her thoughts on dance and stillness https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000k33s
She is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to work with academics to turn their research into radio.
Darragh McGee takes the long view of the risk-based games we have played throughout history. He explores the experiences of their losers and the moral censure that their losses have attracted; from the 18th-century gentry who learned to lose their fortune with good grace at the gaming tables of Bath to the twenty-first century smartphone user, facing an altogether more lonely ordeal. He considers the cultural history gambling - and, what the games we have staked our money on through the centuries, tell us about ourselves and society.
Producer: Ruth Watts
Dr Darragh McGee teaches in the Department for Health at the University of Bath. He is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year to turn their research into radio. You can hear him talking about gambling in this Free Thinking episode https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000khhq
The First Congress of Black Writers and Artists in Paris 1956 staged debates about colonial history which are still playing out in the protests of the Gilets Noirs. New Generation Thinker Alexandra Reza leafs through the pages of the journal Présence Africaine, and picks out a short story by Ousmane Sembène tracing the dreams of a young woman from Senegal. Her experiences are echoed in a new experimental patchwork of writing by Nathalie Quintane called Les enfants vont bien. And what links all of these examples is the idea of papers, cahiers and identity documents.
Producer: Emma Wallace
Alexandra Reza researches post-colonial literature at the University of Oxford. You can hear her in a Free Thinking discussion about Aimé Césaire https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000nmxf She also appears alongside Tariq Ali and Kehindre Andrews in a discussion Frantz Fanon's Writing https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000tdtn And in last week's Free Thinking episode looking at the fiction of Maryse Condé https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000v86y She is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Council to select academics to turn their research into radio.
Gold fob seals, Sheffield silver, Mesolithic stone tools - these were some of the discoveries detailed in the 28 papers, books and pamphlets published by a soldier turned archaeologist who began looking at what you might find in the soil in the middle of a World War I battlefield. In her Essay, Seren Griffiths traces the way Francis Buckley used his training for military intelligence to shape the way he set about digging up and recording objects buried both in war-torn landscapes of France and then on the Yorkshire moors around his home.
Producer: Torquil MacLeod
Dr Seren Griffiths teaches at Manchester Metropolitan University and is involved in a project to use new scientific dating techniques to write the first historical narrative for two thousand years of what was previously 'prehistoric' Neolithic and Bronze Age Britain and Ireland. She has also organised public events at the excavations she co- directs at Bryn Celli Ddu in North Wales and you can hear her talking about midsummer at a Neolithic monument in an episode of Free Thinking.
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to choose ten academics each year to turn their research into radio.
Chinatown, New York, in 1890 was described by photo-journalist Jacob Riis as "disappointing." He focused only on images of opium dens and gambling and complained about the people living there being "secretive". But could withholding your emotions be a deliberate tactic rather than a crass stereotype of inscrutability? Xine Yao has been reading short stories from the collection Mrs. Spring Fragrance, published in 1912 by Sui Sin Far and her Essay looks at what links the Asian American Exclusion Act of 1882, the first American federal law to exclude people on the basis of national or ethnic origin, to writings by the Martinican philosopher Édouard Glissant.
Producer: Caitlin Benedict.
Xine Yao researches early and nineteenth-century American literature and teaches at University College London. She hosts a podcast PhDivas and you can hear her in Free Thinking discussions about Darwin's Descent of Man, Mould-breaking Writing and in a programme with Ian Rankin and Tahmima Anam where she talks about science fiction. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to choose ten academics each year to turn their research into radio programmes.
Vivian Maier left over 150,000 negatives when she died in 2009. Her boxes and boxes of unprinted street photographs were stacked alongside shoulder-high piles of newspapers in her Chicago home. The artist Francis Bacon's studio has been painstakingly recreated in the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin complete with paint-spattered furniture and over 7,000 items. New Generation Thinker Diarmuid Hester's research looks at ideas about waste and in this Essay he considers what the difference might be between hoarding and collecting and between the stuff assembled by these artists and his own father's shelves of matchday programmes.
Producer: Luke Mulhall
Dr Diarmuid Hester is radical cultural historian of the United States after 1950, and he teaches on sexually dissident literature, art, film, and performance at the University of Cambridge. He has published a critical biography of Dennis Cooper called Wrong and you can find his Essay for Radio 3 about Cooper in the series Books to Make Space For on the Bookshelf and his postcard about Derek Jarman's garden in the Free Thinking archives. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who turn their research into radio.
The potato famine saw a Dublin barracks turned into place where starving people were given six minutes to eat their soup in silence. Tom Scott-Smith researches humanitarian relief and his Essay takes us from the father of the modern soup kitchen in 1790 Bavaria and the meaning of "to rumfordize" to Boston, America a hundred years later and a recipe developed by an MIT Professor, Ellen Swallow Richards, which dunked meat in condensed milk and flour. What lessons about society's values can we take from their different recipes for soup?
Producer: Torquil MacLeod
Tom Scott-Smith is Associate Professor of Refugee Studies and Forced Migration at the University of Oxford. He has published a book called On an Empty Stomach: Two Hundred Years of Hunger Relief, and taken part in a film project Shelter without Shelter which was the winner of one of the 2020 AHRC Research in Film Awards. This research was featured in an exhibition staged by the Imperial War Museum which you can hear about in the Free Thinking episode called Refugees.. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to choose ten academics each year who use their research to make radio programmes.
Blousy chrysanthemums pattern the cotton dress, designed for wearing indoors, that a pregnant Sophie Oliver found herself owning. It helped her come to terms with motherhood. In this Essay, the New Generation Thinker reflects upon the daydreams of Jean Rhys, the way she tried to connect with her daughter Maryvonne through clothes and examples from her fiction where fashion allows dissatisfied female characters to express and transform themselves.
Producer: Ruth Watts
Dr Sophie Oliver lectures in English at the University of Liverpool and curated an exhibition at the British Library in 2016 - Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea and the Making of an Author. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who use their research to make radio programmes. You can find Sophie discussing a novel based on the actress Ingrid Bergman, and the writing of Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath in episodes of Free Thinking available on the programme website and BBC Sounds.
Claude Mackay the Haarlem poet wrote about his experiences of an earthquake in Kingston in 1907. Twenty years earlier the city was putting itself back together following a devastating fire set off by a disgruntled employee. New Generation Thinker Christienna Fryar has been reading through diaries and archives and her Essay suggests that there are lessons we can take about the way societies rebuild after disasters.
Producer: Luke Mulhall
Dr Christienna Fryar is Lecturer in Black British History at Goldsmiths London and convenor of the MA in Black British History, the first taught masters' programme of its kind in the UK. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Council to select ten academics each year to make radio programmes based on their research. You can find a playlist of discussions, documentaries and other Essays featuring New Generation Thinkers on the Free Thinking programme website which include Christienna hosting discussions about women and slavery, and talking with Professor Olivette Otele.
The dangerous world of an explosives factory is the setting of Inez Holden’s 1944 novel There’s No Story There. A bohemian figure who went on to write film scripts for J Arthur Rank, to report on the Nuremberg Trials, and produce articles published in Cyril Connolly's magazine Horizon - Holden campaigned for workers’ rights and was close friend of George Orwell, and though she published ten books in her lifetime, she fell out of fashion - until now. New Generation Thinker Lisa Mullen re-reads her writing and finds a refreshingly modern mind.
Lisa Mullen is the author of Mid-Century Gothic: The Uncanny Objects of Modernity in British Literature and Culture after the Second World War. She teaches at the University of Cambridge and is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council which selects ten academics each year to turn their research into radio. You can hear Lisa writing on George Orwell and the contribution of his wife in a Radio 3 Essay called Who Wrote Animal Farm? https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000413q She has presented short features about Mary Wollstonecraft as a single mother https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00061ly On the blackthorn in Sloe Time https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000n6bx She has contributed to Free Thinking discussions about Contagion and Viruses https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000gbq6 and Weimar and the Subversion of Cabaret https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000b7r7 She has presented episodes of Free Thinking looking at eco-criticism https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000rw8t and Panto and magic https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000q376
Producer: Torquil MacLeod
Drugs, sex, violence and thinking about death are at the core of the George Miles cycle of five novels. New Generation Thinker Diarmuid Hester draws the links between the author Dennis Cooper and the radicalism of the Marquis de Sade. Now 68, Cooper's books have been praised for his non naturalistic writing and the texture of teenage thought that he captures in the series, which begins with Closer, and condemned for depravity. George Miles was his childhood friend and then lover, who ended up committing suicide.
Diarmuid Hester teaches at the University of Cambridge and is a 2020 New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council which selects ten academics each year to turn their research into radio. He has published WRONG: A Critical Biography of Dennis Cooper, and is now working on Nothing Ever Just Disappears: A New History of Queer Culture Through its Spaces You can hear him talking about Derek Jarman's garden in this Free Thinking https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000jgm5
Producer: Luke Mulhall
The rights of tribal people, the lives of ordinary workers and the depiction of female desire were amongst the themes explored by the writer Mahasweta Devi. Born in Dhaka in 1926, she attended the school established by Rabindranath Tagore and before her death in 2016 she had published over 100 novels and 20 collections of short stories. Sindhubala is one such story, which traces the tale of a woman made to become a healer of children and for New Generation Thinker Preti Taneja, Mahasweta's writing offers a way of using language to explore ideas about power, freedom and feminism.
Preti Taneja is the author of the novel We That Are Young. She teaches at Newcastle University and is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio. You can find other Essays by Preti available on the Radio 3 website including one looking at Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001kpc Creating Modern India explores the links between Letchworth Garden City and New Delhi https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08j9x3h You can also find her discussing Global Shakespeare and different approaches to casting his plays in this Free Thinking playlist on Shakespeare https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06406hm And a Free Thinking interview with Arundhati Roy about translation https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b5hk01
Producer: Torquil MacLeod
Dinah Mulock Craik achieved fame and fortune as the author of the 1856 bestselling novel John Halifax, Gentleman. New Generation Thinker Clare Walker Gore reads this rags-to-riches tale of an orphan boy who rises in the world through sheer hard work and sterling character and her essay looks at the way it encapsulates the most cherished values of its period – but, she argues, both it and the author are more subversive than they first appear. Though she was seen as an icon of the self-improving, respectable middle-classes, Craik had a colourful, often unconventional private life, supporting her husband with her writing and adopting a foundling, but dogged by her father, who was a dissenting preacher put into debtor's prison more than once; and her novels explore disability, forbidden desire, familial dysfunction, and the dark side of her culture’s celebration of self-made success.
Clare Walker Gore is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio programmes. She teaches at the University of Cambridge and is the author of Plotting Disability in the Nineteenth Century Novel.
You can hear Clare talk about this research in the Free Thinking episode Depicting Disability https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000p02b
She contributed to Radio 3's Essay Series Women Writers to Put Back on the Bookshelf profiling the author Margaret Oliphant https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000fws4
She has also written an Essay about a 19th-century tiger-hunting MP, who was born without hands and fee - Politician and Pioneer: Writing the Life of Arthur Kavanagh https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06ns10g
Producer: Emma Wallace
Edogawa Rampo's stories give us a Japanese version of Sherlock Holmes. New Generation Thinker Christopher Harding traces the way detective fiction chimed with the modernising of Japan, when the ability to reason and think problems through logically was celebrated, when cities were changing and other arts mourned a lost rural idyll. In The Black Lizard, the hero Akechi Kogorō plays a cat and mouse game with a female criminal who has kidnapped a businessman's daughter.
Christopher Harding is the author of The Japanese: A History in Twenty Lives and Japan Story: In Search of a Nation, 1850 - the Present (published in the US as A History of Modern Japan: In Search of a Nation, 1850 – the Present). He teaches at the University of Edinburgh. He is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who can use their research to make radio programmes.
You can find him discussing other aspects of Japanese history in the playlist Free Thinking explores South and East Asian culture https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0657spq He presented an Archive on 4 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b064ww32 and a series about Depression in Japan also for Radio 4 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07cv0y4 and a series of 5 Essays for BBC Radio 3 called Dark Blossoms about Japan's uneasy embrace of modernity https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b01kb2
Producer: Ruth Watts
If there's a subject in which England has every right to claim knowledge through experience, it is the subject of rain. Poets, politicians, or labourers, we've lived a literally and metaphorically sheltered life if we haven't felt the chill of rain on our face. In her Rainsong Essay Dr Tess Somervell pulls together the many ways in which rain has been gathered and responded to in her native land, from the bedraggled and almost inevitably soon to be betrothed costume-drama heroine, to the high romance of the romantic poets and the ancient wisdom of an unknown medieval bard. While smell and taste and sound and sight might all play a part in our collective response to rain, we also feel it, not just on our skin but in our bones.
Writer and scholar Lauren Elkin describes the very particular grey of a rainy Paris in the time of year that the French revolutionary government called Pluviôse, the month of rain. She talks about the way a particular quality of grey sheen was captured by the French Impressionists, and with it a sense of melancholy. It's a vision that recurs in art and film, from Gustave Caillebotte's 1877 Paris Street, Rainy Day, to the recent Christophe Honore film, Les Chansons d'Amour. Elkin describes the latter as appearing to have been shot through a very realistic grey-green "Paris in the rain" filter, which gives it a power and mood rooted in its setting.
In the third of her curated series of essays about the way rain is experienced across the globe, Nandini Das introduces the Australian poet and environmentalist Mark O'Connor. Mark explores the uniquely Australian experiences of rain, which include the vivid smell of it. The word petrichor was coined by Australian scientists to try and capture the odour of rain on arid lands, but there's more than just petrichor in the air, and there's also great variety in the ways in which different parts of Australia experience rain, from the flash downpours and run-offs in the so-called 'Top End', to the agonising expectation of the farms in the south and the exultant rain chorus of Queensland frogs.
When the rains of the fifth month, samidare, arrive in Japan it seems they'll never stop. In the second of Nandini Das's curated series of essays on rain and the way it's experienced across the globe, she invites art historian Timon Screech to introduce us to the rains of Japan where he now lives.
The rains that flood country and city alike are also known as the plum rains, plumping up the fruit in time for the later ripening and harvest. He talks about rain depicted in Japanese literature, particularly the Haiku, in which the sound of rain is experienced in terms of taste - the bitterness of the plum rains. And we discover the significance and symbolism of the umbrella in Japanese culture and art, including their place in nightmare imagery.
Nandini Das, Professor of Early Modern Literature and Culture at Oxford, brings us stories and personal experiences of rain and the way it informs and combines with different cultures across the globe. Each of the five essays takes a particular sense and location as focus, beginning with Nandini's native India and the sound of rainfall. She recalls the deafening, thundering rains of the monsoon season in Kolkata, and the language that captured its power. She recalls how the inherited myths and stories of India have always been informed by the uneasy balance of the country's rain and searing heat. And she recounts the musical dramas in which raags are used to call the rains and Bengali nursery rhymes carry its sound, 'brishti porey tupur tapur' (pitter-patter falls the rain).
Legendary broadcaster James Burke reveals unexpected connections between his twin passions of science and classical music. In this final essay he leads us, via steam engines, precision instruments, waterworks and iron coffins, to the modern orchestra.
Legendary broadcaster James Burke reveals unexpected connections between his twin passions of science and classical music. Today's essay ranges from Carolina pine trees, chintz, bowler hats and skyscrapers - and ends on the ivories.
Legendary broadcaster James Burke reveals unexpected connections between his twin passions of science and classical music. Today’s essay includes Italian electricity, a German baron and his séances, French carpet-making and your fridge. All on the way to the compositions of Claude Debussy.
Legendary broadcaster James Burke reveals unexpected connections between his twin passions of science and classical music. In this essay he links planetary orbits, new kinds of arithmetic, the teeny-weeny, and of course fake Scottish literature arriving naturally enough at the Romantic movement.
Legendary broadcaster James Burke reveals unexpected connections between his twin passions of science and classical music. In this first exploration he brings together such arcane stuff as organisms that might not exist, Newton and colour, French encyclopedias and a freemason’s opera.
Geoffrey Colman invites us to join him on a walk through a day as an acting coach.
Geoffrey is an acting coach, educator, broadcaster and former professor of acting at the Royal Central School of Speech of Drama, and in this series of Essays he takes listeners inside the rehearsal rooms and onto the stages of his professional life to address key questions about acting.
In this final Essay, Geoffrey describes a series of interactions inside the world of acting - a pop star trying to get in to the business, an actor trying to perfect a role, a stage star who keeps getting stuck on a particular line, and an out of work actor who's obviously struggling. As he does, he brings together all the ideas from this series of Essays, to present a picture of acting and the acting industry today.
Producer: Giles Edwards
Geoffrey Colman describes the ways in which reality TV has changed acting.
Geoffrey is an acting coach, educator, broadcaster and former professor of acting at the Royal Central School of Speech of Drama, and in this series of Essays he takes listeners inside the rehearsal rooms and onto the stages of his professional life to address key questions about acting.
In this Essay, Geoffrey describes the many ways in which reality TV has changed acting, discussing reality, truth and constructed reality.
Producer: Giles Edwards
Geoffrey Colman explores the differences between acting on stage and on screen.
Geoffrey is an acting coach, educator, broadcaster and former professor of acting at the Royal Central School of Speech of Drama, and in this series of Essays he takes listeners inside the rehearsal rooms and onto the stages of his professional life to address key questions about acting.
In this third Essay, Geoffrey discusses the differences between acting on stage and on screen - the difference, according to Sir Laurence Olivier, between handling a sword and a cup of tea. Geoffrey argues that they are completely different propositions, with completely different technical skills required to master each. Actors who can do both stage and screen are, he concludes, truly exceptional artists, because they are very much working in two different art forms. But if they are done well, no one even notices.
Producer: Giles Edwards
Geoffrey Colman asks what students learn in drama schools, as he continues his series of Essays on acting.
Geoffrey is an acting coach, educator, broadcaster and former professor of acting at the Royal Central School of Speech of Drama, and in this series of Essays he takes listeners inside the rehearsal rooms and onto the stages of his professional life to address key questions about acting.
In this second Essay Geoffrey asks what students learn in drama schools. Taking us inside the rehearsal rooms and drama school auditions of his professional life, he'll show how the history of acting tuition continues to inform practice today. But he also reveals how recent movements have upended some of that received wisdom, and challenged the intensely personal way in which graduates are assessed.
Producer: Giles Edwards
Geoffrey Colman considers the art of acting, and in this first of a new set of Essays asks: what makes a great actor?
Geoffrey is an acting coach, educator, broadcaster and former professor of acting at the Royal Central School of Speech of Drama, and in this series of Essays he takes listeners inside the rehearsal rooms and onto the stages of his professional life to address key questions about acting.
In this first episode Geoffrey asks what makes a great actor. With awards season approaching, he's interested in asking what makes for an award-winning performance. As he touches on acting technique, building a character and even an equation for great acting, Geoffrey discusses vulnerability and an actor's ability to make the audience believe.
Producer: Giles Edwards
In the last programme in a series celebrating the joys of Essex, surely the most maligned of counties, writer Gillian Darley explores the unsung delights of mid-Essex, with a trip along the Essex Way.
Known recently for the pneumonic blondes and diamond geezers of television's The Only Way Is Essex, as well as the peroxided 'Essex Girls' of the 80s, Essex seems to have an image problem. John Betjeman called it 'a stronger contrast of beauty and ugliness than any other southern English county'. This series explores the contrasts of this boundary county, this interzone, which has become a parody of itself.
Reader and writer: Gillian Darley is the author of Excellent Essex. She is a writer, broadcaster and architectural campaigner, with an OBE for her services to the Built Environment and its Conservation.
Producer: Justine Willett
In the next in a series celebrating the joys of Essex, surely the most maligned of counties, writer and social historian Ken Worpole explores Essex as a place of retreat and refuge.
Known recently for the pneumonic blondes and diamond geezers of television's The Only Way Is Essex, as well as the peroxided 'Essex Girls' of the 80s, Essex seems to have an image problem. John Betjeman called it 'a stronger contrast of beauty and ugliness than any other southern English county'. This series explores the contrasts of this boundary county, this interzone, which has become a parody of itself.
Reader and writer: Ken Worpole is an acclaimed writer with books on architecture, landscape, planning, design, and social history. He was a founder-member of openDemocracy, and is a senior professor at The Cities Institute, London Metropolitan University.
Producer: Justine Willett
In the next in a series exploring the joys of Essex, surely the most maligned and misunderstood of counties, writer and poet Lavinia Greenlaw takes us back to the formative landscape of her childhood - a place that she rejected for so long...
Known recently for the pneumonic blondes and diamond geezers of television's The Only Way Is Essex, as well as the peroxided 'Essex Girls' of the 80s, Essex seems to have an image problem. John Betjeman called it 'a stronger contrast of beauty and ugliness than any other southern English county'. This series explores the contrasts of this boundary county, this interzone, which has become a parody of itself.
Reader and writer: Lavinia Greenlaw is an acclaimed poet and novelist. Producer: Justine Willett
In the next in a series exploring the joys of Essex, surely the most overlooked and misunderstood of counties, AL Kennedy takes on a watery journey through the rivers, mudflats and reed beds of the county she now calls home.
Known recently for the pneumonic blondes and diamond geezers of television's The Only Way Is Essex, as well as the peroxided 'Essex Girls' of the 80s, Essex seems to have an image problem. John Betjeman called it 'a stronger contrast of beauty and ugliness than any other southern English county'. This series explores the contrasts of this boundary county, this interzone, which has become a parody of itself.
Reader and writer: AL Kennedy is an acclaimed novelist and short story writer.
Producer: Justine Willett
Kicking off the series exploring the joys of Essex, surely the most maligned and misunderstood of counties, singer-songwriter Billy Bragg reflects on the borderland between London and Essex that fuelled his childhood imagination
John Betjeman called Essex 'a stronger contrast of beauty and ugliness than any other southern English county'. But, known recently for the pneumonic blondes and diamond geezers of TV's The Only Way Is Essex, as well as the peroxided 'Essex Girls' of the 80s and the Tory-loving 'Basildon Man' of the 90s, Essex seems to have become a parody of itself. But Billy Bragg thinks otherwise...
Reader and writer: Billy Bragg is a singer, songwriter and activist. Producer: Justine Willett
Radio 3 presenter Jess Gillam celebrates the composer whose music unexpectedly helped her though lockdown, Johann Sebastian Bach,
Radio 3 presenter Jumoké Fashola celebrates the singer-songwriter whose music and life story helped her to find her own voice, the American Nina Simone
Radio 3 presenter Ian Skelly celebrates the composer who helped him see humanity as integrated with nature, the Frenchman Jean Mouton
Radio 3 presenter Elizabeth Alker celebrates the first "unclassified" composer, the Russian Sofia Gubaidulina
Radio 3 presenter Hannah French celebrates the composer who liberates her from "imposter syndrome", the Venetian Barbara Strozzi
Radio 3’s veteran jazz broadcaster Geoffrey Smith concludes his series on perceptions of jazz in Britain, told through his own experience as an American settling in the UK fifty years ago.
In 1963 the great tenorist Sonny Rollins provided one of the high points of Geoffrey's jazz life in a gig at the Minor Key in Detroit. Fresh from the famous sabbatical which produced his album The Bridge, he was in towering form. Nearly four decades later in October 1999 Rollins came to London for a performance at the Barbican just a few days after the fatal rail crash outside Paddington station. At the start of the concert he announced he wanted to dedicate it to the people who had died, "in hopes that they are somewhere listening." Then he played with unforgettable power and invention - Rollins at his best, than which there is nothing greater in jazz. And in the succeeding years, every time he returned to the Barbican, he produced a concert at that same peerless level, leaving his audience crying for more. Geoffrey Smith reflects on the connection this great American musician forged with his British audience over this series of astonishing performances.
Writer and broadcaster Geoffrey Smith continues his series on the changing perceptions of jazz in Britain, by taking a closer look at the celebrated British pianist and composer Stan Tracey.
Stan was an abiding presence in Geoffrey's jazz media life, as reviewer and interviewer, and Geoffrey thinks of him not just as a paragon of British jazz, but of jazz in Britain. He was the real thing, a jazz muso to the bone, totally committed to the music. And to him that's what it was. He once told Geoffrey that when he went out to a gig, he didn't say to himself "I'm going to play some jazz", but "I'm going to play some music." Jazz was his music virtually from the time he heard it, trailing down the stairs from the flat above his family home. His route to jazz keyboard went through an accordion - with which he happily played pass-the-hat gigs in pub - to achieving his own style on piano, following trips to New York as a member of shipboard bands in ‘Geraldo's Navy’. He later became house pianist at Ronnie's Scott's and a musician's favourite - the great Sonny Rollins once asked, "does anyone here realise how good he is?" Geoffrey pays tribute to a British player with an unmistakably quirky, determined personal style.
Geoffrey Smith continues his series on changing perceptions of jazz in Britain, focusing on the visits of two celebrated American artists, Duke Ellington and Bud Freeman.
Britain has always been a favourite destination for American jazz stars. It played a key role in the career of Duke Ellington, whose visit here in 1933 generated such enthusiasm among the musical elite that it convinced him to attempt more ambitious musical works. Equally smitten by the mix of British history, culture and style was the legendary Chicago saxophonist Bud Freeman, whose British affinity took roots in the 20s when he and his fellow Chicago jazz pioneers adopted the Prince of Wales as their model for dress and behaviour, and honoured him with their composition, Prince of Wails. Bud settled in London in the late 70s, when Geoffrey became his regular companion for city strolls and got to know him well.
Writer and broadcaster Geoffrey Smith continues his series on the changing perceptions of jazz in Britain, focusing on the audience.
In a culture obsessed with interpreting social signs, the British are fascinated by jazz as style, attitude, behaviour. In the 1920s, jazz was the vogue music of the Bright Young Things: the Prince of Wales himself was fond of sitting in on drums with visiting Americans. On the other end of the political spectrum, the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm saw the music as the epitome of working class art. And the fixation with the purity of jazz's folk roots drove the trad jazz boom of the 1950s, a playing style that was once seen as a sign of hip progressive politics. For Geoffrey, all this signifying makes it harder to get through to the music.
Radio 3’s veteran jazz broadcaster Geoffrey Smith reflects on the changing perceptions and appreciation of jazz in Britain, through his own experience as an American settling in the UK fifty years ago.
In this first programme Geoffrey questions the British term ‘jazzer’ and its jokey connotations which are in sharp contrast to the genre’s more serious Stateside identity as American classical music. There, the genealogy and pedigree of the genre is more complex, going back to the rich musical mix of New Orleans. As John Lewis of the Modern Jazz Quartet once said, "We didn't have Bach, Beethoven or Mozart, so we needed to create a music that could do all the things that music can do". But to the British, argues Geoffrey, the essential value of jazz is precisely that it isn't classical. Geoffrey reminds us that the two genres overlap in key expressive features, and that the immortal names in their respective pantheons have much in common.
Writer and broadcaster Lindsay Johns ends his series of essays on cities influenced by African migration in Cape Town.
Making his way around a city he knows intimately, respects abundantly and loves profusely, Lindsay asks what it means to be Capetonian. From the city's tragic racial history and its legacy, to the wave of migration from elsewhere in Africa, this is a place whose identity is constantly shifting. And as he concludes his series of essays, Lindsay ponders his own ambivalent feelings towards this demographic, political, social, spiritual change.
Producer: Giles Edwards
Writer and broadcaster Lindsay Johns continues his tour of great cities influenced by their relationship with Africa in Fort-de-France, the capital of the Caribbean island of Martinique.
On an island where, as he puts it, Gallic efficiency and Cartesian rigour rub shoulders with local Creole flavour, all in the enervating tropical heat, Lindsay examines the question of identity. Fort-de-France, says Lindsay, looks to Paris for her modus vivendi and to Africa for her raison d’être. So was the decision of Martinique’s most famous son - the poet, playwright, polymath, founder of the Negritude literary movement, politician and former Mayor of Fort-de-France, Aimé Césaire - to stave off independence and remain part of France, the right one? On his walk around the city Lindsay encounters French waiters, BMW-driving witch doctors, and a decapitated lady, as he considers this question.
Producer: Giles Edwards.
Writer and broadcaster Lindsay Johns continues his series of essays examining five great world cities through the prism of their relationship with Africa. In the Jamaican capital, Kingston, this different lens leads to a focus not on pristine beaches, sunshine and cricket, but instead on rebellion and spirituality.
Lindsay considers Jamaica's history, intimately inter-woven with the tragedies, iniquities and horror of slavery; but also one defined by those who have refused to accept that status quo, from Queen Nanny to Marcus Garvey. And as he walks the city's streets, from downtown to New Kingston, where Jamaica's thriving community of entrepreneurs, business people and scientists is based, he ponders Kingston's spiritual connections with East Africa - and Ethiopia - and how profoundly they have affected the city.
Producer: Giles Edwards
In the second of his essays on great cities which have been influenced by African migration, writer and broadcaster Lindsay Johns takes a walk around Philadelphia.
It's a city whose history is tied up with notions of America and of freedom, and as he wanders the streets of Philadelphia, Lindsay ponders the relationship between these two powerful ideas. They're not always easy to reconcile in Philadelphia - where the chronic racialised street homeless situation, the city’s poverty and stark racial divide leave him feeling a distinct lack of 'Brotherly Love' - in a city which takes that as its moniker. As Lindsay considers some of the philosophical questions which arise, he also reflects upon a community of African migrants making their home in the city with its own fascinating and surprising relationship with Philadelphia.
Producer: Giles Edwards.
Writer and broadcaster Lindsay Johns introduces his new series of essays on five great cities which have been influenced by African migration, as he discusses Marseille.
Looking for inspiration to Ian Fleming's 'Thrilling Cities', Lindsay wants to eschew the loud, brash main avenues and explore instead the quiet back alleys, abandoning tourist sites in favour of lesser known, more local and edgier haunts. But he also wants to ditch the colonial mindset always looking for European influence, and instead examine how these cities have been affected by migration from Africa.
And in Marseille, the first of his five, Lindsay finds it all: a truly Franco-African metropolis, infused with gastronomic, religious, linguistic, musical, sartorial and literary influences from the other side of the Mediterranean.
Producer: Giles Edwards
Opera singer Peter Brathwaite used lockdown creatively. Responding to the Getty Museum’s social media challenge to reproduce a work of art using only household items, he embarked on an extraordinary project: to recreate as many artworks depicting black people as possible, posting the results on social media using the hashtag #BlackPortraiture. Over 80 artworks later, Peter’s remarkable recreations of art spanning eight centuries have made a huge impression, particularly in their relevance to the Black Lives Matter movement.
As part of Black History Month on BBC Radio 3, Peter explores five of his recreations in depth, digging deeper into the stories of the black people he has brought to life. He also shares discoveries he has made about himself, his Barbadian heritage and ancestry, through the processes of researching and recreating each portrait.
In this final episode we meet artist Sonia Boyce, whose 1982 self-portrait Rice n Peas celebrates her Black British identity through the medium of food.
Opera singer Peter Brathwaite used lockdown creatively. Responding to the Getty Museum’s social media challenge to reproduce a work of art using only household items, he embarked on an extraordinary project: to recreate as many artworks depicting black people as possible, posting the results on social media using the hashtag #BlackPortraiture. Over 80 artworks later, Peter’s remarkable recreations of art spanning eight centuries have made a huge impression, particularly in their relevance to the Black Lives Matter movement.
As part of Black History Month on BBC Radio 3, Peter explores five of his recreations in depth, digging deeper into the stories of the black people he has brought to life. He also shares discoveries he has made about himself, his Barbadian heritage and ancestry, through the processes of researching and recreating each portrait.
In this fourth episode we meet a formerly enslaved African who has just been granted his freedom following Abraham Lincoln's 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, as depicted by Scottish artist Thomas Stuart Smith in his portrait The Pipe of Freedom.
Opera singer Peter Brathwaite used lockdown creatively. Responding to the Getty Museum’s social media challenge to reproduce a work of art using only household items, he embarked on an extraordinary project: to recreate as many artworks depicting black people as possible, posting the results on social media using the hashtag #BlackPortraiture. Over 80 artworks later, Peter’s remarkable recreations of art spanning eight centuries have made a huge impression, particularly in their relevance to the Black Lives Matter movement.
As part of Black History Month on BBC Radio 3, Peter explores five of his recreations in depth, digging deeper into the stories of the black people he has brought to life. He also shares discoveries he has made about himself, his Barbadian heritage and ancestry, through the processes of researching and recreating each portrait.
In this third episode we meet Emmanuel Rio, horn player and gardener in the employ of Emperor Francis I of Austria, as depicted by Austrian artist Albert Schindler in 1836.
Opera singer Peter Brathwaite used lockdown creatively. Responding to the Getty Museum’s social media challenge to reproduce a work of art using only household items, he embarked on an extraordinary project: to recreate as many artworks depicting black people as possible, posting the results on social media using the hashtag #BlackPortraiture. Over 80 artworks later, Peter’s remarkable recreations of art spanning eight centuries have made a huge impression, particularly in their relevance to the Black Lives Matter movement.
As part of Black History Month on BBC Radio 3, Peter explores five of his recreations in depth, digging deeper into the stories of the black people he has brought to life. He also shares discoveries he has made about himself, his Barbadian heritage and ancestry, through the processes of researching and recreating each portrait.
In this second episode we meet the anonymous boy who appears in the extravagant 17th-century painting The Paston Treasure, a still life that documents a wealthy family's lavish collection of objects – including a human being.
Opera singer Peter Brathwaite used lockdown creatively. Responding to the Getty Museum’s social media challenge to reproduce a work of art using only household items, he embarked on an extraordinary project: to recreate as many artworks depicting black people as possible, posting the results on social media using the hashtag #BlackPortraiture. Over 80 artworks later, Peter’s remarkable recreations of art spanning eight centuries have made a huge impression, particularly in their relevance to the Black Lives Matter movement.
As part of Black History Month on BBC Radio 3, Peter explores five of his recreations in depth, digging deeper into the stories of the black people he has brought to life. He also shares discoveries he has made about himself, his Barbadian heritage and ancestry, through the processes of researching and recreating each portrait.
In this first episode we meet Joseph Johnson, the maimed Georgian street performer and former sailor whose act involved wearing an enormous model of a ship on his head.
Five essays reflect on the impact of the Puritan Pilgrims setting sail on the ship the Mayflower 400 years ago, from Plymouth in England heading west to “the New World”. Writers look at what the anniversary means to Americans in 2020, and create portraits of some of the key players: two of the passengers, and two of the Native Americans who met them.
The tale of the 'Pilgrim Fathers' became part of the foundation myth of the United States. On the 400th anniversary of their setting sail, Nick Bryant (BBC New York correspondent) gives an overview of what the anniversary means in America this year, at a time when that myth is under scrutiny more than ever, and Margaret Verble (Cherokee writer, her book ‘Maud’s Line’ a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer) explores the motivations of Tisquantum, Native American ally and translator to the Pilgrims. Michael Goldfarb (American author, journalist and broadcaster) writes a portrait of John Alden, the crew member turned colonist, Rebecca Fraser (Historian and author of ‘The Mayflower: the Families, the Voyage, and the Founding of America’) uncovers the story of Susanna White-Winslow, Mayflower passenger, and David Silverman (American historian and author) looks at the decisions facing Metacom: a child when the Mayflower landed, he would become a resistance leader.
David J Silverman, American historian and author of ‘This Land Is Their Land’, recounts the life of Metacom, son of Massasoit, who broke the peace his father had forged with the settlers and waged a resistance that would change the course of American history.
Five essays reflect on the impact of the Puritan Pilgrims setting sail on the ship the Mayflower 400 years ago, from Plymouth in England heading west to “the New World”. Writers look at what the anniversary means to Americans in 2020, and create portraits of some of the key players: two of the passengers, and two of the Native Americans who met them.
The tale of the 'Pilgrim Fathers' became part of the foundation myth of the United States. On the 400th anniversary of their setting sail, Nick Bryant (BBC New York correspondent) gives an overview of what the anniversary means in America this year, at a time when that myth is under scrutiny more than ever, and Margaret Verble (Cherokee writer, her book ‘Maud’s Line’ a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer) explores the motivations of Tisquantum, Native American ally and translator to the Pilgrims. Michael Goldfarb (American author, journalist and broadcaster) writes a portrait of John Alden, the crew member turned colonist, Rebecca Fraser (Historian and author of ‘The Mayflower: the Families, the Voyage, and the Founding of America’) uncovers the story of Susanna White-Winslow, Mayflower passenger, and David Silverman (American historian and author) looks at the decisions facing Metacom: a child when the Mayflower landed, he would become a resistance leader.
Rebecca Fraser, author of ‘The Mayflower: The Families, the Voyage, and the Founding of America’, imagines the little recorded life of Susanna Winslow, a woman who gave birth on board the Mayflower and founded a new generation.
Five essays reflect on the impact of the Puritan Pilgrims setting sail on the ship the Mayflower 400 years ago, from Plymouth in England heading west to “the New World”. Writers look at what the anniversary means to Americans in 2020, and create portraits of some of the key players: two of the passengers, and two of the Native Americans who met them.
The tale of the 'Pilgrim Fathers' became part of the foundation myth of the United States. On the 400th anniversary of their setting sail, Nick Bryant (BBC New York correspondent) gives an overview of what the anniversary means in America this year, at a time when that myth is under scrutiny more than ever, and Margaret Verble (Cherokee writer, her book ‘Maud’s Line’ a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer) explores the motivations of Tisquantum, Native American ally and translator to the Pilgrims. Michael Goldfarb (American author, journalist and broadcaster) writes a portrait of John Alden, the crew member turned colonist, Rebecca Fraser (Historian and author of ‘The Mayflower: the Families, the Voyage, and the Founding of America’) uncovers the story of Susanna White-Winslow, Mayflower passenger, and David Silverman (American historian and author) looks at the decisions facing Metacom: a child when the Mayflower landed, he would become a resistance leader.
Michael Goldfarb, American journalist, broadcaster and author of 'Emancipation: How Liberating Europe's Jews from the Ghetto Led to Revolution and Renaissance', considers the life and legacy of John Alden, the Mayflower ship's cooper who became a settler.
Five essays reflect on the impact of the Puritan Pilgrims setting sail on the ship the Mayflower 400 years ago, from Plymouth in England heading west to “the New World”. Writers look at what the anniversary means to Americans in 2020, and create portraits of some of the key players: two of the passengers, and two of the Native Americans who met them.
The tale of the 'Pilgrim Fathers' became part of the foundation myth of the United States. On the 400th anniversary of their setting sail, Nick Bryant (BBC New York correspondent) gives an overview of what the anniversary means in America this year, at a time when that myth is under scrutiny more than ever, and Margaret Verble (Cherokee writer, her book ‘Maud’s Line’ a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer) explores the motivations of Tisquantum, Native American ally and translator to the Pilgrims. Michael Goldfarb (American author, journalist and broadcaster) writes a portrait of John Alden, the crew member turned colonist, Rebecca Fraser (Historian and author of ‘The Mayflower: the Families, the Voyage, and the Founding of America’) uncovers the story of Susanna White-Winslow, Mayflower passenger, and David Silverman (American historian and author) looks at the decisions facing Metacom: a child when the Mayflower landed, he would become a resistance leader.
Margaret Verble, author of the Pulitzer finalist novel ‘Maud’s Line’ and ‘Cherokee America’, considers the life and legacy of Squanto, a Native American man who acted as an interpreter and guide to the Pilgrim settlers, whose motives have been blurred by history.
Five essays reflect on the impact of the Puritan Pilgrims setting sail on the ship the Mayflower 400 years ago, from Plymouth in England heading west to “the New World”. Writers look at what the anniversary means to Americans in 2020, and create portraits of some of the key players: two of the passengers, and two of the Native Americans who met them.
The tale of the 'Pilgrim Fathers' became part of the foundation myth of the United States. On the 400th anniversary of their setting sail, Nick Bryant (BBC New York correspondent) gives an overview of what the anniversary means in America this year, at a time when that myth is under scrutiny more than ever. Among the other essays this week, Margaret Verble (Cherokee writer, her book ‘Maud’s Line’ a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer) explores the motivations of Tisquantum, Native American ally and translator to the Pilgrims, Michael Goldfarb (American author, journalist and broadcaster) writes a portrait of John Alden, the crew member turned colonist, Rebecca Fraser (Historian and author of ‘The Mayflower: the Families, the Voyage, and the Founding of America’) uncovers the story of Susanna White-Winslow, Mayflower passenger, and David Silverman (American historian and author) looks at the decisions facing Metacom: a child when the Mayflower landed, he would become a resistance leader.
In the first essay this week Nick Bryant gives his personal reflections on what the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower means to Americans – from Trump supporters to Native American activists - creating a picture of the USA in 2020 and the anniversary's place in it.
Dina Rezk from the University of Reading looks at politics and the role of humour as she profiles Bassem Youssef, “the Jon Stewart of Egyptian satire”. As protests reverberate around the world, she looks back at the Arab Spring and asks what we can learn from the popular culture that took off during that uprising and asks whether those freedoms remain.
You can hear her in a Free Thinking discussion about filming the Arab Spring https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0005sjw and in a discussion about Mocking Power past and present https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000dzww
You can find of Dina's research https://egyptrevolution2011.ac.uk/
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics to turn their research into radio.
Producer: Robyn Read
New Generation Thinker Brendan McGeever traces the links between anti-Semitism now and pogroms in the former Soviet Union and the language used to describe this form of racism.
Brendan McGeever lectures at the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism at Birkbeck University of London. You can hear him discussing an exhibition at the Jewish Museum exploring racial stereotypes in a Free Thinking episode called Sebald, anti-semitism, Carolyn Forché https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00050d2
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten early career academics each year to turn their research into radio.
Producer: Robyn Read
Prison breaks loom large in both literature and pop culture. But how should we evaluate them ethically? New Generation Thinker Jeffrey Howard asks what a world without prison would look like. His essay explores whether those unjustly incarcerated have the moral right to break out, whether the rest of us have an obligation to help - and what the answers teach us about the ethics of punishment today. Jeffrey Howard is an Associate Professor in the Political Science Dept at University College, London, whose work on dangerous speech has been funded by the British Academy and the Leverhulme Trust. You can find him discussing hate speech in a Free Thinking Episode https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0006tnf
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics who can turn their research into radio.
Producer: Luke Mulhall
Earlier periods of history have seen more people with scarring to their faces from duelling injuries and infectious diseases but what stopped this leading to a greater tolerance of facial difference ? Historian Emily Cock considers the case of the Puritan William Prynne and looks at a range of strategies people used to improve their looks from eye patches to buying replacement teeth from the mouths of the poor, whose low-sugar diets kept their dentures better preserved than their aristocratic neighbours. In portraits and medical histories she finds examples of the elision between beauty and morality. With techniques such as ‘Metoposcopy’, which focused on interpreting the wrinkles on your forehead and the fact that enacting the law led to deliberate cut marks being made - this Essay reflects on the difficult terrain of judging by appearance.
Emily Cock is a Leverhulm Early Career Fellow at the University of Cardiff working on a project looking at Disfigurement in Britain and its Colonies 1600 – 1850.
You can hear her discussing her research with Fay Alberti, who works on facial transplants, in a New Thinking podcast episode of the Arts & Ideas podcast called About Face https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p080p2bc
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year to turn their research into radio.
Producer: Alex Mansfield
Earlier periods of history have seen more people with scarring to their faces from duelling injuries and infectious diseases but what stopped this leading to a greater tolerance of facial difference? Historian Emily Cock considers the case of the Puritan William Prynne and looks at a range of strategies people used to improve their looks from eye patches to buying replacement teeth from the mouths of the poor, whose low-sugar diets kept their dentures better preserved than their aristocratic neighbours. In portraits and medical histories she finds examples of the elision between beauty and morality. With techniques such as ‘Metoposcopy’, which focused on interpreting the wrinkles on your forehead and the fact that enacting the law led to deliberate cut marks being made - this Essay reflects on the difficult terrain of judging by appearance.
Emily Cock is a Leverhulm Early Career Fellow at the University of Cardiff working on a project looking at Disfigurement in Britain and its Colonies 1600 – 1850. You can hear her discussing her research with Fay Alberti, who works on facial transplants, in a New Thinking podcast episode of the Arts & Ideas podcast called About Face https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p080p2bc
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year to turn their research into radio.
Producer: Alex Mansfield
Jade Halbert lectures in fashion, but has never done any sewing. She swaps pen and paper for needle and thread to create a dress from a Jean Muir pattern. In a diary charting her progress, she reflects on the skills of textile workers she has interviewed as part of a project charting the fashion trade in Glasgow and upon the banning of pins on a factory floor, the experiences of specialist sleeve setters and cutters, and whether it is ok to lick your chalk.
Jade Halbert is a Lecturer, Fashion Business and Cultural Studies at the University of Huddersfield. You can find her investigation into fashion and the high street as a Radio 3 Sunday Feature https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000gvpn and taking part in a Free Thinking discussion called The Joy of Sewing https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0002mk2
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten early career academics to turn their research into radio.
Producer: Torquil MacLeod
There is fascinating evidence that 5,000 years ago, people living in Britain and Ireland had a deep and meaningful relationship with the underworld seen in the carved chalk, animal bones and human skeletons found at Cranborne Chase in Dorset in a large pit, at the base of which had been sunk a 7-metre-deep shaft. Other examples considered in this Essay include Carrowkeel in County Sligo, the passage tombs in the Boyne Valley in eastern Ireland and the Priddy Circles in the Mendip Hills in Somerset. If prehistoric people regarded the earth as a powerful, animate being that needed to be placated and honoured, perhaps there are lessons here for our own attitudes to the world beneath our feet.
Susan Greaney is a New Generation Thinker who works for English Heritage at Stonehenge and who is studying for her PhD at Cardiff University.
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council which selects ten academics each year to turn their research into radio. You can hear her journey to Japan to compare the Jomon civilisations with Stonehenge as a Radio 3 Sunday Feature and there is an exhibition open at Stonehenge about the comparison https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000hgqx
Producer: Torquil MacLeod
Advances in robotics and virtual reality are giving us ever more 'realistic' ways of representing the world, but the quest for vivid visualisation is thousands of years old. This essay takes the guide to oratory and getting your message across written by the ancient Roman Quintilian and focuses in on a wall painting of The Judgment of Solomon in an Elizabethan house in the village of Much Hadham in Hertfordshire. Often written off as stiff, formal and artificial with arguments that the Reformation fear of idolatry stifled Elizabethan art, New Generation Thinker Christina Faraday argues that story telling and conveying vivid detail was an important part of painting in this period as art was used to communicate messages to serve social, political and religious ends.
Christina Faraday is a New Generation Thinker who lectures in the History of Art at the University of Cambridge. You can hear her discussing the history of fairgrounds at the end of a Free Thinking episode called Kindness https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000j9cd and her work on an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery of the painting of Nicholas Hilliard in a Free Thinking episode about the joy of miniatures https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0002mk2
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten early career academics each year to turn their research into radio.
Producer: Luke Mulhall
This Essay tells a story of political marches and everyday acts of radical care; of sledgehammers and bags of rice; of the struggles for justice waged by migrant domestic workers but it also charts the realisation of Ella Parry-Davies, that acknowledging publicly for the first time her own condition of epilepsy – or “coming out crip” – is part of the story of our blindness to inequalities in healthcare and living conditions faced by many migrant workers.
Ella Parry-Davies is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at The Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, University of London working on an oral history project creating sound walks by interviewing migrant domestic workers in the UK and Lebanon. You can hear her discussing her research in a Free Thinking episode called Stanley Spencer, Domestic Servants, Surrogacy https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000573q
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten early career academics each year who can turn their research into radio.
Producer: Robyn Read
When Tom Smith sets out to research allegations of racism in Berlin’s club scene, he finds himself face to face with his own past in techno’s birthplace: Detroit. Visiting the music distributor Submerge, he considers the legacy of the pioneers Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson, the influence of Afro-futurism and the work done in Berlin to popularise techno by figures including Kemal Kurum and Claudia Wahjudi. But the vibrant culture which seeks to be inclusive has been accused of whiteness and the Essay ends with a consideration of the experiences of clubbers depicted in the poetry of Michael Hyperion Küppers.
Tom Smith is a New Generation Thinker who lectures in German at the University of St Andrews. You can find another Essay from him called Masculinity Comrades in Arms recorded at the York Festival of Ideas 2019 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00061m5 and a New Thinking podcast discussion Rubble Culture to techno in postwar Germany https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07srdmh
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC with the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who turn their research into radio.
Producer: Robyn Read
Poet Kenneth Steven finds inspiration in Scotland's west coast islands. Each memoir concludes with a poem written about the island he has visited.
5. The Holy Island: a personal reflection on an uninhabited island of spiritual peace.
Poet Kenneth Steven finds inspiration in Scotland's west coast islands. Each memoir concludes with a poem written about the island he has visited.
4. Barra: Gaelic songs and dances at the southern end of the Outer Hebrides.
Poet Kenneth Steven finds inspiration in Scotland's west coast islands. Each memoir concludes with a poem written about the island he has visited.
3. Staffa: the carved pillars and grottos that brought visitors from all over the world.
Poet Kenneth Steven finds inspiration in Scotland's west coast islands. Each memoir concludes with a poem written about the island he has visited.
2. Jura: two majestic mountains and a whirlpool, where George Orwell found inspiration for 1984.
Poet Kenneth Steven finds inspiration in Scotland's west coast islands. Each memoir concludes with a poem written about the island he has visited.
1. Mingulay: in the Outer Hebrides, an island comparable in its wild beauty and isolation to St Kilda.
Diaries are one of our oldest literary traditions, conjuring questions of private confessions and public display. In this series of essays we explore five diarists of the past through the lens of the present.
In these extraordinary times, when the shift between the domestic and the out-of-reach wider world is ever more pronounced, Radio 3 has commissioned five Essays on the theme of diaries – five new diaries written during the unprecedented period of recent weeks, reflecting on the present moment and reaching out to another historical literary diarist for aid and inspiration.
5. Ian Sansom: Mince on Toast with Christopher Isherwood
Ian Sansom reflects on the supreme sociability of Christopher Isherwood through the extreme unsociability of social isolation.
Diaries are one of our oldest literary traditions, conjuring questions of private confessions and public display. In this series of essays we explore five diarists of the past through the lens of the present.
In these extraordinary times, when the shift between the domestic and the out-of-reach wider world is ever more pronounced, Radio 3 has commissioned five Essays on the theme of diaries – five new diaries written during the unprecedented period of recent weeks, reflecting on the present moment and reaching out to another historical literary diarist for aid and inspiration.
4. Ian Sansom: Cheese Dreams with Graham Greene
Ian Sansom explores his own and Graham Greene’s active dream life.
Diaries are one of our oldest literary traditions, conjuring questions of private confessions and public display. In this series of essays we explore five diarists of the past through the lens of the present.
In these extraordinary times, when the shift between the domestic and the out-of-reach wider world is ever more pronounced, Radio 3 has commissioned five Essays on the theme of diaries – five new diaries written during the unprecedented period of recent weeks, reflecting on the present moment and reaching out to another historical literary diarist for aid and inspiration.
3. Helen Mort: More Than Enough
Poet Helen Mort's daily exercise walks with her toddler echo the rooted explorations of Dorothy Wordsworth in the Lake District.
Diaries are one of our oldest literary traditions, conjuring questions of private confessions and public display. In this series of essays we explore five diarists of the past through the lens of the present.
In these extraordinary times, when the shift between the domestic and the out-of-reach wider world is ever more pronounced, Radio 3 has commissioned five Essays on the theme of diaries – five new diaries written during the unprecedented period of recent weeks, reflecting on the present moment and reaching out to another historical literary diarist for aid and inspiration.
2. AL Kennedy: Hope On, Hope Ever
The fortitude and humanity in the diaries of Antarctic explorer Edward Wilson are a counterpoint and inspiration to AL Kennedy in her days denied human contact and open space.
Diaries are one of our oldest literary traditions, conjuring questions of private confessions and public display. In this series of essays we explore five diarists of the past through the lens of the present.
In these extraordinary times, when the shift between the domestic and the out-of-reach wider world is ever more pronounced, Radio 3 has commissioned five Essays on the theme of diaries – five new diaries written during the unprecedented period of recent weeks, reflecting on the present moment and reaching out to another historical literary diarist for aid and inspiration.
1. AL Kennedy: The Towers We Founded and the Lamps We Lit
From the stasis of her confinement, AL Kennedy pursues the ever-restless wanderings of Robert Louis Stevenson.
leading writers share their secrets of places of inner sanctuary 10.Aida Edemariam
leading writers on places of inner sanctuary in times of crisis 8.michael morpurgo
Leading writers share the secrets of places of inner sanctuary 9.David Constantine
leading writers on a place of inner refuge in times of crisis 7.evie wyld
leading writers share the secrets of their internal places of refuge in times of crisis
Leading writers share secrets of their place of internal refuge 5.Alice Oswald
leading writers share the secrets of places of internal refuge in crisis 4.Tessa Hadley
leading writers evoke places of internal refuges which they visit in times of crisis
Leading writers share the secrets of places of internal refuge in times of crisis
Writers on personal places of refuge in times of crisis 1.Alan Hollinghurst
Marybeth Hamilton on the ghosts of Joe Hill and Paul Robeson and their linked fates.
Paul Robeson's life and struggle through songs .Tayo Aluko on Robeson's Zog Nit Keynmol.
Paul Robeson's life and struggle told through music. Matthew Sweet on the Canoe Song.
The life of Paul Robeson in songs. Granddaughter Susan Robeson on Ol' Man River.
Paul Robeson's life and struggle through song. Shana Redmond on No More Auction Block.
Jon Gower, writer and keen walker of the Welsh mountains, explores the unique characteristics of each of Wales's five ranges and reflects on what they mean to the people who live among them.
For many people, Wales is synonymous with its mountains. They occupy a unique place in the country's ancient mythology, its history and its culture, defining who rules the country, who lives in it, and how they survive. But each of the mountain ranges of Wales has its own unique character. In this series of The Essay, Jon Gower paints a detailed portrait of the landscape of these higher places, and in doing so, explores how they’ve shaped the country's psyche.
In ‘The Preseli Mountains’, Jon explores the most mystical range of mountains, which are barely mountains, though the highest of them, Foel Cwmcerwyn, stands tall and sentinel enough to have guided the sailors of west Wales safely to shore. On a clear day you can see not only the patterned field tapestries of Pembrokeshire – shot through with the gold threads of gorse hedges – but also nine other Welsh counties, and the charcoal edge of Ireland across the sea.
Producer: Megan Jones for BBC Cymru Wales
Jon Gower, writer and keen walker of the Welsh mountains, explores the unique characteristics of each of Wales's five ranges and reflects on what they mean to the people who live among them.
For many people, Wales is synonymous with its mountains. They occupy a unique place in the country's ancient mythology, its history and its culture, defining who rules the country, who lives in it, and how they survive. But each of the mountain ranges of Wales has its own unique character. In this series of The Essay, Jon Gower paints a detailed portrait of the landscape of these higher places, and in doing so, explores how they’ve shaped the country's psyche.
In his essay on Epynt, Jon reflects on a landscape that offers meagre grazing for animals, dotted with small ponds and peat bogs, and which remains haunted by the eviction of many inhabitants by the War Office in 1939. Given over to military training, the scything of wind through the tough grasses is for most of the year punctuated by the sound of mortar fire, anti-tank weaponry and machine guns.
Producer: Megan Jones for BBC Cymru Wales
Jon Gower, writer and keen walker of the Welsh mountains, explores the unique characteristics of each of Wales's five ranges and reflects on what they mean to the people who live among them.
For many people, Wales is synonymous with its mountains. They occupy a unique place in the country's ancient mythology, its history and its culture, defining who rules the country, who lives in it, and how they survive. But each of the mountain ranges of Wales has its own unique character. In this series of The Essay, Jon Gower paints a detailed portrait of the landscape of these higher places, and in doing so, explores how they’ve shaped the country's psyche.
Jon sees the Brecon Beacons as being all about water - from their formation by gargantuan glaciers, rumbling slowly across the land gouging valleys and shuffling rocks ever onward, to the many waterfalls tumbling into space. The most remarkable of these is Sgwd yr Eira, the ‘fall of snow’, a veritable avalanche of spume and rush where you can actually walk behind the curtain of water.
Producer: Megan Jones for BBC Cymru Wales
Jon Gower, writer and keen walker of the Welsh mountains, explores the unique characteristics of each of Wales's five ranges and reflects on what they mean to the people who live among them.
For many people, Wales is synonymous with its mountains. They occupy a unique place in the country's ancient mythology, its history and its culture, defining who rules the country, who lives in it, and how they survive. But each of the mountain ranges of Wales has its own unique character. In this series of The Essay, Jon Gower paints a detailed portrait of the landscape of these higher places, and in doing so, explores how they’ve shaped the country's psyche.
In ‘The Black Mountains’, Jon looks at the way these hills, benign and balmy on some occasions, at others beset by fierce weather, have attracted writers and poets to it like a honeypot, from Owen Sheers to Jan Morris: just as Ordnance Survey maps are covered in contour lines, so too is the landscape around here seemingly covered in lines, of poetry.
Producer: Megan Jones for BBC Cymru Wales
Jon Gower, writer and keen walker of the Welsh mountains, explores the unique characteristics of each of Wales' five ranges and reflects on what they mean to the people who live among them.
For many people, Wales is synonymous with its mountains. They occupy a unique place in the country's ancient mythology, its history and its culture, defining who rules the country, who lives in it, and how they survive. But each of the mountain ranges of Wales has its own unique character. In this series of The Essay, Jon Gower paints a detailed portrait of the landscape of these higher places, and in doing so, explores how they’ve shaped the country's psyche.
In the first essay Jon considers Snowdonia as a place of refuge, from the Welsh princes that built their castles here to take advantage of the natural defensive system, to the rare plants finding sanctuary on almost unscalable ledges. In ‘The Black Mountains’, Jon looks at the way these hills, benign and balmy on some occasions, at others beset by fierce weather, have attracted writers and poets to it like a honeypot, from Owen Sheers to Jan Morris: just as Ordnance Survey maps are covered in contour lines, so too is the landscape around here seemingly covered in lines, of poetry.
Jon sees the Brecon Beacons as being all about water - from their formation by gargantuan glaciers, rumbling slowly across the land gouging valleys and shuffling rocks ever onward, to the many waterfalls tumbling into space. The most remarkable of these is Sgwd yr Eira, the ‘fall of snow’, a veritable avalanche of spume and rush where you can actually walk behind the curtain of water.
In his essay on Epynt, Jon reflects on a landscape that offers meagre grazing for animals, dotted with small ponds and peat bogs, and which remains haunted by the eviction of many inhabitants by the War Office in 1939. Given over to military training, the scything of wind through the tough grasses is for most of the year punctuated by the sound of mortar fire, anti-tank weaponry and machine guns.
And in ‘The Preseli Mountains’, Jon explores the most mystical range of mountains, which are barely mountains, though the highest of them, Foel Cwmcerwyn, stands tall and sentinel enough to have guided the sailors of west Wales safely to shore. On a clear day you can see not only the patterned field tapestries of Pembrokeshire – shot through with the gold threads of gorse hedges – but also nine other Welsh counties, and the charcoal edge of Ireland across the sea.
Producer: Megan Jones for BBC Cymru Wales
The novel Miss Marjoribanks (1866) brought to life a large comic heroine who bucked 19th-century conventions. New Generation Thinker Clare Walker Gore outlines the prolific writing career of Margaret Oliphant and laments the way she was used by fellow novelist Virginia Woolf as a symbol of the dangers of needing to write for money to keep yourself and your family afloat.
Producer: Paula McGinley
Author of the first prose romance published in England in 1621, her reputation at court was ruined by her thinly veiled autobiographical writing. Visit the family home, Penshurst Place in Kent, and you can see Lady Mary Wroth's portrait, but New Generation Thinker Nandini Das says you can also find her in the pages of her book The Countess of Montgomery's Urania which places centre stage women who "love and are not afraid to love." Scandal led to her withdrawing it from sale and herself from public life.
Producer: Torquil MacLeod
What is a writer's duty? Katie Cooper considers Storm Jameson's campaigning for refugees, her 1940 appeal To the Conscience of the World, and why her fiction fell out of favour but is now seeing a revival of interest.
Born in Yorkshire in 1891, she wrote war novels and speculative fiction, collections of criticism - including an analysis of modern drama in Europe, the introduction to the 1952 British edition of The Diary of Anne Frank and a host of novels set in European countries. During the Second World War years she was head of PEN, the association of writers, founded in London in 1921 to promote literature and intellectual co-operation.
Katie Cooper teaches at the University of East Anglia and is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the BBC with the Arts and Humanities Research Council to turn research into radio. Her book, War, Nation and Europe in the Novels of Storm Jameson, was published April 2020. If you are an early career academic interested in applying for this year's scheme, you can find details of how to apply on the AHRC website under Funding Opportunities.
Producer: Alex Mansfield
New Generation Thinker Sophie Coulombeau argues that we should salute this woman who supported her family through her writing, who perfected sonnets about solitude before Wordsworth began writing his, and who explored the struggles of women and refugees in her fiction. Mother to 12 children, Charlotte Turner Smith wrote ten novels, three poetry collections and four children's books and translated French fiction. In 1788 her first novel, Emmeline, sold 1500 copies within months but by the time of her death in 1803 her popularity had declined and she had become destitute.
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to work with academics to turn their research into radio.
Producer: Robyn Read
New Generation Thinker Zoe Norridge describes translating the testimony of a nurse who survived the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda.
In Rwanda, Yolande Mukagasana is a well-known writer, public figure and campaigner for remembrance of the genocide. She has authored three testimonies, a collection of interviews with survivors and perpetrators and two volumes of Rwandan stories. Her work has received numerous international prizes, including an Honourable Mention for the Unesco Education for Peace Prize.
Zoe Norridge, from King’s College London, argues there should be a place for Mukagasana on our shelves in UK, alongside works from the Holocaust and other genocides. Why? Because listening to survivor voices helps us to understand the human cost of mass violence.
Producer: Luke Mulhall
As an injured soldier under house arrest, Xavier de Maistre staved off boredom by imagining every step around his drawing room was a step across a country; Virginia Woolf’s writerly wandering around central London to buy a pencil exposed the city's transformation in darkness. Inspired by these ironic quests and symbolic expeditions, five contemporary writers embark on walks of entertaining eccentricity.
Author and academic Sophie Coulombeau completes these imaginative journeys with her newborn baby navigating York - a city and self once familiar, but now elusive and uncanny.
Producer: Ciaran Bermingham
As an injured soldier under house arrest, Xavier de Maistre staved off boredom by imagining every step around his drawing room was a step across a country; Virginia Woolf’s writerly wandering around central London to buy a pencil exposed the city's transformation in darkness. Inspired by these ironic quests and symbolic expeditions, five contemporary writers embark on walks of entertaining eccentricity.
In this episode, journalist, writer and keen walker Nat Segnit seeks recovery and retreat in the unseen mountains of Ibiza, a mysticism-inspired path once trodden by Walter Benjamin.
Producer: Ciaran Bermingham
As an injured soldier under house arrest, Xavier de Maistre staved off boredom by imagining every step around his drawing room was a step across a country; Virginia Woolf’s writerly wandering around central London to buy a pencil exposed the city's transformation in darkness. Inspired by these ironic quests and symbolic expeditions, five contemporary writers embark on walks of entertaining eccentricity.
In this episode, writer and Shamanic Energy Healer Stephanie Victoire has a haunting hike in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Appalachia, meditating on the ancient paths of Native American precursors.
Producer: Ciaran Bermingham
As an injured soldier under house arrest, Xavier de Maistre staved off boredom by imagining every step around his drawing room was a step across a country; Virginia Woolf’s writerly wandering around central London to buy a pencil exposed the city's transformation in darkness. Inspired by these ironic quests and symbolic expeditions, five contemporary writers embark on walks of entertaining eccentricity.
Writer Michael Donkor continues these imaginative journeys by traversing, south to north, across Wandsworth Bridge – perhaps the Thames’ most neglected crossing, but for him a conduit between adult responsibility and childhood memory.
Producer: Ciaran Bermingham
As an injured soldier under house arrest, Xavier de Maistre staved off boredom by imagining every step around his drawing room was a step across a country; Virginia Woolf’s writerly wandering around central London to buy a pencil exposed the city's transformation in darkness. Inspired by these ironic quests and symbolic expeditions, five contemporary writers embark on walks of entertaining eccentricity.
Lancastrian writer Jenn Ashworth begins these imaginative journeys with a trip to Preston's Harris Museum, Gallery and Library, retracing her teenage footsteps and pondering the mental riches promised within.
Producer: Ciaran Bermingham
Ross Sutherland takes us to the birth of modern art as he traces the extraordinary life of Arthur Cravan. Cravan's anarchic art heralded Dada , surrealism, situationism, punk rock and alternative comedy. His whole life was an extravagant show and his influence spreads right across the 20th century.
Cravan went through life using multiple mysterious personas. He was the nephew of Oscar Wilde, a boxing champion, a notorious art critic, a scandalous performer, a deserter, the husband of modernist poet Mina Loy, and was pursued by the CIA.
This mystery story, led by writer Ross Sutherland, tracks across twenty countries as Cravan's outlandish persona shifts between incarnations. Ross's journey leads him to Cravan's greatest riddle of all - his disappearance in the Gulf of Mexico.
In this episode Ross investigates one of Cravan's most outrageous stunts.
This programme contains very strong language.
Writer and Presenter: Ross Sutherland Produced for the BBC by Melvin Rickarby Music by Jeremy Warmsley
Excerpt from Cravan's Weird Seance courtesy of Daniel Oliver
Ross Sutherland takes us to the birth of modern art as he traces the extraordinary life of Arthur Cravan. Cravan's anarchic art heralded Dada , surrealism, situationism, punk rock and alternative comedy. His whole life was an extravagant show and his influence spreads right across the 20th century.
Cravan went through life using multiple mysterious personas. He was the nephew of Oscar Wilde, a boxing champion, a notorious art critic, a scandalous performer, a deserter, the husband of modernist poet Mina Loy, and was pursued by the CIA.
This mystery story, led by writer Ross Sutherland, tracks across twenty countries as Cravan's outlandish persona shifts between incarnations. Ross's journey leads him to Cravan's greatest riddle of all - his disappearance in the Gulf of Mexico.
In this episode, with Ross hitting a series of blank walls in his research, he attempts to find search the elusive Roger Conover, an authority on Arthur Cravan.
This programme contains very strong language.
Writer and Presenter: Ross Sutherland Produced for the BBC by Melvin Rickarby Music by Jeremy Warmsley
Excerpt from Cravan's Weird Seance courtesy of Daniel Oliver
Ross Sutherland takes us to the birth of modern art as he traces the extraordinary life of Arthur Cravan. Cravan's anarchic art heralded Dada , surrealism, situationism, punk rock and alternative comedy. His whole life was an extravagant show and his influence spreads right across the 20th century.
Cravan went through life using multiple mysterious personas. He was the nephew of Oscar Wilde, a boxing champion, a notorious art critic, a scandalous performer, a deserter, the husband of modernist poet Mina Loy, and was pursued by the CIA.
This mystery story, led by writer Ross Sutherland, tracks across twenty countries as Cravan's outlandish persona shifts between incarnations. Ross's journey leads him to Cravan's greatest riddle of all - his disappearance in the Gulf of Mexico.
In this episode Ross investigates the aftermath of Cravan's mysterious vanishing,
This programme contains very strong language.
Writer and Presenter: Ross Sutherland Produced for the BBC by Melvin Rickarby Music by Jeremy Warmsley
Ross Sutherland takes us to the birth of modern art as he traces the extraordinary life of Arthur Cravan. Cravan's anarchic art heralded Dada , surrealism, situationism, punk rock and alternative comedy. His whole life was an extravagant show and his influence spreads right across the 20th century.
Cravan went through life using multiple mysterious personas. He was the nephew of Oscar Wilde, a boxing champion, a notorious art critic, a scandalous performer, a deserter, the husband of modernist poet Mina Loy, and was pursued by the CIA.
This mystery story, led by writer Ross Sutherland, tracks across twenty countries as Cravan's outlandish persona shifts between incarnations. Ross's journey leads him to Cravan's greatest riddle of all - his disappearance in the Gulf of Mexico.
In this episode Ross investigates Cravan's relationship with modernist poet Mina Loy.
This programme contains very strong language.
Writer and Presenter: Ross Sutherland Produced for the BBC by Melvin Rickarby Music by Jeremy Warmsley
Ross Sutherland takes us to the birth of modern art as he traces the extraordinary life of Arthur Cravan. Cravan's anarchic art heralded Dada , surrealism, situationism, punk rock and alternative comedy. His whole life was an extravagant show and his influence spreads right across the 20th century.
Cravan went through life using multiple mysterious personas. He was the nephew of Oscar Wilde, a boxing champion, a notorious art critic, a scandalous performer, a deserter, the husband of modernist poet Mina Loy, and was pursued by the CIA.
This mystery story, led by writer Ross Sutherland, tracks across twenty countries as Cravan's outlandish persona shifts between incarnations. Ross's journey leads him to Cravan's greatest riddle of all - his disappearance in the Gulf of Mexico.
In this episode Ross investigates Cravan's mutiple personas, to find out what lay beneath.
This programme contains very strong language.
Writer and Presenter: Ross Sutherland Produced for the BBC by Melvin Rickarby Music by Jeremy Warmsley
Excerpt from Cravan's Weird Seance courtesy of Daniel Oliver
Ross Sutherland takes us to the birth of modern art as he traces the extraordinary life of Arthur Cravan. Cravan's anarchic art heralded Dada , surrealism, situationism, punk rock and alternative comedy. His whole life was an extravagant show and his influence spreads right across the 20th century.
Cravan went through life using multiple mysterious personas. He was the nephew of Oscar Wilde, a boxing champion, a notorious art critic, a scandalous performer, a deserter, the husband of modernist poet Mina Loy, and was pursued by the CIA.
This mystery story, led by writer Ross Sutherland, tracks across twenty countries as Cravan's outlandish persona shifts between incarnations. Ross's journey leads him to Cravan's greatest riddle of all - his disappearance in the Gulf of Mexico.
In this episode Ross investigates how Cravan's used his art to evade the authorities as the First World War began.
Writer and Presenter: Ross Sutherland Produced for the BBC by Melvin Rickarby Music by Jeremy Warmsley
Excerpt from Cravan's Weird Seance courtesy of Daniel Oliver
Ross Sutherland takes us to the birth of modern art as he traces the extraordinary life of Arthur Cravan. Cravan's anarchic art heralded Dada , surrealism, situationism, punk rock and alternative comedy. His whole life was an extravagant show and his influence spreads right across the 20th century.
Cravan went through life using multiple mysterious personas. He was the nephew of Oscar Wilde, a boxing champion, a notorious art critic, a scandalous performer, a deserter, the husband of modernist poet Mina Loy, and was pursued by the CIA.
This mystery story, led by writer Ross Sutherland, tracks across twenty countries as Cravan's outlandish persona shifts between incarnations. Ross's journey leads him to Cravan's greatest riddle of all - his disappearance in the Gulf of Mexico.
In this episode Ross investigates why Cravan is known as the father of performance art.
Writer and Presenter: Ross Sutherland Produced for the BBC by Melvin Rickarby Music by Jeremy Warmsley
Excerpt from Cravan's Weird Seance courtesy of Daniel Oliver
Ross Sutherland takes us to the birth of modern art as he traces the extraordinary life of Arthur Cravan. Cravan's anarchic art heralded Dada , surrealism, situationism, punk rock and alternative comedy. His whole life was an extravagant show and his influence spreads right across the 20th century.
Cravan went through life using multiple mysterious personas. He was the nephew of Oscar Wilde, a boxing champion, a notorious art critic, a scandalous performer, a deserter, the husband of modernist poet Mina Loy, and was pursued by the CIA.
This mystery story, led by writer Ross Sutherland, tracks across twenty countries as Cravan's outlandish persona shifts between incarnations. Ross's journey leads him to Cravan's greatest riddle of all - his disappearance in the Gulf of Mexico.
In this episode Ross investigates Cravan's work as a notorious art critic.
This programme contains very strong language.
Writer and Presenter: Ross Sutherland Produced for the BBC by Melvin Rickarby Music by Jeremy Warmsley
Excerpt from Cravan's Weird Seance courtesy of Daniel Oliver
Ross Sutherland takes us to the birth of modern art as he traces the extraordinary life of Arthur Cravan. Cravan's anarchic art heralded Dada , surrealism, situationism, punk rock and alternative comedy. His whole life was an extravagant show and his influence spreads right across the 20th century.
Cravan went through life using multiple mysterious personas. He was the nephew of Oscar Wilde, a boxing champion, a notorious art critic, a scandalous performer, a deserter, the husband of modernist poet Mina Loy, and was pursued by the CIA.
This mystery story, led by writer Ross Sutherland, tracks across twenty countries as Cravan's outlandish persona shifts between incarnations. Ross's journey leads him to Cravan's greatest riddle of all - his disappearance in the Gulf of Mexico.
In this episode Ross investigates how Cravan's career as a boxer influenced his art.
This programme contains very strong language.
Writer and Presenter: Ross Sutherland Produced for the BBC by Melvin Rickarby Music by Jeremy Warmsley
Excerpt from Cravan's Weird Seance courtesy of Daniel Oliver
Ross Sutherland takes us to the birth of modern art as he traces the extraordinary life of Arthur Cravan. Cravan's anarchic art heralded Dada, surrealism, situationism, punk rock and alternative comedy. His whole life was an extravagant show and his influence spreads right across the 20th century.
Cravan went through life using multiple mysterious personas. He was the nephew of Oscar Wilde, a boxing champion, a notorious art critic, a scandalous performer, a deserter, the husband of modernist poet Mina Loy, and was pursued by the CIA.
This mystery story, led by writer Ross Sutherland, tracks across twenty countries as Cravan's outlandish persona shifts between incarnations. Ross's journey leads him to Cravan's greatest riddle of all - his disappearance in the Gulf of Mexico.
In this episode Ross comes to terms with Cravan's brazenly offensive poetry.
This programme contains very strong language.
Writer and Presenter: Ross Sutherland Produced for the BBC by Melvin Rickarby Music by Jeremy Warmsley
Five leading writers pick a novel they love and then write an original piece of fiction imagining what happened to the characters after the story ends.
When she first encountered Jane Eyre in the classroom, Philippa Gregory was looking for a love story - between Jane Eyre and the brooding Mr Rochester. Years later, she reads the book very differently.
Join Philippa as she explores the nuances within Charlotte Brontë's classic and writes an original scene, a new ending, for the book.
Producer: Camellia Sinclair
Five leading writers pick a novel they love and then write an original piece of fiction imagining what happened to the characters after the story ends.
Award-winning British-Turkish novelist Elif Shafak first glimpsed Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina on a bookshelf at school. It was only years later that she managed to get her hands on a copy. The experience stirred her soul. The romance was raw, wrong and real. But the book's ending came as a surprise.
For this Boxing Day edition, Elif imagines what would happen if Anna were able to meet her creator, Tolstoy himself, after the novel's final page.
Producer: Camellia Sinclair
Five leading writers pick a novel they love and then write an original piece of fiction imagining what happened to the characters after the story ends.
For the six-year-old AL Kennedy, Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows provided firelight calm and comfort. She still has her childhood copy, bound up in green cloth with gold lettering, the only hardback she possessed at that age. This Christmas Day, she imagines what might have happened to Mole, Rat and Badger years after the Battle of Toad Hall.
Producer: Camellia Sinclair
Five leading writers pick a novel they love and then write an original piece of fiction imagining what happened to the characters after the story ends.
Man Booker Prize winner Bernardine Evaristo first encountered Virginia Woolf's writing as a teenager, reading To the Lighthouse for her English Literature A Level. She loathed the book.
But a few years ago, she gave Woolf another go, reading Mrs Dalloway. As a writer who experiments with language and form, she marvelled at the inventiveness, how Woolf's characters float in and out of the prose.
In this Christmas Eve edition of Open Endings, Bernardine reveals her admiration for Woolf's work and imagines a different end for Clarissa Dalloway's extravagant party.
Producer: Camellia Sinclair
Five leading writers pick a novel they love and then write an original piece of fiction imagining what happened to the characters after the story ends.
In the first essay of the series, the crime writer Ian Rankin picks William Golding's Lord of the Flies. Like many students, Ian first encountered the novel at school but certain scenes and moments have stayed with him for the past 40 years. In this essay, Ian explores his relationship with the work as a teenager of the 1970s and imagines what might have happened to two of the shipwrecked boys, Ralph and Jack, once they reach adulthood.
Producer: Camellia Sinclair
In April 1881, a young African man named John Ocansey set sail from the Gold Coast (modern-day Ghana) for Liverpool in order to try and discover what had happened to goods that his father had dispatched to a Liverpudlian agent. The Africans had not received the two and a half thousand pounds they were owed in exchange for the goods, and rather than sit at home and accept the fact that they had most likely been swindled, young John Ocansey had decided to journey to the world-famous port of Liverpool and claim the money that rightfully belonged to his father. Trading between Africa and Liverpool had been established for over two centuries, and was based on the slave trade in which it was understood that Africans had no rights. Even after the abolition of the trade such attitudes persisted, but Ocansey was determined that he would not be treated as a slave.
Producer Neil McCarthy
To mark the 400 years since the arrival of African slaves to America, Jamaican-born author Anne Bailey reflects on two remarkable women pertinent to this commemoration and discusses how they have influenced her journey as a Black female historian.
Mary Prince, a West Indian slave who after enduring incredible hardships at the hands of several masters obtained her freedom and wrote an abolitionist narrative that was published in Britain. And Sally Hemings - the enigmatic enslaved mistress of Thomas Jefferson who never officially received her freedom and who never wrote her own story, yet as a historical figure looms large in history and in memory.
Anne Bailey reflects on how each of them represented freedom in their own way.
Producer Neil McCarthy
To mark 400 years since the arrival of African slaves to America, David Olusoga reflects on the life of Sarah Forbes Bonetta. As a young Dahomeyan girl called Ina, she was sold into slavery and, in an extraordinary twist of fate, was gifted to Queen Victoria and became her goddaughter Sarah Forbes Bonetta.
Producer Neil McCarthy
To mark 400 years since the arrival of African slaves to America, the author Daina Ramey Berry reflects on Isaac, who led a rebellion, and whose life ended in a final act of defiance.
Reflecting on the 400-year anniversary of African arrivals in America and the legacy of slavery, Daina Ramey Berry is drawn to an enslaved man she met while researching her book The Price for their Pound of Flesh. His name is Isaac and she learned about him through a 19th century newspaper that recorded his remarkable story. He is someone she thinks of often because of his expression of soul values which enslaved people clung to and used to resist the commodification of their bodies. Daina shares Isaac’s story, his powerful statement, and legacies of slavery that reverberate today.
Producer Neil McCarthy
To mark the 400 years since the arrival of African slaves to America, the author and playwright Caryl Phillips reflects on the life of one individual.
In February 1766, a twenty-five year old African man, Philip Quaque, arrived back in his native Africa, with an English wife. He had been taken to England as a teenager to be educated as a Christian missionary. In England he had been ordained into the church, and married, and now the young man was to serve in a slave fort as both a missionary to his own African people, and a Chaplain to the English troops and merchants stationed on the coast. His was an impossible situation, trapped as he was between the hostility of his own people and the disdain of the English. For nearly half a century he managed to maintain a life balanced between these two opposing groups, and he recorded the anxieties visited upon him in a remarkable series of letters that he dispatched back to his employers in England.
Producer Neil McCarthy
In the last of five personal takes on the Weimar Republic, Ute Lemper looks at the enduring appeal of Weimar music and song.
Film critic Clarisse Loughrey looks at the cinema of the Weimar Republic.
Katie Sutton, author of The Masculine Woman in Weimar Germany looks at sexuality in the Republic.
Blade Runner's future is now 40 years old. 5 writers explore the impact and legacy Ridley Scott's 1982 classic film where replicants escape to a retrofitted Earth only to meet their end at the hands of the washed out, titular Blade Runner played by Harrison Ford. Adapted from Philip K. Dick's equally classic 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.
Both film and book are meditations on what it is to be human but we have been looking through the eyes of the film ever since it plunged us into its acid rain, neon coated, West Coast nightmare of flaming night skies, commercial ziggurats, flying cars and fake animals. Now its future is our present. We live in a world of mass species die off, environmental crisis, rapidly developing A.I., all powerful corporations and extreme divides between rich and poor The legendary writer on film, David Thomson, takes a long hard look back at Ridley Scott's rain soaked mash up of existential noir and artificial souls. "Maybe you’ve never seen Blade Runner – but you think you have. It’s one of those films in our dreams and feeble memory. I used to think it was what it claimed to be, the story of a sour bounty hunter charged to eliminate or retire some dangerous escapees from the old scheme of how the universe was run. "
Producer: Mark Burman
Blade Runner's future is now 40 years old. 5 writers explore the impact and legacy Ridley Scott's 1982 classic film where replicants escape to a retrofitted Earth only to meet their end at the hands of the washed out, titular Blade Runner played by Harrison Ford. Adapted from Philip K. Dick's equally classic 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.
Both film and book are meditations on what it is to be human but we have been looking through the eyes of the film ever since it plunged us into its acid rain, neon coated, West Coast nightmare of flaming night skies, commercial ziggurats, flying cars and fake animals. Now its future is our present. We live in a world of mass species die off, environmental crisis, rapidly developing A.I., all powerful corporations and extreme divides between rich and poor.
Film and book have bled into our culture in many different ways. Dr Beth Singler, Junior Research Fellow in Artificial Intelligence at Homerton College, Cambridge asks what is real and fake in A.I. sex and love.
"Simulation forces us to think about how we can the ‘real’ that we seem so often to be confident about. Confident enough perhaps to reassure ourselves that the use of ‘fake’ humans as slave labour and sexbots is alright to be skimmed over in the dialogue of the human characters in Blade Runner. What does it say about the society in the world of Blade Runner that it is okay with slave replicants who fight our off-world wars and fulfil sexual needs for colonists? It gets worse. What does it say about a society that is okay with slave replicants who are only two years old?"
Producer: Mark Burman
Blade Runner's future is now 40 years old. 5 writers explore the impact and legacy Ridley Scott's 1982 classic where replicants escape to a retrofitted Earth only to meet their end at the hands of the washed out, titular Blade Runner played by, Harrison Ford. Adapted from Philip K. Dick's equally classic 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.
Both film and book are meditations on what it is to be human but we have been looking through the eyes of the film ever since it plunged us into its acid rain, neon coated, West Coast nightmare of flaming night skies, commercial ziggurats, flying cars and fake animals. Now its future is our present. We live in a world of mass species die off, environmental crisis, rapidly developing A.I., all powerful corporations & extreme divides between rich and poor.
Film and book have bled into our culture in many different ways. The writer Ken Hollings takes the Voight Kampff test as he examines the ethical barriers between us and the machine. "According to both the novel and its film adaptation, androids are committing a crime simply by not being human. And in the world of 2019, Blade Runner reveals, the punishment is enforced ‘retirement’ – or legal execution. This is the extent to which humanity holds itself responsible for its creations. "
Producer Mark Burman
Blade Runner's future is now 40 years old. 5 writers explore the impact and legacy Ridley Scott's 1982 classic where replicants escape to a retrofitted Earth only to meet their end at the hands of the washed out, titular Blade Runner played by, Harrison Ford. Adapted from Philip K. Dick's equally classic 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.
Both film and book are meditations on what it is to be human but we have been looking through the eyes of the film ever since it plunged us into its acid rain, neon coated, West Coast nightmare of flaming night skies, commercial ziggurats, flying cars and fake animals. Now its future is our present. We live in a world of mass species die off, environmental crisis, rapidly developing A.I., all powerful corporations & extreme divides between rich and poor.
Film and book have bled into our culture in many different ways. Frances Morgan, writer and researcher into electronic music at the Royal College of Art, pierces the sound barrier of a film that defined the future not only in the way it looked but in the ways we heard tomorrow through Vangelis' extraordinary fusion of music, sound & image.
"the first thing I think of is the film’s sonic environment. The main character, the Blade Runner Rick Deckard, moves through the city, from its murky streets up to its corporate penthouses, against a constant backdrop of hissing rain, distant explosions, synthesized voices from billboard-sized screens, bleeping machines, hybrid pop music, multilingual chatter and the buzz of neon. Music ebbs and flows around him: deep drones swelling into gauzy synthetic strings. His apartment pulses with a low hum. Blade Runner is suffused, saturated with sound."
Producer: Mark Burman
Blade Runner's future is now 40 year's old. Ridley Scott's 1982 classic SF vision of replicants escaping to a retrofitted Earth and meeting their end at the hands of the washed out, titular Blade Runner, Harrison Ford as Rick Deckard, is adapted from Philip K Dick's equally classic 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.
Both film and book are meditations on what it is to be human but we have been looking through the eyes of the film ever since it plunged us into its acid rain, neon-coated West Coast nightmare of flaming night skies, commercial ziggurats, flying cars and fake animals. Now its future is our present. We live in a world of mass species die-off, environmental crisis, rapidly developing AI, all-powerful corporations and extreme divides between rich and poor. Just that neon umbrellas never caught on and flying cars are still a luxury.
Film and book have bled into our culture in many different ways and in this series of The Essay 5 writers explore what it is to be human or a machine, the sonic reaches of the film, the contradictions of sex robots, the cinematic legacy. And we begin with Deyan Sudjic, emeritus director of the Design Museum, considering the filmic city of Blade Runner's Los Angeles and its bleed-out beyond the screen into architecture and design.
"The film offers a deeply ambiguous spectacle. Blade Runner is a vision of a world in which mankind has blotted out the sun and nature has gone extinct. We know that we are meant to be horrified. And yet at the same time it’s thrilling to look at, like taking in the view at midnight from a bar on the 60th floor of a Shanghai skyscraper, nursing a vodka martini in an iced glass."
Producer: Mark Burman
Camilla Smith looks at the art of the Weimar Republic.
In the first of five personal takes on the Weimar Republic, historian Jochen Hung presents his view of the Weimar Republic from Berlin.
The annual Arts Over Borders festival reaches into rural and urban communities on both sides of the Irish border. Curated with a strong sense of place and extending across four counties – from Fermanagh to Donegal, Tyrone to Derry/Londonderry- the border itself looms large in the festival.
Recorded in front of live audiences at the 2019 Arts Over Borders festival in Enniskillen and Derry/Londonderry, five writers explore the theme of boundaries.
At the Royal Grammar School, Enniskillen, the author Philip Hoare transcends the elements and talks about being shaped and reshaped by the sea.
Producers: Ophelia Byrne & Cathy Moorehead
The annual Arts Over Borders festival reaches into rural and urban communities on both sides of the Irish border. Curated with a strong sense of place and extending across four counties – from Fermanagh to Donegal, Tyrone to Derry/Londonderry- the border itself looms large in the festival.
Recorded in front of live audiences at the 2019 Arts Over Borders festival in Enniskillen and Derry/Londonderry, five writers explore the theme of boundaries.
At Derry's Guildhall, the writer and journalist Ed Vulliamy talks about the musicians transgressing the perceived barriers between youth and age, from John Cale and Bob Dylan, to Leonard Cohen and Joan Baez.
Producers: Ophelia Byrne & Cathy Moorehead
The annual Arts Over Borders festival reaches into rural and urban communities on both sides of the Irish border. Curated with a strong sense of place and extending across four counties – from Fermanagh to Donegal, Tyrone to Derry/Londonderry- the border itself looms large in the festival.
Recorded in front of live audiences at the 2019 Arts Over Borders festival in Enniskillen and Derry/Londonderry, five writers explore the theme of boundaries.
At the Royal Grammar School, Enniskillen, the writer Wendy Erskine takes us through doorways as portals into other worlds in art, literature and life.
Producers: Ophelia Byrne & Cathy Moorehead
The annual Arts Over Borders festival reaches into rural and urban communities on both sides of the Irish border. Curated with a strong sense of place and extending across four counties – from Fermanagh to Donegal, Tyrone to Derry/Londonderry- the border itself looms large in the festival.
Recorded in front of live audiences at the 2019 Arts Over Borders festival in Enniskillen and Derry/Londonderry, five writers explore the theme of boundaries.
At the Guildhall in Derry/Londonderry, poet Stephen Sexton is prompted by a description of a traditional Tory Island wedding, to talk about the margins between language and image.
Producers: Ophelia Byrne & Cathy Moorehead
The annual Arts Over Borders festival reaches into rural and urban communities on both sides of the Irish border. Curated with a strong sense of place and extending across four counties – from Fermanagh to Donegal, Tyrone to Derry/Londonderry- the border itself looms large in the festival.
In this series of The Essay, recorded in front of live audiences at the 2019 Arts Over Borders festival in Enniskillen and Derry/Londonderry, five writers explore the theme of boundaries.
At the Royal Grammar School, Enniskillen, Irish writer and broadcaster Sinéad Gleeson talks about the ways in which pain, inequality and borders can separate us.
Producers: Ophelia Byrne & Cathy Moorehead
There’s a shadow creeping across the forest in the works of JRR Tolkien. Nature may be incorruptible but the creatures of the forest cannot withstand the relentless march of evil. Slowly but surely the songbirds are replaced by giant spiders, black squirrels and rampaging goblins. Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough is joined by Mark Atherton from Oxford University for a walk through Tolkien’s forest, uncovering the influence of Anglo-Saxon legends and Middle English poems in the creation of Middle Earth.
Producer: Alasdair Cross
Lose yourself in a forest of fair maidens and knights with suspiciously shiny armour. This is a forest where the romantic couplings may be fantastical but the backdrop is meticulously drawn. Each leaf, each clump of moss is taken directly from nature. This is the mediaeval forest as reimagined by late Victorian aesthetes aghast at the grit and grime of industrialisation.
Eleanor Rosamund Baraclough is joined by Ingrid Hanson from Manchester University for a walk through this Pre-Raphaelite forest. Their spirit guide is William Morris, the writer and designer who helped create the forest in his works of fantasy fiction such as The Wood Beyond the World, beating a path to be followed by Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and J.K. Rowling.
Producer: Alasdair Cross
As he enters a woodland, perfumer, Roja Dove can be overwhelmed. This legendary nose of the perfume industry can identify 800 different scents blindfolded. Place him in a forest and he can sense narratives of sex, birth, decay and death.
Roja joins Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough for a walk in the woods to discuss how the base notes of the forest scent inspire him. The foundation of damp moss and rotting wood is warm and comforting, but a change in the breeze can bring fresh inspiration to excite the senses, just the kind of effect Roja looks for when he formulates a new perfume.
Producer: Alasdair Cross
Forests are the perfect place for outlaw artists to enact their vision. Just fourteen stops from Soho on the Central Line, Epping Forest provides a particularly convenient place to lose yourself and hide from worldly distractions.
Sculptor, Jacob Epstein used Epping as artistic inspiration and venue for innumerable affairs. But was he lost in the forest or hiding there? John Clare was incarcerated there in an asylum, a place where he lost his status as the peasant poet but found a new identity. First he believed himself to be Lord Byron, latterly he was William Shakespeare. Skip forward a hundred years and the forest continued to intrigue, sheltering the Punk collective, Crass from Big Bang London and providing a surreal playground for theatrical provocateur and forest pixie, Ken Campbell.
Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough is joined on a walk through the artistic hotspots of Epping Forest by Will Ashon, author of 'Strange Labyrinth', a cultural guidebook to the lungs of North-East London.
Producer: Alasdair Cross
The folk singer, Nancy Kerr joins Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough for a walk in the woods. Forests play a vital role in folk music, as a refuge for romantic outlaws, as a metaphor for freedom and as a space for sexual couplings, usually with the traditionally tragic ending.
Nancy explains how the early folk song collectors such as Cecil Sharp and Ralph Vaughan Williams found a vibrant folk vocabulary bristling with bushes and briars, stout oaks and wily willows. She understands just how powerfully symbolic trees and forests can be, composing her own songs of the woods and interpreting classic tales of sylvan sensuality.
Producer: Alasdair Cross
Radio 3 presenter Kate Molleson celebrates a composer whose music is particularly important to her: the Frenchwoman Eliane Radigue, whose calm and long-form sense of perspective Kate finds inspirational.
Radio 3 presenter Andrew McGregor reflects on the powerful Lamentations of English composer Thomas Tallis and their special place in his life.
Radio 3 presenter Kathryn Tickell celebrates a composer whose music is particularly important to her: the Australian-American folksong fanatic Percy Grainger.
Radio 3 presenter Tom McKinney celebrates the birdsong-inspired music of the twentieth-century French composer Olivier Messiaen and its special place in his life.
Radio 3 presenter Penny Gore celebrates a composer particularly important to her: the Moravian, Leoš Janáček, whose music is shot through with the uncertainties of life.
Radio 3 presenter Petroc Trelawny celebrates a composer whose fascinating life story and music are particularly special to him: the Englishman Lennox Berkeley.
Radio 3 presenter John Toal the French composer Maurice Ravel, whose music had a special place in his life long before he discovered an unexpected connection.
Clemency Burton-Hill celebrates the Romanian composer George Enescu, whose philosophy of the profound importance of music in all areas of life has been a particular inspiration to her.
Radio 3 presenter and poet Ian McMillan celebrates the English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, whose music has been particularly special to him ever since he first heard The Lark Ascending at the age of eight.
Radio 3 presenter Fiona Talkington celebrates the French composer Joseph Canteloube, whose famous Songs of the Auvergne have become particularly important to her during her experience of cancer.
The author Natasha Carthew on Rame Head Chapel, near Whitsand Bay, in south east Cornwall.
5/5 Natasha describes how she would write here in the wild as a child and how the chapel symbolised hope.
This week's Essays are celebrating British architecture. Each writer has a passionate connection with the building featured, revealing how our long past and complex present have led to a built environment unlike anywhere else on the planet.
Image courtesy of Natasha Carthew
Producer: Clare Walker
The writer Bridget Collins takes us backstage to Trinity Theatre, Tunbridge Wells.
4/5 Bridget reflects on repurposing old buildings and the links between church and theatre.
This week's Essays are celebrating British architecture. Each writer has a passionate connection with the building featured, revealing how our long past and complex present have led to a built environment unlike anywhere else on the planet.
Producer: Clare Walker
Author James Rebanks, the Lake District shepherd, talks about Malcolm's place, Taigh na Trathad (The Beach House) in Uig on the Isle of Lewis.
3/5 James describes how the history and sense of community on Lewis has informed the buildings and that it is "not the ‘edge of the world’, but the centre of another that we have chosen not to see".
This week's Essays are celebrating British architecture. Each writer has a passionate connection with the building featured, revealing how our long past and complex present have led to a built environment unlike anywhere else on the planet.
Image courtesy of Alistair MacCallum
Producer: Clare Walker
Novelist Beth Underdown on Rochdale Town Hall.
2/5 Beth describes how her family's personal history is tied up with the building and how Hitler reputedly admired it so much that he ordered it spared during the Second World War.
This week's Essays are celebrating British architecture. Each writer has a passionate connection with the building featured, revealing how our long past and complex present have led to a built environment unlike anywhere else on the planet.
Producer: Clare Walker
Author Louise Welsh reflects on Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Glasgow School of Art.
1/5 Louise describes her memories of the building before it was ravaged by two fires.
This week's Essays are celebrating British architecture. Each writer has a passionate connection with the building featured, revealing how our long past and complex present have led to a built environment unlike anywhere else on the planet.
Image courtesy of Alan McAteer
Producer: Clare Walker
A song about a Glaswegian tough guy begins this Essay from New Generation Thinker Alistair Fraser. Recorded with an audience at the York Festival of Ideas. To hear audience questions download the Essay as an episode of the BBC Arts&Ideas podcast.
The image of the hard man runs like an electric current through Glasgow's history. Unafraid, unabashed, with outlaw swagger, he stalks the pages of countless crime novels and TV dramas. The unpredictable tough guy, schooled in both fist and knife, a symbol of the city's industrial past. But what does being a hard man mean in the Glasgow of today, now call-centre capital of Europe? And what lessons can be drawn from his changing fates and fortunes to understand masculinity and violence elsewhere?
Alistair Fraser is Senior Lecturer in Criminology at the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research, University of Glasgow and a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker. He has spent the last fifteen years studying youth gangs and street culture around the world, and is author of two academic books, Urban Legends: Gang Identity in the Post-Industrial City (2015, Oxford University Press), and Gangs & Crime: Critical Alternatives (2017, Sage). He makes regular contributions to public debate on gangs and youth violence, and has appeared on BBC Radio 3 and 4 on Thinking Allowed, More or Less, and Free Thinking.
Alistair Fraser in a Free Thinking Festival debate about gangs https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09w7qqg Alistair Fraser looks at Doing Nothing https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09v66bh Audience questions of this Essay are found here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p02nrvk3/episodes/downloads
Producer; Jacqueline Smith
What does wearing a suit say? New Generation Thinker Sarah Goldsmith's Essay introduces an audience at York Festival of Ideas to Beau Brummel and others who have understood the mixed messages of suits through time.
England football coach Gareth Southgate's pitch-side waistcoats and 007's exquisite collection of Tom Ford suits all make one thing clear: sweatpants are out and the formal man's suit, along with its tailor, has triumphantly returned. From the colourful flamboyances of the eighteenth century to the dandy dictates of Beau Brummell and into the inky black 'Great Renunciation' of the nineteenth century, join Sarah Goldsmith for a whirlwind tour of the origins of the most ubiquitous, enduring item of male sartorial fashion and the 'second skin' of the male body, the three-piece suit.
Sarah Goldsmith is a historian of masculinity, the body and travel. She is a Leverhulme Research Fellow at the University of Leicester, an AHRC/BBC 2018 New Generation Thinker and a life-long rugby fan. Her first book, Masculinity and Danger on the Eighteenth-Century Grand Tour, is being published in 2019.
Sarah Goldsmith on the C18 craze for weightlifting https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00040wg Sarah Golsmith discusses the body past and present on Free Thinking https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b7my7k
Producer: Jacqueline Smith
Queerness might not be the most obvious association with soldiering, but New Generation Thinker Tom Smith's Essay argues that although the East German army had a reputation for unbending masculinity, it's surprising how central queerness was to the enterprise. Recorded with an audience at the York Festival of Ideas.
Brutality along the Berlin Wall, monumental Soviet-style parades, rows of saluting soldiers: these are the familiar images of the East German military. Army training promoted toughness, endurance and self-control and forced its soldiers into itchy, shapeless uniforms. Delve deeper, though, and you find countless examples of the army’s fascination with homosexuality. Even more unexpectedly, gay and bisexual soldiers found ways of expressing desires and intimacy. LGBT people have long faced discrimination and violence in arenas aimed at the promotion of traditional masculinity, but look closely and we discover that queerness has not always been as marginalised as we’d think. What can East Germany teach us about masculinity in the twenty-first century?
Tom Smith is Lecturer in German at the University of St Andrews researching gender and sexuality in German culture and a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker on the scheme that selects 10 academics each year to turn their research into radio. He has published on sexuality and masculinity in literature, film and television since the 1960s. His book on masculinity in the East German army is out in 2020. His current project explores the emotional worlds of Berlin’s music scene today.
Meet the 2019 New Generation Thinkers including Tom Smith https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0004dsv
Producer: Jacqueline Smith
Lockdown brought beards and the question of to shave or not to shave to the fore. New Generation Thinker Alun Withey looks at what made 18th-century men shave off centuries of manly growth. Recorded before an audience at the York Festival of Ideas. You can hear audience questions from the event as an episode of the BBC Arts&Ideas podcast.
To be clean-shaven was the mark of a C18 gentleman, beard-wearing marked out the rough rustic. For the first time, men were beginning to shave themselves instead of visiting the barber, and a whole new market emerged to cater for rising demand in all sorts of shaving products - soaps, pastes and powders. But the way these were promoted suggests there was confusion over exactly what the ideal man should be. On the one hand, razor makers appealed to masculine characteristics like hardness, control and temper in their advertisements whilst perfumers and other manufacturers of shaving soaps, stressed softness, ease and luxury.
So enter the world of Georgian personal grooming to discover the 18th-century's inner man.
Alun Withey lectures in the Centre for Medical History at the University of Exeter and is a Wellcome Research Fellow and a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker. He has edited an essay collection on the history of facial hair (Palgrave), curated a photographic exhibition of Victorian beards in the Florence Nightingale Museum in London and has written for BBC History Magazine and History Today. He blogs at dralun.wordpress.com
Alun Withey on C16 medical history https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p022kyp1 Alun Withey visits Bamburgh Castle https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p036l4q0 Alun Withey's article about the C19th attitude towards beards https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/31SKHd61RYxJBryrQ4NfmWJ/nine-reasons-victorians-thought-men-were-better-with-beards
Producer: Jacqueline Smith
Napoleon inspired much fiction and non-fiction. New Generation Thinker Emma Butcher looks at the publishing phenomenon that was the traumatised Napoleonic Redcoat - Recorded before an audience at the York Festival of Ideas.
The Napoleonic Wars, like all wars, had their celebrities. Chief among them, Wellington and Napoleon, whose petty rivalry and military bravado ensured their status as household names long after Waterloo. But these wars also saw the rise of a new genre of personal and sentimental war literature which took the public by storm. The writers were foot soldiers rather than officers, infantrymen like the Reverend George Gleig and John Malcolm. Both fought in some of the most decisive battles on the Continent but it is their written accounts of their daily lives, of the true nature of war, its personal costs and the terrors endured, which ensured their best-selling status. This is the story of the rise and rise of the military memoir, with foot soldier as hero, and the way his war stories were lapped up with horrified glee by the armchair readers back home, transforming the image of soldiering.
Emma Butcher is a Leverhulme Early Career Researcher at the University of Leicester and a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to select academics who can turn their research into radio. She is currently writing her second book, Children in the Age of Modern War, has written for the BBC History Magazine and made Radio 3 programmes on the Brontës, child soldiers, and children in art.
Emma Butcher on Kids with Guns https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09vz5lp Emma Butcher on Branwell Bronte https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05770my
Producer: Jacqueline Smith
Daniel Hahn considers language in the relationship between Robinson Crusoe and Man Friday, and how two meeting cultures communicate
In this series of Essays, recorded in front of an audience at the 2019 Hay Festival, five writers respond to the themes of Daniel Defoe’s ‘Robinson Crusoe’. Often described as the first novel, it's a story which still resonates, three hundred years after it was written, but also preserves the attitudes of its time. Fiona Stafford, Horatio Clare, Alex Wheatle, Alys Conran and Daniel Hahn reflect on the novel as a tale of exotic adventure, a study of isolation and a fantasy of colonial encounter.
Alys Conran reflects on the theme of isolation in Robinson Crusoe and the act of reading it as a novelist
In this series of Essays, recorded in front of an audience at the 2019 Hay Festival, five writers respond to the themes of Daniel Defoe’s ‘Robinson Crusoe’. Often described as the first novel, it's a story which still resonates, three hundred years after it was written, but also preserves the attitudes of its time. Fiona Stafford, Horatio Clare, Alex Wheatle, Alys Conran and Daniel Hahn reflect on the novel as a tale of exotic adventure, a study of isolation and a fantasy of colonial encounter.
Having enjoyed it as an eight-year-old boy, Alex Wheatle re-reads Robinson Crusoe and reflects on its themes of imperialism and slavery.
In this series of Essays, recorded in front of an audience at the 2019 Hay Festival, five writers respond to the themes of Daniel Defoe’s ‘Robinson Crusoe’. Often described as the first novel, it's a story which still resonates, three hundred years after it was written, but also preserves the attitudes of its time. Fiona Stafford, Horatio Clare, Alex Wheatle, Alys Conran and Daniel Hahn reflect on the novel as a tale of exotic adventure, a study of isolation and a fantasy of colonial encounter.
Horatio Clare explores the castaway myth, looking at what happens to the soul and mind in the great spaces and on actual desert islands.
In this series of Essays, recorded in front of an audience at the 2019 Hay Festival, five writers respond to the themes of Daniel Defoe’s ‘Robinson Crusoe’. Often described as the first novel, it's a story which still resonates, three hundred years after it was written, but also preserves the attitudes of its time. Fiona Stafford, Horatio Clare, Alex Wheatle, Alys Conran and Daniel Hahn reflect on the novel as a tale of exotic adventure, a study of isolation and a fantasy of colonial encounter.
Fiona Stafford explores ‘The Strange, Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe’, looking at what Crusoe the narrator was most surprised by, and the stranger aspects of the book
In this series of Essays, recorded in front of an audience at the 2019 Hay Festival, five writers respond to the themes of Daniel Defoe’s ‘Robinson Crusoe’. Often described as the first novel, it's a story which still resonates, three hundred years after it was written, but also preserves the attitudes of its time. Fiona Stafford, Horatio Clare, Alex Wheatle, Alys Conran and Daniel Hahn reflect on the novel as a tale of exotic adventure, a study of isolation and a fantasy of colonial encounter.
Poet and wild swimmer Elizabeth-Jane Burnett joins Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough for an inspirational dip in the chilly River Avon.
Elizabeth-Jane's latest book, The Grassling, is a nature memoir about her father, his illness and her attempts to reconnect with the fields and rivers that sustained and moulded his family for generations. Her poetry collection Swims describes a series of wild swims around Britain, connecting them to the environmental and political issues of the day.
In Worcestershire she enjoys her first taste of the River Avon, braving the cold but enjoying the sand martins, the skylarks and a low flying heron which might just find itself immortalised in Elizabeth-Jane's next poetry collection.
Producer: Alasdair Cross
Stand knee-deep in a river and consider the energy flow. Water presses against you, light reflects upon the surface. What else can you feel? Helen Czerski of University College London views the Thames with the eyes of a physicist. At low tide she takes Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough for a wade through the surprisingly clean waters separating Brentford from Kew Gardens.
How would the river look if embankments were removed and channels breached? Why do islands form and persist? Where does each drop of Thames water come from? Why can the river flow east and west at the same time?
You may never view the Thames in quite the same way again.
Producer: Alasdair Cross
For Feargal Sharkey the perfect cast is a lifelong obsession. It's the moment when man and river exist in perfect harmony. It's a passion he shares with generations of artists before him on the chalk streams of Hertfordshire. Dame Juliana Berners, Prioress of St Mary of Sopwell wrote one of the earliest books on the etiquette of hunting, hawking and fishing in the 14th century. Her work influenced Izaak Walton who opens The Compleat Angler with a vivid description of a walk from Tottenham to the waters that Feargal fishes today.
Growing up in Derry with the mountains and trout-rich rivers of Donegal on his doorstep, Feargal fished from childhood, but when the punk fame of The Undertones reached its peak he found himself in north London with only the Grand Union Canal for company. Discovering the chalk streams on the edge of the city brought fishing back into his life and since then he's dedicated himself to the preservation of these waters. England contains most of the world's chalk streams, perfect habitat for trout, waterfowl, otter and water vole, but abstraction for drinking water and pollution from farming and industry has pushed many of these rivers to the edge of destruction.
Feargal shares his determination to save the chalk streams with Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough and instructs her in the Zen art of fly fishing.
Producer: Alasdair Cross
On the banks of the River Medway, Nicola White is in search of artistic inspiration. Driftwood, perhaps? A Victorian poison bottle or a Roman pot? In the second of a series of Essays on British rivers Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough joins the mudlark artist as she combs through mud and shingle.
The Medway rises in the South Downs and passes through sleepy Maidstone but it starts to get really interesting as it broadens out into mudflats, industry and islands. It's here that Kentish history, from the 43AD Roman invasion of Britain through the peaks and troughs of the Royal Navy's Chatham Dockyards to the preparations for Nazi invasion, can be read from the shore.
Nicola collects the stories she finds there- military dog-tags, messages in bottles- and turns them into art inspired by the naïve abstraction of 20th-century St. Ives.
Producer: Alasdair Cross
Gaelic songs and stories burst with mythical water creatures, from seductive kelpies and selkies to woeful waterfall banshees. In the first of five Essays from the banks of British rivers, folk singer Julie Fowlis guides Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough through a watery Highland underworld.
Producer: Alasdair Cross
'Dear Oscar Fingal O'Flaherty Wilde,
Do you mind if I just call you Oscar? It's just you always seemed so approachable yet ultimately unknowable...a bit like the Queen.'
Continuing his series of imaginary correspondences, Ian Sansom finds he's in the gutter, looking at the stars again. As his dispatches to some of the world's great writers resume, Ian is increasingly shocked by their unexpectedly frank and direct answers...
'Dear Dante,
Did you really meant all that stuff about people being thrown into boiling pitch and tar..?'
In his on-going epistolary quest, Ian attempts to find out everything we wanted to know but were too afraid to ask.
Why did Mary Shelley start so young? How did William Trevor keep going for so long? And what exactly is the significance of Marianne Moore's tricorn hat?
Producer: Conor Garrett
'Dear Oscar Fingal O'Flaherty Wilde,
Do you mind if I just call you Oscar? It's just you always seemed so approachable yet ultimately unknowable...a bit like the Queen.'
Continuing his series of imaginary correspondences, Ian Sansom finds he's in the gutter, looking at the stars again. As his dispatches to some of the world's great writers resume, Ian is increasingly shocked by their unexpectedly frank and direct answers...
'Dear Dante,
Did you really meant all that stuff about people being thrown into boiling pitch and tar..?'
In his on-going epistolary quest, Ian attempts to find out everything we wanted to know but were too afraid to ask.
Why did Mary Shelley start so young? How did William Trevor keep going for so long? And what exactly is the significance of Marianne Moore's tricorn hat?
Producer: Conor Garrett
'Dear Oscar Fingal O'Flaherty Wilde,
Do you mind if I just call you Oscar? It's just you always seemed so approachable yet ultimately unknowable...a bit like the Queen.'
Continuing his series of imaginary correspondences, Ian Sansom finds he's in the gutter, looking at the stars again. As his dispatches to some of the world's great writers resume, Ian is increasingly shocked by their unexpectedly frank and direct answers...
'Dear Dante,
Did you really meant all that stuff about people being thrown into boiling pitch and tar..?'
In his on-going epistolary quest, Ian attempts to find out everything we wanted to know but were too afraid to ask.
Why did Mary Shelley start so young? How did William Trevor keep going for so long? And what exactly is the significance of Marianne Moore's tricorn hat?
Producer: Conor Garrett
'Dear Oscar Fingal O'Flaherty Wilde,
Do you mind if I just call you Oscar? It's just you always seemed so approachable yet ultimately unknowable...a bit like the Queen.'
Continuing his series of imaginary correspondences, Ian Sansom finds he's in the gutter, looking at the stars again. As his dispatches to some of the world's great writers resume, Ian is increasingly shocked by their unexpectedly frank and direct answers...
'Dear Dante,
Did you really meant all that stuff about people being thrown into boiling pitch and tar..?'
In his on-going epistolary quest, Ian attempts to find out everything we wanted to know but were too afraid to ask.
Why did Mary Shelley start so young? How did William Trevor keep going for so long? And what exactly is the significance of Marianne Moore's tricorn hat?
Producer: Conor Garrett
'Dear Oscar Fingal O'Flaherty Wilde,
Do you mind if I just call you Oscar? It's just you always seemed so approachable yet ultimately unknowable...a bit like the Queen.'
Continuing his series of imaginary correspondences, Ian Sansom finds he's in the gutter, looking at the stars again. As his dispatches to some of the world's great writers resume, Ian is increasingly shocked by their unexpectedly frank and direct answers...
'Dear Dante,
Did you really meant all that stuff about people being thrown into boiling pitch and tar..?'
In his on-going epistolary quest, Ian attempts to find out everything we wanted to know but were too afraid to ask.
Why did Mary Shelley start so young? How did William Trevor keep going for so long? And what exactly is the significance of Marianne Moore's tricorn hat?
Producer: Conor Garrett
You don't have to be religious to believe that, as the United Nation's Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, "all human beings have the right to be free and treated equally." However, drawing on a wide range of examples including Shakespeare's Richard III to Disney's Jiminy Cricket, New Generation Thinker Dafydd Mills Daniel argues that the UN's emphasis on "reason and conscience" as the drivers of liberty and equality make the modern conception of human rights more religious, and less liberal, than both secular proponents and conservative critics have supposed.
Dafydd Mills Daniel lectures on theology and ethics at the University of Oxford, and researches the history and development of theories of conscience.
The Essay was recorded at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead and - like all the New Generation Thinker Essays - you can hear a longer version with audience questions as a BBC Arts&Ideas podcast. You can also see Dafydd in a National Geographic TV show talking about the last Sin Eater. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvW7pxOrssU
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select 10 academics each year who can turn their research into radio.
Producer: Jacqueline Smith
You are a liberal who opposes art being banned. But would a movie that calls for you to be killed change your view of censorship? This was the quandary facing Salman Rushdie when filmmakers in Pakistan produced a James Bond-style action thriller in which a trio of Islamist guerrillas are inspired by Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa to track down and kill the author of The Satanic Verses. In the year of the 30th anniversary of the fatwa against the novelist from Iranian clerics, film historian Dr Iain Robert Smith explores what this largely-forgotten episode from the Rushdie affair can tell us about current debates on freedom of expression.
Iain Robert Smith researches the impact of globalisation on popular films made around the world. He teaches at King’s College, London.
The Essay was recorded at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead.
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select 10 academics each year who can turn their research into radio.
Producer: Fiona McLean
Was George Orwell’s wife his forgotten collaborator on one of the most famous books in the world? Lisa Mullen takes a new look at Animal Farm from the perspective of the smart and resourceful Eileen Blair – and uncovers a hidden story about sex, fertility, and the politics of women’s work. Why are some contributions less equal than others? Lisa Mullen is Steven Isenberg Junior Research Fellow at Worcester College, University of Oxford and the author of Mid-century gothic: uncanny objects in British literature and culture after the Second World War.
Her Essay is recorded with an audience at Sage Gateshead as part of the Free Thinking Festival and a longer version with audience questions is available as a BBC Arts&Ideas podcast.
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio.
Production Team:- Producer: Fiona McLean Editor: Robyn Read Production Coordinator: Juliette Harvey .
Commercial surrogacy – the practice of paying another woman to carry a pregnancy to term – has been criticised for being exploitative, particularly when poorer women are recruited. Even if these women were paid more, and the exploitation element were reduced, would unease remain about “renting out” your body in this way? This essay from New Generation Thinker Gulzaar Barn will explore what, if anything, is different about the buying and selling of bodily services from other forms of trade. Should the body should be taken off the market?
Gulzaar Barn taught philosophy at the University of Birmingham and is now researching at King’s College, London in the Dickson Poon School of Law. The Essay was recorded at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead and a longer version with audience questions is available as a BBC Arts&Ideas podcast.
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select 10 academics each year who can turn their research into radio.
Producer: Zahid Warley
Have you ever been somewhere you shouldn't? In this essay, New Generation Thinker Ben Anderson creeps around, and explains how trespassers in the early-twentieth century helped create new attitudes to nature by stepping off the path.
Descriptions of late-nineteenth century trespass and rock-climbing show how different experiences of nature led to fights with landowners and gamekeepers for the rights of urban people. People going off-piste also led to efforts to expose environmental inequalities in the Alps, and calls for the protection of wilderness as a playground for hard men. At a time of ever increasing awareness of the environment, walk your thoughts around how our own, personal experience of nature defines what we come to value, and what we might fight to protect, alter or ‘improve’.
Ben Anderson lectures in twentieth century history at Keele University. The Essay was recorded at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead and - like all the Essays this week - a longer version including audience questions is available as an Arts& Ideas podcast.
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select 10 academics each year who can turn their research into radio.
Producer: Jacqueline Smith
Daisy Black looks at religious imagery, food, anti-Semitism and product placement in medieval mystery plays. Eaten by characters, dotted around the stage as saliva-prompting props, or nibbled by audiences - a medieval religious drama is glutted with food but Christianity’s vision of God as spiritual nutrition could provoke horror and fear as well as hunger. We'll hear about some of the gristly, crunchy medieval episodes of culinary performance as the Essay investigates the relationship between faith and food. In one play, sacramental bread is attacked in a kitchen, drawing disturbing parallels between the Eucharist and cannibalism.
Daisy Black lectures in English at the University of Wolverhampton and performs as a storyteller and freelance theatre director. Her essay was recorded at this year's Free Thinking Festival with an audience at Sage Gateshead.
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select 10 academics each year who can turn their research into radio.
Producer: Luke Mulhall
Des Fitzgerald tracks the relationship between the modern city and its green environs. Drawing together psychological research with urban history and literature it asks: what would change, psychologically, socially, emotionally, if we covered the concrete and brickwork of our towns and cities with vines, plants and vertical gardens? A city is not a park but should it be?
Des Fitzgerald is a sociologist at Cardiff University who is researching health, illness and city living. The Essay was recorded at the Free Thinking Festival with an audience at Sage Gateshead.
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select 10 academics each year who can turn their research into radio.
Producer: Torquil MacLeod.
Comedian and author Viv Groskop explores five forgotten feminist futures; from the book that predicted the internet, to the world where men have been wiped out in a plague.
Episode 5/5: Woman on the Edge of Time, by Marge Piercy; a 1970s counter-culture agrarian utopia with a clear message; utopia does not have to be in the future, it can be now.
Comedian and author Viv Groskop explores five forgotten feminist futures.
Episode 4/5: The Female Man, by Joanna Russ, which tells four versions of the same woman, a complex narrative which prefigures many of the sci-fi tropes of 1970s and 1980s cinema.
Comedian and author Viv Groskop explores five forgotten feminist futures; from the book that predicted the internet to the world where men have been wiped out in a gender-specific plague.
Episode 3/5: Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The story of three gentleman explorers, who get purposefully lost on an expedition in the hope of stumbling across an all-women tribe.
Comedian and author Viv Groskop explores five forgotten feminist futures.
Episode 2/5: Mizora: A Prophecy, the 19th-century narrative written by author Mary E Bradley, who didn’t want her husband to find out that she was writing about a world without men.
Comedian and author Viv Groskop explores five forgotten feminist futures; from the book that predicted the internet, to the world where men have been wiped out in a gender-specific plague.
Episode 1/5: Three Hundred Years Hence, by Mary Griffith, often described as the first utopian novel written by a woman, fifty years before the first female suffrage amendment.
Sarah Churchwell celebrates various leading men of the silver screen from the 1930s and 1940s.
She says, "the truth is, I would have done five essays on Cary Grant, but my producer wouldn't let me... Grant embodied the unimaginable." He was also excellent at romantic comedy and drama, and this is now examined. Cherished even.
Producer: Duncan Minshull
Sarah Churchwell celebrates various leading men of the silver screen, from the 1930s and 1940s.
Joel McCrea starred in westerns and crime capers and refused some movies if the characters did not possess moral fibre. So he turned down The Postman Always Rings Twice with Lana Turner. He said he wanted to be the regular guy who 'rode off into the sunset'.
But was this his real appeal?
Producer: Duncan Minshull
Sarah Churchwell celebrates various leading men of the silver screen, from the 1930s and 1940s.
Charles Boyer played killers and gigolos, conmen and psychopaths. He was good at romantic comedy and his Frenchness made him debonair and suave. But it was the voice that was the giveaway - 'deep and purring, with a heavy French accent'. It encouraged this writer's early penchant for escapism.
Producer: Duncan Minshull
Sarah Churchwell celebrates various leading men of the silver screen from the 1930s and 1940s.
Frederic March had an amazing range, playing a lot of different types, and he should be admired for this. Off set, however, he comes under a different sort of scrutiny - "everything was harder in real life than on the effortless silver screen."
Reader: Duncan Minshull
Sarah Churchwell celebrates various leading men of the silver screen, from the 1930s and 1940s:
First off is Clark Gable and Gone with the Wind of course. And countless other films where this classic star could exercise his physical presence. And, according to the writer, his appeal lay as an 'object fought over by women'.
Is this his only talent?
Producer: Duncan Minshull
Writer and broadcaster AL Kennedy concludes her exploration of voice. Today, make some noise before it's too late.
Written and read by AL Kennedy. Producer: Justine Willett
Writer and broadcaster AL Kennedy continues her exploration of voice. Today, she compares the soothing radio voices of her childhood with the angry voices of today's media.
Written and read by AL Kennedy. Producer: Justine Willett
Acclaimed writer AL Kennedy continues her exploration of voice. Today, she looks at the voice on the page - and the importance of telling our stories.
Written and read by AL Kennedy. Producer: Justine Willett
Acclaimed writer and broadcaster AL Kennedy continues her exploration of voice. Today, she looks at the importance of conversation and of being heard.
Written and read by AL Kennedy. Producer: Justine Willett
Using her own voice recordings, writer AL Kennedy explores the power of voice and what it can say about us.
Written and read by AL Kennedy. Producer: Justine Willett
Andrew Martin's five essays that muse on the county of his birth and upbringing:
Sitting on a bench in Scarborough station, he recalls the Yorkshire coast of his youth. This takes in Whitby and Bram Stoker. Robin Hood Bay and the roofs of its houses. Filey and its rock-pools.
And Hull.
Producer: Duncan Minshull
Andrew Martin's five essays that muse on the county of his birth and upbringing.
He thinks he's best able to evoke a Yorkshire steeped in the past, but what about the future. Yorkshire independence? Its young people? The world of retail? There is much to consider.
Producer: Duncan Minshull
Andrew Martin's five essays that muse on the county of his birth and upbringing:
This time, he ponders questions of class in God's Own County. "My dad was one of the men who went to work in suits, being a clerk on British Rail. He got on with the men in overalls, but he tried to stop me speaking like them." The author has enjoyed class mobility, and after recollections of his upbringing, he gets to hear from a friend about the 'County Set'.
Producer: Duncan Minshull
Andrew Martin's five essays that muse on the county of his birth and upbringing:
This time, Andrew ponders the age-old question to do with Yorkshire and Lancashire rivalries - who comes out on top? Time to delve deep into each region's culture to come up with an explanation. But surely this author is biased?
Producer: Duncan Minshull
Andrew Martin's five essays that muse on the county of his birth and upbringing:
To begin, he is getting up there by train from London, thinking about his 'Tyke' identity. Also, who are the exemplars of God's Own County? - it's time to name some names.
Then, before long, he arrives in York...
Producer: Duncan Minshull
1819 was a stunningly fertile year for John Keats, when he wrote five of the greatest odes in the English language and actually introduced words and phrases never heard before - "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.....", "Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty....." . "O for a beaker full of the warm South....."
Five leading contemporary poets each celebrate a single ode.
5. Paul Batchelor on Ode to Psyche
Keats wrote "Ode to Psyche" in spring of 1819 and it was the first of his great odes in that year, , which include "Ode on a Grecian Urn" and "Ode to a Nightingale".
Poet Paul Batchelor explores what is perhaps the least familiar of the great 1819 odes for contemporary readers.
Producer: Beaty Rubens
1819 was a stunningly fertile year for John Keats, when he wrote five of the greatest odes in the English language and actually introduced words and phrases never heard before - "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.....", "Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty....." "O for a beaker full of the warm South....."
Five leading contemporary poets each celebrate a single ode.
4. Sasha Dugdale on Ode to a Nightingale
Producer; Beaty Rubens
In 1819, John Keats wrote five of the greatest odes in the English language. Five leading contemporary poets each celebrate a single ode.
2. Sean O'Brien on Ode on Melancholy
1819 was a stunningly fertile year for John Keats, when he wrote five of the greatest odes in the English language and actually introduced words and phrases never heard before - "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.....", "Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty....."
The multiple award-winning poet Sean O'Brien explores the depth and meaning of Ode on Melancholy, both uncovering Keats' mastery of the language and sharing how important the poem has been to him personally since the loss of fellow-poet and friend Michael Donaghy, who used to recite the ode by heart.
Producer : Beaty Rubens
1819 was a stunningly fertile year for John Keats, when he wrote five of the greatest and most frequently anthologised odes in the English language, fresh-minting phrases now in common use , such as "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.....","Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty....." and "O, for a beaker full of the warm South....."
All this week, leading contemporary poets each celebrate a single ode, explaining what it means to them.
From her home in rural Devon, Alice Oswald brings together her unique blend of poetic sensibility, classical scholarship and personal impressions as she explores Keats' great poem, Ode on a Grecian Urn.
Classically educated poet and former gardener Alice Oswald has won many awards and is commonly considered to be amongst the greatest poets writing in English today.
Producer: Beaty Rubens
1819 was a stunningly fertile year for John Keats, when he wrote five of the greatest odes in the English language and actually introduced words and phrases never heard before - "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.....", "Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty....." . Five leading contemporary poets each celebrate a single ode.
3. Frances Leviston celebrates perhaps Keats' best-loved and most frequently anthologised poem, Ode to Autumn, exploring both its depiction of the bounty of autumn and its forebodings of death.
Producer : Beaty Rubens
Clive Anderson has always been fascinated by Harold Godwinson whose life and reign came to a bloody end at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, which a thousand years on is still the most famous date in English history. In his humorous look at King Harold, he wonders why Shakespeare never chose to write a play about his life - which has all the elements of a gripping historical drama, and a great tragedy. Producer: Sarah Taylor
Stephen Baxter creates a vivid portrait of Edward the Confessor. By any standards, Edward the Confessor lived a remarkable life, and left a still more remarkable legacy. He was a central figure in a period of turbulent politics, characterised by factional intrigue, rebellion, invasion and conquest. He personally experienced dramatic reversals in fortune, spending 25 years in exile before reigning as king of England for almost as long, through moments of periods triumph and humiliation. His posthumous life was similarly eventful . His death triggered the sequence of events that led to the Norman conquest; and his place of burial, Westminster Abbey, became the focal point of a cult which eventually made Edward the patron saint of the English monarchy, and the abbey a national treasure. Producer: Sarah Taylor
Aethelred's name is a combination of the Old English word aethel, meaning 'noble, excellent', and raed, meaning 'advice, counsel'. Simon Keynes probes the life of this Anglo-Saxon monarch who ruled over one of the most turbulent times of English history. Producer: Sarah Taylor
The return of the major series which rediscovers the Anglo-Saxons through vivid portraits of thirty individuals - women as well as men, famous we well as humble - written and presented by leading historians, archaeologists and enthusiasts in the field. Starting at the lonely grave of an anonymous smith buried in 7th century rural Lincolnshire, Leslie Webster vividly recreates the life of the smith and his ambivalent status in Anglo-Saxon society. Drawing on archaeology and written sources such as Beowulf and Aelfric's Colloquy, she reflects on the practical role of the blacksmith in making everyday tools and weapons, and the legendary celebrity of a handful of goldsmiths, who created magnificent works of art such as the Alfred Jewel, which can still be seen in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford today. Producer Beaty Rubens.
Michael Wood on Alfred the Great, King of Wessex and king of the Anglo-Saxons. Michael Wood chronicles Alfred's achievements: his writings; his reflections on kingship; his military skill; his rejuvenation of education and his legal expertise. Here are Alfred's own words about kingship. 'What I set out to do was to virtuously and justly administer the authority given to me. And I wanted to do it - so my talents and capacity might be remembered. But every natural gift in us soon withers if it is not ruled by wisdom. Without wisdom no talent can be fully realised: for to do something unwisely can hardly be accounted a skill. To be brief, I may say that it has always been my wish to live honourably, and after my death to leave to my descendents my memory in good works.' Producer: Sarah Taylor.
Anglo-Saxon scholar and guide at Durham Cathedral where Bede is buried, Lilian Groves explores the life and times of the saint widely regarded as one of the greatest theological scholars who gave to the world 'The Ecclesiastical History of the English People' and marvels at the thousands of visitors from around the world who still come to worship at his tomb. In his lifetime, Bede lived in Northumbria - the edge of the known world. He never left the confines of his monastery yet he legacy is universal. Contributors include Nobel prize-winner Seamus Heaney on the Beowulf bard, the departing Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams on the first Archbishop of Canterbury, St Augustine; writer David Almond on the oldest surviving English poet, Caedmon; Michael Wood on King Alfred; Martin Carver on Raedwald; Richard Gameson on Eadfrith the Scribe; Helena Hamerow on the peasant-farmer; Geoffrey Robertson QC on the law-makers. Producer: Mohini Patel.
Another chance to hear an Essay by the Nobel prize-winner the late Seamus Heaney, recorded before he died in 2013. This is his portrait of the great Beowulf bard and of the court poet in general - known as the "scop" in old English - a man skilled in song and the pure art of story telling. Producer: Beaty Rubens
Most of these Anglo-Saxon Portraits are of named individuals, and Eadfrith, the scribe who wrote and ornamented the magnificent Lindisfarne Gospel in around 700, is no exception. But Richard Gameson's vivid and detailed account of Eadfrith is also a fascinating survey of the many unnamed scribes from the Anglo-Saxon period. A leading expert from the University of Durham on the history of the book, Richard Gameson's vivid Portrait of Eadfrith is punctuated by many extraordinary facts and figures: Eadfrith's total line-length, for example, in the Lindisfarne Gospels, was nearly two kilometres and necessitated the slaughter of some 130 calves! From the writing to the binding, ornamental covering and later copying, this account brings to life each of the essential processes in creating a book in Anglo-Saxon times. It concludes that while the ostentatious ornatmentation suggests that the Anglo-Saxons did judge a book by its cover, the legacy of the scribes goes far beyond this. For, as Richard Gameson states: "Our knowledge of Anglo-Saxon history and literature relies almost entirely on the work of Anglo-Saxon scribes. Without scribes we would have no Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, no Beowulf, no copies of Bede's great Ecclesiastical History." Producer: Beaty Rubens.
Historian Tony Morris explores the life of Cuthbert, the popular saint of the Northeast, and his continuing appeal today, both on and far beyond his home, the island of Lindisfarne.
Martin Carver tells the sensational story of the unearthing of Britain's richest ever grave, at Sutton Hoo, in spring 1939. He goes on to describe the role of his own team from the University of York in the second wave of excavations there, and vividly recreates the life, death and burial of its probable inhabitant, King Raedwald. With a fabulous eye for detail, he describes some of the 263 objects of gold, silver, bronze, iron, gems, leather, wood, textiles, feather and fur, laid out in a wooden chamber at the centre of a buried ship. And he uses these to recreate the life and turbulent times of this early Anglo-Saxon king and his clever, devoted wife. Producer: Beaty Rubens.
'Dear Albrecht, Everyone had hair like that - did they? I'll take your word for it. You were very good at hair, can I just say?'
In a series of imaginary correspondences, Ian Sansom is writing letters to five of history's most celebrated artists and interrogating them about, well, just about everything.
'Dear Caravaggio, you're the sort of man who might know: what is wrong with us?'
As the missives fly much is revealed about their lives as well as about Ian's current state of mind. Albrecht Durer is looking for an App developer. When Caravaggio asks for help finding a patron Ian suggests a crowd funding website. Meanwhile, how did Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron get hold of Ian's address? Did her great niece Virginia Woolf pass on his details? And should he really be telling the Tate Modern that Picasso was having a mid-life crisis in 1932?
In his on-going quest to write more epistles than St Paul, it seems Ian is receiving surprising replies from some of our best-loved artists.
Producer - Mark McCleary for BBC Northern Ireland
'Dear Albrecht, Everyone had hair like that - did they? I'll take your word for it. You were very good at hair, can I just say?'
In a series of imaginary correspondences, Ian Sansom is writing letters to five of history's most celebrated artists and interrogating them about, well, just about everything.
'Dear Caravaggio, you're the sort of man who might know: what is wrong with us?'
As the missives fly much is revealed about their lives as well as about Ian's current state of mind. Albrecht Durer is looking for an App developer. When Caravaggio asks for help finding a patron Ian suggests a crowdfunding website. Meanwhile, how did Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron get hold of Ian's address? Did her great niece Virginia Woolf pass on his details? And should he really be telling the Tate Modern that Picasso was having a mid-life crisis in 1932?
In his on-going quest to write more epistles than St Paul, it seems Ian is receiving surprising replies from some of our best-loved artists.
Producer - Mark McCleary for BBC Northern Ireland
'Dear Albrecht, Everyone had hair like that - did they? I'll take your word for it. You were very good at hair, can I just say?'
In a series of imaginary correspondences, Ian Sansom is writing letters to five of history's most celebrated artists and interrogating them about, well, just about everything.
'Dear Caravaggio, you're the sort of man who might know: what is wrong with us?'
As the missives fly much is revealed about their lives as well as about Ian's current state of mind. Albrecht Durer is looking for an App developer. When Caravaggio asks for help finding a patron Ian suggests a crowd funding website. Meanwhile, how did Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron get hold of Ian's address? Did her great niece Virginia Woolf pass on his details? And should he really be telling the Tate Modern that Picasso was having a mid-life crisis in 1932?
In his on-going quest to write more epistles than St Paul, it seems Ian is receiving surprising replies from some of our best-loved artists.
Producer - Mark McCleary for BBC Northern Ireland
'Dear Albrecht, Everyone had hair like that - did they? I'll take your word for it. You were very good at hair, can I just say?'
In a series of imaginary correspondences, Ian Sansom is writing letters to five of history's most celebrated artists and interrogating them about, well, just about everything.
'Dear Caravaggio, you're the sort of man who might know: what is wrong with us?'
As the missives fly much is revealed about their lives as well as about Ian's current state of mind. Albrecht Durer is looking for an App developer. When Caravaggio asks for help finding a patron Ian suggests a crowd funding website. Meanwhile, how did Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron get hold of Ian's address? Did her great niece Virginia Woolf pass on his details? And should he really be telling the Tate Modern that Picasso was having a mid-life crisis in 1932?
In his on-going quest to write more epistles than St Paul, it seems Ian is receiving surprising replies from some of our best-loved artists.
Producer - Mark McCleary for BBC Northern Ireland
'Dear Albrecht, Everyone had hair like that - did they? I'll take your word for it. You were very good at hair, can I just say?'
In a series of imaginary correspondences, Ian Sansom is writing letters to five of history's most celebrated artists and interrogating them about, well, just about everything.
'Dear Caravaggio, you're the sort of man who might know: what is wrong with us?'
As the missives fly much is revealed about their lives as well as about Ian's current state of mind. Albrecht Durer is looking for an App developer. When Caravaggio asks for help finding a patron Ian suggests a crowd funding website. Meanwhile, how did Victorian photographer Julia Margaret Cameron get hold of Ian's address? Did her great niece Virginia Woolf pass on his details? And should he really be telling the Tate Modern that Picasso was having a mid-life crisis in 1932?
In his on-going quest to write more epistles than St Paul, it seems Ian is receiving surprising replies from some of our best-loved artists.
Producer - Mark McCleary for BBC Northern Ireland
The final run of Essays in the long-running series which explores the impact of the First World War on individual artists through the prism of a single great work of art.
4.Alex Walton recalls the Australian artist, Isobel - "Iso" - Rae, who spent the war in the Etaples art colony in the South of France, but whose work, as a female artist, has long been overlooked.
Born in Australia in 1860 and trained at Melbourne's National Gallery of Victoria Art School, Rae travelled to France in 1887 and spent most of the rest of her life there. A longstanding member of the Étaples art colony, Rae lived in the area from the 1890s until the 1930s, painting the world she witnessed at Etaples Army Base Camp and exhibiting her work in London and Paris.
She was one of only two female Australian artists to live and paint in France during the war, but neither were included in their country's first group of official war artists.
Alex Walton, a curator at the Imperial War Museum, revisits her life and re-evaluates her largely forgotten work for a contemporary audience.
Producer: Beaty Rubens
The final run of Essays in the long-running series which explores the impact of the First World War on individual artists through the prism of a single great work of art.
3.Jane Potter on The Forbidden Zone, a depiction of nursing life at the Front by Mary Borden.
Mary Borden was an Anglo-American novelist who served for four years as a nurse in a military hospital at the Front.
Jane Potter celebrates a work which, like those of Sassoon, Graves, and Remarque, vividly depicts the horror of the Trenches and yet is far less well known.
Producer; Beaty Rubens.
The final run of Essays in the long-running series which explores the impact of the First World War on individual artists through the prism of a single great work of art.
2.Janet Montefiore on Rudyard Kipling's 1922 collection, Epitaphs
On 27 September 1915, 8,000 out of the 10,000 British troops who took part in the disastrous Battle of Loos were killed or wounded. One of these, 2nd Lieutenant John Kipling, eighteen years old, the son of Rudyard Kipling, was reported ‘missing believed killed.’ His body was never found.
Four years later, Rudyard Kipling published his ‘Epitaphs of the War 1914-1918’: thirty-one brief poems giving voice to those who died in the Great War: soldiers, airmen, nurses, non-combatants, Canadians, Indians, sailors, politicians, cowards and heroes.
These days, Kipling is often criticised for his imperialist views on "the white man's burden", but in this Essay, Kipling scholar, Janet Montefiore uncovers a more sympathetic figure. She tells the story behind a poignant collection of poems which express Kipling's personal grief whilst giving voice to a wider sense of outrage about the victims of the war, including the famously succinct condemnation : If any question why we died, Tell them, because our fathers lied.
Producer: Beaty Rubens
The final run of Essays in the long-running series which explores the impact of the First World War on individual artists through the prism of a single great work of art.
1.Imaobong Umoren tells the story behind W.E.B. Dubois' seminal editorial, Returning Soldiers, which laid the early foundations of the Black Lives Matter campaign.
Born in 1868 in Massachusetts, Du Bois was raised by a single mother who descended from African, English and Dutch ancestors. Growing up in the racially mixed town of Great Barrington, Du Bois attended public school alongside both white and black pupils and, at an early age, was singled out for his intellect. He was to grow up to become one of the leading scholars and activists of the twentieth century on what was then termed the ‘Negro Problem’.
Published in The Crisis, the magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Returning Soldiers’, was based on the experiences that Du Bois had during his three-month visit to France from December 1918 to March 1919. Imaobong tells the story behind its writing and uncovers its continuing importance in today's Black Lives Matter campaign.
Dr Imaobong D Umoren is Assistant Professor of International History of Gender at London School of Economics and Political Science.
Poet Simon Armitage talks about reading Ted Hughes as a child and, later, finding an unexpected in tenderness the poet's work. This essay includes a close reading of Hughes's poem Full Moon and Little Frieda.
Ted Hughes died in 2018, and we are still arguing about his legacy. In a new series of the Radio 3 Essay, leading poets bring a sharp eye to the poems themselves, reminding us why Hughes is regarded as one of the 20th-century's greatest writers, and exploring how the works match up to, inform and contradict what we know of the man.
Recorded before a live audience at the BBC's Contains Strong Language Festival in Hull in 2018.
Written and read by Simon Armitage. Produced by Simon Richardson.
Poet Zaffar Kunial explores Ted Hughes's personal obsession with dates and anniversaries.
Ted Hughes died in 1998, and we are still arguing about his legacy. In a new series of the Radio 3 Essay, leading poets bring a sharp eye to the poems themselves, reminding us why Hughes is regarded as one of the 20th-century's greatest writers, and exploring how the works match up to, inform and contradict what we know of the man.
Recorded at the BBC's Contains Strong Language Festival in Hull in 2018.
Written and read by Zaffar Kunial. Produced by Simon Richardson.
Poet Karen McCarthy Woolf on finding solace in Hughes's work during a troubled childhood. To her his books were more a mood: a dark and brooding presence but one that resonated. That subconscious memory left a deep and metaphorical imprint that has infused her own work in its relationships with landscape, loss and grief.
Ted Hughes died in 1998, and we are still arguing about his legacy. In this series of the Radio 3 Essay, leading poets bring a sharp eye to the poems themselves, reminding us why Hughes is regarded as one of the 20th-century's greatest writers, and exploring how the works match up to, inform and contradict what we know of the man.
Recorded before a live audience at the BBC's Contains Strong Language Festival in Hull in 2018.
Written and read by Karen McCarthy Woolf. Produced by Simon Richardson.
Ted Hughes died in 1998, and we are still arguing about his legacy. In this series of the Radio 3 Essay, leading poets bring a sharp eye to the poems themselves, reminding us why Hughes is regarded as one of the 20th-century's greatest writers, and exploring how the works match up to, inform and contradict what we know of the man.
Ted Hughes is perhaps best known for his poems about creatures - for poems like ‘The Thought Fox’, ‘Pike’ and for books like 'Crow'. In today's essay, Helen Mort thinks about what animals signify in Hughes's work and how they might connect to the way the poet writes about the tricky, mysterious lives of others, whether human or animal.
Recorded before a live audience at the BBC's Contains Strong Language Festival in Hull in 2018.
Written and read by Helen Mort. Produced by Simon Richardson.
Poet Sean O'Brien considers the reputations of two very different poets: the raw versus the cooked, the shaman versus the rationalist, Ted Hughes versus Philip Larkin.
Ted Hughes died in 1998, and we are still arguing about his legacy. In this series of the Radio 3 Essay, leading poets bring a sharp eye to the poems themselves, reminding us why Hughes is regarded as one of the 20th-century's greatest writers, and exploring how the works match up to, inform and contradict what we know of the man.
Recorded before a live audience at the BBC's Contains Strong Language Festival in Hull in 2018.
Written and read by Sean O'Brien. Produced by Simon Richardson.
Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough braves the fearsome heffalumps as she steps into the world of AA Milne.
There's no secret about the inspiration for Winnie the Pooh. Thousands of people flock to the Ashdown Forest in East Sussex every year to track down Christopher Robin's tree and play Pooh Sticks. In his autobiography, Christopher Robin Milne wrote of a brief but blissful childhood spent amongst the trees with his battered teddy bear. Pooh's forest and the Ashdown Forest are, he wrote, identical.
The writer, Brian Sibley, joins Eleanor for a walk through the forest and an appreciation of one of the saddest endings in literature. Christopher knows he has to leave his friends and return to school. That's enough to drive many adult readers to tears but Brian believes there will always be a boy and his bear sharing adventures in the 100 Acre Wood.
Producer: Alasdair Cross
Join Mowgli, Shere Khan and Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough in the lush and dangerous Indian forest of Rudyard Kipling's imagination.
Although he was born in India, Kipling had never visited the central Seoni region where he set The Jungle Book. As Daniel Karlin from Bristol University tells Eleanor, the vivid and detailed descriptions of the forest and its fauna came from books and travellers' tales. Kipling was fascinated by animal behaviour but he wasn't too precious to invert reality when the stories required a dash of cruelty or an expression of nobility.
Today the region contains a renowned tiger reserve. Shere Khan is protected whilst the friendlier creatures of The Jungle decline in number.
Producer: Alasdair Cross
Walk through a dark forest and you can't escape the brooding presence of the Brothers Grimm. Unwilling to stray from the path? A glimmer of sharp, white teeth behind that tree? It’s the Brothers Grimm to blame.
Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough is joined by the writer and illustrator Chris Riddell for a walk through the deep, dark Germanic forest of the Grimms' imagination. The company may be agreeable and the conversation fascinating but be sure to leave a trail of breadcrumbs behind.
Producer: Alasdair Cross
Joanna Robertson's earliest childhood memory is that of the baker calling at noon each day, with a basket full of fragrant buns, cakes and bread. It was the first indication of what was to develop into a lifelong love affair with food. For Joanna, food has never just been about nourishment. It has shaped her life in highly personal as well as professional ways, with surprising, funny or poignant results. So much so, that telling her food stories amounts to sharing an intimate and revealing autobiography, with insights into her life, the places she’s lived and worked in, and the people she's met through food. These stretch from Italians who would become a collective of godparents to her eldest daughter, to world class artists and musicians, ranging from Derek Jarman to Sviatoslav Richter.
In the first programme, Joanna reveals how her love of food already manifested itself when she was a child growing up in different parts of the UK.
Joanna Robertson is a journalist who has lived in several countries and is now based in Paris.
Produced by Arlene Gregorius.
Joanna Robertson's earliest childhood memory is that of the baker calling at noon each day, with a basket full of fragrant buns, cakes and bread. It was the first indication of what was to develop into a lifelong love affair with food. For Joanna, food has never just been about nourishment. It has shaped her life in highly personal as well as professional ways, with surprising, funny or poignant results. So much so, that telling her food stories in these Essays amounts to sharing an intimate and revealing autobiography, with deeply personal insights into her life, the places she has lived and worked in, and the people she has met through food. In the second programme, Joanna is a young adult. She is now working two jobs in London, involving food and encounters with world class artists, designers and musicians. In Soho, these include Derek Jarman, Howard Hodgkin and Alexander McQueen, while on the South Bank she serves, for example, Karl-Heinz Stockhausen, Pierre Boulez and Sviatoslav Richter.
Joanna Robertson is a journalist who has lived in several countries and is now based in Paris.
Produced by Arlene Gregorius.
Joanna Robertson's earliest childhood memory is that of the baker calling at noon each day, with a basket full of fragrant buns, cakes and bread. It was the first indication of what was to develop into a lifelong love affair with food. For Joanna, food has never just been about nourishment. It has shaped her life in highly personal as well as professional ways, with surprising, funny or poignant results. So much so, that telling her food stories in these Essays amounts to sharing an intimate and revealing autobiography, with deeply personal insights into her life, the places she’s lived and worked in, and the people she's met through food. In the third programme, Joanna is still living in London as a twenty-something. A passionate love affair ends so badly, that Joanna feels food is no longer for her, and she slides into a severe eating disorder. Brought back from the brink, she then designs her own recovery programme: training as a chef, and life-modelling for painters and sculptors.
Joanna Robertson is a journalist who has lived in several countries and is now based in Paris.
Produced by Arlene Gregorius.
Joanna Robertson's earliest childhood memory is that of the baker calling at noon each day, with a basket full of fragrant buns, cakes and bread. It was the first indication of what was to develop into a lifelong love affair with food. For Joanna, food has never just been about nourishment. It has shaped her life in highly personal as well as professional ways, with surprising, funny or poignant results. So much so, that telling her food stories in these Essays amounts to sharing an intimate and revealing autobiography, with deeply personal insights into her life, the places she has lived and worked in, and the people she has met through food.
In the fourth programme, Joanna is in Rome. Initially as a young woman, spending a long summer being initiated into the culinary and cultural delights of the city. And later, she returns as a future wife and mother, getting her daily bread from the same centuries-old bakery as Rossini did while he composed the Barber of Seville. When the time comes, Joanna's baby is welcomed by a family far bigger than merely her relatives: the neighbourhood's grocers, restaurant owners and Rossini's bakery who asked to become a collective of godparents.
Joanna Robertson is a journalist who has lived in several countries and is now based in Paris.
Produced by Arlene Gregorius.
Joanna Robertson's earliest childhood memory is that of the baker calling at noon each day, with a basket full of fragrant buns, cakes and bread. It was the first indication of what was to develop into a lifelong love affair with food. For Joanna, food has never just been about nourishment. It has shaped her life in highly personal as well as professional ways, with surprising, funny or poignant results. So much so, that telling her food stories in these Essays amounts to sharing an intimate and revealing autobiography, with deeply personal insights into her life, the places she has lived and worked in, and the people she has met through food.
In the final programme, Joanna is living in Paris. Fortune has smiled on her in the shape of a second daughter, but when it comes to food, her luck seems to have run out, as neither her children's school lunches nor local restaurants' menus live up to Joanna's expectations which had been stoked by food writers of the calibre of Elizabeth David and MFK Fisher whom Joanna read avidly as a teenager. Now it's chips with everything it seems. Fate has one good surprise in store however: Joanna's local baker, where she gets her daily morning bread, has just been crowned the best baguette maker in Paris.
Joanna Robertson is a journalist who has lived in several countries and is now based in Paris.
Produced by Arlene Gregorius.
Twm Morys was brought up in the same village as Lloyd George, and in the essay 'Why the Lloyd George museum is so small' (Twm worked in the museum for a while), he explains that the former prime minister is not fondly remembered there. Some think that Lloyd George betrayed his country's cause in order to further himself in England and the Empire, others that his behaviour during the First World War was warmongering (he personally gave many speeches recruiting young welsh men to the army). Twm also recalls that a filthy limerick was found in Lloyd George's wallet at the time of his death, and that as a museum assistant, it wasn't the done thing to draw attention to the verse.
Producer: Megan Jones for BBC Wales
The history of the Welsh people, from the year six hundred to the present, can be traced through poetry - there has not been one generation in that time in which poets haven't kept a record. In this series of Essays, poet and musician Twm Morys brings his personal perspective to five stories looking at aspects of the history of Wales over several centuries, following the fortunes of Welsh figures both eminent and ordinary.
In his fourth essay this week, Twm looks into the experiences of an African man in North Wales in the 1770s, and the stories the community told about how he came to be there. The only black man anyone had ever come across in Cricieth at that time, it seems Jack Ystumllyn may have been an escaped slave, who overcame prejudice to become an extremely popular and respectable man.
Producer: Megan Jones for BBC Wales
Twm Morys delves into the cultural links between Brittany and Wales, and looks into the story of St Teilo.
Drawing on his experience of living in Brittany for ten years, Twm says that speaking Breton was like speaking Welsh after taking some psychedelic drug, and living there was like a Wales where Methodist chapels never happened. St Teilo fled to Brittany with a band of monks in the 6th century to escape the plague, and during this time tamed a fierce dragon and chained it to a rock in the sea. Twm explains how a church in Brittany still manages to claim that they hold a hallowed relic of the Welsh Saint - his arm and hand, encased in silver - even though he returned to Wales to die.
Producer: Megan Jones for BBC Wales
The history of the Welsh people, from the year six hundred to the present, can be traced through poetry - there has not been one generation in that time in which poets haven't kept a record. In this series of Essays, poet and musician Twm Morys brings his personal perspective to five stories looking at aspects of the history of Wales over several centuries, following the fortunes of Welsh figures both eminent and ordinary.
In the second essay Twm explores a tradition that was preserved for more than a thousand years in Wales - that of farmhands singing songs to their oxen
Producer: Megan Jones for BBC Wales
The history of the Welsh people, from the year six hundred to the present, can be traced through poetry - there has not been one generation in that time in which poets haven't kept a record. In this series of Essays, poet and musician Twm Morys brings his personal perspective to five stories looking at aspects of the history of Wales over several centuries, following the fortunes of Welsh figures both eminent and ordinary.
In the first essay, Dinogad's Jerkin, he tells the story of the oldest lullaby in Britain, sung by a mother to her son in Borrowdale in the Lake District at the end of the 7th century. It was preserved in a medieval manuscript which reveals that it was in the Welsh language, throwing a strange light on the history of England.
In the second essay Twm follows the very different fates of two famous Welshmen during the First World War - David Ivor Davies and Ellis Humphrey Evans. From opposite ends of Wales geographically and economically, the former became known as Ivor Novello and thanks to his contacts not only survived the war but was made famous by it. The latter was a poet known as Hedd Wyn, who became the figurehead for Wales' experience of the war: he was killed within hours of going into action on the first day of the Battle of Passchendaele.
‘Jack Ystumllyn’, or 'A victory over racism in 18th century Criccieth', looks into the experiences of an African man in North Wales, and the stories the community told about how he came to be there. The only black man anyone had ever come across, it seems he may have been an escaped slave, and Jack overcame prejudice to become an extremely popular and respectable man.
Twm was brought up in the same village as Lloyd George, and in the essay 'Why the Lloyd George museum is so small' (Twm worked in the museum for a while), he explains that the former prime minister is not fondly remembered there. Some think that Lloyd George betrayed his country's cause in order to further himself in England and the Empire, others that his behaviour during the First World War was warmongering (he personally gave many speeches recruiting young welsh men to the army). Twm recalls that a filthy limerick was found in Lloyd George's wallet at the time of his death, and that as a museum assistant, it wasn't the done thing to draw attention to the verse.
In the final essay 'Saint Teilo - a surplus of arms' Twm delves into the cultural links between Brittany and Wales, drawing on his experience of living there for ten years. Of this he says that speaking Breton was like speaking Welsh after taking some psychedelic drug, and living there was like a Wales where Methodist chapels never happened. St Teilo fled to Brittany with a band of monks in the 6th century to escape the plague, and during this time tamed a fierce dragon and chained it to a rock in the sea. Twm explains how a church in Brittany manages to claim that they hold a hallowed relick of the Welsh Saint - his arm and hand, encased in silver - even though he returned to Wales to die.
Producer: Megan Jones for BBC Wales
Author and broadcaster Sarah Churchwell describes the spell that female film stars of the 1930's and 40's have over her.
From Jean Harlow, the blonde bombshell, to someone the author came to admire later in life. Why? Because this star tried too hard, was unrelenting, was altogether frightening. She now thinks about Joan Crawford - the 'working girl'.
Producer Duncan Minshull.
Poet Kenneth Steven writes on the remote islands of St Kilda, where the community is only a distant memory echoed in the sound of seabirds. This is an island far out in the ocean. 'To make the sea crossing to St Kilda a boat is heading into the full fury of the North Atlantic; west of here lies nothing more than Rockall - and then America.' Once a thriving community lived on the island known as Hirta. 'Not only was there life on St Kilda, there was joy in life. The reports written by early visitors make that abundantly clear: the people made music and danced, they were singers of songs and tellers of tales. They faced hardship together and even death on a daily basis, but this little society held together in happiness.'
But by 1930 the British Government wanted an end to the expense of supporting this remote colony, and the community were forced to take the decision to evacuate. Now there are only the empty shells of houses and the endless cries of seabirds.
'In all the cobbles, concrete years to come Their islands promises to lie at the bottom of a glass, Or silent forever in their eyes, a story frozen Like a fly in the amber of time.'
Producer Mark Rickards.
Kenneth Steven looks at Rum, a wild and windswept Hebridean island, and responds to its landscape in poetry. Rum is the largest of a group making up the 'Small Isles', Rum, Muck, Eigg and Canna, lying west of the fishing port of Mallaig in the Scottish Highlands. 'I don't know a Hebridean island more beautiful to approach. Every time I do I think of it again as a treasure island.'
Its remote and rugged beauty attracted an eccentric Victorian industrialist, who bought it and attempted to transform it into his own vision of an island home, complete with a castle. 'The castle itself was built of red sandstone and shaped from the Isle of Arran. Greenhouses were brought for the growing of peaches, grapes and nectarines. There were heated pools for turtles and alligators; an aviary was constructed for birds of paradise and humming birds.' It was not to last, and Kenneth looks at what's left of the island fantasy today, leaving him with a profound sense of sadness.
Poet Kenneth Steven has a special relationship with the small Hebridean island of Iona, set in the Atlantic off the west coast of Scotland. It was the place of learning and worship in the 6th century, when St Columba brought Christianity from Ireland and set up a monastery, and today it still has a spiritual quality for many of its visitors. Kenneth has visited since he was a child and collected stones polished by the sea along its beaches. Today he reflects on Iona's place as a 'meeting of the sea roads, which has had such a profound impact on so many, and has done for longer than we can ever know'.
'..That is why I keep returning, thirsty, to this place That is older than my understanding, Younger than my broken spirit.'.
Author and broadcaster Sarah Churchwell describes the spell that female film stars of the 1930s and '40s have over her..
From Barbara Stanwyck, 'the tough broad', to a vision of modernity who is all 'satin' and 'chrome'. The author moves on to consider the original 'blonde bombshell' - Jean Harlow.
Producer Duncan Minshull.
Author and broadcaster Sarah Churchwell describes the spell that female film stars of the 1930's and 40's have over her.
From stately Katharine Hepburn she moves on to think about Barbara Stanwyck - 'the tough dame' - who could do more with a raised eyebrow and 'side-eye' than anybody else around.
Producer Duncan Minshull.
Author and broadcaster Sarah Churchwell describes the spell that female film stars of the 1930s and '40s have over her..
She begins her series with Katharine Hepburn, the so-called 'Ice Queen', who inspired the young author growing up in Chicago and lacking any role models. One day she watched The Philadelphia Story on television and life changed forever ...
Producer Duncan Minshull.
Novelist Ian Sansom has a theory to put to Queen of crime, Agatha Christie.
A letter of apology to Virginia Woolf from novelist, Ian Sansom.
Novelist Ian Sansom pens a missive to George Eliot...
Novelist Ian Sansom fires off a letter to Geoffrey Chaucer...
Dr Rita Charon finds a model physician in the pages of Henry James: someone who though on the sidelines of a person's life remains a loyal advocate.
This is part two of The Essay's five-part series, Narrative Medicine - a term coined to describe the capacity to recognize, absorb, metabolize, interpret, and be moved by stories of illness. Simply, it's medicine practised by someone who knows what to do with stories. Part of the BBC's NHS at 70 season.
Warning: this episode deals with serious medical issues and trauma.
Dr Rita Charon considers Kazuo Ishiguro's novel and the questions that it raises. What it means to be human? And how can physicians respond to life's mysteries and paradoxes?
This is part three of The Essay's five-part series, Narrative Medicine - a term coined to describe the capacity to recognize, absorb, metabolize, interpret, and be moved by stories of illness. Simply, it's medicine practised by someone who knows what to do with stories. Part of the BBC's NHS at 70 season.
Warning: this episode deals with serious medical issues and trauma.
Dr Rita Charon traces parallels between the portents of war in Virginia Woolf's novel and the responses of her New York City patients to the 9/11 attacks.
This is part four of The Essay's five-part series, Narrative Medicine - a term coined to describe the capacity to recognize, absorb, metabolize, interpret, and be moved by stories of illness. Simply, it's medicine practised by someone who knows what to do with stories. Part of the BBC's NHS at 70 season.
Warning: this episode deals with serious medical issues and trauma.
Dr Rita Charon explains how Colson Whitehead's 2016 novel about American slavery is used to train medical students, encouraging them to "write what can't be told".
This is the final part of The Essay's five-part series, Narrative Medicine - a term coined to describe the capacity to recognize, absorb, metabolize, interpret, and be moved by stories of illness. Simply, it's medicine practised by someone who knows what to do with stories. Part of the BBC's NHS at 70 season.
Warning: this episode deals with serious medical issues and trauma.
How James Baldwin's short story helped a doctor and her patient break down the divisions of class, age and race.
This is part one of The Essay's five-part series, Narrative Medicine - a term coined to describe the capacity to recognize, absorb, metabolize, interpret, and be moved by stories of illness. Simply - it's medicine practised by someone who knows what to do with stories. Part of the BBC's NHS at 70 season.
Warning: this episode deals with serious medical issues and trauma.
170 years ago one woman launched the beginning of the modern women's rights movement in America. New Generation Thinker Joanna Cohen of Queen Mary University of London looks back at her story and what lessons it has for politics now.
In the small town of Seneca Falls in upstate New York, Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote The Declaration of Sentiments, a manifesto that took one of the nation's most revered founding documents, Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, and turned its condemnation of British tyranny into a blistering attack on the tyranny of American men. But why did Stanton choose to rebrand her claim for rights with the power of sentiment?
Recorded with an audience at the York Festival of Ideas.
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio programmes.
Producer: Jacqueline Smith.
The lawyer turned poet whose response to political upheaval has lessons for our time - explored by New Generation Thinker Seb Falk with an audience at the York Festival of Ideas
The 14th century's most eloquent pessimist, John Gower has forever been overshadowed by his funnier friend Chaucer. Yet his trilingual poetry is truly encyclopedic, mixing social commentary, romance and even science. Writing 'somewhat of lust, somewhat of lore', Gower's response to political upheaval was to 'shoot my arrows at the world'. Whether you want to be cured of lovesickness or learn the secrets of alchemy, John Gower has something to tell you.
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio.
Producer: Jacqueline Smith.
A radical community of women set up in 1760s rural England is explored in an essay from New Generation Thinker Lucy Powell, recorded with an audience at the 2018 York Festival of Ideas.
Sarah Scott's first novel, published in 1750, was a conventional French-style romance, the fitting literary expression of a younger daughter of the lesser gentry. One year later, she had scandalously fled her husband's house, and pooled finances and set up home with her life-long partner, Lady Barbara Montagu. Her fourth novel, Millennium Hall, described in practical detail the communal existence of a group of women who had taken refuge in each other's company and created an all-female utopia in rural England. On Lady Bab's death, in 1765, Scott would attempt to create this radical community in actuality. Lucy Powell will explore the life, work, and far-reaching influence of this extraordinary writer.
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio.
Producer: Jacqueline Smith.
The most famous imposter of the seventeenth century - Mary Carleton. John Gallagher, of the University of Leeds, argues that the story of the "German Princess" raises questions about what evidence we believe and the currency of shame.
Her real name was thought to be Mary Moders and she became a media sensation in Restoration London, after her husband's family, greedy for the riches they believed her to be concealing, accused her of bigamy and put her on trial for her life. Her life, and what remains to us of it, forces us to ask hard questions of the sources from her time. Whose word do we trust?
Recorded with an audience at the 2018 York Festival of Ideas. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio.
Producer: Jacqueline Smith.
Sophie Coulombeau tells the story of John Trusler, an eccentric Anglican minister who was the quintessential 18th-century entrepreneur. He was a prolific author, an innovative publisher, a would-be inventor, and a 'medical gentleman' of dubious qualifications. Dismissed by many as a conman and scoundrel, today, few have heard of the man but his madcap schemes often succeeded, in different forms, a century or two later. In his efforts we can trace the ancestors of the thesaurus, the self-help book, Comic Sans, professional ghostwriting, the Society of Authors, and electrotherapy. New Generation Thinker Sophie Coulombeau argues that telling his story can help us to reinterpret and rehabilitate the very idea of 'failure'.
Recorded with an audience at the York Festival of Ideas 2018.
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the AHRC to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio. Producer: Jacqueline Smith.
Forests are a potent source of inspiration for artists, writers and composers but the truly creative force in the forest is fire. Andrew C Scott from Royal Holloway, University of London is the author of 'Burning Planet'. He stands in awe of the power of fire to reshape our forests and the ability of nature to bounce back, offering fresh space for new plants and animals to colonise.
Andrew takes Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough for a walk through Swinley Woods in Berkshire, site of a spectacular fire in 2011 that, for one terrible day, threatened Windsor Castle and thousands of homes.
Producer: Alasdair Cross
In midsummer week, Radio 3 enters one of the most potent sources of the human imagination. 'Into the Forest' explores the enchantment, escape and magical danger of the forest in summer, with slow radio moments featuring the sounds of the forest, allowing time out from today's often frenetic world.
What is it about forests that inspires our imagination? In this series of Essays for our Into the Forest season, Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough takes five woodland walks with writers and artists who find themselves moved by the sounds, textures and smells of the forest.
She's joined first by Fiona Stafford, author of 'The Long, Long Life of Trees' and expert on the Romantic poets. Fiona is fascinated by the moment in the late 18th century when Britain's great forests were swept away by the demands of the Royal Navy and the Enclosure Acts. As the dark forests with their brigands and wild beasts disappeared, novelists and visual artists were free to conjure up their own dappled glades, to create spaces of romantic imagination.
Producer: Alasdair Cross
In midsummer week, Radio 3 enters one of the most potent sources of the human imagination. 'Into the Forest' explores the enchantment, escape and magical danger of the forest in summer, with slow radio moments featuring the sounds of the forest, allowing time out from today's often frenetic world.
Recorded at this week's Hay Festival 2018, Mab Jones introduces us to her favourite female character in literature - Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, with whom she identifies most - and extracts the lessons we could all learn from her.
Mab is a poet and a recent recipient of a Creative Wales Award, and a frequent presenter of BBC radio documentaries, including 'Hiraeth' and 'The Black Chair'. Mab is also the coordinator of International Dylan Thomas Day, consisting of 62 events around the globe. Her publications include 'Poor Queen' and 'take your experience and peel it'.
In this series of The Essay, five female writers offer a personal guide to favourite and well-known female fictional characters - extracting the lessons we could all learn from them.
The writers in this series include broadcaster Afua Hirsch, historian Bettany Hughes, poet Fiona Sampson and award-winning novelist Francesca Rhydderch.
With Lunchtime Concert, In Tune, Free Thinking, The Verb and The Listening Service all broadcasting from the festival, The Essay is part of Hay Week at BBC Radio 3.
Recorded at this week's Hay Festival 2018, Francesca Rhydderch introduces us to her favourite female character in literature - Virginia Woolf's, arguably, most playful and ground-breaking character Orlando from her novel 'Orlando: A Biography' - and extracts the lessons we could all learn from her.
Francesca is an Associate Professor at Swansea University, with her area of expertise in creative writing. Her debut novel, 'The Rice Paper Diaries', won the Wales Book of the Year Fiction Prize 2014 and her novel 'The Taxidermist's Daughter' was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award in the same year.
In this series of The Essay, five female writers offer a personal guide to favourite and well-known female fictional characters - extracting the lessons we could all learn from them.
The writers in this series include broadcaster Afua Hirsch, historian Bettany Hughes and poets Fiona Sampson and Mab Jones.
With Lunchtime Concert, In Tune, Free Thinking, The Verb and The Listening Service all broadcasting from the festival, The Essay is part of Hay Week at BBC Radio 3.
Recorded at this week's Hay Festival 2018, Fiona Sampson introduces us to her favourite female character in literature - Bertolt Brecht's anti-heroine Mother Courage, from his play 'Mother Courage and Her Children' - and extracts the lessons we could all learn from her.
Fiona is an award-winning poet and writer, who has published nearly 30 books, including collections of poetry and works on writing process. She contributes articles to newspapers including The Guardian, Sunday Times and The Independent. Her most recent publication is 'On the White Plain: the search for Mary Shelley'. Fiona was awarded an MBE in 2017.
In this series of The Essay, five female writers offer a personal guide to favourite and well-known female fictional characters - extracting the lessons we could all learn from them.
The writers in this series include broadcaster Afua Hirsch, historian Bettany Hughes, award-winning novelist Francesca Rhydderch and poet Mab Jones.
With Lunchtime Concert, In Tune, Free Thinking, The Verb and The Listening Service all broadcasting from the festival, The Essay is part of Hay Week at BBC Radio 3.
Recorded at this week's Hay Festival 2018, Bettany Hughes introduces us to her favourite female character in literature - Helen of Troy; a character written about in fiction for millennia - and extracts the lessons we could all learn from her.
Bettany is an historian, author and broadcaster, with her speciality in classical history. She has written a number of books including 'Helen of Troy: Goddess, Princess, Whore' and has presented for BBC Radio 3 for the Sunday Feature strand, for 'The Romans in Britain' in 2011 and for BBC Radio 4 in for a 3-part series 'Amongst the Medici' in 2006.
In this series of The Essay, five female writers offer a personal guide to favourite and well-known female fictional characters - extracting the lessons we could all learn from them.
The writers in this series include broadcaster Afua Hirsch, poets Fiona Sampson and Mab Jones and award-winning novelist Francesca Rhydderch.
With Lunchtime Concert, In Tune, Free Thinking, The Verb and The Listening Service all broadcasting from the festival, The Essay is part of Hay Week at BBC Radio 3.
Afua Hirsch introduces us to her favourite female character in literature - Maggie Tulliver from George Eliot’s ‘Mill on the Floss’ – and extracts the lessons we could all learn from her. Recorded at this week’s Hay Festival 2018,
Afua is a writer, broadcaster and journalist; she is also a barrister with a speciality in international development. Her first book, titled ‘Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging, was published in January 2018.
In this series of The Essay, five female writers offer a personal guide to favourite and well-known female fictional characters - extracting the lessons we could all learn from them.
The writers in this series include historian Bettany Hughes, poets Fiona Sampson and Mab Jones and award-winning novelist Francesca Rhydderch.
With Lunchtime Concert, In Tune, Free Thinking, The Verb and The Listening Service all broadcasting from the festival, The Essay is part of Hay Week at BBC Radio 3.
Joanna Robertson is a journalist and mother who has lived in five foreign countries, where she has observed that local shopping habits tell you a lot about the place. In these Essays, she argues that when people go shopping, they don't just purchase goods, they also buy into something else. Joanna Robertson takes us shopping with the locals and explores these ulterior motives and what they reveal about the residents of five cities: Rome, New York, Berlin, Tirana and Joanna's current home, Paris.
When Romans shop for traditional foods and delicacies in local family-run businesses, they also buy into a local identity - that's now under threat.
Italy was only unified in the nineteenth century, and local roots and identities often go deeper than national ones. One way that Romans express and nourish this local identity is by shopping in traditional family-run businesses that take pride in their products. The "forno" bakery on Campo de' Fiori has counted the Borgias and Rossini among its regulars. In the Trastevere area, Romans queue up for the pizzas and black cherry tarts of the Boccioni kosher bakery that dates back to the eighteenth century. However, many traditional shops are selling up because the children head into professions rather than behind the counter, or because of cash offers from mysterious buyers that the owners can't refuse. Previously legitimate family businesses like bars and restaurants are being taken over by the mafia, who keep the names and decor, but put in their own staff, and use ingredients from mafia controlled farms. Romans are deeply distressed by how unrecognisable their city has become, and the erosion of identity that this has brought.
Producer: Arlene Gregorius.
Joanna Robertson is a journalist and mother who has lived in five foreign countries, where she has observed that local shopping habits tell you a lot about the place. In these Essays, she argues that when people go shopping, they don't just purchase goods, they also buy into something else. Joanna Robertson takes us shopping with the locals and explores these ulterior motives and what they reveal about the residents of five cities: Rome, New York, Berlin, Tirana and Joanna's current home, Paris.
In this edition, she finds that shopping for toys in Berlin reveals an attitude to childhood and nature that's unique to Germany. Germany's concept of nature is deeply rooted in the concepts of nineteenth-century German Romanticism, which in turn is reflected in German toys, and childhood. The child is the Wanderer, journeying through the boundless realms of creativity and dreams, close to the beauty, teachings and wonders of Nature. It's a childhood of great freedom, and responsibility.
Producer: Arlene Gregorius.
Joanna Robertson is a journalist and mother who has lived in five foreign countries, where she has observed that local shopping habits tell you a lot about the place. In these Essays, she argues that when people go shopping, they don't just purchase goods, they also buy into something else. Joanna Robertson takes us shopping and explores these ulterior motives and what they reveal about the residents of five cities: Rome, New York, Berlin, Tirana and Joanna's current home, Paris.
In Tirana, after the fall of Communism, people dream of buying luxuries and achieving the kind of wealth they've seen on Italian TV. They buy and sell what they can, and are inventive about ways to make money, particularly in the main square. Someone takes their bathroom scales and charges customers ten lek a go to weigh themselves. Whole families come and see it as a treat. But when virtually the entire nation tries to finance its dreams of wealth through pyramid schemes, the dreams turn into nightmares. In the town of Gramsh, virtually all that remains for sale - are guns.
Producer: Arlene Gregorius.
Joanna Robertson is a journalist and mother who has lived in five foreign countries, where she has observed that local shopping habits tell you a lot about the place. In these Essays, she argues that when people go shopping, they don't just purchase goods, they also buy into something else. Joanna Robertson takes us shopping with the locals and explores these ulterior motives and what they reveal about the residents of five cities: Rome, New York, Berlin, Tirana and Joanna's current home, Paris.
When Parisians shop for, or sell, traditional, locally produced high-quality food, it's not just because they revere it, but also because it's part of a deeply entrenched culture that dates back to the nineteenth century. Owners of specialist food shops like Madame Acabo and her to-die-for chocolates are the heirs of key individuals like the lawyer, politician and gastronome of genius, Brillat-Savarin (whose Physiology of Taste, published in 1825, has never been out of print), and the aristocrat Grimod de la ReyniÃre who wrote not only gastronomic almanacs and journals, but also reviews of the new phenomenon called "le restaurant" - one of which, a very successful one using only locally sourced ingredients, he set up himself.
Producer: Arlene Gregorius.
Joanna Robertson is a journalist and mother who has lived in five foreign countries, where she has observed that local shopping habits tell you a lot about the place. In these Essays, she argues that when people go shopping, they don't just purchase goods, they also buy into something else. Joanna Robertson takes us shopping with the locals and explores these ulterior motives and what they reveal about the residents of five cities: Rome, New York, Berlin, Tirana and Joanna's current home, Paris.
Thus book-shopping in New York is also about intellectual validation - or, as Joanna found when shopping for books with the late Susan Sontag, about building intellectual bridges to Europe.
Producer: Arlene Gregorius.
Christopher Harding asks if mental illness in Japan may actually be a sign of a rejection of a narrowly conceived modernity? From the neurasthenia of the great novelist Natsume Soseki to the "hikikomori" or acute social withdrawal of the 1990s, he questions whether these conditions may actually be a rational response to a tightly governed society: "their deep disorientation may be the result of living in a rapidly changing society and possessing an almost pathological degree of clear-sightedness." This is the final episode in a series of essays in which he explores the doubts and misgivings which have beset the rapid modernisation of mainstream life in Japan.
Producer: Sheila Cook
Christopher Harding tells the story of a famous crime, the robbery of hundreds of millions of yen in 1968 - which also serves as a metaphor for the theft of postwar promises of liberty and openness in 1960s Japan. The country's "radical moment" was purloined in the interests of rapid economic growth and embrace of an American alliance.
Producer: Sheila Cook
Christopher Harding examines how Buddhism was reimagined in early 20th-century Japan in the service of militarism and nationalism. At risk of terminal decline and blamed for an economic and imaginative stranglehold on the population, its standing was transformed by the former Buddhist priest turned philosopher, Inoue Enryo, who turned "philosophical somersaults to find a basis in Buddhism for war".
Producer: Sheila Cook
Delving further into the darker sides of Japan's recent history, Christopher Harding explores two starkly contrasting models of ‘family’ in turn-of-the-century Japan. One was a neo-Victorian idyll, epitomised by the emperor serving as the benevolent head of a national family; the other was symbolised by a woman who joined a group of anarchists plotting to assassinate the emperor and by feminists who opposed "the heavy investment of powerful people in this familial ideal."
Producer: Sheila Cook
Christopher Harding begins his exploration of some of the darker sides of Japan's recent history by reflecting on popular doubts and misgivings about mainstream modern life through the story of a building: Deer Cry Hall. The rise and fall of this single, iconic piece of late 19th-century architecture represented Japanese concerns about foreignness and fakery in the new world their modernising leaders were creating.
Producer: Sheila Cook
Radio 3 presenter Kate Molleson celebrates a composer whose music is particularly important to her: the Frenchwoman Eliane Radigue, whose calm and long-form sense of perspective Kate finds inspirational.
Radio 3 presenter Andrew McGregor reflects on the powerful Lamentations of English composer Thomas Tallis and their special place in his life.
Radio 3 presenter Kathryn Tickell celebrates a composer whose music is particularly important to her: the Australian-American folksong fanatic Percy Grainger.
Radio 3 presenter Tom McKinney celebrates the birdsong-inspired music of the 20th-century French composer Olivier Messiaen and its special place in his life.
Radio 3 presenter Penny Gore celebrates a composer particularly important to her: the Moravian Leos Janacek, whose music is shot through with the uncertainties of life.
Harland Miller is an artist whose word-play and dexterous brushwork has won him acclaim. He reveals how past decades have informed his work:
After art school and a stint at 'Pop World', Harland is whisked off to New York and promised a show organised by the Steinitz brothers. Anxieties about accommodation ensue. Then a night spent at Jerry's café seems to crystallize his 'vision' for the future..
Producer Duncan Minshull
Acclaimed artist and writer Harland Miller reveals how an eventful past has fed into his work:
2. The late 1970s and Harland ends up in a class at school below the 'worst' group. This group is called 'Peanuts' and with guidance from his teacher Miss Stow he discovers a passion for art and an early talent for painting. There's also a side-career in 'customising' clothes, thanks to Big Kevin.
Producer Duncan Minshull
Acclaimed artist and writer Harland Miller reveals how an eventful past has fed into his work:
1. The 1970s and early art influences may have presented themselves after the graffiting of THIN LIZZY on someone's fence. At home there were father's yearnings for the culture of Venice, though the family lived in Naburn, Yorkshire. Which flooded a lot.
Producer Duncan Minshull
The poet and playwright describes how he was influenced by the comic novel "Pyramids". "When I opened the first few pages...it is no exaggeration to say my whole world changed," he recalls. As a twelve-year-old Nigerian migrant to London, Ellams found that Pratchett's hilarious fantasy world helped him in his transition to his new homeland. "If I could give myself and belong so completely and entirely to his world, which mirrored Britain, then perhaps I could belong to Britain itself." Producer: Smita Patel.
Tony Blair's former spokesman, on how Gustave Flaubert's novel gave him a lifetime love of French culture. "It is a love that has endured. I like reading French, speaking French, listening to French. Every year of my adult life, I have spent a part of it in France, and the older I get, the more freedom I seem to have to go there, and so the more I exploit that freedom." Producer: Smita Patel.
Zarah Hussain explains how The Arabian Nights inspired her as an artist. On discovering the book as a child, she found "the book was absolutely beautiful...There was a border of pink and blue arabesque flowers and a central image of a King wearing a gold crown and beautiful robes in conversation with a Queen similarly bedecked in robes. The floor and walls were covered in repeating geometric patterns. ...they came from a different world, a faraway place, but a place that was somehow familiar to me." Producer: Smita Patel.
Neurosurgeon and writer Henry Marsh on how "War and Peace" by Leo Tolstoy began a teenage love affair with all things Russian. "I burned the plastic coating off my NHS spectacle frames to reveal the revolutionary intellectual steel inside. And bought a young Communist League badge which I could wear on my black polo neck pullover." Marsh later drove across Europe to begin the first of many stints as a volunteer surgeon in Ukraine. "My life might easily have careered off in an entirely different direction if it had not been for Tolstoy," he says.
Producer Smita Patel Editor Hugh Levinson.
Journalist and writer Afua Hirsch discusses "Wide Sargasso Sea" by Jean Rhys, the story of the forgotten first wife of Mr Rochester in Charlotte Bronte's novel Jane Eyre. Encountering Rhys's novel aged 14, Hirsch detested her account of a Creole girl growing up in 1830s Jamaica. Re-reading it much later in life, she came to believe that "it is one of the most perfect books ever written in the English language. The sparsity of Rhys's painfully meticulous sentences, which so alienated the teenage me, touches me now - a writer myself - as the work of a genius." The novel helped shape her thinking on Britishness. "Race is everywhere. Its legacy is real and traumatic. You can't opt out of it or - as so many people in contemporary Britain attempt to do - claim not to see it."
Producer Smita Patel Editor Hugh Levinson.
Paul Morley would be happy to sign up to the notion that music is a civilising force were it not for the fact that everywhere he finds it co-opted for purposes that have precious little to do with the common good. Making a journey in a lift more relaxing, easing the stress of the shopping experience and luring people towards a purchase do not seem to him to be the hallmarks of civilisation. Paul finds much to rejoice at in the way technology has made music available to so many but calls for a vigilance in the easy assumption that all music is good.
Jameela Siddiqi remembers her own relatively late discovery of the power of Indian classical music in the hands of the Sufi singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. A successful TV news producer with a stable job and a casual enthusiasm for music from Bach to the Beatles she found her world turned upside down by a concert by Khan in the late 1980s. She describes what happened to her, the musical world into which she felt inducted and the qualities of that world that she believes are entirely civilising.
Professor Kofi Agawu of Princeton University provides the third in The Essay series running in parallel to the BBC TV series Civilisations. Once again he is responding to the question of whether or not music is an entirely civilising force, and he does so having just returned from a visit to west Africa. Prof Agawu wonders how the musicians of the Asante kingdom, the sophisticated drummers, poets and singers, might respond to the idea that what they do is civilising, but he also tackles the colonial notion that the music of the colonisers was somehow superior to indigenous music and with that civilising. It's not a theory that stands the test of time when he recalls the four-part Lutheran hymns he remembers from his youth with the highly sophisticated rhythmic and poetic structures of Asante music which are now used in serious and popular music around the world.
Professor Alice Roberts chooses to look thousands of years back in human and pre-human history for signs and signals that music was not so much a civilising as a humanising force. Her exploration takes her to ancient archaeological sites where traces of early instruments have been found and the evidence of shifts and re-shapings in our pre-hominid ancestors which suggest some kind of musical interaction long before language developed.
In the first of five essay's responding to the BBC's TV series Civilisations, Sir Roger Scruton explores the notion that music might be a civilising force. His response draws on his own boyhood experiences of Classical Music as well as the nuanced thoughts and conclusions of Plato. He also tackles the uneasy relationship between history's less savoury music enthusiasts, Stalin and Hitler, and the lack of any civilising impact it had on them. There are no pat answers to these serious and challenging questions, but Sir Roger's conclusions rely for the most part on his responses to music and the potential he sees in it alongside religion, morality and love in any encounter with darker forces.
New Generation Thinker Simon Beard, from the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, looks at AI and what the writing of Douglas Adams tells us about questions of morality and who should be in control. This year is the 40th anniversary of BBC Radio 4's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Recorded with an audience at Sage Gateshead as part of BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival.
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio.
Producer: Fiona McLean.
New Generation Thinker Emma Butcher looks at what we learn about war from the writing of child soldiers in The Battle of Trafalgar and the childhood writings of the Bronte family who were avid readers of newspaper accounts of battles and memoirs of soldiers. Does their fantasy fiction show an understanding of PTSD and the impact of battle on fighters before such conditions were diagnosed?
Dr Emma Butcher, literature historian at the University of Leicester, uncovers the history of Robert Sands, a powder monkey in the Battle of Trafalgar,. Does his experience muddy our sense of what childhood is ?
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio
Producer: Torquil MacLeod.
From Monarchs to Presidents. Joanne Paul on satire, flattery and document leaks in the C16 and C17 centuries and the relevance of strategies for telling truth to those who hold power over us now. Five hundred years ago a miscalculation on this front could leave you without a head. Today, the personal stakes may not be as high, but globally, we've never had so much to lose. Renaissance historian and New Generation Thinker Dr Joanne Paul, from the University of Sussex, takes us back to the 16th and 17th century techniques for challenging the establishment and the writings of Gegorge Puttenham, Thomas More and Sir Thomas Elyot and debates over the merits of flattery versus honesty, and whether it was better to lead or to compel.
Recorded with an audience at Sage Gateshead as part of BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival.
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select 10 academics each year who can turn their research into radio
Producer: Torquil MacLeod.
April 1916. By the Nile, the foremost poets of the Middle East are arguing about Shakespeare. In 2004, Egyptian singer Essam Karika released his urban song Oh Romeo.
Reflecting on his travels and encounters around the Arab world, New Generation Thinker Islam Issa, from Birmingham City University, discusses how canonical English writers (Shakespeare and Milton) creep into the popular culture of the region today. Recorded with an audience at Sage Gateshead as part of BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival in 2018.
Islam's Issa's book, Milton in the Arab-Muslim World, won the Milton Society of America's 'Outstanding First Book' award. His exhibition Stories of Sacrifice won the Muslim News Awards 'Excellence in Community Relations' prize.
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio. There are now 100 early career academics who have passed through the scheme.
Producer: Fiona McLean.
A fashion show in Buenos Aires was put on for propaganda but football fixtures were deemed too risky. New Generation Thinker Dr Christopher Bannister, from the University of Manchester, looks at attempts to influence opinion about World War II in Latin America. Although relatively untouched by violence, support in such a strategically important region was vital to the British war effort. Bombs and bullets were no use here, so fashion shows, book launches, soap operas and films became the British Ministry of Information's weapons of war as New Generation Thinker Dr Christopher Bannister, from the University of Manchester, explains.
Recorded with an audience at Sage Gateshead for BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival.
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio.
Producer: Jacqueline Smith.
Alistair Fraser talks about teenagers, street life and filling time. Doing nothing has become the mantra of twenty-first century life. In an accelerated world, we yearn for a space where minds are emptied, iPhones left at the door. But doing nothing is not always a choice. For young people, bored on the streets, it's all there is. And for them doing nothing is always doing something. New Generation Thinker Alistair Fraser, from the University of Glasgow, has written books including Gangs and Crime: Critical Alternatives and Urban Legends: Gang Identity in the Post-Industrial City, which was awarded the British Society of Criminology Book Prize.
Recorded with an audience at Sage Gateshead as part of BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival.
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio.
Producer: Jacqueline Smith.
Gilbert and Sullivan gave university-educated women the English comic operetta treatment in their eighth collaboration, Princess Ida (1884) but why did the most famous musical duo of their day choose to make fun of them? To find out, New Generation Thinker Dr Eleanor Lybeck, from the University of Oxford, looks at protests, popular culture and a group of pioneering Victorian women who saw education as the first step towards emancipation. Recorded with an audience at Sage Gateshead as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival.
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio
Producer: Zahid Warley.
Tom Simpson looks at a study of suspicion in a 1950s Italian village and the lessons it has for community relations and social tribes now. Edward Banfield's book, The Moral Basis of a Backward Society, depicts a village where everyone is out for themselves. New Generation Thinker Tom Simpson is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford. He argues that we are losing the habits of trust that have made our prosperity possible. Unless we learn how to reinvigorate our cultures of trust, we ourselves have a future that is backwards.
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio.
Producer: Luke Mulhall.
An apple a day is said to keep the doctor away but could a poem, painting or play have the same effect? Daisy Fancourt is a Wellcome Research Fellow at University College London. In her Essay, recorded with an audience at Sage Gateshead for the Free Thinking Festival, she looks at experiments with results which which prove that going to a museum is known to enhance neuronal structure in the brain and improve its functioning and people who play a musical instrument have a lower risk of developing dementia. What does this mean for our attitudes towards the arts and what impact are arts prescriptions having ?
Daisy Fancourt has published a book called Arts in Health: Designing and researching interventions .
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio
Producer: Zahid Warley.
Hetta Howes looks at male fears and why Margery Kempe was criticised for crying and bleeding
Medieval mystic Margery Kempe's excessive, noisy crying made her travelling companions so irritated that they wanted to throw her overboard, while others accused her of being possessed by the devil. But Kempe believed she was using her tears as a way to connect with God, turning the medieval connection between women and water into a form of bodily empowerment and a holy sign. New Generation Thinker Hetta Howes, from City, University of London, explores the connections between medieval women and water.
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio.
Recorded at the 2018 Free Thinking Festival.
Producer: Luke Mulhall.
With its title drawn from an essential work by ARB Haldane, 'New Ways through the Glens' is Kenneth Steven's personal reflection on the changes brought to the people and landscape of the Scottish Highlands by the arrival of roads and canals in the 18th and 19th centuries.
In his final Essay, he finds that the new routes are opening up the Highlands to tourists for the first time and a romantic view of the lochs and mountains was born. The mission had been to bring the Highlands in to the United Kingdom, to civilise a landscape and a people that had for too long been allowed to remain wild and unaccountable. There is no doubt that change had to happen, but it came at a high price. As Kenneth points out, 'It's little wonder that most of the songs of the Gaels are about loss.'
With its title drawn from an essential work by ARB Haldane, 'New Ways through the Glens' is Kenneth Steven's personal reflection on the changes brought to the people and landscape of the Scottish Highlands by the arrival of roads and canals in the 18th and 19th centuries.
In this Essay, he looks at the ambitious project to build a canal through the heart of the Highlands along the Great Glen, linking east and west.
With its title drawn from an essential work by ARB Haldane, 'New Ways through the Glens' is Kenneth Steven's personal reflection on the changes brought to the people and landscape of the Scottish Highlands by the arrival of roads and canals in the 18th and 19th centuries.
In the second in the series, he explores how the central belt of Scotland was transformed by land clearance, just where the Highlands meet the Lowlands.
With its title drawn from an essential work by ARB Haldane, 'New Ways through the Glens' is Kenneth Steven's personal reflection on the changes brought to the people and landscape of the Scottish Highlands by the arrival of roads and canals in the 18th and 19th centuries.
In the first programme, he looks at the road-building programme of General Wade, who was determined to pacify the warring clans.
Writer Louise Welsh reflects on the theme of the Uncanny in the writing of Muriel Spark through her story "The House of the Famous Poet."
Muriel Spark was a Scot, an exile, a poet, a codebreaker, a convert to a particularly Calvinist form of Catholicism from a particularly low-key Judaism and the cosmopolitan author of slender, sophisticated novels whose bestselling book mined her own schooldays in the Edinburgh of the 1930s. She may be most famous for "The Prime of Jean Brodie" but she wrote more than 20 novels, plus poems and plays. She is a writer of many facets, all of them glittering, and is now recognised as the most important Scottish writer of the 20th century. In this series, five Scottish women writers give five very different takes on the novels and life of Mrs Spark.
In "Dial M for Muriel" crime writer Val McDermid discusses Muriel Spark - crime novelist. Muriel Spark was a Scot, an exile, a poet, a codebreaker, a convert to a particularly Calvinist form of Catholicism from a particularly low-key Judaism and the cosmopolitan author of slender, sophisticated novels whose bestselling book mined her own schooldays in the Edinburgh of the 1930s. She may be most famous for "The Prime of Jean Brodie" but she wrote more than 20 novels, plus poems and plays. She is a writer of many facets, all of them glittering, and is now recognised as the most important Scottish writer of the 20th century. In this series, five Scottish women writers give five very different takes on the novels and life of Mrs Spark.
Muriel Spark worked as a black propagandist during the war. Janice Galloway discusses two novels influenced by that work, The Comforters, and The Hothouse by the East River. Muriel Spark was a Scot, an exile, a poet, a codebreaker, a convert to a particularly Calvinist form of Catholicism from a particularly low-key Judaism and the cosmopolitan author of slender, sophisticated novels whose bestselling book mined her own schooldays in the Edinburgh of the 1930s. She may be most famous for "The Prime of Jean Brodie" but she wrote more than 20 novels, plus poems and plays. She is a writer of many facets, all of them glittering, and is now recognised as the most important Scottish writer of the 20th century. In this series, five Scottish women writers give five very different takes on the novels and life of Mrs Spark.
Muriel Spark is best known for her witty novels but she began as a poet, and her gravestone describes her as "poeta." Poet Kate Clanchy discusses Muriel Spark - poet. Muriel Spark was a Scot, an exile, a poet, a codebreaker, a convert to a particularly Calvinist form of Catholicism from a particularly low-key Judaism and the cosmopolitan author of slender, sophisticated novels whose bestselling book mined her own schooldays in the Edinburgh of the 1930s. She may be most famous for "The Prime of Jean Brodie" but she wrote more than 20 novels, plus poems and plays. She is a writer of many facets, all of them glittering, and is now recognised as the most important Scottish writer of the 20th century. In this series, five Scottish women writers give five very different takes on the novels and life of Mrs Spark.
Ali Smith presents the first in a series of essays from five Scottish women writers on Muriel Spark. Muriel Spark, was a Scot, an exile, a poet, a codebreaker, a convert to a particularly Calvinist form of Catholicism from a particularly low-key Judaism and the cosmopolitan author of slender, sophisticated novels whose bestselling book mined her own schooldays in the Edinburgh of the 1930s. She may be most famous for "The Prime of Jean Brodie" but she wrote more than 20 novels, plus poems and plays. She is a writer of many facets, all of them glittering, and is now recognised as the most important Scottish writer of the 20th century. In this series, five Scottish women writers give five very different takes on the novels and life of Mrs Spark.
Five writers consider the pleasures of viewing a phenomenon or social activity closely:
Lavinia Greenlaw is on the road in 'intense darkness'. She's visualising what it's like to walk along it and drive along it too. What insights and treasures are revealed ahead?
Producer Duncan Minshull.
Five writers consider the pleasures of viewing a phenomenon or social activity closely:
Rachel Cooke considers the way people eat, what it says about them that is good and bad and amusing. Yet her starting line is unnerving - "the optics of eating are inherently violent." How so?
Producer Duncan Minshull.
Five writers consider the pleasures of viewing a phenomenon or social activity closely:
Every year Nicholas Shakespeare visits the River Hodder in Lancashire. The aim is to catch sea-trout. But to catch sea-trout you have to understand them, and to understand them you have to read their river - expertly.
Producer Duncan Minshull.
Five writers consider the pleasures of viewing a phenomenon or social activity closely:
Lauren Elkin reckons that the way people walk, their gait, is a signifier. It also tells us something about ourselves as we watch people file past us, the quick and the slow. And it makes her think of George Sand strolling Paris.
Producer Duncan Minshull
Five writers consider the art of viewing a phenomenon or social activity closely:
Art historian James Fox drew a yellow disc and put a face on it, he was very young at the time. Since then he has been beguiled by the star that gives our planet light and warmth. And, as he says, looking up to the sky, "there is much that is god-like about it."
Producer Duncan Minshull.
The poet Fiona Hamilton contrasts the different states of clay before and after it's baked hard. The satisfying tactile quality of clay squished in the hand, compared to the dry ordinariness of a brick. It's part of this week's series of Cornerstones - nature writing about how rock, place and landscapes affect us.
Mud bricks are as old as civilisation, and have been used throughout the world, but in England they underpinned the Industrial Revolution, enabling the rapid, cheap construction of mills, factories, terraced housing and the bridges and viaducts of an expanding rail network. Whilst bricks are mundane and ubiquitous, they derive from the deposits left across large parts of England after the last Ice Age, and so are surely the youngest 'rock' of all.
Producer: Mark Smalley
The artist and archaeologist Rose Ferraby gets to grips with something that is always around us, but which we almost never stop to consider: gypsum, the chief constituent of the plaster on the walls around us. It's part of this week's series of Cornerstones - nature writing about how rock, place and landscape affects us.
Gypsum's use dates back to at least the ancient pyramids of Egypt. Rose explains how gypsum, being highly soluble, is responsible for the notorious sinkholes around the city of Ripon, frequently causing subsidence and damage to homes. She also considers alabaster, a soft, luminous stone composed of gypsum, and which was used to stunning effect for medieval memorials and sometimes even in place of stained glass in windows.
Among the other Cornerstones essays this week, the writer Alan Garner takes flint, the stone that has enabled human civilisation, and Esther Woolfson contrasts Aberdeen's granite solidity with the decline of the North Sea oil and gas industry, on which its economy has relied for the last 40 years.
Producer: Mark Smalley
Image: Courtesy of the artist Rose Ferraby
The writer Esther Woolfson contrasts the solidity of Aberdeen, the 'Granite City', with the decline of the North Sea oil and gas industry, on which its economy has so relied since the 1970s. It's part of this week's series of Cornerstones - nature writing about rock, place and landscape.
Author of 'Field Notes from a Hidden City', about her encounters with Aberdeen's wildlife, Esther reflects on the city's relationship with the North Sea hydrocarbons industry, and how much the city has been affected by the waning oil boom. She contrasts the city's big, public granite Victorian edifices with the slow creation in past millennia beneath the seabed of the oil and gas hydrocarbons which have powered the modern world.
Among the other Cornerstones essays this week, the writer Alan Garner reflects upon flint, the stone that has enabled human civilisation, and Sara Maitland considers Lewisian gneiss, so much a rock of ages that it is two-thirds the age of the earth itself.
Producer: Mark Smalley
Image: Courtesy of the artist Rose Ferraby
The writer Sara Maitland conjures with a rock of ages, Lewisian gneiss. Two-thirds the age of the earth itself, and the oldest stone in the UK, it makes up parts of the Northwest Highlands and the Western Isles. It's part of this week's series of Cornerstones - nature writing about rock, place and landscape.
Sara reflects on how the gneiss began its slow journey across the face of the earth more or less where Antarctica is today. It is still moving northwards, at about the same speed as our nails grow. 'Gneiss' comes from the German word meaning to sparkle, and Sara wonders whether it's this quality that convinced Neolithic builders to construct the Callanish stone circle on Lewis from this distinctive, ancient stone.
The other Cornerstones essays broadcast on Radio 3 this week hears different writers reflecting on how other rocks shape landscapes and us, such as flint, North Sea oil and gas, gypsum, which is the main constituent of plaster, and the clay bricks that define our urban landscapes.
Producer: Mark Smalley
Image: Courtesy of the artist Rose Ferraby
The writer Alan Garner sparks with flint, the stone that, perhaps more than any other, has enabled human civilisation. It's a stone that has featured in some of his novels, such as Red Shift, where the same Neolithic hand axe resurfaces across different times to haunt his characters. And it is time and evolution that he looks at in this essay: "My blood walked out of Africa ninety thousand years ago. We came by flint. Flint makes and kills; gives shelter, food; it clothes us. Flint clears forest. Flint brings fire. With flint we bear the cold."
Alan's essay is the first of five Cornerstones this week in which different writers reflect on how a particular rock shapes both people and place.
Producer: Mark Smalley
Image: Courtesy of the artist Rose Ferraby
Nikesh Shukla on Watershed in Bristol and how it helped him fall in love with the city. 5/5 Nikesh edits Rife magazine for young people in the building and explains how the spirit of Watershed is summed up in the community who use the space. "People are generous with their time, their ideas and their skills. People can be interrupted and can interrupt." Producer Clare Walker.
Travel writer Phoebe Smith on Hafod Eryri - the visitor centre on Mount Snowdon's summit. 4/5 Phoebe explains how despite herself, Hafod Eryri has grown on her, and that she has found unexpected joy at being able to drink hot chocolate on top of a mountain. Its presence says something about our chutzpah in putting a building where it doesn't belong. Producer Clare Walker.
Andrew Hurley on the haunting qualities of Chingle Hall, a 17th-century manor house near Preston. 3/5 Andrew describes the disturbing histories of the inhabitants of the hall and the many paranormal experiences of visitors. As repositories of memories and secrets, are buildings themselves sentient things and places of shifting realities? Producer Clare Walker.
Novelist Melissa Harrison on the joy of 'sleeping with books' at Gladstone's Library in North Wales, the only residential library in the UK.
2/5 Melissa explains why the building allows her to sink into a state of uninterrupted concentration, allowing a thread of thought to persist not only over hours but days.
Producer Clare Walker.
Pianist Stephen Hough on Wigmore Hall in London and how its "shoebox" design catches the ear.
1/5 Stephen describes the hall in which he has performed and listened to numerous concerts and how its design ensures "every sound is beautifully focused."
This week's Essays are celebrating British architecture. Each writer has a passionate connection with the building, revealing how our long past and complex present have led to a built environment unlike anywhere else on the planet. Producer Clare Walker Image of Wigmore Hall courtesy of Peter Dazeley.
Ian Sansom drops a quick line to Dante
Ian Sansom writes to Frankenstein author, Mary Shelley, to ask her how on earth she coped
Ian Sansom is in the gutter looking at the stars as he writes to Oscar Wilde
Ian Sansom writes to Irish novelist and playwright, William Trevor
Ian Sansom writes to poet Marianne Moore and asks her about that tricorn hat
Ten contemporary cultural specialists look back at the impact of the Russian Revolution of 1917 on artists of the time - in film, theatre, poetry, dance and beyond. Writer, composer and silent movie accompanist Neil Brand weighs up propaganda versus artistic invention in the re-enactment of the Revolution at the heart of Eisenstein's classic film October.
Part of Breaking Free: A Century of Russian Culture
Producer Alison Hindell BBC Cymru Wales.
Ten contemporary cultural specialists look back at the impact of the Russian Revolution of 1917 on artists of the time - in film, theatre, poetry, dance and beyond. Political commentator and historian Tariq Ali recalls a tour of Constructivist Moscow in the 1980s that introduced him to the work of revolutionary architect Moisei Ginzburg.
Part of Breaking Free: A Century of Russian Culture
Producer Alison Hindell BBC Cymru Wales.
Ten contemporary cultural specialists look back at the impact of the Russian Revolution of 1917 on artists of the time - in film, theatre, poetry, dance and beyond. Ceramicist Claire Curneen tells the strange story of the Imperial Porcelain Factory in Petrograd that was renamed the State Porcelain Factory in 1917. She examines two dinner plates, now held at the National Museum of Wales, that were originally designed for aristocrats but then repurposed after the Revolution.
Part of Breaking Free: A Century of Russian Culture
Producer Alison Hindell BBC Cymru Wales.
Ten contemporary cultural specialists look back at the impact of the Russian Revolution of 1917 on artists of the time - in film, theatre, poetry, dance and beyond. Poet and biographer Elaine Feinstein compares the impact of the Revolution on the contrasting lives of the two great poets, Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetaeva.
Part of Breaking Free: A Century of Russian Culture
Producer Alison Hindell BBC Cymru Wales.
Ten contemporary cultural specialists look back at the impact of the Russian Revolution of 1917 on artists of the time - in film, theatre, poetry, dance and beyond. Musicologist Tamsin Alexander considers the music of Alexander Mosolov, which was inspired by the industrial sounds of the newly forged Soviet Union, and who was the only composer to be sent to the Gulag.
Part of Breaking Free: A Century of Russian Culture
Producer Alison Hindell BBC Cymru Wales.
Ten contemporary cultural specialists look back at the impact of the Russian Revolution of 1917 on artists of the time - in film, theatre, poetry, dance and beyond. Academic and art historian Christina Lodder describes the work and influence of visionary sculptor Vladimir Tatlin, whose major revolutionary design would never be realised.
Part of Breaking Free: A Century of Russian Culture
Producer Alison Hindell BBC Cymru Wales.
Ten contemporary cultural specialists look back at the impact of the Russian Revolution of 1917 on artists of the time - in film, theatre, poetry, dance and beyond. Director and writer Richard Eyre appraises the impact of the Russian Revolution on the life and career of theatre director Vsevolod Meyerhold. Initially, an enthusiast for the Bolshevik cause, he later fell foul of the system.
Part of Breaking Free: A Century of Russian Culture
Producer Alison Hindell BBC Cymru Wales.
Ten contemporary cultural specialists look back at the impact of the Russian Revolution of 1917 on artists of the time - in film, theatre, poetry, dance and beyond. Former ballerina Deborah Bull looks at the impact of Nijinsky's revolutionary ballet, The Rite of Spring, which in dance terms, pre-empted the events of October 1917 by several years.
Part of Breaking Free: A Century of Russian Culture
Producer Alison Hindell BBC Cymru Wales.
Ten contemporary cultural specialists look back at the impact of the Russian Revolution of 1917 on artists of the time - in film, theatre, poetry, dance and beyond. 100 years to the day since American journalist John Reed witnessed first-hand the momentous events in revolutionary Petrograd, writer and historian Helen Rappaport reappraises his classic account, Ten Days That Shook the World.
Part of Breaking Free: A Century of Russian Culture
Producer Alison Hindell BBC Cymru Wales.
Ten contemporary cultural specialists look back at the impact of the Russian Revolution of 1917 on artists of the time - in film, theatre, poetry, dance and beyond. Journalist and writer Martin Sixsmith opens the series with a consideration of the choices, good and bad, open to artists during and after the Revolution.
Part of Breaking Free: A Century of Russian Culture
Producer Alison Hindell BBC Cymru Wales.
Claire woke up one morning to discover that overnight she had lost her memory as a result of a viral infection. Dr Catherine Loveday, a neuropsycholgist at the University of Westminster, has worked with Claire for many years and shares what life is like when you can only live in the present.
Programme image courtesy of Sarah Grice, Wellcome Collection.
Professor David Shanks is an expert in memory and learning at UCL and investigates how the brain makes memories. This has implications for exams and for how people can learn a language, in this essay David looks at how we can influence our memories and tells us about the more unusual ways to remember.
Programme image courtesy of Sarah Grice, Wellcome Collection.
Eyewitness accounts are crucial in court cases but how reliable are people's memories? Forensic psychologist Professor Fiona Gabbert researches the reliability, suggestibility and fallibility of memory to discover how errors are made. And while most people think their memories are their own, social influences can cause "memory conformity" when people discuss their shared experiences together. Fiona's research leads to tips on how to cue up the brain to improve how memories are made.
Programme image courtesy of Sarah Grice, Wellcome Collection.
We all remember where we were as a child when a particular world event took place; depending on your age it could be the killing of J.F. Kennedy, the bombing of the twin towers in New York or the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Chris French is Professor of Psychology at Goldsmiths and is interested in the nature of early childhood memories. Some memories when we interrogate them are clearly not believable and others can be implanted, so how reliable are our memories?
Programme image courtesy of Sarah Grice, Wellcome Collection.
Neuroscientist Adam Zeman on how amnesia leads to a loss of self and how the lives of two men, Peter and Marcus, have been affected by their lack of a past. As Professor of Cognitive and Behavioural Neurology at the University of Exeter, Adam works with people with epilepsy who experience loss of memory. His work leads him to examine how memories are formed and ask whether autobiographical details are the only part of our sense of self that matters.
Part of Why Music? The Key to Memory at Wellcome Collection which launches on Friday with In Tune.
Programme image courtesy of Sarah Grice, Wellcome Collection.
How do you deal with a house worth of "stuff" when the family home needs to be cleared after the death of your mother? And when you're living in a small flat that has little room for heirlooms? While in the depths of grief, and faced with difficult decisions about what to do with everything, Joanna Robertson ponders the true meaning of things once their beloved owner has gone. Apart from their obvious sentimental value, do these objects provide us with a deeper connection to our history and identity? Or are they just "stuff" to get rid of?
Many people feel they're drowning in stuff, and try to declutter. Joanna Robertson is one of them. And in the fourth part of her series on "stuff", she finds that trying to get rid of books and personal letters is a whole other story. What to do with books brought home from faraway places, and with once-treasured love letters? Producer: Arlene Gregorius.
Decluttering is all the rage, as many of us are weighed down by stuff. Joanna Robertson lives in Paris, where apartments are small. So how do they go about getting rid of their clutter? Or do they?
In a previous series for The Essay, Joanna took us to some of the international cities she's lived in and told us the Shopping News. Now, she takes on the consequences. Stuff Happens - not just to shopaholics but to all of us. It's the seemingly inescapable curse of 21st century consumerism - however hard we try to resist.
In this edition, Joanna finds out about Parisians' solutions for having too much stuff - and they aren't what you might think.
Producer: Arlene Gregorius.
Why is it so hard to get rid of stuff? Why does it have such a hold on us, yet get us down?
In a previous series for The Essay, Joanna Robertson took us to some of the international cities she's lived in and told us the Shopping News. Now, she takes on the consequences. Stuff Happens - not just to shopaholics but to all of us. It's the seemingly inescapable curse of 21st century consumerism - however hard we try to declutter and resist. In this edition, Joanna Robertson aims for a tidy home, and its reward, a tidy mind. Easier said than done - except on one occasion, when she managed quite a coup. Producer: Arlene Gregorius.
Why does stuff have such an emotional hold on us? Why can't we just let it go?
In a previous series for The Essay, Joanna Robertson took us to some of the international cities she's lived in and told us the Shopping News. Now, she takes on the consequences. Stuff Happens - not just to shopaholics but to all of us. It's the seemingly inescapable curse of 21st century consumerism - however hard we try to declutter and resist. In this edition, Joanna Robertson relives some of her frequent house moves in Europe. Once, when relocating from Rome to Berlin, Joanna and her stuff got perilously stuck in the snowbound Alps, in almost the same spot as Hannibal and his elephants over two millennia earlier.
Producer: Arlene Gregorius.
Don Paterson is an award-winning poet, editor and teacher, but for all his technical ability and the recognition that has been paid to his work Paterson is acutely aware of awe and sometimes envy when he looks at the work of other writers. Here he applies his wit and skills of technical analysis to discussing five poems he wishes he had written. Tonight, Robert Frost's poem 'Design'.
Design
I found a dimpled spider, fat and white, On a white heal-all, holding up a moth Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth-- Assorted characters of death and blight Mixed ready to begin the morning right, Like the ingredients of a witches' broth-- A snow-drop spider, a flower like froth, And dead wings carried like a paper kite.
What had that flower to do with being white, The wayside blue and innocent heal-all? What brought the kindred spider to that height, Then steered the white moth thither in the night? What but design of darkness to appall?-- If design govern in a thing so small.
Don Paterson is an award-winning poet, editor and teacher, but for all his technical ability and the recognition that has been paid to his work Paterson is acutely aware of awe and sometimes envy when he looks at the work of other writers. Here he applies his wit and skills of technical analysis to discussing the five poems he wishes he had written. Tonight, Sylvia Plath's poem 'Cut'.
Cut For Susan O'Neill Roe
What a thrill - My thumb instead of an onion. The top quite gone Except for a sort of a hinge
Of skin, A flap like a hat, Dead white. Then that red plush.
Little pilgrim, The Indian's axed your scalp. Your turkey wattle Carpet rolls
Straight from the heart. I step on it, Clutching my bottle Of pink fizz.
A celebration, this is. Out of a gap A million soldiers run, Redcoats, every one.
Whose side are they on? 0 my Homunculus, I am ill. I have taken a pill to kill
The thin Papery feeling. Saboteur, Kamikaze man
The stain on your Gauze Ku Klux Klan Babushka Darkens and tarnishes and when
The balled Pulp of your heart Confronts its small Mill of silence
How you jump - Trepanned veteran, Dirty girl, Thumb stump.
Don Paterson is an award-winning poet, editor and teacher, but for all his technical ability and the recognition that has been paid to his work Paterson is acutely aware of awe and sometimes envy when he looks at the work of other writers. Here he applies his wit and skills of technical analysis to discussing the five poems he wishes he had written. Tonight, Elizabeth Bishop's 'Large Bad Picture'.
Large Bad Picture
Remembering the Strait of Belle Isle or some northerly harbor of Labrador, before he became a schoolteacher a great-uncle painted a big picture.
Receding for miles on either side into a flushed, still sky are overhanging pale blue cliffs hundreds of feet high,
their bases fretted by little arches, the entrances to caves running in along the level of a bay masked by perfect waves.
On the middle of that quiet floor sits a fleet of small black ships, square-rigged, sails furled, motionless, their spars like burnt match-sticks.
And high above them, over the tall cliffs' semi-translucent ranks, are scribbled hundreds of fine black birds hanging in n's in banks.
One can hear their crying, crying, the only sound there is except for occasional sighing as a large aquatic animal breathes.
In the pink light the small red sun goes rolling, rolling, round and round and round at the same height in perpetual sunset, comprehensive, consoling,
while the ships consider it. Apparently they have reached their destination. It would be hard to say what brought them there, commerce or contemplation.
Don Paterson is an award-winning poet, editor and teacher, but for all his technical ability and the recognition that has been paid to his work Paterson is acutely aware of awe and sometimes envy when he looks at the work of other writers. Here he applies his wit and skills of technical analysis to discussing the five poems he wishes he had written. Tonight, Michael Donaghy 'The Hunter's Purse'.
The Hunter's Purse
is the last unshattered 78 by 'Patrolman Jack O'Ryan, violin', a Sligo fiddler in dry America.
A legend, he played Manhattan's ceilidhs, fell asleep drunk one snowy Christmas on a Central Park bench and froze solid. They shipped his corpse home, like his records.
This record's record is its lunar surface. I wouldn't risk my stylus to this gouge, or this crater left by a flick of ash -
When Anne Quinn got hold of it back in Kilrush, she took her fiddle to her shoulder and cranked the new Horn of Plenty Victrola over and over and over, and scratched along until she had it right or until her father shouted
'We'll have no more Of that tune In this house tonight'.
She slipped out back and strapped the contraption to the parcel rack and rode her bike to a far field, by moonlight.
It skips. The penny I used for ballast slips. O'Ryan's fiddle pops, and hiccoughs back to this, back to this, back to this: a napping snowman with a fiddlecase; a flask of bootleg under his belt; three stars; a gramophone on a pushbike; a cigarette's glow from a far field; over and over, three bars in common time.
Don Paterson is an award-winning poet, editor and teacher, but for all his technical ability and the recognition that has been paid to his work Paterson is acutely aware of awe and sometimes envy when he looks at the work of other writers. Here he applies his wit and skills of technical analysis to discussing the five poems he wishes he had written. Tonight, Seamus Heaney's 'The Underground' .
The Underground
There we were in the vaulted tunnel running, You in your going-away coat speeding ahead And me, me then like a fleet god gaining Upon you before you turned to a reed
Or some new white flower japped with crimson As the coat flapped wild and button after button Sprang off and fell in a trail Between the Underground and the Albert Hall.
Honeymooning, moonlighting, late for the Proms, Our echoes die in that corridor and now I come as Hansel came on the moonlit stones Retracing the path back, lifting the buttons
To end up in a draughty lamplit station After the trains have gone, the wet track Bared and tensed as I am, all attention For your step following and damned if I look back.
from Station Island (Faber, 1984), copyright (c) Seamus Heaney 1984,.
Since August 1947 the events surrounding Partition have been a staple of art, music, drama and fiction. Writer and spiritual teacher John Siddique draws on his Indian and Irish roots as he reflects on what Partition means to him. He reflects on the 70-year cultural legacy, identifying patterns and drawing lessons from literature, film and poetry.
As the British withdrew after 300 years the subcontinent was partitioned into two independent nation states: Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. It prompted one of the greatest migrations in human history. Ten million people were displaced as Muslims trekked to West Pakistan and East Pakistan (modern day Bangladesh), while millions of Hindus and Sikhs headed in the opposite direction.
The resulting carnage saw massacres, arson, forced conversions, mass abductions, and savage sexual violence. It is estimated that in excess of a million people died and 75,000 women were raped, many of whom were then disfigured or dismembered.
John says he found suffering, but also beauty, in the short stories of Saadat Hassan Manto. And he recommends Deepa Mehta's film, Earth, based on the novel Ice Candy Man, for its unflinching and human portrayal of events.
Produced by Matt Willis at 7digital.
A heartfelt meditation on the (in)visibilty of gay women.
Writer and theatremaker Stella Duffy describes growing up lesbian in New Zealand in the 60s and 70s and considers what the 40 year expatriate 'marriage' of novelist, poet and playwright Gertrude Stein and Alice B Toklas, author of The Alice B Toklas Cookbook, means to her.
Part of Gay Britannia, a season of programming marking the 50th anniversary of The Sexual Offences Act 1967, which partially decriminalised homosexual acts that took place in private between two men over the age of 21.
Writer: Stella Duffy Reader: Stella Duffy Producer: Simon Richardson.
Mary Wollstonecraft, William Godwin, William Wordsworth and Thomas Paine were amongst the guests invited to the dinner table of publisher Joseph Johnson. Daisy Hay explores the pivotal role played in the early history of English Romanticism by a maker of books who was also a maker of dreams, who invited his workers to eat alongside leading thinkers of the day, and whose publication The Analytical Review set out significant new ideas.
New Generation Thinker Daisy Hay is a Senior Lecturer in Senior Lecturer in English Literature and Archival Studies at the University of Exeter and has written about the tangled lives of the Young Romantics as well as Mr and Mrs Disraeli. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio.
The Essay was recorded in front of an audience at the Festival of Ideas run by the University of York in 2017. You can rewatch and listen to events from this year's online Festival http://yorkfestivalofideas.com/2020-online/
Producer: Jacqueline Smith.
Image: Daisy Hay. Credit: Ian Martindale.
What does the press reporting of a story of high society scandal and assassination from the reign of Charles II tell us about fake news, political bias and the draw of a saucy headline.
New Generation Thinker Thomas Charlton researches religious and political disputes of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and is currently based at Dr Williams's Library in London. His essay, recorded in front of an audience at the 2017 Festival of Ideas at the University of York, looks at a tale from 1682 and the way that the assassination of a very rich man in the heart of London highlighted tensions between the Court Party of Charles II and the Anti-Court Party of the Duke of Monmouth, his ambitious and illegitimate son. Charles might have been a Merry Monarch but he was also a very insecure one. The Crown throughout his reign was suspected of Catholic tendencies and the threat of revolution hung in the air. The Murder of Tom of the Ten Thousand nearly brought matters to a head ... and a colourful and thoroughly partisan media was there to publish every lurid detail.
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC with the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio and applications are open now for 2021. Details are on the AHRC website. You can find events from this year's online York Festival of Ideas http://yorkfestivalofideas.com/2020-online/
Producer: Jacqueline Smith.
Image: Thomas Charlton. Credit: Ian Martindale.
Jonathan Healey, of the University of Oxford, argues that the way people resisted unpopular governments changed dramatically from the 16th to the 21st centuries. As states grew in power, flight was no longer an option, so discontented people were forced to imagine revolution. Today, escape is once again possible, to safe online spaces which act like medieval forests, places which the government can't control. The nature of resistance is reverting to its Tudor state: socially conservative, constant, and small in scale.
Recorded with an audience at the 2017 York Festival of Ideas New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC with the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio. You can find information about how to apply for this year's scheme on the website https://ahrc.ukri.org/
Producer: Jacqueline Smith.
Image: Jonathan Healey. Credit: Ian Martindale.
From the Persian poet Rumi through the Old Testament Israelites to the political protests of the suffragettes, New Generation Thinker Christopher Kissane, of the London School of Economics, explores the history of fasting. Eating and avoiding hunger are our most basic goals, yet for thousands of years people have deliberately denied themselves food as an act of faith or conscience. What is the history of fasting, and why do billions still fast today?
Recorded with an audience at the York Festival of Ideas in 2017 New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC with the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio.
Producer: Jacqueline Smith.
Image: Christopher Kissane. Credit: Ian Martindale.
From Romantic notions of the natural nursing mother to Victorian fears of vampirism to modernist associations between breastfeeding and the working class, Corin Throsby, from the University of Cambridge, tracks the political and social implications of how we have chosen to feed our babies over the past 200 years.
Recorded with an audience at the York Festival of Ideas in 2017. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC with the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio.
Producer: Jacqueline Smith.
Image: Corin Throsby. Credit: Ian Martindale.
Five writers explore the year 1917 through the works of five Great War artists. Tonight, Santanu Das explores the poetic world of Bristol-born Isaac Rosenberg.
Less familiar today than his contemporaries Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, Rosenberg described - as they did - the horror of war close-up: "The wheels lurched over sprawled dead / But pained them not, though their bones crunched, / Their shut mouths made no moan..." wrote Rosenberg in his great poem of 100 years ago, Dead Man's Dump. "Earth has waited for them, / All the time of their growth / Fretting for their decay: / Now she has them at last!"
In tonight's Essay, Santanu Das re-reads Rosenberg's 1917 poem, written a few months before his own death having just completed a night patrol - on April 1st 1918.
Producer: Simon Elmes.
Before the First World War, Mata Hari's elaborate and provocative performances made her body a sensation. The artist, dancer and style icon graced La Scala, the Folies Bergère and the exclusive private salons of Europe. She was "the toast of Paris," in a skin coloured body stocking with bejewelled breast cups, enchanting, enthralling and scandalous.
In this series looking at the impact of the First World War on artists, the writer Elif Şafak examines this notorious femme fatale's act.
She explores the allure of the Oriental and attitudes to unfettered and independent women. Drawing parallels with Zulaikha, she unveils the legend of Mata Hari who, convicted for passing secrets to the enemy, faced her final performance before a firing squad on 15th October 1917.
Producer: Sarah Bowen.
Five writers explore the year 1917 through the work of five Great War artists. Tonight, Joanna Bourke on Siegfried Sassoon and his celebrated protest against the conflict.
"I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe that the War is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it." So wrote the soldier-poet Siegfried Sassoon in July 1917, in a letter to the Times newspaper. "I am a soldier," he went on, "convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe this War, upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest." The result was uproar - and Sassoon's subsequent confinement to Craiglockhart Hospital in Edinburgh, suffering (the authorities concluded) from shell-shock.
In tonight's Essay, Joanna Bourke re-reads Sassoon's letter of protest and examines what led up to his outspoken anti-war declaration, and what happened next.
Producer: Simon Elmes.
Tarek Osman explores the words of Gertrude Bell, in this series looking at the impact of the First World War on great artists and thinkers.
Gertrude Bell, explorer, archeologist, diplomat, linguist, writer and spy was no ordinary woman. The first woman ever to be awarded a first-class degree in modern history from Oxford, she went on to become a groundbreaking mountaineer and have a Swiss peak named after her. But these were mere asides.
By 1914 she had immersed herself in the history and culture of the Levant, mastering Arabic, and forging real relationships across large swathes of the region.
As the First World War raged across Europe and the Middle East, the British Empire realised it needed her knowledge and experience. And in 1917, as Oriental Secretary in the British Commission in Baghdad, she was crucial to them, visiting dignities, poring over intelligence and military plans. The only woman in that world of men, she devised British strategy, selecting its Arab partners and drawing lines in the sand which would become the borders of new states.
As a young academic, Tarek tussled with the idea of Bell. She was symbolic of the way colonial powers had shaped his world and a voice that seemed so condescending. In this essay he explores his own conflicted relationship with her and how, as his understanding of the region grew, he developed a respect for a driven and courageous woman whose ideas and reflections remain so relevant today.
Producer Sarah Bowen.
Five writers explore the year 1917 through the works of five diverse creative minds of the Great War, and the experiences that shaped them. In tonight's Essay, the writer and academic Heather Jones looks at French artist Marcel Duchamp's controversial 'readymade' that he entitled 'Fountain', but which was, in effect, simply a piece of common-or-garden, off-the-shelf sanitary-ware, a men's urinal. In what way, contemporary voices asked, was this art? Yet in 2004, critics named 'Fountain' as the most important art work of the twentieth century. But why? And what was the connection to the torment and terror of the First World War which still raged as Duchamp was creating it in 1917? Heather Jones explores the meaning and the wartime associations of Duchamp's now celebrated statement of artistic intent.
Producer: Simon Elmes.
Martin Luther and Philipp Melanchthon are the odd couple of the Reformation, inseparable in the religious revolution they inaugurated, and yet in personality chalk and cheese - and there's no doubt that it's Luther who is the cheese: volatile, colourful, impassioned; ripening majestically but also suddenly going off, like one of those goats' cheeses in the middle of France that could easily double up as an explosive device. Luther has priority in terms of being older, and by force of personality. Melanchthon seems monochrome by comparison. It has been easy for history, outside of specialists, to forget him. But if Margaret Thatcher once said of her right-hand man William Whitelaw that "every Prime Minister needs a Willie", this is all the more the case with true revolutionaries. Revolutions seem to need an odd couple: Robespierre and Danton, or Marx and Engels. Melanchthon is hardly a household name these days but he is (if you like) a revolutionary's revolutionary. Intellectual, serious, endlessly patient, he kept clearing up the mess that Luther left around him. Professor Brian Cummings, from the University of York, tells his story.
Producer: Rosie Dawson
Part of Radio 3's Breaking Free series of programmes exploring Martin Luther's Revolution.
Johann Walther was adopted out of poverty as a boy and could sing like a canary. Initially taking a series of courtly composer and cantor roles, he jumped at the chance to edit the people's first Protestant hymn book. It's a great untold story - the hymns of Luther and Walther began a rich musical tradition in Protestant Germany which changed the musical world. Without Luther and Walther we would not have the oratorios, cantatas and passions of Bach and the word-centred, 'Protestant' tradition of high-quality and complex music and hymnody we know today. Dr Stephen Rose from Royal Holloway University of London tells the story of Johann Walther, the man behind Luther's musical Reformation.
Producer: Rosie Dawson
Part of Radio 3's Breaking Free series of programmes exploring Martin Luther's Revolution.
Dr Charlotte Woodford, fellow in German at Cambridge University, tells the story of the woman who won Martin Luther's heart.
If ever there were a power behind the throne, none was stronger than Katharina von Bora. Known as 'The Lutherine', this former nun found her true vocation as Luther's 'Power-Frau,' arguing the finer points of Theology with him as well as raising their six children and providing hospitality for Luther's fellow-reformers in Wittenberg.
Luther had told friends he didn't intend to take a wife, and when he eventually decided to marry Katharina he wrote to a friend that he did not feel 'passionate love' for her. But later he described her in the most glowing terms possible for a biblically-minded theologian, comparing his devotion to her with that which he felt for one of St Paul's epistles. 'The epistle to the Galatians is my dear epistle. I have put my confidence in it. It is my Katy von Bora'.
Producer: Rosie Dawson
Part of Radio 3's Breaking Free series of programmes exploring Martin Luther's Revolution.
Thomas Muntzer was a fire and brimstone apocalyptic preacher and reformer who was more popular than Martin Luther in his day. As leader of 'The Peasants' War' in 1525 he is hailed as the forerunner of Communist revolutionaries. Though not a communist himself, he had no respect for the social hierarchy - neither princes, dukes, bishops nor civic dignitaries and this was based on his belief that every man was equal before God. It was the task of princes to wield the sword on the side of God - but with the people and not against the people. He initially saw Luther as a comrade-in-arms but he went on to write two major pamphlets against Luther in 1524 describing him as 'soft-living flesh', 'Dr Liar', 'the Wittenberg Pope' and worse. Luther denounced him as a devil and Thomas Muntzer ended up losing his head. Edinburgh writer Andy Drummond profiles the man that Luther later admitted had been his most dangerous opponent.
Producer: Rosie Dawson
Part of Radio 3's Breaking Free series of programmes exploring Martin Luther's Revolution.
Martin Luther is a larger than life figure, a difficult hero who escapes any pigeon-holes you might try to stuff him into. Over the last five hundred years he has been made into a nationalist hero, the founder of the German language, the original pater familias of the pious parsonage, the man who ushered in the modern era.
He was a complex character, an angry anti-Semite who made enemies easily; he was also brilliant, courageous, and revolutionary. In the first of five essays this week which look at the most influential figures who brought about the Reformation, Lyndal Roper, Regius Professor of History at Oxford University, profiles the man who has caused her so much fascination and delight and frustration.
Producer: Rosie Dawson
Part of Radio 3's Breaking Free series of programmes exploring Martin Luther's Revolution.
Thoughts on writing fiction as you get older from the novelist Penelope Lively.
Andrew Martin toasts five 'social phenomena' that are still with us - just.
The genesis of this is hazy. It seems the author lost his travel pass in Soho one day, aged 17. And soon felt there the allure of such places: those erotic emporia. Ruminating on this experience, Andrew looks at the history of such retail outlets and why they have almost entirely disappeared.
Producer Duncan Minshull.
Writing back the years: thoughts on poetry after retirement by Douglas Dunn.
Writing age: thoughts on keeping going by Diana Hendry.
Writing as you get older: thoughts from Vicki Feaver inspired by a commission from the Scottish Poetry Library. What does it mean to be creatively active for long enough to have a late style? 'Do not let me hear of the wisdom of old men', TS Eliot says, 'but rather of their folly'. Late Beethoven stared human extinction in the face and composed music of stark clarified beauty; late Rubens painted with a looser more sensuous brush stroke - was he remembering the flesh of his younger life or was his arthritis affecting his grip? Late style for writer might include a maturation of style, a relaxing into the wisdom of age and experience, but it might also mean struggling to hold onto your gifts, and writing through illness and through grief. A week of essays from three poets and two novelists. Producer: Tim Dee.
The novelist Paul Bailey discusses writing in his ninth decade.
Andrew Martin toasts five 'social phenomena' that are still with us - just.
You buy your milk at the supermarket. But what about that noble clan of milkmen still out there? Still up at 3 am, wending their ways along the nation's streets in their floats. We meet some of the best of them.
Producer Duncan Minshull.
Andrew Martin toasts five 'social phenomena' that are still with us - just.
The author dislikes mobile phones. Because he hankers after the rituals and protocols of the old telephones. On a telephone you can be witty, louche, stylish. Try out the 700-series for instance, in a range of colours each suggesting a certain mood, quality.
Producer Duncan Minshull.
Andrew Martin toasts five 'social phenomena' that are still with us - just.
Starting in London's Hampstead Cemetery, the author pays homage to some amazing characters of the 'vent' world: Sailor Jim; Lord Charles; Shorty; Arthur Lager. All enjoyed varying degrees of success through the decades - just don't call them dummies.
Producer Duncan Minshull.
Andrew Martin toasts five 'social phenomena' that are still with us - just.
It starts amidst the elegance of the Jardin du Luxembourg, where the author's sons potter about with model boats on the ornamental lake. This is charmingly anachronistic and will spark off searches for more ponds and model boats in the UK. Places such as Hampstead, Clapham, Southwold, where it's a small but enthusiastic pastime still.
Producer Duncan Minshull.
Christopher Harding explores the Tokyo of a century ago, the bustling, cosmopolitan capital of a growing empire, where the meaning of 'time' was hotly contested. Critics attacked the relentless 'clock time' of new factories and businesses and the 'leisure time' of youngsters who favoured cafes or poetry rather than exerting themselves in empire-building. Buddhist thinkers and folklorists claimed that Japan must rediscover its natural sense of time as seasonal and cyclical, rather than mechanical.
New Generation Thinker Christopher Harding contemplates the way these attempts at escape became useful fodder for Japan's militarist ideologues - working for the Emperor, his palace tucked away amongst the trees in central Tokyo, whose own sense of time stretched back into myth and from there into divinity.
Recorded as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival in front of an audience at Sage Gateshead. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio.
Producer: Luke Mulhall.
John Gallagher, New Generation Thinker, marks the 400th anniversary of the publication of what might be the greatest, but littlest-known, book of travels of early modern England. Fynes Moryson was a young fellow of a Cambridge college when he left on a journey to Jerusalem and back. His monumental book 'An Itinerary' is a colourful, funny and touching account of one man's curious journey, meeting bandits in northern Germany, disguising himself as a Catholic Italian in order to see Rome and burying his brother's body by the side of the road on his return.
John Gallagher's Essay brings to life one of the great travel accounts of any period which includes detailed instructions to English travellers on how best to disguise themselves when travelling through Catholic Europe.
Recorded as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival in front of an audience at Sage Gateshead. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 with the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio.
Producer: Fiona McLean.
New Generation Thinker Victoria Donovan from the University of St Andrews explores the dilemmas of post-war reconstruction in Soviet Russia and asks why the atheist Communist regime was prepared to spend millions on the restoration of religious architecture. On encountering the war-charred ruins of historic Novgorod in 1944, the Soviet historian Dmitry Likhachev mourned Russia's transformation into a 'graveyard without headstones'. Yet, just 20 years later, the town had risen from the ashes; even the onion-domed churches had been restored. How did this happen?
Recorded as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival in front of an audience at Sage Gateshead. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select 10 academics each year who work with us to turn their research into radio.
Producer: Luke Mulhall.
New Generation Thinker Preti Taneja, Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at Warwick University, on the creation of modern India.
How did a modernist style develop in India between the 1900s and the 1950s? Preti Taneja, who grew up in Letchworth Garden City, traces the way the Garden City Movement inspired the work of Edwin Lutyens in his reshaping of her parents' New Delhi. The first generation of post-Independence architects built on this legacy, drawing also from Le Corbusier, who designed India's first post-partition planned city, Chandigarh, with its famous 'open hand' sculpture; and from Frank Lloyd Wright and Walter Gropius, to create some of the most iconic public buildings across India today. In art, something similar was happening: painter MF Hussain and a group of fellow radicals wanting to break away from Indian traditions and make an international statement. They formed The Progressive Artists Group in December 1947, just months after Partition.
Preti Taneja's essay explores this cultural re-imagining of the new nation, when architects and artists tried to come to terms with India's political and aesthetic history, looking forward to a future they could design, build and express themselves: one that was meant to shape human behaviour for the better.
Recorded as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio.
Producer: Fiona McLean.
Matthew Smith, a New Generation Thinker, goes deep into the American Psychiatric Association archives, where lies an unpublished historical manuscript entitled The Magic Years. Written during the early 1970s, it eulogised the giant strides of post-war American psychiatry made in this period of hope and promise when even the complete eradication of mental illness was thought possible. As a medical historian Matthew argues that, while psychiatrists today might dismiss The Magic Years - and the science behind it - as misguided or naïve, it actually has much to teach us.
New Generation Thinker Matthew Smith is from the University of Strathclyde.
Recorded as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival in front of an audience at Sage Gateshead. New Generation Thinkers is scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio programmes.
Producer: Zahid Warley.
From 1941 to 1968 Catherine Fletcher's grandfather Donald Hudson was a missionary in India. Catherine tells his story during those turbulent years and reflects on the way British people with family history in India understand that past - in this the anniversary year of the end of colonial India.
Originally from Yorkshire, Donald Hudson arrived in Dhaka, now in Bangladesh, to find a city in chaos amid communal riots. He stayed for two years and then moved to one of the most significant British missionary institutions in India, the Baptist Missionary College at Serampore, outside Kolkata, where he was based through famine and then Partition in 1948.
Catherine Fletcher is a Radio 3 New Generation Thinker from Swansea University.
Recorded as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead.
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select 10 academics each year who work with us to turn their research into radio.
Producer: Luke Mulhall.
New Generation Thinker Katherine Cooper looks at literary refugees in the Second World War and tells the untold story of the work done by British writers to save their European colleagues. She shows how HG Wells, Rebecca West and JB Priestley became intertwined with the lives of writers fleeing persecution on the continent. Katherine peeps into drawing rooms, visits the archives of PEN, scrutinises the correspondence and draws on the fiction of key literary figures to explore crucial allegiances formed in wartime London. Why did these British writers believe that by saving Europe's literary voices they were saving Europe itself?
Katherine Cooper is Senior Research Associate at the University of East Anglia, School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing.
Recorded as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival in front of an audience at Sage Gateshead.
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select 10 academics each year and then work with them to turn their research into radio.
Producer: Torquil MacLeod.
New Generation Thinker Edmund Richardson with the story of Alexander the Great's lost city, buried beneath Bagram airbase, a CIA detention site and wrecked Soviet tanks. For centuries, it was a meeting point of East and West. Then it vanished. In 1832, it was discovered by the unlikeliest person imaginable: a ragged British con-man called Charles Masson, on the run from a death sentence. Today, Alexander's lost civilization is lost again. And Masson? For his next trick, he accidentally started the most disastrous war of the nineteenth century.
Edmund Richardson's Essay tells the story of the liar and the lost city, of how the unlikeliest people can change history.
Recorded in front of an audience as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 with the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio.
Producer: Jacqueline Smith.
New Generation Thinker Louisa Egbunike from Manchester Metropolitan University considers images of war and ghosts of the past. News reports of the Biafran war (1967-1970), with their depictions of starving children, created images of Africa which have become imprinted. Biafra endured a campaign of heavy shelling, creating a constant stream of refugees out of fallen areas as territory was lost to Nigeria.
Within Igbo culture specific rites and rituals need to be performed when a person dies. To die and be buried 'abroad', away from one's ancestral home or to not be buried properly, impedes the transition to the realm of the ancestors. Louisa Egbunike explores the legacy of the Biafran war and considers the image of those spirits unable to journey to the next realm, and left to roam the earth.
Recorded in front of an audience as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select 10 academics each year who can turn their research into radio.
Producer: Zahid Warley.
The ruined priory of Tynemouth nestles on a Northumbrian clifftop, staring out at the fog and foam of the North Sea. In the 14th century it was a proving ground - and occasional prison camp - for monks from the wealthy mother monastery of St Albans. But the monks here didn't just isolate themselves, pray and complain about the food (though they did do those things). They also studied astronomy. Writing treatises, computing tables and designing new instruments, they contemplated the nature of a divinely-wound clockwork universe.
New Generation Thinker Seb Falk from the University of Cambridge brings to life a world where science and religion went hand-in-hand, where monks loved their gadgets, and where a wooden disc, a brass ring and some silk threads were all you needed to model the motions of the stars.
Recorded as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival in front of an audience at Sage Gateshead. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio.
Producer: Jacqueline Smith.
Author and broadcaster Sarah Churchwell describes the spell that female stars of the 1930s and '40s have over her..
From Joan Crawford, the 'working girl', to someone regarded as 'the quintessential Diva'. Apart from appearing in some great films, this one had the eyes and the laugh, and could smoke like a dragon. It's Bette Davis, of course.
Producer Duncan Minshull.
Five writers recall a night they spent somewhere out of the ordinary.
Naomi Alderman signs up for a trip to the Arctic, but has to spend a lot of time in her bunk bed. When she feels better and ventures across the ice, small but vital revelations are at hand ...
Producer Duncan Minshull.
Five writers recall a night they spent somewhere out of the ordinary.
John Walsh lies in a hammock in the jungle in Guyana, with his new friend Helen close by. At two in the morning they set off to explore the undergrowth and soon encounter some other sleepers ...
Producer Duncan Minshull.
Five writers recall a night they spent somewhere out of the ordinary.
Philip Hoare was thrown off his bike and spent a night in a hospital observation ward. The bed is tiny, the sheets strap him firmly in. Then he takes a look at his fellow patients ...
Producer Duncan Minshull.
Five writers recall a night they spent somewhere out of the ordinary.
Rachel Cooke was on assignment in the wilds of Scotland, reporting on a deer hunt. Exhausted, after a peaty-coloured bath, bedtime approaches. Dreams ensue and also the rattling of her door-knob ...
Producer Duncan Minshull.
Five writers recall a night they spent somewhere out of the ordinary.
Colin Thubron is the first to report back. Thirty years ago he was in a Chinese town, unknown to the rest of the world. His time here was haunted by memories of a merciless leader, whose bed he will sleep in for one night only. One night is enough though ...
Producer Duncan Minshull.
In this series of essays, five writers talk about what black and white evokes for them. Beginning with something quite tangible, each piece unfolds to tell a story that is deeply personal and also far-reaching.
Poet and writer Salena Godden talks about her relationship with her skin and a particular line from a Leonard Cohen song
Produced in Bristol by Siobhan Maguire.
In this series of essays, five writers talk about what black and white evokes for them. Lindsay Johns looks to a black & white photo at his desk for inspiration. The picture of athletes Tommie Smith, John Carlos and Peter Norman on the Olympic podium in 1968 reveals ideas that are central to his writing. Lindsay is a writer, broadcaster and Head of Arts and Culture at Policy Exchange.
In this series of essays, five writers talk about what black and white evokes for them. Writer and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo remembers the lessons she learned from her father as a young girl growing up in Zhejiang province, eastern China. They have stayed with her through her adult life, guiding creative endeavours and personal development, shaping the way that she understands the world.
Five writers talk about what black and white evokes for them. Glyn Maxwell looks at the words on his page and thinks about whether we've all become too black and white, too binary in our digital lives. It's possible that we lost something valuable in the spectrum of grays afforded by analogue.
In this series of essays, five writers talk about what black and white evokes for them. Beginning with something quite tangible, each piece unfolds to tell a story that is deeply personal and also far-reaching.
Broadcaster and GP Farrah Jarral talks about what it means to be fluent in something you don't understand. It all starts with the little sticker that decorated the covers of her teenage CD collection.
Heather Jones explores the deadly symbolism of the Howth Mauser
Nicholas Rankin explores the emergence of the deadly 'force reducer' that is the sniper
John Gallagher duels with the noisy story of guns 300 years ago
Brian DeLay reveals the life & arms deals of the most dangerous man you've never heard of
Catherine Fletcher unveils handguns' explosive Renaissance origin
Simon Heffer continues his highly-authored and deeply-informed exploration of British cinema by viewing five New Wave or so-called "Kitchen Sink" films of the late 1950s and 1960s.
5.Billy Liar
Keith Waterhouse's novel about Billy Fisher was turned into a film, starring Tom Courtenay, in 1963. The story of Billy's real life in a semi somewhere in the West Riding, and his vividly imagined alternative life in Ambrosia, lived to the accompaniment of a brass band, was unlike any film that had come before, but was it tragedy or comedy? Simon Heffer ends his account of the New Wave with this highly contentious film.
Producer: Beaty Rubens.
Simon Heffer continues his highly-authored and deeply-informed exploration of British cinema by viewing five New Wave or so-called "Kitchen Sink" films of the late 1950s and 1960s.
4.This Sporting Life
Simon Heffer examines the powerful film version of how David Storey's novel about Frank Machin, a talented rugby league player, hungry for success and love.
Simon Heffer continues his highly-authored and passionate exploration of British cinema by viewing five New Wave or so-called "Kitchen Sink" films of the late 1950s and 1960s.
Having explored the stereotyping of working class characters in his previous series of Essays on British film, Simon Heffer turns his gaze upon the films written and directed by a new generation of grammar school-educated young men, whose gritty depiction of the lives of ordinary working men and women was to shock and delight the cinema-going public in the 1960s.
3.The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner
Simon Heffer examines a second Alan Sillitoe novel, this time turned into a cinematic masterpiece by Tony Richardson: the story of Colin Smith, a boy whose chance to escape borstal and, possibly, to improve his life chances, depends on his talent as a cross-country runner.
Producer: Beaty Rubens.
Simon Heffer continues his highly-authored and deeply-informed exploration of British cinema by viewing five New Wave or so-called "Kitchen Sink" films of the late 1950s and 1960s.
Having explored the stereotyping of working class characters in his previous series of Essays on British film, Simon Heffer turns his gaze upon the films written and directed by a new generation of grammar school-educated young men, whose gritty depiction of the lives of ordinary working men and women was to shock and delight the cinema-going public in the 1960s.
2.Saturday Night and Sunday Morning Simon Heffer reveals how Alan Sillitoe's novel was turned into a stunning film, directed by Karel Reisz, produced by Tony Richardson, and starring Albert Finney as Arthur Seaton, the anti-hero whose motto is "Don't Let the bastards grind you down".
Producer: Beaty Rubens.
Simon Heffer continues his highly-authored and deeply-informed exploration of British cinema by viewing five New Wave or so-called "Kitchen Sink" films of the late 1950s and 1960s.
1.Room at the Top
Having explored the stereotyping of working class characters in his previous series of Essays on British film, Simon Heffer turns his gaze upon the films written and directed by a new generation of grammar school-educated young men, whose gritty depiction of the lives of ordinary working men and women was to shock and delight the cinema-going public.
John Braine's novel, Room at the Top, was a literary sensation when it was published in 1957 and caused further shock waves when it was released as a film two years later, starring Laurence Harvey as the determined Joe Lampton, determined to marry a rich man's daughter and live in the "Top" district of town.
Producer : Beaty Rubens.
Poet Alyson Hallett is drawn to chalk landscapes and the large horse at Westbury in Wilts
Novelist Sarah Moss discusses basalt and dolerite, the fire rocks that underpin castles.
Writer Paul Evans traces a family line back through Shropshire's seams of coal.
Derbyshire poet and climber Helen Mort visits Stanage Edge, famed for its millstone grit.
Linda Cracknell reflects on the appeal of the quartz on Ben Lawers, her local Munro.
Breaking Free - the minds that changed music.
In The Essay this week, personal reflections on the revolutionary music and ideas of the Second Viennese School as they searched for an antidote to all the certainties and expectations of the past, and cast music on a new path of dissonance and discovery, shocking audiences then and now.
Bethany Bell is a BBC foreign correspondent and has lived in Vienna for more than 15 years. In tonight's Essay Bethany remembers living in Mödling, a town near Vienna where Schoenberg lived and where on walks with Berg and Webern he devised his radical ideas for music.
Breaking Free - the minds that changed music.
In The Essay this week, personal reflections on the revolutionary music and ideas of the Second Viennese School as they searched for an antidote to all the certainties and expectations of the past, and cast music on a new path of dissonance and discovery, shocking audiences then and now.
Musician and broadcaster Tom McKinney recalls his "first contact" with the music of Webern - his Five Pieces for Orchestra, Op.5, and then taking part in a transformative performance of the same work as a professional musician.
Breaking Free - the minds that changed music.
In The Essay this week, personal reflections on the revolutionary music and ideas of the Second Viennese School as they searched for an antidote to all the certainties and expectations of the past, and cast music on a new path of dissonance and discovery, shocking audiences then and now.
Tonight's essayist is Gillian Moore, Director of Music at Southbank Centre in London. She talks about Alban Berg's relationships with key women in his life, including his final operatic creation "Lulu".
Breaking Free - the minds that changed music
In The Essay this week, personal reflections on the revolutionary music and ideas of the Second Viennese School as they searched for an antidote to all the certainties and expectations of the past, and cast music on a new path of dissonance and discovery, shocking audiences then and now.
Tonight's essayist is broadcaster and journalist Stephen Johnson who has chosen Schoenberg's Second String Quartet as his touchstone - a work that defines Schoenberg's movement away from traditional tonality and embraces the dissonance.
Breaking Free - the minds that changed music.
In The Essay this week, personal reflections on the revolutionary music and ideas of the Second Viennese School as they searched for an antidote to all the certainties and expectations of the past, and cast music on a new path of dissonance and discovery, shocking audiences then and now.
Tonight's essayist is Radio 3 presenter and pianist Sarah Walker who describes the experience of learning and performing Schoenberg's Suite for piano (Op.25) for her MA recital.
Novelist Andrew Martin has long been interested in ghosts and their stories, and he gives them much thought over five essays.
5. It goes without saying that Halloween and Christmas are resonant times for the Undead. Prepare to hear about the best ... or should that be the worst?
Producer Duncan Minshull.
Novelist Andrew Martin has long been interested in ghosts and their stories, and he gives them much thought over five essays.
4. Stories, novels, films.. but the author's favourite source for things unreal and unsettling is a huge tome called 'Phantasms of the Living', which he now celebrates..
Producer Duncan Minshull.
Novelist Andrew Martin has long been interested in ghosts and their stories. He gives them much thought over five essays.
3. The ghosts of Medieval times were 'solid' and had a moral purpose. Modern sightings were ephemeral, transluscent, and now 'doubt' crept in...
Producer Duncan Minshull.
Novelist Andrew Martin has long been interested in ghosts and their stories. He gives them much thought over five essays:
2. 'Britain is a ghostly nation', he reckons. And most of them came from the north. And their heyday was a hundred years ago. And just what is The Society of Psychical Research?
Producer Duncan Minshull.
Novelist Andrew Martin has long been interested in ghosts and their stories, and he gives them much thought over five essays.
1. In his first essay, he asks if he actually believes in ghosts. Well, he certainly relishes the 'fear' and 'beauty' that comes from ghostly narratives. 'Have you ever seen a ghost?' is the first question he must address, and of course there is no clear cut answer to this...
Producer Duncan Minshull.
"It sounds such a simple business.. 'I changed my mind.' Subject, verb, object - a clear, clean action..."
In five essays, the acclaimed author asks whether his point of view has changed through the years. Referring to historical characters and scenes from his own life, he now thinks about the vagaries of time, beginning with a visit to the barbers on the eve of his 70th birthday.
Producer Duncan Minshull.
"It sounds such a simple business.. 'I changed my mind.' Subject, verb, object - a clear, clean action..."
In five essays, the acclaimed author asks whether his point of view has changed over the years. Referring to historical characters and scenes from his own life , he now explores his tastes in literature. He has remained firm in admiration of some authors, others have caused indecision and a change of heart even.
Producer Duncan Minshull.
"It sounds such a simple business.. 'I changed my mind.' Subject, verb, object - a clear, clean action..."
In five essays, the acclaimed author asks whether his point of view has changed over the years. Referring to historical characters and scenes from his own life, he first cites John Maynard Keynes and Francis Picabia. Then, what is the role of memory in all this?
Producer Duncan Minshull.
"It sounds such a simple business.. 'I changed my mind.' Subject, verb, object - a clear, clean action..."
In five essays, the acclaimed author asks whether his point of view has changed over the years. Referring to historical characters and scenes from his own life, he now thinks about a lifetime's use of words. He has his favourites, such as 'decimated' and 'indifference'. But have things stayed the same with words ?
Producer Duncan Minshull.
As part of Radio 3's 70th celebrations, Julian Barnes - also 70 this year - on why and how he alters his views. Today a word about vacillation, uncertainty and of course - memory.
"It sounds such a simple business.. 'I changed my mind.' Subject, verb, object - a clear, clean action..."
In five essays, the acclaimed author asks whether his point of view has changed over the years. Referring to historical characters and scenes from his own life, he first cites John Maynard Keynes and Francis Picabia. Then, what is the role of memory in all this?
Producer Duncan Minshull.
'Dear Geoffrey Chaucer, Can I call you Geoff..?'
In a series of imaginary correspondences, novelist Ian Sansom is writing letters to five of literary history's most celebrated figures and interrogating them about their art.
'Oh Agatha Christie, Please - do tell - what is the secret of your success?'
As his correspondence unfolds, queries are raised and jealousies revealed.
'Dear Virginia Woolf, Please accept my apologies. For a long time I thought you represented everything that's wrong with literature...'
How exactly does George Eliot do it? And why does she keep ignoring Ian's letters?
'Dear George Eliot, You are simply so far out of my league as a correspondent that it is embarrassing even to put pen to paper and to address you directly.
In his on-going epistolary quest, Ian attempts to find out everything you wanted to know about some of our best-loved writers but just were too afraid to ask.
Producer: Conor Garrett.
'Dear Geoffrey Chaucer, Can I call you Geoff..?'
In a series of imaginary correspondences, novelist Ian Sansom is writing letters to five of literary history's most celebrated figures and interrogating them about their art.
'Oh Agatha Christie, Please - do tell - what is the secret of your success?'
As his correspondence unfolds, queries are raised and jealousies revealed.
'Dear Virginia Woolf, Please accept my apologies. For a long time I thought you represented everything that's wrong with literature...'
How exactly does George Eliot do it? And why does she keep ignoring Ian's letters?
'Dear George Eliot, You are simply so far out of my league as a correspondent that it is embarrassing even to put pen to paper and to address you directly.
In his on-going epistolary quest, Ian attempts to find out everything you wanted to know about some of our best-loved writers but just were too afraid to ask.
Producer: Conor Garrett.
'Dear Geoffrey Chaucer, Can I call you Geoff..?'
In a series of imaginary correspondences, novelist Ian Sansom is writing letters to five of literary history's most celebrated figures and interrogating them about their art.
'Oh Agatha Christie, Please - do tell - what is the secret of your success?'
As his correspondence unfolds, queries are raised and jealousies revealed.
'Dear Virginia Woolf, Please accept my apologies. For a long time I thought you represented everything that's wrong with literature...'
How exactly does George Eliot do it? And why does she keep ignoring Ian's letters?
'Dear George Eliot, You are simply so far out of my league as a correspondent that it is embarrassing even to put pen to paper and to address you directly.
In his on-going epistolary quest, Ian attempts to find out everything you wanted to know about some of our best-loved writers but just were too afraid to ask.
Producer: Conor Garrett.
'Dear Geoffrey Chaucer, Can I call you Geoff..?'
In a series of imaginary correspondences, novelist Ian Sansom writes letters to five of literary history's most celebrated figures and interrogates them about their art.
'Oh Agatha Christie, Please - do tell - what is the secret of your success?'
As his correspondence unfolds, queries are raised, jealousies revealed, concerns aired.
'Dear Virginia Woolf, Please accept my apologies. For a long time I thought you represented everything that's wrong with literature...'
How exactly does George Eliot do it? Why is it so difficult? And what's that Jonathan Swift just called him?
Producer: Conor Garrett.
'Dear Geoffrey Chaucer, Can I call you Geoff..?'
In a series of imaginary correspondences, novelist Ian Sansom is writing letters to five of literary history's most celebrated figures and interrogating them about their art.
'Oh Agatha Christie, Please - do tell - what is the secret of your success?'
As his correspondence unfolds, queries are raised and jealousies revealed.
'Dear Virginia Woolf, Please accept my apologies. For a long time I thought you represented everything that's wrong with literature...'
How exactly does George Eliot do it? And why does she keep ignoring Ian's letters?
'Dear George Eliot, You are simply so far out of my league as a correspondent that it is embarrassing even to put pen to paper and to address you directly.
In his on-going epistolary quest, Ian attempts to find out everything you wanted to know about some of our best-loved writers but just were too afraid to ask.
Producer: Conor Garrett.
Film and theatre director Sir Richard Eyre describes how he was inspired by "The People's War" by Angus Calder. This social history of the Second World War relives the experience of ordinary citizens during the conflict: "their endurance and patience and their cowardice, complaints, and selfishness, as much as their heroism and humanity." It provided Eyre with a vision - albeit unfulfilled - of social justice, which was in sight during the social revolution of wartime. "So I return to this book, this litany of courage and misery and endurance and hardship - the only book I return to constantly and obsessively - for solace." Producer: Smita Patel.
The artist Tacita Dean describes how "Fires" by Marguerite Yourcenar changed her life and art. She discovered the book of prose poems as an undergraduate. "Somehow, her pithy and uncompromising language appealed to me, and my own love tragedy," she says. Yourcenar's work helped her find her voice as a feminist, writer and film-maker. "She gave a female voice to my passionate and romantic younger self who was trying to find an artistic context for the desire I had to reach out and touch the classical past."
Producer: Smita Patel.
Ben Anderson, correspondent with Vice News, on how "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" led him to become a journalist. He discovered the book, ghost-written by Alex Haley, as "a skinny white kid living in Bedford". Yet the story of the American firebrand for the cause of black power became his touchstone. He was inspired by the way Malcolm X devoured every possible book while in prison. "Suddenly a fire was lit inside me. I had a path to follow," Anderson says. And Malcolm X's urge to see the world for himself was another source of inspiration. "This basic approach of just getting there and witnessing has become my job," he says. Malcolm X's " constant search, his relentless curiosity, his willingness to face unpleasant facts and reinvent himself, set an example that I?ve tried to follow ever since." Producer: Smita Patel.
Pauline Black, the singer who found fame with the ska band The Selecter, on how Harper Lee's "To Kill A Mockingbird" helped her understand her place as a black girl adopted by a white family. She both identified with Scout, the tomboyish main character, while it was the first book she read in which the black characters "shared a dignity and gravitas". It allowed her to understand the racial tensions and hypocrisy which surrounded her childhood. "This novel gave the little black girl that timidly lingered inside me the security to come out and fight against racial injustice with my chosen profession, music." Producer: Smita Patel.
David Simon, the author and creator of the TV series "The Wire", describes how "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" by James Agee and Walker Evans changed his work as a journalist. The celebrated work capturing the lives of ordinary people during the depression made him realise the importance of sharing "the simple, raw vulnerability" of lived experience. "Page after page was fully ripe with the delicate work of a thinking journalist who knows with all moral certitude that he is approaching and attempting to capture the love, fear and sadness of real lives." Producer: Smita Patel.
Novelist Kit de Waal reflects on the architecture of Winson Green Prison, in Birmingham, where she worked.
This week's Essays are part of the 70th birthday celebrations of the Third Programme: the network discussed architecture from its earliest days, covering both new initiatives and historic buildings, most notably in talks by Nikolaus Pevsner.
Producer Clare Walker.
Author Dr Gavin Francis passes the new Queensferry Crossing every morning on his way to work. When it is finished in May 2017, it will be the largest balanced cantilever ever built. Gavin believes it is the most impressive structure under construction in these islands today.
This week's Essays are part of the 70th birthday celebrations of the Third Programme: the network discussed architecture from its earliest days, covering both new initiatives and historic buildings, most notably in talks by Nikolaus Pevsner.
Producer Clare Walker.
Poet Helen Mort can see Chesterfield's Crooked Spire Church - The Church of St Mary's and All Saints - from the window of her house. She explains why it has inspired her since childhood.
This week's Essays are part of the 70th birthday celebrations of the Third Programme: the network discussed architecture from its earliest days, covering both new initiatives and historic buildings, most notably in talks by Nikolaus Pevsner.
Producer Clare Walker.
British Painter Humphrey Ocean RA introduces us to Impington College, the only building the Bauhaus architect Walter Gropius built in Britain. Humphrey believes it accidentally became the template for the proliferation of the kind of brave, new, post-war architecture he grew up with.
This week's Essays are part of the 70th birthday celebrations of the Third Programme: the network discussed architecture from its earliest days, covering both new initiatives and historic buildings, most notably in talks by Nikolaus Pevsner.
Producer Clare Walker.
Novelist Mark Haddon reflects on the house in Northamptonshire which was his childhood home, until the age of 12:
"It was a detached, three bedroom, two storey new-build on a thin strip of reclaimed rubbish dump between the end of a red-brick terrace and the Smarts' bungalow. My father was an architect and although he didn't design the building himself it was, in its modest way, an architect's house, a couple of cuts above provincial 1960s boilerplate."
This week's Essays are part of the 70th birthday celebrations of the Third Programme: the network discussed architecture from its earliest days, covering both new initiatives and historic buildings, most notably in talks by Nikolaus Pevsner.
Producer Clare Walker.
In 1815 an anonymous author published "Memoirs of an Old Wig" and lamented the influx of French hairdressers to England. From the writings of ETA Hoffmann and Charles Dickens, from Hans Christian Andersen to Balzac and beyond, New Generation Thinker Seán Williams considers the depiction of hairdressers in prints and prose and what it tells us about a transformative period in British and European history.
The Essay is recorded in front of an audience as part of Sound Frontiers: BBC Radio 3 live at Southbank Centre celebrating 7 decades of pioneering music and culture.
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio.
Producer: Jacqueline Smith.
In October 1884 the playwright August Strindberg took a train from exile to face a charge of blasphemy in court. New Generation Thinker Leah Broad, from the University of Oxford, reflects on "the woman question" in nineteenth century Scandinavian countries and what their debates have to say to us today.
The Essay is recorded in front of an audience as part of Sound Frontiers: BBC Radio 3 live at Southbank Centre celebrating 7 decades of pioneering music and culture.
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio.
Producer: Torquil MacLeod.
In 1912 Freud compared psychoanalysis to using the telephone, an instrument he disliked. Reflecting on this fear of the phone, the poet and New Generation Thinker Sarah Jackson, from Nottingham Trent University, explores the telephone's voices in philosophy and fiction.
The Essay is recorded in front of an audience as part of Sound Frontiers: BBC Radio 3 live at Southbank Centre celebrating 7 decades of pioneering music and culture.
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio.
Producer: Fiona McLean.
Memories of Partition explored by New Generation Thinker Anindya Raychaudhuri, from the University of St Andrews. He listens to oral histories and looks at film and literature depicting this key moment in history and the shadows it has cast. He reflects on the way people now frame their own experiences through representations of the mass migration which they have seen in news reels, films and fiction.
The Essay was recorded in front of an audience as part of Sound Frontiers: BBC Radio 3 live at Southbank Centre celebrating 7 decades of pioneering music and culture.
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio. Applications are now open for the 2018 scheme. Further details and examples of other essays and broadcasts from New Generation Thinkers can be found on the Free Thinking programme website.
From Spanish Inquisition stews and Reformation sausages to pork in French school dinners, New Generation Thinker Christopher Kissane from the London School of Economics explores the significance of food in past and present conflicts over identity. The Essay is recorded in front of an audience as part of Sound Frontiers: BBC Radio 3 live at Southbank Centre celebrating 7 decades of pioneering music and culture.
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio.
Producer: Luke Mulhall.
To celebrate the 70th anniversary of Radio 3, the network invited five writers with whom it shares a birthday, also turning 70 this year, on a birthday outing. Our contributors chose to visit places that have some personal significance for them where they could look back and reflect on their feelings in this special birthday year.
Today, Ukrainian-British Novelist Marina Lewycka, best known for her 2005 novel A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian which won the 2005 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, takes a trip up the Eiffel Tower to reflect on a lifetime of visiting the city and a look at what the future holds for the Europe she loves.
Essayist and reader: Marina Lewycka Producer: Simon Richardson.
To celebrate the 70th anniversary of Radio 3, the network invited five writers with whom it shares a birthday, also turning 70 this year, on a birthday outing. Our contributors chose to visit a places that have some personal significance for them where they could look back and reflect on their feelings in this special birthday year.
Today, novelist and memoirist Gervase Phinn, a former teacher and schools inspector, recalls joining the pilgrims on a visit to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, to pay homage to the relics of the apostle St James and to the act of pilgrimage itself.
Essayist and reader: Gervase Phinn Producer: Simon Richardson.
To celebrate the 70th anniversary of Radio 3, the network invited five writers with whom it shares a birthday, also turning 70 this year, on a birthday outing. Our contributors chose to visit places that have some personal significance for them where they could look back and reflect on their feelings in this special birthday year.
Liverpool-born novelist and former politician Edwina Currie returns to her native city for a ferry ride across the River Mersey where, over 50 years ago, in an end of school ritual, she and her peers threw their hated green school berets into the river.
Essayist and reader: Edwina Currie Producer: Simon Richardson.
To celebrate the 70th anniversary of Radio 3, the network invited five writers with whom it shares a birthday, also turning 70 this year, on a birthday outing. Our contributors chose to visit places that have some personal significance for them, where they could look back and reflect on their feelings in this special birthday year.
Today, poet and broadcaster Michael Rosen visits Eastwood and the childhood home of DH Lawrence, the poet who inspired him to write.
Essayist and reader: Michael Rosen Producer: Simon Richardson.
To celebrate the 70th anniversary of Radio 3, the network invited five writers with whom it shares a birthday, also turning 70 this year, on a birthday outing. Our contributors chose to visit places that have some personal significance for them, where they could look back and reflect on their feelings in this special birthday year.
Today, novelist and campaigner Lisa Appignanesi, who is Chair of the Royal Society of Literature, samples the timeless elegance of The Savoy Hotel's Beaufort Bar and reflects on the characters that have passed through its doors during the 'Belle Epoque' and since.
Essayist and reader: Lisa Appignanesi Producer: Simon Richardson.
Poet Kenneth Steven writes on the remote islands of St Kilda, where the community is only a distant memory echoed in the sound of seabirds. This is an island far out in the ocean. 'To make the sea crossing to St Kilda a boat is heading into the full fury of the North Atlantic; west of here lies nothing more than Rockall - and then America.'
Once a thriving community lived on the island known as Hirta. 'Not only was there life on St Kilda, there was joy in life. The reports written by early visitors make that abundantly clear: the people made music and danced, they were singers of songs and tellers of tales. They faced hardship together and even death on a daily basis, but this little society held together in happiness.'
But by 1930 the British Government wanted an end to the expense of supporting this remote colony, and the community were forced to take the decision to evacuate. Now there are only the empty shells of houses and the endless cries of seabirds.
'In all the cobbles, concrete years to come Their islands promises to lie at the bottom of a glass, Or silent forever in their eyes, a story frozen Like a fly in the amber of time.'
Written and read by Kenneth Steven
Producer Mark Rickards
Poet Kenneth Steven writes on Raasay, an island close to Skye once home to the great Gaelic bard Sorley MacLean. Kenneth describes the history of this 'fiercely traditional island', with its continuing belief in the sanctity of the Sabbath Day - Sunday. 'This was prevalent until recently all across the Highlands and islands; it has faded with increasing secularisation, but on Raasay (as in other Outer Hebridean islands in particular) it remains firm'.
Kenneth looks at two famous sons of Raasay, bot born in 1911. Calum MacLeod is famous for building a road across the island when requests for its construction has fallen on deaf ears. 'Over a period of about ten years he constructed one and three quarter miles of road, using little more than a shovel, pick and wheelbarrow.'
But his main interest is in the work of Sorley Maclean, Gaelic poet. 'Gaelic was his mother tongue; the language of the heart, and the poetry he wrote was out of the burning fires of the heart. This was no gentle poetry. Sorley Maclean's people were from Raasay and Skye and the memory of their struggle for justice and for land beat within him like a living drum.'
Written and read by Kenneth Steven
Producer Mark Rickards
Kenneth Steven looks at Rum, a wild and windswept Hebridean island, and responds to its landscape in poetry.
Rum is the largest of a group making up the 'Small Isles', Rum, Muck, Eigg and Canna, lying west of the fishing port of Mallaig in the Scottish Highlands. 'I don't know a Hebridean island more beautiful to approach. Every time I do I think of it again as a treasure island.' Its remote and rugged beauty attracted an eccentric Victorian industrialist, who bought it and attempted to transform it into his own vision of an island home, complete with a castle. 'The castle itself was built of red sandstone and shaped from the Isle of Arran.
Greenhouses were brought for the growing of peaches, grapes and nectarines. There were heated pools for turtles and alligators; an aviary was constructed for birds of paradise and humming birds.'
It was not to last, and Kenneth looks at what's left of the island fantasy today, leaving him with a profound sense of sadness.
Written and read by Kenneth Steven
Producer Mark Rickards
Poet Kenneth Steven writes on Hoy, the only place of cliffs and mountains in the archipelago of the Orkney islands Kenneth describes the beauty of the Orkney islands as seen in their greenness and lushness, in contrast to the harsher landscape of the north-east corner of Scotland just to their south. 'These islands seem almost cut out of some richly endowed agricultural shore far to the south and planted in the sea just to the top right of Scotland'. But Hoy is different, the island has a wildness not found elsewhere in the islands.
Kenneth reflects on the relationship between writer George Mackay Brown and the composer Peter Maxwell Davies, who died in 2016. They had met and Peter Maxwell Davies made the decision to live on Hoy in its rugged yet peaceful landscape. 'His falling in love with Hoy was not just a passing whim. He had to win his right to the place in almost fairy-tale like terms. But the peace he had so craved was all about him and his was able to compose; the music that flowed through him could be released at last.'
Written and read by Kenneth Steven
Producer Mark Rickards
Poet Kenneth Steven has a special relationship with the small Hebridean island of Iona, set in the Atlantic off the west coast of Scotland. It was the place of learning and worship in the 6th century, when St Columba brought Christianity from Ireland and set up a monastery, and today it still has a spiritual quality for many of its visitors.
Kenneth has visited since he was a child and collected stones polished by the sea along its beaches. Today he reflects on Iona's place as a 'meeting of the sea roads, which has had such a profound impact on so many, and has done for longer than we can ever know'.
'..That is why I keep returning, thirsty, to this place That is older than my understanding, Younger than my broken spirit.'
Written and read by Kenneth Steven
Producer Mark Rickards
To celebrate the centenary of Roald Dahl's birth his biographer, Donald Sturrock remembers meeting the genius storyteller in the writing hut at the bottom of his garden. Here Dahl revealed how he used both the darkness and lightness of his childhood to fire his writing. Donald Sturrock wrote Storyteller: The Life of Road Dahl and has edited his letters, Love From Boy: Roald Dahl's Letters to His Mother.
Written and read by Donald Sturrock Produced by Justine Willett.
In the centenary year of Roald Dahl's birth the dazzling language, clever observation and rude humour that infuses Dahl's poetry is celebrated by the acclaimed children's writer and former children's laureate, Michael Rosen.
Written and read by Michael Rosen Produced by Justine Willett.
In the centenary year of Roald Dahl's birth Laura Dockrill remembers growing up with Matilda and discovering through Dahl's heroine that it was OK to be different. Laura Dockrill is a writer, illustrator and performance poet. She is the creator of Darcy Burdock, shortlisted for the Waterstones Children's Book Prize 2014.
Written and read by Laura Dockrill Produced by Justine Willett.
To celebrate the centenary of Roald Dahl's birth Jeremy Dyson remembers his ten-year-old self and the day he discovered Dahl's short stories for adults. The deliciously dark lure of that first encounter has never left him. In his essay he reflects on Dahl's storytelling genius and its influence on his own writing. Jeremy Dyson is a screenwriter and with Mark Gatiss, Steve Pemberton and Reese Shearsmith created The League of Gentlemen.
Written and read by Jeremy Dyson. Produced by Justine Willett.
To mark the centenary of Roald Dahl's birth Frank Cottrell Boyce writes about the myth that the celebrated storyteller Dahl constructed out of his near fatal plane crash during the Second World War, and how he so perceptively captured a child's-eye view in his writing. Cottrell Boyce also recalls his very first encounter with Dahl's writing, which ended in outrage. The award-winning Frank Cottrell Boyce's first novel, Millions, was made into a feature film. He is a successful screenwriter and helped devise the Opening Ceremony for the London 2012 Olympic Games.
Roald Dahl at 100 is a celebration of the storyteller's work and legacy ahead of the centenary of his birth in September 2016. Five acclaimed writers, the screenwriter and children's novelist, Frank Cottrell Boyce; the screenwriter and co-creator of The League of Gentleman, Jeremy Dyson; the author and performance poet, Laura Dockrill; the writer and former children's laureate, Michael Rosen, and the biographer Donald Sturrock, explore their passion for Dahl's dazzling worlds, his dark humour and wild language and how it inspired their own work.
Written and read by Frank Cottrell Boyce Produced by Justine Willett.
In a week of broadcasts tracking the 100th anniversary of the first week of the Battle of the Somme, Radio 3's Essay series is featuring five new poems written in response to the battle. The poems have been commissioned by 14-18Now and these programmes will broadcast the poems for the first time and also hear from the poets about their inspiration and writing.
4th July: Paul Muldoon: July 1st 1916, With the Ulster Division 5th July: Yrsa Daley-Ward: When your mother calls you, come. 6th July: Bill Manhire: Known Unto God 7th July: Jackie Kay: Private Joseph Kay 8th July: Daljit Nagra: On your 'A 1940 Memory'
Daljit Nagra's poem was commissioned by 14-18 NOW:WW1 Centenary Art Commissions, Norfolk & Norwich Festival and Writers' Centre Norwich. It was published by Gatehouse Press.
Producer: Tim Dee.
In a week of broadcasts tracking the 100th anniversary of the first week of the Battle of the Somme, Radio 3's Essay series is featuring five new poems written in response to the battle. The poems have been commissioned by 14-18Now and these programmes will broadcast the poems for the first time and also hear from the poets about their inspiration and writing.
4th July: Paul Muldoon: July 1st 1916, With the Ulster Division 5th July: Yrsa Daley-Ward: When your mother calls you, come. 6th July: Bill Manhire: Known Unto God 7th July: Jackie Kay: Private Joseph Kay 8th July: Daljit Nagra: On your 'A 1940 Memory'
Jackie Kay's poem was commissioned by 14-18 NOW:WW1 Centenary Art Commissions, Norfolk & Norwich Festival and Writers' Centre Norwich. It was published by Gatehouse Press.
Producer: Tim Dee.
In a week of broadcasts tracking the 100th anniversary of the first week of the Battle of the Somme, Radio 3's Essay series is featuring five new poems written in response to the battle. The poems have been commissioned by 14-18Now and these programmes will broadcast the poems for the first time and also hear from the poets about their inspiration and writing.
4th July: Paul Muldoon: July 1st 1916, With the Ulster Division 5th July: Yrsa Daley-Ward: When your mother calls you, come. 6th July: Bill Manhire: Known Unto God 7th July: Jackie Kay: Private Joseph Kay 8th July: Daljit Nagra: On your 'A 1940 Memory'
Bill Manhire's poem was commissioned by 14-18 NOW:WW1 Centenary Art Commissions, Norfolk & Norwich Festival and Writers' Centre Norwich. It was published by Gatehouse Press."
Producer: Tim Dee.
In a week of broadcasts tracking the 100th anniversary of the first week of the Battle of the Somme, Radio 3's Essay series is featuring five new poems written in response to the battle. The poems have been commissioned by 14-18Now and these programmes will broadcast the poems for the first time and also hear from the poets about their inspiration and writing.
4th July: Paul Muldoon: July 1st 1916, With the Ulster Division 5th July: Yrsa Daley-Ward: When your mother calls you, come. 6th July: Bill Manhire: Known Unto God 7th July: Jackie Kay: Private Joseph Kay 8th July: Daljit Nagra: On your 'A 1940 Memory'
Yrsa Daley-Ward's poem was commissioned by 14-18 NOW:WW1 Centenary Art Commissions, Norfolk & Norwich Festival and Writers' Centre Norwich. It was published by Gatehouse Press."
Producer: Tim Dee.
In a week of broadcasts tracking the 100th anniversary of the first week of the Battle of the Somme, Radio 3's Essay series is featuring five new poems written in response to the battle. The poems have been commissioned by 14-18Now and these programmes will broadcast the poems for the first time and also hear from the poets about their inspiration and writing.
4th July: Paul Muldoon: July 1st 1916, With the Ulster Division 5th July: Yrsa Daley-Ward: When your mother calls you, come. 6th July: Bill Manhire: Known Unto God 7th July: Jackie Kay: Private Joseph Kay 8th July: Daljit Nagra: On your 'A 1940 Memory'
Paul Muldoon's poem was commissioned by 14-18 NOW:WW1 Centenary Art Commissions, Norfolk & Norwich Festival and Writers' Centre Norwich. It was published by Gatehouse Press.
Producer: Tim Dee.
As part of BBC Music Get Playing, supporting amateur music making around the UK this summer, 5 leading writers and artists contribute an Essay in this series, in which they talk about their little-known passions for playing an instrument.
In the final programme of the series, the writer Alexander McCall Smith, author of "The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" describes how he learned to play saxophone which led to him starting The Really Terrible Orchestra.
His career as an amateur saxophonist began with lessons' from his wife's flute teacher and then, during a stay in the US, he began to assemble a collection of saxophones, including a fine bass instrument.
After returning home to Edinburgh, Alexander decided that he should encourage other amateur musicians to play together, no matter what their standard, and the Really Terrible Orchestra was born. In spite of its name, it has performed in concert halls to packed houses.
Producer: Emma Kingsley.
As part of BBC Get Music Playing supporting amateur music making around the UK, 5 leading writers and artists contribute an Essay in this series, in which they talk about their little-known passions for playing an instrument.
In the 4th programme of the series, the Guardian's film critic Peter Bradshaw describes how he was reunited with his electric guitar, decades after having given it away.
He explores what playing the instrument meant to him as a youngster and assesses how he approaches it now as an adult. He examines the pleasures and pitfalls of relearning an instrument. And he marvels at the beauty of the electric guitar itself.
For more information visit bbc.co.uk/getplaying
Producer: Emma Kingsley.
As part of BBC Music Get Playing, supporting amateur music making around the UK, 5 leading writers and artists contribute an Essay in this series, in which they talk about their little-known passions for playing an instrument.
In the third programme of the series, the poet Fiona Sampson explores how playing the violin to professional standard in her youth has informed her life and work today.
She relives her youth spent at summer schools and in orchestras and describes playing the violin in the practice rooms at the Royal Academy of Music.
And she describes how the shape that that her body made around the violin stays with her wherever she goes.
For more information visit bbc.co.uk/getplaying
Producer: Emma Kingsley.
As part of BBC Music Get Playing, supporting amateur music making around the UK, 5 leading writers and artists contribute an Essay in this series, in which they talk about their little-known passions for playing an instrument.
In the second programme, the award-winning novelist Joanne Harris (best known for her novel "Chocolat") describes how she learned to play the flute as a child. This was followed by the bass guitar which she began after falling in love with a drummer in a band and wanting to join.
When she heard the story told by her grandfather of how he had refused to hand his double bass over to a Nazi soldier in occupied France, the young Joanne Harris realised that a musical instrument could be a powerful force. She began playing herself, first the flute and then, as a 16 year old, the bass guitar. She's continued to play both instruments and is now developing a way of telling stories in performances which incorporates music.
In this Essay, Joanne tells the story of her performing life and considers the way in which music can be an essential part of storytelling.
for more information visit bbc.co.uk/getplaying
Producer: Emma Kingsley.
As part of the BBC Music Get Playing, supporting amateur music making around the UK, 5 leading writers and artists contribute an Essay in this series, in which they talk about their little-known passions for playing an instrument.
In the first programme, the impressionist, actor and writer Alistair McGowan describes his attempts to relearn the piano. He started learning as a child but gave it up to play football instead. He tried it again in his 30s but stopped when his TV series "The Big Impression" took over. Then, later on, after a midnight piano lesson on a cruise ship, he began in earnest again and discovered a new world of music-making.
Alistair is fascinated by short pieces in particular. His special favourites are the pieces he heard his mother play and also ones he has discovered on piano courses and through hearing them on the radio. A tiny nugget of Satie, Mompou or John Field carries for him all the weight of human experience and channels a musical history into one small but perfect form.
more info visit bbc.co.uk/getplaying
Producer: Emma Kingsley.
In this series of The Essay, recorded this week in front of an audience at the Hay Festival, five writers explore The Art of Storytelling. The writers include linguist Prof. David Crystal, artist and memoirist Edmund de Waal, broadcaster and musician Clemency Burton-Hill and novelist Jon Gower.
Today, Prof. Emma Smith takes a closer look at Shakespeare's skills as a storyteller and how his plots, where the outcome is often signposted from the beginning, still hold audiences enthralled.
Part of Radio 3's week-long residency at the Hay Festival, with programmes In Tune, Lunchtime Concert, Free Thinking and The Verb all broadcasting from the Festival.
In this series of The Essay, recorded this week in front of an audience at Hay Festival, five writers explore The Art of Storytelling. The writers include artist and memoirist Edmund de Waal, broadcaster and musician Clemency Burton-Hill, Shakespeare scholar Professor Emma Smith and novelist Jon Gower.
Today, with so many of the world's languages disappearing, Professor David Crystal asks how we can preserve for the future the many different stories of accent, dialect and language.
Part of Radio 3's week-long residency at Hay Festival, with programmes In Tune, Lunchtime Concert, Free Thinking and The Verb all broadcasting from the Festival.
In this series of The Essay, recorded earlier this week in front of an audience at Hay Festival, five writers explore The Art of Storytelling. The writers include novelist Jon Gower, linguist Professor David Crystal, artist and memoirist Edmund de Waal and Shakespeare scholar Professor Emma Smith.
Today broadcaster Clemency Burton-Hill considers the relationship between storytelling and music.
Part of Radio 3's week-long residency at Hay Festival, with programmes In Tune, Lunchtime Concert, Free Thinking and The Verb all broadcasting from the Festival.
In this series of The Essay, recorded this week in front of an audience at Hay Festival, five writers explore The Art of Storytelling. The writers include linguist Professor David Crystal, broadcaster and musician Clemency Burton-Hill, artist and memoirist Edmund de Waal and Shakespeare scholar Professor Emma Smith.
Today novelist and short story writer Jon Gower reflects on lessons learned from a master storyteller - his grandfather - and recalls an encounter with The Lady of the Lake.
Part of Radio 3's week-long residency at Hay Festival, with programmes In Tune, Lunchtime Concert, Free Thinking and The Verb all broadcasting from the Festival.
In this series of The Essay, recorded this week in front of an audience at the Hay Festival, five writers explore The Art of Storytelling. The writers include linguist Prof. David Crystal, broadcaster and musician Clemency Burton-Hill, Shakespeare scholar Prof. Emma Smith and novelist Jon Gower.
Today Edmund de Waal, artist and writer of the memoir 'The Hare With Amber Eyes' considers the idea of storytelling through objects, taking as his starting-point a fragment of 12th century porcelain he bought in a Chinese street-market.
Part of Radio 3's week-long residency at the Hay Festival, with programmes In Tune, Lunchtime Concert, Free Thinking and The Verb all broadcasting from the Festival.
In Lines of Work prominent people in a particular job read and reflect on the writings of an illustrious forebear. In this essay the gardener Jackie Bennett responds to the ideas and principles laid out by the Elizabethan thinker Francis Bacon in his Essay 'Of Gardens'.
Producer: James Cook.
In Lines of Work prominent people in a particular job read and reflect on the writings of an illustrious forebear of the same trade. The essays are partly about ideas and how they change, but also about the practice and experience of being a certain kind of thing; be it a teacher, a journalist, a soldier or a critic.
Journalist Helen Lewis reads the poet John Milton's defence of a Free Press, Aeropagitica. The question of freedom of the press rarely goes away but it feels particularly of the moment. Helen, deputy editor of the New Statesman, reads Milton for the first time to see whether his 17th century concerns can help us think through the post-Leveson age.
Producer: James Cook.
Prominent people in a particular line of work read and reflect on the writings of an illustrious forebear of the same trade. The essays are partly about ideas and how they change, but also about the practice and the human experience of being a certain kind of thing; be it a teacher, a soldier a critic or a journalist.
Soldier and author Harry Parker, relives The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S Grant, through the lens of his own experiences in Helmand province. Grant fought in the US Mexican War and then commanded the Union armies in the American Civil War. Reading Grant's spare prose Harry reflects on the changes in the way war is experienced, consumed and portrayed.
Producer: James Cook.
Prominent people in a particular line of work read and reflect on the writings of an illustrious forebear of the same trade. The essays are partly about ideas and how they change, but also about the practice and the human experience of being a certain kind of thing; be it a teacher, a soldier a critic or a journalist.
Theatre critic Susannah Clapp has a passionate exchange of views with Oscar Wilde through his essays on criticism. Many of Wilde's pungent epithets and observations â€" his 'silken arrows' as Susannah describes them - still have the power to thrill, inform and entertain. But Susannah finds Wilde was on the wrong side of anonymity arguments and struggles to make sense of the internet age. Susannah ends telling her illustrious forebear of her fears for Wildean criticism in the age of mere opinion.
Producer: James Cook.
Prominent people in a particular line of work read and reflect on the writings of an illustrious forebear of the same trade. The essays are partly about ideas and how they change, but also about the practice and the human experience of being a certain kind of thing; be it a teacher, a soldier a critic or a journalist.
Francis Gilbert was a secondary school teacher for a number of years and is now Lecturer in Education at the University of London. He reads Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Emile and reflects on whether this template for a perfect education has a place and an influence on today's curriculum. Rousseau was an 18th-century Swiss philosopher and Emile - which charted the imagined education of the books titular young man - can be through of as the educational textbook of the Romantic movement. Rousseau's ideas have influenced Steiner Schools and the Montessori movement but are they desirable (or even feasible) in the age of mass state education.
Producer: James Cook.
Four centuries after Shakespeare's death, young scholars share new evaluations of his work - in a series of essays recorded in front of an audience in Shakespeare's old classroom at the Guildhall in Stratford-upon-Avon.
5.Siobhan Keenan on Shakespeare Beyond London
The Globe Theatre on the South Bank gives us such a clear image of productions of Shakespeare's plays in his own day, that it's easy to forget they were also performed far beyond London. Siobhan sets out to explain how Shakespeare and his fellow actors regularly toured the country, performing in spaces ranging from town halls and churches to large country houses.
Siobhan sheds light on why most of Shakespeare's plays were designed so that they could be performed anywhere - with call for few props and little scenery - in order to reveal the importance of touring to his career, and the emergence of Shakespeare as a cultural icon in Elizabethan and Jacobean England - and beyond.
Siobhan Keenan is Reader in Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature at De Montfort University.
BBC Radio 3 is marking the 400th anniversary of the death of Shakespeare with a season celebrating the four centuries of music and performance that his plays and sonnets have inspired.
Producer: Beaty Rubens.
Four centuries after Shakespeare's death, young scholars share new evaluations of his work - in a series of essays recorded in front of an audience in Shakespeare's old classroom at the Guildhall in Stratford-upon-Avon.
4.Preti Taneja: Freedom of Speech or "Nothing": King Lear and Contemporary India
Preti recently undertook a wide-reaching trip to India in order to research her own new novel based on King Lear. In this Essay, she considers Shakespeare's great tragedy as a lens through which to explore some of the contradictions of freedom of speech and censorship, development and corruption, activism and violence facing the world's youngest, fastest growing democracy today.
Preti Taneja is a former Radio 3 New Generation Thinker and post-doctoral research fellow in Global Shakespeare at Queen Mary, University of London, and Warwick University.
BBC Radio 3 is marking the 400th anniversary of the death of Shakespeare with a season celebrating the four centuries of music and performance that his plays and sonnets have inspired.
Producer: Beaty Rubens.
Four centuries after Shakespeare's death, young scholars share new evaluations of his work - in a series of essays recorded in front of an audience in Shakespeare's old classroom at the Guildhall in Stratford-upon-Avon.
3.Joan Fitzpatrick with "Wolf All?- Shakespeare and Food in Renaissance England"
Joan Fitzpatrick explains her new research on what people ate in Shakepeare's England, and what food and the consumption of food signifies in his plays.
She starts with details of enormously popular Dietary books, such as William Bullein's Government of Health, (first printed in 1542) and goes on to explore why eating is about far more than nourishment, shedding important new light on the old, the young, the thin, the fat, women, foreigners, the poor and social elites in Shakespeare's plays.
Joan Fitzpatrick is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Loughborough University
BBC Radio 3 is marking the 400th anniversary of the death of Shakespeare with a season celebrating the four centuries of music and performance that his plays and sonnets have inspired.
Producer : Beaty Rubens.
Joan explores the symbolism of food and eating in Shakespeare's plays
Four centuries after Shakespeare's death, young scholars share new evaluations of his work - in a series of essays recorded in front of an audience in Shakespeare's old classroom at the Guildhall in Stratford-upon-Avon.
2.James Loxley on Undiscovered Countries: Shakespeare and the Nation
At a time when relationships between the UK and the rest of Europe, and between the UK's own constituent nations, looks more unsettled than for many years, James Loxley explores what light Shakespeares plays might throw on tricky questions of national identity and the political debates that can grow up around them.
James starts by considering Henry V, for which Shakespeare is often depicted as a celebrant of untroubled Englishness, giong on to explain that during Shakespeare's most creative period, the very name and nature of the country was in dispute, with the concept of "Great Britain" becoming a prospect for the first time.
And he concludes by wondering how Shakespeare's plays can help us understand our own national questions today.
James Loxley is Professor of Early Modern Literature in the University of Edinburgh
BBC Radio 3 is marking the 400th anniversary of the death of Shakespeare with a season celebrating the four centuries of music and performance that his plays and sonnets have inspired.
Producer: Beaty Rubens.
James explores the light Shakespeare throws on national identity, then and now
Four centuries after the death of Shakespeare, five young scholars share new evaluations of his work - in a series of essays recorded in front of an audience in Shakespeare's old classroom at the Guildhall in Stratford-upon-Avon.
1.Sophie Duncan on Shakespeare and the Suffragettes
Sophie Duncan reveals how Shakespeare's heroines helped transform Victorian schoolgirls into Edwardian activists.
The 19th century actress Ellen Terry told the suffragettes that they had more in common with Shakespeare's female characters than with the fragile, domestic ladies of Victorian novels. Sohie Duncan's new research starts with the unanticipated results of a competition run in The Girls' Own Paper in 1888 to find its readers' favourite Shakespearean heroine. It moves into more conventional scholarly territory with an analysis of a Suffragist-led production of The Winter's Tale in 1914, and its impact on English Suffragettes as a depiction of violence against women and the transformative power of female friendship.
Sophie Duncan is Calleva Post-Doctoral Researcher at Magdalen College, Oxford
BBC Radio 3 marks the 400th anniversary of the death of Shakespeare with a season celebrating the four centuries of music and performance that his plays and sonnets have inspired.
Producer: Beaty Rubens.
Playwright and academic Elizabeth Kuti explores Sean O'Casey's "The Silver Tassie"
Photographer John D McHugh explores one of the war photos taken by Fr Francis Browne
Poet and academic Gerald Dawe explores Francis Ledwidge's poem "O'Connell Street".
Dr Heather Jones of the LSE explores Elizabeth Bowen's novel "The Last September"
The writer Fintan O'Toole reflects on James Joyce's novel "Ulysses"
Daybreak... and five writers set off on foot - and report back: Finally, the biographer Lucy Hughes Hallett, strolling amongst headstones in a local cemetery. Accompanying her, a hairy pointer called Kilburn, who has his own reasons for trotting out early.
Producer: Duncan Minshull
Daybreak... and five writers set off on foot - and report back: This time, the novelist Ian Sansom starts out, using as inspiration ideas of Benjamin Franklin and his faith in 'powerful goodness'. Powerful goodness will power him along, towards the sea at the edge of his town.
Producer: Duncan Minshull
Daybreak... and five writers set off on foot - and report back: This time, novelist Kamila Shamsie observes the wonderful light at a time called 'dusk-dawn', first from the ice of the Antarctic, then from the deck of her ship. Funnily enough, the experience makes her think of a Greek Island.
Producer: Duncan Minshull
Daybreak... and five writers set off on foot - and report back: This time, novelist Nicola Barker negotiates the slopes of her back garden at 5am, wintertime. It's a mini-walk, full of massive muddy challenges and includes a vigil of her 'benighted goldfish'.
Producer: Duncan Minshull
Daybreak... and five writers set off on foot - and report back:
First out, Nicholas Shakespeare and his sons walk their local beach in Tasmania, a spit of white sand, which offers up stories about sea creatures and ships in distress. Producer: Duncan Minshull
In the week of International Women's Day, five women tell us about their lives in music including what, and who, inspires them. Today, we hear from cellist, performer, composer, blogger, broadcaster and educator Zoë Martlew.
A week of Essays in which five women tell us about their lives in music including what, and who, inspires them. Alice Farnham is one of Britain's leading female conductors. As well as enjoying a growing international reputation, particularly in the field of opera conducting, she is Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Women Conductors @ Morley - a programme to encourage women into the conducting profession.
In the week of International Women's Day, five women tell us about their lives in music including what, and who, inspires them. Today, Kathryn McAdam – AKA ‘Soprano on sabbatical’
The composer Nicola LeFanu tells us about her life in music as part of this series celebrating inspiring women. When she was growing up it didn't occur to her that composition was an unusual thing for a woman to do; it seemed completely natural, surrounded as she was by women who wrote music: her mother, the composer Elizabeth Maconchy, and her friends including the Welsh composer Grace Williams and the Irish composer Ina Boyle. It was only when Nicola went on to study music herself that she realised how few women had been included in the books which told the history of Western Classical music. In this edition of The Essay, Nicola shares her story of what, and who, has inspired her own career spanning over half a century and how things have changed for women in music during her lifetime.
A week of Essays in which five women tell us about their lives in music including what, and who, inspires them. Today, the mezzo-soprano Sarah Connolly talks about her career, her family, and the inspirational characters she has played.
Stephen Johnson studies the audience's reaction to Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks
Stephen Johnson considers how Beethoven's Piano Concerto No 4 thrilled the first audience
Stephen Johnson considers how Shostakovich's Symphony No 5 surprised it's first audience
Stephen Johnson considers how Byrd's Mass for 4 voices was received by its first audience
Stephen Johnson considers how Mahler's Symphony no 8 was received by its first audience.
Charlotte Bronte's true identity revealed through five powerful, poignant letters.
5.Marking the 200th anniversary of Charlotte Bronte's birth, Rachel Joyce - a best-selling author herself - considers how, on the publication of Jane Eyre, Bronte reacted to becoming a literary sensation.
When Jane Eyre was published in 1847, it was a literary sensation. Rachel Joyce reflects both on Bronte's modest excitement that her book was being read by "such men as Mr Thackeray", and her absolute confidence in her own writing and literary judgement.
Rachel Joyce is the best-selling author of The Lonely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, and recently wrote a new adaptation of Jane Eyre for BBC Radio 4.
Producer: Beaty Rubens.
Charlotte Bronte's true identity explored through her powerful and poignant letters - letters which are often particularly revealing when read with the beneift of hindsight.
The journalist Jane Shilling has reflected on women, ageing and creativity in her book, The Woman in the Mirror. Two hundred years after Charlotte Bronte's birth, Jane Shilling wonders about her feelings as she wrote to her dear friend, Ellen Nussey, "I shall soon be 30 and have done nothing yet", shortly before embarking on her greatest work, Jane Eyre.
Producer: Beaty Rubens.
In the 200th anniversary of her birth, Charlotte Bronte's true identity revealed through five powerful, poignant letters.
The poet laureate Robert Southey's letter to Charlotte Bronte is now infamous: "Literature cannot be the business of a woman's life, and it ought not to be. The more she is engaged in her proper duties, the less leisure will she have for it even as an accomplishment and a recreation."
The scholar and Bronte biographer Lyndall Gordon, explores Bronte's response to this letter, in all its ambiguity: "In the evenings, I confess, I do think, but never trouble anyone else with my thoughts."
Producer: Beaty Rubens.
Charlotte Bronte's true identity revealed through five powerful and poigant letters
2.Biographer Claire Harman on the two years Charlotte Bronte spent as a mature student in Belgium, at a school run by Zoe and Constantin Heger, and its turbulent epistolary aftermath.
When Charlotte Bronte's passionate letters to Constantin Heger were published in 1913, they caused a sensation. Today, they are more likely to provoke a sympathetic response.
Marking the 200th anniversary of her birth, Claire Harman unfolds the story of Bronte's time in Brussels. She explores the letters she wrote to Heger after her return to Haworth and his stoney refusal to correspond with her, in spite of her pleas and her wish to write a book and dedicate it to him: "I would write a book and I would dedicate it to my literature master - to the only master I have ever had - to you Monsieur".
It's amongst the most painful incidents in Bronte's life-story, but Claire Harman goes on to discuss how Bronte eventually used the experience in The Professor, Villette, and, of course, in her masterpiece, Jane Eyre.
Producer: Beaty Rubens.
Charlotte Bronte's true identity revealed through her powerful and poignant letters.
1.Bronte's biographer, Claire Harman, on her experience as a governess.
Among the 900 surviving letters of Charlotte Bronte, the ones written while she was a governess most vivdly reveal her characteristic blend, as a young woman, of unhappiness and frustration mingled with hope and ambition.
Claire Harman sets out the drab, demeaning details of Bronte's career as a governess, and her passionate longing for a more fulfilling life. In her letter to her old school-friend, Ellen Nussey, Bronte writes enviously of another friend who has been travelling in Belgium: "I hardly know what swelled to my throat as I read her letter - such a vehement impatience of restraint and steady work - such a strong wish for wings - wings such as wealth can furnish - such an urgent thirst to see - to know - to learn - something internal seemed to expand boldly for a minute - I was tantalised with the consciousness of faculties unexercised.....".
Producer: Beaty Rubens.
Acclaimed writer A L Kennedy muses on the hell that is other people.
As someone so unable to deal with other people that she works at home, making up imaginary friends, who even then don't always behave, A L Kennedy admits to not necessarily being the best person to dish out advice on relationships. However, in this series she wonders whether she's perhaps been a little harsh when it comes to 'other people'.
Today she tackles fullscale, walking on sunshine, singing in the rain love - surely the most terrifying word of all that we associate with 'other people'.
Written and read by A L Kennedy, the award-winning novelist, dramatist and broadcaster. Producer: Justine Willett.
Acclaimed writer A L Kennedy muses on the hell that is other people, today looking at family.
As someone so unable to deal with other people that she works at home, making up imaginary friends, who even then don't always behave, A L Kennedy admits to not necessarily being the best person to dish out advice on relationships. However, in this series she wonders whether she's perhaps been a little harsh when it comes to 'other people'.
Written and read by A L Kennedy, the award-winning novelist, dramatist and broadcaster. Producer: Justine Willett.
Acclaimed writer A L Kennedy muses on the hell that is other people, today looking at friends.
As someone so unable to deal with other people that she works at home, making up imaginary friends, who even then don't always behave, A L Kennedy admits to not necessarily being the best person to dish out advice on relationships. However, in this series she wonders whether she's perhaps been a little harsh when it comes to 'other people'.
Today, she ponders friendship, which, as a happily solitary only child, was something she managed to put off for as long as was decently possible...
Written and read by A L Kennedy, the award-winning novelist, dramatist and broadcaster. Producer: Justine Willett.
Acclaimed writer A L Kennedy muses on the hell that is other people, today looking at 'other generations'.
As someone so unable to deal with other people that she works at home, making up imaginary friends, who even then don't always behave, A L Kennedy admits to not necessarily being the best person to dish out advice on relationships. However, in this series she wonders whether she's perhaps been a little harsh when it comes to 'other people'.
Today, she contemplates the pitfalls of being old, young or something in between, and wonders why we're perhaps uneasiest of all with those of our own age.
Written and read by A L Kennedy, the award-winning novelist, dramatist and broadcaster. Producer: Justine Willett.
Acclaimed writer A L Kennedy muses on the hell that is other people, kicking off with strangers.
In Jean Paul Sartre's Play 'No Exit' one character declares, 'L'Enfer - c'est les autres' - hell is other people, and A L Kennedy has found herself very much behind this idea. As someone so unable to deal with other people that she works at home, making up imaginary friends, who even then don't always behave, she admits to not necessarily being the best person to dish out advice on relationships. However, in this series she wonders whether she's perhaps been a little harsh when it comes to 'other people'.
Today, she reveals why, despite being a solitary novelist with an existential fear of strangers, she has found herself hugging the odd one in the street.
Written and read by A L Kennedy, the award-winning novelist, dramatist and broadcaster. Producer: Justine Willett.
Five writers recall clothes and accessories that resonate vividly in works of art: The series started with a white dress and ends with a pristine white suit ... Author and journalist John Walsh describes the transformative powers of a 'two-piece', worn in turn by a motley bunch of blokes in Los Angeles and celebrated in Ray Bradbury's story 'The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit'.
Producer Duncan Minshull
Five writers recall clothes and accessories that resonate vividly in works of art:
Justine Picardie, author and editor of Harper's Bazaar, considers a whole pile of dresses and jewellery worn by Nicole Diver in Scott Fitzgerald's novel Tender Is The Night. And how Nicole's passion for clothes is mirrored by the author's wife, Zelda. Producer Duncan Minshull
Five writers recall clothes and accessories that resonate vividly in works of art:
Author and critic Stephen Bayley on a pair of glasses sported brilliantly in the film 8 1/2 by Marcello Mastroianni. So classic and cool are the frames, that we desire them today. Producer Duncan Minshull
Five writers recall clothes and accessories that resonate vividly in works of art: Journalist Rachel Cooke remembers reading the best-seller Bonjour Tristesse as a teenager, in which a character's memorable slacks, or 'pedal pushers', said everything about French chic. Or so she thought.
Five writers recall clothes and accessories that resonate vividly in works of art:
Art historian James Fox describes 'Symphony in White' No. 1, the painting by James Whistler that had everyone guessing about the wearer and the story behind her.
Producer Duncan Minshull
Tom Service explores musical creativity and seismic shock in the twenty-first century. By the time the 20th century was 16 years old, music like Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring, Strauss's Salome, and Schoenberg's Five Orchestral Pieces had sent shockwaves through the tectonic plates of musical and cultural convention. In ripping up the musical rule-book, these pieces were heard to threaten social and even moral stability as well. So where are the seismic moments of the first 16 years of the 21st century? Why haven't composers been able to write another Rite? Is it because new music has lost its cultural capital? Or is it, rather, that seismic activity is happening even more today than it was in 1916- an endless series of mini-earthquakes rather than a single musical volcano, biding its time until all that creative energy breaks through?
The story of new music is peppered with events that have altered the course of musical history. For our New Year New Music season, we asked five Radio 3 presenters to each tell the story of one of these "seismic moments". From silence and ambient sounds to riot and revolution, these intriguing events have, in different ways, changed the progress of sound and culture - or, as one of our five suggests, have they?
Written and read by Tom Service Producer: John Goudie.
Sarah Walker's chosen seismic moment in new music describes the notorious 1973 concert when Carnegie Hall played host to the radically minimalist Four Organs by Steve Reich. She also looks at how minimalism together with the idea of the composer-performer ensemble, changed the history of 20th century music.
The story of new music is peppered with events that have altered the course of musical history. For our New Year New Music season, we asked five Radio 3 presenters to each tell the story of one of these "seismic moments". From silence and ambient sounds to riot and revolution, these intriguing events have, in different ways, changed the progress of sound and culture - or, as one of our five suggests, have they?
Written and read by Sarah Walker Producer: John Goudie.
In his 1978 album Music for Airports Brian Eno created a new genre of music he named 'ambient music'. The album was designed to ease the tedium of waiting in airports, but ambient music, which Eno said was 'as ignorable as it is interesting', had an influence way beyond that. Ivan Hewett looks into the genesis and subsequent history of ambient music, and explains why Eno's description is not as self-contradictory as it appears to be.
The story of new music is peppered with events that have altered the course of musical history. For our New Year New Music season, we asked five Radio 3 presenters to each tell the story of one of these "seismic moments". From silence and ambient sounds to riot and revolution, these intriguing events have, in different ways, changed the progress of sound and culture - or, as one of our five suggests, have they?
Written and read by Ivan Hewett. Produced by Elizabeth Allard.
Sara Mohr-Pietsch's chosen seismic moment in new music looks to the fall of the Berlin Wall. She reflects on the accompanying rise in the popularity of Eastern European composers as a simplicity in musical language emerged from behind the Iron Curtain.
The story of new music is peppered with events that have altered the course of musical history. For our New Year New Music season, we asked five Radio 3 presenters to each tell the story of one of these "seismic moments". From silence and ambient sounds to riot and revolution, these intriguing events have, in different ways, changed the progress of sound and culture - or, as one of our five suggests, have they?
Written and read by Sara Mohr-Pietsch. Producer: Nicola Holloway.
Robert Worby's selected seismic moment in new music is the first performance of John Cage's controversial 4'33" and its impact on performers and audiences ever since.
The story of new music is peppered with events that have altered the course of musical history. For our New Year New Music season, we asked five Radio 3 presenters to each tell the story of one of these "seismic moments". From silence and ambient sounds to riot and revolution, these intriguing events have, in different ways, changed the progress of sound and culture - or, as one of our five suggests, have they?
Written and read by Robert Worby Produced by Elizabeth Allard.
Many people would not consider a ski-jump to be a work of art. But for anthropologist and novelist Professor Thomas Hylland Eriksen, Oslo's Holmenkollen ski-jumping hill was the most important art work in Norway.
"The Holmenkollen Hill, white, elegant and majestic, hovered above the city like a large bird about to take flight," says Eriksen. "It was a work of art enjoyed by tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people every day". Eriksen employs the past tense because the structure - built for the 1952 Winter Olympics in Oslo - was pulled down and replaced with a more "flashy, hi-tech and efficient" ski jump in 2008.
The architects of the original - Olav Tveten and Frode Rinnan - had created much more than a sporting facility, he says. It was a frugal, elegant structure, which spoke to the Norwegian love of the mountains and the outdoors. "Looking towards Holmenkollen made people more Norwegian." It lives on, he says, as a memory of how architecture can transform a practical structure into a sublime work of art.
This edition of The Essay is one of a series in which five writers each consider the significance of a work of art to their nation, as part of Radio 3's Northern Lights season.
Producer: Andy Denwood.
Writer and historian Ray Hudson considers how one drawing shows Alaskans caught between the fire and the sea: between the state's turbulent natural beauty and the race to exploit its wealth in raw materials.
In Carolyn Reed's "Touching Fire", two women stand on the shores of a great sea, their faces lit by a pile of blazing logs. "This fire for me suggests the commercial exploitation that has historically consumed much of the region," says Hudson, who witnessed a massive expansion in commercial fishing during nearly three decades living in Alaska's remote Aleutian Islands. Yet he takes heart from the dignity and determination of the women caught between fire and water. "I know that despite its violent dominance the fire will go out and the women will turn to face the sea," he says.
This edition of The Essay is one of a series in which five writers each consider the significance of a work of art to their homelands, as part of Radio 3's Northern Lights season.
Producer: Andy Denwood.
The Canadian novelist Elizabeth Hay considers the significance of a painting which symbolises much about her country, once famously described having "too much geography". The great achievement of Canadian painter David Milne, says Hay, was to take the impersonal vastness of the nation's landscape, and make it personal.
Milne, who died in 1953, was a modernist painter who lived in a cabin in northern Ontario and eked out a frugal lifestyle while producing paintings "full of immense space and airiness", says Hay. His work, "Painting Place III" was created when he awoke from an afternoon nap in a hollow and saw the landscape framed by spruce trees. It was his management of the scene that made it personal, she observes. "He nestled a painting box, a quart jar, and tubes of paint in the foreground, turning the picture into a self-portrait of sorts, a portrait of someone imbued with a sense of landscape."
Like Milne, Hay's own writing has reflected the immensity of Canada's vast northern landscape. "What we have in common, in differing degrees...is not just a feeling for landscape, but a need for it," she says.
This edition of The Essay is one of a series in which five writers each consider the significance of a work of art to their nation, as part of Radio 3's Northern Lights season.
Producer: Andy Denwood.
Artist and writer Hallgrimur Helgason asks what one Icelandic painting can say in a culture that is primarily verbal.
The visual arts got off to a slow start in Iceland, he observes. "Our first ever exhibition of paintings opened in the year 1900. The history of Icelandic art reads like a short story." For a thousand years Icelandic culture had been dominated by the Sagas. When paintbrushes and oil paints finally arrived in the 19th century, early artists focused on the country's stunning scenery. But in 1914 a bright new talent emerged blinking in the northern light.
"Fish Processing in Eyjafjord'" captures a lively group of women in the bright morning sunshine, preparing salted cod for export. "Here everything is a first", says Helgason. "We're at the dawn of our art history, at the dawn of the twentieth century, at the dawn of a beautiful day by the beautiful fjord." And the artist represents another first, as one of the very earliest women painters in Iceland: Kristin Jonsdottir, who had returned from Denmark, inspired by Cezanne and Van Gogh. "It's all fresh and new, painting ordinary people at work, with strong and stylized brushwork," says Helgason.
This edition of The Essay is one of a series in which five writers each consider the significance of a work of art to their nation, as part of Radio 3's Northern Lights season.
Producer: Andy Denwood.
Danish writer Mette Moestrup praises the way artist Pia Arke explored the difficult relationship between Denmark and Greenland, its former colony.
Arke was the child of a Danish father and a Greenlandic mother. "My pictoral work deals almost exclusively with the silence that surrounds the bonds between Greenland and Denmark," she wrote. "I was myself born into that silence."
One of Arke's projects involved the construction of a giant Camera Obscura on the site of her long demolished childhood home at Cape Nuugaarsuk in Greenland. The camera looked like "a big ice-cube among the barren mountains", says Moestrup. The artist was able to sit inside the camera as she took landscape and portrait shots. "Here," says Moestrup, "she created beautiful, haunting, hazy photographs of the bare rocky formations, the water and the ice. A lost home, and a lost view recreated via the nomadic camera house."
This edition of The Essay is one of a series in which five writers each consider the significance of a work of art to their nation, as part of Radio 3's Northern Lights season.
Producer: Andy Denwood.
Environmental journalist Jason Mark visits Alaska's remote northern rim, and on the shores of the Arctic Ocean at a barbecue with Inuits, he reflects on the impact of our lust for hydrocarbons. Whilst the ice melts beneath them, so the search goes on for oil in these northern parts. He tries to grasp what he sees as the bitter ironies of climate change, confirmed by his encounters with Inuit hunters and others who describe how much the weather is warming.
Producer: Mark Smalley.
Daniel Kalder conjures up the vast landscapes east of the Urals, where taiga becomes tundra. Siberia is more a state of mind than a place, given how the term encompasses not only the endless forests of the taiga but also that which lies beyond them, where the trees dwindle, diminish and finally give way to the tundra's ceaseless realms of permafrost. As part of Radio 3's Northern Lights season Kalder, a travel writer who's lived in and travelled around Russia, reflects on how ice and wind vies with geology to shape these memorable tracts. And in that land of ice, not just the cryogenically preserved woolly mammoths, but is it true that former Soviet apparatchiks are buried with their medals, in full state regalia?
Producer: Mark Smalley.
Geologist and climatologist Gina Moseley led a team of cavers into an unknown system of limestone caverns in northern Greenland in the summer of 2015. Her findings will keep her busy for a long time to come. She describes what it was like wriggling into these remote spaces, knowing they were the first people to have ever done so. This in a place where the rest of the world's population of 7.3 billion people lives well south of their northern latitude.
The wonder of being there contrasts with the work that lies ahead of her, to analyse the flowstone in the caves they came to sample, and to find out what it tells us of previous times when the earth's climate warmed up, just as it's doing again now.
'Rock talk' is what the travel writer Sara Wheeler recalls of her time cooped up in cold, billowing tents with a horde of geologists well north of Hudson Bay up in Canada's Arctic. That and the unforgettable smell of drying socks. Visiting a geoscientific mapping project whilst researching the circumpolar Arctic had its highs, as well as its lows. Besides the socks was the extraordinary encounter with a browned circle on the ground, an old Inuit tent ring. In the middle sat a flinty limestone tool, which had probably lain there for 5,000 years since it had last been used to scrape seal hide.
Producer: Mark Smalley.
As part of Radio 3's Northern Lights season the award-winning poet John Burnside explores his fascination with the Sámi landscapes of Finnmark in northern Norway, reflecting on how they're shaped by ice as much as rock.
Winner of both the 2011 TS Eliot Prize for Poetry and the Forward Prize, John Burnside has returned time and again to find out more about the resilient culture of the Sámi people of northern Scandinavia. Here, he considers the wild beauty of Sámiland (or Lapland), describing a region at such variance with the Santa-themed tourism flogged to visitors.
Producer: Mark Smalley.
With Scotland and all things Scottish very much in the air, acclaimed writer, comedian and now ex-pat, AL Kennedy, continues her reflections on what Scottishness means to her in this week's series of The Essay. Today: Scotland's many hidden identities.
Written and performed by AL Kennedy Producer: Justine Willett.
With Scotland and all things Scottish very much in the air, acclaimed writer, comedian and now ex-pat, AL Kennedy, continues her reflections on what Scottishness means to her in this week's series of The Essay. Today: the language of Scotland.
Written and performed by AL Kennedy Producer: Justine Willett.
With Scotland and all things Scottish very much in the air, acclaimed writer, comedian and now ex-pat, AL Kennedy, reflects on what Scottishness means to her in this series of The Essay. Today: morality and misery - is dourness necessarily such a bad thing?
Written and performed by AL Kennedy Producer: Justine Willett.
With Scotland and all things Scottish very much in the air, acclaimed writer, comedian and now ex-pat, AL Kennedy, reflects on what Scottishness means to her in this new series of The Essay. Today: a good sense of humour.
Written and performed by AL Kennedy Producer: Justine Willett.
With Scotland and all things Scottish very much in the air, acclaimed writer, comedian and now ex-pat, AL Kennedy, reflects on what Scottishness means to her in this new series of The Essay. Today: tartan, the kilt and a sense of identity.
Written and performed by A L Kennedy Producer: Justine Willett.
Novelist and critic Ian Sansom believes that the idea of the average is one of the key terms and principles of the modern age, encompassing human productivity, relationships, politics and art. So, how did average become a byword for mediocrity?
In the final essay of the series, he attempts to locate the most average place in the UK, the heart of Middle England, the spiritual home of Joe and Josephine Public.
Producer: Stan Ferguson.
Novelist and critic Ian Sansom goes in search of the 'average' man or woman.
Novelist and critic Ian Sansom believes that the idea of the average is one of the key terms and principles of the modern age, encompassing human productivity, relationships, politics and art. So, how did average become a byword for mediocrity?
In the third essay of the series, he explores the changing concept of the average working week in an age of zero hours contracts. Is the idea of an average working week now as redundant and old-fashioned as the idea of the tea-drinking, bowler-hatted man on the Clapham omnibus, with his 2.4 children living comfortably in suburbia, in a nation of cheeky-chappie shopkeepers?
Producer: Stan Ferguson.
Novelist and critic Ian Sansom believes that the idea of the average is one of the key terms and principles of the modern age, encompassing human productivity, relationships, politics and art. So, how did average become a byword for mediocrity?
In the second essay of the series, he uncovers the unlikely history of the scientific measurement of the dimensions of the average man and woman. We learn that our ever-changing dimensions matter - size matters - for all sorts of obvious reasons, not least because average sizes literally determine the shape of the world we all live in: the height of our tables and chairs, the shape of our clothes, our cars, our phones - and of course our coffins. We all live and die according to the average.
Producer: Stan Ferguson.
Novelist and critic Ian Sansom believes that the idea of the average is one of the key terms and principles of the modern age, encompassing human productivity, relationships, politics and art. So, how did average become a byword for mediocrity?
'Average Is Over' proclaims the title of one recent best-selling book about economics. 'Start: Punch Fear In the Face, Escape Average And Do Work That Matters' suggests the title of another. 'Conquering Average'. 'Mastering Average'. 'Overcoming Average'. This has become the mantra of our times.
In the opening essay of this series of investigations into the average, Sansom takes a sideways look at the history and meaning of the ordinary and the everyday and discovers what it means to be the opposite of 'awesome'.
Producer: Stan Ferguson.
World War One ravaged Tanzania. East Africans were recruited as carriers and fighters, and many more were affected by the destruction of crops by retreating forces. As many as a million died from starvation and sickness as well as from their wounds, yet the war is barely remembered there now. Oswald Masebo, Professor of History at the University of Dar es Salaam, explores the conundrum with an audience at the auditorium of the British Council in Tanzania.
The First World War is a difficult history for Indians to remember. Although over a million soldiers from India served, their contribution was not rewarded with independence for their country and disappointment was met with harsh repression. The writer, diplomat and Indian MP Shashi Tharoor presents his essay at the Indian International Centre in Delhi, in partnership with the British Council. In 'Parting Words' he explores the troubled associations of the war and its aftermath, and explains that India is finally honouring its heroes of World War One.
There are currently wars in two of Jordan's neighbouring countries. The kingdom has a long history of absorbing trouble from its orders and has its origins in the settlement after World War One. Lina Attel is Director General of the King Hussein Foundation, National Centre for Culture and Arts. In this essay, recorded with partners the British Council at the Haya Cultural Centre, Amman, she explains how Jordan's strong cultural identity has sustained it through the turbulent century since the First World War. She says it is a knowledge of the stories of its cultural heroes that will keep the country together as it faces further threats.
David Frum is a Washington-based political advisor and an editor of the Atlantic Magazine. He is also the former Special Advisor and speech writer to President George W Bush, and was working at the White House when America was attacked by terrorists on September 11th 2001. In this essay, recorded with BBC Partners the British Council at the United States Library of Congress, he explains how World War One came to shape US Foreign Policy through the twentieth century and still has a strong effect on how American engages with the world today.
Celebrated playwright and theatre director Wesley Enoch is a proud Noonuccal Nuugi man. During his career he has directed many plays by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists. Building up to the First World War centenary, Wesley developed the Black Diggers project about the experience of indigenous soldiers in World War One with the playwright Tom Wright. In these special editions of The Essay we gain an international perspective on the war as we hear from cultural figures from around the world taking part in an international series of events called The War That Changed The World, made in partnership with the British Council and the BBC World Service.
Wesley Enoch's essay, Stories that Bind, is delivered at the ABC headquarters in Sydney. In it he explores the powerful legend of Anzac in Australia and how that can leave out an important part of the story.
Producer, Charlie Taylor.
The poet and translator Sasha Dugdale explores the impact of the First War on the great Russian poet, Anna Akhmatova.
Her focus is on the collection, White Flock, published in 1917, but written during the war. In many poems, Akhmatova mentions the war directly, and in others, echoes of loss and war sound, refracted through peculiarly Russian folk imagery.
Sasha focuses on a two-part poem called 'July 1914'. In the first stanza, the turf has been burning for four weeks and the dry summer smells of smoke and fumes. The birds aren't singing and the aspen isn't moving. A one-legged wanderer comes to the house with terrible prophecies and predicts that 'soon there won't be room for all the fresh graves'. In the second part, the juniper's sweet smell rises from the burning wood and the widow's cry sounds. Instead of water and the rain they have prayed for, a warm red wetness floods the trampled fields.
Sasha's powerful Essay includes a new translation of the poem and a poignant account of how some of its motifs are now reappearing in contemporary writing about the war in Ukraine.
The long-running series in which scholars, writers and critics explore the impact of the First World War on individual artists through a single work of art.
4.The distinguished art critic, Richard Cork, discusses Pablo Picasso's designs for the Ballets Russes production, Parade, which premiered in Paris in 1917, with music by Erik Satie and a one-act scenario by Jean Cocteau.
Picasso's sets and costumes for Parade are now considered key works, representative of the tumultuous era in which they were produced. At the onset of war, Picasso had left France and moved to Rome, where the Ballets Russes rehearsed. He soon met the ballerina Olga Khokhlova, and married her in 1918, so these were years of personal change as well as artistic.
Although the ballet took time to gain critical response, its originality was recognised by some at the time. Guillaume Apollinaire, who wrote the programme notes for Parade, described Picasso's designs as "a kind of surrealism" (une sorte de surréalisme) three years before Surrealism developed as an art movement in Paris, partly as a response to the war.
Producer: Beaty Rubens.
Virginia Woolf spent the First World War on the Home front mainly in London. It was an anxious time; she lost several cousins in the conflict, and her brother-in-law Cecil Woolf died at the Front; in 1915 she suffered a mental breakdown.
For Woolf the war had changed everything, and her three novels written soon after it - Jacob's Room (1922), Mrs Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927) - display a marked shift in style. 'There had to be new forms for our new sensations', she wrote in a 1916 essay, and in 1923 went further: "We are sharply cut off from our predecessors. A shift in the scale - the war, the sudden slip of masses held in position for ages - has shaken the fabric from top to bottom, alienated us from the past and made us perhaps too vividly conscious of the present."
In 1925, Woolf's brilliant novel Mrs Dalloway would amaze readers with its literary techniques and its counterpointing of society hostess Clarissa Dalloway and war veteran Septimus Warren-Smith. Here was a work of fiction in which the principal characters never meet, where the Victorian staples of plot and family relationships are eclipsed by a new emphasis on what the characters think rather than what they do or say.
For Dame Gillian Beer this thronging novel with its cast of war profiteers, war casualties, and passers-by ultimately has a positive message. In Mrs Dalloway Virginia Woolf draws the reader and the novel's characters together: "Whether known or unknown to each other, in a shared humanity," she says, "her work draws us all alongside, across time.".
How great artists and thinkers responded to the horrors of the First World War in individual works of art.
2.Stand-Up comedian Arthur Smith presents a suitably Dada-esque account of Tristan Tzara's Dada Manifesto.
Arthur Smith has long been fascinated by the Dada movement, which began one hundred years ago in 1915. His interest was re-ignited by a recent visit to the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, where Tzara - a French writer and performance artist of Romanian-Jewish descent - first came to prominence. This visit led him to reflect both on the seriousness of the dadists' project - as a protest against the meaningless horrors of the First World War - and on their use of comedy to express their ideas.
Juxtaposing the Dada Manifesto with his thoughts on that most conventional of War poets, Rupert Brooke, Arthur Smith's comic and thought-provoking Essay is a document of which Tristan Tzara himself - had he been a radio broadcaster - would have been proud.
Producer: Beaty Rubens.
Further Essays in the major Radio Three series exploring how great artists and thinkers responded to World War One in individual works of art.
1.Rabindranath Tagore: Santanu Das explores the great Indian thinker's Nobel lectures
Afer Rabindranath Tagore won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, he became one of the most feted literary figure of the war years. He was read at home but also in the trenches, by the likes of Wilfred Owen.
With his long white beard, flowing Indian clothes and intense gaze, Tagore came across as some sort of Oriental prophet, speaking for peace at a time of war. In 1916, he gave a series of lectures in Japan and the United States on 'Nationalism'. In them he noted: 'In this frightful war, the West has stood face to face with her own creation'. For him, the War was neither a sudden eruption nor a case of Europe sleepwalking into conflict but, rather, the shattering logical climax of unchecked Western nationalism and imperialism: 'suddenly, with all its mechanism going mad, it has begun the dance of the Furies, shattering its own limbs, scattering them into the dust. It is the fifth act of the tragedy of the unreal.'
Santanu Das, Reader in English at King's College, London, tells the story of a largely fogotten writer and thnker.
Producer: Beaty Rubens.
To mark the anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, a series of essays about Napoleon Bonaparte and his relationship with a a group of writers. In this edition, Kirsteen McCue on singing and interpreting the history behind the 'Ettrick Shepherd' James Hogg's Scottish Napoleonic songs.
To mark the anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, a series of essays about Napoleon Bonaparte. When the writer Adam Nicolson was a teenager he lived with his father who was writing about Napoleon and 1812. What was it like?
To mark the anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, a series of essays about Napoleon Bonaparte. The writer Andrea Stuart was born and raised in the Caribbean. The subject of her second book Josephine de Beauharnais, the first wife of Napoleon, was born on Martinique to a wealthy white Creole family. In a narrative crossing back and forth between their shared Caribbean origins, Andrea Stuart explores Josephine's journey away from the tropics and the significance of her origins in her relationship with another exile from an island, the world-famous Corsican mountaineer.
First broadcast in December 2012.
Julia Blackburn tells an extraordinary tale of sleuthing for the ghost of Napoleon on St Helena, his last island and his final unsought home.
The first of five essays as part of BBC Radio 3's 2012 Napoleon Season, marking two hundred years since his historic retreat from Moscow.
Julia had long wanted to write about Napoleon's final days. She set off for St Helena and Longwood House - the Emperor's last home prison - and tried to enlist the support of two official parties. She contacted the British Governor of the island and the French Consul who took responsibility for what became a tiny piece of France after the Emperor's death. Neither bothered to reply so Julia was forced to seek answers by exploring other paths back into the life of Napoleon's last days on St Helena. A lonely giant tortoise came to her rescue along with some other human inhabitants of the island - or Saints as they call themselves.
Producer: Tim Dee
First broadcast 03/12/2012.
Winner of the Nobel Prize in 1923, William Butler Yeats is a commanding presence in 20th-century literature and has inspired, and occasionally infuriated, successive generations of readers, writers, and performers ever since.
Marking the 150th anniversary of his birth on 13th June 1865, five of Ireland's leading cultural figures reflect on their relationship with his work. The authors include novelist John Banville, actor Fiona Shaw, writer Fintan O'Toole and poet Paul Muldoon.
In this edition, Ireland's current Professor of Poetry, Paula Meehan, explores the influence of the magical and the mystical in the work of WB Yeats.
Producer: Stan Ferguson.
Winner of the Nobel Prize in 1923, William Butler Yeats is a commanding presence in 20th-century literature and has inspired, and occasionally infuriated, successive generations of readers, writers, and performers ever since.
Marking the 150th anniversary of his birth on 13th June 1865, five of Ireland's leading cultural figures reflect on their relationship with his work. The authors include actor Fiona Shaw, writer Fintan O'Toole and poets Paul Muldoon and Paula Meehan.
In this edition, Booker Prize-winning author John Banville explains his long-held love for Yeats's 1928 collection, 'The Tower'.
Producer: Stan Ferguson.
Winner of the Nobel Prize in 1923, William Butler Yeats is a commanding presence in 20th-century literature and has inspired, and occasionally infuriated, successive generations of readers, writers, and performers ever since.
Marking the 150th anniversary of his birth on 13th June 1865, five of Ireland's leading cultural figures reflect on their relationship with his work. The authors include novelist John Banville, actor Fiona Shaw, writer Fintan O'Toole and poet Paula Meehan.
In this edition, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon explores the connections between Yeats's post-World War One masterpiece 'The Second Coming' and Shelley's 'Ozymandias' written a century earlier in the aftermath of the Battle of Waterloo.
Producer: Stan Ferguson.
Marking the 150th anniversary of his birth on 13th June 1865, five of Ireland's leading cultural figures reflect on their relationship with the poet, dramatist and prose writer, William Butler Yeats.
Winner of the Nobel Prize in 1923, Yeats is a commanding presence in 20th-century literature and has inspired, and occasionally infuriated, successive generations of readers, writers, and performers ever since. The series includes Fiona Shaw, John Banville and Paul Muldoon.
In this edition, writer and cultural commentator, Fintan O'Toole, explains that you don't always have to like everything about the man himself to appreciate the wonder of the poetry of WB Yeats.
Producer: Stan Ferguson.
Winner of the Nobel Prize in 1923, William Butler Yeats is a commanding presence in 20th-century literature and has inspired, and occasionally infuriated, successive generations of readers, writers, and performers ever since.
Marking the 150th anniversary of his birth on 13th June 1865, five of Ireland's leading cultural figures reflect on their relationship with his work. The authors include novelist, John Banville, writer Fintan O'Toole and poets, Paul Muldoon and Paula Meehan.
In this edition, celebrated actor and director Fiona Shaw explains the lasting impact of her childhood introduction to the work of WB Yeats.
Producer: Stan Ferguson.
Unthank, Brigadoon, Thrums. Scottish literature is filled with place names that can't be found in a gazeteer or GPS. The literary critic Stuart Kelly explores the imaginary locations that have provided the settings for some of Scotland's greatest novels. He concludes his visit to imaginary Scottish places with a visit to Brigadoon.
Scottish Literature is filled with imaginary places. Today Stuart Kelly explores Alasdair Gray's Unthank, the nightmarish setting for 1981's Lanark.
Brigadoon, Unthank, and today Duncairn. Literary critic Stuart Kelly explores the fictional Scottish cities that never appear on any map.
Brigadoon, Unthank, Thrums. There are places in Scottish literature which are missing from gazetteers or GPS. Literary critic Stuart Kelly explores the imaginary places where Scotland's finest writing is set. Today he travels to JM Barrie's imaginary "Thrums.".
Unthank, Brigadoon, Thrums. Scottish literature is filled with place names that can't be found in a gazeteer or GPS. The literary critic Stuart Kelly explores the imaginary locations that have provided the settings for some of Scotland's greatest novels. Today, the novelist John Galt, little known outside Scotland, whose books provide some of the wittiest portraits of 19th-century Scottish life.
In this series of The Essay, recorded in front of an audience at the Hay festival earlier this week, five writers take George Orwell's essay title Why I Write as a starting point for their own explorations. The writers include the screenwriter, novelist and author of the opening ceremony for the 2012 Olympics, Frank Cottrell Boyce; the editor and translator Daniel Hahn; Horatio Clare, whose first book was set on the hillsides where he grew up around Hay itself; and the Welsh poet laureate, Gillian Clarke. Part of Radio 3's week-long residency at the Hay Festival, with programmes CD Review, Lunchtime Concert, In Tune, Free Thinking, The Verb and World on 3 all broadcasting from the festival.
In this series of The Essay, recorded in front of an audience at the Hay Festival earlier this week, five writers take George Orwell's title Why I Write as a starting point for their own explorations. The writers include the screenwriter, novelist and author of the opening ceremony for the 2012 Olympics, Frank Cottrell Boyce; the editor and translator Daniel Hahn; Horatio Clare, whose first book was set on the hillsides where he grew up around Hay itself; and the Welsh poet laureate, Gillian Clarke.
Part of Radio 3's week-long residency at the Hay Festival, with programmes CD Review, Lunchtime Concert, In Tune, Free Thinking, The Verb and World on 3 all broadcasting from the festival.
In this series of The Essay, recorded in front of an audience at the Hay festival earlier this week, five writers take George Orwell's title Why I Write as a starting point for their own explorations. The writers include the screenwriter, novelist and author of the opening ceremony for the 2012 Olympics, Frank Cottrell Boyce; the editor and translator Daniel Hahn; Horatio Clare, whose first book was set on the hillsides where he grew up around Hay itself; and the Welsh poet laureate, Gillian Clarke.
Part of Radio 3's week-long residency at the Hay Festival, with programmes CD Review, Lunchtime Concert, In Tune, Free Thinking, The Verb and World on 3 all broadcasting from the festival.
Literary journalist and writer Alex Clark has written many of our leading publications, and is a former Booker and Granta judge. She comes to Hay to ask 'Why I Write'.
In this series of The Essay, recorded in front of an audience at the Hay Festival earlier this week, five writers take George Orwell's title Why I Write as a starting point for their own explorations. The writers include the screenwriter, novelist and author of the opening ceremony for the 2012 Olympics, Frank Cottrell-Boyce; the editor and translator Daniel Hahn; Horatio Clare, whose first book was set on the hillsides where he grew up around Hay itself; and the Welsh poet laureate, Gillian Clarke.
Part of Radio 3's week-long residency at the Hay Festival, with programmes CD Review, Lunchtime Concert, In Tune, Free Thinking, The Verb and World on 3 all broadcasting from the festival.
In this series of The Essay, recorded in front of an audience at the Hay festival earlier this week, five writers take George Orwell's title Why I Write as a starting point for their own explorations. The writers include the screenwriter, novelist and author of the opening ceremony for the 2012 Olympics, Frank Cottrell Boyce; the editor and translator Daniel Hahn; Horatio Clare, whose first book was set on the hillsides where he grew up around Hay itself; and the Welsh poet laureate, Gillian Clarke.
Part of Radio 3's week-long residency at the Hay Festival, with programmes CD Review, Lunchtime Concert, In Tune, Free Thinking, The Verb and World on 3 all broadcasting from the festival.
Welles's career is littered with lost and half-finished projects. Film critic, David Thomson explores the man's complicated relationship with failure.
Five essays by five enthusiasts that follow the rise and fall of controversial Renaissance man, Orson Welles.
Produced by Gemma Jenkins.
Five essays by five enthusiasts that follow the rise and fall of controversial Renaissance man, Orson Welles.
Gatsby expert, Sarah Churchwell on Welles's talent for self-mythologizing and how he compares with fiction's great dissembler, Jay Gatsby.
Produced by Gemma Jenkins.
Five essays by five enthusiasts that follow the rise and fall of controversial Renaissance man, Orson Welles.
Film critic Peter Bradshaw shares his own Rosebud theory in his personal take on Citizen Kane.
Produced by Gemma Jenkins.
Filmmaker, Kevin Jackson, crowns Welles the Prospero of the silver screen as he appraises Welles's Shakespeare trilogy.
Five essays by five enthusiasts that follow the rise and fall of controversial Renaissance man, Orson Welles.
Produced by Gemma Jenkins.
Five essays by five enthusiasts that follow the rise and fall of Orson Welles, the controversial Renaissance man who was an actor, film director, radio producer and theatre impresario. Essayists include film critics Peter Bradshaw and David Thomson and Sarah Churchwell.
Simon Callow, Welles's biographer, tracks the transformation from schoolboy to prodigy and unpicks what really happened during the six months Welles spent at Dublin's Gate Theatre.
Produced by Gemma Jenkins.
The novelist and academic Ian Sansom explores the literary, philosophical and cultural history of the table. From dining to designing, drinking and disagreeing; the table is central to our lives; "the departure point and launching pad for a thousand hare-brained schemes and ideas, a drawing board, a battlefield, and also the philosopher's favourite tool". Ian has raised a family round his kitchen table, but his true table as a writer is a solitary one. Bertrand Russell used the table as a symbol to explore the uncertain nature of observed reality; Wordsworth urged readers to rise up from their wooden desk, while Karl Marx used tables to explore the notion of commodities in Das Kapital, but is the table Ian built for O-level woodwork the truest thing he has ever made?'.
In the final programme celebrating comic actors from mid-20th century British film, Simon Heffer turns his gaze on a man whose priapic laugh alone merits an entire radio series. Sid James was at the heart of the phenomenally successful Carry On films and one of the best-loved and most easily recognised comic actors of his day.
Throughout the 1950s and '60s, the many roles he played were all, in essence, the same. As Simon Heffer puts it: "To say Sid had range as an actor would be to do him an injustice. Sid not have range. Sid was Sid. And it was as well he was, because the audience expected Sid in the full pomp of his Sidness, and would have been crushed with disappointment by anything else."
But Sid was not, by birth, the wise-cracking Cockney geezer whom he came to embody. He traced his roots back to Johannesburg, where he started life as Solomon Joel Cohen and began his working life as a gentlemen's hairdresser.
Simon Heffer traces his journey from a few years in rep to bit-parts in British comic films, his years of triumph in the Carry On films and his dramatic and unpredictable death on stage in 1976 - a somehow fitting end to a series on comic actors in their lives and on film.
Producer: Beaty Rubens.
A further chance to hear the columnist and historian Simon Heffer with his 2015 Essays on much-loved comic actors of mid-20th century British film.
4 of 5: Tony Hancock.
Tragedy and comedy have often shared the billing in Simon Heffer's series on British comic actors in mid-20th century film, but never more so than in the case of Tony Hancock.
Hancock is warmy recalled for his embodiment on radio and television of a self-deluded failure, a man whose life has been an odyssey of constant frustration. His role in film was less succesful and Simon Heffer examines the reasons why.
After critics noted the contributions of both his gifted screenwriters, Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, and of his main sidekick, Sid James, Hancock refused to work with them. Then he fired his agent.
Simon Heffer considers the strengths but also the weaknesses of his two largely forgotten films - The Rebel and The Punch and Judy Man - and the sad demise of a brilliant performer whose influences are still apparent today.
Producer : Beaty Rubens.
The columnist and historian Simon Heffer resumes his series of Essays celebrating mid-20th century British film with a new focus on five popular comic actors.
In exploring five British comic film actors from the mid-20th century, Simon Heffer's gaze has never strayed far from the British obsession with class. The double-barrelled, single-named actor Terry-Thomas - with his monocle, his cigarette holder and the hallmark gap between his two front teeth - perfected the role of a particular type of British toff. Taking star billing in a series of films such as Private's Progress, I'm All Right, Jack, and Carlton-Browne of the FO in the mid-1950s, his timing was perfect too. Simon Heffer argues that whether playing a cad, a rotten bounder or a charmer, Terry-Thomas came to represent the louche and degenerate side of the upper classes at a time when the class system was coming under full attack. With his trademark mix of celebration and historical analysis, Simon Heffer sheds fresh light on a series of once hugely popular but now often forgotten or overlooked performances.
Producer : Beaty Rubens.
Resuming his celebration of mid-20th century British film, the columnist and historian Simon Heffer turns his gaze on five hugely popular comic actors.
Alastair Sim is perhaps best remembered for a definitive interpretation of Scrooge, but Simon Heffer also recalls the run of classic comedies in which he perfected his role as a slightly ambivalent, often incompetent and occasionally threatening presence: The Happiest Days of Your Life, Laughter in Paradise, Captain Boycott and An Inspector Calls.
He concludes by revealing the little-known story of how Sim came to play the main role - or, rather, roles - in a film which has become a landmark of British cinema - The Belles of St Trinian's.
The inestimable Margaret Rutherford had been marked down to play the headmistress, Miss Fritton, but when Rutherford turned out to be unavailable, Alastair Sim offered to take on both his male part and the role of Miss Fritton, granting him the glorious lines: "In other schools, girls are sent out quite unprepared into a merciless world, but when our girls leave here, it is the merciless world that has to be prepared."
Producer : Beaty Rubens.
A further chance to hear the columnist and historian Simon Heffer's Essays celebrating comic film actors of early British film.
1. Will Hay, by popular consent the greatest comic actor in films of the 1930s and '40s.
With films such as Oh! Mr Porter, Boys Will Be Boys and The Goose Steps Out, Will Hay was, by popular consent, the greatest comic actor in films of the 1930s and '40s.
Simon Heffer traces the rise to fame of this music hall star, who became best known for his anti-authoritarian roles, whether playing a policeman, a fireman, a stationmaster, a barrister, a professor, or - perhaps most famously - an incompetent and morally dubious schoolmaster.
Producer : Beaty Rubens.
Poet and author Andrew Motion considers the penultimate lines of the Lord's Prayer, "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil".
Five brilliant voices essay on different sections of the Lord's Prayer for our time. Author Ali Smith, Professor of Islamic and Interreligious Studies Mona Siddiqui, Rabbi Julia Neuberger, poet and undertaker Thomas Lynch and poet and author Andrew Motion examine each thought with a modern day searchlight, bringing theological knowledge, personal memory, poetic insight and imagination to an understanding of this prayer, murmured by millions every day.
In all it's not even sixty words long and, as it appears in the Gospel according to Matthew, it's introduced by Jesus as a 'how to pray' guide: 'This then, is how you should pray". Today it's bound with the need to express our longing for a better world and something we all share, but what do these short lines mean and how do they help?
Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
Producer, Kate Bland.
Michigan-based poet and undertaker Thomas Lynch considers the lines of the Lord's Prayer "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us".
Five brilliant voices essay on different sections of the Lord's Prayer for our time. Author Ali Smith, Professor of Islamic and Interreligious Studies Mona Siddiqui, Rabbi Julia Neuberger, poet and undertaker Thomas Lynch and poet and author Andrew Motion examine each thought with a modern day searchlight, bringing theological knowledge, personal memory, poetic insight and imagination to an understanding of this prayer, murmured by millions every day.
In all it's not even sixty words long and, as it appears in the Gospel according to Matthew, it's introduced by Jesus as a 'how to pray' guide: 'This then, is how you should pray". Today it's bound with the need to express our longing for a better world and something we all share, but what do these short lines mean and how do they help?
Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
Producer, Kate Bland.
Rabbi Julia Neuberger considers the middle section of the Lord's Prayer. She reflects on the line "Give us this day our daily bread".
Five brilliant voices essay on different sections of the Lord's Prayer for our time. Author Ali Smith, Professor of Islamic and Interreligious Studies Mona Siddiqui, Rabbi Julia Neuberger, poet and undertaker Thomas Lynch and poet and author Andrew Motion examine each thought with a modern day searchlight, bringing theological knowledge, personal memory, poetic insight and imagination to an understanding of this prayer, murmured by millions every day.
In all it's not even sixty words long and, as it appears in the Gospel according to Matthew, it's introduced by Jesus as a 'how to pray' guide: 'This then, is how you should pray". Today it's bound with the need to express our longing for a better world and something we all share, but what do these short lines mean and how do they help?
Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
Producer, Kate Bland.
British Muslim Academic Mona Siddiqui explores the second section of the Lord's Prayer. She considers the lines "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven".
Five brilliant voices essay on different sections of the Lord's Prayer for our time. Author Ali Smith, Professor of Islamic and Interreligious Studies Mona Siddiqui, Rabbi Julia Neuberger, poet and undertaker Thomas Lynch and poet and author Andrew Motion examine each thought with a modern day searchlight, bringing theological knowledge, personal memory, poetic insight and imagination to an understanding of this prayer, murmured by millions every day.
In all it's not even sixty words long and, as it appears in the Gospel according to Matthew, it's introduced by Jesus as a 'how to pray' guide: 'This then, is how you should pray". Today it's bound with the need to express our longing for a better world and something we all share, but what do these short lines mean and how do they help?
Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
Producer, Kate Bland.
Author Ali Smith begins this series of essays on the Lord's Prayer. She focuses on the first lines, "Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name".
Five brilliant voices essay on different sections of the Lord's Prayer for our time. Author Ali Smith, Professor of Islamic and Interreligious Studies Mona Siddiqui, Rabbi Julia Neuberger, poet and undertaker Thomas Lynch and poet and author Andrew Motion examine each thought with a modern day searchlight, bringing theological knowledge, personal memory, poetic insight and imagination to an understanding of this prayer, murmured by millions every day.
In all it's not even sixty words long and, as it appears in the Gospel according to Matthew, it's introduced by Jesus as a 'how to pray' guide: 'This then, is how you should pray". Today it's bound with the need to express our longing for a better world and something we all share, but what do these short lines mean and how do they help?
Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
Producer, Kate Bland.
Critic Martin Gayford tells the stories of his encounters and friendships with leading jazz musicians as a fan, an amateur music promoter and, latterly, as a journalist.
Martin describes his encounters with "miscreant grandfather substitute" pianist Jimmy Rowles. Rowles's varied musical career saw him achieve success as a solo artist and the vocal coach at the Hollywood studios, where he taught Marilyn Monroe how to sing.
Critic Martin Gayford tells the stories of his encounters and friendships with five leading jazz musicians as a fan, an amateur music promoter and, latterly, as a journalist.
Martin recalls the lessons that he learnt from his two meetings, over the space of a 12 years, with the saxophone colossus Sonny Rollins. Martin travelled to New York in 2010 to interview him on the eve of a concert celebrating his 80th birthday, his life changed by the events of September 11th, when his lower Manhattan home was destroyed.
Critic Martin Gayford tells the stories of his encounters and friendships with leading jazz musicians as a fan, an amateur music promoter and, latterly, as a journalist.
The American cornettist Ruby Braff had a fierce reputation for a bad temper and his scrapping with bandmates, but from his home in Cape Cod, he used to regularly call Martin for long, revealing telephone conversations.
Critic Martin Gayford tells the stories of his encounters and friendships with leading jazz musicians as a fan, an amateur music promoter and, latterly, as a journalist.
The British pianist Marian McPartland found fame across the Atlantic, spending six decades at the heart of the swinging New York jazz scene and hosting a long-running National Public Radio programme. When Martin brought her to Cambridge for a concert, he reflected on their shared suburban upbringings.ii.
Critic Martin Gayford tells the stories of his encounters and friendships with leading jazz musicians as a fan, an amateur music promoter and, latterly, as a journalist.
In this first programme, Martin recalls his meetings with Doc Cheatham, a trumpeter whose lengthy career spanned almost all recorded jazz. In an attempt to befriend one of his musical heroes, Martin booked the octogenarian Doc to play a gig in Cambridge. The tactic worked, when he embarked on a tour with Doc and found himself rooming with him in Soho. Here Doc told Martin his stories of playing in bands in Nashville, accompanying Billie Holiday, deputising for Louis Armstrong and becoming a celebrated solo artist in his own right.
Producer Paul Smith, for Just Radio.
This week, various authors remember a significant swimming experience:
5. Author and journalist Philip Hoare would avoid the water. He overcame his fear and started to swim everywhere. But what compelled him to jump into Southampton Water?
Producer Duncan Minshull.
This week, various authors remember a significant swimming experience:
4. Novelist Kamila Shamsie is with friends in Byron Bay, Australia. They stay on shore, she goes for a dip and before long something starts to 'pull' at her...
Producer Duncan Minshull.
This week, five authors remember a favourite swimming experience:
3. Musician and author Marcus O'Dair dons his wet suit and blazes a trail across blackish Ullswater in the Lake District, thinking of his strokes and other famous swimmers, and his mother swims with him too!
Producer Duncan Minshull.
This week, various authors remember a significant swimming experience:
2. Antonia Quirke enjoys a gentle dip in the South Pacific, but alludes to some darker waters of her childhood and also some swims in England's gravel pits. Plus, the ocean with Spielberg's Jaws in it is 40 years old this year...
Producer Duncan Minshull.
This week, various authors remember a significant swimming experience:
1. Novelist Christopher Hope describes a Pretoria swimming pool of his youth, where, if things got too much, he'd happily sink to the bottom and stay there a while. Letting things pass over him...
Producer Duncan Minshull.
In the week leading up to our celebration of International Women's Day, a series of The Essay celebrating five women who have been unacknowledged movers and shakers in the world of classical music down the ages. Each of these women overcame societal expectations or personal adversity to have real influence on the music of their day, and subsequently ours.
Betty Freeman was possibly the most influential patron of twentieth century classical music. From 1964 onwards, she gave a total of 413 grants and commissions for living expenses, compositions, recordings, performances and librettos to 81 artists. These include John Cage, Steve Reich, Robert Wilson and Peter Sellars and also younger composers such as Olga Neuwirth and Hans Peter Kyburz.
An editor of BBC Music Magazine, Helen Wallace looks for the woman behind the list of names and discovers what drove her to play so formative a role in the lives of these great musicians.
Produced by Simon Richardson
To find out more about Radio 3's International Women's Day programming follow @BBCRadio3 and the hashtag #womensday.
In the week leading up to our celebration of International Women's Day, a series of The Essay celebrating five women who have been unacknowledged movers and shakers in the world of classical music down the ages. Each of these women overcame societal expectations or personal adversity to have real influence on the music of their day, and subsequently ours.
We tend to remember William Ewart Gladstone as a reformer who wanted to pacify Ireland. We know that Queen Victoria preferred Disraeli's flattery to Gladstone's earnest lectures. And we've heard that this long-serving Prime Minister relaxed by cutting down trees on the Hawarden estate. What we don't imagine about this Grand Old Man is his sensuality. In fact, W.E. Gladstone was passionately musical and he owed much of the pleasure he gained from exploring his musical tastes, as well as the moral purpose he derived from it, to the influence of his daughter Mary.
As Dr Phyllis Weliver explains, Mary was a pioneering Private Secretary to the Prime Minister, one who advised on ecclesiastical appointments with a strong bias towards those who shared her sense of the moral purpose of music. She was also a subtle master of 'soft diplomacy' in the way she brought music making to Downing Street and the heart of her father's government.
Produced by Simon Richardson
To find out more about Radio 3's International Women's Day programming follow @BBCRadio3 and the hashtag #womensday.
In the week leading up to our celebration of International Women's Day, a series of essays celebrating five women who have been unacknowledged movers and shakers in the world of classical music down the ages. Each of these women overcame societal expectations or personal adversity to have real influence on the music of their day, and subsequently ours.
Leopoldine Wittgenstein is someone it's easy to overlook. Neurotic and shy, she stands in the shadow not just of her extraordinarily talented children, who include that giant of twentieth century philosophy, Ludwig Wittgenstein, but also of her overwhelming and dominant husband, Karl, who built himself up to become one of the wealthiest and most successful industrialists of the late Austro-Hungarian Empire. But Leopoldine, or Poldy, as she was known in the family, was an exceptionally gifted pianist. And she presided over one of the most important and glittering musical salons in fin de siècle Vienna, attended not just by Hanslick, but by Brahms, Mahler and Richard Strauss.
Bethany Bell, the BBC's Vienna Correspondent, takes to the streets of the modern city on the trail of this most misunderstood woman.
Produced by Simon Richardson
To find out more about Radio 3's International Women's Day programming follow @BBCRadio3 and the hashtag #womensday.
In the week leading up to our celebration of International Women's Day, a series of essays celebrating five women who have been unacknowledged movers and shakers in the world of classical music down the ages. Each of these women overcame societal expectations or personal adversity to have real influence on the music of their day, and subsequently ours.
Lady Maud Warrender was a respected performer, and one of the most influential patrons of music in the early twentieth century, all while living with her lesbian lover, the opera singer Marcia Van Dresser. Her life, lived very much in the public gaze, but with whole areas that were kept so discreetly private that it is hard to find any concrete information, was an example of a tightrope successfully and deftly trodden - a perilous path between respectability and scandal.
Dr Kate Kennedy tells the story of this extraordinary woman who wielded more power in the musical world than many male professional concert promoters put together.
Produced by Simon Richardson
To find out more about Radio 3's International Women's Day programming follow @BBCRadio3 and the hashtag #womensday.
In the week leading up to our celebration of International Women's Day, a series of essays celebrating five women who have been unacknowledged movers and shakers in the world of classical music down the ages. Each of these women overcame societal expectations or personal adversity to have real influence on the music of their day, and subsequently ours.
Nadezhda von Meck was 46 and had recently lost her husband when she first wrote to Pyotr Ilich Tchaikovsky, who was in his mid-thirties, asking the rising star for some pieces to be played at her country house. Money followed in a registered envelope - an amount so big that it slightly embarrassed - but also dazzled - him. And that payment was only the start. For the 13 years that followed, Madame von Meck kept the composer in grand style.
But the money came, and kept coming, on one condition: that the composer and his benefactor should never meet.
Author and journalist Vanora Bennett, the eldest daughter of the flute player William Bennett and the cellist Rhuna Martin, tells the fascinating story of one woman's single-minded dedication to a cause she passionately believed in.
Produced by Simon Richardson
To find out more about Radio 3's International Women's Day programming follow @BBCRadio3 and the hashtag #womensday.
Fear is one of the six basic universal emotions (the others are anger, disgust, happiness, sadness and surprise) and like all human emotions not easy to understand. Fear can be played upon, enjoyed, conquered. It is an obstacle to progress ("the only thing to fear is fear itself") and, as we stand at the kerb, it saves our lives every day. This series of The Essay brings you five essays on different aspects of fear.
At first sight it appears that fear can be understood in a straightforward way as an adaptive response, promoting behaviour to protect us from threats to life and limb. In humans, however, the biological givens are invariably transformed and serve ends not envisaged in biology.
Physician and philosopher Raymond Tallis explores the uniqueness of human fear, how it is rooted in the distinctive nature of human as opposed to animal consciousness, and how it is often led by thought and imagination. He considers why, seemingly perversely, we might enjoy cultivating fear through stories and games.
Producer Laura Thomas.
Fear is one of the six basic universal emotions (the others are anger, disgust, happiness, sadness and surprise) and like all human emotions not easy to understand. Fear can be played upon, enjoyed, conquered. It is an obstacle to progress ("the only thing to fear is fear itself") and, as we stand at the kerb, it saves our lives every day. This series of The Essay brings you five essays on different aspects of fear.
Author and animal scientist Temple Grandin tells the story of how, in 1949, she was diagnosed with autism at aged two. Autism was not always well understood at the time, but Grandin's mother refused to accept the notion that her daughter could never participate in mainstream society. Grandin has since become a leading advocate for autistic people, explaining the role fear and anxiety plays in their condition and how they those feelings can be managed. Her experience of fear has also given her a unique insight into animal welfare, and led her to campaign for improved animal rights and care of livestock.
Producer Laura Thomas.
Fear is one of the six basic universal emotions (the others are anger, disgust, happiness, sadness and surprise) and like all human emotions not easy to understand. Fear can be played upon, enjoyed, conquered. It is an obstacle to progress ("the only thing to fear is fear itself") and, as we stand at the kerb, it saves our lives every day. This series of The Essay brings you five essays on different aspects of fear.
Professor Quentin Skinner of Queen Mary University of London tells the story of how 17th century British philosopher Thomas Hobbes came to believe that "fear and I were twin born" and to write fear into the heart of his political philosophy, arguing that it underpins all human motivation and action.
Producer Laura Thomas.
Fear is one of the six basic universal emotions (the others are anger, disgust, happiness, sadness and surprise) and like all human emotions not easy to understand. Fear can be played upon, enjoyed, conquered. It is an obstacle to progress ("the only thing to fear is fear itself") and, as we stand at the kerb, it saves our lives every day. This series of The Essay brings you five essays on different aspects of fear.
Kier-La Janisse is a writer and the Founder of the Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies, and reflects on how educational films like Dark and Lonely Water, The Finishing Line and Signal 30 have scared more children more deeply than any horror feature film, and explains how - in mid-twentieth century America - fear was exploited to create an educational film boom.
Producer Laura Thomas.
Fear is one of the six basic universal emotions (the others are anger, disgust, happiness, sadness and surprise) and like all human emotions not easy to understand. Fear can be played upon, enjoyed, conquered. It is an obstacle to progress ("the only thing to fear is fear itself") and, as we stand at the kerb, it saves our lives every day. This series of The Essay brings you five essays on different aspects of fear.
Tonight writer and broadcaster Matthew Sweet uncovers the tragic history of The Little Albert Experiment, conducted by John B Watson, a 1920s psychologist who conditioned a toddler to recoil from a white rat and, eventually, any white fluffy object.
Producer Laura Thomas.
You won't find this photograph in a glossy coffee table book. It's not art and the person who took it doesn't feature in the Photographers Hall of Fame. But this picture has had an enormous impact on our legal system. In 1866 a butcher sat for his photograph in the remote town of Wagga Wagga, Australia. Three years later this likeness had Britain transfixed. Jennifer Tucker tells the story of how it was central to the longest legal battle in 19th-century England, and sparked a debate about evidence, the law, ethics and facial recognition that has continued ever since.
Jennifer Tucker is Associate Professor of History and Science in Society at Wesleyan University, USA.
Producer: Rosie Dawson.
You won't find this photograph in a glossy coffee table book. It's not art and the person who took it doesn't feature in the Photographers Hall of Fame. But this picture has had an enormous impact on the way Britain sees what has come to be known as its cultural heritage.
The man who took the photo, W. Jerome Harrison, launched a scheme for recording the country's past in which amateur photographers up and down the land took pictures of the buildings which were important them. Wiki-buildings and English Heritage do this now on a much grander scale. But Elizabeth Edwards argues that the mass participation of people in defining what matters about the past began with Harrison, and changed the way in which a nation viewed itself.
Elizabeth Edwards is Research Professor of Photographic History and Director of the Photographic History Research Centre at De Montfort University, Leicester.
Producer: Rosie Dawson.
The Dogon. Jeanne Haffner on how aerial photography changed the spaces we live in.
You won't find this photograph in a glossy coffee table book. It's not art and the person who took it doesn't feature in the Photographers Hall of Fame. But this picture has had an enormous impact on the organisation of our living spaces. The birds-eye photograph of the Dogon tribe working their fields in Mali was taken by the French Africanist Marcel Griaule. He'd trained in aerial photography during the First World War and he argued that the Dogon landscape, seen from the air, revealed the patterns and secrets of the lives of its inhabitants, patterns which could teach Western city planners and architects how to build a happier society.
Jeanne Haffner is lecturer in the Department of History and Science at Harvard University.
Producer: Rosie Dawson.
You won't find this photograph in a glossy coffee table book. It's not art and the person who took it doesn't feature in the Photographers Hall of Fame. But this picture has had an enormous impact on our world. Today high-resolution photographs of nebulae or galaxies saturate our culture to such an extent that they are almost kitsch. But when Henry Draper took the very first pictures of a nebula in 1880 it was one of the greatest achievements of photography. Omar Nasim tells the story of how this photograph defied the imagination and raised questions not just about the size of the universe but about the very origins of humanity.
Omar Nasim is lecturer in the School of History at the University of Kent.
Producer: Rosie Dawson.
You won't find this photograph in a glossy coffee table book. It's not art and the person who took it doesn't feature in the Photographers Hall of Fame. But this picture has had an enormous impact on the world of medicine and our relationship with our bodies. The photograph of Anna Bertha Ludwig Rontgen's left hand taken in 1896 astounded the scientific world and alarmed the public. For the scientists it signalled the beginning of medical radiography. For the public it gave rise to fears about intrusion and privacy in much the same way as the introduction of the TSA body scanner did in 2007. From medical imaging to airport security, Kelley Wilder shows how X-ray photography changed the world.
Kelley Wilder is Reader in Photographic History, De Montfort University, Leicester
Producer: Rosie Dawson.
Writers, painters and other practitioners re-visit an early piece of work. And tell us what they think about it now:
5. Roger Michell, director of such films as Notting Hill and Hyde Park on Hudson, describes working for the BBC in the 1980's. He was fresh out of theatre, and making his first drama was a huge challenge - aesthetically and technically..
Writers, painters and other practitioners re-visit an early piece of work. And tell us what they think about it now:
4. After deciphering some vivid dreams, singer-songwriter Stephen Coates formed a band called The Real Tuesday Weld. He also descended the depths to an underground river in London and this, too, helped with the band's formation..
Producer Duncan Minshull.
Writers, painters and other practitioners re-visit an early piece of work. And tell us what they think about it now..
3. Actress Janet Suzman was cast as an unknown to play Alexandra in a film about the Romanovs. It was called 'Nicholas and Alexandra', and it meant hello Hollywood! But if she watches herself as Russian royalty these days, what's her response?
Producer Duncan Minshull.
Writers, painters and other practitioners re-visit an early piece of work. And tell us what they think about it now:
2. Writer and painter Harland Miller ran a studio in New York in the early '90s, and was once mesmerised by a strange sign in a cafe. He made some notes about it - then realised his visual sense and love of word-play began to feed off each other...
Producer Duncan Minshull.
Writers, painters and other practitioners re-visit an early piece of work. And tell us what they think about it now:
1. Novelist Deborah Moggach wrote her first book in Pakistan, 38 years ago, and her heroine was a rebellious student called Laura. Now, who could that be based upon?
Producer Duncan Minshull.
The grim, concrete forts and pillboxes of the east coast of England may seem a far cry from the romantic ruins of Britain's medieval castles. But as writer Ken Worpole argues, they have earned their place in the East Anglian landscape, and should be both preserved, and treasured as reminders of our past, just as much as ivy-clad castles and castle ruins from the high middle ages. As somebody who was born in wartime in a castle (his mother was a refugee from the East End) it was perhaps inevitable that Ken would be drawn to play as a child in the redundant forts of Essex, where his imagination could roam riot - unlike the out-of-bounds medieval castle down the road! But the link with medieval castles isn't coincidental. The architecture of many of these forts (and the architecture of the Martello towers constructed to defend the coast during the Napoleonic wars) builds on the legacy of medieval military design, and in turn would go on to influence brutalist architecture of the 1950s onwards. In France, such military structures as the Atlantic Wall, are stark reminders of an era many would prefer to forget, and there have been calls for these concrete 'monstrosities' to be removed from the landscape. But, as Worpole argues, this would the equivalent of removing medieval castles from the landscape. The power of ruins resides in their ability to set the imagination free, and at the same time grounding people in the reality of past lives, and of earlier generations' hopes and tribulations.
Very often the visitor to a medieval castle in Britain is confronted with a mass of information and interpretation about the military activities of the men who inhabited these spaces, but very little about the women. Archaeologist Prof. Roberta Gilchcrist is keen to correct this imbalance, and argues that traditional interpretations of castles ignore the gendered spaces - the gardens, the apartments, the kitchens where female servants cooked, or indeed the adjoining parklands where aristocratic women occasionally hunted. There is abundant evidence that women gave birth in castles, and also had a hand in interior design, improving both plumbing and décor. Moreover, some women played a key role in the defence of medieval castles, in the absence of the lord. Archaeological research suggests women definitely did have a place in British castle history.
The walls of Kenilworth Castle, situated at the heart of England, might have seemed practically impregnable to the men defending them. And yet, as Dr Benjamin Wild argues in tonight's essay, the mightiest of fortresses was of little more account than a mere folly when men pursued force and fanfare at the expense of political relationships. In 1266 a somewhat humiliated Henry III laid siege to this red sandstone medieval mega-structure, determined to reassert his authority over his upstart subjects. Although the defiant rebels were few in number, they were in a position to taunt Henry. The King, in turn, had to use all the dark arts of propaganda to counter this public relations disaster. He tried to cut a dash in a fancy and highly impractical tunic, and attempted to taunt the starving rebels with the sights and smells of food - including an entire whale with which to feast his troops! Add to that the attempt to enlist the power of religion, by excommunicating the rebels, the siege undoubtedly exhibited elements of farce, as well as the latest in deadly weaponry. But when finally, after 172 days, the rebels submitted to royal authority there was one lesson to be learnt: that no wall, however.
It is generally conceded that, following his triumphant conquest of Wales, Edward I ordered to be constructed some of the finest castles in Britain. But who exactly designed them? And who managed this massive construction project? In general, little is known about the lives and careers of medieval master masons - the equivalent of today's architects. However, as architectural historian Dr Nicola Coldstream argues, we are fortunate in the case of these particular castles to be able to follow the careers of two men in particular: Master James of Savoy, and Master Hugh of Chester. In recent years, much has been made of Master James' architectural genius, a man drafted in from the continent to help bring Edward's project into being. However, as Dr Coldstream argues, Master James' knowledge has been exaggerated. Instead, it appears more likely that his genius lay more in project management than in castle design. Not that that was any lesser task: overseeing various building sites, where thousands of craftsmen were deployed, was no sinecure. There is little doubt that the King valued both James' and Hugh's efforts: they were privileged to have audience with the king, and it is possible that Edward had some involvement in the design of the castles by which he would seal his conquest of the Welsh people.
In the Fall and Rise of the British Castle, five writers reflect on the continuing power of the castles, which still dominate not only large sections of the British landscape, but also large areas of our imagination.
In this first of the series, historian Professor Jeremy Black gives an overall view of the castle as an instrument of power and control, built to withstand siege warfare - a lesson which, by the eighteenth century, had been all but forgotten. At the height of the Jacobite Rebellion one Scottish lord had cause to regret having removed the iron bars from his castle windows, and weakening the walls by adding graceful wings to his residence. Would his stone residence survive the onslaught of the rebels? As Professor Black argues, he had forgotten the primary function of a castle, namely to to maintain the rule of force and government in Britain. Castles, whether built of timber, or stone, or both, were intended to promote a powerful symbol of authority over society. That they came to be built throughout the British Isles was the result of a remarkable public-private partnership - although as later events would show, it was never wise for monarchs, or governments, to entrust too much power into private hands. Britain's fortifications would eventually be monopolised by the state, who by the eighteenth century set greater store by the Royal Navy than by stone walls.
Actor and playwright Lolita Chakrabarti explains how "A Tale of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens affected her at a pivotal moment in her life. She first came across the novel at the age of 15, as a set text at school. Dickens's account of the French Revolution mirrored the tumult of the politics of the mid-1980s, while his narrative seized her imagination. "He paints pictures with words succinctly and with no pretension. He tells a cracking story, has a great sense of humour and creates credible, compelling characters," she says. The novel's portrayal of personality influenced her acting, leading her to search for the emotional impulse motivating each character. No wonder she still keeps her original paperback copy: "Many of the pages are loose, but I'm loath to throw it away because this book opened a door for me." Producer: Smita Patel.
Journalist and writer Jon Ronson explains the electrifying effect of reading Jonathan Coe's "What a Carve Up!" He first came across the satirical novel as a care-free nightclubber in his 20s. "It politicized me in a way," Ronson says, making him "understand that big politics affect those of us down here just trying to shuffle our way through life". He was horrified and fascinated by the Winshaws, the grotesque family at the centre of the book, who typify the excesses of the Thatcher years. Ronson says the book was a deep influence on his own writing. "I wanted to pass on to my own readers the great revelation I'd learned from 'What A Carve Up!' - that powerful, crazy people affect our lives in ways we barely notice." Producer: Smita Patel.
Jude Kelly, the artistic director of Southbank Centre, describes how "Little Women" by Louisa May Alcott mirrored her own experiences growing up in a lively Liverpool home. Like the March family, Kelly grew up surrounded by sisters, and with a father who was often absent. She was inspired by the way Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy grew throughout the novel. "Each daughter is tested against her own frailties and foibles to see if she can become a woman of substance in her own terms ... and I wanted to be a woman of substance too," she says. And the book helped her come to terms with the loss of her baby sister Caroline of multiple sclerosis. "Maybe this is the biggest influence 'Little Women' had on me. It made me think about death as an inevitable part of our lives. Producer: Smita Patel.
The legendary singer-songwriter Steve Earle describes how Truman Capote's true-life murder story, "In Cold Blood", captured his imagination as a 12-year-old boy. He first encountered the tale - a dramatic account of a multiple killing in Kansas - in the film version, shown at a local drive-in movie house. "I had to find a copy of that book and read it for myself," he says, stealing the volume from his mother's handbag and devouring it over the next couple of days. Capote's story inspired his decades-long campaign against the death penalty. And the book led him to feel empathy for the killers at the centre of the tale, thanks to "the power of intellect and humanity flowing from heart to hand to pen to page." Producer: Smita Patel.
Writer Polly Coles reads So Near to Venice, the last of her essays about some of the ways in which Venetians and others have adapted to live in 21st-century Venice. Moving to Venice with her family for several years gave her a resident's view of a city she loves and despairs of in equal measure. Once the most cosmopolitan city in Europe, nowadays it seems little more than a stage-set for the tourist industry. But Venice will always be more than the most idealized city in the world.
In this edition, Polly looks at the invisible residents of Venice who service the millions of tourists who descend on the city each year.
Written and performed by Polly Coles Producer: Melanie Harris Sparklab Productions.
Writer Polly Coles reads The Writing on the Wall, the third of her essays about some of the ways in which Venetians and others have adapted to live in 21st-century Venice - one of the most beautiful cities in the world. In tonight?s essay, Polly argues that the recent Biennale fashion of rigging up neon strips of random text around the city Venice is nothing new in city that has always been written upon - in every sense of the phrase.
Written and performed by Polly Coles Producer: Melanie Harris Sparklab Productions.
Writer Polly Coles reads Tinseltown, the second of her essays about some of the ways in which Venetians and others have adapted to live in 21st-century Venice - one of the most acclaimed cities in the world. Moving to Venice with her family for several years gave her a resident's view of a city she loves and despairs of in equal measure. Once the most cosmopolitan city in Europe, nowadays it seems little more than a stage-set for the tourist industry. But Venice will always be more than the most idealized city in the world.
In this edition, Polly looks at the impact of celebrity on Venice, suggesting it's a familiar phenomenon for Venetians down the centuries.
Written and performed by Polly Coles Producer: Melanie Harris Sparklab Productions.
Writer Polly Coles reads At Home, the first of her essays about some of the ways in which Venetians and others have adapted to live in 21st-century Venice - one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Moving to Venice with her family for several years gave her a resident's view of a city she loves and despairs of in equal measure. Once the most cosmopolitan city in Europe, nowadays it seems little more than a stage-set for the tourist industry. But Venice will always be more than the most idealized city in the world.
In this essay, Polly looks at what home and house mean to different types of Venetian residents in modern day Venice. From the aristocrat in her Palazzo to the stowaway Moldovan in a broom cupboard, she wonders if anyone can survive in Venice without the tourist dollar.
Written and performed by Polly Coles Producer: Melanie Harris Sparklab Productions.
Tom Shakespeare challenges stereotypical ideas about creativity and disability, by celebrating a selection of disabled artists, discussing how their impairments fuelled their genius and demonstrating the variety and achievement of disabled lives.
Lucy Jones may well be the best British painter you've never heard of. There is no doubt about her disability, because she was born with cerebral palsy. But she has no intention of identifying as a disabled artist. Cerebral palsy and dyslexia and depression are part of her biography, but they're not on the label for the artwork, any more than being a woman or living in Ludlow should define her or explain what she does. She wants her portraits to offer a universal comment on humanity.
Tom Shakespeare challenges stereotypical ideas about creativity and disability, by celebrating a selection of disabled artists, discussing how their impairments fuelled their genius and demonstrating the variety and achievement of disabled lives.
What comes to mind when you think of disability? Perhaps the child born with a genetic condition, or the person in the prime of life who becomes spinal-cord injured. But only 5% of children and only 10% of working age adults are disabled. The majority of people become disabled in later life, and artists are no exception.
In this programme,Tom Shakespeare discusses how the lives of three artists - the painters Goya, Klee and Matisse - show how restriction created by ageing or disease can open up new creative possibilities.
Tom Shakespeare challenges stereotypical ideas about creativity and disability, by celebrating five disabled artists, discussing how their impairments fuelled their genius and demonstrating the variety and achievement of disabled lives.
The visionary Brazilian sculptor Arthur Bispo do Rosario spent fifty years of his life on a Rio de Janeiro psychiatric ward, and did not even think of himself as an artist.
Born in Japaratuba on the east coast of Brazil, the descendent of African slaves, he was exposed to a strongly religious culture and to the hybrid traditions of folk art. He'd been a sailor and an odd-job man when, in 1938, he had a vision of angels bathed in light. He felt that the Virgin Mary had guided him to record the universe in visual form, in preparation for the Day of Judgement. The same year, he was hospitalized for treatment for paranoid schizophrenia. For Bispo do Rosario, this creative outpouring was a spiritual, not an artistic task: he saw it as his duty to prepare for the Last Judgement.
Bispo do Rosario's work is reminiscent of surrealism, of the ready-mades of Marcel Duchamp, of the fabric creations of Louise Bourgeois, the solitary confinement of Kurt Schwitters: all the more extraordinary in that Bispo do Rosario was entirely self-taught, worked in an artistic vacuum, and generated all this extraordinary art through his own originality and imagination.
Producer: Martin Williams.
Tom Shakespeare challenges stereotypical ideas about creativity and disability, by celebrating five disabled artists, discussing how their impairments fuelled their genius and demonstrating the variety and achievement of disabled lives.
Bryan Pearce, a painter from St Ives in Cornwall, was one of the very few people with learning disability who has achieved fame in their own right. He was born with the metabolic disorder Phenylketonuria. Today, all children are tested at birth for PKU, and if they have the genetic mutation, are placed on a special diet, and so grow up unaffected. In 1929, the condition was unknown, and as a result, Bryan Pearce experienced intellectual impairment and other health problems.
As a teenager, Bryan was encouraged by his mother and other artists to paint. His obvious talent meant that he attended the St Ives School of Painting during his twenties. Although he painted slowly, producing perhaps one picture a month, he had a long and very successful career, exhibiting throughout the UK. Bryan Pearce was limited in his ability to learn and communicate verbally. But alongside his deficits was a huge talent to see and communicate through art. As he said to his mother: "What would I do if I didn't paint? What would I do?"
Producer: Martin Williams.
Tom Shakespeare challenges stereotypical ideas about creativity and disability, by celebrating five disabled artists, discussing how their impairments fuelled their genius and demonstrating the variety and achievement of disabled lives.
Abul 'Ala Al-Ma'arri became visually impaired in childhood and went on to become the most famous poet in the Arab world, but is still barely known in Britain. He was born near Aleppo in the year 973. Although welcomed in the literary salons of Baghdad, al-Ma'arri became an ascetic, who avoided other people, and refused to sell his poetry.
Al-Ma'arri was notable as a religious sceptic; he deemed it a matter of geographical accident what faith people adopted, and rejected the idea that Islam had a monopoly on truth. He opposed all violence and killing, becoming a vegan and avoiding the use of animal skins in clothing and footwear. Al-Ma'arri is a distinguished, if rare, example of a rationalist in the Islamic world, and one who was writing half a millennium before the Enlightenment thinkers of the West such as Voltaire.
One hundred years ago the First World War set the course for the modern world: for the countries that took part nothing would be the same again. In these special editions of The Essay we gain an international perspective on the war as we hear from cultural figures from around the world taking part in an international series of events called The War That Changed The World, made in partnership with the British Council and the BBC World Service. Herlinde Koebl, is an artist and photographer known for her in-depth, political and thematic work. In this essay she draws on the experience of her latest project 'Targets' which was a series of documentary photographs of the targets used for training by soldiers in 30 countries. Contrasting accounts of First World War training, and quoting from contemporary soldiers, Herlinde Koebl asks what makes a soldier able to kill? The essay is performed in front of an audience at the Bundeswehr Military Museum in Dresden.
One hundred years ago the First World War set the course for the modern world: for the countries that took part nothing would be the same again. In these special editions of The Essay we gain an international perspective on the war as we hear from cultural figures from around the world taking part in an international series of events called The War That Changed The World, made in partnership with the British Council and the BBC World Service. Haris Pasovic lived through the Siege of Sarajevo and was the producer of Susan Sontag's legendary 1993 'Waiting for Godot', produced in the city during the war. Since then he has developed theatrical spectaculars with a special focus on the impact of war including The Red Line (11,500 chairs representing those killed in the siege) and 'The Conquest of Happiness' (a massive open-air theatre event for Derry Year of Culture based on the works on Bertrand Russell). His essay 'Divine Uncertainty' is a personal take the war in Bosnia and the First World War. In this essay, recorded at the Sarajevo Theatre of War, Haris explains how he sees politics as a force woefully out of step with science and playfully suggests that a theory of 'political relativity' is needed in which cultural identity is cushioned by tolerance.
One hundred years ago the First World War set the course for the modern world: for the countries that took part nothing would be the same again. In these special editions of The Essay we gain an international perspective on the war as we hear from cultural figures from around the world taking part in an international series of events called The War That Changed The World, made in partnership with the British Council and the BBC World Service. Joanna Bourke stunned academics and the reading public alike with her extraordinary study 'An Intimate History of Killing', since which she has written studies of Fear, Rape, Pain and Humanity. Shell Shock and the Shock of Shells draws on the letters and diaries of soldiers and their families. In this essay she returns to the First World War to reflect not only on shell shock, but also on the actual shells themselves, presenting her latest research into their physical impact and the language which evolved to describe them. Her essay was recorded with an audience at the Imperial War Museum in London.
One hundred years ago the First World War set the course for the modern world: for the countries that took part nothing would be the same again. In these special editions of The Essay we gain an international perspective on the war as we hear from cultural figures from around the world taking part in an international series of events called The War That Changed The World, made in partnership with the British Council and the BBC World Service. Tatyana Tolstaya is an internationally acclaimed Russian novelist and broadcaster, and well known in Russia as a scion of the country's most famous literary family. In this essay 'White Flowers', she tells a moving story from her own family, the story of her grandmother's chance encounter with British journalist William Stead. This is a poetic story about revolution, ideology and the individual, through which we glimpse a different future for Russia and for Europe. It is recorded with an audience at the Hermitage in St Petersburg, which was known as the Winter Palace when it was 'stormed' in 1917.
Christian Carion, Heroism and the Christmas Truce
Christian Carion, Heroism and the Christmas Truce
One hundred years ago the First World War set the course for the modern world: for the countries that took part nothing would be the same again. In these special editions of The Essay we gain an international perspective on the war as we hear from cultural figures from around the world taking part in an international series of events called The War That Changed The World, made in partnership with the British Council and the BBC World Service. Christian Carion is the director of the French film 'Joyeux Noël' shortlisted for an Oscar in 2006. He is a child of farmers of the fields of northern France and grew up among the battlefields of the First World War. He has lost friends to the live ordnance which is still being ploughed up every year. This is a war which still claims lives. For this Christmas edition of The Essay, recorded with an audience at Hotel National des Invalides, in Paris - the historic and ceremonial heart of the French Arrmed Forces - Christian Carion will look at heroism and the truce of Christmas 1914.
Oscar-winning screen writer Frederic Raphael reads the final essay in his new series about living abroad across Europe, this time in Greece.
It's the early 1960s, and the country is as yet undisturbed by mass tourism. As Raphael travels to a remote island, echoes of the classical world rub up against the realities of post civil war division, and a village life which has barely changed for centuries.
Part four sees the writer journey to early 1960s Italy, where he mixes ancient Roman history, with a very personal experience of some of the key players in the Italian film industry.
Oscar-winning screen writer Frederic Raphael continues his essay series about living abroad across Europe.
In programme three Raphael gives an off-the-beaten-track perspective on Franco's Spain, during the late 1950s, where he lived in a small artistic community and witnessed the impact of grand politics on Spanish village life.
'Every man has two countries, his own and France' says Frederic Raphael, quoting Thomas Jefferson, as he begins part two of his essay series about living abroad across Europe.
In this programme he explores his life as a young writer in the post-war Paris of Jean-Paul Sartre, and remembers his time living in the Cote d'Azur before it was a popular tourist destination.
Oscar-winning writer Frederic Raphael reads the first of his essay series about living abroad throughout Europe between the 1940s and 60s, beginning with the first foreign country he ever lived in: England.
Uprooted from New York City as a young boy, the writer paints a child's-eye portrait of wartime Britain, with all its class conscious peculiarities, but seen through the eyes of a young American kid used to waffles, zips and Buicks.
Producer: Jo Wheeler.
The last of five personal essays on the voice and radio. Broadcaster Fi Glover on how radio voices make the global local and the local global. Fi Glover has worked in almost every job that radio offers and is currently presenting the Listening Project on BBC Radio 4 - a programme in which her voice hardly appears whilst the voices of its contributors (ordinary people often at corners of their lives) are rich in personality and incident. Is radio good at not presenting and just listening? Has the BBC traditionally over-managed those who speak on its airwaves? And what of hate speech and hate radio? Why does the radio voice still reach deep into our hearts and minds in the era of screen-based living and social media?
An essay given in front of an audience at the British Academy in London in October 2014 as part of a series of events marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of Dylan Thomas. Producer: Tim Dee.
The fourth of five personal essays on the voice and radio. BBC Radio Merseyside presenter Roger Phillips describes his job as the listening anchorman of the station's daily phone-in programme. What is is like to be the in the middle of a city as it talks to and of itself every day of the week? How does the city's voice manifest itself in the way it talks? Are there as many talkers in Newcastle or Bristol? What does the Liverpool voice do to the Liverpool mind? Thoughts too on victim culture and Scally jokes.
An essay given in front of an audience at the British Academy in London in October 2014 as part of a series of events marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of Dylan Thomas. Producer: Tim Dee.
The third of five personal essays on the voice and radio. Former BBC journalist and now media professor David Hendy explores how, in the early years of radio, the voices coming through the airwaves were heard and regarded. Why did a heard voice carry more swaying power than written words, why did a radio voice carry - so experiments and test showed - even more potency? How did radio become a tool for demagogues? Why are our ears susceptible?
An essay given in front of an audience at the British Academy in London in October 2014 as part of a series of events marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of Dylan Thomas. Producer: Tim Dee.
The second of five personal essays on the voice and radio. Journalist and broadcaster Olivia O'Leary describes her autobiography in radio from Irish nuns at her boarding school hunting down wicked wirelesses to thoughts on the speed of the Irish voice by comparison with the English. Olivia O'Leary has worked in radio for decades and is well known - as a voice - for her penetrating yet tactful interviewing skills. She shares some of her secrets.
An essay given in front of an audience at the British Academy in London in October 2014 as part of a series of events marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of Dylan Thomas, himself one of the most famous radio voices of all time. Producer: Tim Dee.
The first of five essays on the voice and radio - all delivered by seasoned broadcasters and practitioners. Actor Samuel West explores the art of performance and declarative language. How should an actor speak? What is the best way to read poetry on the radio? How does radio drama get by without images? Are the pictures really better?
Recorded in front of an audience at the British Academy in London in October 2014 as part of a series of events marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of Dylan Thomas, himself one of the best known radio voices of all time.
Subsequent essays from the British Academy come from veteran Irish broadcaster Olivia O'Leary, Professor of Media David Hendy, Radio Merseyside's phone-in host Roger Phillips and Radio 4's Fi Glover - all sharing their varied perspectives on the art of radio.
Producer: Tim Dee.
Serial entrepreneur Luke Johnson celebrates the simple but powerful messages of the self-help classic, "The Magic of Thinking Big" by David J Schwartz." "His book is not great literature," he admits. "Indeed, it is popular psychology at its most obvious." However, Johnson defends its power as "basic but also profound" - and it has influenced his huge success with a series of household name businesses. Producer: Smita Patel.
Children's Laureate Malorie Blackman on how Alice Walker's novel "The Color Purple" legitimised her need to be a writer. She writes how the novel was "about the triumph of the human spirit". Reading it for the first in her early 20s it "blasted open a door which I thought was locked and barred to me. Actually it blasted open a door which I didn't appreciate even existed. A door that could lead to a writing career of my own... this book and its author showed that it was possible for me to not only be an author but to have my own voice."
Producer: Smita Patel.
Actor/director Simon McBurney of Theatre de Complicite describes how John Berger's "And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos" plays with ideas of connection, memory, narrative and mortality which are essential to his theatrical work. "Berger digs in the vulnerable earth of human experience, and joins the fragments he uncovers with an eye as sure as an astronomer, a gesture as gentle as a carpenter," McBurney says. This slim work has been a point of reference for his art and his life. Producer: Smita Patel.
Singer Tracey Thorn describes how she as a rebellious teenager she seized on the feminist classic "The Female Eunuch" by Germaine Greer. "It seemed brand new, and it spoke to me of things I'd long thought and felt without ever having words or names for," she says. She explains how the book was a deep influence on the lyrics she wrote for her band Everything but the Girl. But now she is herself a mother, she finds herself questioning Greer's contemptuous dismissal of parenting. "As feminists, I feel we are more forgiving now than Greer was; more inclusive, less dismissive, and perhaps that's because greater freedoms have brought with them greater liberties for us to be so. It's not such a threat now to admit to being happily married and enjoying motherhood when we are not utterly constrained and defined by these roles." Producer: Smita Patel.
Former Home Secretary Alan Johnson describes how "David Copperfield" by Charles Dickens mirrored his poor and troubled childhood in West London. After the death of his mother, the discovery of this great novel gave him the hope to build a happy and secure adult life. "I was thirteen years old and had read lots of books but nothing like this complex saga; so moving, so emotionally intertwined. I loved Peggoty, laughed at Micawber, loathed Uriah Heep. And I cried. Tears that never fell for my mother fell for Ham." Producer: Smita Patel.
Gabriele Ferrario of the Genizah Research Unit reveals the most secretive side of the Genizah collection: the manuscripts relating to alchemy and magic.
The Cairo Genizah is a treasure trove of manuscripts from the Ben Ezra synagogue in Old Cairo that portrays over 800 years of community life. Rediscovered in the 19th century, this vast communal paper-bin contained hundreds upon thousands of scraps of rag-paper and parchment - an unedited archive of prayers, letters, poems, magical spells, alchemical recipes, children's exercise books, divorce deeds and pre-nuptial agreements that paints a lively and intimate picture of daily medieval life in Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean.
Produced by Michele Banal and Miranda Hinkley.
First broadcast in May 2013.
Daniel Davies of the Genizah Research Unit sheds light on three very different lives by reading the private documents of the legendary philosopher Maimonides, community leader Solomon ben Judah and Indian Ocean trader Abraham ben Yiju,
They are all from the Genizah papers. The Cairo Genizah is a treasure trove of manuscripts from the Ben Ezra synagogue in Old Cairo that portrays over 800 years of community life. Rediscovered in the 19th century, this vast communal paper-bin contained hundreds upon thousands of scraps of rag-paper and parchment - an unedited archive of prayers, letters, poems, magical spells, alchemical recipes, children's exercise books, divorce deeds and pre-nuptial agreements that paints a lively and intimate picture of daily medieval life in Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean.
Produced by Michele Banal and Miranda Hinkley.
First broadcast in May 2013.
Melonie Schmierer-Lee of the Genizah Research Unit reveals the fortunes of women in medieval Cairo by looking at marriage and divorce deeds, as well as some incredibly detailed pre-nuptial agreements.
The Cairo Genizah is a treasure trove of manuscripts from the Ben Ezra synagogue in Old Cairo that portrays over 800 years of community life. Rediscovered in the 19th century, this vast communal paper-bin contained hundreds upon thousands of scraps of rag-paper and parchment - an unedited archive of prayers, letters, poems, magical spells, alchemical recipes, children's exercise books, divorce deeds and pre-nuptial agreements that paints a lively and intimate picture of daily medieval life in Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean.
Produced by Michele Banal and Miranda Hinkley
First broadcast in May 2013.
Ben Outhwaite, Head of the Genizah Research Unit, shows how private letters between medieval merchants reveal an international trading network that united Jews, Muslims and Christians across Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.
The Cairo Genizah is a treasure trove of manuscripts from the Ben Ezra synagogue in Old Cairo that portrays over 800 years of community life. Rediscovered in the 19th century, this vast communal paper-bin contained hundreds upon thousands of scraps of rag-paper and parchment. It's an unedited archive of prayers, letters, poems, magical spells, alchemical recipes, children's exercise books, divorce deeds and pre-nuptial agreements that paints a lively and intimate picture of daily medieval life in Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean.
Produced by Michele Banal and Miranda Hinkley.
First broadcast in May 2013.
The Cairo Genizah is a treasure trove of manuscripts from the Ben Ezra synagogue in Old Cairo that portrays over 800 years of community life. Rediscovered in the 19th century, this vast communal paper-bin contained hundreds upon thousands of scraps of rag-paper and parchment. It's an unedited archive of prayers, letters, poems, magical spells, alchemical recipes, children's exercise books, divorce deeds and pre-nuptial agreements that paints a lively and intimate picture of daily medieval life in Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean.
In this first essay, Dr Esther-Miriam Wagner of the Genizah Research Unit tells the story of the discovery of the Genizah inside the ancient and crumbling synagogue of Al-Fustat, a suburb of modern day Cairo. Featuring a legendary curse, a pair of intrepid Scottish twins, an eccentric scholar and one very generous rabbi.
Produced by Michele Banal and Miranda Hinkley. A Nightjar production.
First broadcast in May 2013.
Five Essays about the 19th-century German composer Johannes Brahms. Part 5 of 5.
Recorded in front of an audience at St. Georges, Bristol, as part of BBC Radio 3's Brahms Experience - a week-long exploration of Brahms' life and music.
Brahms lived in a time of tremendous change. The idea of the 'future' was never far from peoples' minds: new technology was emerging, the political map of Europe redrawn, and long-cherished ideas of art and culture overturned.
But how did Brahms, a composer who mined the music of the past for inspiration, fit in with a world where progress was king?
Pianist and writer Natasha Loges looks at Brahms' views on the future: recording technology, piano design - and his own place in the future of music.
Producer: Melvin Rickarby.
Five Essays about the 19th-century German composer Johannes Brahms. Part 4 of 5.
Recorded in front of an audience at St. Georges, Bristol, as part of BBC Radio 3's Brahms Experience - a week-long exploration of Brahms' life and music.
Brahms and and Freud co-existed in Vienna, as psychoanalysis was being born. But they belong to two vastly different epochs: what can we learn by setting them side by side?
Often at a loss for words, frequently gruff and spiky, Brahms was a man with complex personal traits. Devastated by his parents' disintegrating marriage, he found relationships exceptionally difficult.
A question Freud once asked of us all might help us understand the hidden personality of Johannes Brahms: what is the sublimation of sexual desire, and how much unfulfilled libido can we bear?
Writer Lesley Chamberlain takes us back to the Vienna of the 1890s, where Brahms was composing his late masterpieces and Freud was carrying out his groundbreaking early work.
Producer: Melvin Rickarby.
Five Essays about the 19th-century German composer Johannes Brahms. Part 3 of 5.
Recorded in front of an audience at St. Georges, Bristol, as part of BBC Radio 3's Brahms Experience - a week-long exploration of Brahms' life and music.
Brahms lived in a time of great political change. In his late thirties he saw the birth of a unified German nation under the 'Iron Chancellor' Otto von Bismarck. The question of what this Germany was to be became one of the great issues of the day.
Writer and pianist Natasha Loges explores the nationalist elements of Brahms' music. She examines his famous feud with the more openly patriotic Richard Wagner, and the ways in which Brahms' 'German' image was manipulated in the next century by the Nazis.
Producer: Melvin Rickarby.
Five Essays about the 19th-century German composer Johannes Brahms. Part 2 of 5.
Recorded in front of an audience at St. Georges, Bristol, as part of BBC Radio 3's Brahms Experience - a week-long exploration of Brahms' life and music.
Interaction with nature is one of the cornerstones of 19th-century Romantic music. Writer Lesley Chamberlain offers a chance to join Brahms for a creative ramble and sets his work in the climate of German ideas about nature.
In the German Romantic tradition Nature is Art's rival and the artist's consolation. Brahms' love of nature, which came to him in hours of shared and solitary walking, intensified the demands he made on himself as a composer.
Producer: Melvin Rickarby.
Five Essays about the 19th-century German composer Johannes Brahms. Part 1 of 5.
Recorded in front of an audience at St. Georges, Bristol, as part of BBC Radio 3's Brahms Experience - a week-long exploration of Brahms' life and music.
To this day Brahms has a reputation as a rather terse, fearsome personality who wrote dark, serious music. But his tender, intimate chamber music gives a clue to how he behaved behind closed doors and among friends. Pianist and writer Natasha Loges looks at what lies behind Brahms' famously gruff public persona, and discovers his tender, private side. She offers an invitation into Brahms' inner circle: music making at home, coffee and conversation with friends, the food he enjoyed, and the women he flirted with.
Producer: Melvin Rickarby.
Stephen Johnson considers how five seminal pieces of music would have been appreciated by the audiences who heard them first. He probes the societies and cultures that shaped the experience of those original listeners to reveal what our modern ears might be missing.
It's easy for us to recognise, in Stravinsky's first ballet score, portents of the musical revolution that would soon follow. This is music that teeters on the brink of a breakdown in traditional tonality, and points forward to the complex, fractured world of twentieth century art. Did that first Parisian audience of 1910 glimpse such things in The Firebird? Or were they simply seduced by its colourful oriental influences, which were the height of fashion in Europe at the time. People were fascinated by the outlandish, the gothic, the occult; and they gorged themselves on Firebird's exotic pleasures.
Stephen Johnson considers how five seminal pieces of music would have been appreciated by the audiences who heard them first. He probes the societies and cultures that shaped the experience of those original listeners to reveal what our modern ears might be missing.
Since its revival in the 19th century, Bach's St. Matthew Passion has been hailed as one of the pillars of Western music; universally regarded, and with a powerful influence that reaches into our own time. How differently, then, would his music have fired imaginations in the provincial church-goers of 18th century Leipzig? People whose experience of music was so much more limited than our own, and whose pietist religious sensibilities coloured every aspect of their daily lives.
Stephen Johnson considers how five seminal pieces of music would have been appreciated by the audiences who heard them first. He probes the societies and cultures that shaped the experience of those original listeners to reveal what our modern ears might be missing.
The delightful charm of Schumann's Scenes from Childhood masks a surprising sophistication which marks them among his most popular pieces. Today, we might prefer to look past his music's sentimentality to plumb its hidden subtleties; Schumann's audience would have revelled in it. In his world, domesticity and gentility were something to be cherished and celebrated. Individual expression, too, was a new credo for all kinds of artistic endeavours; perhaps the listener for whom this music held the deepest meaning was the composer himself.
Stephen Johnson considers how five seminal pieces of music would have been appreciated by the audiences who heard them first. He probes the societies and cultures that shaped the experience of those original listeners to reveal what our modern ears might be missing.
The Lamentations by Victoria offer modern listeners a window into a Golden Age of sacred harmony, a period when the ethereal harmonies of Renaissance masters seemed to mirror the ageless music of the spheres. Might Victoria's own congregation have detected more human qualities in his music? He lived and worked in Rome, a city rife with evangelical zeal and foul corruption. As a naïve young priest, he was plunged into this swarming, cultural melting-pot with, at its heart, a church that burned with the muscular, newly re-energised faith of the Catholic Counter-Reformation.
Stephen Johnson considers how five seminal pieces of music would have been appreciated by the audiences who heard them first. He probes the societies and cultures that shaped the experience of those original listeners to reveal what our modern ears might be missing.
Haydn's famous Symphony No.100, his "Military Symphony", stands as model of classical elegance. Its famous bugle and percussion effects feel, by modern standards, sophisticated and refined. However, in 1794, war with France was a frightening reality; his first London audiences would have included a good few aristocratic refugees from revolutionary Paris. One contemporary critic remarked: "It is the advancing to battle; and the march of men, the sounding of the charge, the thundering of the onset, the clash of arms, the groans of the wounded, and what may well be called the hellish roar of war increase to a climax of hellish sublimity.".
Five essays about one of the twentieth century's most fascinating playwrights, Samuel Beckett, recorded in front of an audience at the 2014 Happy Days International Beckett Festival in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland. Authors include actor Lisa Dwan, now regularly performing his work; Mark Nixon, head of the Beckett International Foundation and journalist and commentator Fintan O'Toole.
In this edition, photographer John Minihan, who took some of the best-known black and white portraits of Samuel Beckett, remembers spending time with a playwright who was often a reluctant subject.
Producers: Conor Garrett & Stan Ferguson.
Five essays about one of the twentieth century's most fascinating playwrights, Samuel Beckett, recorded in front of an audience at the 2014 Happy Days International Beckett Festival in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland. The authors include John Minihan, the photographer who captured some of the best known images of Beckett, actor Lisa Dwan, now regularly performing his work, and journalist and commentator Fintan O'Toole.
In this edition, opera director Netia Jones explores the relationship between words and music in Samuel Beckett's work.
Producers: Conor Garrett & Stan Ferguson.
Five essays about one of the twentieth century's most fascinating playwrights, Samuel Beckett, recorded in front of an audience at the 2014 Happy Days International Beckett Festival in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland. The authors include John Minihan, the photographer who captured some of the best known images of Beckett, actor Lisa Dwan, now regularly performing his work, and journalist and commentator Fintan O'Toole.
In this edition, Beckett expert Dr Mark Nixon talks about editing Echo's Bones, the Beckett short story recently published some 80 years after it was written.
Producers: Conor Garrett & Stan Ferguson.
Five essays about one of the twentieth century's most fascinating playwrights, Samuel Beckett, recorded in front of an audience at the 2014 Happy Days International Beckett Festival in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland. The authors include John Minihan, the photographer who captured some of the best known images of Beckett, actor Lisa Dwan, now regularly performing his work, and Mark Nixon, head of the Beckett International Foundation.
In this edition, journalist and commentator, Fintan O'Toole, reflects on themes of mortality and death in Beckett's work.
Producers: Conor Garrett & Stan Ferguson.
Five essays about one of the twentieth century's most fascinating playwrights, Samuel Beckett, recorded in front of an audience at the 2014 Happy Days International Beckett Festival in Enniskillen, Northern Ireland. The authors include John Minihan, the photographer who captured some of the best known images of Beckett, the writer Fintan O'Toole and Mark Nixon, head of the Beckett International Foundation.
In this edition, Irish actor Lisa Dwan describes the demands of performing Beckett and her encounters with some of the actors most closely associated with his work, including Billie Whitelaw.
Producers - Conor Garrett & Stan Ferguson.
"Slate is our stone, from the quarries of Snowdonia", writes the Welsh poet Gillian Clarke in her Cornerstones essay, "just as the coal in the grate is ours, from the south Wales coalfield. We tread on slate every day." For her slate was inescapabable, ubiquitous: "In city, town, village and upland farm, we sleep under Welsh slate. Rain sings on it. It roofed every house I have ever lived in."
Gillian's is the fourth and last of these essays in which writers and artists reflect on the way their bedrock geology - their cornerstones - have shaped their favourite landscapes. "To this day" she says, "the sight of slate-tips in rain never fails to fill me with awe, such an unbearable weight of angles and shards, of greys, purples, silvers, broken pieces of sky, so many deaths, so much lost life. So much geological and human history."
In the other essays, Sue Clifford, co-founder of Common Ground reflects on her favourite limestone landscapes, the walker and geologist Ronald Turnbull addresses sandstone, and the sculptor Peter Randall-Page tells us what it's like working with something as unforgiving as Dartmoor's obdurate granite boulders.
Producer: Mark Smalley.
For 25 years the sculptor Peter Randall-Page has worked Dartmoor's obdurate and unforgiving granite boulders. He reflects on what it's like trying to wrestle with it: "granite is stuff personified, quintessentially dumb matter, it is what the earth is made of, congealed magma, planetary and galactic, inert and unintelligible."
Peter's is the third of four essays in which writers and artists reflect on the way their bedrock geology - their cornerstones - have shaped their favourite landscapes. Peter Randall-Page realises that he's worked his way back through geological time to work with granite: "beginning with the relatively young sedimentary limestone of Bath, through the metamorphic marble of Carrara to the most ancient material of granite."
In the other essays, Sue Clifford, co-founder of Common Ground reflects on her favourite limestone landscapes, the walker and geologist Ronald Turnbull addresses sandstone and the Welsh poet Gillian Clarke addresses the human dimension of mining Snowdonia's slate.
Producer: Mark Smalley.
The walker, writer and geologist Ronald Turnbull reflects on how some of his favourite landscapes across the UK are softly shaped by sandstone. The ease of carving it, he says, accounts for its attractions to mankind across time.
This is the second of four essays in which writers reflect on the way their bedrock geology has shaped their favourite landscapes. The sandstone that characterises his home in Dumfries, Ronald Turnbull says, is similar to the sandstone of North America, Siberia and elsewhere, because it was all created as part of the same hot, desert landmass millions of years ago.
In the other essays, Sue Clifford, co-founder of Common Ground reflects on limestone landscapes, the sculptor Peter Randall-Page describes what it's like working with Dartmoor's obdurate granite boulders, and the Welsh poet Gillian Clarke evokes the human stories shaped by Snowdonia's slate.
Producer: Mark Smalley.
Sue Clifford, co-founder of the arts and environment organisation Common Ground, reflects on what England's limestone landscapes mean to her, the way water has carved out vast underground cave systems.
This is the first of four essays in which writers reflect on the way their bedrock geology has shaped their favourite landscapes. Limestone, as Sue Clifford says, is not only the stone of choice for many of Britain's architectural landmarks, but in the wild it also supports a wealth of flowers, creating its own micro-climates in the klints and grykes that characterise karst scenery. Limestone, she acknowledges, rejoices in its own specific vocabulary.
In the other essays, the walker and geologist Ronald Turnbull addresses sandstone, the sculptor Peter Randall-Page describes what it's like working with Dartmoor's obdurate granite boulders, and the Welsh poet Gillian Clarke writes about Snowdonia's slate.
Producer: Mark Smalley.
Continuing the Sound of Cinema season, the Rev Richard Coles ponders heaven and hell in the classic 1946 Powell and Pressburger film A Matter of Life and Death, starring David Niven.
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, together known as The Archers, were one of the most influential and audacious film-makers of the 1930s and 40s. Their groundbreaking works include: 'The Red Shoes', 'The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp', 'A Matter of Life and Death' and 'Black Narcissus'.
The Rev Richard Coles is a cleric and broadcaster. Producer: Justine Willett.
Continuing the Sound of Cinema season, ballerina, writer and broadcaster Deborah Bull gives a dancer's take on Powell and Pressburger's best-known film, the 1948 classic 'The Red Shoes', starring Moira Shearer, and based on the classic Hans Christian Andersen fairytale.
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, together known as The Archers, were one of the most influential and audacious film-makers of the 1930s and 40s. Their groundbreaking works include: 'The Red Shoes', 'The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp', 'A Matter of Life and Death' and 'Black Narcissus'.
Writen and read by Deborah Bull. Bull joined The Royal Ballet in 1981 and became a Principal Ballerina in 1992. After her 20-year career in ballet, she went on to become Creative Director of the Royal Opera House, as well as an author and broadcaster. She is currently Director of Cultural Partnerships at King's College, London. Producer: Justine Willett.
Taking Robert Graves' phrase Goodbye to All That as their starting point, five writers from countries involved in the First World War reflect on a turning point moment in their own histories and interpret the phrase with the ambiguity that Graves intended.
These five essays that have been curated by writer Lavinia Greenlaw to mark the centenary of the outbreak of World War One, as part of 14-18 Now, a major cultural programme across the United Kingdom.
Tonight, Jeanette Winterson examines her own sense that recent years have seen a turning point in British attitudes to the importance of the arts.
Written and read by Jeanette Winterson Produced by Emma Harding.
Taking Robert Graves' phrase Goodbye to All That as their starting point, five writers from countries involved in the First World War reflect on a turning point moment in their own histories and interpret the phrase with the ambiguity that Graves intended.
These five essays that have been curated by writer Lavinia Greenlaw to mark the centenary of the outbreak of World War One, as part of 14-18 Now, a major cultural programme across the United Kingdom.
Tonight, Chinese-born author, Xiaolu Guo, contemplates the role of Chinese 'coolies' on the battlefields of the First World War.
Written and read by Xiaolu Guo Produced by Emma Harding.
Taking Robert Graves' phrase Goodbye to All That as their starting point, five writers from countries involved in the First World War reflect on a turning point moment in their own histories and interpret the phrase with the ambiguity that Graves intended.
These five essays that have been curated by writer Lavinia Greenlaw to mark the centenary of the outbreak of World War One, as part of 14-18 Now, a major cultural programme across the United Kingdom.
Episode Three: A Visit to the Magician
Tonight, German writer Daniel Kehlmann reflects on recent German history through the prism of a hypnotism show taking place in a central Berlin theatre.
Written and read by Daniel Kehlmann Translated by Carol Janeway Produced by Emma Harding.
Taking Robert Graves' phrase Goodbye to All That as their starting point, five writers from countries involved in the First World War reflect on a turning point moment in their own histories and interpret the phrase with the ambiguity that Graves intended.
These five essays that have been curated by writer Lavinia Greenlaw to mark the centenary of the outbreak of World War One, as part of 14-18 Now, a major cultural programme across the United Kingdom.
Tonight, Colm Toibin tells the story of Lady Gregory's fighter pilot son, whose death inspired one of Yeats' most famous poems, 'An Irish Airman Foresees His Death'.
Written and read by Colm Toibin Produced by Emma Harding.
Taking Robert Graves' phrase Goodbye to All That as their starting point, five writers from countries involved in the First World War reflect on a turning point moment in their own histories and interpret the phrase with the ambiguity that Graves intended.
These five essays that have been curated by writer Lavinia Greenlaw to mark the centenary of the outbreak of World War One, as part of 14-18 Now, a major cultural programme across the United Kingdom.
Tonight, Elif Shafak contemplates a point of no return in the history of her native country, Turkey.
Written and read by Elif Shafak Produced by Emma Harding
http://www.1418now.org.uk/.
"It is all done by suggestion, but eroticism is in every frame and image from beginning to end. It is a film full of wonderful performances and passion just below the surface, which finally, at the end of the film, erupts", Michael Powell
Continuing the Sound of Cinema season, film critic Peter Bradshaw looks at Powell and Pressburger's sensuous 1947 melodrama, 'Black Narcissus'.
Set in a convent in an isolated Himalayan valley, in which tensions are running high, Black Narcissus was based on the 1939 novel of the same name by Rumer Godden. It stars Deborah Kerr, Kathleen Byron and Jean Simmons, and was described by Michael Powell described as the most erotic film he ever made.
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, together known as The Archers, were one of the most influential and audacious film-makers of the 1930s and 40s. Their groundbreaking works include: 'The Red Shoes', 'The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp', 'A Matter of Life and Death' and 'Black Narcissus'.
Peter Bradshaw is the Guardian's film critic.
Producer: Justine Willett.
How great artists and thinkers responded to the First World War through individual works of art
10.The poet Ruth Padel reflects on the German artist Kathe Kollwitz's memorial for her youngest son Peter, who died on the battlefields of the First World War in October 1914.
The German painter, printmaker and sculptor created some of the greatest and most searing accounts of the tragedies of poverty, hunger and war in the 20th century.
The death of her youngest son, Peter, in October 1914, prompted a prolonged period of deep depression, but by the end of that year she was turning her thoughts to creating a moument to Peter and his fallen comrades.
She destroyed this first monument in 1919 and began again in 1925. The final memorial, entitled The Grieving Parents, was finally completed in 1932 and placed in the cemetery where Peter lay.
The poet Ruth Padel traces Kollwitz's long period of anguish and artistic growth.
Producer : Beaty Rubens.
How great artists and thinkers responded to the First World War in individual works of art and scholarship
9.Santanu Das on the Indian poet, Sarojini Naidu's 1917 collection, The Broken Wing: Songs of Love, Death and the Spring.
Saraojini Naidu was born in Hyderabad in 1879 and became known as "the Nightingale of India" for her work as a poet and also as an Indian independence activist.
Of her 1917 collection, Rabindranath Tagore declared: "Your poems in The Broken Wing seem to be made of tears and fire, like the clouds of a July evening, glowing with the muffled power of sunset."
The distinguished scholar of the First World War, Santanu Das, a reader in English at King's College, London, reflects on the importance of Naidu's work and on the impact of the First World War on the Indian fight for independence.
Producer : Beaty Rubens.
How great artists and thinkers responded to the First World War in their work.
BBC Correspondent Lyse Doucet, fresh from her experiences in Afghanistan and Syria, introduces novelist Edith Wharton's reportage from wartime France, 'Fighting France, from Dunkerque to Belfort'.
Wharton, best known for 'The Age Of Innocence' and 'The House of Mirth', was granted unique access to the Western front and wrote one of the most evocative and undeservedly neglected accounts of life in France in World War One.
In its pages, penned early in the war, are Wharton's painterly descriptions of the country's overnight transformation from peace to war, her deep love for France and its people, and her accounts of the destruction wrought upon the villages and towns in the path of the German invader.
Producer: Benedict Warren.
How great artists and thinkers responded to the First World War in individual works of art and scholarship
7.Ian Christie on Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin
For Russians of Sergei Eisenstein's generation, the experience of the First World War was overtaken by the revolution of 1917, which took Russia out of the war and plunged it into a bitter civil war from which the infant Bolshevik Soviet state emerged.
Eisenstein seized the opportunity of serving in the Red Army in order to become a radical theatre director, which led him into film as part of the first generation of Soviet film-makers who would astonish the world in the late 1920s with films like The Battleship Potemkin and October. These films would shape the cultural and political landscape of the interwar years - championed by those who wanted to condemn the Great War as an imperialist struggle, and also foreshadowing the Second World War, as in Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky.
The distinguished film historian Ian Christie untangles this complex story.
Producer Beaty Rubens
Producer : Beaty Rubens.
How great artists and thinkers responded to the First World War in individual work.
6. Dr Heather Jones of the LSE reflects on Henri Barbusse's novel Le Feu.
Completed in 1916 and the work of a French soldier at the front, Le Feu was the first explicit account of conditions there. It proved a revelation to a French public sold a sentimental line by the press of the time. Yet Le Feu, with its deep insights into the emotions of men at war, was not seen as damaging to home-front morale. Here was a new kind of writing in which rural dialects and working- class accents conveyed heroism, and could be literary, even transcendent.
Producer: Ben Warren.
How great artists and thinkers responded to the First World War in individual works of art, literature and scholarship
5.Michal Shapira on Sigmund Freud's Thoughts for the Times on War and Death, a text written in Vienna in 1915, expressing his dismay as the war progressed.
The declaration of war in 1914 was initially met with jubilation by the people of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and, in Vienna, Sigmund Freud shared the general mood
But, like his fellow-citizens, Freud expected a quick war. By February 1915, with two of his sons fighting and thousands of injured and traumatised soldiers returning from the front, Freud's feelings had changed.
Dr Michal Shapira reflects on his Thoughts for the Times on War and Death and considers how it prefigures some of his later, better-known works on war and the death-drive.
Dr Michal Shapira is a senior lecturer of history and gender studies at Tel Aviv University Producer : Beaty Rubens.
How great artists and thinkers responded to the First World War in individual works of art.
Professor David Edgerton of King's College London reflects on the Memorandum on the Neglect of Science, a 1916 clarion-call from the British scientific establishment.
In a letter to The Times that year, many of the great names of British science declared their belief that both academic and applied science were being treated as Cinderella subjects. The Germans, they surmised, had got their act together and were outflanking the British military effort in chemical warfare, armaments and generally taking science more seriously.
They continued by observing that the entrance examinations for Oxford and Cambridge Universities and the civil service, were weighted towards the Classics rather than sciences. Was this the first stirrings CP Snow's Two Cultures debate?
David Edgerton, the Hans Rausing Professor of the History of Science and Technology and Professor of Modern British History, at King's College London, finds out what was going on at the time and looks at how the First World War advanced British science.
Producer: Benedict Warren.
How great artists and thinkers responded to the First World War in individual works of art Cartoonist and writer Martin Rowson reflects on Otto Dix's Der Krieg, a harrowing cycle of prints of wartime experience.
In 1924, six years after the end of hostiliies, the painter Otto Dix, who had been a machine-gunner in the German Army, produced his 51 Der Krieg prints. Gruesome, hallucinatory, and terribly frank, these postcards of conflict tell the soldier's ghastly tale.
Cartoonist Martin Rowson, whose own work is similarly direct and uncompromising, tells Dix's story, exposing what the War did to the man and ponders why Der Krieg remains such a powerful statement.
Producer: Benedict Warren.
How great artists and thinkers responded to the Frst World War in individual works of art
2.Sarah LeFanu reflects on Rose Macaulay's 1916 novel, Non-Combatants and Others
Rose Macaulay is perhaps best remembered for her final novel, The Towers of Trebizond, but her biographer, Sarah LeFanu, has long believed that one of her earlier novels, Non-Combatants and Others, is a work of striking originality. She also argues for its importance to our understanding of the impact of the First World War not only on soldiers at the front but on the entire nation.
The books which have become the foundational texts of our perception and understanding of the war are all by men who had served as soldiers - Edmund Blunden, Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves - but all were written more than a decade later, when their authors had had time to shape and mediate their experiences through a process of post-war reflections.
The immediacy of Non-Combatants and Others - written and set in 1915 - is another reason for its claim to be regarded as a key text of the war.
Sarah LeFanu brings the novel alive by interweaving a re-telling of its story with her reflections on how it sheds light on Macaulay's own changing attitude to the war, and her later commitment to the League of Nations Union and the Peace Pledge Union.
Producer : Beaty Rubens.
How great artists and thinkers responded to the First World War in individual works of art 1. BBC Correspondent Allan Little reflects on C.R.W.Nevinson's great 1917 painting, Paths of Glory
C.R.W.Nevinson's painting, Paths of Glory, is a distant cry from the rallying recruitment posters which appeared at the start of the war. It depicts the bloated corpses of two dead soldiers, stretched out in the mud, against a backdrop of tangled barbed wire, somewhere on the Western Front.
Unsuprisingly, it was censored at the time.
Perhaps part of its shock value was in its title. In his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, the 18th century poet, Thomas Gray, had declared "the Paths of Glory lead but to the grave", but in Nevinson's painting, the two fallen soldiers are far from the comfort even of a grave in an English country churchyard, and, indeed, from any decent burial at all.
In his many years as a BBC Special Correspondent, Allan Little has witnessed some shocking scenes of war and has also reflected on the depiction of war in news footage and photography as well as in the works of contemporary war artists.
He considers the continuing power of Nevinson's painting and the role of art both in recruiting soldiers and in denouncing war.
Producer; Beaty Rubens.
It's over the mountains, it has no major roads, it's too dangerous, or tourists don't get it at all. Five writers with a desire for travel or living elsewhere, recall a city that once captured their hearts and minds for reasons of secrecy or isolation, or simply being off limits.
Simon Calder recalls the small-scale delights of Holguin in Cuba. It' so different to the capital city, but worth the detour - if you can get there!
Producer Duncan Minshull
First broadcast in April 2013.
It's over the mountains, it has no major roads, it's too dangerous, or tourists don't get it at all. Five writers with a desire for travel or living elsewhere, recall a city that once captured their hearts and minds for reasons of secrecy or isolation, or simply being off limits.
Travel writer Michela Wrong sees beautiful Italianate buildings, and all things Futurist - in Africa. In Asmara, the capital of Eritrea, to be precise.
Producer Duncan Minshull
First broadcast in April 2013.
It's over the mountains, it has no major roads, it's too dangerous, or tourists don't get it at all. Five writers with a desire for travel or living elsewhere, recall a city that once captured their hearts and minds for reasons of secrecy or isolation, or simply being off limits.
Vanora Bennett describes Makhachkala in Russia as 'beyond the mountains', yet these days it's on the brink of enormous change...
Producer Duncan Minshull
First broadcast in April 2013.
It's over the mountains, it has no major roads, it's too dangerous, or tourists don't get it at all. Five writers with a desire for travel or living elsewhere recall a city that once captured their hearts and minds for reasons of secrecy or isolation, or simply being off limits.
The novelist Romesh Gunesekera can't wait to tell us about Kunming, which is so unlike any other modern Chinese city...
Producer Duncan Minshull
First broadcast in April 2013.
It's over the mountains, it has no major roads, it's too dangerous, or tourists don't get it at all. Five writers with a desire for travel or living elsewhere recall a city that once captured their hearts and minds for reasons of secrecy or isolation, or simply being off limits.
Novelist Nicholas Shakespeare once lived in Hobart, Tasmania, and reveals to us its convict and whaling past, and the story of a monkey...
Producer Duncan Minshull
First broadcast in April 2013.
Recorded at the Laugharne Live Festival 2014, in the grounds of Laugharne Castle, West Wales. Five leading writers and artists reflect on the ways in which they connect with one of Wales's most famous cultural exports, Dylan Thomas. Poet and musician Twm Morys explores the links between Wales's poetic heritage and Dylan Thomas's writing. Drawing on memories of living in Thomas's hometown of Swansea, he considers whether Thomas's writing is universally acknowledged to represent the cultural landscape that nurtured its creation.
Five leading writers and artists reflect on the ways in which they connect with one of Wales's most famous cultural exports, Dylan Thomas. Linking up from New York, writer, poet and activist Kevin Powell looks at Dylan Thomas's far-reaching influence on Black American writers, from his own introduction to Thomas's words in the new poetry and spoken-word scene happening in New York in the early 90s, to the new wave of Black American artists inspired through hip-hop, spoken word and America's oral tradition. Recorded in front of an audience at the Laugharne Live Festival.
Recorded at the Laugharne Live Festival, in the grounds of Laugharne Castle, West Wales. Five leading writers and artists reflect on the ways in which they connect with one of Wales's most famous cultural exports, Dylan Thomas. The poet and writer Gwyneth Lewis, whose words are emblazoned over Wales Millennium Centre, takes a personal journey through the language of Dylan Thomas. She argues that to appreciate the work fully we must understand the poet's rigorous practice and detailed knowledge of poetic history and tradition.
Recorded at the Laugharne Live Festival, in the grounds of Laugharne Castle, West Wales, in 2014. Five leading writers and artists reflect on the ways in which they connect with one of Wales's most famous cultural exports, Dylan Thomas.
Andrew Davies reflects on the influence of Dylan Thomas on a child growing up in Wales in the 1950s, with aspirations to be a writer. A day trip to Rhossili beach and a Cornish pasty chimed with Davies's role model's account in "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog", but was this the gateway to a future as a poet?
Recorded at the Laugharne Live Festival, in the grounds of Laugharne Castle, West Wales. Five leading writers and artists reflect on the ways in which they connect with one of Wales's most famous cultural exports, Dylan Thomas. Professor John Goodby is one of the world's most respected academic authorities on the poetry of Dylan Thomas. Using poems such as the radiant "In the White Giant's Thigh", "And death shall have no dominion" and "A Refusal to Mourn" he explores how the boundaries which Dylan Thomas crossed in both life and art have made it difficult for critics to pigeon-hole his legacy.
In today's essay, historian Dan Cruikshank explores his passion for Georgian architecture through the work of the Scottish neoclassical architect and interior designer Robert Adam.
Producer: Mohini Patel.
In today's essay shedding light on key figures of the Georgian era, the writer and cartoonist Martin Rowson discusses the satiric genius of William Hogarth and his lasting influence on the development of the political cartoon.
Producer: Mohini Patel.
In today's essay shedding light on key figures of the Georgian era, historian Amanda Vickery explores the life of gentlewoman Elizabeth Parker Shackleton, member of the lesser gentry and mercantile elite of 18th-century Lancashire.
Producer: Mohini Patel.
In today's essay shedding light on key figures of the Georgian era, actor and writer Ian Kelly explores the life and times of David Garrick - actor, playwright and one of the most influential theatre managers of his generation.
Producer: Mohini Patel.
In the first essay of the week, shedding light on key figures of the Georgian era, biographer Claire Tomalin explores the life of Dora Jordan, the greatest comic actress of her day and renowned for being lover to the future king.
The rest of the essays in this series are by the actor and writer Ian Kelly on actor, playwright, and theatre manager David Garrick; historian Amanda Vickery on Lancashire gentlewoman Elizabeth Parker Shackleton; writer and cartoonist Martin Rowson on Hogarth and historian Dan Cruikshank on architect Robert Adam.
Producer: Mohini Patel.
dNovelist and academic Ian Sansom explores the symbolism of beds in literature, art and film, and asks what beds reveal about human nature. 'Beds are where we are most physical, most elemental, and where we experience the great highs and lows of life. Everything significant that happens to us tends to take place in bed'. Certainly many of history's greatest thinkers and writers are thought to have been inspired in bed; G.K. Chesterton wished he had a pencil long enough to write on the ceiling while lying down, Milton is said to have written Paradise Lost in bed, and Truman Capote started his day in bed with coffee, mint tea, sherry and martinis. Ian thinks the bed is where we are most ourselves 'the place where you cannot hide', and perhaps we try to avoid spending too much time there because we fear what it signifies - 'the never-ending lie-in to come'.
Novelist Ian Sansom delves into cupboards and cabinets to explore what they reveal about human nature. Le Corbusier didn't approve of the clutter cupboards encourage, wanting to free our lives of 'junk'; whereas artist Herbert Distel filled a cabinet with trinkets donated by Man Ray, Annette Messager, Andy Warhol, and John Cage - 'a roll-call of twentieth-century conceptualists, creatives, collagists and curators of the curious' in his Museum of Drawers. Rimbaud wrote about an old sideboard crammed with memories, and Duchamp fitted his life's work in a suitcase, but Ian wonders if the contents of our cupboards really do tell our life stories, complete with the all the hopes, dreams and broken promises suggested by unused pasta machines and unfinished jigsaws - or in the end does it all 'amount to nothing, just so much junk?'.
Are you sitting comfortably? Despite his bad posture, novelist and academic Ian Sansom explores our complex physical, mental and emotional relationship with the chair. Chairs can symbolise who we are, like Ian's comfy old overstuffed armchair, and in 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears', the little bear asks 'Who's been sitting in my chair?' which Ian reads as "Who am I?" Van Gogh painted two empty chairs after his famous fall-out with Gauguin; Henry Thoreau, out in his cabin at Walden Pond, had just three chairs 'one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society'. Ian has 26 chairs in total, but not a 'named chair', which is the 'scholar's burnished throne'. Apart from beds, we share more intimacy with chairs than with any other piece of furniture, but often their symbolism is most powerful when empty, because Ian believes that empty chairs always imply people.
Novelist and academic Ian Sansom steps into the history of wardrobes, to discover not only how and why we store clothes in large upright wooden boxes, but also why wardrobes feature so largely in fairy tales, memoirs and stories. From E. Nesbit's 'The Aunt and Anabel' to C.S Lewis's 'The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe', via Guy De Maupassant's tragic tale of a child in a wardrobe, Rimbaud's poem about a wardrobe with missing keys, and Roman Polanski's short film about two men who carry a wardrobe out of the sea; Ian explores the symbolism of wardrobes as a place where secrets are stored, imaginations inspired, consciences hidden, and our 'selves' reinvented.
Five writers set out on foot to sample the transforming qualities of Spring. They report back with tales that are climatically confused - it could be warm or chilly out there ...
5. Philip Hoare is quickly at the water's edge in Sholing, well before the waking hour. Then meetings with many animals are recalled.
Producer Duncan Minshull.
Five writers set out on foot to sample the transforming qualities of Spring. They report back with tales that are climatically confused - it could be warm or chilly out there ...
4. Kirsty Gunn is in Sutherland, debating whether to ford the chilly River Brora on an afternoon hike.
Producer Duncan Minshull.
Five writers set out on foot to sample the transforming qualities of Spring. They report back with tales that are climatically confused - it could be warm or chilly out there ...
3. John Walsh reckons that 'below' it feels wintry; yet ascend near a village called Steep and spring beckons. But where is he?
Producer Duncan Minshull.
Five writers set out on foot to sample the transforming qualities of Spring. They report back with tales that are climatically confused - it could be warm or chilly out there ...
2. Ross Raisin recalls the Yorkshire Wolds, getting greener all the time, and scene of some famous new paintings by David Hockney.
Producer Duncan Minshull.
Five writers set out on foot to sample the transforming qualities of Spring. They report back with tales that are climatically confused - it could be warm or chilly out there ...
1. Michele Roberts pounds the pavements of Poznan and is reminded of Persephone under scudding clouds.
Producer Duncan Minshull.
Radio 3 presenter Sara Mohr-Pietsch celebrates a composer whose music has particularly inspired her: the remarkable twelfth-century abbess and mystic Hildegard of Bingen - perhaps the earliest actual "composer" in the history of Western music.
Radio 3 presenter Martin Handley celebrates a composer whose music has particularly inspired him: Malcolm Arnold, creator of symphonies of great emotional depth and complexity - as Martin discovered as a teenage violinist, playing Arnold's Second Symphony with the composer conducting.
Radio 3 presenter Lucie Skeaping celebrates a composer whose music has particularly inspired her: the Elizabethan Thomas Ravenscroft, a contemporary of Shakespeare who wrote songs that became incredibly popular - or, like Shakespeare, borrowed from the popular imagination and made it his own.
Radio 3 presenter Tom Service celebrates a composer whose music has particularly inspired him - Arnold Bax, whose music reflects his love of the remarkable landscape of northwest Scotland, where Tom spent his childhood summer holidays.
Radio 3 presenter Sarah Walker celebrates a composer whose music has particularly inspired her: 'English Experimentalist' John White - who, as well as being a dedicated opponent of "seriosity" in classical music, is the spitting image of Hollywood actor Jack Nicholson.
This is the first of five editions of The Essay in which Radio 3 classical music presenters celebrate lesser-known composers whose 'secret admirers' they are. Coming up from Tuesday to Friday: Tom Service on Arnold Bax Lucie Skeaping on Thomas Ravenscroft Martin Handley on Malcolm Arnold Sara Mohr-Pietsch on Hildegard of Bingen.
A series of five essays from writers around the Commonwealth which start on Commonwealth Day 10th March and tackle the past, present and future of this unique international organisation.
Tolu Ogunlesi, poet and author from Nigeria looks at whether young people in Lagos can relate to the Commonwealth.
A series of five essays from writers around the Commonwealth which start on Commonwealth Day 10th March and tackle the past, present and future of this unique international organisation.
Farah Ghuznavi from Bangladesh has been Writer in Residence for Commonwealth Writers. She saw the Commonwealth as an irrelevance in her early life. Here she explains what changed her mind.
A series of five essays from writers around the Commonwealth which start on Commonwealth Day, 10th March, and tackle the past, present and future of this unique international organisation.
Author Noah Richler writes from a Canadian perspective. The Queen still appears on the bank notes of Canada as she is the head of state. The role is largely ceremonial, so why the need for ties like the Commonwealth in such an advanced country?
A series of five essays from writers around the Commonwealth which start on Commonwealth Day, 10th March, and tackle the past, present and future of this unique international organisation.
Fakir Aijazuddin, author and historian from Lahore, comments on Pakistan's chequered relationship with the Commonwealth. He reflects on his own dealings with what he describes as a typically British invention, the 'gentleman's club'.
The first of five Essays from writers around the Commonwealth which start on Commonwealth Day, 10th March, and scrutinise the destiny of this unique international body.
Dr Sue Onslow of the School of Advanced Studies, University of London looks at the history of the Commonwealth and its web of committees and forums. She asks whether they have made a difference in world politics in the past and whether the organisation has a future.
The Islamic Golden Age (c. 750-1258 CE) rediscovered through portraits of key figures and events. In tonight's essay, award-winning writer Kamila Shamsie looks at the life of Lubna of Cordoba. She leaves traces in fragments of records: one says she was the royal library acquisitions expert, another suggests she was private secretary to al-Hakam II. What's not in doubt is that she had a fine and piercing intellect and moved in some of the most interesting circles of the day.
Producer: Sarah Taylor.
Radio 3 continues its twenty-part series looking at the five-hundred-year period, the Islamic Golden Age. We've heard about some of the great architects, philosophers, scientists and leaders of the period. In this evening's essay, Narguess Farzad explores the life and work of the Persian poet, Al-Rumi.
Producer: Mohini Patel.
'Men grieved for him as they grieve for prophets. I have seen no other ruler for whose death the people mourned, for he was loved by good and bad, Muslim and unbeliever alike.' 'Abd al-Latif, 1193
Historian Jonathan Phillips reassesses the influence of 12th-century hero Saladin - a man whose legacy has been admired and appropriated by an extraordinary range of people through the ages. In the past few years he's been the subject of a ballet in Damascus, a musical in Lebanon and he's seen in a children's cartoon (on al-Jazeera TV) where his morality and good character are used as an exemplar for young people to emulate.
Given his role in defeating and removing Western invaders, his legacy has immense symbolism in the Middle East. Arab Nationalist leaders such as Nasser of Egypt, Saddam Hussein, and the Assad dynasty in Syria have all embraced his achievement. Yet he appeals to Islamists too: Osama bin Laden praised Saladin's wisdom and his use of the jihad to succeed in defeating the West; to the head of the CIA unit hunting bin Laden, his opponent's personal piety, generosity and sharing of hardships with his men meant 'he is an Islamic hero, as the faith's ideal type, and almost as a modern-day Saladin'.
Jonathan questions why Saladin has maintained such an incredibly broad appeal down the centuries.
Producer: Mohini Patel.
Radio 3's twenty-part essay series on the Islamic Golden Age continues its exploration through this five-hundred-year period of empire, innovation, religious turmoil, scientific discovery and major advances in philosophical thought. In this evening's essay, Dr. Amira Bennison examines the creation of two great cities of learning - Baghdad and Cairo.
The medieval Middle East is the stuff of fantasy, from the windswept deserts of Arabia to the bustling bazaars of cities like Baghdad and Cairo. But what were these cities actually like? And what part did they play in creating great men (and sometimes women) of letters, science and art? Cities figured in the Muslim imagination as hubs of religion, government, commerce and culture. Medieval Muslim geographers often conceptualised their world as one of routes linking an endless series of towns and cities like stars glittering in the firmament. Although some of these cities like Jerusalem or Damascus were already ancient when the Muslims arrived in the 7th century, others, Baghdad and Cairo included, were new Muslim creations - brash, vibrant and dense with talent, the New Yorks of their age.
Producer: Mohini Patel.
Radio 3's twenty-part essay series on the Islamic Golden Age (c. 750 - 1258 CE) continues its exploration through this five-hundred-year period of empire, innovation, religious turmoil, scientific discovery and major advances in philosophical thought.
In this evening's essay, Professor Charles Burnett from the Warburg Institute sheds light on the ideas of the philospher, Ibn Rushd - also widely known as Averroes. Ibn Rushd was born in Cordoba in the twelfth century and was prolific in his studies which were wide ranging. Some of his ideas were seen as controversial among Muslim scholars and he has been called the founding father of secular thought in Western Europe.
Producer: Mohini Patel.
Radio 3's twenty-part essay series on the Islamic Golden Age continues its exploration through this five-hundred-year period of empire, innovation, religious turmoil, scientific discovery and major advances in philosophical thought. In this evening's essay, Professor Mona Siddiqui turns her attention to Al-Ghazali. He had a major influence on both Muslim and European philosophers.
Producer: Sarah Taylor.
Radio 3's twenty part essay series on the Islamic Golden Age continues its exploration through this five hundred year period of empire, innovation, religious turmoil, scientific discovery and major advances in philosophical thought. In this evening's essay, we hear about the controversial Egyptian imam-caliph, Al Hakim and his sister Sitt al-Mulk. At worst, al Hakim has a reputation as the "mad" caliph and the destoroyer of the Holy Sepulchre church in Jerusalem. At best - he's a capricious tyrant. Dr. Simonetta Calderini and Dr. Delia Cortese share their forensic academic research into these controversial siblings and the essay is read by Dr. Simonetta Calderini.
Producer: Sarah Taylor.
Radio 3 continues its series of portraits of some of the more remarkable figures and events from the Islamic Golden Age - an era which saw huge changes in empires, medicine, architectural achievements and philosophical thought. In this evening's essay, Professor James Montgomery sheds light on the scholar al-Biruni. An exceptionally gifted mathematician, he devoted much of his life to astronomy and chronometry in an effort to measure, capture and contain time. He lived a long life devoted to scholarship and wrote more than 140 books which influenced intellectual thought of the period and beyond.
Producer: Sarah Taylor.
This major essay series continues as leading thinkers and practitioners share their knowledge and passion for the Golden Age of Islam. Dr. Sussan Babaie from the Courtauld Institute is an expert in Islamic architecture. She turns the spotlight on two significant monuments of the early medieval period in the Islamic world: the 10th century royal mausoleaum of the Samanid dynasty in Bukhara, present-day Uzbekistan and the 11th to 12th century developments in the great congregational mosque of Isfahan, in central Iran, built under the patronage of the Seljuq dynasty.
Producer: Sarah Taylor.
In a major series for Radio 3, we continue our journey through the Islamic Golden Age. The period ranges from 750 to 1258 CE and we'll hear about architecture, religious scholarship, medicine, innovation and philosophy. In this evening's essay, Dr Tony Street assesses the great philosopher and highly influential physician Avicenna. Born in Bukahara in 980, Avicenna was an Arabic-speaking Persian who supplanted Aristotle as the leading philosopher of all time, at least for Muslim scholars.
Producer: Sarah Taylor.
Novelist Andrew Martin considers attitudes that no longer seem so vital in the modern world. And he concludes his series with something we often did on Sundays - 'church-going'.
Producer Duncan Minshull
First broadcast in January 2014.
Novelist Andrew Martin considers attitudes that no longer seem so vital in the modern world. And he continues with a celebration of 'manual work' - which fewer embrace these days. Producer Duncan Minshull
First broadcast in January 2014.
Novelist Andrew Martin considers attitudes that no longer seem so vital in the modern world. And this time he thinks about the loss of old rules. The ones to do with 'gentility'.
Producer Duncan Minshull
First broadcast in January 2014.
Novelist Andrew Martin considers attitudes that no longer seem so vital in the modern world. And he continues his series with lamenting the loss of 'not eating too much'..
Producer Duncan Minshull
First broadcast in January 2014.
Novelist Andrew Martin considers attitudes that no longer seem so vital in the modern world. And he begins his series with a lament for a loss of modesty, or 'not boasting'.
Producer Duncan Minshull
First broadcast in January 2014.
Taking Rilke's classic correspondence as inspiration, five leading poets write a personal letter to a young poet. Today, award-winning Scottish poet and editor, Don Paterson.
The original Letters to a Young Poet is a compilation of letters by Rainer Maria Rilke, written between 1902 and 1908 to a 19-year-old officer cadet called Franz Kappus. Kappus was trying to choose between a literary career and entering the Austro-Hungarian army. Rilke's letters touch on poetry and criticism, but they range widely in subject matter from atheism and loneliness, to friendship and sexuality:
"If your everyday life seems to lack material, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to summon up its riches; for there is no lack for him who creates and no poor, trivial place."
In their new letters, five poets imagine a young poet protégé to whom they want to pass on life experience and thoughts about the poetic art.
Our poets are: Michael Symmons Roberts, Vicki Feaver, Michael Longley, Moniza Alvi and Don Paterson.
Don Paterson was born in 1963 in Dundee, Scotland. He moved to London in 1984 to work as a jazz musician, and began writing poetry around the same time. His collections of poetry are Nil Nil (Faber, 1993), God's Gift to Women (Faber, 1997), The Eyes (after Antonio Machado, Faber, 1999), Landing Light (Faber, 2003; Graywolf, 2004), Orpheus (a version of Rilke's Die Sonette an Orpheus, Faber, 2006) and Rain (Faber, 2009; Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010).
First broadcast in January 2014.
Taking Rilke's classic correspondence as inspiration, five leading poets write a personal letter to a young poet. Today, Pakistan-born Moniza Alvi.
The original Letters to a Young Poet is a compilation of letters by Rainer Maria Rilke, written between 1902 and 1908 to a 19-year-old officer cadet called Franz Kappus. Kappus was trying to choose between a literary career and entering the Austro-Hungarian army. Rilke's letters touch on poetry and criticism, but they range widely in subject matter from atheism and loneliness, to friendship and sexuality:
"If your everyday life seems to lack material, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to summon up its riches; for there is no lack for him who creates and no poor, trivial place."
In their new letters, five poets imagine a young poet protégé to whom they want to pass on life experience and thoughts about the poetic art.
Our poets are: Michael Symmons Roberts, Vicki Feaver, Michael Longley, Moniza Alvi and Don Paterson.
About Moniza Alvi: Moniza Alvi was born in Pakistan and grew up in Hertfordshire. Her latest book are At the Time of Partition (Bloodaxe Books, 2013) which is shortlisted for the 2013 T S Eliot Prize. Other recent books include her book-length poem; Homesick for the Earth, her versions of the French poet Jules Supervielle (Bloodaxe Books, 2011); Europa (Bloodaxe Books, 2008); and Split World: Poems 1990-2005 (Bloodaxe Books, 2008), which includes poems from her five previous collections.
Taking Rilke's classic correspondence as inspiration, five leading poets write a personal letter to a young poet. Today, eminent Belfast poet, Michael Longley.
The original Letters to a Young Poet is a compilation of letters by Rainer Maria Rilke, written between 1902 and 1908 to a 19-year-old officer cadet called Franz Kappus. Kappus was trying to choose between a literary career and entering the Austro-Hungarian army. Rilke's letters touch on poetry and criticism, but they range widely in subject matter from atheism and loneliness, to friendship and sexuality:
"If your everyday life seems to lack material, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to summon up its riches; for there is no lack for him who creates and no poor, trivial place."
In their new letters, five poets imagine a young poet protégé to whom they want to pass on life experience and thoughts about the poetic art.
Our poets are: Michael Symmons Roberts, Vicki Feaver, Michael Longley, Moniza Alvi and Don Paterson.
About Michael Longley: Michael Longley was born in Belfast in 1939. His Collected Poems was published in 2006 and in 2007, he was appointed Professor of Poetry for Ireland. His most recent poetry collections are Gorse Fires (2009) and A Hundred Doors (2011), shortlisted for the 2011 Forward Poetry Prize (Best Poetry Collection of the Year).
First broadcast in January 2014.
Taking Rilke's classic correspondence as inspiration, five leading poets write a personal letter to a young protégé. Today, to coincide with the announcement of the T S Eliot Prize, one of the prize's judges, Vicki Feaver, writes a letter to a young woman poet.
The original Letters to a Young Poet is a compilation of letters by Rainer Maria Rilke, written between 1902 and 1908 to a 19-year-old officer cadet called Franz Kappus. Kappus was trying to choose between a literary career and entering the Austro-Hungarian army. Rilke's letters touch on poetry and criticism, but they range widely in subject matter from atheism and loneliness, to friendship and sexuality:
"If your everyday life seems to lack material, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to summon up its riches; for there is no lack for him who creates and no poor, trivial place."
In their new letters, five poets imagine a young poet protégé to whom they want to pass on life experience and thoughts about the poetic art.
Our poets are: Michael Symmons Roberts, Vicki Feaver, Michael Longley, Moniza Alvi and Don Paterson.
About Vicki Feaver: Vicki Feaver has published three collections of poetry, Close Relatives (Secker 1981), The Handless Maiden (Cape 1994) and The Book of Blood (Cape 2006), both short-listed for the Forward Prize Best Collection, with The Book of Blood also shortlisted for the 2006 Costa (formerly Whitbread) Poetry Book Award. Her poem 'Judith' won the Forward Prize for the Best Single Poem. She lives in Scotland.
Taking Rilke's classic correspondence as inspiration, five leading poets write a personal letter to a young poet. Today, to coincide with the announcement of the T S Eliot Prize, shortlisted poet Michael Symmons Roberts writes a letter about poetry that dares the depths.
The original Letters to a Young Poet is a compilation of letters by Rainer Maria Rilke, written between 1902 and 1908 to a 19-year-old officer cadet called Franz Kappus. Kappus was trying to choose between a literary career and entering the Austro-Hungarian army. Rilke's letters touch on poetry and criticism, but they range widely in subject matter from atheism and loneliness, to friendship and sexuality:
"If your everyday life seems to lack material, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to summon up its riches; for there is no lack for him who creates and no poor, trivial place."
In their new letters, five poets imagine a young poet protégé to whom they want to pass on life experience and thoughts about the poetic art.
Our poets are: Michael Symmons Roberts, Vicki Feaver, Michael Longley, Moniza Alvi and Don Paterson.
About Michael Symmons Roberts: Roberts's latest collection Drysalter (Cape 2013) won the 2013 Forward Prize and is on the shortlist for both the T S Eliot Prize and the Costa Poetry Award. He is a leading poet, librettist, novelist, radio dramatist and broadcaster. Previous collections include The Half-Healed, Corpus and Burning Babylon.
First broadcast in January 2014.
Stepping back in time, BBC News correspondents present a personal perspective on principal cities of the major European powers that fought the First World War. In this Essay, Emma Jane Kirby considers the capital of the largest contemporary modern maritime empire: London.
To today's listeners some of Londoners' concerns a century ago will seem extraordinarily familiar. Complaints about the Tube were as frequent and heartfelt then as they are today. To try and divert travellers from their misery, Macdonald Gill - the brother of sculptor and designer Eric Gill - was commissioned to produce a "Wonderground" map. It was intended to amuse them as they waited for their trains which were infrequent, often dirty and overcrowded.
The map's whimsical illustrations - together with Cockney asides put in the mouths of some of the invented characters - captured the city's above-ground, pre-war character. It evoked the zeitgeist which George Bernard Shaw simultaneously reflected on stage in "Pygmalion" - and led to a subsequent commission to design a theatreland map during the First World War.
Emma Jane Kirby considers the idea of Britain which London was presenting to both the wider world and Britons themselves, and she assesses how far these attitudes still resonate today.
Producer Simon Coates.
Stepping back in time, BBC News correspondents present their personal perspectives on the capital cities of major European powers that fought the Great War.
The series continues with the remarkable city which would - uniquely - soon be renamed amidst bloody regicide and revolution: St Petersburg.
The BBC's Moscow correspondent, Steve Rosenberg, finds a revealing connection, however, between the St. Petersburg of a hundred years ago and its counterpart of today.
He tells the remarkable story of the Grand International Masters' Chess Tournament of 1914, with its starring cast of Russian, German, French, British and American competitors and its dramas of who won and who lost.
But the tournament also demonstrated the Russian passion for chess that continues to this day and helps define its national identity as well as the fierce competition with other countries.
Producer Simon Coates.
Stepping back in time, three BBC News correspondents present their personal perspectives on the capital cities of the major European powers that fought the Great War.
The first programme explores the epicentre of turmoil as the conflagration took hold: Berlin, the capital of Kaiser Wilhelm II's empire. Stephen Evans reminds us that the German capital on the eve of war was the world's most innovative technological centre. Einstein was here, the director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics from 1914. Mark Twain called Berlin the "German Chicago" because of its dizzying sense of modernity and progress. Immigrants were sucked in by industry. In 1895, 20,000 Berliners worked in the factories being built on the outskirts of the city, living cheek-by-jowl in new blocks which became known as "rental barracks".
But all this industrial energy and the wealth it created - which we still associate with today's Germany - came at a price. Both male and female workers felt alienated in their work, likening themselves to machines. As women grew in importance to the economy, so did the loudness of the criticism of their alleged neglect of traditional home virtues. The image of Germany united in war that was to be orchestrated later in the year was already belied by the reality of daily life in the capital itself.
Producer Simon Coates.
Stepping back in time exactly a century, five BBC News correspondents present their personal perspectives on the principal cities of the major European powers that, later in 1914, would fight the Great War.
The programmes continue with Hugh Schofield reimagining the chic French capital of Maurice Ravel, the Ballets Russes and Henri Matisse - but which politically suffered continuing angst over its neighbour across the Rhine: Germany.
For many, the wounds of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1 had still not healed. And the assassination in Paris of the leading French pacifist and socialist, Jean Jaurès, in late July 1914 convulsed the city and crystallised the diverging views about France's relations with her European neighbours. Hugh Schofield tells the story of why this event provoked such turmoil at the time and why it still resonates powerfully today in the politics and culture of France.
Producer Simon Coates.
As part of the Music on the Brink season, each programme in this series of "The Essay" considers the special character of Vienna, Paris, Berlin, St. Petersburg and London.
Stepping back exactly a hundred years, five BBC News correspondents present personal perspectives on the capital cities of the major European powers that, later in 1914, would face each other in the Great War. We start in the capital of the Habsburg Empire and the rich multiculturalism of Mitteleuropa.
In this programme, Bethany Bell, the BBC's Vienna Correspondent, evokes both the public face of Austria-Hungary's capital and the simmering tensions which underlay its multi-national empire on the eve of the greatest conflagration the world had yet seen. Taking us on a richly evocative tour of the embodiment of Mitteleuropa, she tells us about a world that was soon to be torn asunder but of which telling - and not always attractive - elements remain.
It is all too easy to forget, she reminds us, that within months Vienna was home to Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Leon Trotsky, Siegmund Freud and Josef Broz (later Marshal Tito) - all figures who defined the twentieth century. She also discusses the critic and satirist Karl Kraus and the controversial pre-World War One mayor of Vienna Karl Lueger.
For the multiple nationalities of 1914 Vienna, the chronic tensions which bedevilled this polyglot empire were painfully familiar. The programme reveals what has survived to this day of the compromised nature of Vienna from the era of Zemlinsky and Schreker and of Schoenberg, Webern and Berg.
Producer Simon Coates.
There's never been a better time to go blind. The digital world transforms the way information can be appreciated, doing great things for the the sighted as well as the blind - breaking down barriers to absorbing, manipulating, and transmitting culture. But access can be denied by considerations of politics and trade, rooted in the history of copyright. Visually impaired people sometimes end up as collateral damage in the war on digital piracy. Rupert Goodwins looks into how the future could be brighter for blindness.
Disability isn't limited to the physical fact of what it does to mind and body - the isolation it brings has compounded its cruelty throughout history. As a technology journalist who started off building computers, Rupert Goodwins decided to find out if he could use some of the tools of his trade to change that situation, and make our hyper-connected modern environment solve some very old problems.
The experience of being a patient in modern medicine is little discussed by doctors and often badly handled by the media. Through months of investigation as the medics tried to find the why behind the what, Rupert Goodwins finds much has changed in what it means to be a patient, and old assumptions are not a good guide for what will happen next.
Even perfect eyesight is nothing of the sort- it just looks the part. As the world changed and darkened around him, Rupert Goodwins found that not only did the real nature of sight became clearer, the revelations led to realisations about philosophy and reality that are too easily lost in the dazzle of daylight.
When journalist Rupert Goodwins started losing his sight, he wasn't expecting a journey to the back of his eyeballs that would take him 500 million years through time with stops for the evolution of modern philosophy, the nature of experience and the curious nature of sight itself. The surprise began in the night sky when the stars started going out...
In a major series for Radio 3, we rediscover some of the key thinkers and achievements from the Islamic Golden Age. The period ranges from 750 to 1258 CE and over twenty episodes, we'll hear about architecture, invention, medicine, innovation and philosophy.
In the final essay in this first set of ten essays, Professor Peter Adamson reflects on the magnitude of Al-Farabi's contribution to philosophy in the Islamic Golden Age. Al-Farabi studied and taught amongst the Christians of the Baghdad school, and later went to Syria and Egypt, dying in the middle of the 10th century in Damascus. His writings reflect the agenda of the Baghdad school: he wrote commentaries on Aristotle, concentrating on the logical works so prized by the school founder Matta. But Farabi seems to have had a more ambitious aim than his colleagues did. He wanted not just to elucidate Aristotle, or to press philosophical ideas into the service of religion but to integrate all branches of philosophy into a single, systematic theory.
Producer: Mohini Patel.
In a major series for Radio 3, we continue our journey through the Islamic Golden Age. The period ranges from 750 to 1258 CE and over the twenty episodes, we'll hear about architecture, religious scholarship, medicine, innovation and philosophy. In this evening's essay, Professor Hugh Kennedy explores the life of al-Tabari, the chronicler and historian of the early Islamic World.
Producer: Mohini Patel.
In a major series for Radio 3, we rediscover some of the key thinkers and achievements from the Islamic Golden Age. The period ranges from 750 to 1258 CE and over twenty episodes, we'll hear about architecture, invention, medicine, innovation and philosophy.
Professor James Montgomery explores the life and work of the Arab philosopher al-Kindi, widely regarded today as one of the greatest scholars of the medieval Islamic world. He was the first significant thinker to argue that philosophy and Islam had much to offer each other and need not be kept apart.
Al-Kindi lived in Iraq during the dynamic ninth century, a period when Baghdad was a hive of cultural and intellectual activity easily rivalling the greatness of Athens and Rome. He was hugely influenced by Greek philosophy and supervised the translation of many works by Aristotle and others into Arabic. The author of more than 250 works, he wrote on many different subjects, from optics to mathematics, music and astrology.
Producer: Mohini Patel.
In a major series for Radio 3, we rediscover some of the key thinkers and achievements from the Islamic Golden Age. The period ranges from 750 to 1258 CE and over twenty episodes, we'll hear about architecture, invention, medicine, mathematics, innovation and philosophy.
In today's essay, Iraqi-born scientist, writer and broadcaster Jim Al-Khalili tells us about the legacy of al-Khwarizmi. Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi was a Persian mathematician, astronomer, astrologer geographer and a scholar in the House of Wisdom in Baghdad. The House of Wisdom was a renowned centre of scientific research and teaching in his time - attracting some of the greatest minds of the Islamic Golden Age. Al-Khwarizmi was born in Persia around 780 and was one of the learned men who worked in the House of Wisdom under the leadership of Caliph al-Mamun, the son of the caliph Harun al-Rashid, who was made famous in the Arabian Nights.
Producer: Mohini Patel.
In a major series for Radio 3, we rediscover some of the key thinkers and achievements from the Islamic Golden Age. The period ranges from 750 to 1258 CE and in these twenty essays, we'll hear about architecture, invention, medicine, mathematics, innovation and philosophy. In today's essay, Narguess Farzad, senior fellow in Persian at SOAS (School of African and Oriental Studies), recounts the tale of two remarkable and influential women poets, Rabia Balkhi and Mahsati Ganjavi.
Rabia Balkhi was said to be a great beauty of royal birth who died a tragic death. She lived in the southern part of Afghanistan and from a young age, she loved to write poems on love and beauty. She fell in love with her brother's Turkish slave, Baktash. They began to meet in secret and write poetry to each other. When her brother, Hares, found out, he ordered her jugular vein be cut and that she be left to die a slow and painful death imprisoned and alone in her bathroom. As she was dying, Rabia found the strength to write her final poems with her blood on the walls of the bathroom. Her poems were not recited in public during her life time but won hearts and minds throughout the ages.
Mahsati Ganjavi was an eminent Iranian poetess and composer of quatrains. She grew up in Ganjeh, now the second largest city of Azerbaijan. Mahsati was contemporary to Seljukid Dynasty who ruled most parts of Iran from 1037 to 1194 AD. She was a poetess laureate to the courts of Sultan Mahmud II (1118-1131) and his uncle Sultan Sanjar (1131-1157). Her quatrains (Rubaiyat), were full of joy and optimism - on the joy of living and the fullness of love.
Producer: Mohini Patel.
The Islamic Golden Age rediscovered through portraits of key achivements and figures. The period ranges from 750 to 1258 CE and we'll hear about architecture, invention, medicine, innovation and philosophy. Professor Julia Bray explores the figure of Harun al-Rashid known to many from the Thousand and One Night tales.
Julia separates fact from fiction and sheds light on Harun's life. What was his Baghdad really like? Was it as Tennyson said 'A goodly place, a goodly time, For it was in the golden prime Of good Haroun Alraschid'. Harun is remembered as a champion of the arts, as a romantic hero, a benevolent ruler. However, there's plenty of evidence to the contrary and that his failure to plan properly for the future led to chaos and bloodshed.
Producer: Sarah Taylor.
In a major series for Radio 3, we rediscover some of the key thinkers and achievements from the Islamic Golden Age. The period ranges from 750 to 1258 CE and we'll hear about architecture, invention, medicine, innovation and philosophy. Professor Jonathan Bloom on how the Islamic scholars and thinkers were the early adopters of paper - far ahead of their European contemporaries.
Producer: Sarah Taylor.
In a major series for Radio 3, we rediscover some of the key thinkers and achievements from the Islamic Golden Age. The period ranges from 750 to 1258 CE and over twenty episodes, we'll hear about architecture, invention, medicine, innovation and philosophy. Baroness Warsi, the first Muslim member of the British Cabinet, gives her personal take on Persian scholar Imam Bukhari.
Producer: Sarah Taylor.
In a major series for Radio 3, we rediscover some of the key thinkers and achievements from the Islamic Golden Age. The period ranges from 750 to 1258 CE and we'll hear about architecture, invention, medicine, innovation and philosophy. Professor Robert Gleave continues the series with an essay featuring Ali ibn Abi Talib and the origins of Shi'ism.
Producer: Sarah Taylor.
In a major series for Radio 3, we rediscover some of the key thinkers and achievements from the Islamic Golden Age. The period ranges from 750 to 1258 CE and we'll hear about architecture, invention, medicine, innovation and philosophy. Professor Hugh Kennedy begins the series with an introductory essay explaining how the Islamic state established itself.
Producer: Sarah Taylor.
Writer Adam Gopnik sees Cubism, far from being a premonition of abstraction, as a new form of poetic modern realism, a way of capturing the syncopated, quick paced, ecletic mix of high and low that marks our civilization. Its tragedy, he argues, is that it captured that spirit just as the civilization it celebrated was about to commit suicide.
Producer: Sara Davies.
Among the memorable publishing highlights of 1913 Paris, Alain-Fournier's Le Grand Meaulnes has become one of France's best-loved and most revered novels. Writer Michele Roberts looks at why it occupies such a privileged place in French hearts, and assesses the cultural and literary landscape from which it emerged.
Producer: Sara Davies.
Guillaume Apollinaire's volume of poetry, Alcools, met with astonishment, admiration and a good deal of outrage when it was published in Paris in 1913. In its experiments with subject, structure and style it blazed a bold trail for the modernist poetry of the 1920s, claims Martin Sorrell of Exeter University.
Producer: Sara Davies.
1913 marks an extraordinary year in Paris. Momentous events occurred in literature, music and the visual arts. In the first of four essays looking at this annus mirabilis for French and European culture, Professor Michael G Wood of Princeton University explores the publication of Marcel Proust's Swann's Way, a novel that marked a turning point in the relationship between a writer and his characters.
Producer: Sara Davies.
In this final essay, psychotherapist Emmy Van Deurzen reflects on how existentialist philosophy has shaped her life and work. She grew up in the Netherlands, but went as a student to France, where she read philosophy and later studied psychotherapy. Her work in the two fields led her to want to follow an existentialist path- to pursue a form of therapy which was rooted in philosophy. She now lives and teaches in England, where she works with clients on using moments of crisis in their lives for positive action.
Producer: Emma Kingsley
The Existential Me was first broadcast in November 2013 to mark the centenary of the birth of Albert Camus.
Here, film-maker Gary Walkow reflects on how existential thinking has influenced his work, from his adaptation of Dostoevsky's "Notes From Underground" to his film on the Beat writers.
Producer: Emma Kingsley
The Existential Me was first broadcast in November 2013 to mark the centenary of the birth of Albert Camus.
The novelist and poet Michèle Roberts, half French, has been considerably influenced by existentialist literature. Her essay begins with an examination of Raymond beating up his nameless girlfriend in Camus's 'L'Etranger' - and getting let off by the police - then moves on to the works of Simone de Beauvoir and a discussion of feminism as a politics. She considers, too, existentialism as it appears in Madeleine Bourdouxhe, and how she has learned from both these writers.
Producer: Julian May
The Existential Me was first broadcast in November 2013 to mark the centenary of the birth of Albert Camus.
Paul Hart is a young theatre director who last year directed Jean Paul Sartre's existentialist play 'Huis Clos' in London's West End. In the play three people are locked in a room with each other for eternity. This is damnation, for Hell, famously, is other people.
This year Hart was staff director of 'The Captain of Köpenick' at the National Theatre. In Carl Zuckmayer's play petty criminal Wilhelm Voigt (Antony Sher), released after fifteen years in prison, wanders 1910-Berlin in desperate pursuit of identity papers. When he picks up an abandoned military uniform in a fancy-dress shop he suddenly finds the city ready to obey his every command. But what he craves is official recognition that he exists.
Drawing on his experience of these productions, his other work in the theatre and his life as he establishes himself in his hazardous profession, Paul Hart considers the power and veracity of existentialist ideas.
Producer: Julian May
The Existential Me was first broadcast in November 2013 to mark the centenary of the birth of Albert Camus.
'The Existential Me' is a series marking the centenary of the birth of Albert Camus and complementing Radio 3's documentary about him. Five people working in different disciplines write essays about existentialism its impact on their work and their lives.
As well as writing novels and short stories Naomi Alderman is a writer of computer games. The world of computers is, she believes essentially existentialist because nothing exists except through the will of the players, who create themselves. Within the games they exist solely through what they do. Any meaning is created by the players themselves Alderman considers the implications of this, and they way her literary and gaming endeavours influence each other.
She is fascinated, too, by the way that the first and third persons are the dominant voices in writing, but in computer games and cyber space the second person comes to the fore. There is a constant challenge to you. What are you up to? What do you want to do now? This, she reflects, is entirely existential.
Producer: Julian May.
Novelist Glenn Patterson is proudly Belfast, and admits to being baffled by Derry in his childhood - it seemed far off in the distant West, and not quite in Northern Ireland, and not quite in Donegal, on whose border the city lies. Belfast has had a tendency to feel superior culturally, so why then has Derry's unique cultural tale had such a lasting impact and influence on Glenn? The city's Punk rockers The Undertones changed his view of music and 'shook' him awake, so why does he now think of them as Canadians?
Dublin born Nuala Hayes first came to Derry in the 1970s to act in Brian Friel's early Field Day productions, including the first staging of Translations at the height of the 'troubles'. Since then she has become fascinated with the city's many stories, and in particular those of the famous shirt factories. Nuala ponders the common threads of the city's shirt factory and story-telling traditions, examining the shirt as a symbol in Irish poetry and literature, and on the factory floors of Derry where story-telling became a way of life for the city's women.
Novelist Brian McGilloway was born and brought up in Derry, a city from which his imagination has never quite escaped. He explores how the urban landscape shaped him creatively, from the river Foyle which divides the city, to its dark, tangled streets and alleyways, and the strange hinterland of the nearby Donegal border. As his writing progressed, the city began to take shape as a character in its own right, one which continues to feed and inspire his imagination.
Composer, jazz musician and session pianist Neil Cowley revisits his year as musician in residence for Derry / Londonderry, the inaugural UK City of Culture in 2013. Neil arrived in a city he knew little about, full of trepidation thanks to years of headlines about terrorism and violence in Northern Ireland. What he found among the city's young musicians challenged and changed not only his long-held preconceptions, but also his view of music as a tool to bring about change.
Journalist and author Susan McKay returns to Londonderry to explore what 'City of Culture' status has meant to the place of her birth. Known as both Derry and Londonderry, the walled city became the inaugural UK City of Culture in 2013, and Susan examines what rebranding and reimagining has meant to a place that endured some of the worst episodes of the 'troubles' throughout her school days. As its search for identity continues, what has the city gained from its year in the limelight, and has anyone beyond its ancient walls noticed?
What happens when cinema shuts up? Matthew Sweet explores those moments when the talkie stops talking and cuts the music dead: the final minutes of William Wyler's Roman Holiday; the heist in Rififi; Oliver Hardy's long despairing look into the camera lens. He also listens hard to those cinematic sounds being silenced by digital technology from the fizz of a reel-change to the wear and tear on a film's soundtrack and asks what we have lost now that cinema is no longer a physical, photochemical medium.
The writer and film critic David Thomson explores how film composers create mood and how the best music evokes a place beyond reality.
The American academic and social critic Camille Paglia on the film scores which have inspired her since childhood including the work of Bernard Herrmann, John Dankworth and Max Steiner.
The novelist Jonathan Coe explores how a joint concert with Arthur Honegger led to the composer Miklós Rózsa writing for film, including the scores for 'Ben-Hur', 'Spellbound' and 'The Lost Weekend'.
The live music and sound effects, the unruly audiences, the performers paid to interpret mysterious foreign intertitles, the usherettes spraying the audience with disinfectant. Matthew Sweet explores the sound-world of cinema's beginnings, from the orchestras of big-budget epics to the small improvising bands of the fleapits - and discovers how their ghosts haunt the modern cinemagoing experience.
First broadcast September 2013.
Continuing the Sound of Cinema season, writer A L Kennedy contemplates the inconveniences of love in the 1945 Powell and Pressburger romance 'I Know Where I'm Going!', set on a remote Scottish island.
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, together known as The Archers, were one of the most influential and audacious film-makers of the 1930s and 40s. Their groundbreaking works include: 'The Red Shoes', 'The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp', 'A Matter of Life and Death' and 'Black Narcissus'.
A L Kennedy is an award-winning writer and stand-up comedian.
Producer: Justine Willett.
Continuing the Sound of Cinema season, Ian Christie on the 1943 Powell and Pressburger film The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, a film that has been called Britain's answer to Citizen Kane.
Ian Christie knew Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger well, and was instrumental in bringing their films to a new audience in the 1980s. Here he looks at their unusual relationship through one of their greatest films.
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, together known as The Archers, were one of the most influential and audacious film-makers of the 1930s and 40s. Their groundbreaking works include: 'The Red Shoes', 'The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp', 'A Matter of Life and Death' and 'Black Narcissus'.
Ian Christie is an acclaimed film scholar, who has written several works on the films of Powell and Pressburger.
Producer: Justine Willett.
As part of BBC Radio 3's Sound of Cinema, a week of essays written and presented by historian and columnist Simon Heffer on classic British taboo-breaking films which depicted a society changed profoundly by war.
In Heffer on British Film, he puts the case for five films from the decade after the war which show British cinema dealing with gritty social issues and dramatic high standards before the 60s were underway - including It Always Rains on Sunday (1947), The Browning Version (1951), Mandy (1953), The Long Memory (1952), and Yield to the Night (1956), the subject of his final essay in the series.
Yield to the Night was widely regarded as the pinnacle of Diana Dors' career - the film on which her reputation as a serious actress rests. She plays a murderess Mary Hilton sentenced to hang, spending her last days in the condemned cell in a British women's prison. It was released a year after Ruth Ellis was executed and bore an uncanny resemblance to her case but it was actually based on a novel of 1954 - a year before Ellis murdered Blakely.
Mary is a married woman who drifts into an affair with a good-looking piano player Jim Lancaster (Michael Craig) The problem is the affair is one-sided. Jim is smitten with another - Lucy Carpenter - who is way out of his league. But Mary is so hopelessly in love, she starts to believe Lucy deserves to die. And she has Jim's gun. But she shoots not her boyfriend, but her boyfriend's lover.
The story of events leading to murder is told in flashback and there is little doubt that the screenplay draws liberally on the Ellis case - the murderess withdrawing her revolver from her handbag in the street, and emptying its chambers into her victim with shocking calmness. A glamorous, bottle-blonde young woman, Mary, like Ellis, had difficulties with men all her life and makes no attempt to escape justice.
The film focuses almost entirely on her experience of prison - the British equivalent of Death Row - awaiting execution, and on her relationship with the various female prison warders, and in particular with MacFarlane (Yvonne Mitchell). Mary is a likeable young woman and the warders grow fond of her. Decidedly anti-capital punishment and downbeat in mood, the film won critical acclaim, particularly for the skilled acting of Dors, who had previously been cast solely as the stereotypical "blonde bombshell".
Producer: Mohini Patel.
As part of BBC Radio 3's Sound of Cinema, a week of essays written and presented by historian and columnist Simon Heffer on classic British taboo-breaking films which depicted a society changed profoundly by war. The cinema of the 30s was nakedly and unashamedly escapist in a way that the cinema of the late 40s and early 50s - in an age of lost innocence and social upheaval - simply couldn't be. This was a period when British cinema was forced to embrace change and reflect reality.
Taboos it had left untouched could no longer be ignored if film was to remain relevant. Families had broken up because of bereavement and adultery. Subjects considered unsuitable for a cinema audience - marital breakdown , criminality, revenge, failings in the justice system, and disability - suddenly became popular with British screenwriters and studios. Social realism was the order of the day.
In Heffer on British Film, Simon Heffer puts the case for five films from the decade after the war which show British cinema dealing with gritty social issues and dramatic high standards before the 60s were underway - including It Always Rains on Sunday (1947), The Long Memory (1952), The Browning Version (1951), Yield to the Night (1956) and the focus of today's essay - Mandy (1953).
Ealing Studios' Mandy, directed by Alexander Mackendrick was based on the book 'The Day Is Ours' by Hilda Lewis, with screenplay by Nigel Balchin and Jack Whittingham. It's the story of a girl, Mandy Garland, who is diagnosed with a congenital hearing defect and starred Phyllis Calvert, Jack Hawkins and Terence Morgan.
As her parents Harry and Christine Garland come to terms with the fact that they have a deaf-mute daughter, they enrol her in special education classes to try to get her to speak. As she struggles to express herself and learn how to lip-read, her parents argue over the best way to deal with her condition and their marriage comes under severe strain. This is compounded by hints of an affair between Christine and Searle (Jack Hawkins) , the headmaster of the school for the deaf where Mandy is enrolled. Although it may be too late for the little girl to make great strides, the specialist training eventually pays off to the point where Mandy says her own name for the first time.
While the drama revolves around the parents' sharply conflicting views of what to do for their child, the unpretentious, documentary style adopted by MacKendrick reveals the world through the eyes of the little girl as she responds to the strange way adults around her conduct themselves and the sensitive guidance of her school. And, thanks to the wonderful performance he draws from Mandy Miller, the slow but sure development of this youngster is at the heart of the film.
Producer: Mohini Patel.
As part of BBC Radio 3's Sound of Cinema, a week of essays written and presented by historian and columnist Simon Heffer on classic British taboo-breaking films which depicted a society changed profoundly by war. The cinema of the 30s was nakedly and unashamedly escapist in a way that the cinema of the late 40s and early 50s - in an age of lost innocence and social upheaval - simply couldn't be. This was a period when British cinema was forced to embrace change and reflect reality.
In Heffer on British Film, Simon Heffer puts the case for five films from the decade after the war which show British cinema dealing with gritty social issues and dramatic high standards before the 60s were underway - including It Always Rains on Sunday (1947), Mandy (1953), Yield to the Night (1956), The Browning Version (1951) and the subject of today's essay - The Long Memory (1952).
The Long Memory was Robert Hamer's follow-up to the success of Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949), one of the driest black Ealing comedies ever made. Hamer wrote the script for this thriller with Frank Harvey, adapting a novel by Howard Clewes. It portrays Britain as depressed, worn out by war, and full of the poor, dispossessed, transient, and criminal. It tells the story of Phillip Davidson (John Mills) fresh out of prison after serving twelve years for a murder he didn't commit and obsessed with revenge.
An early flashback provides us with the details: a smuggling job goes sour, and Davidson is blamed for the death of a man who, in fact, is not dead. His girlfriend, Fay (Elizabeth Sellars), played a significant part in securing that conviction. She was coerced by her father to lie about the identity of the man who was burned in the boat fire that followed the altercation. And one of the film's neat little twists, she subsequently goes on to marry the very policeman superintendent originally in charge of Davidson's case. Davidson makes his home in a remote shack on the Kent Marshes, and grimly sets about the task of seeking out his former tormentors. The action alternates between his search and the slow unravelling of the idyllic domesticity of the policeman's life. Davidson gets involved with local waitress Ilse, played by Norwegian actress Eva Bergh, a refugee her from being raped one night and a touching relationship develops between them, forcing Davidson to re-evaluate his need for revenge.
Producer: Mohini Patel.
The cinema of the 30s was nakedly and unashamedly escapist in a way that the cinema of the late 40s and early 50s - in an age of lost innocence and social upheaval - simply couldn't be. This was a period when British cinema was forced to embrace change and reflect reality. Taboos it had left untouched could no longer be ignored if film was to remain relevant. Families had broken up because of bereavement and adultery.
In Heffer on British Film, Simon Heffer puts the case for five films from the decade after the war which show British cinema dealing with gritty social issues and dramatic high standards before the 60s were underway - including It Always Rains on Sunday (1947), The Long Memory (1952), Mandy (1953), Yield to the Night (1956) and the subject of today's essay - The Browning Version (1951).
Anthony Asquith's adaptation of Terence Rattigan's unforgettable play. The Browning Version, outlines personal, marital and institutional failure with a clarity and honesty unusual for the time, if not unprecedented. A heart-breaking story of remorse and atonement, The Browning Version is a classic of British realism and the winner of best actor and best screenplay honours at the 1951 Cannes Film Festival. It's set in an English public school on the last day of the summer term. The once-brilliant classicist, Andrew Crocker-Harris, played by Michael Redgrave, is about to leave his post after 18 years because of ill-health, to take a less demanding job and begins to feel that his life has been a failure. His students despise him - the boys and staff alike nick-named him 'The Crock' - and his wife Millie, played by Jean Kent, is carrying on an affair with another master at the school.
Diminished by poor health, a crumbling marriage, and the derision of his pupils, the once brilliant scholar is compelled to re-examine his life when an unexpected gesture of kindness from a pupil of a copy of Browning's translation of the Agamemnon overwhelms him and brings a ray of hope. He must confront his utter failures as teacher, husband, and a man. Long-repressed emotion, disappointment and humiliation are released and the way is paved for a series of surprising revelations and decisions.
Producer: Mohini Patel.
As part of BBC Radio 3's Sound of Cinema, a week of essays written and presented by historian and columnist Simon Heffer on classic British taboo-breaking films which depicted a society changed profoundly by war.
In this first programme Heffer explores the Britain depicted by director Robert Hamer in what he describes as his 'stunning film noir' "It Always Rains on Sunday".
"The period between 1945 and 1955," says Heffer, "was when the British cinema started to grow up. The films reflected a world that existed rather than one self-appointed moral arbiters wished existed. The treatment of class became radically different. Hamer brought a mathematician's precision and a poet's touch to his work. He was the most original directorial talent working in Britain, whatever fans of Michael Powell and David Lean might argue. He combined acute visual sense with a regard for and an understanding of the English language, matched by none of his rivals."
The cinema of the 30s was nakedly and unashamedly escapist in a way that the cinema of the late 40s and early 50s - in an age of lost innocence and social upheaval - simply couldn't be. Taboos it had left untouched could no longer be ignored if film was to remain relevant. Families had broken up because of bereavement and adultery. Subjects considered unsuitable for a cinema audience - marital breakdown , criminality, revenge, failings in the justice system, and disability - suddenly became popular with British screenwriters and studios. Social realism was the order of the day. And in "It Always Rains on Sunday" from 1947, Hamer depicts a gritty world of shrewish housewives, spivs, chancers, petty thugs and avuncular but determined policemen who patrolled the streets of London's tough Bethnal Green district.
In the final essay of this series, Mike Figgis reflects on the lessons he learned while working on big studio films in Hollywood and on how those experiences shaped his own approach to directing.
Mike Figgis is an Academy Award nominated film director, writer, and composer. His films include, Suspension of Disbelief (2013), Love Live Long (2008), Cold Creek Manor (2003), Hotel (2001), Miss Julie (1999), One Night Stand (1997), Leaving Las Vegas (1995), The Browning Version (1994), Internal Affairs (1990) and Stormy Monday (1988).
The series is produced by Sasha Yevtushenko.
First broadcast in February 2012.
Josie Rourke, the Artistic Director of the Donmar Warehouse, reminds us that working in theatre isn't always plain sailing. In her essay, she looks at what happens when disaster strikes and things go wrong. It's in these situations that a director is truly tested.
Josie Rourke trained with directors Peter Gill, Michael Grandage, Nicholas Hytner, Phyllida Lloyd and Sam Mendes. Before coming to the Bush she worked for five years as a freelance director and was the Associate Director of Sheffield Theatres and Trainee Associate Director at the Royal Court. At the Royal Court she directed Loyal Women by Gary Mitchell. She was the tour director of The Vagina Monologues by Eve Ensler. For the Royal Shakespeare Company she directed Believe What You Will and King John.
Rourke was the Artistic Director of the Bush Theatre between 2007 and 2011, where she also directed many of its hits including Nick Payne's If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet. In 2011, Rourke directed a production of Much Ado About Nothing at Wyndham's Theatre, starring David Tennant and Catherine Tate. She became Artistic Director of the Donmar Warehouse in January 2012 and her first production as director was George Farquhar's The Recruiting Officer.
The series is produced by Sasha Yevtushenko.
First broadccast in February 2012.
Tony Award-winning director Bartlett Sher explores how a director must search for the play's 'inward sound' when creating theatre.
Bartlett Sher has been nominated four times for the Tony Award, winning it in 2009 for the Broadway revival of South Pacific. Sher was previously the Artistic Director at the Intiman Playhouse in Seattle and is now Resident Director at the Lincoln Centre in New York. His recent work in the UK includes the ENO production of Nico Muhly's opera Two Boys.
The series is produced by Sasha Yevtushenko.
First broadcast in February 2012.
In the second of five essays, the theatre director Emma Rice explores the role of the director as storyteller, and elaborates on the undertaking that transforms a text into a fully-fledged production.
Emma Rice is the Joint Artistic Director of Kneehigh Theatre. For Kneehigh, she has directed for The Red Shoes (2002 Theatrical Management Association [TMA] Theatre Award for Best Director); The Wooden Frock (2004 TMA Theatre Award nomination for Best Touring Production); The Bacchae (2005 TMA Theatre Award for Best Touring Production); Tristan & Yseult (2006 TMA Theatre Award nomination for Best Touring Production); Cymbeline (in association with the Royal Shakespeare Company for The Complete Works festival); A Matter of Life and Death (Royal National Theatre production in association with Kneehigh Theatre); Rapunzel (in association with Battersea Arts Centre); Brief Encounter (tour and West End; Studio 54, Broadway); and Don John (in association with the Royal Shakespeare Company and Bristol Old Vic). She was nominated for the 2009 Olivier Award for Best Director for Brief Encounter.
Emma's latest work includes Oedipussy for Spymonkey; Steptoe & Son; the West End production of Umbrellas of Cherbourg; Wah! Wah! Girls for World Stages in association with Sadler's Wells and Theatre Royal Stratford East; and, in spring 2013, The Empress at the RSC.
The series is produced by Sasha Yevtushenko.
First broadcast in February 2012.
In the first essay of the series, Roger Michell reflects on the mix of emotion he feels on the first day of any production, and beckons us to follow as he travels to the location of his 2012 film Hyde Park on Hudson.
A James Cameron film. A Rupert Goold production. The director has become an acclaimed and authoritative figure - even a star in his own right - but the job itself remains the subject of speculation: what does a director actually do? And what is the mysterious 'process' that sees them from idea to first night? In this Essay series, five innovative practitioners of stage and screen reveal the daily grind of a craft which, despite books and interviews on the subject, remains opaque.
Roger Michell's career has spanned theatre, television and film. Earlier in his career, he worked at the Royal Court and the RSC, where he eventually became a resident director. He continues to divide his time between theatre and film, and recent stage productions include Rope (The Almeida) and Tribes (Royal Court). For BBC television he directed The Buddha of Suburbia (1993) and Persuasian (1995). Some of his films include Notting Hill (1999), Changing Lanes (2002), The Mother (2003), Enduring Love (2004), Venus (2006) and Morning Glory (2010), as well as Hyde Park on Hudson (2012).
The series is produced by Sasha Yevtushenko.
First broadcast in February 2012.
Five contemporary novelists examine the craft of Dickens's prose, and reflect on how the giant of British nineteenth-century fiction is both a role model and a shadow looming over their own writing. Taking as their starting point a favourite extract from one of Dickens's novels, each writer discuss Dickens's themes, narrative techniques and writing craft, and tells us what they themselves have learnt from it. They offer thoughtful, unusually engaged and focused critical appreciation of Dickens's skill, as well as valuable insights into their own work and how they themselves wrestle with the subject and technique under discussion.
In the final programme in the series, novelist Justin Cartwright reflects on the significant place Christmas occupies in Dickens's work, and argues that this is a direct result of his experiences as a child and not simply an expression of sentiment.
First broadcast in December 2011.
Five contemporary novelists examine the craft of Dickens's prose, and reflect on how the giant of British nineteenth-century fiction is both a role model and a shadow looming over their own writing. Taking as their starting point a favourite extract from one of Dickens's novels, each writer discuss Dickens's themes, narrative techniques and writing craft, and tells us what they themselves have learnt from it. They offer thoughtful, unusually engaged and focused critical appreciation of Dickens's skill, as well as valuable insights into their own work and how they themselves wrestle with the subject and technique under discussion.
In the fourth programme in the series novelist Alexander McCall Smith salutes Dickens's mastery of the episodic form, something he himself used with great success in his novels 44 Scotland Street, published over several years in a daily newspaper, and Corduroy Mansions, published in daily episodes online.
First broadcast in December 2011.
Five contemporary novelists examine the craft of Dickens's prose, and reflect on how the giant of British nineteenth-century fiction is both a role model and a shadow looming over their own writing. Taking as their starting point a favourite extract from one of Dickens's novels, each writer discuss Dickens's themes, narrative techniques and writing craft, and tells us what they themselves have learnt from it. They offer thoughtful, unusually engaged and focused critical appreciation of Dickens's skill, as well as valuable insights into their own work and how they themselves wrestle with the subject and technique under discussion.
In the third programme in the series, novelist, essayist and performer A L Kennedy takes an extract from Nicholas Nickleby as her starting point for a provocative exploration of poverty and misery - themes which loom large in Dickens's work, and which are never far from her own fiction.
First broadcast in December 2011.
Five contemporary novelists examine the craft of Dickens's prose, and reflect on how the giant of British nineteenth-century fiction is both a role model and a shadow looming over their own writing. Taking as their starting point a favourite extract from one of Dickens's novels, each writer discuss Dickens's themes, narrative techniques and writing craft, and tells us what they themselves have learnt from it. They offer thoughtful, unusually engaged and focused critical appreciation of Dickens's skill, as well as valuable insights into their own work and how they themselves wrestle with the subject and technique under discussion.
In the second essay in the series, Booker-shortlisted novelist Romesh Gunesekera takes an extract from David Copperfield as a starting point for an exploration of Dickens's writing about childhood and the move from childhood into adulthood, a theme which has been significant in his own writing.
First broadcast in December 2011.
Five contemporary novelists examine the craft of Dickens's prose, and reflect on how the giant of British nineteenth-century fiction is both a role model and a shadow looming over their own writing. Taking as their starting point a favourite extract from one of Dickens's novels, each writer discuss Dickens's themes, narrative techniques and writing craft, and tells us what they themselves have learnt from it. They offer thoughtful, unusually engaged and focused critical appreciation of Dickens's skill, as well as valuable insights into their own work and how they themselves wrestle with the subject and technique under discussion.
Beginning the series is Tessa Hadley, writing on Rooms and Reality. Taking as her starting point the description of the Clenham's house in Little Dorritt, she explores how Dickens paints the reality of his world through his characters' houses, and reflects on how significant houses are her own writing.
Other writers in the series are A L Kennedy, Alexander McCall Smith, Romesh Gunesekera and Justin Cartwright.
First broadcast in December 2011.
Wagner and Adorno
Professor John Deathridge explores the posthumous reputation of Wagner in the 20th Century as seen through the lens of the philosopher Theodor Adorno who had pertinent things to say about Wagner's appropriation by the fascists, his infamous anti-semitism, and the related issues of German culture post-World War 2, the culture industry and mass culture in general.
Wagner and Nietzsche
Michael Tanner looks at the relationship between two titans of German culture, the 55-year old composer Richard Wagner and the precocious 24-year old philologist, who was destined to become the great philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche. Out of their heady late-night chats about Schopenhauer, Euripedes and Socrates came Nietzsche's first book, The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music. The relationship was to darken and turn sour in later years when Nietzsche accused Wagner of "slobbering at the foot of the cross" in his final opera, Parsifal. But to the end Nietzsche was to regard his encounter with Wagner as one of the most important events of his life.
Wagner and Schopenhauer
Professor Christopher Janaway on Wagner's life-changing encounter with the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer. In 1854 he read Schopenhauer's masterwork, The World as Will and Representation; and it hit him like a thunderbolt. Wagner discovered a thinker who endorsed his own developing views on the role of music and gave him a new way to think about his perpetual struggles with desire and erotic love. It also convinced him of the futility of political agitation. It can be argued that Wagner bent these ideas to his own purposes; and that Tristan and Isolde, written in the aftermath of this great encounter, is really a Schopenhauerian experiment gone wrong: instead of losing desire and attachment, the two lovers intensify both to the extreme. It was only in his last opera, Parsifal, that Wagner finally produced a music drama that seems in many respects at peace with the ascetic ideal of his philosophical hero, Arthur Schopenhauer.
Wagner and the Philosophy of Revolution:
Professor Anthony Grayling looks at the crucial years before and after the Dresden uprising of 1849 when Wagner was manning the barricades with revolutionaries such as Mikhail Bakunin. After the death of the philosopher, Hegel, in 1831, a group of his followers, the Young Hegelians argued that the forces of freedom and reason would continue to conquer everything in their way. Into this heady mix came the attacks on religious orthodoxy of Ludwig Feurbach and the political and economic theories of Proudhon. Wagner drank this all in greedily. And during his years of exile in Switzerland these ideas bubbled away and were reborn in his own philosophical essays concerning the artwork of the future aimed at remaking society along utopian socialist lines.
Wagner and German Idealism
Professor Roger Scruton explores the philosophical background that influenced the young Richard Wagner. The German universities of his youth were in a state of intellectual ferment in the aftermath of the greatest philosopher of modern times, Immanuel kant. Out of this came a school of philosophy known as German Idealism. Wagner was particular influenced by the most famous of these philosophers, Hegel. And, even though Wagner was later to radically revise his philosophical views, the ideas of Hegel can still be traced in his great cycle of music dramas, The Ring: the notion that nothing human is permanent, and all must perish in the spirit's ongoing search for self-knowledge. And the essence of this spirit, Hegel argued, is freedom. Wagner took this idea one step further. Freedom, for Wagner, was not only a political phenomenon, it was also a profound spiritual reality, revealed in the moment of sacrifice.
En liten tjänst av I'm With Friends. Finns även på engelska.