Free Thinking

Latest Episodes:

Pacific Rim politics; Ronan Bennett; Sjon Oct 12, 2017

Show notes

The Gunpowder Plot in a new tv dramatisation by Ronan Bennett plus presenter Rana Mitter explores anti-Catholic prejudice in Britain today with Catherine Pepinster and Tim Stanley, and historians Richard McGregor and Hans van de Ven discuss relations between Japan, US and China. And the Icelandic poet and songwriter Sjón on hisrole in Poetry International as it celebrates its 50th anniversary since it was founded in 1967 by former poet laureate Ted Hughes. Richard McGregor is former Beijing bureau chief for The Financial Times and the author of Asia's Reckoning: China, Japan, and the Fate of U.S. Power in the Pacific Century. Hans van de Ven has written China at War: triumph and tragedy in the emergence of the new China 1937 - 1952. He is Professor of Modern Chinese History, Department of East Asian Studies, University of Cambridge. 'Gunpowder' a 3-part TV series developed by Ronan Bennett, Kit Harington and Daniel West will air on BBC TV Poetry International is on London's Southbank from Friday 13th-Sunday 15th October as part of the London Literature Festival. Catherine Pepinster has written The Keys and the Kingdom: The British and the Papacy from John Paul II to Francis. You can hear Ronan Bennett's Private Passions on BBC Radio 3 on November 5th. Producer: Fiona McLean.

Jewish history, jokes and contemporary identity. Michael Longley Oct 11, 2017

Show notes

Simon Schama and Devorah Baum join Philip Dodd for a conversation ranging from the expulsion of Jewish people from Spain in 1492 to Jewish jokes today. Plus, poet Michael Longley considers his preoccupations with The Great War, The Troubles and the natural world.

Belonging: The Story of the Jews 1492-1900 is the title of Simon Schama's latest book.

Devorah Baum teaches at the University of Southampton and has written Feeling Jewish (A Book for Just About Anyone) and The Jewish Joke.

Michael Longley is the recipient of the 2017 PEN Pinter Prize. His latest collection is called Angel Hill. The Pen Pinter prize is awarded annually to a writer from Britain, the Republic of Ireland or the Commonwealth who, in the words of Harold Pinter's Nobel Literature Prize speech, casts an 'unflinching, unswerving gaze upon the world' and shows a 'fierce intellectual determination...to define the real truth of our lives and our societies.'

Producer: Craig Templeton Smith

Salman Rushdie. Uncertainty Oct 10, 2017

Show notes

Novelists Salman Rushdie and Lionel Shriver join science writer Marcus Chown and historian Rachel Hewitt to discuss fiction, US politics, living in uncertain times and the new West End play from Simon Stephens Heisenberg: The Uncertainty Principle. Presented Shahidha Bari.

Free Thinking - Blade Runner. Ghost Stories Oct 05, 2017

Show notes

Matthew Sweet goes on a ghost hunt in Portsmouth with Karl Bell and is joined by Susan Owens and Stuart Evers to look at hauntings and what they tell us about our fears through the ages. James Burton from Goldsmiths and New Generation Thinker Sarah Dillon watch a vision of Los Angeles in 2049 in the Blade Runner sequel.

Free Thinking - Alan Hollinghurst Oct 04, 2017

Show notes

Alan Hollinghurst talks to Anne McElvoy and a Proms Extra audience about his new novel The Sparsholt Affair, which traces a family and changing attitudes to sexuality across generations. It's the sixth novel from the author whose Booker Prize winning The Line of Beauty was dramatised for TV and who began his literary career with The Swimming Pool Library published in 1988. Recorded last month as a Proms Extra event with an audience at Imperial College. Producer: Zahid Warley

Free Thinking: The importance of networks; the art of dance. Oct 03, 2017

Show notes

Niall Ferguson talks to Philip Dodd about a less hierarchical history. Jane Munro looks at Degas's depictions of the human body. Sarah Lamb describes dancing MacMillan's ballets.

The Square and the Tower: Networks, hierarchies and the struggle for global power by Niall Ferguson is out now. Degas - A Passion for Perfection runs at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge until January 14th 2018. Jane Munro has edited a catalogue containing essays to mark the centenary of Degas's death which is published by Yale University Press.

Kenneth MacMillan - A National Celebration - featuring 6 ballet companies from across Britain - takes place at the Royal Opera House between October 18th and November 1st.

Producer: Robyn Read

Landmark: Andrew Marvell's To His Coy Mistress Sep 28, 2017

Show notes

Poets Michael Symmons Roberts and Helen Mort and academic Stewart Mottram join Matthew Sweet in Hull to discuss the language of love and the politics underpinning Marvell's poem in a special recording for National Poetry Day. Readings are performed by Matt Sutton. Published posthumously in 1861, the poem has been seen as following traditions of carpe diem love poetry exhorting the female reader to seize the day and respond more quickly to the poet/lover but it has also been argued that the metaphors are ambiguous and the poem can be read as an ironic version of sexual seduction. Many of the phrases and ideas about time in the poem have inspired other authors and been re-used as book titles and lines in films including within A Matter of Life and Death, The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock and the writing of Ursula K Le Guin. Recorded with an audience at the University of Hull as part of the BBC's festival Contains Strong Language. Producer: Fiona McLean.

Simon Heffer. Social Conservatism. Sibelius. D'Oyly Carte. Sep 28, 2017

Show notes

Philip Blond, Eliza Filby, Tom Simpson and Simon Heffer join Rana Mitter to look back to Edwardian England and at conservative thinking now. New Generation Thinkers Eleanor Lybeck and Leah Broad share their research into touring opera and the links between Sibelius's music for theatre and his symphonies. Simon Heffer's latest book is called The Age of Decadence: Britain 1880-1914 Opera: Passion, Power and Politics opens at the Victoria and Albert Museum on September 30th. Tickets cost £19 and BBC Radio 3 is broadcasting the operas featured in the exhibition. The BBC Symphony Orchestra embark upon a cycle of Sibelius to mark 100 years since Finland gained independence. Catch up with tonight's performance of Sibelius 5 on the Radio 3 website. Eliza Filby is the author of God and Mrs Thatcher Philip Blond is the Director of think tank Res Publica. Tom Simpson is a New Generation Thinker and Associate Professor of Philosophy and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford You can find a discussion of The Union Jack and of George Dangerfield's The Strange Death of Liberal England in the Free Thinking collection of Landmarks on our website. Producer: Luke Mulhall.

Kamila Shamsie: John Kasmin. Dido Sep 26, 2017

Show notes

Family ties and radicalisation in Kamila Shamsie's novel Home Fire; images of beggars and slaughterhouses in the old postcards collected by John Kasmin, the art dealer who promoted abstract artists including Anthony Caro and Gillian Ayres. Plus Dido, Queen of Carthage - from Virgil and Christopher Marlowe to Purcell and TS Eliot - classicist Natalie Haynes and theatre director Rebecca McCutcheon discuss the different interpretations. Kamila Shamsie's novels include Burnt Shadows which links events in Nagasaki and partition in India to Pakistan in the early 1980s, New York post 9/11 and Afghanistan in the wake of a US bombing campaign; and A God in Every Stone moves from the time of Persian Darius I to the experiences of Indian troops fighting the First World War and the independence movement in Peshawar. John Kasmin's Postcards series published by Trivia Press is themed into collections Meat; Scrub; Elders; Size; and Wreck. Dido, Queen of Carthage is at the Swan theatre in Stratford with Kimberley Sykes directing for the Royal Shakespeare Company until October 28th 2017. Natalie Haynes is the author The Ancient Guide to Modern Life and her latest novel is The Children of Jocasta. Rebecca McCutcheon directed performances of Christopher Marlowe's drama in a women's refuge and at Kensington Palace and her theatre company Lost Text, Found Space is now working on staging a rarely performed play by Elizabeth Inchbold at a Victorian House in Peckham.

Free Thinking. Bernard MacLaverty. Immigration. Christian destruction of Classical World Sep 21, 2017

Show notes

The Northern Irish author of Cal and Grace Notes, Bernard MacLaverty talks to Anne McElvoy about his novel Midwinter Break plus Clair Wills on her research into post war immigration to Britain and the differing expectations and experience of migrants and European refugees. The daughter of Irish immigrants - she now teaches at Princeton University in USA. Joining in the discussion Will Jones, who researches the politics of migration and is working on developing the idea of matching markets which would match refugee preferences with state priorities. Anne also hears from Catherine Nixey a young historian with a tale to tell of who did for the pagans. Nixey claims that the old story of Roman paganism dying of its own accord and Christianity moving into a void is one told by the victors. The Christians in fact annihilated belief systems across the Empire in a concerted attack on their philosophy, buildings and artworks.

Midwinter Break by Bernard MacLaverty is out now in hardback. Clair Wills book is called Lovers and Strangers: An Immigrant History of Post-War Britain. William Jones, Centre of International Public Policy, Royal Holloway University of London The Darkening Age by Catherine Nixey out now in hardback.

Producer: Jacqueline Smith

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