Berlioz originally presented an early version of The Shepherd's Farewell - part of The Childhood of Christ, at this year's Proms - as the work of ‘Ducré’. It soon emerged that Ducré was not a forgotten 17th century composer, but a hoax created to satirize Parisian high society. Shahidha Bari presents an exploration of the literary hoax - from Thomas Chatterton's invented 15th century monk to faked Shakespeare deeds and a racy "discovered" diary. She is joined Nick Groom, Professor of English at ...
Aug 16, 2019•29 min
From Napoleon impersonators, caricature and ballads, to a play which asks what if he didn't die in exile - presenter Anne McElvoy is joined by actor and director Kathryn Hunter, biographer Michael Broers, historians Oskar Cox Jensen and Laura O'Brien and journalist Nabila Ramdani who looks at how Napoleon is viewed in 21st century France Michael Broers has published the second instalment of his biography which is called Napoleon The Spirit of The Age. Oskar Cox Jensen has published Napoleon and ...
Aug 15, 2019•43 min
Recorded as his film Peterloo opened in cinemas and repeated now to mark this week's 200th anniversary of the Manchester massacre
Aug 14, 2019•45 min
The award-winning author of young adult novels, Patrice Lawrence and historian Emma Butcher - who specialises in 19th century child soldiers - discuss the construction of childhood past and present with New Generation Thinker and literary scholar, Lisa Mullen. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run annually by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to turn early career academics into broadcasters.
Aug 13, 2019•36 min
Tchaikovsky’s letters to his brothers and to his nephew - to whom his final Symphony, the Pathétique, is dedicated - are fascinating insights into the composer’s turbulent life and work. Though his sexuality has, in particular, long been a topic of speculation, it is only recently that many of these previously suppressed letters have come to light. Shahidha Bari presents a selection of the most intimate, witty and revelatory ones, with readings by actor and writer Tom Stuart. She is also joined ...
Aug 12, 2019•26 min
Novelist and Gothic literature specialist Elizabeth Lowry joins the writer, documentarist, film-maker and psycho-geographer Iain Sinclair to discuss the dark glitter of the Gothic and the work of the American poet Edgar Allan Poe, with presenter Matthew Sweet. Elizabeth Lowry’s latest book is entitled 'Dark Water' Producer: Torquil MacLeod
Aug 08, 2019•21 min
One way that people deal with grief and suffering is to turn to tragic stories for example and catharsis. Rana Mitter discusses tragedy, ancient and modern with the award-winning poet Clare Pollard, author of ‘Ovid’s Heroines’, and the literary historian, Jennifer Wallace, whose new book is ‘Tragedy Since 9 /11’ Producer: Zahid Warley
Aug 08, 2019•33 min
In 2017, Sacha Dench, founder of Conservation Without Borders, flew the 4,000 mile migration route of Bewick swans from Arctic Russia to the UK in a paraglider. Drawing on her experience, the ‘Human Swan’ talks about the birds that have become symbolic of love, beauty, and mystery. Dance critic Sarah Crompton talks about the numerous productions of Swan Lake that she has seen and why the ballet has become such a staple of the repertoire.. Presenter Hetta Howes. Producer: Torquil MacLeod...
Aug 05, 2019•22 min
Since 1983, Spike Lee's production company has produced over 35 films. His 1989 film Do The Right Thing was nominated for Best Original Screenplay in the Academy Awards. Best Picture that year went to Driving Miss Daisy. 30 years on Do the Right Thing has been re-released in cinemas in the UK and BlacKkKlansman is now out on DVD. It won Best Adapted Screenplay in the 2019 Academy Awards where Best Picture went to Green Book.
Aug 05, 2019•45 min
Taking their inspiration from the Russian and Finnish composers of 2019 Prom 22, Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough and an audience at Imperial College London hear from Mythos Podcaster Nicole Schmidt and the musical scholar and New Generation Thinker Leah Broad about the role of legends and landscapes in north European music. They'll be talking trolls and suncream, the political dimension of being folk or not folk enough, and the peculiar potency of midsummer with its emphasis on fertility, creation ...
Aug 04, 2019•25 min
1996 was the summer of Woodstock, the moon landing, the Beatles’ Abbey Road and a gathering of beat poets at the Royal Albert Hall. Author and New Generation Thinker Preti Taneja is joined by poets Rachael Allen and Jacob Polley to take an un-nostalgic look at how the Sixties appear now. We'll also hear them perform some of their own poetry. The discussion is inspired by the programme for the Proms concert for Prom 11 The Sound of a Summer. For 30 days following the concert you can hear the musi...
Jul 26, 2019•32 min
Naomi Paxton discusses the latest science and clinical practice with psychologist Dr Daisy Fancourt, a psychologist and epidemiologist who studies the relationship between music and health, and Dr Simon Opher, a GP in Gloucestershire who prescribes music and other cultural practices for his patients. Producer: Luke Mulhall
Jul 24, 2019•35 min
As the Proms marks the 50th anniversary of the first Moon landings, Professor Richard Wiseman, author of ‘Shoot For The Moon’ and Melanie Vandenbrouck the lead curator of the Moon exhibition at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich join Rana Mitter to discuss the legacy of the Apollo 11 mission. Producer: Zahid Warley
Jul 22, 2019•38 min
Matthew Sweet looks at book frontispieces, dust jackets, footnotes, indexes and marginalia with Dennis Duncan, and explores a research project investigating difficulty in culture, with Professor Sarah Knight and Dr Hannah Crawforth. Plus, New Generation Thinker Jeffrey Howard discusses hate speech. Jeffrey Howard lectures in political theory at University College London and is a 2019 New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to put acade...
Jul 19, 2019•46 min
Anne McElvoy and new ways of understanding post-war Germany and Austria through history, film and literature with Florian Huber, Sophie Hardach, Adam Scovell and Tom Smith. Florian Huber Promise Me You'll Shoot Yourself explores a little understood wave of suicides across Germany towards the end of the Third Reich Sophie Hardach's latest novel called Confession with Blue Horses follows a family living in East Berlin who try to escape to the West. Adam Scovell is a film critic and author whose ne...
Jul 17, 2019•46 min
Hetta Howes learns that the absence of dental floss in the Neolithic era has left archaeologists with invaluable information about how our ancestors lived and where they travelled to. While piles of pig bones near Stonehenge reveal a communal society that used feasting as a form of negotiation. Penny Bickle and Jim Leary, who both lecture in the University of York's Department of Archaeology, uncover their findings from research projects in the Vale of Pewsey, Alsace and Stonehenge. Penny's curr...
Jul 17, 2019•40 min
Encyclopedia of Shakespeare's Language uses corpus linguistics, a statistical method that collates data on how frequently words are used and how often particular words appear alongside each other, to investigate Shakespeare's work. And the results are startling. John Gallagher talks to Professor Jonathan Culpeper and Professor Alison Findlay, both from Lancaster University, about how the project works, and the light it's shedding both on how Shakespeare worked as a writer, and on the development...
Jul 17, 2019•45 min
What is the metaphysical status of an unborn fetus in relation to its mother? Is it possible to know what pregnancy will mean for you before you become pregnant? How can the distinction between having a duty to do something and acting for a reason help us make sense of debates surrounding breast feeding? And why have philosophers of the past had so little to say on these matters? Hetta Howes gets to grips with the conceptual puzzles surrounding pregnancy and early motherhood with the philosopher...
Jul 17, 2019•48 min
Greater Manchester was created in the 1970s, bringing together areas that had previously been parts of Lancashire, Yorkshire, and Cheshire, as well as the City of Manchester itself. These areas all had (and have) quite different accents, so Erin Carrie and Rob Drummond, of Manchester Metropolitan University, have set out to document the accents of Greater Manchester, as a way of investigating whether there's a Greater Manchester identity, and what it is if there is one. John Gallagher talks to E...
Jul 17, 2019•39 min
Writer, feminist and author of such books as Sexual Personae and Provocations, Camille Paglia joins Philip Dodd to talk about feminism and free speech in the 21st century, and how her Italian heritage has contributed to her character. Producer: Craig Templeton Smith
Jul 16, 2019•46 min
Ex marine and journalist Elliot Ackerman talks with Iraq war political advisor Emma Sky. A novel by Shiromi Pinto tracing the life of Sri Lankan architect Minnette de Silva. New Generation Thinker Christina Faraday researches the history of pop-up anatomy books. Rana Mitter presents. Elliot Ackerman has written Places and Names. Emma Sky has written In a Time of Monsters. Shiromi Pinto has written Plastic Emotions You can hear a Free Thinking discussion about Why We Fight with Former army office...
Jul 11, 2019•59 min
The Belgian theatre director Ivo van Hove on staging Ayn Rand's ideas in The Fountainhead. 'The theme of my novel', said Ayn Rand, 'is the struggle between individualism and collectivism, not in the political arena but in the human soul. Plus Shahidha Bari meets Lesley Nneka Arimah, the winner of the 2019 Caine Prize for African Writing and looks at sex lives on screen and in print. How much do women share and how quickly do ideas about shame and acceptance come into play? Zoe Strimpel researche...
Jul 10, 2019•46 min
Matthew Sweet and guests look at the thought and writing of Iris Murdoch 100 years on from her birth, re-reading her work of moral philosophy she published in 1970, drawing on lectures she had given at universities in England and America. With Lucy Bolton, who has written about Iris Murdoch, philosophy and cinema, novelist and critic Bidisha, and friend of Iris Murdoch Peter J Conradi, who is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Kingston. The Iris Murdoch Research Centre is at the ...
Jul 10, 2019•44 min
Philip Dodd hosts a special programme recorded in Cleveland, Ohio. Once a booming manufacturing metropolis located on the southern shore of Lake Erie, this 'rust belt' city has for many years been synonymous with industrial decay and high unemployment. For many the city's fortunes changed in 1969 when industrial pollution on the Cuyahoga river caught fire causing an environmental catastrophe, earning the city the moniker 'the mistake on the lake', a pejorative term it still struggles to shake of...
Jul 04, 2019•45 min
Rana Mitter considers fearing Russia past and present with Mark B Smith, and the way Russia controlled fears over Chernobyl. Plus Tamar Koplatadze from the University of Oxford on her research into contemporary post-Soviet/colonial women writers’ responses to the fall of the Soviet Union, Victoria Donovan from the University of St Andrews outlines her project in the Donbass region of Ukraine that attempts to reconcile an industrial, Soviet past with an uncertain future and Yu Jie, Research Fello...
Jul 04, 2019•45 min
Preti Taneja talks to the winner of the 2019 Dylan Thomas Prize, Guy Gunaratne, Egyptian graphic novelist Deena Mohamed, poet and broadcaster, Michael Rosen, Iranian-American author Dina Nayeri and Somali-British poet Momtaza Mehri. Guy Gunaratne's first novel In Our Mad and Furious City imagines events over 48 hours on a London council estate evoking the voices of different residents. It was the winner of the International Dylan Thomas Prize, the Jhalak Prize as well as the Authors Club Best Fi...
Jul 03, 2019•45 min
Amitav Ghosh on linking refugees, climate change, Venice & Bengali forests in his fiction. New Generation Thinker Islam Issa on Epstein's Lucifer sculpture. Rana Mitter presents. Gun Island by Amitav Ghosh weaves the ancient legend about the goddess of snakes, Manasa Devi into a journey between America, the Sundarbans and Venice. You can also find Amitav Ghosh talking to Free Thinking about the need for fiction to reflect climate change here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07z7bnd The emot...
Jun 28, 2019•47 min
The art of Cindy Sherman; art critic Laura Cumming on finding out the history behind the days her mother disappeared as a child on a Lincolnshire beach, New Generation Thinker Susan Greaney on local history museums. Naomi Paxton presents and joining her to talk about Cindy Sherman are Laura Cumming, the actor Adjoa Andoh, photographer Juno Calypso and New Generation Thinker Joe Moshenska from the University of Oxford. Laura Cumming's memoir is called On Chapel Sands and it is being read as the B...
Jun 26, 2019•46 min
Jane Goodall is giving a talk at the British Academy on the work of the Jane Goodall Foundation with chimpanzees, protecting the environment with local communities and improving health and education for girls in rural Africa. Elif Shafak's latest novel is called 10 Minutes, 38 Seconds in this Strange World and looks at the death of a sex worker and the last moments of her life. Elif Shafak has been vocal in her concerns about freedom of speech in modern day Turkey. Producer: Luke Mulhall...
Jun 26, 2019•46 min
New Generation Thinker Alistair Fraser on the fates and fortunes of Glaswegian tough guys. Recorded with an audience at the York Festival of Ideas. To hear audience questions download the Essay as an episode of the BBC Arts&Ideas podcast. The image of the hard man runs like an electric current through Glasgow's history. Unafraid, unabashed, with outlaw swagger, he stalks the pages of countless crime novels and TV dramas. The unpredictable tough guy, schooled in both fist and knife, a symbol ...
Jun 21, 2019•19 min
