BBC Radio 3's annual Free Thinking festival of ideas continues its summer of activity around the country. In the first of 2 programmes from Derry-Londonderry Matthew Sweet celebrates the city's status as City of Culture 2013 and explores its cultural past and present with a series of discussions, events and interviews recorded at The Playhouse. Writer Owen Hatherley, Derry-based architect Mary Kerrigan and local crime writer Brian McGilloway reflect on the architecture and landscape of Derry and...
Oct 22, 2013•44 min
Susannah Clapp joins Anne McElvoy for the very first review of David Tennant’s much anticipated performance as the lead in Shakespeare's Richard II. Writer and journalist Eric Schlosser reveals a series of near-disasters in the history of management of nuclear weapons. New Generation Thinker Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough has a sneak preview of the Illuminating York Festival, which celebrates the city’s Viking history. Richard Burton on his new biography of poet Basil Bunting.
Oct 18, 2013•45 min
Fifty years since Oh What a Lovely War was first performed, Night Waves pays tribute to Joan Littlewood's revolutionary anti-war musical. In a programme recorded before an audience at the Theatre Royal Stratford East where the show received its premiere, Samira Ahmed and her guests, the critic, Michael Billington, Erica Whyman from the RSC, the historian, David Kynaston and Murray Melvin from the original cast, discuss how Oh What A Lovely War changed Britain's theatrical landscape and redefined...
Oct 17, 2013•44 min
Philip Dodd discusses the announcement of the winner of this year's Man Booker Prize with Sarah Churchwell. Susannah Clapp is in the studio discussing Rufus Norris, the director revealed today as the new Artistic Director of the National Theatre. Philip is joined by the Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland and historian of US politics Prof Philip Davis to discuss the current US shutdown. James Malpas and Karen Leeder review the new Paul Klee exhibtion at the Tate Modern. And Philip takes a trip...
Oct 16, 2013•45 min
Tom Hanks stars as Captain Phillips in the new film from Paul Greengrass; writer Writer Kevin Jackson and Anja Shortland join Matthew Sweet to discuss the film and its portrayal of Somali Piracy. Film historian David Thomson discusses the most memorable moments in films. As David Greig’s play The Events opens, inspired by the Norwegian massacre by Anders Breivik, the director Ramin Gray, forensic psychiatrist Cleo Van Velsen and priest Giles Fraser discuss the possibility of forgiveness in the f...
Oct 15, 2013•45 min
In the last of Matthew Sweet's visits to ZSL London Zoo we consider our relations with our closest animal relatives - apes. Daniel Simmonds, Keeper at ZSL London Zoo's Gorilla Kingdom, discusses the problems that come with looking after creatures so similar to, but different from us. Is any kind of mutual understanding possible at all? Matthew picks up the theme with anatomist and anthropologist Alice Roberts, physician and philosopher Raymond Tallis and novelist James Lever. So what happens whe...
Oct 11, 2013•44 min
Social media, as old as Cicero and as revolutionary as Christianity? Tom Standage and William Dutton join Philip Dodd to explore our networked world and to question whether social media alters historic mappings of power and authority. Photographer Dayanita Singh discusses her new retrospective at London’s Hayward gallery and her approach to the camera. As part of Verdi 200, Radio 3’s season celebrating the composer’s bicentenary, music historian Sarah Lenton and scholar René Weis explore Verdi’s...
Oct 10, 2013•44 min
Catholic theologian Hans Küng in his new work asks 'Can We Save The Catholic Church?'. He discusses this and more with Anne McElvoy. Anna Raeburn and Adam Mars-Jones review the first episode of Masters of Sex and discuss the work of Masters and Johnson. In a theatre critique, Susannah Clapp comes straight from the Donmar Warehouse to the studio for a first night review of Arnold Wesker's 'Roots'. And the author Wendy Lower has written a new book 'Hitler's Furies - German women in the Nazi Killin...
Oct 09, 2013•45 min
Jonathan Derbyshire, the Managing Editor of Prospect magazine, and Observer columnist Nick Cohen discuss the genealogy of left wing politics in Britain. The thinker and psychoanalyst Slavoj Zizek takes on the ideology machine of Hollywood in his new film, The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology. Directors Richard Eyre and Stephen Unwin discuss their two respective productions of Henrik Ibsen's Ghosts, which have both just opened. Melissa Benn asks what messages we are conveying to young women and what a...
Oct 04, 2013•45 min
In Night Waves’ second outing to London Zoo, Matthew Sweet and guests discuss Angus Wilson's 1961 novel 'The Old Men at the Zoo'. Matthew is joined by Wilson's friend and biographer Margaret Drabble, by the poet and novelist Iain Sinclair, and by Jonathan Powell and Margot Hayhoe who brought the story to TV screens in the 1983 BBC series.
Oct 03, 2013•44 min
With Rana Mitter. Bestselling author of Wild Swans, Jung Chang discusses her new biography of the most important woman in Chinese history; Empress Dowager Cixi. Alastair Sooke survey's a new show by The critics' favourite Young British artist, Sarah Lucas. US historian Tim Stanley joins Rana to discuss former Chilean President Salvador Allende along with the author of a new book on the subject, Oscar Guardiola-Rivera. And our latest contribution to the Sound of Cinema season: Simon Fisher Turner...
Oct 02, 2013•45 min
Samuel Huntington’s essay ‘The Clash of Civilisations?’ was published twenty years ago; Philip Dodd and guests Douglas Murray, Maria Misra and Gideon Rose discuss the importance and relevance of the essay today. Karen Leeder reviews a new exhibition of the work of George Grosz which focuses on his satirical depictions of bourgeois life in Weimar Berlin. Simon Heffer on his new book High Minds, which explores 1840s-1880s as a period which laid the foundations for modern Britain.
Oct 01, 2013•45 min
Actress Cate Blanchett joins Samira Ahmed to discuss her role in Woody Allen's latest film, Blue Jasmine. Renaissance scholar Alexander Lee, Sarah Dunant and Radio 3 New Generation Thinker John Gallagher reassess the Renaissance and consider whether our view of the period is seen through rose-tinted glasses. Maxim Leo on his new memoir, Red Love, and the compromises involved in living in the DDR. Art critic Joanne Harwood reviews Tate Modern's retrospective of the late Brazilian artist Mira Sche...
Sep 27, 2013•45 min
Architect Zaha Hadid joins Rana Mitter to reflect on her designs for the Serpentine's new Sackler Gallery. Critics Ian Christie and Muriel Zagha discuss the sounds and music of French Cinema. Philosopher Julian Baggini and Classicist Richard Seaford consider the pros and cons of cynicism towards the public sphere.
Sep 26, 2013•45 min
Australian director Baz Luhrmann shot to fame in 1992 with Strictly Ballroom and was nominated in 2003 for seven Tony awards for his Broadway production of La Boheme. He's best known however for his bright and brash films Romeo and Juliet, Moulin Rouge, and The Great Gatsby which was released earlier this year. On all three he has worked with Glasgow based composer Craig Armstrong who studied with Cornelius Cardew and began his career as in-house composer at the city's Tron Theatre. Baz and Crai...
Sep 25, 2013•19 min
Carter Burwell is famed for scoring the films of the iconic Coen Brothers, from 1984's Blood Simple to Raising Arizona, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, and No Country for Old Men; they have one of the longest standing collaborations in the industry. Burwell was born in New York City where in the 1980s he played in a number of punk bands and worked at the New York Institute of Technology where he was first approached by the Coens. He talks to Tom Service about how he goes about approaching each score, f...
Sep 25, 2013•19 min
As part of the BBC's Sound of Cinema season, Tom Service talks to ten-time Academy Award nominee James Horner. Horner was born in Los Angeles but spent his early years in London and studied at the Royal College of Music before returning to California to pursue a doctorate in composition. Having initially intended composing concert music he fell into the film industry more or less by accident. His award winning collaboration with James Cameron has spanned three decades, from Aliens in 1986 to the...
Sep 25, 2013•20 min
Acclaimed director Ken Loach and composer George Fenton have collaborated on fourteen films together in the last two decades. Beginning in 1994 with Ladybird Ladybird, they have worked together on titles including Sweet Sixteen, My Name is Joe, Looking for Eric, and the Palme d'Or-winning The Wind that Shakes the Barley. Currently working on a new release for 2014 being filmed in Ireland, they take time out to talk to Tom Service about the role of music in Ken's films - how it can make the speci...
Sep 25, 2013•21 min
In the light of recent revelations about feuding in the Labour party does it make sense to demand or even expect loyalty from people in public life? Two former newspaper editors, Andreas Whittam Smith and David Yelland will be joining Philip Dodd to give their opinions. Also in the programme the historian, Tom Holland, will be sharing his passion for Herodotus; Tim Clark and Rosina Butler will be discussing the evolution of the Japanese erotic print; and the Magnum photographer, Martin Parr will...
Sep 25, 2013•45 min
In the first of three special programmes from ZSL London Zoo, Matthew Sweet examines the Zoo as cultural institution. Matthew discusses the Zoo's current incarnation as conservation centre with ZSL's Zoological Director David Field and head of the Tiger Conservation Programme Sarah Christie, and takes a tour of the Zoo with architecture critic Ellis Woodman to explore the peculiarities of designing housing for animals.
Sep 24, 2013•44 min
A Landmark edition recorded in front of an audience at the British Film Institute as part of the Sound of Cinema season: Matthew Sweet is joined by the film's stars Peter Wyngarde and Clytie Jessop, psychoanalyst Susie Orbach, writer and critic Christopher Frayling and stage and screenwriter Jeremy Dyson to examine the British horror classic The Innocents. They explore how the combination of cinematography, the script of William Archibald and Truman Capote and Georges Auric's original music and ...
Sep 19, 2013•44 min
Actor Rory Kinnear, currently playing Iago at the National Theatre, discusses the challenges of writing his first play. Samira Ahmed talks to the Australian Art exhibition curator at The RA and to Edmund Capon, former director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, whose television series The Art of Australia starts next month. Kit Davis assesses a landmark of American cinema, Michael Roemer's 1964 film Nothing But A Man. And Roger Highfield and Eliane Glaser discuss the idea of the scientist as...
Sep 19, 2013•45 min
Anne McElvoy talks to celebrated Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood whose latest novel MaddAddam competes her dystopian trilogy that began a decade ago with Oryx and Crake and continued six years later with The Year of the Flood.
Sep 17, 2013•40 min
Historian Simon Schama joins Philip Dodd to discuss his book and TV series The Story of the Jews. Stephen Hopgood and Clive Stafford Smith debate the pros and cons of the human rights industry, and whether it has shifted to serve Western interests. Director Beeban Kidron on her documentary InRealLife, which explores the impact of the internet on children and young people.
Sep 17, 2013•45 min
In a special event recorded in front of an audience at London's Royal College of Music Anne McElvoy talks to John le Carré to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his groundbreaking Cold War espionage novel, The Spy who Came in from the Cold. It's the book which brought him international fame and which was described by Graham Greene as 'the best spy story I have ever read'. He discusses his extraordinary childhood as well as the state of Britain today, and the revelations of whistleblowers such as ...
Sep 13, 2013•44 min
Philip Dodd is joined by evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins speaking about his new memoir - An Appetite for Wonder: The Making of a Scientist. Plus Tacita Dean speaks about about her new film 'JG' premiering in a new exhibition of her work at London's Frith Street and theatre critic Susannah Clapp reviews 'The Ritual Slaughter of Gorge Mastromas, a new play by Dennis Kelly at London's Royal Court.
Sep 12, 2013•45 min
Actor Diana Quick, playwright Jessica Swale and critic Susannah Clapp join Matthew Sweet to discuss the changing role of women, as reflected in the theatre. The works of Henry Moore and Francis Bacon are brought together in the Ashmolean Museum's exhibition ‘Flesh and Bone’ - art critic Bill Feaver reviews. Andrew Lycett discusses the founding father of Victorian sensation-fiction, Wilkie Collins. Professor Nello Cristianini explores the shifts in the field of Artificial Intelligence.
Sep 10, 2013•45 min
Rana Mitter assesses the shortlist for this year's Booker prize and speaks to nominee Jhumpa Lahiri. Joanna Bourke and Paul Schulte examines the history of chemical warfare and our ambivalence to it. Plus Colin Thubron and Artemis Cooper celebrate the publication of the long awaited final instalment of Patrick Leigh Fermor's account of his journey from the Hook of Holland to the Bosphorus and beyond.
Sep 10, 2013•45 min
Ian McMillan, Judith Palmer and Don Paterson introduce the winning entries in this year's Proms Poetry Competition - and welcome some of the winners on stage to read their poems. The reader is Samantha Bond. Recorded in front of an audience at this year's Proms Plus events at the Royal College of Music. In Association with the Poetry Society.
Sep 10, 2013•21 min
Former Poet Laureate Andrew Motion and poet Paul Farley on the work of one of the most popular and influential of the Thirties poets, Louis MacNeice, the BBC producer who worked with Benjamin Britten and W.H. Auden and whose most enduring work, Autumn Journal, is set amid the upheaval of the period leading up to the Second World War. MacNeice died fifty years ago this week. There's also a Proms appreciation of fellow Irish poet and Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney whose death was announced on Friday...
Sep 05, 2013•21 min
