Free Thinking

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The Joy of Bureaucracy Feb 22, 2018

Show notes

Red tape or accountability? Matthew Sweet is joined by Lord Robin Butler, former head of the home Civil Service, writer and lecturer Eliane Glaser and Professor André Spicer whose recent book looks at meaningless management speak. Deborah McAndrew talks about her stage adaptation of Charles Dickens' Hard Times which examines the results of purely utilitarian education. And journalist Richard Lloyd Parry's new book is an account of the tsunami of 2011 - Japan's biggest loss of life since the bombing of Nagasaki.

Richard Lloyd Parry’s Ghosts of the Tsunami: Death and Life in Japan’s Disaster is out now Japan Now is at the British Library in London 25 February with events also taking place at Sheffield on Saturday 24th - Programmed by Modern Culture in partnership with the Japan Foundation and Sheffield University, at The Forum in Norwich on Saturday and at the University of Manchester on Monday.

Business Bullshit by André Spicer is available now

Hard Times is at The Viaduct Theatre, Halifax, until 24 February, then The Dukes, Lancaster, from 27 February until 3 March - check the Northern Broadsides website for further dates.

Steven Pinker on Progress Feb 22, 2018

Show notes

We should ignore newspaper headlines, believe that things are getting better and defend Enlightenment values. That's the message from Steven Pinker, Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. He debates his defence of progress and his optimistic outlook with Philip Dodd. Plus culture wars in Britain. Are the divisions we are seeing today different to previous culture wars? Eliza Filby, Alex Massie & Tarjinder Gill debate.

Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker is out now.

Eliza Filby is the author of God and Mrs Thatcher and a Visiting Lecturer at Kings College, London. Alex Massie is Scotland Editor of The Spectator and a columnist for The Times and The Sunday Times Tarjinder Gill is a writer and teacher who blogs on race and identity issues at AllinBritain.

Producer: Robyn Read

Napoleon in Fact & Fiction Feb 21, 2018

Show notes

From Napoleon impersonators, his image in 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.

Napoleon Disrobed - a play performed by Told By an Idiot which is based on the novel The Death of Napoleon by Simon Leys - is on tour visiting Plymouth, London, Birmingham and Scarborough. Michael Broers has just published the second instalment of his biography which is called Napoleon The Spirit of The Age. Oskar Cox Jensen has published Napoleon and British Song. Laura O'Brien has published The Republican Line: Caricature and French Republican Identity (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015)

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Reflecting Rural Life Feb 15, 2018

Show notes

Film maker Clio Barnard and novelist Amanda Craig on rural life. Matthew Sweet presents.

Free Thinking: Mark Dion; Colour, Insects, Virginia Woolf Feb 14, 2018

Show notes

American artist, Mark Dion has a new exhibition on in London: Theatre of the Natural World . Dion is exhilarated by the natural world but tells Anne McElvoy why his art is about how we classify it and what that says about us. Virginia Woolf: An Exhibition Inspired by her Writings opens at Tate St Ives so Anne McElvoy finds out how questions about colour perception and insect behaviour in turn inspired the writer. Literary scholars Claudia Tobin and Rachel Murray discuss. Evolutionary biologists, Menno Schiltuizen and Suzanne Williams, tell Anne about how colour and invertebrate studies in ecosystems old and new are refining our understanding of evolution.

Mark Dion: Theatre of the Natural World at Whitechapel Gallery, London until May 13th Virginia Woolf: An Exhibition Inspired by Her Writings at Tate St Ives continues until April 29th. Menno Schiltuizen 'Darwin Comes to Town: How the Urban Jungle Drives Evolution' is out now. Suzanne Williams, Researcher and Head of Invertebrate Division, Natural History Museum, London. Claudia Tobin is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Cambridge Rachel Murray, School of Humanities, University of Bristol

Presenter: Anne McElvoy

How Big Should the State Be? Feb 14, 2018

Show notes

David Willetts, Polly Toynbee, Baroness Simone Finn, Julia Black and Adrian Wooldridge join Anne McElvoy for a debate recorded with an audience at the LSE Festival Beveridge 2.0

Michael Ignatieff and Central Europe Feb 13, 2018

Show notes

Philip Dodd talks to Michael Ignatieff about the political landscape of central Europe.

Tariq Ali Feb 08, 2018

Show notes

1968 was one of the most seismic years in recent history -- Vietnam, the Prague spring, Black Power at the Olympics and protests on the streets of Paris and London so this evening's programme -- Rana Mitter's extended interview with Tariq Ali -- is part commemoration, part reassessment. What remains of that turbulent time and where can we discern its features in our political landscape today? Rana takes Tariq back to his life as a boy in Lahore - a city where his radical parents regularly hosted the likes of Pakistan's great 20th century poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz and brings him via his first hand experience of wartime Vietnam and his intellectual engagement with the Russian revolution to the present where he offers assessments of the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn and the US President, Donald Trump. There's time too for a diversion into literature. Tariq shares his love of Kipling and in the longer version of the interview available as one of our Arts and Ideas podcasts - he reads from his novel Night of the Golden Butterfly featuring a character based on the painter, Tassaduq Sohail.

Tariq Ali has chosen a mixtape for Radio 3's Late Junction broadcast this week.

Producer: Zahid Warley

Celebrating Buchi Emecheta Feb 08, 2018

Show notes

Buchi Emecheta explored child slavery, motherhood, female independence and freedom through education in over 20 books. Born in 1944 in an Ibusa village, she lost her father aged eight, travelled to London and made a career as a writer whilst bringing up five children on her own, working by day and studying at night for a degree. Shahidha Bari talks to her son Sylvester Onwordi, to New Generation Thinker Louisa Egbunike, to publisher Margaret Busby and magazine editor Kadija George. We also hear from other writers and publishers taking part in a day long series of discussions and performances at the Centre of African Studies at SOAS, University of London, on Saturday 3rd February. They include Alastair Niven - former Director of the Africa Centre, Dr Marie Linton Umeh, writer Irenosen Okojie, Professor Akachi Ezeigbo and poet Grace Nichols.

Buchi Emecheta's career took off when she turned her columns for the New Statesman about black British life into a novel In The Ditch which was published in 1972. It depicted a single black mother struggling to cope in England against a background of squalor. Two years later Allison and Busby published her book Second-Class Citizen, which focused on issues of race, poverty and gender. Now, a year after her death, the Omenala Press is re-issuing editions of her work.

Producer: Robyn Read

Trade, Davos, Ocean travel and Mermaids Feb 02, 2018

Show notes

Anne McElvoy looks at trade past and present as she discusses a book questioning economists' reliance on GDP with its author, David Pilling, and reports on debates from the world economic forum annual meeting at Davos with American reporter Rob Cox. She also looks at a new novel depicting a "mermaid" displayed as a visitor attraction by an 18th century London-based merchant, and is shown around an exhibition exploring the design and impact of ocean liners with one of its curators, Ghislaine Wood. .

Ocean Liners: Speed and Style runs at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London from 3 February – 10 June 2018

The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock - the debut novel from Imogen Hermes Gowar is out now. Sarah Peverley is a New Generation Thinker who teaches at the University of Liverpool and a Leverhulme Research Fellow (2016-18) working on a project entitled 'Mermaids of the British Isles, c. 450-1500.'

Producer: Luke Mulhall

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