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
Proms Plus: The Weeping Prophet and Visions of Chaos
August 10, 2018 19:30 - 32 minutes - 29.7 MBThe Bible has provided much fruitful inspiration to poets, novelists and composers over the past two thousand years. BBC New Generation Thinker Dr Joe Moshenska teaches Milton at the University of Cambridge. He discusses ideas of doom, chaos and Biblical themes with the novelist Salley Vickers, whose novel Mr Golightly’s Holiday features God as protagonist. They look at the “weeping prophet” Jeremiah, Job, Cassandra and Tiresias and discuss whether creation is impossible without chaos with...
Proms Plus:The Weeping Prophet and Visions of Chaos
August 10, 2018 19:30 - 32 minutes - 29.7 MBThe Bible has provided much fruitful inspiration to poets, novelists and composers over the past two thousand years. BBC New Generation Thinker Dr Joe Moshenska teaches Milton at the University of Cambridge. He discusses ideas of doom, chaos and Biblical themes with the novelist Salley Vickers, whose novel Mr Golightly’s Holiday features God as protagonist. They look at the “weeping prophet” Jeremiah, Job, Cassandra and Tiresias and discuss whether creation is impossible without chaos with ...
Proms Plus: Re-working a Classic in Poetry
August 06, 2018 17:00 - 34 minutes - 31.9 MBA series of classical tales, from the Iliad to the Inferno have been recast by modern poets. Sean O’Brien has written a version of Dante’s Inferno, and, for the stage, Aristophanes’ The Birds; he is Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University. Sandeep Parmar’s poetry includes Eidolon, the classical rewrite Helen of Troy in America, and she is a Professor of English Literature at the University of Liverpool. Catherine Fletcher invites them to reflect on how to find the right wo...
Proms Plus: Folklore of Britain and Ireland
August 06, 2018 13:17 - 21 minutes - 19.6 MBPoets Gillian Clarke and Peter Mackay discuss the rich seam of folklore that has influenced their work and the danger of losing our connection to these tales. Gillian is a former National Poet of Wales and winner of the Queen’s Medal for Poetry. Peter is a New Generation Thinker, originally from Lewis, and an expert in Scots and Irish poetry.
Proms Plus: London in Fact & Fiction
July 31, 2018 19:30 - 36 minutes - 33.2 MBNovelists John Lanchester and Diana Evans, both chroniclers of contemporary London, discuss the many and diverse communities and villages that make up the UK capital, exploring the differences between north and south, east and west, the suburbs and the inner city. John Lanchester’s novel Capital, set in London prior to and during the 2008 financial crisis, was dramatised for BBC Television in 2015, while Diana Evans’ most recent novel Ordinary People offers a portrait of contemporary London ...
Proms Plus: Mountains
July 30, 2018 19:30 - 33 minutes - 30.5 MBThe Alps have loomed large in the artistic imagination since the Romantic poets explored them in search of ‘the sublime’. Historian Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough talks to writer Abbie Garrington and climber Dan Richards. His book Climbing Days tells the life of his Great-Great Aunt, Dorothy Pilley, a pioneering woman climber, and reflects on the appeal of the mountains and how the landscape can be a force for creativity, in music and literature. Abbie Garrington, from Durham University, has a...
Proms Plus: Funny Fiction
July 28, 2018 19:40 - 20 minutes - 19 MBInspired by Beethoven's penchant for musical jokes, Sahidha Bari is joined by writer Meg Rosoff for a selection of readings of comic fiction from Kingsley Amis to Paul Beatty. The reader is Carl Prekopp.
Proms Plus: British Countryside real & imagined
July 27, 2018 19:48 - 36 minutes - 33.4 MBEver since the ancient Greeks, writers have waxed lyrical about rural life, associating it with beauty, innocence and goodness. Will Abberley, BBC New Generation Thinker and senior lecturer in English at the University of Sussex is joined by writer Melissa Harrison & archaeologist and sheep farmer Francis Pryor to discuss the British countryside real and imagined. Producer: Luke Mulhall
Proms Plus: Birds and Humans
July 27, 2018 14:30 - 33 minutes - 30.9 MBHelen Macdonald, author of H Is For Hawk and Tim Birkhead, Professor of Behaviour and Evolution at the University of Sheffield and author of Bird Sense, share their experiences of observing birds closely and their pick of writing inspired by real and fictional birds. Professor Birkhead’s recent research has been into the adaptive significance of egg shape in birds and Helen Macdonald won the 2014 Samuel Johnson Prize and Costa Book Award for her writing about the year she spent training a go...
Proms Plus: The Wanderer
July 25, 2018 12:50 - 21 minutes - 19.7 MBLauren Elkin, author of 'Flaneuse' and BBC Radio 3 New Generation Thinker Seán Williams talk to Rana Mitter about the joys of a wandering life and the inspiration that walking brought to writers from the 18th century to the present day. Producer: Zahid Warley
Proms Plus – exploring the narrative voice in literature
July 21, 2018 14:25 - 20 minutes - 18.9 MBSarah Dillon and novelist Richard Beard on narrative voices in literature
Proms Plus: Daphnis & Chloe
July 17, 2018 13:04 - 21 minutes - 19.4 MBLongus’s charming pastoral novel Daphnis and Chloe about teenage love and pirates was written in the second century AD. Tim Whitmarsh, AG Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at Cambridge, discusses his work, alongside that of other early Greek writers and Judith Mackrell, dance critic for The Guardian talks about how the text was used by Diaghilev to create the iconic ballet for the Ballet Russes. Presenter: Shahidha Bari. Producer: Torquil MacLeod
Howard Jacobson
July 12, 2018 21:45 - 50 minutes - 45.8 MBWhy We Need the Novel Now. Man Booker Prize winner Howard Jacobson delivers a keynote lecture and talks to presenter Shahidha Bari and an audience at the Southbank Centre in London as part of the Man Booker 50 Festival. In the age of Twitter and no-platforming, Jacobson argues that the novel has never been more necessary. Howard Jacobson won the Man Booker Prize in 2010 for The Finkler Question and was shortlisted for J in 2014 Producer: Zahid Warley
Helaine Blumenfeld, Dale Harding; Stella Tillyard
July 12, 2018 15:00 - 48 minutes - 44.5 MBHelaine Blumenfeld is a sculptor who divides her time between her family in England and her work-family in Italy. As an exhibition featuring much new work opens in Ely Cathedral, she talks to Anne McElvoy about expressing her thoughts in marble, the importance of risk to the artist and why total immersion without distraction produces her best work. As the Liverpool Biennial gets under way Dale Harding, an Australian artist and descendant of the Bidjara, Ghungalu and Garingbal peoples of Cent...
Philosophical tennis, hidden beaches and Eleanor Marx.
July 10, 2018 22:01 - 45 minutes - 41.2 MBAt the height of summer, Matthew Sweet and guests turn their minds to tennis, beaches and walking. As Wimbledon continues, Benjamin Markovits and William Skidelsky consider the philosophy of tennis; New Generation Thinker Des Fitzgerald explores the geography of a little known beach in Cardiff city centre; Rachel Holmes goes on a walking tour of Eleanor Marx's Sydenham in south London. A Weekend in New York is by Benjamin Markovits Federer and Me: A Story of Obsession is by William Skide...
From C18 automata to Superheroes and Digital Living
July 06, 2018 13:51 - 45 minutes - 41.7 MBPlaywright Charlotte Jones, author Laurence Scott, New Generation Thinkers Lisa Mullen and Iain Smith join Matthew Sweet. Charlotte Jones discusses her new play set in a Quaker community during the Napoleonic Wars. Matthew Sweet visits Compton Verney Art Gallery with Lisa Mullen to see the exhibition, 'Marvellous Mechanical Museum' which re-imagines the spectacular automata exhibitions of the 18th century. Laurence Scott talks about the ideas in his book, 'Picnic Comma Lightning' which expl...
Renzo Piano
July 04, 2018 21:45 - 44 minutes - 41 MBThe Italian architect and engineer, Renzo Piano, talks to Philip Dodd about his career from the Pompidou in Paris (with Richard Rogers) to the Shard in London and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. 50 years of his work are being marked in an exhibition at London's Royal Academy of Arts from the 15th of September to the 20th of January 2019. Producer: Craig Templeton Smith.
What do you call a stranger? The Caine Prize. NHS ideals.
July 04, 2018 09:46 - 44 minutes - 41 MBNandini Das and John Gallagher look at words for strangers in Tudor and Stuart England and ideas about civility. Plus Shahidha Bari talks to Makena Onjerika the winner of the 2018 Caine Prize for African Writing. And, as the NHS approaches its 70th anniversary, we discuss the relationship between care, institutions, and the concept of medicine with novelist and former nurse Christie Watson, and historian of the NHS Roberta Bivins. Nandini Das is working on the Tide Project http://www.tide...
Fun Home, Olivia Laing, Oscar Wilde, The Deer Hunter
June 28, 2018 22:18 - 45 minutes - 42.1 MBAlison Bechdel's graphic memoir 'Fun Home' on stage at the Young Vic in London reviewed by Jen Harvie from Queens Mary University of London, a novel inspired by Kathy Acker from Olivia Laing, Film historian and broadcaster Ian Christie on the 40th anniversary of Michael Cimino's film, 'The Deerhunter' and a new biography by Michèle Mendelssohn on Oscar Wilde's time in America. Mathew Sweet presents. Fun Home - which explores family, memory and sexuality, runs at the Young Vic in London fro...
The body, past and present
June 28, 2018 10:30 - 44 minutes - 41.1 MBCan beauty be an ethical ideal? What did being handsome mean in C18 England? How do we look at images by Egon Schiele and Francesca Woodman or a Renaissance nude and is that affected by changing attitudes towards the body now? Anne McElvoy talks to the painter, Chantal Joffe, the philosopher, Heather Widdows, the writer, performer and activist Penny Pepper and the New Generation Thinkers Catherine Fletcher and Sarah Goldsmith. Chantal Joffe's solo show - Personal Feeling is the Main thing ...
The Working Lunch and Food in History
June 27, 2018 15:40 - 44 minutes - 40.8 MBRana Mitter discusses food in history. James C Scott on the role of grain and coercion in the development of the first settled societies, and how the Victorians changed lunch, with New Generation Thinkers Elsa Richardson and Chris Kissane. Plus, following the death of American philosopher Stanley Cavell last week, Rana discusses his work and legacy with Stephen Mulhall and Alice Crary. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select...
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Woman’s Rights
June 22, 2018 14:30 - 17 minutes - 16.3 MB170 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 o...
John Gower, the Forgotten Medieval Poet
June 22, 2018 14:24 - 18 minutes - 17 MBThe 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 ...
Sarah Scott and the Dream of a Female Utopia
June 22, 2018 14:02 - 18 minutes - 16.6 MBA 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 Montag...
The Forgotten German Princess
June 22, 2018 13:54 - 17 minutes - 16.5 MBThe 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 wh...
Rehabilitating the Rev John Trusler
June 22, 2018 13:45 - 17 minutes - 16.4 MBSophie 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...
Oliver Rackham and Wildwood Ideas
June 21, 2018 21:00 - 44 minutes - 40.8 MBOur romantic attachment to the idea of wildwood, the impossibility of ever getting back to some primeval grove, and the possibilities opening up about the health and wellbeing of future forests, are debated by Rana Mitter with ecologist and conservationist, Keith Kirby, who knew and worked with Rackham, botanist Fraser Mitchell whose work with pollen is helping to uncover the deep history of trees and environmental archaeologist, Suzi Richer, who is assembling oral histories of woodcraftship...
Windrush. Forests in Art. South African Jazz
June 21, 2018 10:34 - 44 minutes - 41.1 MBColin Grant, Hannah Lowe and Jay Bernard discuss writing about Windrush 70 years on with Shahidha Bari. Plus Alexandra Harris looks at trees in art as part of Radio 3's Into the Forest season of programmes and Jonathan Eato and Nduduzo Makhintini discuss their research into South African jazz -- one of the subjects in the British Academy Summer Showcase. Colin Grant has written books including Bageye at the Wheel, A Smell of Burning, I & I Natural Mystics and Negro with a Hat. Hannah Lowe'...
The Word For World Is Forest
June 19, 2018 22:08 - 44 minutes - 40.9 MBUrsula Le Guin's idea of the forest is explored by philosopher and Green party politician Rupert Read and novelist Zen Cho. Plus Matthew Sweet talks to Ian Hislop about this year's winner of the Paul Foot Award for Investigative Journalism, and for Radio 3's 'Into the Forest' we ask whether, if a tree falls in the wood and nobody is around, it makes a sound. Usula Le Guin (1929 - 2018) published her science fiction novella The Word for World Is Forest in 1972. In midsummer week, Radio 3 en...
The Piano and Love
June 14, 2018 22:11 - 45 minutes - 41.4 MBHistorian Fern Riddell and composer Debbie Wiseman on why the piano is essentially erotic while psychologist Frank Tallis and Tiffany Watt Smith explore obsessive love with presenter Matthew Sweet. Plus Grainne Sweeney curator of an exhibition which looks at the way inventors from the North East of England have shaped the world we live in today. Dr Frank Tallis is a writer and clinical psychologist and author of The Incurable Romantic: and Other Unsettling Revelations as well as a series o...
Inside the 'Intellectual Dark Web'
June 13, 2018 21:45 - 44 minutes - 40.8 MBCommentator Douglas Murray, journalist Bari Weiss and writer Ed Husain join Philip Dodd to explore the 'Intellectual Dark Web'. Their YouTube videos and podcasts receive millions of views and downloads. They sell out theatres across the US. But these aren't rock stars or the latest pop sensation. They are a collection of public intellectuals, scientists, political columnists, and stand up-comedians who are at the front line of the raging 'culture wars'. As two of its leading figures, neuro...
Mark Lilla. Owen Hatherley. Gulzaar Barn.
June 12, 2018 21:45 - 44 minutes - 41.1 MBMark Lilla could be called the conscience of liberal America. He talks to Anne McElvoy about life after identity politics. 2018 New Generation Thinker Gulzaar Barn discusses whether paying people for taking part in medical trials is different from other forms of "labour". Plus Owen Hatherley's latest book is called Trans-Europe Express: Tours of a Lost Continent. He discusses what makes a European city and who should take responsibility for shaping our urban environment whether its Hull or T...
The Man Who Convinced Jimmy Carter to Run for President
June 07, 2018 21:45 - 44 minutes - 41 MBMatthew Sweet meets with physician, anthropologist, author and Jimmy Carter's former 'drugs czar', Peter Bourne. Comparing his life to the title character in the film Forrest Gump, the trained psychiatrist and Vietnam veteran looks back on an eclectic career spanning six decades. He talks about his involvement in the civil rights movement, his close relationship with Jimmy Carter (and how he convinced him to run for president), serving as an Assistant Secretary-General at the UN, and his a...
Bernard-Henri Lévy, Edith Hall and Simon Critchley
June 07, 2018 12:54 - 44 minutes - 40.4 MBFrom people-watching with Aristotle in a London park, to meeting in a luxury hotel at midnight to discuss the fate of a continent, to using a lunchtime five-a-side game as the starting point for a meditation on the human condition, this programme treats 'philosophy' as a verb rather than a noun. Bernard-Henri Lévy is in London to perform a one-man play on Brexit. Simon Critchley's new book is What We Think About When We Think About Football, and Edith Hall's is Aristotle's Way: How Ancient W...
The rise of translation and the death of foreign language learning
June 06, 2018 12:10 - 44 minutes - 40.5 MBArundhati Roy, Meena Kandasamy and Preti Taneja share thoughts about translation. Plus Anne McElvoy will be joined by Professor Nichola McLelland and Vicky Gough of the British Councl to examine why, in UK schools and universities, the number of students learning a second language is collapsing - whilst the number of languages spoken in Britain is rising and translated fiction is becoming more available and popular. The Booker prize winner Arundhati Roy is giving the W G Sebald lecture at ...
American slavery, the occult and modern politics, jobs for psychopaths.
June 01, 2018 10:49 - 44 minutes - 40.6 MBIraq vet and novelist Kevin Powers, the careers picked by psychopaths, and American writer Gary Lachman join Matthew Sweet. Kevin Powers' prize winning novel The Yellow Birds explored the experience of soldiers and their lack of control. His new novel A Shout in the Ruins looks at the long shadows cast by the American Civil War and slavery. Gary Lachman discusses non-rational or pre-Enlightenment thinking in contemporary politics and culture as he publishes his latest book called Dark Star...
Rowan Williams and Simon Armitage
May 30, 2018 21:45 - 44 minutes - 41 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,...
Elif Shafak, Juan Gabriel Vásquez and Javier Cercas
May 29, 2018 21:45 - 44 minutes - 40.8 MBThe lure of conspiracy theories, the power of fiction to translate history and the public role of writer are debated as Shahidha Bari chairs a discussion recorded with the Colombian writer Juan Gabriel Vásquez, the Spanish writer Javier Cercas and the Turkish author Elif Shafak - recorded with an audience at the Hay Festival. Javier Cercas' latest novel is The Impostor and his essay about fiction is called The Blind Spot. Juan Gabriel Vásquez’s new novel is called The Shape of the Ruins. ...
Tacita Dean; Mountains, John Tyndall
May 24, 2018 21:45 - 47 minutes - 43.2 MBEleanor Rosamund Barraclough meets the British artist Tacita Dean. ‘Tacita Dean: Landscape’ has just opened at the Royal Academy in London and features vast chalk mountains and cloudscapes and a film made in Cornwall, Yellowstone and Wyoming. And what does an artist do when she travels hundreds of miles to film a total eclipse of the sun… and finds there’s no film in the camera. Then focus on mountains and those who climb them. New Generation Thinker Ben Anderson reflects on an interplay...
The 2018 Wolfson History Prize Debate
May 23, 2018 21:45 - 44 minutes - 40.8 MBThis year's authors are: Robert Bickers for Out of China: How the Chinese Ended the Era of Western Domination Lindsey Fitzharris for The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine Tim Grady for A Deadly Legacy: German Jews and the Great War Miranda Kaufmann for Black Tudors: The Untold Story Peter Marshall for Heretics and Believers: A History of the English Reformation Jan Rüger for Heligoland: Britain, Germany and the Struggle for the No...
In Conversation: Philip Roth (1933 - 2018)
May 23, 2018 12:29 - 45 minutes - 41.4 MBFrom BBC Radio 3's archive, another opportunity to hear an interview with Philip Roth (1933 - 2018), author of books including Portnoy's Complaint & American Pastoral. Recorded in New York in 2008, Philip Roth talked to Philip Dodd about his life and work and about his 29th book Indignation. The Pulitzer Prize winning Roth has been called provocative, playful and angry and many of his themes remained consistent since he began writing in the late 1950’s. He and his fictional alter ego, Na...
Motherhood in fiction, memoir and on the analyst's couch
May 22, 2018 21:45 - 44 minutes - 41.1 MBWriters Sheila Heti, Jessie Greengrass and Jacqueline Rose compare notes on motherhood & presenter Anne McElvoy looks at depictions of Mrs Noah with New Generation Thinker Daisy Black. Jacqueline Rose has written Mothers: An Essay on Love and Cruelty. Her previous books include Women in Dark Times Sheila Heti's latest book is called Motherhood. Her previous books include How Should a Person Be? and Women in Clothes. Jessie Greengrass' novel, Sight, has been shortlisted for the Women's P...
Jordan B Peterson
May 17, 2018 21:45 - 44 minutes - 40.7 MBSelf help, identity politics and the influence of postmodernists are on the agenda as Philip Dodd meets the YouTube star and Canadian clinical psychologist, Jordan B. Peterson. 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos by Jordan B. Peterson is out now. Producer: Craig Templeton Smith
Designing the future
May 17, 2018 15:03 - 44 minutes - 40.5 MBShahidha Bari looks at British design pioneers Enid Marx, Edward Bawden and Charles Rennie Mackintosh with curators Alan Powers and James Russell and design historian Eleanor Herring. 2018 New Generation Thinker Lisa Mullen visits The Future Starts Here at the V&A. Alan Powers is the author of a new book Enid Marx:The Pleasures of Pattern and is curating an exhibition at the House of Illustration in London Print, Pattern and Popular Art which runs from May 25th to September 23rd 2018 James...
John Gray, Atheism and Post-structuralism
May 16, 2018 11:51 - 52 minutes - 48.4 MBThe relationship between intellectuals, nations and spies debated by Agnes Poirier, Maria Dimitrova, and Jefferson Morley. Plus philosopher John Gray explores atheism and doubt with Matthew Sweet. Seven Types of Atheism by John Gray is out now. Producer: Luke Mulhall
What is Speech?
May 10, 2018 22:18 - 45 minutes - 41.8 MBMatthew Sweet discusses talking, speech and having a voice, with Trevor Cox, Professor of Acoustic Engineering at the University of Salford; Rebecca Roache, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Royal Holloway, University of London; actress and impressionist Jessica Martin; and Maurice McLeod, social commentator, director of Media Diversified, and Labour councillor for Queenstown Battersea. Trevor Cox has written Now You're Talking: The Story of Human Conversation from Neanderthals to Artificia...
Charms: Madeline Miller; Zoe Gilbert; Kirsty Logan
May 09, 2018 21:45 - 58 minutes - 53.2 MBEach generation creates its own myths and in Free Thinking, Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough talks to three writers whose novels and stories spring bright and fresh from a compost of classical legend and British folk stories. Madeline Miller, the American writer who re-created Achilles for the 21st century, now turns her attention to Circe, nymph, lowest-of-the-low goddess or witch, who possesses a unique sympathy for humanity. Zoe Gilbert's obsession with folk stories where strange things happe...
Out of Control?
May 08, 2018 22:09 - 44 minutes - 41.1 MBFormer army officer Dr Mike Martin on Why We Fight. Historian Priya Satia argues that guns were the drivers behind the industrial revolution. The mob as a political entity and the Massacre of St George's Fields of 10 May 1768 is considered in an opinion piece from 2018 New Generation Thinker Dafydd Mills Daniel. We also look at night time - curator Anna Sparham selects some nocturnal views of the capital from a photography exhibition at the Museum of London, while Dr Gavin Francis explains h...
Disrupted Childhood. Turkish Star Wars
May 04, 2018 11:46 - 44 minutes - 41 MBPauline Dakin spent her childhood on the run. Sally Bayley grew up in a house where men were forbidden and a charismatic leader ruled. They compare notes with presenter Matthew Sweet. New Generation Thinker Iain Smith discusses his research into the history of a film known as the Turkish Star Wars. Plus Canadian poet Gary Geddes on his poem sequence The Terracotta Army. And the pioneering Hungarian photographer László Moholy-Nagy and the birds eye view images which he created. Sarah Allen, c...
Marxism
May 02, 2018 22:14 - 44 minutes - 41.2 MBAnne Applebaum, Gregory Claeys, Jane Humprhies and Richard Seymour join Rana Mitter to assess the legacy of Marx 200 years after his birth. Do his ideas have currency and if so where is he an influence in the world? Academic Emile Chabal reports on researching Marxism in India and Brazil. Gregory Claeys is the author of Marx and Marxism Richard Seymour has written Corbyn - The Strange Rebirth of Radical Politics Anne Applebaum's latest book is called Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine ...