Free Thinking

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Democracy, Hong Kong and USA Nov 19, 2020

Show notes

Democracy, Hong Kong and USA Free Thinking

Hong Kong has seen elections postponed, pro-democracy protesters arrested and a sweeping new national security law imposed by Beijing this year outlawing sedition and subversion. Rana Mitter asks whether Hong Kong can retain its unique identity and how the city's culture can help us make sense of these turbulent times. And, is there Trumpism without President Trump? Following the fortunes of the Republican Party in the US elections, we consider where the ideas associated with the 45th president sit in the history of conservative political thought.

Tammy Ho is Associate Professor of English at HK Baptist University, and a specialist on Hong Kong identity in literature

Zuraidah Ibrahim is deputy executive editor of the South China Morning Post, the main English-language newspaper in the city, and she is the co-author of Rebel City: Hong Kong’s Year of Water and Fire

Jeffrey Wasserstrom is Professor of Chinese history at the University of California and the author of Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink, based on meetings with many of the Hong Kong protestors

Colleen Graffy is Professor of International Law at Pepperdine University's Caruso School of Law. She served in the George W Bush administration as deputy assistant secretary of state for diplomacy

Henry Olsen is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Centre and a regular columnist for the Washington Post, as well as the conservative journal National Review. His recent book is The Working Class Republican: Ronald Reagan and the Return of Blue-Collar Conservatism

Producer Ruth Watts

Helen Mort and Blake Morrison, Oulipo Nov 18, 2020

Show notes

Teaching writing - mentors Helen Mort and Blake Morrison compare notes. Plus as Georges Perec's memoir I Remember is published in English for the first time, we look at the rules of writing proposed by the Oulipo group which was founded in 1960 by Raymond Queneau and François Le Lionnais. Georges Perec (1936 – 1982) came up with a "story-making machine" and created a novel in which the letter 'e' never appears. Queneau's Exercices de Style recounts a bus journey ninety-nine times. Shahidha Bari talks to Adam Scovell and Lauren Elkin about Oulipo.

Helen Mort's books include poetry collections Division Street and No Map Could Show Them and a debut novel Black Car Burning and she is a Senior Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University https://www.helenmort.com/

Blake Morrison's books include poetry collections Dark Glasses and Pendle Witches, And When Did You Last See Your Father? which won the JR Ackerley Prize for Autobiography and a study of the murder of James Bulger, As If. He is Professor of Creative and Life Writing at Goldsmiths College, University of London. http://www.blakemorrison.net/

Their conversation is part of the series Critical Friends organised in partnership with the Royal Society of Literature https://rsliterature.org/ You can find more writerly conversations in the Free Thinking playlist Prose and Poetry https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p047v6vh

Adam Scovell is the author of novellas including How Pale the Winter Has Made Us and Mothlight

Lauren Elkin is the author of The End of Oulipo? An Attempt to Exhaust a Movement and Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London

George Perec's I Remember translated into English by David Bellos and Philip Terry has just been published by Editions Gallic.

Producer: Ruth Watts

New Thinking: Face Transplants and Researching Nose Injuries Nov 13, 2020

Show notes

Would you change your nose if you could? What about an entire face transplant? Des Fitzgerald speaks to researchers investigating the past and future of facial difference and medical intervention and looks at videos from participants in the AboutFace project, which are being launched as part of the Being Human Festival this November.

Emily Cock, from the University of Cardiff, looks at our relationship with our noses throughout history – from duels and sexual diseases to racial prejudice.

Fay Bound Alberti, from the University of York, talks about a project called AboutFace, which she is running to look at the emotional impact of face transplant surgery, investigating the moral questions it raises, looking at the impact of facial difference in the age of the selfie, and the emergence of facial transplantation as a response to severe trauma. There have been fewer than 50 face transplants globally since the first was performed in 2005 and none in the UK to date. You can find more at https://aboutfaceyork.com/ @AboutFaceYork

Fay is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow from the Department of History at the University of York and is working with Sarah Hall on the launch of new videos as part of the 2020 Being Human Festival https://beinghumanfestival.org/ The BBC has a series of programmes reflecting the anniversary of the Disability Discrimination Act UK

Emily Cock is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, undertaking a three-year project Fragile Faces: Disfigurement in Britain and its Colonies (1600–1850). Her book is called Rhinoplasty and the nose in early modern British medicine and culture

She and host Des Fitzgerald, from the University of Exeter, are New Generation Thinkers on the scheme run by the BBC with the AHRC to work with academics to put research onto radio.

You can find a playlist called New Research on the Free Thinking website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90

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

Postcolonial Derby: Privateers, Pieces of Eight and the Postwar Playhouse Nov 12, 2020

Show notes

What connects a "double elephant" sized map, an academy of dissenters and Daniel Defoe? Shahidha Bari makes a virtual visit to the University of Derby's hub for the Being Human Festival 2020. Today the East Midlands city of Derby is often overlooked, but it was one of the powerhouses of the industrial revolution. Historians and archivists have been exploring Derby as a postcolonial city and uncovering its hidden past. We hear how an intricate set of world maps by the 18th-century cartographer Hermann Moll may have arrived in Derby and what they tell us about the city's relationship with the world. What light can the Mexican silver coins Arkwright used to pay his mill workers at Cromford shed on 19th-century global trade and piracy? And how did Derby's little theatre club formed after the Second World War give rise to a star of the British cinema, Alan Bates?

Shahidha Bari speaks to historians from the University of Derby; Dr Cath Feely, Professor Paul Elliot and Dr Oliver Godsmark. And we hear from Laura Phillips, Head of Interpretation and Display at Derby Museums. and Mark Young, Librarian at Derby Local Studies Library.

Being Human Festival: https://beinghumanfestival.org/

Other programmes in our Free Thinking New Research playlist includes: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09fnz6t Lost and Found in the Archives https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000b6hk Love Stories https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b082kwts What the Archives reveal

Producer: Ruth Watts

The Imperial War Museum BBC Radio 3 Remembrance Debate 2020 Nov 11, 2020

Show notes

What does it mean to make art to commemorate histories of conflict? Anne McElvoy's guests are 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 joins with the Imperial War Museum for the 2020 Remembrance Debate.

Es Devlin and Machiko Weston worked together on a digital artwork commission to mark the 75th anniversary of Hiroshima. What images and words were appropriate to use? https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/i-saw-the-world-end

1,600 volunteers, all men, dressed in replica World War I British army uniforms, and appeared on station platforms and public spaces across the UK in Jeremy Deller's artwork We're Here Because We're Here. That was on of the many projects commissioned by Jenny Waldman as part of 14-18 NOW, the UK's official arts programme for the First World War Centenary.

Ekow Eshun is chair of the Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group and creative director of the Calvert 22 Foundation.

Paris Agar is an art curator on the Cold War and Late 20th Century team at the IWM who worked on the What Remains, Culture Under Attack programming and projects to mark the Fall of the Berlin Wall anniversary.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Charity shop history, our relationship with 'stuff', and musical typewriters Nov 10, 2020

Show notes

Matthew Sweet and guests discuss the history and ideas behind the charity shop, our relationship with 'stuff', and musical typewriters - aspects of November's Being Human Festival.

Matthew talks to researchers whose work is featured in the festival, which showcases research from a series of UK universities. His guests are anthropologist and soprano Jennifer Cearns from University College London; George Gosling, a historian at the University of Wolverhampton; Georgina Brewis of University College London's Institute of Education; plus Vaibhav Singh from the University of Reading, who shares his research into typewriters and plays a tune on a musical typewriter.

https://beinghumanfestival.org/

You can find conversations about love stories, researching archives, beer and buses, and haunted houses in previous episodes related to Being Human Festivals, alongside other new academic research in the Free Thinking playlist called New Research

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90

Producer: Emma Wallace

Billy Wilder Nov 05, 2020

Show notes

Mr Wilder & Me is the title of the new novel from Jonathan Coe, who won the Costa Prize for his book Middle England. He is one of Matthew Sweet's guests in a programme exploring the life and work of the Austrian born director behind Hollywood hits including Sunset Boulevard, Double Indemnity and Some Like it Hot. They are joined by film critics Phuong Le and Melanie Williams and Paul Diamond, the son of Billy Wilder's long time writing partner I.A.L. Diamond who worked on scripts for Some Like It Hot; The Apartment (which won an Academy Award for Best Screenplay); Irma la Douce; and The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes.

Jonathan Coe's Mr Wilder & Me is out now.

In the Free Thinking archives and available to download as Arts & Ideas podcasts you can find Matthew Sweet discussing films including Tarkovksy's Stalker https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0775023 the career of Cary Grant https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000hn1z Silent Film Star Betty Balfour https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04007l1 Laurel and Hardy's The Music Box https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001xwd

You can also find him discussing the stage adaptation of Jonathan Coe's novel The Rotters' Club in an event recorded at the Birmingham Rep Theatre https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b076b15h

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

New Thinking: Depicting disability in history and culture Nov 04, 2020

Show notes

This November sees the 25th anniversary of the UK Disability Discrimination Act. As we consider what contemporary progress has been made we'll uncover the long history of disabled people’s political activism, look back at the treatment of disabled people in Royal Courts and at fictional portrayals of disability in 19th-century novels from Dickens and George Eliot to Charlotte M Yonge and Dinah Mulock Craik. Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough presents.

Professor David Turner is the author of Disability in Eighteenth-Century England: Imagining Physical Impairment which won the Disability History Association Outstanding Publication Award for the best book published worldwide in disability history. He teaches at Swansea University and was advisor on the BBC Radio 4 series Disability: A New History. His latest book is Disability in the Industrial Revolution: Physical Impairment in British coalmining 1780-1880 (co-authored with Daniel Blackie). Dr Clare Walker Gore has just published Plotting Disability in the Nineteenth-Century Novel. She teaches English at the University of Cambridge and is a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker.

This episode of Free Thinking is put together in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI as one of a series of discussions focusing on new academic research also available to download as New Thinking episodes on the BBC Arts & Ideas podcast feed. You can find the whole collection here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90

Jessica Secmezsoy-Urquhart is at the University of St Andrews. They look at the disabled history of the royal court in Renaissance England and Scotland and the role of the Court Fool. They also make films and broadcasts for The Social on BBC Scotland.

War in fact and fiction Nov 03, 2020

Show notes

From East Africa to Arabia, the First World War to Mozambique, Rana Mitter discusses the impact of war on society and culture. Margaret MacMillan's most recent book is called War: How Conflict Shaped Us and takes a deep dive into the history of conflict. Rob Johnson considers what we gain by exploring the overlooked side of Lawrence of Arabia - his thoughts on warfare and military strategy. And, the end of the Gaza empire, and the clash in East Africa between Belgian, German, British and French forces are explored in novels by Mia Couto and Abdulrazak Gurnah. They compare notes about the way fiction can trace changes in relationships due to war.

Producer: Ruth Watts

Thinking about audiences in a time of pandemic Oct 29, 2020

Show notes

From online dance, pavement performances of plays, and the part played by audiences in Greek theatres and Shakespeare's Globe - how is performance adapting in the Covid era, and how are we rethinking what an audience is? Shahidha Bari hosts a discussion, with Kwame Kwei-Armah of the Young Vic; Kirsty Sedgman from the University of Bristol, who looks at theatre from Ancient Greece on; Lucy Weir, who teaches dance at the University of Edinburgh and is a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker; and Ted Hodgkinson, who programmes literary events at the Southbank Centre in London.

This episode is part of the programming for BBC Radio 3's residency at London's Southbank Centre and their Inside Out Season of Music and Literary Events, which include concerts broadcast live on BBC Radio 3 and available to catch up with via BBC Sounds, and a series of author interviews and discussions.

The Young Vic is marking its 50th anniversary with a series of events, including Twenty Twenty - 3 plays centred around the themes of Home, Heritage, and History which mark the culmination of a year-long community project with Blackfriars Settlement, Certitude, and Thames Reach, and various online films.

You can find discussions about how Covid has affected classical and musical audiences and programming on BBC Radio 3's Music Matters programmes https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006tnvx

Producer: Emma Wallace

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