The Essay

What does wearing a suit say? New Generation Thinker Sarah Goldsmith's Essay introduces an audience at York Festival of Ideas to Beau Brummel and others who have understood the mixed messages of suits through time. England football coach Gareth Southgate's pitch-side waistcoats and 007's exquisite collection of Tom Ford suits all make one thing clear: sweatpants are out and the formal man's suit, along with its tailor, has triumphantly returned. From the colourful flamboyances of the eighteenth century to the dandy dictates of Beau Brummell and into the inky black 'Great Renunciation' of the nineteenth century, join Sarah Goldsmith for a whirlwind tour of the origins of the most ubiquitous, enduring item of male sartorial fashion and the 'second skin' of the male body, the three-piece suit.Sarah Goldsmith is a historian of masculinity, the body and travel. She is a Leverhulme Research Fellow at the University of Leicester, an AHRC/BBC 2018 New Generation Thinker and a life-long rugby fan. Her first book, Masculinity and Danger on the Eighteenth-Century Grand Tour, is being published in 2019.Sarah Goldsmith on the C18 craze for weightlifting https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00040wg Sarah Golsmith discusses the body past and present on Free Thinking https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b7my7k Producer: Jacqueline Smith

Queerness might not be the most obvious association with soldiering, but New Generation Thinker Tom Smith's Essay argues that although the East German army had a reputation for unbending masculinity, it's surprising how central queerness was to the enterprise. Recorded with an audience at the York Festival of Ideas. Brutality along the Berlin Wall, monumental Soviet-style parades, rows of saluting soldiers: these are the familiar images of the East German military. Army training promoted toughness, endurance and self-control and forced its soldiers into itchy, shapeless uniforms. Delve deeper, though, and you find countless examples of the army’s fascination with homosexuality. Even more unexpectedly, gay and bisexual soldiers found ways of expressing desires and intimacy. LGBT people have long faced discrimination and violence in arenas aimed at the promotion of traditional masculinity, but look closely and we discover that queerness has not always been as marginalised as we’d think. What can East Germany teach us about masculinity in the twenty-first century?Tom Smith is Lecturer in German at the University of St Andrews researching gender and sexuality in German culture and a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker on the scheme that selects 10 academics each year to turn their research into radio. He has published on sexuality and masculinity in literature, film and television since the 1960s. His book on masculinity in the East German army is out in 2020. His current project explores the emotional worlds of Berlin’s music scene today.Meet the 2019 New Generation Thinkers including Tom Smith https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0004dsvProducer: Jacqueline Smith

Napoleon inspired much fiction and non-fiction. New Generation Thinker Emma Butcher looks at the publishing phenomenon that was the traumatised Napoleonic Redcoat - Recorded before an audience at the York Festival of Ideas.The Napoleonic Wars, like all wars, had their celebrities. Chief among them, Wellington and Napoleon, whose petty rivalry and military bravado ensured their status as household names long after Waterloo. But these wars also saw the rise of a new genre of personal and sentimental war literature which took the public by storm. The writers were foot soldiers rather than officers, infantrymen like the Reverend George Gleig and John Malcolm. Both fought in some of the most decisive battles on the Continent but it is their written accounts of their daily lives, of the true nature of war, its personal costs and the terrors endured, which ensured their best-selling status. This is the story of the rise and rise of the military memoir, with foot soldier as hero, and the way his war stories were lapped up with horrified glee by the armchair readers back home, transforming the image of soldiering. Emma Butcher is a Leverhulme Early Career Researcher at the University of Leicester and a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to select academics who can turn their research into radio. She is currently writing her second book, Children in the Age of Modern War, has written for the BBC History Magazine and made Radio 3 programmes on the Brontës, child soldiers, and children in art.Emma Butcher on Kids with Guns https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09vz5lp Emma Butcher on Branwell Bronte https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05770my Producer: Jacqueline Smith

Lockdown brought beards and the question of to shave or not to shave to the fore. New Generation Thinker Alun Withey looks at what made 18th-century men shave off centuries of manly growth. Recorded before an audience at the York Festival of Ideas. You can hear audience questions from the event as an episode of the BBC Arts&Ideas podcast.To be clean-shaven was the mark of a C18 gentleman, beard-wearing marked out the rough rustic. For the first time, men were beginning to shave themselves instead of visiting the barber, and a whole new market emerged to cater for rising demand in all sorts of shaving products - soaps, pastes and powders. But the way these were promoted suggests there was confusion over exactly what the ideal man should be. On the one hand, razor makers appealed to masculine characteristics like hardness, control and temper in their advertisements whilst perfumers and other manufacturers of shaving soaps, stressed softness, ease and luxury. So enter the world of Georgian personal grooming to discover the 18th-century's inner man.Alun Withey lectures in the Centre for Medical History at the University of Exeter and is a Wellcome Research Fellow and a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker. He has edited an essay collection on the history of facial hair (Palgrave), curated a photographic exhibition of Victorian beards in the Florence Nightingale Museum in London and has written for BBC History Magazine and History Today. He blogs at dralun.wordpress.comAlun Withey on C16 medical history https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p022kyp1 Alun Withey visits Bamburgh Castle https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p036l4q0 Alun Withey's article about the C19th attitude towards beards https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/31SKHd61RYxJBryrQ4NfmWJ/nine-reasons-victorians-thought-men-were-better-with-beards Producer: Jacqueline Smith

Daniel Hahn considers language in the relationship between Robinson Crusoe and Man Friday, and how two meeting cultures communicateIn this series of Essays, recorded in front of an audience at the 2019 Hay Festival, five writers respond to the themes of Daniel Defoe’s ‘Robinson Crusoe’. Often described as the first novel, it's a story which still resonates, three hundred years after it was written, but also preserves the attitudes of its time. Fiona Stafford, Horatio Clare, Alex Wheatle, Alys Conran and Daniel Hahn reflect on the novel as a tale of exotic adventure, a study of isolation and a fantasy of colonial encounter.

Alys Conran reflects on the theme of isolation in Robinson Crusoe and the act of reading it as a novelist In this series of Essays, recorded in front of an audience at the 2019 Hay Festival, five writers respond to the themes of Daniel Defoe’s ‘Robinson Crusoe’. Often described as the first novel, it's a story which still resonates, three hundred years after it was written, but also preserves the attitudes of its time. Fiona Stafford, Horatio Clare, Alex Wheatle, Alys Conran and Daniel Hahn reflect on the novel as a tale of exotic adventure, a study of isolation and a fantasy of colonial encounter.

Having enjoyed it as an eight-year-old boy, Alex Wheatle re-reads Robinson Crusoe and reflects on its themes of imperialism and slavery.In this series of Essays, recorded in front of an audience at the 2019 Hay Festival, five writers respond to the themes of Daniel Defoe’s ‘Robinson Crusoe’. Often described as the first novel, it's a story which still resonates, three hundred years after it was written, but also preserves the attitudes of its time. Fiona Stafford, Horatio Clare, Alex Wheatle, Alys Conran and Daniel Hahn reflect on the novel as a tale of exotic adventure, a study of isolation and a fantasy of colonial encounter.

Horatio Clare explores the castaway myth, looking at what happens to the soul and mind in the great spaces and on actual desert islands.In this series of Essays, recorded in front of an audience at the 2019 Hay Festival, five writers respond to the themes of Daniel Defoe’s ‘Robinson Crusoe’. Often described as the first novel, it's a story which still resonates, three hundred years after it was written, but also preserves the attitudes of its time. Fiona Stafford, Horatio Clare, Alex Wheatle, Alys Conran and Daniel Hahn reflect on the novel as a tale of exotic adventure, a study of isolation and a fantasy of colonial encounter.

Fiona Stafford explores ‘The Strange, Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe’, looking at what Crusoe the narrator was most surprised by, and the stranger aspects of the bookIn this series of Essays, recorded in front of an audience at the 2019 Hay Festival, five writers respond to the themes of Daniel Defoe’s ‘Robinson Crusoe’. Often described as the first novel, it's a story which still resonates, three hundred years after it was written, but also preserves the attitudes of its time. Fiona Stafford, Horatio Clare, Alex Wheatle, Alys Conran and Daniel Hahn reflect on the novel as a tale of exotic adventure, a study of isolation and a fantasy of colonial encounter.

Poet and wild swimmer Elizabeth-Jane Burnett joins Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough for an inspirational dip in the chilly River Avon.Elizabeth-Jane's latest book, The Grassling, is a nature memoir about her father, his illness and her attempts to reconnect with the fields and rivers that sustained and moulded his family for generations. Her poetry collection Swims describes a series of wild swims around Britain, connecting them to the environmental and political issues of the day.In Worcestershire she enjoys her first taste of the River Avon, braving the cold but enjoying the sand martins, the skylarks and a low flying heron which might just find itself immortalised in Elizabeth-Jane's next poetry collection.Producer: Alasdair Cross

Stand knee-deep in a river and consider the energy flow. Water presses against you, light reflects upon the surface. What else can you feel? Helen Czerski of University College London views the Thames with the eyes of a physicist. At low tide she takes Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough for a wade through the surprisingly clean waters separating Brentford from Kew Gardens. How would the river look if embankments were removed and channels breached? Why do islands form and persist? Where does each drop of Thames water come from? Why can the river flow east and west at the same time?You may never view the Thames in quite the same way again.Producer: Alasdair Cross

For Feargal Sharkey the perfect cast is a lifelong obsession. It's the moment when man and river exist in perfect harmony. It's a passion he shares with generations of artists before him on the chalk streams of Hertfordshire. Dame Juliana Berners, Prioress of St Mary of Sopwell wrote one of the earliest books on the etiquette of hunting, hawking and fishing in the 14th century. Her work influenced Izaak Walton who opens The Compleat Angler with a vivid description of a walk from Tottenham to the waters that Feargal fishes today.Growing up in Derry with the mountains and trout-rich rivers of Donegal on his doorstep, Feargal fished from childhood, but when the punk fame of The Undertones reached its peak he found himself in north London with only the Grand Union Canal for company. Discovering the chalk streams on the edge of the city brought fishing back into his life and since then he's dedicated himself to the preservation of these waters. England contains most of the world's chalk streams, perfect habitat for trout, waterfowl, otter and water vole, but abstraction for drinking water and pollution from farming and industry has pushed many of these rivers to the edge of destruction. Feargal shares his determination to save the chalk streams with Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough and instructs her in the Zen art of fly fishing.Producer: Alasdair Cross

On the banks of the River Medway, Nicola White is in search of artistic inspiration. Driftwood, perhaps? A Victorian poison bottle or a Roman pot? In the second of a series of Essays on British rivers Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough joins the mudlark artist as she combs through mud and shingle.The Medway rises in the South Downs and passes through sleepy Maidstone but it starts to get really interesting as it broadens out into mudflats, industry and islands. It's here that Kentish history, from the 43AD Roman invasion of Britain through the peaks and troughs of the Royal Navy's Chatham Dockyards to the preparations for Nazi invasion, can be read from the shore.Nicola collects the stories she finds there- military dog-tags, messages in bottles- and turns them into art inspired by the naïve abstraction of 20th-century St. Ives.Producer: Alasdair Cross

Gaelic songs and stories burst with mythical water creatures, from seductive kelpies and selkies to woeful waterfall banshees. In the first of five Essays from the banks of British rivers, folk singer Julie Fowlis guides Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough through a watery Highland underworld.Producer: Alasdair Cross

'Dear Oscar Fingal O'Flaherty Wilde,Do you mind if I just call you Oscar? It's just you always seemed so approachable yet ultimately unknowable...a bit like the Queen.' Continuing his series of imaginary correspondences, Ian Sansom finds he's in the gutter, looking at the stars again. As his dispatches to some of the world's great writers resume, Ian is increasingly shocked by their unexpectedly frank and direct answers...'Dear Dante,Did you really meant all that stuff about people being thrown into boiling pitch and tar..?'In his on-going epistolary quest, Ian attempts to find out everything we wanted to know but were too afraid to ask. Why did Mary Shelley start so young? How did William Trevor keep going for so long? And what exactly is the significance of Marianne Moore's tricorn hat?Producer: Conor Garrett

'Dear Oscar Fingal O'Flaherty Wilde,Do you mind if I just call you Oscar? It's just you always seemed so approachable yet ultimately unknowable...a bit like the Queen.' Continuing his series of imaginary correspondences, Ian Sansom finds he's in the gutter, looking at the stars again. As his dispatches to some of the world's great writers resume, Ian is increasingly shocked by their unexpectedly frank and direct answers...'Dear Dante,Did you really meant all that stuff about people being thrown into boiling pitch and tar..?'In his on-going epistolary quest, Ian attempts to find out everything we wanted to know but were too afraid to ask. Why did Mary Shelley start so young? How did William Trevor keep going for so long? And what exactly is the significance of Marianne Moore's tricorn hat?Producer: Conor Garrett

'Dear Oscar Fingal O'Flaherty Wilde,Do you mind if I just call you Oscar? It's just you always seemed so approachable yet ultimately unknowable...a bit like the Queen.' Continuing his series of imaginary correspondences, Ian Sansom finds he's in the gutter, looking at the stars again. As his dispatches to some of the world's great writers resume, Ian is increasingly shocked by their unexpectedly frank and direct answers...'Dear Dante,Did you really meant all that stuff about people being thrown into boiling pitch and tar..?'In his on-going epistolary quest, Ian attempts to find out everything we wanted to know but were too afraid to ask. Why did Mary Shelley start so young? How did William Trevor keep going for so long? And what exactly is the significance of Marianne Moore's tricorn hat?Producer: Conor Garrett

'Dear Oscar Fingal O'Flaherty Wilde,Do you mind if I just call you Oscar? It's just you always seemed so approachable yet ultimately unknowable...a bit like the Queen.' Continuing his series of imaginary correspondences, Ian Sansom finds he's in the gutter, looking at the stars again. As his dispatches to some of the world's great writers resume, Ian is increasingly shocked by their unexpectedly frank and direct answers...'Dear Dante,Did you really meant all that stuff about people being thrown into boiling pitch and tar..?'In his on-going epistolary quest, Ian attempts to find out everything we wanted to know but were too afraid to ask. Why did Mary Shelley start so young? How did William Trevor keep going for so long? And what exactly is the significance of Marianne Moore's tricorn hat?Producer: Conor Garrett

'Dear Oscar Fingal O'Flaherty Wilde,Do you mind if I just call you Oscar? It's just you always seemed so approachable yet ultimately unknowable...a bit like the Queen.' Continuing his series of imaginary correspondences, Ian Sansom finds he's in the gutter, looking at the stars again. As his dispatches to some of the world's great writers resume, Ian is increasingly shocked by their unexpectedly frank and direct answers...'Dear Dante,Did you really meant all that stuff about people being thrown into boiling pitch and tar..?'In his on-going epistolary quest, Ian attempts to find out everything we wanted to know but were too afraid to ask. Why did Mary Shelley start so young? How did William Trevor keep going for so long? And what exactly is the significance of Marianne Moore's tricorn hat?Producer: Conor Garrett

You don't have to be religious to believe that, as the United Nation's Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, "all human beings have the right to be free and treated equally." However, drawing on a wide range of examples including Shakespeare's Richard III to Disney's Jiminy Cricket, New Generation Thinker Dafydd Mills Daniel argues that the UN's emphasis on "reason and conscience" as the drivers of liberty and equality make the modern conception of human rights more religious, and less liberal, than both secular proponents and conservative critics have supposed. Dafydd Mills Daniel lectures on theology and ethics at the University of Oxford, and researches the history and development of theories of conscience.The Essay was recorded at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead and - like all the New Generation Thinker Essays - you can hear a longer version with audience questions as a BBC Arts&Ideas podcast. You can also see Dafydd in a National Geographic TV show talking about the last Sin Eater. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xvW7pxOrssU New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select 10 academics each year who can turn their research into radio.Producer: Jacqueline Smith

You are a liberal who opposes art being banned. But would a movie that calls for you to be killed change your view of censorship? This was the quandary facing Salman Rushdie when filmmakers in Pakistan produced a James Bond-style action thriller in which a trio of Islamist guerrillas are inspired by Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa to track down and kill the author of The Satanic Verses. In the year of the 30th anniversary of the fatwa against the novelist from Iranian clerics, film historian Dr Iain Robert Smith explores what this largely-forgotten episode from the Rushdie affair can tell us about current debates on freedom of expression. Iain Robert Smith researches the impact of globalisation on popular films made around the world. He teaches at King’s College, London. The Essay was recorded at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select 10 academics each year who can turn their research into radio.Producer: Fiona McLean

Was George Orwell’s wife his forgotten collaborator on one of the most famous books in the world? Lisa Mullen takes a new look at Animal Farm from the perspective of the smart and resourceful Eileen Blair – and uncovers a hidden story about sex, fertility, and the politics of women’s work. Why are some contributions less equal than others? Lisa Mullen is Steven Isenberg Junior Research Fellow at Worcester College, University of Oxford and the author of Mid-century gothic: uncanny objects in British literature and culture after the Second World War. Her Essay is recorded with an audience at Sage Gateshead as part of the Free Thinking Festival and a longer version with audience questions is available as a BBC Arts&Ideas podcast. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio. Production Team:- Producer: Fiona McLean Editor: Robyn Read Production Coordinator: Juliette Harvey .

Commercial surrogacy – the practice of paying another woman to carry a pregnancy to term – has been criticised for being exploitative, particularly when poorer women are recruited. Even if these women were paid more, and the exploitation element were reduced, would unease remain about “renting out” your body in this way? This essay from New Generation Thinker Gulzaar Barn will explore what, if anything, is different about the buying and selling of bodily services from other forms of trade. Should the body should be taken off the market?Gulzaar Barn taught philosophy at the University of Birmingham and is now researching at King’s College, London in the Dickson Poon School of Law. The Essay was recorded at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead and a longer version with audience questions is available as a BBC Arts&Ideas podcast. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select 10 academics each year who can turn their research into radio.Producer: Zahid Warley

Have you ever been somewhere you shouldn't? In this essay, New Generation Thinker Ben Anderson creeps around, and explains how trespassers in the early-twentieth century helped create new attitudes to nature by stepping off the path.Descriptions of late-nineteenth century trespass and rock-climbing show how different experiences of nature led to fights with landowners and gamekeepers for the rights of urban people. People going off-piste also led to efforts to expose environmental inequalities in the Alps, and calls for the protection of wilderness as a playground for hard men. At a time of ever increasing awareness of the environment, walk your thoughts around how our own, personal experience of nature defines what we come to value, and what we might fight to protect, alter or ‘improve’.Ben Anderson lectures in twentieth century history at Keele University. The Essay was recorded at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead and - like all the Essays this week - a longer version including audience questions is available as an Arts& Ideas podcast. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select 10 academics each year who can turn their research into radio.Producer: Jacqueline Smith

Daisy Black looks at religious imagery, food, anti-Semitism and product placement in medieval mystery plays. Eaten by characters, dotted around the stage as saliva-prompting props, or nibbled by audiences - a medieval religious drama is glutted with food but Christianity’s vision of God as spiritual nutrition could provoke horror and fear as well as hunger. We'll hear about some of the gristly, crunchy medieval episodes of culinary performance as the Essay investigates the relationship between faith and food. In one play, sacramental bread is attacked in a kitchen, drawing disturbing parallels between the Eucharist and cannibalism. Daisy Black lectures in English at the University of Wolverhampton and performs as a storyteller and freelance theatre director. Her essay was recorded at this year's Free Thinking Festival with an audience at Sage Gateshead.New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select 10 academics each year who can turn their research into radio.Producer: Luke Mulhall

Des Fitzgerald tracks the relationship between the modern city and its green environs. Drawing together psychological research with urban history and literature it asks: what would change, psychologically, socially, emotionally, if we covered the concrete and brickwork of our towns and cities with vines, plants and vertical gardens? A city is not a park but should it be? Des Fitzgerald is a sociologist at Cardiff University who is researching health, illness and city living. The Essay was recorded at the Free Thinking Festival with an audience at Sage Gateshead. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select 10 academics each year who can turn their research into radio.Producer: Torquil MacLeod.

Comedian and author Viv Groskop explores five forgotten feminist futures; from the book that predicted the internet, to the world where men have been wiped out in a plague.Episode 5/5: Woman on the Edge of Time, by Marge Piercy; a 1970s counter-culture agrarian utopia with a clear message; utopia does not have to be in the future, it can be now.

Comedian and author Viv Groskop explores five forgotten feminist futures. Episode 4/5: The Female Man, by Joanna Russ, which tells four versions of the same woman, a complex narrative which prefigures many of the sci-fi tropes of 1970s and 1980s cinema.

Comedian and author Viv Groskop explores five forgotten feminist futures; from the book that predicted the internet to the world where men have been wiped out in a gender-specific plague. Episode 3/5: Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The story of three gentleman explorers, who get purposefully lost on an expedition in the hope of stumbling across an all-women tribe.

Comedian and author Viv Groskop explores five forgotten feminist futures. Episode 2/5: Mizora: A Prophecy, the 19th-century narrative written by author Mary E Bradley, who didn’t want her husband to find out that she was writing about a world without men.

Comedian and author Viv Groskop explores five forgotten feminist futures; from the book that predicted the internet, to the world where men have been wiped out in a gender-specific plague. Episode 1/5: Three Hundred Years Hence, by Mary Griffith, often described as the first utopian novel written by a woman, fifty years before the first female suffrage amendment.

Sarah Churchwell celebrates various leading men of the silver screen from the 1930s and 1940s.She says, "the truth is, I would have done five essays on Cary Grant, but my producer wouldn't let me... Grant embodied the unimaginable." He was also excellent at romantic comedy and drama, and this is now examined. Cherished even.Producer: Duncan Minshull

Sarah Churchwell celebrates various leading men of the silver screen, from the 1930s and 1940s.Joel McCrea starred in westerns and crime capers and refused some movies if the characters did not possess moral fibre. So he turned down The Postman Always Rings Twice with Lana Turner. He said he wanted to be the regular guy who 'rode off into the sunset'. But was this his real appeal?Producer: Duncan Minshull

Sarah Churchwell celebrates various leading men of the silver screen, from the 1930s and 1940s.Charles Boyer played killers and gigolos, conmen and psychopaths. He was good at romantic comedy and his Frenchness made him debonair and suave. But it was the voice that was the giveaway - 'deep and purring, with a heavy French accent'. It encouraged this writer's early penchant for escapism.Producer: Duncan Minshull

Sarah Churchwell celebrates various leading men of the silver screen from the 1930s and 1940s.Frederic March had an amazing range, playing a lot of different types, and he should be admired for this. Off set, however, he comes under a different sort of scrutiny - "everything was harder in real life than on the effortless silver screen."Reader: Duncan Minshull

Sarah Churchwell celebrates various leading men of the silver screen, from the 1930s and 1940s:First off is Clark Gable and Gone with the Wind of course. And countless other films where this classic star could exercise his physical presence. And, according to the writer, his appeal lay as an 'object fought over by women'. Is this his only talent?Producer: Duncan Minshull

Writer and broadcaster AL Kennedy concludes her exploration of voice. Today, make some noise before it's too late.Written and read by AL Kennedy. Producer: Justine Willett

Writer and broadcaster AL Kennedy continues her exploration of voice. Today, she compares the soothing radio voices of her childhood with the angry voices of today's media.Written and read by AL Kennedy. Producer: Justine Willett

Acclaimed writer AL Kennedy continues her exploration of voice. Today, she looks at the voice on the page - and the importance of telling our stories.Written and read by AL Kennedy. Producer: Justine Willett

Acclaimed writer and broadcaster AL Kennedy continues her exploration of voice. Today, she looks at the importance of conversation and of being heard.Written and read by AL Kennedy. Producer: Justine Willett

Using her own voice recordings, writer AL Kennedy explores the power of voice and what it can say about us.Written and read by AL Kennedy. Producer: Justine Willett

Andrew Martin's five essays that muse on the county of his birth and upbringing:Sitting on a bench in Scarborough station, he recalls the Yorkshire coast of his youth. This takes in Whitby and Bram Stoker. Robin Hood Bay and the roofs of its houses. Filey and its rock-pools. And Hull.Producer: Duncan Minshull

Andrew Martin's five essays that muse on the county of his birth and upbringing.He thinks he's best able to evoke a Yorkshire steeped in the past, but what about the future. Yorkshire independence? Its young people? The world of retail? There is much to consider.Producer: Duncan Minshull

Andrew Martin's five essays that muse on the county of his birth and upbringing:This time, he ponders questions of class in God's Own County. "My dad was one of the men who went to work in suits, being a clerk on British Rail. He got on with the men in overalls, but he tried to stop me speaking like them." The author has enjoyed class mobility, and after recollections of his upbringing, he gets to hear from a friend about the 'County Set'.Producer: Duncan Minshull

Andrew Martin's five essays that muse on the county of his birth and upbringing:This time, Andrew ponders the age-old question to do with Yorkshire and Lancashire rivalries - who comes out on top? Time to delve deep into each region's culture to come up with an explanation. But surely this author is biased?Producer: Duncan Minshull

Andrew Martin's five essays that muse on the county of his birth and upbringing: To begin, he is getting up there by train from London, thinking about his 'Tyke' identity. Also, who are the exemplars of God's Own County? - it's time to name some names. Then, before long, he arrives in York...Producer: Duncan Minshull

1819 was a stunningly fertile year for John Keats, when he wrote five of the greatest odes in the English language and actually introduced words and phrases never heard before - "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.....", "Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty....." . "O for a beaker full of the warm South....."Five leading contemporary poets each celebrate a single ode.5. Paul Batchelor on Ode to PsycheKeats wrote "Ode to Psyche" in spring of 1819 and it was the first of his great odes in that year, , which include "Ode on a Grecian Urn" and "Ode to a Nightingale". Poet Paul Batchelor explores what is perhaps the least familiar of the great 1819 odes for contemporary readers. Producer: Beaty Rubens

1819 was a stunningly fertile year for John Keats, when he wrote five of the greatest odes in the English language and actually introduced words and phrases never heard before - "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.....", "Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty....." "O for a beaker full of the warm South....." Five leading contemporary poets each celebrate a single ode.4. Sasha Dugdale on Ode to a NightingaleProducer; Beaty Rubens

In 1819, John Keats wrote five of the greatest odes in the English language. Five leading contemporary poets each celebrate a single ode.2. Sean O'Brien on Ode on Melancholy1819 was a stunningly fertile year for John Keats, when he wrote five of the greatest odes in the English language and actually introduced words and phrases never heard before - "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.....", "Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty....."The multiple award-winning poet Sean O'Brien explores the depth and meaning of Ode on Melancholy, both uncovering Keats' mastery of the language and sharing how important the poem has been to him personally since the loss of fellow-poet and friend Michael Donaghy, who used to recite the ode by heart. Producer : Beaty Rubens

1819 was a stunningly fertile year for John Keats, when he wrote five of the greatest and most frequently anthologised odes in the English language, fresh-minting phrases now in common use , such as "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.....","Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty....." and "O, for a beaker full of the warm South....." All this week, leading contemporary poets each celebrate a single ode, explaining what it means to them. From her home in rural Devon, Alice Oswald brings together her unique blend of poetic sensibility, classical scholarship and personal impressions as she explores Keats' great poem, Ode on a Grecian Urn.Classically educated poet and former gardener Alice Oswald has won many awards and is commonly considered to be amongst the greatest poets writing in English today. Producer: Beaty Rubens