Arts & Ideas

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.

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

Cordelia Fine debates the effects of testosterone. Adrian Owen explores the “grey zone” of consciousness. Curator Matt Kimberley and Jahnavi Phalkey discuss scientific discoveries made in India and how they should be displayed at the London Science Museum. Plus Chair of the Judges for the Royal Society Science Book Prize Richard Fortey joins in the round table with presenter Matthew Sweet exploring whether it’s good to personalise science stories.

Philip Dodd and guests explore the art of negotiation and discuss JT Rogers' play Oslo which opens at the National Theatre this week. It draws on the experiences of Norwegian diplomat Mona Juul and her husband, social scientist Terje Rød-Larsen who fixed secret meetings between the State of Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation. Sir John Jenkins is a former diplomat and Executive Director of The International Institute for Strategic Studies - Middle East. He's been HM Consul-General in Israel, and Ambassador to Syria, Iraq and Saudia Arabia. Gabrielle Rifkind is a senior consultant to the Middle East Programme, which she founded and directed until 2015. She is the Director of the Oxford Process, an independent preventive diplomacy initiative pioneered through her dialogue work with Oxford Research Group (ORG). Michael Burleigh is a historian and author of books including A Cultural History of Terrorism; Small Wars, Far Away Places: The Genesis of the Modern World and Moral Combat: A History of World War Two. Dr Beyza Unal is a research fellow with the International Security Department at Chatham House. She specializes in nuclear weapons policies and leads projects on chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear weapons. Dr Unal is also conducting research on cybersecurity. Oslo plays at the National Theatre from 5 - 23 September. It opens in the West End at the Harold Pinter Theatre from 2 October to 30 December. Producer: Eliane Glaser.

Anne Applebaum talks to Anne McElvoy about Russian nationalism and Ukrainian history in a programme exploring the importance of borders and the way identities are bound up with a sense of place. Nick Tandavanitj and Rhiannon White discuss creating drama out of the specific histories of Hull and Port Talbot. St John Simpson, curator of a British Museum exhibition devoted to a nomadic culture of antiquity, explains the ethos of the Scythians. Anne Applebaum is a Professor at LSE and a columnist for The Washington Post. Her new book is called Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine and covers the period from 1917 to the present.Rhiannon White is co-artistic director of Common Wealth which is staging We're Still Here in Port Talbot at the Byass Works, Dock Road between 15 - 30 September in conjunction with National Theatre Wales. It's 6 years since they staged The Passion there. Nick Tandavanitj has worked with Blast Theory since 1994. 2097:We Made Ourselves Over comprises five short science fiction films – each accompanied by an interactive film for smartphones – and live events across both Hull and Aarhus. Scythians: warriors of ancient Siberia runs at the British Museum from 14 September 2017 – 14 January 2018. Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Philip Dodd and Joanna Kavenna discuss the challenges of art in an age of irony as the work of Käthe Kollwitz goes on display in Birmingham at the Ikon Gallery. Lawrence Norfolk pays tribute to the work of the great American poet, John Ashbery, who died last week. Plus a discussion of social conservatism in the USA, Europe and the UK with Sophie Gaston from the think tank, Demos and the political commentators, Tim Stanley and Charlie Wolf. Kollwitz was born in Königsberg in East Prussia in 1867 and the show gathers together 40 of her drawings and prints under the themes of social and political protest, self-portraits and images she made in response to the death of her son Peter in October 1914. Portrait of the Artist: Käthe Kollwitz A British Museum and Ikon Partnership Exhibition runs from 13 September 26 November 2017 with a fully illustrated catalogue.John Ashbery (July 28, 1927 – September 3, 2017) is the author of collections including Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror which won him a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 Image: Käthe Kollwitz (1867-1945) Self Portrait, (1924) Woodcut Copyright: The Trustees of the British MuseumProducer: Zahid Warley

Public pools, the "steamie" and the Turkish bath; debates about hygiene and the role and revival of these public spaces are explored by Matthew Sweet and guests as Scottish theatres host a 30th anniversary tour of Tony Roper's play depicting 1950s Glasgow women washing their clothes in a public washhouse. Joining Matthew will be Chris Renwick, author of 'Bread for All: The Origins of the Welfare State', and Claire Launchbury, who has studied women's use of public baths in Middle Eastern cities. We'll also be introduced to the joy of the shmeiss at London's Porchester Spa with columnist and steam-rooms enthusiast Matthew Norman. Following the announcement today of the death of Peter Hall, we'll hear an extract from an interview he recorded with Philip Dodd for Night Waves in 2011, and David Warner remembers being directed by Peter Hall in a landmark production of Hamlet in 1965. The full recording of Peter Hall's interview with Philip Dodd is available on the Free Thinking website.The Steamie tours to Kirckaldy, Aberdeen, Dundee, Ayr, Inverness, Stirling, Glasgow and Edinburgh between September 6th and November 11th. It features Libby McArthur, Mary McCusker, Steven McNicoll, Carmen Pieraccini and Fiona Wood.Producer: Luke Mulhall

The Booker Prize winning novelist, Alan Hollinghurst, talks to Anne McElvoy about the art of fiction and his new book, The Sparsholt Affair Producer: Zahid Warley

Anne McElvoy is joined by historians Helen Rappaport and Victor Sebestyen to consider the figure of Lenin, as the Proms marks the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution.Victor Sebestyen, author of Lenin the Dictator: An Intimate PortraitAnd Helen Rappaport, author of Caught in the Revolution: Petrograd 1917

Professor Kathleen Burk, University College London, reflects on Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address with BBC Radio 3 New Generation Thinker Joanna Cohen. Event hosted by Rana Mitter.