Arts & Ideas

Rana Mitter has a first-night review of Electra with Kristin Scott Thomas from Professor Edith Hall and Susannah Clapp; historian Andrew Roberts talks about his new biography of Napoleon and Katie Hill discusses the most extensive to date UK exhibition of Ai Weiwei's artworks just opening at Blenheim Palace.

Matthew Sweet examines our contradictory attitudes to China and it's culture with the film historian Sir Christopher Frayling and the Chinese ceramics expert Stacey Pierson, who has been to see the British Museum's new exhibition about Ming. Padraig Reidy who writes for Index on Censorship and Rob Gifford of the Economist discuss the merits of Tim Berners Lee's Magna Carta for the web. And novelist Neel Mukherjee talks about his Man Booker Prize nominated book The Lives of Others.

As the Schaubühne Berlin's production of Henrik Ibsen's 'An Enemy of the People' opens at The Barbican, Anne McElvoy speaks to the play's director Thomas Ostermeier. American novelist Joseph O'Neill discusses his new book 'The Dog' and, continuing the series meeting this year's shortlisted authors for the Man Booker Prize, Ali Smith explains the connected stories which comprise her novel 'How to Be Both'.

Fukuyama and Howard Jacobson are interviewed by Philip Dodd. In 1989, Francis Fukuyama published an essay which he titled “The End of History?" He's just published Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy. Howard Jacobson won the Man Booker prize in 210 for his comic novel The Finkler Question. His new book J is a dystopian love story.

Steven Pinker's research at Harvard is into language and cognition. His new book The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century explores the links between syntax and ideas. Will Self experiments with language and literary form. Will Self's new book Shark links an incident in World War II with an American resident in a therapeutic community in London overseen by psychiatrist Zack Busner. They join Matthew Sweet for a Free Thinking programme about language.

Scientist Susan Greenfield, painter Fiona Rae, poet Paul Farley and artist and TV presenter Matt Collings discuss abstract art past and present. The event recorded in front of an audience at the Starr Auditorium at Tate Modern is chaired by Anne McElvoy. Part of a series of broadcasts tying into BBC 4 Goes Abstract

Martin Amis talks to Philip Dodd about his reputation for courting controversy and his 14th novel The Zone of Interest. Recorded in front of an audience as part of the BBC Proms.

Rudy's Rare Records stars Lenny Henry as the son who works alongside his father in a record shop. The Radio 4 comedy has been adapted for stage and is being performed with live music at Birmingham Rep and the Hackney Empire. In a conversation recorded in front of an audience at The Studio at Birmingham Rep, Lenny Henry talks to Matthew Sweet about performing on radio, stage and screen and his campaign for better Black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) representation.

Peter Watkins' film Culloden is 50, and in front of an audience at the Edinburgh Festival, Matthew Sweet discusses its influence on portrayals of Scotland's Highland identity in book and film with Diana Gabaldon, author of the best-selling Outlander series, historian Tom Devine and media expert John Cook.

The poet Daljit Nagra and Radio 3 presenter Ian McMillan introduce the winning entries in this year's Proms Poetry Competition - and welcome some of the winners on stage to read them. In association with the Poetry Society. Recorded in front of an audience at the Royal College of Music.