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.
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Episodes
Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe
May 08, 2023 09:00 - 44 minutes - 40.9 MB650 years since the visions of Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe's birth in King's Lynn, two novels have been published which explore these influential medieval mystics. Shahidha Bari brings together Claire Gilbert - author of I, Julian - and Victoria MacKenzie - author of For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy On My Little Pain - and New Generation Thinker Hetta Howes to discuss these very different characters and what we know of their lives and faith. Producer: Robyn Read You can find other con...
Kingship and ceremony
May 05, 2023 18:57 - 45 minutes - 41.4 MBLuxury and Power is the title of a new British Museum exhibition focusing on the politics of display used by rulers in Persia and Greece. Ahead of the coronation, Anne McElvoy hears from the curator, from academics researching past royal rituals in Tudor and Medieval England and about power and royalty on the operatic stage from Verdi's Don Carlos and Aida and to Philip Glass's Akhnaten and Britten's Gloriana. Dr Jamie Fraser is curator for the Ancient Levant and Anatolia at the British Mus...
Sidney Poitier
May 04, 2023 11:00 - 45 minutes - 41.2 MBGuess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) tackled inter-racial relationships. In the Heat of the Night won the Best Picture Oscar in 1967. For Love of Ivy (1968) satirised white liberal attitudes and treated audiences to the indelibly suave image of Poitier eating sushi and talking Japanese. A new play at the Kiln Theatre in London explores the decisions Poitier had to make in his film career. The playwright Ryan Calais Cameron joins Matthew Sweet with film critic Jan Asante and biographer Aram G...
Sound, conflict and central heating
May 02, 2023 10:28 - 45 minutes - 41.5 MBRecordings in sub-zero temperatures and the hottest day on record have fed into the sound of Erland Cooper's latest composition. Ahead of a performance at the Barbican Centre, he discusses the way his Folded Landscape piece thaws through seven movements. New Generation Thinker Sam Johnson-Schlee is researching the social history of central heating, how its changed what we do in the home, and why climate change and global geopolitics are leading to questions about its' future. Sarah Jilani ...
Lady Antonia Fraser
April 27, 2023 15:59 - 45 minutes - 41.3 MBFrom Mary Queen of Scots - about whom her mother was going to write until she intervened - to her most recent biography of Caroline Lamb, out in mid May, Lady Antonia Fraser has had a career publishing prize winning books exploring historical figures. In this conversation, recorded at her London home with historian Rana Mitter, she reflects on what she calls "optical research", the crime fiction she has written, meeting figures from history including Clement Atlee dressed as Santa and the pr...
Queen Charlotte, fashion and music
April 25, 2023 10:27 - 45 minutes - 41.5 MBMusic making, fashion and behaviour at court in the Georgian period are the focus of new research by Sophie Coulombeau, Mary-Jannet Leith and Lizzy Buckle. As Bridgerton launches a spin off series about Queen Charlotte and an exhibition opens at the Queen's Gallery at Buckingham Palace called Style and Society, Shahidha Bari hosts a discussion about soirées, soprano stardom and sexual scandals. Producer: Julian Siddle A Georgian inspired episode of Radio 3's weekly curation of Words and Mu...
New Thinking: Fashion, sustainability and Earth Day
April 20, 2023 17:04 - 27 minutes - 25.5 MBFrom unboxing and influencers to circular fashion and a new artwork unveiled for Earth Day: New Generation Thinker Xine Yao from University College London hosts a conversation about sustainable fashion ideas. How does the London College of Fashion experiment with materials and teach design practices and fashion media which focus on sustainability? Monica Buchan-Ng is the Acting Head of Knowledge Exchange at the Centre for Sustainable Fashion and she tells us about online courses and innov...
Hilma af Klint
April 20, 2023 17:00 - 45 minutes - 41.6 MBAs a new Tate exhibition of paintings puts the work of Swedish painter Hilma af Klint alongside modernist giant, Piet Mondrian. Both were painters fascinated by esoteric and occult ideas that became more marginal with the ascendancy of modernism. Matthew Sweet and guests discuss these abstract art works, theosophy and a search for the spirit world. Nabila Abdel Nabi is co-curator of Hilma Af Klint & Piet Mondrian: Forms of Life runs at Tate Modern in London Jennifer Higgie is the author of...
Tartan, Kidnapped and Highland writing
April 19, 2023 16:00 - 45 minutes - 41.6 MBStevenson's swashbuckling Jacobite set novel has been translated into a play which is touring Scotland. Tartan and its history are on show at V&A Dundee, including a piece of tartan found in a peat bog in Glen Affric around forty years ago newly dated to circa 1500-1600 AD, making it the oldest known surviving specimen of true tartan in Scotland. The Highland Book prize has announced its shortlist. Anne McElvoy is joined by New Generation Thinker and poet Peter Mackay, fashion historian Jona...
Galatea and Shakespeare
April 18, 2023 16:00 - 45 minutes - 41.7 MBJohn Lyly's play Galatea, first recorded in 1588, inspired Shakespeare to write As You Like It and A Midsummer Night's Dream. In Brighton, Emma Frankland is directing a rare professional revival of it, so she and the academic advisor on the project Andy Kesson join Globe Theatre head of research Will Tosh and New Generation Thinker Emma Whipday for a conversation about cross-dressing in Elizabethan dramas and about the plays gathered together in Shakespeare's First Folio. Shahidha Bari hosts...
Caruso, Elsie Houston, Peter Brathwaite
April 13, 2023 12:59 - 45 minutes - 41.4 MBThe singers Enrico Caruso and Elsie Houston, a new opera at ENO and links between musical and artistic traditions in Latin America, Europe and New York are explored by the academics Ditlev Rindom and New Generation Thinker Adjoa Osei. Plus the baritone Peter Brathwaite has an exhibition of lockdown photographs in which he recreates the poses of black people portrayed in paintings from the last 800 years opening in Bristol (the photographs have also been published in a book) and has a musical...
Land and soil politics
April 13, 2023 11:00 - 14 minutes - 13 MBFrom nature as "a living whole" in the ideas of Goethe and Alexander von Humboldt to the "Blood and Soil" ideas of Nazi Germany: New Generation Thinker Jim Scown, from Cardiff University, traces the links between ideas about the order of nature to more troubling views about links with the land that led organic pioneer Jorian Jenks to refer to "alien hands" tilling "British soil". Producer: Torquil MacLeod
Ginger Rogers
April 12, 2023 10:45 - 45 minutes - 41.4 MB‘Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did but backwards and in high heels’ said cartoonist Bob Thaves. Matthew Sweet is joined by Lucy Bolton, Pamela Hutchinson, David Benedict and Miles Eady to look at her life (1911-1995) and a film career that stretched far beyond the 10 movies she made with Astaire, including an Oscar winning performance in Kitty Foyle. Producer: Torquil MacLeod The BFI season runs to the end of April Many of Ginger Rogers' RKO films are available to watch on iPla...
Children of the Waters
April 11, 2023 17:02 - 14 minutes - 13 MBAn 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 Durkhei...
Pirates
April 11, 2023 16:00 - 45 minutes - 41.6 MBFrom the Pirates of Penzance and Captain Hook, to Ottoman corsairs, Henry Avery, Mary Read and Lady Killigrew: Anne McElvoy is joined by New Generation Thinkers Michael Talbot and Joan Passey, and by Robert Blyth, Senior Curator of World and Maritime History, Royal Museums Greenwich, who is also one of the co-curators of Pirates at the National Maritime Museum Cornwall. Producer: Harry Parker Pirates runs at the National Maritime Museum Cornwall from April to December and then moves in 202...
Revolutionary free speech
April 07, 2023 11:00 - 14 minutes - 13.1 MB"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 ...
Fugitive slaves, Victorian justice
April 06, 2023 17:00 - 13 minutes - 12.5 MBThe 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
Religion and Science
April 06, 2023 16:00 - 45 minutes - 41.4 MBNicholas Spencer, Emily Qureshi-Hurst and Philip Ball join Christopher Harding for a conversation about the nature of reality – as science reveals it, as religion reveals it, and how the world might look if we treat science and religion not as competitors but as collaborators; a cosmic dynamic duo. Magesteria: The Entangled Histories of Science and Religion by Nicholas Spencer is out now. Producer: Ruth Watts
A family of witches
April 05, 2023 19:00 - 14 minutes - 13.1 MBAn 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
New Thinking: Raiding Gay’s the Word & Magnus Hirschfeld
April 05, 2023 18:52 - 42 minutes - 39.2 MBCustoms officers raided the London bookshop Gay’s the Word on April 10th 1984 and seized 144 titles. A campaign was mounted after the directors were charged with conspiracy to import indecent books. Dr Sarah Pyke tells Diarmuid Hester about an oral history project which aims to raise awareness of Operation Tiger and how it ties into wider work on a history of queer reading. Dr Ina Linge has been looking at the way LGBTQ+ people used autobiographical writing to critically engage with the sc...
The Rossettis and Walter Pater
April 05, 2023 14:13 - 45 minutes - 41.2 MBWhat is that people hate about the Pre-Raphaelites? From the 19th century to the present day their detractors have been remarkably consistent in the language that they have used to the describe their visceral dislike of these artists and their works. Dinah Roe, Greg Tate and Lynda Nead join Matthew Sweet to examine what makes Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his gang such a polarising force in art history. They also delve into the powerful and sensual poetry of Christina Rossetti and Walter Pater'...
Introducing New Generation Thinkers 2023
April 04, 2023 20:58 - 53 minutes - 48.8 MBFrom lessons in civility learnt playing French board game to the value of babbling by babies in speech development, a history of central heating to the neglected industrial landscapes of the A13, Anti-Asian tropes in AI, Quaker needlework to Viking burial practices, 70’s women’s art collectives, the history of Ireland’s Magdalen laundries to the first philosophy book by a woman to be published in C17 century Germany: Chris Harding hears about the research topics of ten early career academics...
Charles Babbage and broadcasting the sea
April 04, 2023 11:50 - 14 minutes - 13 MBThe 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 ...
Translating Cultures
March 28, 2023 18:20 - 45 minutes - 41.3 MBComposer Alex Ho, novelist Xiaolu Guo, curator George Young and director Anthony Lau join Rana Mitter to discuss a Cinderella story Ye Xian which has inspired a new music theatre piece, a new Manchester gallery display of Chinese life and history, a Brecht play set in China which looks at love, hospitality and goodness and a memoir which describes ideas about love and what it feels like to be based in a new city. Producer: Robyn Read George Young is Head of Exhibitions and Collections at t...
East Germany
March 28, 2023 17:50 - 45 minutes - 41.3 MBKatja Hoyer and Karen Leeder join Anne McElvoy to discuss new histories of East Germany, stories depicting life in the state which have recently been translated into English as well as a recently translated edition of Uwe Wittstock's February 1933. Plus, Emily Oliver on the history of BBC German service and Elizabeth Ward is beginning a research project on the cinema of East Germany and its involvement in International Film Festivals. Katja Hoyer's book is called Beyond the Wall: East Germa...
The culture of Albania
March 23, 2023 22:00 - 44 minutes - 41.1 MBLea Ypi, author of a memoir entitled Free: Coming of Age at the End of History, joins Matthew Sweet to explore the history and culture of Albania - its art, music and literature. They're joined by Adela Demetja - curator and director of the Tirana Art Lab - Centre for Contemporary Art in Albania and curator of the Albania pavilion in last year's Venice Biennale, which featured the work of Lumturi Blloshmi. Ani Kokobobo, Associate Professor and chair of Slavic Languages & Literatures at the U...
New Thinking: AI, feminism, human/machines
March 23, 2023 13:22 - 47 minutes - 43.2 MBWhat ethical questions arise from new human-machine relations as we are increasingly asked, as citizens and workers, to collaborate with AI systems? And how might a feminist approach to AI design help us shape an equitable future for AI-Human relations? Research Associate, Kerry McInerney, discusses how facial recognition AI software is being deployed in job recruitment and to tackle gender based violence. Lecturer, Kendra Briken describes her work on the integration of the human labo...
Busking and Billy Waters
March 21, 2023 15:57 - 44 minutes - 40.8 MBBilly Waters became a celebrity in early 19th century London as a talented street performer. New Generation Thinker Oskar Jensen and Mary L. Shannon join Rana Mitter to tell Billy's story and those of other musicians performing on the streets of London at the time. Charlie Taverner has written a history of Street Food. We also hear from Marigold Hughes about the latest production from Streetwise Opera, an organisation that devises opera productions with people who are or have been homeless. ...
The wicked? stepmother
March 16, 2023 22:45 - 44 minutes - 40.9 MBCinderella is opening in a new ballet production at the Royal Opera House and Mothering Sunday is coming up so Matthew Sweet is joined by New Generation Thinkers Sabina Dosani and Emma Whipday and Marina Warner for a conversation about good and bad mothering and how images are changing. Marina Warner's many books include From the Beast to the Blonde: On Fairy Tales and Their Tellers Frederick Ashton's ballet Cinderella has been re-imagined using video design for a new production running at ...
Decadent Art
March 15, 2023 14:20 - 44 minutes - 40.9 MBA Persian epic depicted in The Yellow Book which Aubrey Beardsley was art editor for, Iranian figures on the French operatic stage and Rudyard Kipling's links with decadent ideas: Shahidha Bari is joined by Dr Julia Hartley, Dr Alexander Bubb and Professor Jennifer Yee to discuss new research into late nineteenth century art, literature and opera and what we mean by decadence. Was it really a-political and focused on surface and ornament? And how far are ideas about art for art's sake and se...
Debt
March 14, 2023 11:24 - 45 minutes - 41.3 MBDebt is central to the modern economy and it has long been so. The idea of debt has long been loaded with as much morality as financial meaning. Anne McElvoy explores our ideas about debt, what it is and how it works. Decisions about borrowing or paying down debt are currently being faced the world over. They’re informed by political beliefs and a whole history of ideas behind that. So, how have our ideas changed over time and what can or should be done about it? Professor Kenneth Rogoff is...
New Thinking: British Sign Language
March 13, 2023 09:00 - 43 minutes - 39.6 MBBody language is being studied as a way of working out new ways of learning Sign Language and if British Sign Language is to be taught as a GCSE in schools who should do the teaching? As we mark 20 years since British Sign language was acknowledged as a language in its own right (18th March 2003) and then the passing in 2022 of recognition in law that it is an indigenous language of Great Britain: Naomi Paxton talks to two researchers in the field. Doctor Kate Rowley is the Deputy Direct...
Making Your Voice Heard
March 08, 2023 20:10 - 45 minutes - 41.4 MBIranian women using song to protest and whose voices do we pay attention to ? On International Women's Day, Shahidha Bari hosts a conversation with the authors of books called On Being Unreasonable and Who Gets Believed, an artist and a researcher looking at Iranian women using song. Michelle Assay is an academic specialising in music who was born in Iran and had to leave the country. Dina Nayeri is an Iranian American writer now based in Scotland and Kirsty Sedgman studies the behaviour of ...
Anarchism and David Graeber
March 07, 2023 22:44 - 44 minutes - 41.1 MBBullshit jobs, Toward an Anthropological Theory of Value, Debt: The First 5000 Years: the titles of some of David Graeber's books give a sense of his take on the world and his concerns. Matthew Sweet talks with archaeologist David Wengrow - co-author with Graeber of The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity and looks at Graeber's involvement with the Occupy movement and the influence of anarchist ideas. They are joined by historian of ideas Dr Sophie Scott-Brown, and by Kirsten Steve...
Dom Sylvester Houédard
March 02, 2023 22:44 - 43 minutes - 39.9 MBThe monk and poet Dom Sylvester Houédard (1924-92) used his Olivetti Lettera 22 typewriter to fuse art and writing in concrete poetry. Born in 1924 he worked in Army Intelligence in India, Sri Lanka and Singapore during the Second World war and in 1949 he joined the Benedictine Abbey of Prinknash, Gloucestershire. Matthew Sweet looks at his life and art with guests Nicola Simpson, Rey Conquer, Charles Verey and Greg Thomas. Charles Verey is writing a biography of Dom Sylvester Houédard and ...
Sesame Street and Soviet culture
March 02, 2023 14:10 - 45 minutes - 41.2 MBMuppets in Moscow is Natasha Lance Rogoff's account of launching a Russian version of the American tv series Sesame Street. If a single announcer supplies the dialogue dubbing when a foreign film is shown in Russia where do you find the technical skills you need? Should you feature exclusively ethnically Russian actors or include nationalities from former Soviet republics? What puppets from Russian folklore might be suitable and what kind of education for children are you trying to achieve? ...
Tin cans, cutlery and sewing
February 28, 2023 22:30 - 44 minutes - 41.2 MBHow sewing machines wrecked sewing. Why people mistrusted tin cans. What the invention of stainless steel had to do with the military. New research into the impact of industrialisation on materials like tin, steel and sewing machines is shared by the academics Chris Corker from the University of York, Lindsay Middleton from the University of Glasgow, and Serena Dyer who teaches at De Montfort University. Chris Harding hosts the conversation. Producer: Tim Bano
Ghosts of Caribbean History
February 24, 2023 15:51 - 44 minutes - 41 MBHungry Ghosts is the new novel set in colonial Trinidad by Kevin Jared Hosein. Colin Grant has written a memoir about his Jamaican family. A new art project, Windrush Portraits, is a collaboration between Mary Evans and Michael Elliott with communities in both Kingston, Jamaica, and Southampton, UK. Shahidha Bari looks at the way ghosts of history haunt these artworks. Producer: Robyn Read Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein is out now. Colin Grant's memoir I'm Black So You Don't Have to B...
Climate change and empire building
February 23, 2023 13:00 - 44 minutes - 40.7 MBHaggling with Indian customs officials and presenting a mighty emperor with the distinctly unimpressive gifts of a cheap sword and a broken carriage are two particularly inauspicious moments that feature in the tale told by historian and New Generation Thinker Nandini Das in her new book about the four years Thomas Roe spent as James VI and I's ambassador to the Mughal Empire. Peter Frankopan has previously written about The Silk Roads and the First Crusade. Now he has turned his attention t...
Phaedra, Cretan palaces and the minotaur
February 21, 2023 08:52 - 44 minutes - 40.5 MBA new exhibition at the Ashmolean looks at the digs conducted by Sir Arthur Evans at Knossos in Crete. At the National Theatre Janet McTeer stars as the Cretan princess Phaedra in a new play by Simon Stone. Classicist Natalie Haynes, curator Andrew Shapland and Minoan archaeologist Nicoletta Momigliano join Rana Mitter to explore what the artefacts found at Knossos can tell us about the world of the Minoans and to delve into the powerful myths these Bronze Age Cretans left us. Labyrinth: Kn...
Idrissa Ouédraogo
February 16, 2023 15:26 - 44 minutes - 40.7 MBBurkinabé filmmaker Idrissa Ouédraogo (21 January 1954 – 18 February 2018) was awarded the Grand Prix at the 1990 Cannes Film Festival for his film Tilaï. Much of Ouédraogo's work deals with the tensions between rural and city life and tradition and modernity in his native Burkina Faso. Matthew Sweet is joined by Boukary Sawadogo who teaches cinema studies at City College of New York and New Generation Thinker Sarah Jilani. Boukary Sawadogo is the author of books including “West African Scr...
Stories of Love
February 14, 2023 08:00 - 44 minutes - 41 MBProust as an agony uncle, Romeo and Juliet rewritten as 21st century Welsh teenagers in a new drama by Gary Owen, the Lesbian coming of age novel by Rita Mae Brown that inspired the lead character in Willy Russell's Educating Rita to change her name and a new book inspired by the historical figures who collaborated on the first English medical textbook on homosexuality. Tom Crewe's novel The New Life depicts the married lives and love triangles of John Addington Symonds and Henry Havelock El...
Donkeys
February 09, 2023 22:44 - 44 minutes - 41 MBFrom Orwell and Shakespeare back to Greek myth, Aesop, and early Christianity: Matthew Sweet and guests look at a cultural history of the donkey. EO, a film out in UK cinemas this month, follows the life of a donkey born in a Polish circus. New Generation Thinker Lisa Mullen is an expert on George Orwell and lecturer in film at the University of Cambridge Lucy Grig is Senior Lecturer in Roman History at the University of Edinburgh Faith Burden is Executive Director of Equine Operations at t...
The Heir of Redclyffe
February 09, 2023 00:00 - 14 minutes - 12.9 MBSoldiers 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) ...
Lady Macbeth
February 08, 2023 08:00 - 44 minutes - 41.1 MBPlaywright Zinnie Harris, author Isabelle Schuler and New Generation Thinker Emma Whipday and Michelle Assay have looked at the murdering husband and wife of Shakespeare's Scottish play. Chris Harding hosts a discussion about the Macbeth story from Kurosawa and Shostakovich to a novel called Lady MacBethad and a play called Macbeth an Undoing. Macbeth - an Undoing by Zinnie Harris runs at the Lyceum Edinburgh from Feb 4th to 25th 2023. Throne of Blood Akira Kurosawa's 1957 film is part of a...
Berji Kristin: Tales from the Garbage Hills
February 08, 2023 00:00 - 14 minutes - 13.1 MBUrbanisation, 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 Hi...
Gwendolyn Brooks
February 07, 2023 16:00 - 45 minutes - 41.3 MBInner city life in Chicago's Bronzeville and the experiences of ordinary people inspired the first poetry collection published by Gwendolyn Brooks in 1945 and she followed this with a sequence of poems Annie Allen and a novella Maud Martha depicting Black women entering adulthood. Chicago based poet Peter Kahn, editor of an anthology of modern poets responding to the writing of Brooks, and poets Malika Booker and Keith Jarrett join Shahidha Bari to discuss the themes and textures in Gwendoly...
The mermaid-like Mélusine
February 03, 2023 16:08 - 44 minutes - 41.1 MBThe legend of Mélusine emerges in French literature of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries in the texts of Jean d’Arras and Coudrette. A beautiful young woman, the progeny of the union between a king and a fairy, is condemned to spend every Saturday with her body below the waist transformed into the tail of serpent. She agrees to marry only on the condition that her husband should never seek to see her on that day every week. Shahidha Bari explores the emergence of the hybrid m...
Crossroads and TV soaps
February 02, 2023 12:00 - 44 minutes - 40.6 MBRussell T Davies has written a 3 part mini-series - Nolly - about Crossroads star Noele Gordon. He joins Matthew Sweet along with screenwriter Paula Milne who wrote for Crossroads and Coronation Street and devised Angels for the BBC, and writer Gail Renard, who was working at ATV during the Crossroads years, to explore the unique and sometimes undervalued place of the soap opera in TV drama. Nolly will begin streaming on ITVX from Thursday 2nd February. The drama will be accompanied by a do...
The English Civil War
January 31, 2023 22:44 - 45 minutes - 41.2 MBIf the Tudors are the soap opera of English history, the restless years of the mid 17th century, often called the English Civil War, are more like a seminar in political and religious theory with an added component of armed violence. How did historians in the 20th century make sense of the period? And how are historians of today rising to the challenge? The Restless Republic: The People’s Republic of Britain, by Anna Keay, was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction 2022...