Arts & Ideas
1,985 episodes - English - Latest episode: 2 months ago - ★★★★ - 268 ratingsLeading thinkers discuss the ideas shaping our lives – looking back at the news and making links between past and present. Broadcast as Free Thinking, Fridays at 9pm on BBC Radio 4. Presented by Matthew Sweet, Shahidha Bari and Anne McElvoy.
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Episodes
Get Carter
September 22, 2020 11:00 - 45 minutes - 41.7 MBThe film starring Michael Caine was adapted from a 1970 Ted Lewis novel set in an underworld of gangsters and teenage pornography. Mike Hodges, Nick Triplow, Pamela Hutchinson and John Gray talk with Matthew Sweet about the influence of the book and film. Originally set in Scunthorpe, Lewis' novel Jack's Return Home was relocated to Newcastle/Gateshead for the film which Mike Hodges adapted and directed. A series of events marking what would have been Ted Lewis's 80th birthday are taking pl...
Family ties and reshaping history
September 17, 2020 11:38 - 44 minutes - 40.9 MBFrom the influential part played by Sikh queens, through the ties of marriage and religion which helped shape the Western world, back to the links between Neanderthals and early man: Rana Mitter talks to Priya Atwal, Joseph Henrich, and Rebecca Wragg Sykes about family ties, power networks, and history. Priya Atwal has published Royal and Rebels: The Rise and Fall of the Sikh Empire. Dr Atwal is a Teaching Fellow in Modern South Asian History at King's College London. Joseph Henrich is a Pr...
New Thinking: The Mayflower and Native American History
September 16, 2020 08:00 - 48 minutes - 44.5 MBFrom fancy dress parties using native American head-dresses to the continuing significance of Wampum belts made of shells - how do particular objects help us tell the story of the colonisation of America and what is the legacy of the ideas brought by Puritan settlers who left English port cities like Plymouth and Southampton 400 years ago? Eleanor Barraclough talks to 3 academics whose research helps us answer these questions - Sarah Churchwell, Kathryn Gray and Lauren Working - and we hear ...
Piranesi and disturbing archecture
September 15, 2020 11:00 - 45 minutes - 41.4 MBSusanna Clarke, Adam Scovell, Lucy Arnold and Anton Bakker are Matthew Sweet's guests. Susanna Clarke talks about the inspiration behind the follow up to her best-selling first novel, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. Piranesi is the springboard for a discussion about haunted spaces and mind-bending architecture in film, fiction and art from MC Escher to Christopher Nolan's Inception, Shirley Jackson to Mervyn Peake. The print maker Giovanni Battista Piranesi, who was born 300 years ago on Oc...
The Radiophonic Workshop
August 06, 2020 09:00 - 43 minutes - 39.6 MBThe BBC Radiophonic workshop was founded in 1958 by Desmond Briscoe and Daphne Oram. This group of experimental composers, sound engineers and musical innovators provided music for programmes including The Body in Question, Horizon, Quatermass, Newsround, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Chronicle and Delia Derbyshire's iconic Doctor Who Theme before being shut down by Director General John Birt in 1998. Tying into the 2020 celebration of classic Prom concerts, this episode of Free Thi...
Greek classics and the sea plus a pair of novels byTolstoy and Dostoevsky
July 29, 2020 17:28 - 41 minutes - 38.2 MBClassicists Edith Hall and Barry Cunliffe explore the importance of the sea in the classical world in a discussion hosted by Rana Mitter. Pat Barker and Giles Fraser look at Tolstoy's War and Peace and Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov and the depiction of faith in those novels with presenter Ian McMillan. The Ancient Greeks often preferred to take sea journeys rather than risk encounters with brigands and travelling through mountain passes inland and colonised all round the Black Sea an...
Wole Soyinka's writing
July 29, 2020 17:00 - 45 minutes - 42 MBNovelist Ben Okri, playwright Oladipo Agboluaje and academic Louisa Egbunike join Matthew Sweet to look at the influential writing of Nigerian playwright and author Wole Soyinka - and specifically at his play 1975 Death and the King's Horseman. In 1986 he became the first African author to be given the Nobel Prize in Literature. He has worked teaching at many universities in the USA, and began playwriting after studying at University College Ibadan, and then at Leeds University and working a...
Bernard-Henri Lévy, Stella Sandford, Homi K Bhabha
July 28, 2020 21:45 - 45 minutes - 41.4 MBThe French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy has written a philosophical take on the current pandemic and what it tells us about society. He talks with Stella Sandford, Director of the Society for European Philosophy in the UK and author of How to Read Beauvoir, whose own research looks at sex, race and feminism, and with Homi Bhabha, the Anne F. Rothenberg Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University. The Virus in the Age of Madness by Bernard-Henri Lévy is out now. You can find a philoso...
Anne Applebaum, Ingrid Bergman, Herland
July 23, 2020 10:07 - 45 minutes - 41.3 MBAnne Applebaum's new book The Twilight of Democracy has the subtitle The failure of democracy and the parting of friends. She talks to Anne McElvoy about what happened when she tried to connect up with past friends whose politics are now different to her own. The American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman is most famous now for her short story The Yellow Wallpaper. Will Abberley tells us about her view of fashion and why women should not seek to stand out because a focus on their appearance wa...
Dada and the power of Nonsense
July 22, 2020 23:58 - 45 minutes - 41.4 MBSubversion in art and writing and a project to re-imagine Dada. Curator Jade French, artist Jade Montserrat, writer Lottie Whalen and 2020 New Generation Thinker Noreen Masud are in conversation with Shahidha Bari. You can find more about today's guests and their research at https://jademontserrat.com/ https://www.jadefrench.co.uk/research http://www.takedadaseriously.com/ http://lucywritersplatform.com/author/lottie-whalen/ https://www.dur.ac.uk/english.studies/staff/?id=17758 New Generat...
Proms Lecture - Daniel Levitin: Music and Our Brains
July 22, 2020 23:16 - 59 minutes - 54 MBFormer musician and record producer Daniel Levitin is now a leading neuroscientist and best selling author. In this year marking the anniversary of the birth of Beethoven, Rana Mitter introduces a Proms Lecture called "Unlocking the Mysteries of Music in Your Brain", which uses Beethoven's compositions to set the Proms audience it was recorded with, in 2015, a series of challenges which reveal the relationship between memory and music. You can also find Daniel Levitin talking to Rana Mitt...
New Thinking:Nature Writing
July 15, 2020 09:00 - 43 minutes - 39.7 MBGilbert White was born on July 19th 1720 at his grandfather's vicarage in Hampshire. His Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (1789) influenced a young Charles Darwin and he's been called England's first ecologist. Dafydd Mills Daniel from the University of Oxford tracks his influence on contemporary debates about the impact of man on the planet and the beginnings of precise and scientific observations about birds and animals. Dr Pippa Marland from the University of Leeds runs the Lan...
Magic
July 14, 2020 11:42 - 46 minutes - 42.3 MBMatthew Sweet delves into the deep history of magic, its evolution into religion and science and its continuing relevance in the 21st century. Joining his coven are novelist and historian Kate Laity, Professor of European Archaeology at Oxford University Chris Gosden, Jessica Gossling who's one of the leaders of the Decadence Research Unit at Goldsmiths, University of London and John Tresch, Professor of the History of Science and Folk Practice at the Warburg Institute. The History of Magic...
Egyptian Satire
July 09, 2020 20:46 - 12 minutes - 11.7 MBDina 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 abou...
Pogroms and prejudice
July 09, 2020 20:35 - 14 minutes - 13 MBNew 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/...
The consolation of philosophy and stories
July 09, 2020 19:41 - 45 minutes - 41.3 MBThe Roman statesman Boethius wrote The Consolation of Philosophy around the year 524 when he was incarcerated. It advises that fame and wealth are transitory and explores the nature of happiness and belief. Former Bishop of Edinburgh Richard Holloway has been wrestling with the way we understand belief. He joins Professor Seth Lerer and New Generation Thinker Kylie Murray in a discussion chaired by Matthew Sweet. Richard Holloway's new book is called Stories We Tell Ourselves: Making Meanin...
What does a black history curriculum look like?
July 08, 2020 08:55 - 45 minutes - 41.2 MBWhose life stories are missing from the British history we write and teach? How do we widen the way we look at episodes which are on the syllabus? Rana Mitter's panel comprises Kimberly McIntosh Senior Policy Editor from the Runnymede Trust, Lavinya Stennett founder of the Black Curriculum & New Generation Thinker Christienna Fryar, who runs the Black British History MA at Goldsmiths, University of London. Plus Hester Grant has just published a history of the Sharp family. Granville Sharp w...
Prison Break
July 03, 2020 17:00 - 14 minutes - 13.4 MBPrison 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,...
Facing Facts
July 03, 2020 09:00 - 12 minutes - 11.9 MBEarlier 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 aristocrati...
Gambling, good leadership and economic history
July 03, 2020 07:22 - 45 minutes - 41.5 MBAnne McElvoy looks at leadership lessons from past US presidents, the parallels between the betting industry and fears over gambling in 1945 and now and she asks who are the key economic thinkers. Her guests are Callum Williams, senior economics writer at The Economist, 2020 New Generation Thinker Darragh McGee from the University of Bath and ahead of July 4th and Independence Day in the USA she revisits her interview with Doris Kearns Goodwin about her book called Leadership in Turbulent Ti...
Frank Cottrell-Boyce
July 01, 2020 09:00 - 44 minutes - 40.6 MBThe screenwriter and novelist talks to Matthew Sweet about teaching creative writing to children in lockdown, attending mass on zoom, the changing meaning of community and the importance of family and he looks back to the image of Britain he created with Danny Boyle for the opening of the London 2012 Olympics. Frank Cottrell-Boyce is the author of books including Millions, Framed, Runaway Robot and a sequel to Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, He has worked on screenplays including The Two Popes, co...
Dam Fever and The Diaspora
June 28, 2020 18:33 - 14 minutes - 13.2 MBNew Generation Thinker Majed Akhter explores how large dam projects continue to form reservoirs of hope for a sustainable future. Despite their known drawbacks, our love affair with dams has not abated – across the world more than 3,500 dams are in various stages of construction. In Pakistan this has become entwined with nationalism, both inside the community and in the diaspora - but what are the dangers of this “dam fever” ? This Essay traces the history of river development in the region,...
Not Quite Jean Muir
June 28, 2020 18:12 - 14 minutes - 12.9 MBJade 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...
Digging Deep
June 28, 2020 17:50 - 14 minutes - 13.1 MBThere 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 So...
Tudor Virtual Reality
June 28, 2020 08:00 - 13 minutes - 12.8 MBAdvances 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 Refor...
Berlin, Detroit, Race and Techno Music
June 28, 2020 08:00 - 14 minutes - 13.5 MBWhen 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...
Coming out Crip and Acts of Care
June 28, 2020 08:00 - 13 minutes - 12.1 MBThis 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 Acade...
Ian Rankin and Tahmima Anam
June 26, 2020 13:00 - 44 minutes - 41.2 MBCrime writer Ian Rankin talks with Tahmima Anam in a conversation organised in partnership with the Royal Society of Literature and the Bradford Literature Festival. Plus New Generation Thinker Xine Yao looks at the depiction of East Asian figures in science fiction films and writing. Shahidha Bari presents. Ian Rankin's latest Inspector Rebus novel A Song For the Dark Times comes out in October. His cat-and-mouse espionage thriller Westwind was republished last September. Tahmima Anam's fi...
Revisit: Arundhati Roy
June 25, 2020 08:00 - 44 minutes - 40.5 MBArundhati Roy, the Man Booker prize winning author and campaigner, is in conversation with Philip Dodd about a life in the public eye and the novel she published 20 years after The God of Small Things. She discusses the politics of Kashmir, the influence of architecture and why she chose a graveyard setting for her novel and how writing a transgender character Anjum, who is a Hijra, helped her tell the story. Her second novel is called The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. The virtual Women of ...
Rethinking the Curriculum
June 22, 2020 16:17 - 44 minutes - 41.2 MBFrom a greater focus on Black history and poetry to classics in state school classrooms and an understanding of the history of science - Rana Mitter & guests debate the syllabus. Jade Cuttle is Arts Commissioning Editor at The Times, and a poet who both reviews and writes her own work https://www.jadecuttle.com Sandeep Parmar is Professor of English Literature at the University of Liverpool and a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker. She is hosting an online conversation at the 2020 Ledbury Poe...
Irenosen Okojie and Nadifa Mohamed. Midsummer archaeology
June 22, 2020 08:00 - 48 minutes - 44.6 MBThe writing life of two authors who should have been sharing a stage at the Bare Lit Festival. Irenosen Okojie and Nadifa Mohammed talk to Shahidha Bari in a conversation organised with the Royal Society of Literature. And 2020 New Generation Thinker Seren Griffiths describes a project to use music by composer at an archaeological site to mark the summer solstice and the findings of her dig. The Somali-British novelist Nadifa Mohamed featured on Granta magazine's list "Best of Young British...
Queer Bloomsbury and stillness in art and dance
June 17, 2020 08:00 - 44 minutes - 40.7 MBFrancesca Wade and Paul Mendez talk to Shahidha Bari about Queer Bloomsbury in a conversation run in partnership with the Royal Society of Literature who set up events in mid-June to mark Dalloway Day, inspired by the 1925 novel from Virginia Woolf. Claudia Tobin from the University of Cambridge looks at Woolf's writing on art and the vogue for still lives and compares notes with 2020 New Generation Thinker Lucy Weir from the University of Edinburgh, who has written a postcard exploring danc...
Revisit: Antarctica - testing ground for the human species
June 16, 2020 08:00 - 44 minutes - 40.7 MBTwo hundred years ago, Antarctica was discovered by Russian explorers and throughout this year the the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust is marking that anniversary. As we approach the date in June which is celebrated as midwinter with a special meal on the research stations - here's a chance to hear Rana Mitter and guests discussing the lure of this polar region both in our imaginations and as an aid to understanding what is happening to the planet. Rana Mitter's guests are: writer Meredith Hoop...
New Thinking: Refugees
June 16, 2020 00:28 - 43 minutes - 40.1 MBWhat are the best shelters? the right language? how does our view of hosting families change if we look at refugee self help schemes and experiences in camps in Palestine and Syria ? A trio of researchers share their findings with John Gallagher as we mark Refugee Week 2020. Dr Rebecca Tipton, from the University of Manchester, works on Translating Asylum - an ongoing research project looking at language and communication challenges common to individuals displaced by conflict both past and ...
The future of theatre debate
June 12, 2020 14:47 - 43 minutes - 40.1 MBCan our theatrical landscape survive financially, and how might it need to creatively adapt to survive post pandemic? As part of the Lockdown Theatre Festival, Anne McElvoy's panel features: Bertie Carvel - actor and executive producer of Lockdown Theatre Festival, whose roles include Rupert Murdoch in Ink, Miss Trunchbull in Matilda The Musical, and Simon in BBC One drama Doctor Foster. Amit Lahav – founder of Gecko, the internationally-touring physical theatre company based in Ipswich. Ele...
Failure and female friendship
June 10, 2020 08:00 - 45 minutes - 41.3 MBHow do you cope with a sense of failure? Michèle Roberts has been Booker shortlisted and has 12 novels under her belt but her latest book is a clear eyed account of a year spent rewriting after having a novel rejected. What sustained her in part were her female friends and cooking. Lara Feigel is the author of acclaimed non fiction books and her first novel takes the template of Mary McCarthy's 1963 novel about female friendship and examines the lives of women now set against the backdrop of...
Dickens
June 09, 2020 08:00 - 44 minutes - 41.1 MBMathew Sweet with Linda Grant, Laurence Scott & Lucy Whitehead. Dickens died on June 9th 1870. In 1948, the critic FR Leavis published the Great Tradition and included only one Dickens novel but that same year saw the film of Oliver Twist by David Lean. Our panel have been re-reading novels including Bleak House, Martin Chuzzlewit and Great Expectations, looking at a form of Dickens fan fiction following his death, the changes in literary fashion and the way his work connects with the presen...
New Thinking: Tackling Modern Slavery
June 07, 2020 11:28 - 41 minutes - 38.1 MBNaomi Paxton looks at the impact of the 2015 Modern Slavery Act, talking to researchers Katarina Schwarz and Alicia Kidd who are trying to measure and improve its effectiveness. Katarina Schwarz from the Rights Lab at Nottingham University works with the Wilberforce Institute at the University of Hull on a project looking into what makes people from particular countries vulnerable to being trafficked and exploited, including in the UK. Over the past five years, over 75% of people identifi...
Robin Askwith
June 03, 2020 08:30 - 44 minutes - 40.8 MBRobin Askwith experienced isolation as a child with polio. In a conversation with Matthew Sweet, he reflects on a career running from the Confessions sex comedies to arthouse cinema working with directors including Lindsay Anderson and Pier Paolo Pasolini. His first film role was playing the schoolboy, Keating, in the film if.... and his most recent TV role has seen him appear on Coronation Street. Producer: Robyn Read
Revisit: Tokyo Story
June 02, 2020 21:39 - 44 minutes - 40.8 MBActor Richard Wilson, Professor Naoko Shimazu and film critic Larushka Ivan-Zadeh join Rana Mitter to look at this cinematic classic which was one of the 53 films made by Yasujiro Ozu before his death in 1963. Tokyo Story follows an elderly couple who go to visit their busy grown up children and their widowed daughter-in-law. It is being rereleased this month by the BFI as part of their season of Japanese Film – the Ozu collection goes on BFI Player on 5 June (with 25 titles available) and T...
Revisit: Rowan Williams and Simon Armitage
May 28, 2020 08:00 - 44 minutes - 40.7 MBFormer Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has written about Auden, Dostoevsky and tragedy. At Hay Festival he talks to poet Simon Armitage about the imprint of landscapes in Yorkshire, West Wales, and the Middle East, the use of dialect words and reinterpreting myths. Chaired by Rana Mitter. Books by Rowan Williams include Dostoevsky: Language, Faith and Fiction and The Tragic Imagination. He is Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge. Books by Simon Armitage include The Unaccompanied,...
Sarah Perry
May 27, 2020 08:00 - 55 minutes - 50.4 MBMatthew Sweet talks to author Sarah Perry about her gothic imagination, writing about religion, rationalism and disease in novels including The Essex Serpent, After Me Comes The Flood and Melmoth. Recorded from her home in Norwich, Sarah discusses her experience of these times as someone who has an auto-immune condition, her interest in comets and the way she used sewing to overcome a temporary inability to write. You can hear more from authors in the Norfolk area on the website of the Nor...
Revisit: My Body Clock is Broken
May 21, 2020 08:26 - 43 minutes - 40.1 MBJay Griffiths, Vincent Deary, Louise Robinson and Matthew Smith discuss our mental health. How does depression affect our sense of time and the rhythms of daily life? Our body clocks have long been seen by scientists as integral to our physical and mental health - but what happens when mental illness disrupts or even stops that clock? Presenter Anne McElvoy is joined by those who have suffered depression and those who treat it - and they attempt to offer some solutions. Jay Griffiths is th...
Anne Fine and Romesh Gunesekera. Jarman's Garden
May 21, 2020 08:00 - 45 minutes - 41.4 MBAuthors Anne Fine and Romesh Gunesekera are Fellows of the Royal Literature Society who signed the Register on the same day. In the first of a series of conversations with writers who would have been sharing a stage at a literary festival, they talk to Shahidha Bari. Plus a postcard from 2020 New Generation Thinker Diarmuid Hester on the saving of Derek Jarman’s house and garden - also the subject of Sunday’s Words and Music which you can find on BBC Sounds and here https://www.bbc.co.uk/pr...
Kindness
May 20, 2020 08:00 - 45 minutes - 41.5 MBRutger Bregman challenges ideas about the selfish gene, and survival of the fittest with stories of human co-operation and kindness as he publishes a book called Human Kind - A Hopeful History. Plus in Mental Health Awareness Week, Dr Sylvan Baker on rethinking the way we treat kids in care. And New Generation Thinker Christina Faraday on an anniversary of the fairground. You can hear a curated selection of readings and music on the theme of travelling fairs and circuses on Radio 3's Words ...
The 2020 Wolfson History Prize: David Abulafia, Hallie Rubenhold, Prashant Kidambi
May 18, 2020 23:00 - 45 minutes - 41.5 MBFrom Indian cricket, a survey of the oceans to the women killed by Jack the Ripper: Rana Mitter with the second set of shortlisted authors for the history writing prize. David Abulafia The Boundless Sea: A Human History of the Oceans Hallie Rubenhold The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper Prashant Kidambi Cricket Country: An Indian Odyssey in the Age of Empire You can hear the other shortlisted historians in a progarmme broadcast on May 12th and available as an A...
Revisit: 2019 Wolfson History Prize Discussion
May 14, 2020 07:30 - 44 minutes - 40.6 MBFrom classical birds to Nazi legacies, Oscar Wilde to Queen Victoria in India, early building to maritime trading: Rana Mitter and an audience at the British Academy debate history writing and hear from the six historians on the 2019 shortlist. The books are: Building Anglo-Saxon England by John Blair Reckonings: Legacies of Nazi Persecution and the Quest for Justice by Mary Fulbrook Trading in War: London’s Maritime World in the Age of Cook and Nelson by Margarette Lincoln Birds in the Anc...
The 2020 Wolfson History Prize: Toby Green, Marion Turner, John Barton
May 13, 2020 07:00 - 43 minutes - 40.1 MBNew takes on Chaucer, the Bible and African trading - Rana Mitter presents the first of 2 prograrmmes featuring 3 of the historians shortlisted for this year's history writing prize. Marion Turner has written Chaucer: A European Life Toby Green is the author of A Fistful of Shells: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution John Barton is nominated for A History of the Bible: The Book and Its Faiths A second programme will be broadcast on Tues May 19th hearing ...
WW II radio propaganda & French relations
May 06, 2020 08:00 - 45 minutes - 42.1 MBMatthew Sweet looks at new research from Ludivine Broch, Daniel Lee, Hannah Elias and Cathy Mahoney into religion & propaganda on the radio + French soldiers in Yorkshire & a post WWII gratitude train sent by France and Italy to the USA. Daniel Lee is a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker who teaches at Queen Mary, London. His books include Pétain's Jewish Children: French Jewish Youth and the Vichy Regime, 1940–42 and The SS Officer’s Armchair due to be published in September 2020. Ludivine Br...
Revisit: Encylopedias and Knowledge from Diderot to Wikipedia
May 04, 2020 23:10 - 45 minutes - 41.4 MBJimmy Wales talks Diderot & collecting knowledge + Tariq Goddard on Mark Fisher aka k-punk. The French writer Diderot was thrown into prison in 1749 for his atheism, worked on ideas of democracy at the Russian court of Catherine the Great and collaborated on the creation of the first Encyclopédie. Biographer Andrew S. Curran and Jenny Mander look at Diderot's approach to editing the first encyclopedia. Plus writer and publisher Tariq Goddard on the work and legacy of his collaborator and fri...