Free Thinking

Latest Episodes:

Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu Nov 18, 2022

Show notes

Matthew Sweet gathers together four Proust fans from very different backgrounds - the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, Jane Smiley, the psychotherapist, Jane Haynes, Christopher Prendergast, who has a translation of the book and written Living and Dying with Marcel Proust, and from France, the writer, Marie Darrieussecq. The actor Peter Marinker tackles the difficult task of giving an English voice to Proust.

The novel In Search of Lost Time is a modernist masterpiece which offers a symphonic account of what it meant to be alive in France as the 19th century became the 20th.

Producer: Zahid Warley

You can find a collection of programmes on the Free Thinking website exploring different aspects of modernism around the world https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07p3nxh

On Sunday Nov 20th at 5.30pm and for a month afterwards BBC Radio 3's curated selection of Words and Music inspired by the writing of Proust will be available on BBC Sounds.

George Bernard Shaw Nov 16, 2022

Show notes

Disillusionment with war and how you sue for peace are at the heart of Shaw's drama Arms and the Man, being staged in Richmond this autumn. Whilst in Bath a touring production of Mrs Warren's Profession stars Caroline Quentin and her daughter Rose Quentin as the former prostitute and her disapproving daughter. Anne McElvoy is joined by director Paul Miller, Professor Sos Eltis who has edited Shaw's work and theatre critic and writer Mark Lawson to look at Shaw's ability to construct arguments on stage and the resonances of his plays now.

Arms and the Man runs at the Orange Tree Theatre in London directed by Paul Miller from 19 November 2022 – 14 January 2023 Mrs Warren's Profession directed by Anthony Banks runs at the Bath Theatre Royal from 9th - 19th November starring Caroline Quentin and her daughter Rose Quentin as Mrs Warren and her daughter Vivie. It then tours to the Richmond Theatre from 22nd November to 26th November 2022 and goes on to visit theatres including the Chichester Festival Theatre, the Hall for Cornwall, the Yvonne Arnaud in Guilford. My Fair Lady - a production from the Lincoln Centre directed by Bartlett Sher - is at the Cardiff Millennium Centre from November 8th to 26th and it then tours to Edinburgh, Southampton, Sunderland, Bristol, Birmingham and Manchester.

Producer: Ruth Watts

You can find other Free Thinking conversations about drama past and present including discussions about Moliere, Ibsen, the playwright Rona Munro, John McGrath's Scottish drama, in a collection called Prose, Poetry and Drama https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p047v6vh

Plastic and Clay Nov 09, 2022

Show notes

It revolutionised domestic chores, signified modernity and has been made into packaging, textiles, electrical machinery but plastic has also contributed to our throw-away society. Clay is turned into bricks, cookware and used in industrial processes including paper making, cement production, and chemical filtering and increasingly contemporary artists are taking up the material. As exhibitions at the V&A Dundee and the Hayward Gallery in London display the different qualities and associations of these materials Lisa Mullen is joined by ceramic artist Lindsey Mendick, curators Cliff Lauson and Johanna Agerman Ross, and Kirsty Sinclair Dootson who studies materials in visual culture.

Plastic: Remaking Our World is at the V&A Dundee. It features product design, graphics, architecture and fashion from the collections of the V&A and Vitra Design Museum, and other collections. It is the first exhibition produced and curated by V&A Dundee, the Vitra Design Museum and maat, Lisbon, with curators from V&A South Kensington. Strange Clay: Ceramics in Contemporary Art is at the Hayward Gallery in London until 8 January 2023 and features 23 international artists.

You can find a collection of programmes exploring Art, Architecture, Photography and Museums on the Free Thinking programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p026wnjl

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

The Imperial War Museum Remembrance Discussion 2022 Nov 08, 2022

Show notes

Do video games help explore war? An exhibition at the Imperial War Museum includes Sniper Elite 5, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and a military training simulator. For the 2022 discussion about how we look at warfare past and present Anne McElvoy is joined by writer & broadcaster Louise Blain, retired Colonel Lincoln Jopp, game designer Florent Maurin and IWM curator Chris Cooper.

War Games runs at IWM London until May 2023 and is a free exhibition. Louise Blain presents Radio 3's Sound of Gaming - a monthly show looking at the music written for games.

You can find previous discussions available on BBC Sounds and downloadable as the Arts & Ideas podcast: Former soldier Lincoln Jopp, war reporter Christina Lamb, novelist Elif Shafak and curator Hilary Roberts explore the impact of the words we use to describe conflict in 2021 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0011cxv What does it mean to make art to commemorate histories of conflict? Anne McElvoy's talked to the artists Es Devlin and Machiko Weston, Art Fund director Jenny Waldman, chair of the Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group Ekow Eshun and Paris Agar from the IWM as Radio 3 joined with the Imperial War Museum for the 2020 Remembrance Debate https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000p85j On the Free Thinking programme website is a collection of programmes called Free Thinking on War and Conflict which includes episodes on Odesa Stories; Abdulrazak Gurnah and Margaret McMillan on War in Fact and Fiction; architect Marwa al-Sabouni on Syria: Hope and Poetry

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

John Knox Nov 03, 2022

Show notes

The Scottish theologian and preacher John Knox died on 24th November 1572, bringing to an end a life packed with drama and controversy. Matthew Sweet is joined by historian Steven Reid, literary historian Lucy Hinnie and New Generation Thinker Dafydd Mills Daniel to go through some of the most vivid and important episodes in that life, including his periods in exile, his highly antagonistic meetings with Mary Queen of Scots, and his time on the high seas as a prisoner forced to row a French galley. They also address the question of what makes Knox such an important figure and how his influence is still felt in Scotland today.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Goethe, Schiller and the first Romantics Nov 02, 2022

Show notes

Putting I at the centre, the Ich, was the creed of philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte whilst Friedrich Schelling, saw the self as at one with the rest of nature: naturphilosophie. These competing ideas were debated in literary salons in the German town of Jena in the 1790s and Andrea Wulf's new biography Magnificent Rebels: The First Romantics and the Invention of the Self tells this story. She joins Anne McElvoy alongside New Generation Thinker Dr Seán Williams and the musicologist and Classical music biographer, Stephen Walsh, author of The Beloved Vision: Music in the Romantic Age.

Producer: Ruth Watts

This edition features discussion of music inspired by the Jena writers and extracts of:

Franz Schubert, “Gretchen am Spinnrade” sung by Bernarda Fink (soprano) with Gerold Huber (piano), Harmonia Mundi, HMC901991

Weber, Der Freischütz, Rundfunkchor Leipzig, Staatskapelle Dresden, Carlos Kleiber Deutsche Grammophon, 4577362

You can find other programmes exploring German culture and thinking in the Free Thinking archives and available to download as Arts & Ideas podcasts including ETA Hoffmann https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00188r7 Rainer Maria Rilke https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0016k0v Wittgenstein's Tractatus https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000wcwk The 1920s Philosophy's Golden Age https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000q380 The Tin Drum https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05stw9v Thomas Mann https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001025h

Alexander the Great Nov 01, 2022

Show notes

King of Asia and Pharoah are two of the titles taken by Alexander, ruler of Macedonia from 336 B.C. to 323 B.C. He died aged 32 having conquered a vast area and founded the city of Alexandria in present day Egypt but his reputation stretched even further as a kind of philosopher king, and in myths and stories, as someone who travelled to paradise, created the first flying machine and explored underwater. Rana Mitter has been to visit a new exhibition at the British Library which illustrates these different images of Alexander and he's joined by New Generation Thinkers Dr Julia Hartley, Professor Islam Issa and by Peter Toth, curator of ancient and medieval manuscripts at the British Library. Plus we hear about the books on the shortlist of this year's Cundill History Prize from the chair of the judges, Professor J.R. McNeill.

Julia Hartley teaches on French, Italian, and Iranian art and literature at King's College London . You can find an Essay she wrote for Radio 3 on Alexander and the Persians available on BBC Sounds https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0016rpp Islam Issa is Professor of Literature and History at Birmingham City University. His book, Alexandria: The City that Changed the World, will be out in 2023. Alexander the Great: The Making of a Myth runs at the British Library until February 19th 2023.

The Cundill History prize has shortlisted the following books (the winner is announced on December 1st) https://www.cundillprize.com/ Cuba: An American History by Ada Ferrer All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake by Tiya Miles Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union by Vladislav M. Zubok

Producer: Ruth Watts.

You can hear an episode of Radio 3's Words and Music on the theme of Egypt co-curated by New Generation Thinker Islam Issa available on BBC Sounds for a month after being broadcast on Sunday November 6th at 5.30pm. And an episode of Free Thinking available now on BBC Sounds and as an Arts & Ideas podcast explores Dead Languages and the deciphering of hieroglyphics.

Ghostwatch Oct 27, 2022

Show notes

The director and writer of Ghostwatch Lesley Manning and Stephen Volk join Matthew Sweet and academic Lucy Arnold to look back at the reality–horror/pseudo-documentary TV, which aired on British tv screens on Halloween night 1992. The BBC switchboard received an estimated 1,000,000 phone calls on the night of the broadcast and it has never been repeated on British tv although it is now part of a BFI season exploring horror.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

A BFI Horror season In Dreams are Monsters is running at venues across the UK until 31 December 2022 with screenings and events themed around the vampire, the ghost, the zombie, the witch and the beast.

Orhan Pamuk and the Ottoman Empire Oct 26, 2022

Show notes

A pandemic, crumbling empire and new nationhood are the backdrop for Orhan Pamuk's latest novel Nights of the Plague. He talks to Rana Mitter about the historical basis for his novel. They're joined by historian and BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker Michael Talbot and literary scholar Keya Anjaria.

Some of the books they recommend at the end of the conversation are Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar (1901 – 1962) whose The Time Regulation Institute and A Mind at Peace have been published in English by Penguin Halide Edib Adıvar (1884 – 1964) whose memoirs have been published in English Yasher Kemal (1923 – 2015) author of Mehmet My Hawk Orhan Kemal - the pen name of Turkish novelist Mehmet Raşit Öğütçü (1914 - 1970) whose books describe the life of the poor in Turkey Oğuz Atay (1934 - 1977) a pioneer of the modern novel whose The Disconnected has become a best-seller Latife Tekin (1957 - ) and the film-maker Yılmaz Güney (1937 - 1984)

Producer Luke Mulhall

You can find more conversations about Turkish history via the Free Thinking website

New Thinking: Dead Languages Oct 26, 2022

Show notes

John Gallagher discusses the latest research on the languages of the ancient world that weren't Latin and Greek. We associate places like Italy and Cyprus with those two best known ancient languages. But both were linguistically diverse. What informed people's choice of language in these places? How were alphabets developed and used? Plus, an exhibition at the British Museum explores the world opened up when Egyptian hieroglyphics were deciphered 200 years ago, and how the invention of the Cyrillic alphabet, developed in the Balkans over 1,000 years ago, still has political repercussions today.

With Dr Katherine McDonald, Assistant Professor in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Durham, Dr Mirela Ivanova, Lecturer in Medieval History at the University of Sheffield, and a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker, Dr Philippa Steele is Senior Research Associate in the Faculty of Classics at the University of Cambridge, and Dr Ilona Regulski, an Egyptologist based at the British Museum.

The British Museum exhibition Hieroglyphs: Unlocking Ancient Egypt runs until Feb 189th 2023.

This New Thinking episode of the Arts and Ideas podcast was made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

You can find other episodes exploring language in the New Research playlist on the Free Thinking programme website

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