Free Thinking

Latest Episodes:

Free Thinking - Paul Nash; George Szirtes; Hungary 1956 and now. Oct 19, 2016

Show notes

Artist Dave McKean on the way Paul Nash's dreams have inspired a graphic novel.

Ahead of the 60th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution, Philip speaks to poet George Szirtes, who left the country as a boy in 1956, and writer Tibor Fischer, whose parents came to Britain that same year. They are joined by historians Nora Berend and Simon Hall to discuss the revolt, the history of Islam in Hungary and the political debates going on today.

Paul Nash runs at Tate Britain from 26 October 2016 – 5 March 2017

Dave McKean has created a graphic novel, Black Dog, based on the dreams of Paul Nash which forms part of the 14-18 Now arts programme.

George Szirtes is the co-editor of the Hungarian Anthology The Colonnade of Teeth published by Bloodaxe Books and the title of his own new poetry collection is Mapping the Delta.

Tibor Fischer is the author of numerous works, including the Booker Prize-nominated Under The Frog.

Dr Nora Berend is Reader in European History, University of Cambridge, and author of books including At the Gate of Christendom: Jews, Muslims and "Pagans" in Medieval Hungary c. 1000-c. 1300

Professor Simon Hall, University of Leeds, is the author of 1956: The World in Revolt. He is giving a public lecture on The Hungarian Revolution and the Refugee Experience, 1956-2016, in Leeds on Thursday 24 November.

Free Thinking: Kevin Brownlow Oct 18, 2016

Show notes

How do you restore a silent film? Kevin Brownlow is in conversation with Matthew Sweet about his life's work documenting the early history of cinema and preserving many lost classics - including the culmination of a 50 year project which sees Abel Gance's 1927 epic Napoleon re-released in cinemas around the UK and on DVD. Described by Martin Scorsese as 'a giant among film historians', Brownlow received an Academy Honorary Award in 2010.

As part of Southbank Centre's Film Scores Live, Carl Davis conducts the Philharmonia Orchestra in his score for Napoleon - the longest film score ever composed - alongside a screening of the new digital version of the BFI-Photoplay restoration which Kevin Brownlow has worked on. This event happens on Sunday November 6th.

BBC Radio 3's Sound of Cinema broadcasts an interview with Carl Davis on Saturday October 29th.

Producer: Craig Templeton Smith

Free Thinking: Caravaggio; Bob Dylan; Dario Fo; Lenin's train journey. Oct 13, 2016

Show notes

The award of this year's Nobel Prize in Literature to Bob Dylan is discussed by writer Toby Litt and by Anthony Wall, the Editor of BBC TV's Arena series who co-produced the Martin Scorsese documentary about Dylan: No Direction Home and who has made several other films with and about Dylan.

As the death of Italian playwright and activist Dario Fo is announced, David Greig Artistic Director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh is joined by playwright Anders Lustgarten to reflect on Dario Fo's plays.

Caravaggio's art explored by curator Letizia Treves, New Generation Thinker Joe Moshenska and playwright Anders Lustgarten.

Plus, historian and Russologist Catherine Merridale on her latest book about Lenin's journey from exile in Zurich back to Russia on the eve of the 1917 Revolution. Anne McElvoy presents.

Beyond Caravaggio runs at The National Gallery 12 Oct 2016 To 15 Jan 2017.

Anders Lustgarten's play The Seven Acts of Mercy is at the Royal Shakespeare Company from November 24th to February 10th

Joe Moshenska is the author of A Stain In The Blood and teaches at Cambridge University. He is on the New Generation Thinkers scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio.

Mexican writer Álvaro Enrigue's novel is called Sudden Death. It's translated by Natasha Wimmer. You can find more about fiction in translation in a collection on our website http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p047v6vh

Catherine's Merridale's account of Lenin's journey from Zurich to Petrograd is Lenin On The Train.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

Free Thinking: Sound Frontiers - Teju Cole Oct 12, 2016

Show notes

The US-based author Teju Cole talks to Philip Dodd about a range of subjects from James Baldwin and the pressing political realities of Black Lives Matter to the creative potential of social media.

Teju Cole is a photographer, art historian and writer. He was raised in Nigeria and lives in Brooklyn. His books are Open City, Every Day is For The Thief and his new collection of essays Known and Strange Things.

The conversation was part of the London Literature Festival at South Bank Centre.

Producer: Zahid Warley

Free Thinking: Outsiders and Colin Wilson. Norse sagas. The Vulgar. Oct 11, 2016

Show notes

What is an outsider? Gary Lachman and Suzi Feay discuss the writings of Colin Wilson with presenter Matthew Sweet 60 years on from the publication of Wilson's best-seller which analysed literary characters in works by Camus, Hemingway, Dostoyevsky and figures including Van Gogh, T.E. Lawrence and Nijinsky. The Vulgar is the title of an exhibition of fashion on display at the Barbican - Linda Grant and Sarah Kent discuss the messages our clothing choices send out. And New Generation Thinker Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough on Norse gods.

Beyond the Robot: The Life and Work of Colin Wilson by Gary Lachman is out now. He has also written the introduction to a new edition of The Outsider published by Penguin.

Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough has published Beyond The Northlands: Viking Voyages and the Old Norse Sagas. She was selected as one of the New Generation Thinkers in 2013 in a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council which works with academics who want to turn their research into radio.

The Vulgar: Fashion Redefined runs at the Barbican Art Gallery from October 13th to 5th February 2017. Linda Grant's new novel The Dark Circle is out in November.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Free Thinking: Sound Frontiers: Margaret Atwood and Naomi Alderman Oct 06, 2016

Show notes

Margaret Atwood and Naomi Alderman share an interest in science fiction, the role of women and the power of fiction. They are in conversation with Philip Dodd as part of a week of Free Thinking broadcasts tying into this year's London Literature Festival at Southbank Centre, London and its theme of Living in Future Times.

Margaret Atwood's new novel Hag-Seed is a re-imagining of Shakespeare's The Tempest. She is also being awarded this year's Pen Pinter Prize.

Naomi Alderman's new novel The Power will be published at the end of October. It imagines a world where women are endowed with an automatic power to hurt.

Producer: Fiona McLean

Free Thinking: Wells' Women Oct 06, 2016

Show notes

H G Wells -- the man, his women and his writing. Matthew Sweet chairs a discussion about the father of science fiction to open the London Liteature Festival at South Bank Centre. Joining him for the event are Louisa Treger, Mark Blacklock, Joanna Kavenna and Christopher Priest.

Louisa Treger's novel The Lodger was inspired by Dorothy Richardson, one of the key women in Wells’ life. Christopher Priest's books include The Space Machine and his latest, The Gradual which explores ideas about time. He 's Vice-President of the H. G. Wells Society. Joanna Kavenna's latest novel is called A Field Guide to Reality. Mark Blacklock teaches science fiction at Birkbeck College and is the author of The Emergence of the Fourth Dimension: Higher Spatial Thinking in the Fin de Siecle.

More information about anniversary events to mark 150 years since the birth of HG Wells are found at http://hgwellssociety.com/ .

Sound Frontiers: BBC Radio 3 live at Southbank Centre. Celebrating 7 decades of pioneering music and culture.

Producer: Zahid Warley.

Free Thinking - Sound Frontiers: Kamila Shamsie, Nikesh Shukla, Drugs in the German Reich. Board Games. Oct 05, 2016

Show notes

Rana Mitter and guests will be broadcasting live from the Radio 3's pop up studio at Southbank Centre, London. Norman Ohler, author of Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany, will be revealing the role played by drugs such as methamphetamine in Hitler's downfall. Nikesh Shukla, a former writer in residence at the Royal Festival Hall, has edited a collection of essays called The Good Immigrant. He'll be joined by novelist Kamila Shamsie, who has been involved in a project re-imagining the Canterbury Tales by talking to refugees, to reflect on the impact of migration on individuals, families and beyond. Plus, Catherine Howell, curator of toys and games at the V&A Museum of Childhood and Marie Foulston, curator of video games at the V&A, consider the metamorphosis of gaming from tabletops to laptops.

The Good Immigrant edited by Nikesh Shukla is a collection of essays by 21 British BAME poets, writers, journalists and artists. http://www.nikesh-shukla.com/ He is appearing at the Rochdale Literature and Ideas Festival on 22nd October

Blitzed: Drugs in Nazi Germany is by Norman Ohler translated by Shaun Whiteside.

Kamila Shamsie is discussing Refugee Tales with Josh Cohen and Catherine Bergvall as part of the London Literature Festival at Southbank on Saturday October 8th at 5pm.

She is also giving the 7th Castlefield Manchester Sermon at 7pm on October 14th as part of Manchester Literature Festival which runs from October 7th - 23rd.

http://www.manchesterliteraturefestival.co.uk/

Game Plan: Board Games Rediscovered is at the V&A Museum of Childhood, London E2, from 8 October to 23 April.

Producer: Craig Templeton Smith

Free Thinking - Sound Frontiers: Books of 1946 Sep 29, 2016

Show notes

The novelist Benjamin Markovits, the literary historian Lara Feigel and the broadcaster and essayist Kevin Jackson join Matthew Sweet and an audience at Southbank Centre, London to explore some of the key books published in 1946 – a year in which Penguin Classics launched in the UK with a version of the Odyssey, Herman Hesse won the Nobel Prize for Literature, popular fiction included crime stories by Agatha Christie, Edmund Crispin and John Dickson Carr and children were reading Tove Jansson’s Moomin series, the first of Enid Blyton’s Malory Towers and the second Thomas the Tank Engine book.

Their particular choices include Back, a novel by Henry Green, All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren, Jill by Philip Larkin and The Moving Toyshop by Edmund Crispin

Recorded in front of an audience at Southbank as part of Sound Frontiers: Celebrating seven decades of pioneering music and culture from Radio 3 and the Third Programme.

Producer: Zahid Warley.

Free Thinking - Sound Frontiers: Success debated by Peter Frankopan, Edith Hall, Kwame Kwei-Armah Sep 29, 2016

Show notes

Historian Peter Frankopan and Classicist, Edith Hall, join the author and drama practitioner Kwame Kwei-Armah in a Free Thinking session, chaired by Anne McElvoy, on the concept of success. Success was scrutinised in a documentary on the Third Programme in 1967. Personal or public - how do we imagine success in the contemporary world? Have our hopes for a successful society grown or diminished, is a sense of personal integrity as strong as it was? Archives from the Third Programme include a transcript from 5 June 1967 of a programme produced by Douglas Cleverdon in which Philip Toynbee, Sir Michael Redgrave, Malcolm Muggeridge and John Berger talk to host Philip O'Connor about the nature of success. Have our definitions changed at all?

Peter Frankopan from Worcester College, Oxford is the author of The Silk Roads: A New History of the World Edith Hall's latest book is called Introducing The Ancient Greeks: From Bronze Age Seafarers to Navigators of the Western Mind Kwame Kwei-Armah, author, actor and Artistic Director of CENTERSTAGE Baltimore directs One Night in Miami by Kemp Power at London's Donmar Warehouse October 6th - December 3rd 2016

Producer: Jacqueline Smith.

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