Arts & Ideas
1,985 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 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.
Homepage Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Episodes
Why go into space?
September 20, 2023 16:12 - 45 minutes - 41.4 MBFrom Cold War triumphalism to wanting to secure the future of humanity, people have given many reasons for wanting to go into space. Christopher Harding is joined by an historian, a science fiction writer, a scientist and a visionary to unpick some of those reasons, and ask what they tell us about technology, society and utopia. With Dr Ghina M. Halabi, Timothy Peacock, Una McCormack and Avi Loeb. Producer: Luke Mulhall You can hear more from Timothy Peacock, who teaches at the University...
Black Atlantic
September 19, 2023 06:00 - 45 minutes - 41.4 MBIn 1816, Richard Fitzwilliam donated money, literature and art to the University of Cambridge, and the museum which bears his name began. A research project led by New Generation Thinker Jake Subryan Richards has been exploring Cambridge’s role in the transatlantic slave trade and he has curated an exhibition at the Fitzwilliam. Artist and writer Jacqueline Bishop who features in this show, joins Jake and April-Louise Pennant, who has been researching the history of Penrhyn Castle in Wales. ...
The Red Shoes
September 14, 2023 22:11 - 45 minutes - 41.5 MBThe dancer Moira Shearer starred in the 1948 film written, directed, and produced by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger which reworks a Hans Christian Andersen story, mixed with elements of ballet history and the founding of the Ballet Russes by Diaghilev. The film, about the tangled relationships between a dancer, composer and ballet impresario, had a cast involving many professional dancers, and gained five Academy Award nominations including best score for Brian Easdale. As the BFI pre...
Queer history, new narrative in San Fransisco
September 13, 2023 06:00 - 44 minutes - 41.2 MBNew narrative was a way of mixing philosophical and literary theory with writing about the body and pop culture. It was promoted by a group of writers in 1970s San Francisco. One of the chapters in New Generation Thinker Diarmuid Hester's new book Nothing Ever Just Disappears explores their work. He joins Dodie Bellamy in a programme exploring different aspects of the gay imagination and the re-inventing of tradition presented by Naomi Paxton. Alongside them is Lauren Elkin, author of a stud...
Wolfson Prize 2023
September 05, 2023 09:53 - 44 minutes - 41 MBSix historians have been shortlisted for the 2023 history writing prize which has been awarded for over fifty years. Rana Mitter has been talking to the authors about the books in contention: African and Caribbean People in Britain: A History by Hakim Adi The World the Plague Made: The Black Death and the Rise of Europe by James Belich The Perils of Interpreting: The Extraordinary Lives of Two Translators between Qing China and the British Empire by Henrietta Harrison Vagabonds: Life on the ...
Writing and Place: The Cairngorms
September 04, 2023 19:00 - 23 minutes - 21.1 MBThe Cairngorms National Park has inspired writing by Merryn Glover, whose books include The Hidden Fires: A Cairngorms Journey with Nan Shepherd. Writer and artist Amanda Thomson's book Belonging is on the longlist for the 2023 James Cropper Wainwright Prize for nature writing. As the BBC Proms broadcasts a concert from Perth, they talk to Radio 3's Kate Molleson about place and capturing Scottish nature in their work. Producer Ruth Watts You can find out more about Amanda Thomson at https...
Writing and Place: Cornwall
August 27, 2023 21:44 - 20 minutes - 19 MBThe coastline of Cornwall and its communities are the subject of a non fiction book called The Draw of the Sea by Wyl Menmuir. He joins writer Natasha Carthew in a conversation about the importance of place hosted by Joan Passey, who is a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker and author of Cornish Gothic 1830-1913. Wyl Menmuir's novels include The Many and Fox Fires. Natasha Carthew is a poet and author of a memoir called Undercurrent: A Cornish Memoir of Poverty, Nature and Resilience Producer: ...
The Black Country past and present
August 25, 2023 08:45 - 44 minutes - 40.3 MBIn The Old Curiosity Shop, Charles Dickens portrayed The Black Country as a polluted hellscape where little Nell sickens and dies. So popular was the book that this idea of the region was rivetted into history and endures to this day. In this edition of Free Thinking Matthew Sweet sets out to find the real Black Country, a place whose borders you can cross without knowing, with a reputation for insularity in spite of centuries of migration. In a programme recorded at the Birmingham Hippodrom...
Dark Places
August 21, 2023 08:25 - 44 minutes - 41.1 MBCrime writer Ann Cleeves, theologian Mona Siddiqui, deep sea fish expert and podcast host Thomas Linley and poet Jake Morris-Campbell join Matthew Sweet to explore areas beyond the reach of light, both literally and metaphorically, as part of Radio 3's 2022 overnight festival at Sage Gateshead. What darkness makes someone commit a murder? Shetland and Vera are two TV series developed from the crime novels of Ann Cleeves. Her most recent book is The Heron's Cry featuring detective Matthew Ve...
The Wife of Bath
August 01, 2023 08:18 - 43 minutes - 40.2 MBChaucer's widow and clothmaker is one of three characters given a longer confessional voice than other pilgrims in his Canterbury Tales and she uses her narrative to ask who has had the advantage in setting out the stories of women - "Who peyntede the leon, tel me who?" Shahidha Bari explores both the roots and the influence of Chaucer's creation and the different modern versions created by writers such as Zadie Smith and Ted Hughes and a film version by Pasolini. Shahidha's guests are Mario...
Glenda Jackson on filming Sunday Bloody Sunday
July 31, 2023 08:30 - 44 minutes - 41.1 MBGlenda Jackson plays part of a love triangle in John Schlesinger's follow up to his Oscar winning Midnight Cowboy. The plot written by Penelope Gilliat centres on an artist who has relationships with a female job consultant and a male doctor. Was the 1971 film ahead of its times? Matthew Sweet re-watched it with guests including Glenda Jackson, playwright Mark Ravenhill, film historian Melanie Williams and BFI National Archive curator Simon McCallum. They discuss the different elements of th...
Writing and Place: Wales
July 30, 2023 14:00 - 21 minutes - 19.5 MBA Roman road which winds up through central Wales forms the spine of the latest book by Tom Bullough. He joins poet Zoë Skoulding in a conversation with Joan Passey about how the Welsh landscape has fed into their writing. Tom Bullough spent his early years on a hill farm in Radnorshire and his books include the novel Addlands. Zoë Skoulding is Professor of Poetry and Creative Writing at Bangor University. She lives in Porthaethwy/Menai Bridge and her latest poetry collection is called Margi...
Writing and Place: The North-East
July 22, 2023 18:30 - 20 minutes - 18.6 MBJessica Andrews grew up in Sunderland and has written two novels - Saltwater and Milk Teeth. Jake Morris-Campbell still lives in his native South Shields and his poetry includes the collection Corrigenda for Costafine Town and various Radio 3 commissioned pieces. He is a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker. They talk to Ian McMillan, host of Radio 3's new writing programme The Verb, about how their sense of the North East of England has fed into their writing. Producer Torquil MacLeod You can ...
Writing and Place: Northern Ireland
July 17, 2023 09:36 - 23 minutes - 21.5 MBSmall town life in Northern Ireland is the focus of this conversation about writing and place. Since his debut Divorcing Jack in 1994, Colin Bateman has written many novels, dramas and screenplays and most recently Thunder and Lightning: A Memoir of Life on the Tough Cul-de-Sacs of Bangor. Michelle Gallen’s novels Big Girl, Small Town and Factory Girls have appeared on literary prize lists and they focus on life in a border town. Shahidha Bari, who presents Radio 3's arts and ideas programme...
Rock Follies
July 14, 2023 11:36 - 44 minutes - 40.5 MBRula Lenska was one of the stars of this 1970s TV series about a fictional female band, playing the role of Nancy "Q" Cunard de Longchamps, alongside Julie Covington and Charlotte Cornwell. She joins Matthew Sweet along with Howard Schuman, who wrote the series, and Andy Mackay, saxophonist with Roxy Music, who co-wrote the songs with Howard. Also taking part are Chloë Moss who has written the book for a stage adaptation of the series that is opening at the Chichester Festival Theatre, and c...
Oxford Philosophy
July 12, 2023 21:44 - 1 hour - 63.8 MBThe influence of World War Two on philosophical thinking is the focus of today's discussion as Chris Harding explores the years when the University of Oxford hosted one of the most distinctive and influential philosophy departments in the English speaking world. Thinkers like J.L. Austin, Gilbert Ryle and Elizabeth Anscombe, although very different in their own right, developed a style of philosophising that is sometimes called 'ordinary language philosophy': rejecting grand theory or metaph...
Childhood and play
July 11, 2023 17:00 - 44 minutes - 41 MBHow do children develop language and experiment with sounds? What toys help them develop? And, how they explain their games? As the Young V&A, previously the Museum of Childhood, opens in East London, Anne McElvoy hosts a discussion looking at the history of play. Does our interest in children's play tells us more about them or, the adults who care for them? Dr Helen Charman, is the Director of the revamped Young V&A in East London Dr Yinka Olusoga is a Lecturer in Education at the Univers...
South Asia: poverty and princes
July 06, 2023 11:00 - 45 minutes - 41.2 MBJoya Chatterji has written about the South Asian twentieth century in her new book called Shadows at Noon. Tripurdaman Singh has been researching Indian princely states. Novels by Kamala Markandaya (1924-2004) are being republished. Her daughter Kim Oliver and literary scholar Alastair Niven discuss Nectar in a Sieve. A bestseller when it first came out in 1954, it's a story about a tenant farmer, his wife and the impact of a tannery built in a neighbouring village. Rana Mitter hosts. The b...
New Thinking: women and football
July 06, 2023 11:00 - 34 minutes - 31.8 MBIn 1897 women played American football in San Fransisco. Dr Katie Taylor, is a qualified coach who previously managed the Great Britain Men's Flag Football Team, supporting the team at three European Championships. She is a Lecturer in Sociology of Sport at Nottingham Trent University and has been researching the history of women playing the sport and the language used in newspaper to describe both women players and coaches working in the game. Stacey Pope is Associate Professor in the Dep...
Liverpool Biennial + art at MIF
July 04, 2023 13:43 - 44 minutes - 41.2 MBThe Sacred Return of Lost Things is the theme of this year's Art Biennial in Liverpool. Catherine Fletcher talks to some of the artists showing work about how they have engaged with the city's history. Visual artist Melanie Manchot introduces her first full length feature film, STEPHEN, about a character recovering from gambling and alcohol addictions. Rudy Loewe describes their new large-scale installation The Reckoning, based around the Carnival in Trinidad and Tobago. And Charmaine Watkis...
A lively Tudor world
July 04, 2023 12:21 - 44 minutes - 40.5 MBMarrying someone based on a portrait was part of life in Renaissance Europe. An exhibition in Bath explores the politics of wedlock and painting - New Generation Thinker Christina Faraday has been to visit. Eleanor Chan has been studying the history of depicting musical notes on the page, whilst Sew What podcast host Isabella Rosner looks at needlework skills in Tudor England. John Gallagher hosts the conversation. Producer: Nick Holmes BBC Radio 3 is marking the anniversary of the Tudor c...
New Thinking: oral histories and the NHS
July 04, 2023 08:31 - 29 minutes - 27.1 MB160 volunteers recorded over 2,400 interviews with over 1,200 people on their lived experience of the NHS - as patients, staff and members of the public in an oral history project run by the University of Manchester. Professor Stephanie Snow discusses the way these help us understand how caring for children has changed in the NHS, what it felt like to get health care and not have to pay for it and other stories which interviews with policy makers in the archives didn't reveal. The Voices of...
New Thinking: Children and health
July 03, 2023 13:30 - 34 minutes - 31.5 MBWhat can we learn from children's experiences in the Pandemic at home and at school? Can children express their experiences through drawing, and how might a simple curtain help create happy family homes? Lindsey McEwen is Professor of Environmental Management within the Department of Geography and Environmental Management at the University of the West of England, Bristol. Her research involved working with children in Bristol to understand their experiences and impact of the Pandemic on the...
New Thinking: health inequalities
July 02, 2023 08:23 - 29 minutes - 26.7 MBFrom exercise on prescription to museum visits and debt advice. Christienna Fryar hears about social prescribing projects which are trying to link up the arts with other services to improve people’s health and tackle loneliness. These include wild swimming in the waterways of Nottinghamshire, the “Arts for the Blues” project based in the North west of England, a pilot programme in Scotland called “Art at the Start”, and a community hub at the Grange in Blackpool. Helen Chatterjee, Profes...
New Thinking: Design and health
July 01, 2023 08:28 - 32 minutes - 29.6 MBHow a new material helps stroke patients recover and how mapping where infections and contamination happen helps staff training. New Generation Thinker Elsa Richardson hears from two leading designers whose new research ideas have transformed the lives of stroke survivors and the elderly. Laura Salisbury is founder of the Wearable MedTech Lab at the Royal College of Art and CEO of KnitRegen and Professor Alastair Macdonald is Senior Researcher in the School of Design at The Glasgow School o...
New Thinking: Writing the NHS
June 30, 2023 11:54 - 37 minutes - 34.2 MBIn the first NHS hospital to be opened in 1948 by then Minister of Health Aneurin Bevan, a prize winning poet and academic has been sitting in the restaurant which serves as the canteen, persuading hospital workers to share their stories and take time to involve themselves in writing. Dr Kim Moore is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Manchester Metropolitan University. Her time as NHS75 writer in residence at Trafford General Hospital has led to an anthology being published Untold Stories o...
Dystopian thinking
June 30, 2023 09:48 - 45 minutes - 41.5 MBDystopias are a longstanding staple of film and literature, particularly science fiction, but what can we learn from them? Do they simply entrench despair or act as a prompt to improve the world? And what do The Two Ronnies have to do with all this? As a stage adaptation of Kay Dick's 1977 novel 'They: A Sequence of Unease' opens at the Manchester International Festival - a work that imagines a Britain that has been purged of culture - Matthew Sweet is joined by writer Una McCormack and New ...
Julian the Apostate
June 28, 2023 18:00 - 45 minutes - 41.3 MBIbsen referred to Emperor and Galilean as his "major work". The play describes the life of Julian, who ruled the Roman empire from AD361-363. Julian attempted to abolish the recently established state religion of Christianity and replace it with the worship of the ancient, pagan gods. The play is brimming with action and ideas, but is rarely performed. Rana Mitter discusses Ibsen's play and the history and religious ideas behind it with theatre critic and writer, Mark Lawson; historian and a...
Boyhood to manhood
June 26, 2023 12:16 - 44 minutes - 40.9 MBThe Second World War obsessed Luke Turner when he was growing up, before he founded the music website Quietus. Music has also been former teacher and now Add to Playlist host Jeffrey Boakye's passion and he's written a novel for teens called Kofi and the Rap Battle. Lisa Sugiura researches the online world that has drawn in so many. Chris Harding has been to see the new James Graham play at the National Theatre which explores the football team put together by Gareth Southgate. They come toge...
Gut instinct
June 23, 2023 08:56 - 45 minutes - 42.1 MBThe Skeptic Editor Michael Marshall talks to Matthew Sweet about how we judge actions and truth. They're joined by New Generation Thinkers Elsa Richardson, who is a historian of the emotions at the University of Strathclyde working on a popular history of the gut-brain connection and digestion more widely, and Brendan McGeever, who teaches on sociology, racism and anti-semitism at Birkbeck, University of London. Producer: Julian Siddle
Diva
June 21, 2023 21:45 - 44 minutes - 40.8 MBMaria Callas (1823-1977) and Adelina Patti (1843-1914) are two of the performers whose images are on show at the Victoria and Albert Museum's Diva. Professor Peggy Reynolds and Dr Ditlev Rindom have been to visit the exhibition which runs from opera, through films like Cleopatra, to pop performers such as Grace Jones, Lizzo and Cher. But what about performers from an earlier era ? Brianna Robertson-Kirkland shares her research, whilst Michael Twaits shares what the idea of Diva means to drag...
The Sorrows of Young Werther
June 20, 2023 19:15 - 44 minutes - 40.9 MBAn instant bestseller in 1774, The Sorrows of Young Werther was carried by Napoleon on his campaign in Egypt, it led to spin offs in fashion, porcelain and perfume and created Werther fever. A work of his Sturm und Drang years, Goethe's epistolary novel was published anonymously when he was aged 24. The story captures the intensity of unrequited love, frustrated ambition and mental suffering. It is also a novel that keys into the big philosophical arguments of its age and has given rise to a...
Life, art and drama in the kitchen
June 16, 2023 08:01 - 45 minutes - 41.4 MBIn the Kitchen (washing machine) 1977 is an art work by Helen Chadwick being displayed at the Hepworth Wakefield, whilst Carrie Mae Weems' images called Kitchen Table Series 1990 are coming to a Barbican show. Art critic Sarah Kent joins New Generation Thinker and archaeologist Marianne Hem Eriksen, film scholar Melanie Williams, whose latest book looks at Shelagh Delaney's A Taste of Honey, and journalist and writer Angela Hui, whose memoir is called Takeaway: Stories from a childhood behin...
Glenda Jackson and Filming Sunday Bloody Sunday
June 15, 2023 16:58 - 44 minutes - 41.1 MBGlenda Jackson (May 1936-June 2023) starred in many plays and films. One of those was Sunday Bloody Sunday where she plays part of a love triangle in John Schlesinger's follow up to his Oscar winning Midnight Cowboy. The plot written by Penelope Gilliat centres on an artist who has relationships with a female job consultant and a male doctor. Was the 1971 film ahead of its times? Matthew Sweet re-watched it with guests including Glenda Jackson, playwright Mark Ravenhill, film historian Melan...
Portraits
June 14, 2023 21:45 - 45 minutes - 41.3 MBWhat exactly is a portrait? As the National Portrait Gallery re-opens and Sheffield Documentary Festival begins, Shahidha Bari talks to the gallery's Chief Curator Alison Smith, film-makers Kim Longinotto and Franky Murray Brown about their film Dalton's Dream, photographer Johny Pitts, whose project Home is Not a Place moves to the Photographers’ Gallery in London and New Generation Thinker Ana Baeza Ruiz about an oral history project with 1970s feminist artists. Producer: Sofie Vilcins Y...
Ideas about health
June 13, 2023 11:00 - 45 minutes - 41.3 MBEdinburgh GP Gavin Francis has been reading the writings of Thomas Browne (1605 -1682), who travelled to Padua and Leiden to qualify in medicine and then wrote on topics including religion, burial and examples of false understanding of science at the time. A Fortunate Woman - a depiction of a country doctor working now - takes inspiration from A Fortunate Man published in 1967 by John Berger and photographer Jean Mohr. Author Polly Morland joins Gavin Francis and New Generation Thinker Matt ...
Adam Smith
June 08, 2023 18:00 - 45 minutes - 41.2 MBThe father of capitalism or a sensitive moral philosopher? Adam Smith has been claimed as the defender of self-interest and advocate of free market economics, but his reputation has undergone a recent reappraisal. With his tercentenary in 2023, Anne McElvoy hears about the unexpected side of Adam Smith and his enduring presence in modern political economy. Glory Liu is a Lecturer on Social Studies at Harvard University. Her first book, Adam Smith's America: How a Scottish Philosopher became...
Yellowface, AI and Asian stereotypes
June 07, 2023 11:00 - 45 minutes - 41.3 MBIs it ever okay to pass off someone else’s work as your own? What if it’s a computer programme faking it? And how are our perceptions of ownership and Identity influenced by the apparent power of digital technology? These are some of the big questions Chris Harding discusses with : Rebecca Kuang, author of a new novel, ‘Yellowface’, which is largely a story about plagiarism and publishing, but also touches on identity, social media and use of digital technology in perpetuating misinformati...
Michel Piccoli
June 06, 2023 11:25 - 44 minutes - 40.8 MBLe Mépris in 1963 brought fame to Michel Piccoli. Jean-Luc Godard's new wave film was based on an Italian novel about a love triangle and power dynamics involving a playwright asked to work on a film script. Piccoli (1925-2020) went on to work with many other directors, including Buñuel, Chabrol, Varda, Rivette, Demy and Sautet in roles which run from a weak priest to a confused pope, with a host of rebels, cynics, lovers and losers mixed in. Matthew Sweet is joined by Geoff Andrew, Muriel Z...
Nature Memoirs
May 31, 2023 18:45 - 44 minutes - 40.6 MBFrom Pakistan to Bulgaria to swimming the waterways of Britain: Rana Mitter is joined by a panel of writers to look at our relationship with particular landscapes and the natural world. Kapka Kassabova’s latest book Elixir: In the Valley at the End of Time details her stay in a remote valley by the River Mesa in Bulgaria and the knowledge of herbalism she finds there. Patrick Barham's latest book is about Roger Deakin, the environmentalist who co-founded Common Ground and was passionate abou...
Europe
May 31, 2023 18:37 - 45 minutes - 41.3 MBFrom dockworkers in Poland to meetings with European prime ministers and presidents and witnessing the fall of the Berlin Wall - the latest book by Timothy Garton Ash is a memoir called Homelands: A Personal History of Europe. He is joined by the Turkish writer now in exile from her home country Ece Temelkuran, by journalist Ben Judah who has been interviewing citizens across different European countries and by Misha Glenny, who has written on the former Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe and pre...
The Troubles in Northern Ireland
May 26, 2023 11:16 - 45 minutes - 41.5 MBThe Imperial War Museum in London is putting on display recently collected objects and new first-hand testimony describing life in Northern Ireland during The Troubles in its first show to look at this topic. Anne McElvoy explores what it means to explore this history in writing, music and museum displays. The author Louise Kennedy's novel Trespasses is a 1970s love story. Poet Maria McManus and composer Keith Acheson have collaborated on a piece called Ellipses which they describe as being ...
Sneezing, smells and noses
May 26, 2023 09:52 - 45 minutes - 41.9 MBThe profound effects of losing our sense of smell, why historians should think more about the smells of the past and some thoughts on sneezing from Montaigne and La Condamine. Rana Mitter is joined by philosopher and wine-taster Barry Smith, Chrissi Kelly who founded the charity AbScent following her own experience of anosmia (the loss of smell), sensory historian William Tullett and New Generation Thinker Gemma Tidman. William Tullett's book Smell and the Past: Noses, Archives, Narratives ...
Linda Grant and Jewish history
May 25, 2023 09:37 - 45 minutes - 41.4 MBA Baltic forest in 1913, Soho and the suburbs of Liverpool and the Jewish community that grows up there are the settings for Linda Grant's new novel The Story of the Forest. She joins presenter John Gallagher, Rachel Lichtenstein and Julia Pascal for a conversation about writing and Jewish identity in the North West as we also hear about Julia Pascal's play Manchester Girlhood and look at the re-opening of the Manchester Jewish Museum with curator Alex Cropper . Producer in Salford: Nick Ho...
Mermaids, Caribbean tales and copyright
May 24, 2023 21:45 - 44 minutes - 41.2 MBDisney's The Little Mermaid and a musical adaptation of a Caribbean version of the story kick off our conversation as Shahidha Bari is joined by director Ola Ince, historian and Sarah Peverley, who is writing a cultural history of mermaids. "Mermaid hunter" Sacha Coward considers mermaids as queer icons and Claudy Op den Kamp talks us through Disney copyright history. Producer: Sofie Vilcins Once On This Island directed by Ola Ince runs at the Regent's Park Theatre until June 10th. It's th...
Essex
May 19, 2023 12:20 - 45 minutes - 41.3 MBThanks in part to the birth of those enduring caricatures - Essex Man & Essex Girl - in the 1990s, this is a county that has struggled to break free from a whole raft of stereotypes and assumptions. Matthew Sweet and his guests - all Essex residents - are here to present a more nuanced, complicated and historically rich vision of this woefully misunderstood part of England. Tim Burrows has written The Invention of Essex: The Making of an English County Elsa James is an artist whose work inc...
Rocky Horror and camp
May 17, 2023 11:00 - 45 minutes - 41.9 MBPremiered to 63 people at the Royal Court back in 1973, the Rocky Horror Show is marking its anniversary with a production touring the UK. New Generation Thinkers Louise Creechan and Joan Passey explore its links with Frankenstein and the Gothic tradition and Paul Baker discusses its place in a history of camp. Shahidha Bari presents. Camp: The Story of the Attitude that Conquered the World is out now. Paul Baker is a Professor at Lancaster University. Rocky Horror runs at Sadlers Wells Pea...
Zimbabwean writing
May 16, 2023 11:17 - 44 minutes - 41.2 MBA '70s London squat was home to the writer Dambudzo Marechera when he was writing his first novel The House of Hunger (1978), which was published in the Heinemann African Writers series and has now been issued as a Penguin Classic. Tinashe Mushakavanhu is researching his story and writings. Mufaro Makubika has adapted the coming of age story published by NoViolet Bulawayo in 2013 as a play, which is now touring England. Jocelyn Alexander is involved in creating an archive and oral history do...
Agoraphobia
May 12, 2023 09:14 - 45 minutes - 41.9 MB"Not so much a fear of going out as a fear of something dreadful happening whilst being out" - writer Graham Caveney talks to Matthew Sweet about his own experience of agoraphobia and also how the condition has been reflected in the work of other writers, including Shirley Jackson and Emily Dickinson. Writer Kate Summerscale and New Generation Thinker Joan Passey trace the shifting ideas about sources of phobias in the 19th century and the explosion of interest in naming and cataloguing them...
Mountaineering, Lizzie Le Blond, sport and science
May 10, 2023 08:56 - 45 minutes - 41.5 MBOvercoming grief, historian Rachel Hewitt's new book mixes recent personal history and her experiences of fell running and lockdown with her research into the pioneering mountain climber known as Lizzie Le Blond (1860 – 1934). In 1907, Le Blond set up the Ladies' Alpine Club and over her lifetime made 20 first ascents of different peaks. Chris Harding is joined by Rachel Hewitt, Dr Ben Anderson from Keele University, and science writer Caroline Williams to discuss alpine sports, running, ris...