Arts & Ideas

In Frank Skinner's A Comedian's Prayer Book the broadcaster presents a series of prayers which read like a stand-up routine exploring questions of belief. A practising Roman Catholic, Skinner's questions include the correct way of addressing God, what it means to be humble, and an unpicking of some of the metaphors used in the Bible. Jeet Thayil was born into a Syrian Christian family in Kerala, and his latest novel, Names of the Women, imagines the New Testament from the viewpoint of the women who became followers of Jesus Christ - from Martha and Mary, the sisters of Lazarus, to Lydia of Thyatira, who is regarded as the first documented convert to Christianity in Europe. Yaa Gyasi’s second novel is called Transcendent Kingdom and it tells the story of a woman working in science who is negotiating her relationship both with her mother and with her beliefs and background. Laurence Scott talks to these three authors about how they approached writing about faith in fiction and for a mass audience.Producer: Emma WallaceYou can find a playlist exploring religious belief on the Free Thinking website, with speakers including Ziauddin Sardar, Richard Dawkins, Karen Armstrong, Rabbi Sacks, Marilynne Robinson, and Rowan Williams. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03mwxlp

Wartime saviour or the symbol of nostalgic imperialism ? David Reynolds, Priya Satia, Richard Toye and Allen Packwood join Anne McElvoy to look at the ways Churchill's story and legacy are being written now by both historians and in the press. How can we untangle the culture war that is raging over his reputation and what can we learn if we look at the research coming out of the Churchill Archives Centre in Cambridge?Richard Toye is Professor of History at the University of Exeter co-author of The Churchill Myths (2020) and author of Winston Churchill: A Life in the News (OUP, 2020) Priya Satia is Professor of International History at the University of Stanford, author of Time's Monster: How History Makes History (2020) and Empire of Guns: The Violent Making of the Industrial Revolution (2018) David Reynolds is Professor of International History at the University of Cambridge and author of One World Divisible: a Global History since 1945 (2000) and In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War (2004) which was the winner of the Wolfson Prize Allen Packwood is Director of the Churchill Archives Centre in CambridgeProducer: Ruth Watts

As lockdowns have forced us to forgo the delights of the outside world, have we developed a taste for simple pleasures? Many have reported enjoying cooking and eating more than usual, or appreciating simple treats such as a walk in nature. Has the grey monotony of this period caused music to sound more vibrant, and colours to appear more vivid? And what is the science, philosophy and psychology behind the enjoyment of simple pleasures? Matthew Sweet asks taste and wine expert Barry Smith; colour expert Kassia St Clair; Lisa Appignanesi an author of books exploring psychology and memory; and historian of luxury Seán Williams to share their ideas about pleasure.Kassia St Clair is the author of The Secret Lives of Colour and The Golden Thread. Barry C Smith is a Professor of philosophy and Director of the Institute of Philosophy at the University of London's School of Advanced Study. He researches the multisensory nature of perceptual experience, focusing on taste, smell and flavour and also writes on wine. Seán Williams is a New Generation Thinker who teaches on German culture and history at the University of Sheffield considering topics ranging from the Alps, Spas and ideas about luxury, to a history of hairdressing. Lisa Appignanesi's books include Everyday Madness, All About Love: Anatomy of an Unruly Emotion, Memory and Desire and many others.You can find a whole playlist of programmes exploring different emotions from our Free Thinking Festival 2019 including 20 Words for Joy ... Feelings Around the World hearing from Thomas Dixon, Aatish Taseer and Veronica Strang; Does My Pet Love Me? Why We Need Weepies, and the Way we Used to Feel https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p036y2hbProducer: Eliane Glaser

Join Tariq Ali, a renowned journalist and filmmaker, Professor Kehinde Andrews, an expert in Black Studies, and Alexandra Reza, an insightful New Generation Thinker, as they dissect Frantz Fanon's compelling ideas. They delve into the legacy of colonialism and its impact on identity, exploring themes of resistance and dignity from Fanon’s works, 'Black Skin, White Masks' and 'The Wretched of the Earth.' Their conversation highlights the ongoing relevance of Fanon's philosophy in today's social movements and the complexities of navigating identity in a post-colonial world.

The dangerous world of an explosives factory is the setting of Inez Holden’s 1944 novel There’s No Story There. A bohemian figure who went on to write film scripts for J Arthur Rank, to report on the Nuremberg Trials, and produce articles published in Cyril Connolly's magazine Horizon - Holden campaigned for workers’ rights and was close friend of George Orwell, and though she published ten books in her lifetime, she fell out of fashion - until now. New Generation Thinker Lisa Mullen re-reads her writing and finds a refreshingly modern mind.Lisa Mullen is the author of Mid-Century Gothic: The Uncanny Objects of Modernity in British Literature and Culture after the Second World War. She teaches at the University of Cambridge and is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council which selects ten academics each year to turn their research into radio. You can hear Lisa writing on George Orwell and the contribution of his wife in a Radio 3 Essay called Who Wrote Animal Farm? https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000413q She has presented short features about Mary Wollstonecraft as a single mother https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00061ly On the blackthorn in Sloe Time https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000n6bx She has contributed to Free Thinking discussions about Contagion and Viruses https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000gbq6 and Weimar and the Subversion of Cabaret https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000b7r7 She has presented episodes of Free Thinking looking at eco-criticism https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000rw8t and Panto and magic https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000q376Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Drugs, sex, violence and thinking about death are at the core of the George Miles cycle of five novels. New Generation Thinker Diarmuid Hester draws the links between the author Dennis Cooper and the radicalism of the Marquis de Sade. Now 68, Cooper's books have been praised for his non naturalistic writing and the texture of teenage thought that he captures in the series, which begins with Closer, and condemned for depravity. George Miles was his childhood friend and then lover, who ended up committing suicide.Diarmuid Hester teaches at the University of Cambridge and is a 2020 New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council which selects ten academics each year to turn their research into radio. He has published WRONG: A Critical Biography of Dennis Cooper, and is now working on Nothing Ever Just Disappears: A New History of Queer Culture Through its Spaces You can hear him talking about Derek Jarman's garden in this Free Thinking https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000jgm5Producer: Luke Mulhall

Two years of staying inside her own home in Homs, whilst 60 per cent of her neighbourhood was turned into rubble hasn't deterred architect Marwa al-Sabouni. She talks to Anne McElvoy about rebuilding and hope. Adélie Chevée researches the use of media by the Syrian opposition, and Kareem James Abu-Zeid is an Egyptian-American translator, editor, and writer who spent 16 years working on a version of Songs of Mihyar the Damascene by Adonis, a poem which has been compared to TS Eliot's The Wasteland.Marwa al-Sabouni published The Battle for Home: The Vision of a Young Architect in Syria in 2016 and you can hear her talking to Free Thinking about Syrian Buildings https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b076b15v Since then she's recorded a TED talk How Syria's architecture laid the foundation for a brutal war, advised the World Economic Forum, written for the Wall St Journal and is now publishing Building for Hope: Towards and Architecture of Belonging.Adonis was born into a farming family who couldn't afford the cost of a formal education but after reciting a poem to the president of Syria visiting his region, the teenager was supported by the president and enrolled in a French high school. He is now a leading Arabic poet based in Paris, who uses free verse, and a variety of forms to explore themes of migration and exile. His book Songs of Mihyar the Damascene, with translations by Kareem James Abu-Zeid and Ivan Neubanks is a 200 page collection which has taken Kareem 16 years of work to bring to print.Adélie Chevée is a political scientist and a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute. She has studied the use of media by the Syrian opposition and is now looking at the impact of fake news in Middle Eastern societies.You can find a playlist called Belonging, Home, Borders and National Identity on the Free Thinking website which includes conversations about Pakistan, Turkey, Hong Kong, France, India, Sweden and more https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03mb66kProducer: Torquil MacLeod

From clues in paintings to colonial trade to letters sent between Australia and England; the links between a Durham based poet and India to the female singers and dancers from Latin America who were contemporaries of Picasso and Josephine Baker; the significance of the Cyrillic alphabet in building nations to why we should pay attention to brackets, commas and colons: African film and ideas about empire to depictions of Iran in nineteenth century French literature and art; how activism affects our view of art to law and the transatlantic slave trade: New Generation Thinker Lisa Mullen talks to the ten academics whose ideas will become programmes for BBC Radio 3 as we introduce the 2021 New Generation Thinkers on the scheme run in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council.Dr Julia Hartley, University of Warwick Dr Florence Hazrat, University of Sheffield Dr Mirela Ivanova, University of Oxford Sarah Jilani, University of Cambridge Dr Jake Morris-Campbell, Newcastle University Adjoa Osei, University of Liverpool Dr Jake Richards, London School of Economics Dr Fariha Shaikh, University of Birmingham Dr Vid Simoniti, University of Liverpool Dr Lauren Working, University of OxfordProducer: Ruth WattsYou can find a playlist featuring discussions, essays and features made by the hundred New Generation Thinkers over ten years of the scheme on the Free Thinking programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08zhs35

The rights of tribal people, the lives of ordinary workers and the depiction of female desire were amongst the themes explored by the writer Mahasweta Devi. Born in Dhaka in 1926, she attended the school established by Rabindranath Tagore and before her death in 2016 she had published over 100 novels and 20 collections of short stories. Sindhubala is one such story, which traces the tale of a woman made to become a healer of children and for New Generation Thinker Preti Taneja, Mahasweta's writing offers a way of using language to explore ideas about power, freedom and feminism.Preti Taneja is the author of the novel We That Are Young. She teaches at Newcastle University and is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio. You can find other Essays by Preti available on the Radio 3 website including one looking at Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001kpc Creating Modern India explores the links between Letchworth Garden City and New Delhi https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08j9x3h You can also find her discussing Global Shakespeare and different approaches to casting his plays in this Free Thinking playlist on Shakespeare https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06406hm And a Free Thinking interview with Arundhati Roy about translation https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b5hk01Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Dinah Mulock Craik achieved fame and fortune as the author of the 1856 bestselling novel John Halifax, Gentleman. New Generation Thinker Clare Walker Gore reads this rags-to-riches tale of an orphan boy who rises in the world through sheer hard work and sterling character and her essay looks at the way it encapsulates the most cherished values of its period – but, she argues, both it and the author are more subversive than they first appear. Though she was seen as an icon of the self-improving, respectable middle-classes, Craik had a colourful, often unconventional private life. She supported her husband through her writing and adopted a foundling, but was dogged by her father, who was a dissenting preacher put into debtor's prison more than once, whilst her novels explore disability, forbidden desire, familial dysfunction, and the dark side of her culture’s celebration of self-made success.Clare Walker Gore is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio programmes. She teaches at the University of Cambridge and is the author of Plotting Disability in the Nineteenth Century Novel.You can hear Clare talk about this research in the Free Thinking episode Depicting Disability https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000p02bShe contributed to Radio 3's Essay Series Women Writers to Put Back on the Bookshelf profiling the author Margaret Oliphant https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000fws4She has also written an Essay about a 19th-century tiger-hunting MP, who was born without hands and feet - Politician and Pioneer: Writing the Life of Arthur Kavanagh https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06ns10gProducer: Emma Wallace