Arts & Ideas

Re-invention and moral struggles are at the heart of the story of post-war Germany traced by Frank Trentmann in his new book Out of the Darkness. Anne McElvoy talks to him, to Thomas Meaney the new editor of Granta who is bringing out an edition called Deutschland, to journalist Stefanie Bolzen and to New Generation Thinker Dr Tom Smith who has studied the techno scene in German cities. How have 70 years of political struggles shaped Germany's culture and identity?Producer Ruth Watts

Caribbean migrants striving to make their lives in London are the focus of this 1956 novel by Samuel Selvon. Written in creolized English, it established him as an important Caribbean voice. In an event organised in partnership with the Royal Society of Literature and the British Library, Shahidha Bari is joined by the poet Anthony Joseph, the writer Guy Gunaratne and by Susheila Nasta who is a writer, critic and literary executor and representative for the Sam Selvon literary estate.Guy Gunaratne‘s first novel In Our Mad And Furious City won the International Dylan Thomas Prize, Jhalak Prize and the Authors Club Award. Their second novel published earlier this year is called Mister Mister. Anthony Joseph was born in Trinidad. The author of five poetry collections, Sonnets for Albert, won the T. S. Eliot Prize 2022 and was shortlisted for The Forward Prize for Best Collection 2022. Susheila Nasta founded Wasafiri, the Magazine of International Contemporary Writing and is an Emeritus Professor at Queen Mary, London and the Open University. Her books include The Cambridge History of Black and Asian British Writing, and Brave New Words: The Power of Writing Now.Producer: Torquil MacLeod You can find other conversations about prose, poetry and drama - some recorded as events at the British Library and in partnership with the Royal Society of Literature gathered into a collection on the programme website for BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking. They are all available to download as the Arts & Ideas podcast.

Over 200 women sculptors have been uncovered in the research of Sophie Johnson from Bristol University. She describes some of their creations and discusses the challenges of working with the incomplete personal archives of these artists – including Mrs Goldsmith, Patience Wright, and Catherine Andras, who created wax portrait miniatures and effigies, and Anne Seymour Damer, who carved in marble.Kathleen Collins died in her 40s and left un-filmed screenplays and unpublished stories which Alix Beeston from Cardiff University has been researching. Collins’ finished film Losing Ground didn’t get a theatrical release when it was made in 1982 but it was restored and reissued in 2015. Now her work is finding a new audience. But how should we approach her unfinished works? Joan Passey hosts the conversation.Producer in Cardiff: Fay LomasDr Joan Passey teaches English at Bristol University and is a New Generation Thinker working with the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to share research on radio. Sophie Johnson is a PhD candidate at the University of Bristol researching eighteenth century European women sculptors. Her research focuses on women wax modellers and their entrepreneurship. Links to her articles are available at https://research-information.bris.ac.uk/en/persons/sophie-johnson Dr Alix Beeston is a feminist writer and academic based at Cardiff University. Her most recent book is Incomplete: The Feminist Possibilities of the Unfinished Film. More details of her work are available at https://alixbeeston.com/With special thanks to Michael Minard, who provided the song ‘It Might Be’ – written by Minard and Kathleen Collins, performed by Jenny Burton, intended for use in an unfinished film project by Collins – which we hear in the podcast.This New Thinking episode of the Arts and Ideas podcast was made in partnership with the AHRC, part of UKRI. You can find more conversations about new research available on the website of Radio 3’s Free Thinking programme and another collection exploring Women in the World all available as the Arts & Ideas podcast.

A miserable child and a summer festival are at the heart of the short work of philosophical fiction first published by Ursula Le Guin in 1973. The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas was sparked by "forgetting Dostoyevsky and reading road signs backwards" was the answer given by the author when asked where she got the idea from. Matthew Sweet is joined by guests including the authors Una McCormack, Naomi Alderman, Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson and Kevan Manwaring, and political philosopher Sophie Scott-Brown. They discuss Le Guin's thought experiments and writing career and also the short story called The Ones Who Stayed and Fought which NK Jemisin wrote in response to Le Guin's vision of Omelas.Producer: Luke MulhallNaomi Alderman's latest novel The Future is out now Esmie Jikiemi-Pearson publishes The Principle of Moments in January 2024 Dr Sophie Scott-Brown is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of East Anglia and is the author of The Histories of Raphael Samuel - A Portrait of A People’s Historian Dr Kevan Manwaring is Programme Leader for MA Creative Writing (online) and Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Arts University Bournemouth Dr Una McCormack's books include Star Trek: Picard novel The Last Best HopeYou can find many other discussions about science fiction and imagining the future in collections on the Free Thinking programme website including episodes about Philip K Dick, John Rawls, Octavia Butler, Afro-futurism, AI and creativity

The first women’s liberation conference in the UK, Miss World protests, the formation of the Brixton Black Women’s Group and the politics of who cleans the house are all explored in a new exhibition at Tate Britain. Whilst activism and art linked to ecology by 50 women and gender non-conforming artists are on display at the Barbican Centre in London and eco-feminist Monica Sjöö (1938-2005) is celebrated in a show opening at Modern Art Oxford. Naomi Paxton is joined by the academics Sophie Oliver and Ana Baeza Ruiz, by Alona Pardo curator of the Re/Sisters exhibition at the Barbican, and by Marlene Smith, a member of the BLK art group in Britain, who has helped pull together the Tate show.Producer: Julian SiddleWomen in Revolt: Art, Activism and the Women’s movement in the UK 1970–1990 runs at Tate Britain until 7 April 2024 Monica Sjöö: The Great Cosmic Mother runs at Modern Art Oxford from 18 November to 25 February 2024 RE/SISTERS A Lens on Gender and Ecology runs at the Barbican Centre, London until Sun 14 Jan 2024Ana Baeza Ruiz is at Loughborough University working as the Research Associate for the project Feminist Art Making Histories - an oral history of women's art. Sophie Oliver teaches literature at the University of Liverpool, specialising in modernist writing by women and in links between art and writing. Both are New Generation Thinkers on the scheme run by the BBC and the AHRC to put research on the radio.

Matthew Sweet is joined by Professor Preti Taneja – author of a novel We That Are Young which sets the King Lear in Delhi, by Dr Iain Robert Smith who studies films from around the world, and by Andrew Dickson, journalist and author of Worlds Elsewhere: Journeys Around Shakespeare’s Globe. As part of Radio 3’s day of music inspired by Shakespeare, Free Thinking looks at paintings by the Romantics and Pre-Raphaelites, at films from India and Turkey, and at the way Shakespeare’s plays resonate in political hot spots.Producer: Ruth WattsYou can find plenty more Shakespeare discussions in a collection on the Free Thinking programme website and available as Arts and Ideas podcasts and we’ve got two New Thinking episodes exploring what else you might have seen in an Elizabethan playhouse aside from Shakespeare plays – and the title of another research project that we hear about might give you a clue - Box Office BearsAnd you can hear all the music played today on Radio 3 inspired by Shakespeare on BBC Sounds - where you can also find episodes of Words and Music and a Sunday Feature presented by New Generation Thinker (and winner of the British Academy Book Prize) Nandini Das profiling Shakespeare’s rival Robert Greene.

Goldilocks, Robin Hood, Little Bess of Bromley, Moll Frith were star performers on the bear baiting circuit in Elizabethan England. New evidence of bear bones uncovered in archaeological digs and over 1,100 accounts in letters and documents from the period, are being studied in a research project called Box Office Bears. Andy Kesson delves into bears’ impact on the literary culture of the time and asks if bear baiting was not so much a sporting contest as a staged spectacles akin to contemporary wrestling. Hannah O’Regan explains how bear bones found in archaeological digs in Southwark’s theatre land reveal the animals’ stressful lives and she suggests that the scary, fighting bears of our cultural imaginary are strikingly different from the playful, conflict defusing bear of real life. Were they unfairly typecast? Hannah O'Regan is Professor of Archaeology and Palaeoecology at the University of Nottingham and Principal Investigator in the BOB Project. She has excavated on sites in the UK, Israel and South Africa. Her current research interests include human-non-human animal interactions (particularly bears). Andy Kesson is a Reader in Renaissance Literature at the University of Roehampton and Co-Investigator in the BOB project. He was the principal investigator for Before Shakespeare, and is working with the theatre maker Emma Frankland on a production of John Lyly’s Galatea which he discussed in an episode of Free Thinking called Galatea and Shakespeare https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001kvpk. He has recently explored a multitude of bears in early modern plays. Box Office Bears: Animal baiting in early modern England, is a project bringing together researchers from the Universities of Nottingham, Roehampton and Oxford and project partner Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) https://boxofficebears.com/about/ Dr Emma Whipday is a Lecturer in Renaissance Literature at Newcastle University and an expert in Shakespeare, early modern literature, women's history, theatre history, and the history of the home and family . Her current book project, Subordinate Roles, explores the cultural importance of the brother-sister relationship and the place of the unmarried woman in early modern society. She’s a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker on the scheme which promotes research on the radio.This New Thinking episode of the Arts and Ideas podcast was made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI. You can find more in a collection of the website of BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking programme and all available on BBC Sounds.

Ultrasound tests in Burnley market hall will help the phonetics lab at Lancaster University explore tongue positions and accents as part of this year's Being Human Festival. Claire Nance joins John Gallagher to explain more. Alongside them are Rob Drummond from Manchester Met University, author of a new book You're All Talk, Andrea Smith from the University of Suffolk, who is researching early radio voices and Shane O'Mara, Professor of Experimental Brain Research in Trinity College Dublin, who has been exploring why we converse.Producer in Salford: Faith LawrenceThis New Thinking episode of the Arts and Ideas podcast was made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI. Professor Claire Nance and her team from Lancaster University are at Burnley Market on Saturday 11th November. The Being Human Festival runs a series of public events across the UK showcasing humanities research at universities. It runs November 9th - 18th https://www.beinghumanfestival.org/ Dr Andrea Smith is a Lecturer in English and Creative Writing at the University of Suffolk Professor Shane O'Mara teaches at Trinity College Dublin and is the author of books including In Praise of Walking and Talking Heads: The New Science of How Conversation Shapes Our WorldsProfessor Rob Drummond's book You're All Talk is out now and you can hear more from him in these podcasts New Thinking: City Talk https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07h30hm and New Thinking: Accents https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0d66mtl You can find John Gallagher's programme A History of the Tongue available if you look up Radio 3's Sunday Feature programme website And we have other Free Thinking discussions about speech: Sadie Ryan, Lynda Clark and Allison Koenecke in an episode called Speech, Voice, Accents and AI https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000srbn New Thinking: Language the Victorians and Us https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0dmjgwx New Thinking: Language Loss and Revival https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0dw6ctr What is Speech? https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b1q2f3 What is Good Listening? https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000djtd The pros and cons of swearing https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09c0r4m Language and Belonging https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0006fh9 AI and creativity: what makes us human? https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0005nml

From Iraq and Afghanistan and news headlines today back to earlier battles in the Spanish Civil War and World War Two, the relationship between war, photography and the press has affected attitudes towards conflicts. In the annual Remembrance discussion organised in partnership with the Imperial War Museum, Free Thinking presenter Anne McElvoy's panel are: Toby Haggith Senior Curator, Department of Second World War and Mid 20th Century Conflict; Irish Iraqi artist Jananne Al-Ani, whose work explores surveillance, aerial reconnaissance and exodus after warfare; Charlie Calder-Potts, who was an official war artist with the British Army in Afghanistan 2013/14; and Caroline Brothers, author of War and Photography: A Cultural History.The Blavatnik Art, Film and Photography Galleries at IWM London include around 500 works from the museum collections including John Singer Sargent’s painting Gassed, Steve McQueen’s response to the 2003 war in Iraq, Queen and Country, and works by artists including Paul Nash, Laura Knight, Peter Jackson, Olive Edis and Omer Fast. Charlie Calder-Potts works with aluminium, wasli, wood panel and vellum (calf skin); combining photography, painting and drawing and has worked in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Iran and Russia. Jananne Al-Ani is an Irish Iraqi artist who teaches at the University of the Arts London. Her video piece Timelines which was on display at the Towner Art Gallery Eastbourne last year and has recently been seen at the Ab-Anbar Gallery, London, explores Armistice Day 1918 in the town of al-Hindayyah in what is now modern-day Iraq. Caroline Brothers is the author of War and Photography A Cultural History.Producer: Torquil MacLeodYou can find a collection of episodes exploring war and conflict on the Free Thinking programme website which include past discussions organised in partnership with the IWM.

From Lyons’ Corner House opera performances in the 1920s to 1980s productions staged in fish and chip shops in Scotland – Alexandra Wilson has been studying the history of opera going and presents us with a wider audience for the art form than current stereotypes might have you think. Callan Davies has looked at what went on in Elizabethan playhouses aside from plays by the likes of Shakespeare. New archaeological digs and legal documents featuring complaints are giving us evidence for a kind of leisure centre or arena which might have seen animal sports, fencing matches or spectaculars. Laurence Scott hosts the conversation.Alexandra Wilson is Professor of music and cultural history from Oxford Brookes University and the author of Opera in the Jazz Age: Cultural Politics in 1920s BritainCallan Davies is lecturer in 17th-century studies at the University of Southampton. His book is called What is a Playhouse? England at Play, 1520-1620 and he’s involved in a research project called Box Office Bears which you can hear more about in another of our New Thinking episodes of the Arts and Ideas podcast and you can find more information about playhouses here: https://www.shakespearesglobe.com/discover/shakespeares-world/playhouses/ https://www.thestageshoreditch.com/discover/history-heritage Laurence Scott is the author of two books The Four-Dimensional Human and Picnic Comma Lightning. He teaches writing and literature at New York University in London and became a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker in the first year of the scheme in 2011. This New Thinking episode of the Arts and Ideas podcast was made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI. You can find a collection of episodes focused on new research on BBC Radio 3’s Free Thinking programme website.

Lady Fanshawe’s ‘Receipt Book’ (c.1651-1707) provides the inspiration for a public cooking event at Tamworth castle hosted by the academic Sara Read which includes preserving vegetables and a look at etiquette. Ideas about hospitality and how we behave when we eat are at the heart of a quiz organised by researchers at Edge Hill University. Both are part of the Being Human Festival and Sara Read and Zayneb Allak join Lindsay Middleton, who is researching food poverty, luxury ingredients and tin cans. Lisa Mullen is also joined at the Free Thinking table for a conversation about new research into food history by two authors: Rebecca May Johnson has written a memoir called Small Fires: an epic in the kitchen and Pen Vogler's History of Good Food and Hard Times in Britain is called Stuffed. So join them for a conversation which covers eel soup, salads, real butter and How to Cook a Wolf.Producer: Jayne EgertonThe Being Human Festival runs from Nov 9th to 19th showcasing university research from around the UK in a series of public events https://www.beinghumanfestival.org/ Dr Sara Read teaches at Loughborough University and is running a workshop at Tamworth Castle on Nov 18 Rebecca May Johnson is running an experimental cooking demo in Walton-on-the-Naze, Essex on Nov 18 and her memoir is called Small Fires Zaynab Allak at Edge Hill University is running events to do with hospitality 10-16 November Dr Lindsay Middleton is a literary historian of nineteenth-century food writing at the University of Glasgow. Her research projects include Dishes for the Sick Room: Invalid Recipes from Glasgow's Culinary Collections Pen Vogler is the author of Stuffed: A History of Good Food and Hard Times in Britain and Scoff: A History of Food and Class in BritainYou can find more episodes exploring new research in a collection on the Free Thinking programme website including other New Thinking podcast episodes made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI

Around 3 million Bengali Pakistanis now live in Pakistan it is estimated and a research project has been exploring their experiences, mixing oral testimony and art projects with analysis of recent history. Humera Iqbal explains their findings to presenter Sarah Jilani. And Ahmad Naji Bakhti discusses his novel about the dreams of a boy growing up in Lebanon and how writing it in exile in Wales has led him to reflect on the language and phrasing he uses and what audience he is addressing. Humera Iqbal is Associate Professor of Social and Cultural Psychology at University College London. Her project is called Partition of Identity https://poistudy.com/ and has led to a film called BHASHAILI (ADRIFT) (2023) directed and produced by: Jawad Sharif and produced by: Humera Iqbal, Syeda Kashmala, Anushay Malik based on their research work and that of Maria Rashid. It is being screened at Rich Mix as part of the Being Human Festival on November 16th https://richmix.org.uk/events/paper-boats-the-pakistani-bengali-story/ Ahmad Naji Bakhti is a lecturer in creative writing at Aberystwyth University and the author of a novel called Between Beirut and the Moon published by Influx Press. He is also working on a project with Syrian residents in Aberystwyth. Dr Sarah Jilani is a Lecturer in English at City, University of London, looking at post-colonial world literatures and film and is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the BBC and Arts and Humanities Research Council to put research on the radio. This episode of the Arts and Ideas podcast was made in partnership with the AHRC, part of UKRI.

Writers Teju Cole and Noo Saro-Wiwa and Tate curator Osei Bonsu talk to Laurence Scott.The exhibition A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography at Tate Modern has a mission statement - to confront reductive representations of African peoples and cultures. All the images are from an African perspective, and explore ideas about masks, spiritual worlds, royalty, family portraits and shared dreams.The lives of African settlers in China are at the heart of the new book Black Ghosts by Noo Sara-Wiwa. Opportunities for Africans to live and work in China are precarious and tightly controlled, the book explores why many choose to live under such restrictions.And Teju Cole’s new novel is entitled Tremor. His central character a teacher of photography considers the revaluation of contemporary and historical identity in both Africa and America.Producer: Julian SiddleYou can find more episodes exploring Black History including episodes on Octavia Butler, the Black Atlantic, Sankofa and Afro-futurism and Zimbabwean writing on the Free Thinking programme website and available on BBC Sounds and as the Arts & Ideas podcast https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08t2qbp

"Strange stories" is the way Robert Aickman (1914-1981) described his fiction and to be honest that's putting it mildly. When he wasn't writing fiction that leaves both his protagonists and his readers in some very weird places, he was involved in an investigation into the haunting of Borley Rectory, was a member of The Ghost Club and he also co-founded the British Inland Waterways Association to restore canals. Matthew Sweet is joined by three fans of his work - critic Suzy Feay, writer Andrew Male and publisher R.B. Russell.Producer: Torquil MacLeodRobert Aickman published the following collections of stories: Powers of Darkness (1966), Sub Rosa (1968), Cold Hand in Mine (1976), Tales of Love and Death (1977) and Intrusions (1980) You can find other spooky Free Thinking episodes including a discussion of Ghost Stories with Irving Finkel and Jeremy Dyson, a ghost hunt in Portsmouth and a discussion of Blade Runner and a programme about the TV programme Ghostwatch

The first live concert in 175 years of songs and music written by Eliza Flower (1803-1846) takes place tomorrow. A friend of JS Mill, Harriet Martineau and Robert Browning, Flower set to music some of Walter Scott's romantic songs, composed music for her sister Sarah Flower Adams, who penned hymns including Nearer, My God, to Thee. Singer Frances M Lynch, accompanied on piano by Laurence Panter, joins New Generation Thinker and historian Oskar Jensen and Dr Clare Stainthorp, who is researching the Freethought Movement: Atheism, Agnosticism, and Secularism, 1866–1907. Matthew Sweet hosts.Producer: Torquil MacLeodFlower of the Seasons: Politics, power and poverty takes place at Conway Hall in London on Friday 27th October at 7pm performed by Electric Voice Theatre. Clare Stainthorp will be leading an event - Great and Good? - at Conway Hall on Saturday 11th November as part of the Being Human Festival.

Sleep science pioneer Nathaniel Kleitman descended into a cave in 1938 to investigate the nature of our sleep cycle. The experiment was not a success. And while it may not have yielded much evidence - a thrilling news report detailing the subterranean sleep project caught the public imagination. It's one of the stories told in a new book by Kenneth Miller tracing the history of research into sleeping patterns and the impact of sleep deprivation which takes in figures including Pavlov, Joe Borelli, William Dement and Mary Carskadon. John Gallagher talks to Kenneth Miller and to - Dr Diletta da Cristaforo about how contemporary writers are dealing with our fraught relationship with a good night's sleep. Professor Sasha Handley is an expert in the approach to sleep of early modern people - and we consider if they have any tips to help us now. Dr Emily Scott Dearing discusses Turn it Up - a new exhibition at the London Science Museum which explores the soothing sounds - and surprising power of the lullaby.Producer in Salford: Kevin CoreRadio 3's evening programmes include Night Tracks and Night Tracks mixes presented by Sara Mohr-Pietsch and Hannah Peel, Unclassified on Thursday evenings with Elizabeth Alker and six hours of music Through the Night - all available to listen at any time on BBC Sounds Mapping the Darkness by Kenneth Miller is out now Dr Diletta de Cristofaro is an Assistant Professor at Northumbria University and is working on a project Writing the Sleep Crisis https://www.writingsleep.com/ Sleeping Well in the Early Modern World is a project run at Manchester University by Professor Sasha Handley https://sites.manchester.ac.uk/sleeping-well/ It includes a series of public events at Ordsall Hall near Salford Quays. Turn it Up an exhibition about music which was at Manchester Science Museum opens in London's Science Museum and includes a section about sleep and music.The BBC Philharmonic Concert at Bridgewater Hall on Saturday October 28th takes us from dawn to dusk in a programme of music by Finnish composers and in London on the same evening Hannah Peel presents a 4 hour concert of Night Tracks Live at Kings Place. Both will become available on BBC Sounds and broadcast on Radio 3. You can find a Free Thinking Festival lecture about the need to sleep from Professor Russell Foster available on BBC Sounds https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08hz9yw

Ekow Eshun is curating an exhibition exploring the idea of Sankofa, taking from the past what is good and bringing it into the present. Sarah Jilani teaches novels written by Ama Ata Aidoo (1942-2023) and Flora Nwapa (1931-1993). Sculptor Zak Ové is showing a work called The Mothership Connection as part of Frieze Sculpture display in London's Regents Park which brings together the form of a Pacific Northwest totem and a rocket with elements relating to African culture like tribal masks. They join Shahidha Bari for a conversation exploring African ideas about a better future.Producer: Marcus SmithThe Mothership Connection is on display in Regents Park as part of Frieze London's sculpture display and he has work on show in an exhibition opening at the Saatchi Gallery. He also in the past curated an exhibition called Get Up Stand Up Now: Generations of Black Creative Pioneers Power to the People: Horace Ové’s Radical Vision is running at the BFI in London and Pressure, his film which was Britain’s first Black feature, has been newly restored by the BFI National Archive and is screening. Sarah Jilani teaches world literatures in English at City, University of London and is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to showcase new research on radio. Ekow Eshun is a writer and curator. His most recent show In and Out of Time runs at Accra’s Gallery 157 until December 12th 2023. You can hear him discussing ideas about The Black Fantastic in a previous episode of Free Thinking. You can find a collection of episodes exploring Black History on the Free Thinking programme website and available to download as Arts and Ideas podcasts https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08t2qbp

A series of revelatory hallucinations that Philip K Dick experienced in 1974, radically altering his view of belief, time and history, were the inspiration for his quasi-autobiographical novel Valis which was published in 1981. Roger Luckhurst, Sarah Dillon, Beth Singler and Adam Scovell join Matthew Sweet to unravel this deeply strange book and to discuss how Dick's experience of mental illness and his tireless attempts at self-diagnosis thread their way through his novels and short stories, despite being largely absent from the many film and TV adaptations of his work, including Blade Runner, Total Recall and Minority Report.Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Bach's view of the body and how that comes through in his cantatas is being studied by violinist and contributor to Radio 3's Early Music Show, Mark Seow. He joins presenter Naomi Paxton and historians of medicine Alanna Skuse and Michelle Pfeffer, alongside evolutionary biochemist Nick Lane. Together they look at music, metaphors and the idea that vital bodily fluids (blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile) and links with five elements (earth, water, fire, air, and space) could regulate our health.Producer: Luke MulhallAlanna Skuse is an Associate Professor at the University of Reading. She has researched representations of self-wounding in plays, ballads, moral writings and medical texts from 1580-1740. Her first book is called Constructions of Cancer in Early Modern England: Ravenous Natures and her second Surgery and Selfhood in Early Modern England.Michelle Pfeffer is an early modern historian at Oxford with research interests in the history of science, religion, and scholarship in Europe. Nick Lane is Professor of Evolutionary Biochemistry at University College London.Mark Seow is a violinist and academic who teaches at the University of Cambridge https://markseow.co.uk/aboutRadio 3's Early Music Show is broadcast each Sunday afternoon at 2pm and available on BBC Sounds.You can hear former Radio 3 controller Nicholas Kenyon exploring The Early Music Revolution in the Sunday Feature broadcasting on October 22nd.Radio 3's weekly selection of Words and Music has a recent episode called Blow winds, blow.

Man-made gems are the subject of research being undertaken by jeweller Sofie Boons. She joins presenter Nandini Das alongside Matthew Winterbottom, the curator of an exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford which explores the explosion of colour in design, textiles, paintings and jewellery in the Victorian period. Dinah Roe has been looking at the the way colour infuses the pages of Victorian literature and in 1773, Birmingham Assay Office was founded to provide testing and hallmarking of precious metal items - Chris Corker from the University of York has been researching that history.Colour Revolution at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford runs until 18 Feb 2024 and Matthew Winterbottom is its co-curator and Assistant Keeper, Curator of Decorative Arts and Sculpture at the Ashmolean. You can find out more about "the alchemical jeweller" at https://sofieboons.com/ Dr Chris Corker lectures at the School for Business and Society at the University of York and you can hear more about his research in a previous episode of Free Thinking called Tin cans, cutlery and sewing https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001jcr0 Dinah Roe is Reader in Nineteenth Century Literature at Oxford Brookes University. You can hear her discussing the writing and artwork of the Rosetti family which was displayed in an exhibition at Tate Britain in a previous episode of Free Thinking.Nandini Das is a historian and New Generation Thinker based at the University of Oxford. She is the author of a book called Courting India and has presented Essays and Sunday Features for BBC Radio 3 including Rainsong in Five Senses and A Jig Into History about a bet undertaken by Shakespeare's former clown Will Kemp https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001j4rz

Jane Eyre and Shirley by Charlotte Bronte both refer to the unrest in Yorkshire which took place in the early years of the nineteenth century as new technology threatened jobs in the mills. Literary historian Sophie Coulombeau discusses parallels between the Luddites and concerns over AI now, and looks at what is real and what is fictional in the novels studied by Jonathan Brockbank of the University of York. Tania Shew shares some of the accounts of strikes outside the workplace which she has uncovered in her research. These include a charity worker strike and school strikes organised by pupils in 1911. How far do they strike a chord with more modern strike action? Dr Jonathan Brockbank is a Lecturer in Modern Literature at the University of York who is exploring Luddite protests and their depiction in literature. Dr Tania Shew is the holder of the Isaiah Berlin Junior Research Fellowship at Wolfson College, Oxford researching the women’s suffrage movement. You can hear her discussing her work on suffrage sex strikes in this episode of New Thinking called Women’s History https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0bsjyr8 Dr Sophie Coulombeau teaches literature at the University of York and has published articles on the writing of Frances Burney, Elizabeth Montagu, William Godwin and Jeremy Bentham. She is editing a volume of essays, Mary Hamilton and Her Circles, alongside colleagues working on the “Unlocking the Mary Hamilton Papers” project at the John Rylands Library and is a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker on the scheme which promotes research on the radio. This New Thinking episode of the Arts & Ideas podcast was made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), part of UKRI. You can find more collected on the Free Thinking programme website of BBC Radio 3 under New Research or if you sign up for the Arts & Ideas podcast you can hear discussions about a range of topics.

What links “the British Marilyn” Diana Dors, the last women to be hanged in Britain Ruth Ellis, the artist Pauline Boty and the soap and film star Barbara Windsor? Professor Lynda Nead is giving a series of lectures this Autumn exploring Blondes, attitudes to desire and technological changes in film-making. She joins presenter Matthew Sweet alongside film critics Phuong Le and Christina Newland, and philosopher Heather Widdows.Producer Luke MulhallThe Paul Mellon Lectures run from on 5 Wednesday nights at the V&A Museum between 18 October to 15 November 2023 https://www.paul-mellon-centre.ac.uk/whats-on/forthcoming/paul-mellon-lectures-2023/event-groupYou can find a host of Free Thinking episodes exploring film stars including Marlene Dietrich, Asta Nielson and Audrey Hepburn all available to download as Arts & Ideas podcasts and on BBC Sounds

Nicholas Cullinan from the National Portrait Gallery, London (NPG) and Elvira Dyangani Ose from the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Barcelona (MACBA) join Anne McElvoy to discuss the challenges of running a major art museum and their visions for the future of their respective institutions. They discuss connecting with a wider community which has involved the NPG showing a David Beckham portrait in the hospital he was born in, and plans at MACBA to open out the ground floor and use the squares that surround the museum in Barcelona; the impact of blockbuster shows about Vermeer and Picasso and creating a space for VR and video at the NPG and whether the trend for immersive art experiences - like the David Hockney immersive show running at The Lightroom near Kings Cross station until December 2023 – is a good thing.Producer: Torquil MacLeodFrieze London runs from 11th - 15th October 2023. You can find previous Frieze/Free Thinking debates hearing from directors including Michael Govan, Sabine Haag & Hartwig Fischer; Suhanya Raffel, Richard Armstrong and Nathalie Bondil, Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky, Kaywin Feldman and Siak Ching Chong.

An accidental invention which revolutionised plant collecting has inspired an artwork from Mat Collishaw, created in collaboration with video artists based in Ukraine, which is being premiered in a gallery at Kew Gardens. The nine minute video, accompanied by music by Samuel Barber's Adagio for strings, draws on the discovery in 1829 that a Wardian case could allow plants to grow under airtight glass. And the way art and music respond to environmental concerns is at the heart of this Free Thinking conversation hosted by Jade Munslow Ong. Jimmy López Bellido has written a symphony inspired by photographs of a changing landscape, Sarah Casey's drawings look at the impact of ice melting in glaciers and New Generation Thinker Vid Simoniti has written a book exploring the political ambitions of contemporary art in the early twenty-first century. He talks about the work of Alberta Whittle, Olafur Eliasson, El Anatsui, Maurice Mbikayi, Margaret Wertheim and Christine Wertheim. Producer in Salford: Nick HolmesPetrichor, a new exhibition of work by Mat Collishaw runs from 20 October 2023- 7 April 2024 at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art, Kew Gardens. Sarah Casey is Director of the School of Art in Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts and has worked on The Emergency project which uses drawing to examine artefacts emerging from alpine glaciers as a result of climate change and ice melting. She also convenes a group studying rocky environments and geology. From 26-28th October ‘Rocky Futures’, an art exhibition in the form of three live video events streamed from destinations across the globe on the theme of geology, mobilities and the climate emergency will be available online at https://wp.lancs.ac.uk/rocky-climates/rocky-futures/ Vid Simoniti's book is called Artists Remake the World: A Contemporary Art Manifesto. He is a New Generation Thinker and teaches at The University of Liverpool. Symphony No 3, Altered Landscapes by Jimmy López Bellido is being played by the BBC Concert Orchestra in a concert at London's Southbank Centre on Thu 12 Oct 2023 and will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on October 25th. With thanks to the Concert Orchestra for providing a recording of part of their rehearsal of the piece recorded on 10 October. The Hyundai Commission from artist El Anatsui runs at Tate Modern in London from October 10th - April 14th 2024 Jade Munslow Ong teaches at the University of Salford and is writing a book about the environment in literature. She is on the New Generation Thinkers scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to work with early career researchers on making radio.Green Thinking is a collection of programmes exploring different aspects of art and history and the environment available via the Free Thinking programme website - all episodes are downloadable as the Arts & Ideas podcast and on BBC Sounds.

DH Lawrence described outcasts living by the Thames, Mina Loy made art from trash, calling her pieces “refusées", Wyndham Lewis moved from England to North America in search of fame and stability after having been spurned by the cultural establishment in Britain. In this conversation about new research, Jade Munslow Ong discusses the way widening the canon of writers traditionally labelled as “modernist” might allow a greater understanding of attitudes towards homelessness and poverty in the early decades of the twentieth century. Dr Laura Ryan was a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Galway researching modernism and homelessness investigating the work of writers who were literally homeless, including D. H. Lawrence, Claude McKay, Jean Rhys and Tom Kromer, and also looking at depictions of homelessness in modernist texts by George Orwell, Mina Loy and Samuel Beckett. She now teaches at the University of Limerick.Dr Nathan Waddell is Associate Professor in Twentieth-Century Literature at the University of Birmingham. He is writing new books about Wyndham Lewis and about George Orwell. He has also edited collections of essays on Lewis, who featured in books already published by Nathan called Modernist Nowheres and Moonlighting. Nathan is also editing The Oxford Handbook of George Orwell. You can hear Nathan in a Free Thinking episode exploring futurism in a collection of discussions about modernism on the website of the Radio 3 Arts and Ideas programme Dr Jade Munslow Ong is a Reader in English Literature at the University of Salford where she is working on a project entitled South African Modernism 1880-2020. You can hear about some of the authors featured in her Essay for Radio 3 called The South African Bloomsberries. She is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to turn research into radioThis podcast is made in partnership with the AHRC, part of UKRI. You can sign up for more episodes of the Arts and Ideas podcast wherever you find your podcasts or look at the collection of discussions focused on New Research available via the Free Thinking programme website.

I've been Thinking is the title of a memoir from philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett. Philip Goff is a Professor at Durham University who's written Why ? The Purpose of the Universe. The Bishop Auckland Project is opening a new museum exploring faith and their curator Amina Wright joins them and podcaster and former director of Theos Liz Oldfield for a discussion about finding meaning. The presenter is Chris Harding. Producer: Luke Mulhall You can find a collection of programmes exploring Philosophy and looking at Religious Belief on the Free Thinking programme website. All of them are available to download as Arts and Ideas podcasts and on BBC Sounds

Loss and belonging are explored in an installation at the Barbican Centre in London from Sierra Leonian poet and artist/filmmaker Julianknxx which hears choirs and musicians from cities across the world voice a single refrain: ‘We are what’s left of us’. Momtaza Mehri has been Young People's Poet Laureate for London. A poem from her collection Bad Diaspora Poems is picked out in a selection for this year's National Poetry Day on October 5th, which has the theme of refuge. Matthew Sweet explores with them where we find refuge and hears from the academic Dr Jesús Sanjurjo about refugees from Spain who arrived in Somers Town in Camden in 1823 .Producer: Julian SiddleChorus in Rememory of Flight by Julianknxx runs until 11 Feb 2024 at The Curve in the Barbican Centre London. He also has a film exploring Sierra Leone in the exhibition A World in Common: Contemporary African Photography on at Tate Modern until Jan 14 2024 and an artwork on show in an exhibition about Sankofa curated by Ekow Eshun on in Accra, Ghana. On the National Poetry Day website https://nationalpoetryday.co.uk/ you can find the text and teaching resources relating to the poem by Momtaza Mehri Brief Dialogue Between the Self-declared East African Micronations of Regent Park Estate (Toronto) & Regent’s Park Estate (London) Dr Jesús Sanjurjo is an Early Career Fellow of the Leverhulme and Isaac Newton Trusts at the University of Cambridge

Tales of adventure and magic connect the Slavic lands: East Slavs (Russia, Ukraine, Belarus), West Slavs (Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland) and South Slavs (the countries of former Yugoslavia plus Bulgaria). Matthew Sweet has been reading a new collection of Slavic myths. The authors Noah Charney and Svetlana Slapšak join academic Mirela Ivanova to talk about the way Slavic tales connect with stories from Greece, Rome, Egypt and Scandinavia and how they were used to bolster power in new Slavic nations.Producer: Torquil MacLeodThe Slavic Myths by Noah Charney and Svetlana Slapšak and illustrated by Joe McLaren is out now.You might also be interested in a Free Thinking discussion of Albanian culture and history, and in a Radio 3 New Generation Thinker Essay from Mirela Ivanova called Contesting an Alphabet about the competing claims over the invention of Cyrillic.

"Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short" is the way Thomas Hobbes described the life of man in a state of nature in his 1651 book The Leviathan. The seventeenth century philosopher reasoned that what men needed was a "common power to keep them in awe". It was a conclusion that has not endeared him to the enlightenment and liberal thinkers of the centuries that followed. The philosopher John Gray thinks that Hobbes' bleak vision of the human condition might help us understand the recent disappointments of progressive politics and the failures of liberal democracies. Anne McElvoy talks to him about this theory and to journalist and author of Politics: A Survivors Guide, Rafael Behr and Teresa Bejan, Professor of Political Theory at the University of Oxford and author of Mere Civility: Disagreement and the Limits of Toleration.Producer: Ruth WattsYou can find other episodes exploring ideas about politics and history in the Free Thinking archives and available to download as Arts & Ideas podcasts. They include - Utopianism in Politics a discussion about Thomas More's ideas with guests including Kwasi Kwarteng and Gisela Stuart John Maynard Keynes with guests including Adam Tooze and Zachary D. Carter John Rawls's A Theory of Justice with Rupert Read, Teresa Bejan and Jonathan Floyd

From the forceps inventor Peter Chamberlen to letters written by Queen Victoria about giving birth saying ‘Dearest Albert hardly left me at all, & was the greatest support & comfort’: John Gallagher and his guests discuss childbirth and parenting. Dr Jessica Cox is the author of In Confinement: The Hidden History of Maternal Bodies in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Dr Laura Sellers is programmes curator at the medical history museum in Leeds The Thackray. We also hear from the dramatist Testament, whose play Daughter was nominated for the Prix Europa and Hannah Silva, whose book My Child The Algorithm is a memoir of queer parenting which started out as a radio play written using text generated by a machine-learning algorithm. The discussion is hosted by New Generation Thinker and historian at the University of Leeds John Gallagher in a recording at The Howard Assembly Room in Leeds as part of the BBC Contains Strong Language Festival.Testament's play Daughter is available on BBC Sounds here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0011545Producer based in Salford: Nick HolmesYou can find a whole series of BBC programmes recorded at the 2023 Contains Strong Language Festival on the festival website and available on BBC Sounds. They include Radio 3's new writing programme The Verb, a Drama on 3, the music magazine programme Music Matters, Radio 4's discussion programme Start the Week and a special episode of Radio 3's The Early Music Show coming later this month.

Rejected by her usual publisher, Farewell Leicester Square is a novel by Betty Miller, written in 1935, exploring antisemitism, Jewishness and "marrying out". Marghanita Laski may now be best known for her contributions to broadcasting on programmes like The Brains Trust but was also a published author of many stories including The Victorian Chaise-Longue and Little Boy Lost. Both writers have now been republished by Persephone Books. Matthew Sweet's guests are the novelist Howard Jacobson, the academic Lisa Mullen and the author Lara Feigel. They explore the writers' lives and why they both abandoned writing fiction to focus on literary biographies. At the end of the discussion Howard Jacobson tells listeners “I very rarely hear people describing a novel that makes me want to read it - in fact if there is any listener out there who now does not want to read Marghanita Laski they are heartless.”Producer: Fiona McLeanBetty Miller published 7 novels including Farewell Leicester Square and On the Side of the Angels (1945) and a biography of Robert Browning (1952). Marghanita Laski's books include To Bed with Grand Music (1946), Tory Heaven (1948), Little Boy Lost (1949), The Village (1952) and The Victorian Chaise-longue (1953), biographies of Jane Austen and George Eliot . She was also a prolific contributor to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED).On the Free Thinking programme website you can find a collection of episodes exploring prose, poetry and drama including previous discussions featuring Howard Jacobson, Lara Feigel and Lisa Mullen

Novelist Jonathan Coe joins book historians Roland Allen, Prof Lesley Smith and Dr Gill Partington and presenter Lisa Mullen. As Radio 3’s Late Junction devotes episodes this September to the cassette tape and the particular sound and way of recording and assembling music which that technology provided, we look at writing. At a time when there’s a lot of chat about AI and chatbots creating writing, what does it mean to write on a page of paper which is then printed and assembled into a book. The author Jonathan Coe’s many books include The Rotter's Club, What a Carve Up! Mr Wilder and Me and his latest Bournville is now out in paperback Roland Allen has worked in publishing and has now written The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper Gill Partington (with Simon Morris and Adam Smyth) is one of the founding editors of Inscription: Journal of Material Text, which brings together artists, book historians, and academic theorists. After editions looking at beginnings, holes and folds, the new issue coming soon looks at touch. Lesley Smith is Fellow and Tutor in Politics at Harris Manchester College, Oxford and has chosen a selection of handwritten documents from the collections of the Bodleian Library published as Handwritten: Remarkable People on the Page.Producer: Ruth Watts

From 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 MulhallYou can hear more from Timothy Peacock, who teaches at the University of Glagow, in an episode of the Arts & Ideas podcast called New Thinking: From life on Mars to space junk Una McCormack has contributed to Free Thinking episodes discussing Time, Star Trek, Quatermass, Dystopian Thinking, Asimov. Avi Loeb has written Interstellar: The Search for Extraterrestrial Life and Our Future Beyond Earth Dr Ghina M. Halabi spent 13 years working on astrophysics research before becoming a consultant

In 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. Plus, Sherry Davis discusses the rediscovery of Black professionals in East African archaeology.Producer: Ruth WattsBlack Atlantic: Power, people, resistance runs at the Fitzwilliam until Jan 7th 2024 and a catalogue accompanies the show. You can find more on BBC Sounds from Jake Subryan Richards, who is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to showcase new academic research. These include an Essay called John Baptist Dasalu and Fighting for Freedom as part of a series by New Generation Thinkers 2021 and Free Thinking/BBC Arts & Ideas discussions about Ships and History https://jacquelineabishop.com/ Dr April-Louise Pennant, a sociologist based at Cardiff University, has a Leverhulme fellowship to research history and Penrhyn Castle https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/wales/penrhyn-castle-and-garden and she will be sharing some of her discoveries as part of the Being Human Festival which features public events taking place in partnership with UK universities from November 9th - 18th https://www.beinghumanfestival.org/ Sherry Davis is founder of Rehema Cultural Arts and a 2023 winner of the Deutsch Bank Award for Creative Entrepreneurs (DBACE). Rehema Cultural Arts partner with cultural institutions to decolonise their collections relating to African history. She has curated an exhibition at the Horniman Museum in South London that explores historic images and stories of African archaeologists https://www.horniman.ac.uk/event/ode-to-the-ancestors/A BBC Proms concert featuring spirituals sung by Reginald Mobley is available on BBC Sounds until October 9th.

The 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 prepares a UK-wide season of Powell and Pressburger films running from 16th October to 31st December (including a re-release of The Red Shoes), Matthew Sweet is joined by film critics Lillian Crawford, Pamela Hutchinson, dance reviewer Sarah Crompton and New Generation Thinker and film lecturer Lisa Mullen.Producer: Torquil MacLeodYou can find Matthew Sweet presenting Radio 3's regular strand devoted to film and TV music Sound of Cinema on Saturday afternoons at 3pm and available on BBC Sounds and a whole host of Free Thinking episodes devoted to classics of cinema are in a collection on the programme website labelled Landmarks including: Jean Paul Belmondo and the French New Wave, Marlene Dietrich, Dirk Bogarde and the Servant, Bette Davis, Sidney Poitier, Asta Nielsen.

New 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 study of unruly bodies in feminist art called Art Monsters which explores artists including Carolee Schneemann, and the influence of writers like Kathy Acker. And James Corley has adapted a play, opening at Wilton's in London, which takes an influential essay by Merle Miller as its starting point.Producer: Luke MulhallYou can find a collection called Identity Discussion on the Free Thinking programme website which includes episodes about including Rocky Horror and camp, the V&A exhibition Diva, punk, tattoos, and perfecting the body. Based on the essay On Being Different by Merle Miller, James Corley's What It Means is at Wilton's Music Hall in London 4th - 28th October 2023 Dodie Bellamy's first novel, The Letters of Mina Harker, took a character from Bram Stoker's Dracula. She has also published poetry, essays and memoirs. Nothing Ever Just Disappears Seven Hidden Histories by Diarmuid Hester is out now. He is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Council to put academic research on the radio and you can find him talking about Derek Jarman's Garden in a previous Free Thinking episode https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000jgm5 exploring Stories of Love including Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001hxhk and hosting an Arts and Ideas podcast episode about Raiding Gay’s the Word & Magnus Hirschfeld https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0ff53xvCheck out Forever Blue - Radio 3's broadcast on Sunday and then on BBC Sounds of a programme inspired by Derek Jarman's Blue, the film released 30 years ago which was also broadcast on Radio 3.

Six 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 Streets of Nineteenth-Century London by Oskar Jensen Resistance: The Underground War in Europe, 1939-1945 by Halik Kochanski Portable Magic: A History of Books and their Readers by Emma SmithThe winner is announced on November 13th 2023. You can find interviews with past nominees for the Wolfson prize, plus winners of other non fiction prizes like the Cundill and the British Academy Book Prize in previous editions of Free Thinking all available on BBC Sounds and as the Arts & Ideas podcast.Producer: Ruth Watts

The 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 WattsYou can find out more about Amanda Thomson at https://passingplace.com/home.html You can find out more about Merryn Glover at https://merrynglover.com/ This is part of a series of conversations about writing and place recorded for BBC Proms around the UK in summer 2023. You can find more conversations about writing and about nature and green thinking on the website for BBC Radio 3's arts and ideas programme Free Thinking.

The 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 ResilienceProducer: Luke Mulhall

In 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 Hippodrome for the BBC’s 2022 Contains Strong Language Festival, Matthew’s guests are the poet Liz Berry - author of the prize winning 2014 collection Black Country, whose latest collection The Dereliction is a collaboration with the photographer Tom Hicks; dialectologist Dr Esther Asprey, from the University of Wolverhampton, who published the first complete scholarly account of Black Country dialect; the artist and film-maker Dawinder Bansal, who uses her upbringing in her parents' electrical shop, which also rented VHS Bollywood films as the starting point for the art installation Jambo Cinema which was part of The Birmingham 2022 Festival https://www.dawinderbansal.com/projects; and a pair of historians, Dr Simon Briercliffe from the Black Country Living Museum, author of Forging Ahead – Austerity to Prosperity in the Black Country and Dr Matthew Stallard from the Centre for the Study of Legacies of British Slavery UCL who grew up in Wolverhampton.Producer: Olive Clancy.The 2023 Contains Strong Language Festival takes place in Leeds from September 21st - 24th at Leeds Playhouse so go to their website for tickets and listen out for programmes on BBC Sounds.

Louise Jameson joins Matthew Sweet to recall the women who ran the digs she stayed in as a touring actor and the landladies that she's played (including a homicidal one!). Historian Gillian Williamson looks at how life in boarding houses in Georgian London has been portrayed both in contemporary accounts and in fiction, while Lillian Crawford encounters some memorable landladies in Ealing comedies and other post-war British films.Gillian Williamson is the author of Lodgers, Landlords, and Landladies in Georgian London.Producer: Torquil MacLeod.

Russell T. Davies is joined by his friend and author of Love from the Pink Palace, Jill Nalder to discuss their importance in one another’s lives, the importance of literature in their lives, and the TV series It’s a Sin with New Generation Thinker and psychiatrist Sabina Dosani and chair Matthew Sweet in a conversation recorded in partnership with the Royal Society of Literature which was recorded to mark World AIDS Day. Producer: Torquil MacLeodYou can find a collection of discussions recorded in partnership with the Royal Society of Literature in a collection called Prose, Poetry and Drama on the Radio 3 Free Thinking programme website.

Dame Sheila Hancock, Geoff Dyer and Rachel Stott join Matthew Sweet to discuss the work and performance of writers, artists, athletes and musicians near the end of their careers.Old Rage by Sheila Hancock is out now in paperback and she can be seen on BBC i-player in the drama The Sixth Commandment The Last Days of Roger Federer by Geoff Dyer is out now in paperback. Rachel Stott is a composer and plays viola with the Revolutionary Drawing Room, the Bach Players and Sopriola.Producer: Torquil MacLeodYou can hear music composed by Beethoven as part of this BBC Proms season available on BBC Sounds.

Crime 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 Venn and his colleague Jen Rafferty, played on TV in an adaptation of The Long Call by Ben Aldridge and Pearl Mackie. Poet and New Generation Thinker Jake Morris-Campbell writes about the mining communities of Northumberland and Durham and the experience of working in darkness. Professor Mona Siddiqui joined the University of Edinburgh’s Divinity school in December 2011 as the first Muslim to hold a Chair in Islamic and Interreligious Studies Dr Thomas Linley hosts The Deep-Sea podcast and researches the behaviour of deep sea fish. He's based at Newcastle University. You can read the paper he co-authored 'Fear and loathing of the deep ocean: why don't people care about the deep sea?' here: https://bit.ly/3IBHsPTProducer: Torquil MacLeodYou can find a series of BBC Proms concerts broadcast from Sage Gateshead available on BBC Sounds and a conversation about writing and place with North Eastern authors Jake Morris-Campbell and Jessica Andrews in conversation with Ian McMillan.

The German Romantic author of horror and fantasy published stories which form the basis of Jacques Offenbach's opera The Tales of Hoffmann, the ballet Coppélia and the Nutcracker. In the theatre he worked as a stagehand, decorator, playwright and manager and he wrote his own musical works, his opera Undine ended its run at the Berlin Theatre after a fire. But during his lifetime he also saw Warsaw and Berlin occupied by Napoleon and during the Prussian war against France, he wrote an account of his visit to the battlefields and he became entangled in various legal disputes towards the end of his life. Anne McElvoy is joined by:Joanna Neilly Associate Professor and Fellow and Tutor in German at the University of Oxford.Keith Chapin senior lecturer in music at Cardiff University.Tom Smith a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker. He is Senior Lecturer and Head of German at the University of St Andrews.You can find details about performances of Offenbach's works on the website of the society http://offenbachsociety.org.uk/Producer: Tim Bano

A world of sprites and spirits encountered by childhood sisters in the 1988 animated feature film by Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away) and Studio Ghibli has become a hit stage adaptation for the Royal Shakespeare Company. The original composer Joe Hisaishi worked with playwright Tom Morton-Smith and Director Phelim McDermott and the production returns to the Barbican this autumn. Chris Harding and guests look at how this story of Totoro relates to Japanese beliefs about ghosts and nature, and how Miyazaki used ideas of childhood innocence to critique post-War Japanese society. Chris Harding is joined by the playwright Tom Morton-Smith, Michael Leader from the podcast Ghiblioteque, Dr Shiro Yoshioka, Lecturer in Japanese Studies at the University of Newcastle, and Dr Xine Yao, co-director of qUCL at University College London, and a Radio 3/AHRC New Generation Thinker.My Neighbour Totoro from the Royal Shakespeare Company in collaboration with Improbable and Nippon TV runs at the Barbican Theatre in London from 23 NovemberMusic from Studio Ghibli films is included in a BBC Prom concert being performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra on Monday August 28th and then available on BBC Sounds.You can find a collection of programmes exploring different facets of Japanese culture on the Free Thinking programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0657spqProducer: Luke Mulhall

The creator of much-loved children's TV classics including The Clangers, Bagpuss and Pogles' Wood is discussed by Matthew Sweet and his guests: Daniel Postgate who took over Smallfilms from his father, singer Sandra Kerr who was the voice of Madeleine in Bagpuss, composer and author Neil Brand, and writer and broadcaster Samira Ahmed. Oliver Postgate's father was a communist and his mother was a political activist, daughter of prominent Labour figure George Lansbury - how much of this political background can we find in the fantastical worlds that he created? There's also discussion of the music that plays such a major role in the programmes - the deep folk roots of the songs performed by Sandra and John Faulkner in Bagpuss and Vernon Elliot's sparse and poignant compositions for The Clangers, Noggin the Nog and Ivor the Engine.CLANGERS: The Complete Scripts 1969-1974 has been publishedYou can find more Free Thinking/Arts & Ideas discussions of influential TV, film, books and art in a collection on Radio 3's Free Thinking programme website called LandmarksProducer: Torquil MacLeod

Chaucer'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 Marion Turner, author of The Wife of Bath: A Biography, Patience Agbabi who reimagines this timeless character as a Nigerian businesswoman in her poem The Wife of Bafa, and New Generation Thinker Dr Hetta Howes who teaches at City University, London.You can hear Marion Turner discussing Chaucer's own life in a past episode of Free Thinking hearing from nominees for the 2020 Wolfson History Prize https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000j2qw You can find a discussion about Chaucer's court case in an Arts and Ideas podcast episode with Hetta Howes called A Feminist Take on Medieval History https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06n28wv And Free Thinking has a whole collection of programmes exploring Women in the World all available on BBC Sounds and as Arts & Ideas podcasts https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p084ttwpProducer: Torquil MacLeod

Chaucer'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 Marion Turner, author of The Wife of Bath: A Biography, Patience Agbabi who reimagines this timeless character as a Nigerian businesswoman in her poem The Wife of Bafa, and New Generation Thinker Dr Hetta Howes who teaches at City University, London.You can hear Marion Turner discussing Chaucer's own life in a past episode of Free Thinking hearing from nominees for the 2020 Wolfson History Prize https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000j2qw You can find a discussion about Chaucer's court case in an Arts and Ideas podcast episode with Hetta Howes called A Feminist Take on Medieval History https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06n28wv And Free Thinking has a whole collection of programmes exploring Women in the World all available on BBC Sounds and as Arts & Ideas podcasts https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p084ttwpProducer: Torquil MacLeod

Glenda 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 the film, including the score, which features the trio Soave sia il vento from Mozart's opera Così fan tutte, the very precise decor and evocation of late '60s London and filming inside a Jewish synagogue. Glenda Jackson died in June 2023 and we are repeating this discussion to mark her death. Producer: Fiona McLeanSunday Bloody Sunday is available on Blu-rayYou can find Matthew Sweet discussing other classics of British Cinema in the Free Thinking archives including British New Wave Films of the 60s - Joely Richardson and Melanie Williams evaluate the impact and legacy of Woodfall Films, the company behind Look Back in Anger, A Taste of Honey and The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09ysnl2 An extended interview with Mike Leigh, recorded as he released his historical drama Peterloo, but also looks back at his film from 1984 Four Days in July https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0000tqw Early Cinema looks back at a pioneer of British film Robert Paul and at the work of Alice Guy https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000dy2b Philip Dodd explores the novel and film of David Storey's This Sporting Life with social historian Juliet Gardiner, journalist Rod Liddle, writer Anthony Clavane and the author's daughter Kate Storey https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09j0rt6 Samira Ahmed convenes a discussion about British Social Realism in Film https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01pz16k