Arts & Ideas

Historian William Dalrymple, Wasafiri editor Susheila Nasta and novelist Romesh Gunesekera join Rana Mitter for a conversation looking at the East India company, the socialist economic policies and language battles in Ceylon in the 1960s before it became Sri Lanka and the way writing from around the world has reflected changes of attitude to post colonial history.Sri Lankan-born British author Romesh Gunesekera has just published his ninth novel, Suncatcher, depicting two boys, Jay and Kairo, growing up in 1964, who overcome their different backgrounds to become friends at a time when Ceylon is on the brink of change.Wasafiri, the magazine of international contemporary writing, has just published its 100th edition, which includes an interview with Romesh Gunesekera. The publication derives its name from a KiSwahili word meaning "travellers" that is etymologically linked with the Arabic word "safari". Susheila Nasta, Professor of Modern and Contemporary Literatures at QMUL, was the founding editor, the recipient of the 2019 Benson Medal from the Royal Society of Literature and is now handing over the reins to Malachi McIntosh. She has just edited a collection of essays called Brave New Words: The Power of Writing Now and has completed compiling, with Mark Stein, The Cambridge History of Black and Asian British Writing, due out in 2020.William Dalrymple has published The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company which you can find as a Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000b4pz He has curated an exhibition at the Wallace Collection in London, Forgotten Masters: Indian Painting for the East India Company, which runs from Dec 4th to April 19th 2020Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Author Priya Basil and curator Victoria Avery look at food, fasting and feeding guests. Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough is their host as the FitzWilliam Museum in Cambridge opens an exhibition and Priya Basil publishes reflections on hospitality which link the free meals offered to all which is part of Sikhism to food clubs in Germany which have welcomed refugees. Maia Elliott of the UK's Global Food Security programme, describes her work to try to make future food supply more reliable for all. She describes her own food habits and the possible ways all of our diets might have to change in the future. Be My Guest: Reflections on Food, Community and the Meaning of Generosity is out now. Feast & Fast: The art of food in Europe, 1500 –1800 runs at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge until April 26th 2020 and features food creations and sugarwork from food historian Ivan Day. Global Food Security publish their research here: https://www.foodsecurity.ac.uk/ You can hear more discussions about food by searching for Free Thinking Food to hear philosopher Barry Smith and critic Alex Clark with Matthew Sweet https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08wn51y The Working Lunch and Food in History https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b7my5n New Generation Thinkers Food: We Are What We Eat a Radio 3 Essay from Christopher Kissane which looks at Spanish Inquisition stews & Reformation sausages to pork in French school meals https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07xhr60 Healthy Eating Edwardian Style - an Essay from Elsa Richardson https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p075d3hy Producer: Alex Mansfield

Nam June Paik made art with TV sets and imagined an information superhighway before the internet was invented. John Giorno organised multi-media and dial-a-poem events. Poet and New Generation Thinker Sarah Jackson joins Matthew Sweet to look at the visions of the future conjured up by these artists who were both interested in the influence of mass media and Buddhism. She's joined by artist Haroon Mirza and Tate curator Achim Borchardt-Hume. We dial a poet Vahni Capildeo and hear from Vytautus Landbergis, former Lithuanian Head of State and former comrade of Nam June Paik as a Fluxus artist.John Giorno (December 4, 1936 – October 11, 2019) Nam June Paik (20 July 1932, Gyeongseong - Died: 29 January 2006) Tate Modern's exhibition of Nam June Paik's art runs until 9 February 2020.Haroon Mirza's work is on show in an exhibition called Waves and Forms at the John Hansard Gallery in Southampton until January 11th 2020. Vahni Capildeo's most recent collection is called Skin Can Hold. Sarah Jackson's poety collection is called Pelt. You can hear Sarah Jackson exploring the human voice in a short feature if you look up this programme called New Generation Thinkers: Edmund Richardson and Sarah Jackson https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05pspzx and Sarah Jackson delivers a short talk about the history of the telephone in a programme called The Essay Telephone Terrors https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07wrlf4Or you might be interested in Matthew Sweet's Free Thinking discussion about future visions and technology in the TV series Quatermass https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000b03y or our Free Thinking the Future collection of programmes https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zwn4dProducer: Caitlin Benedict

Should we take more breaks at during the working day? Claudia Hammond, Matthew Smith, Sarah Cook and Ayesha Nathoo discuss the art of rest and concentration with Anne McElvoy.

Economist Larry Summers, former President of Harvard lays out his view of a university and Philip Dodd debates with the OU's Josie Fraser, classicist Justin Stover and NESTA's Geoff Mulgan. Has new technology and globalisation signed the death knell for traditional courses in humanities subjects like English literature and philosophy ? You can find Philip talking to academic Camille Paglia here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0006t8t to Niall Fergusson about the importance of networks here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b096gv0d to David Willetts here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09gsxhq about Nietsche's views of a university education in University Therapy or Learning? here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07gnj1bProducer: Eliane Glaser.

Rana Mitter talks to historians of China - Jung Chang and Julia Lovell. Jung Chang's latest book Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister looks at the lives of the first Chinese girls to attend university in the USA. On their return to Shanghai one worked in business, one married a politician and one was involved in high society. Julia Lovell has been awarded one of the most significant history writing prizes - the Cundill - for her latest book Maoism: A Global History. Cindy Yu is a China reporter and broadcast editor at the Spectator.Playwright Tom Morton-Smith discusses putting cold war tensions on stage in his new play Ravens: Spasky v Fischer which is inspired by the chess match that took place in Reykjavik, 1972. The play runs at the Hampstead Theatre in London until January 18th. The winner of the biennial David Cohen prize for Literature is announced. You can find our playlist of In Depth Interviews here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04ly0c8 Film critic Agnes Poirer compares two crime caper films from 50 years ago The Italian Job featuring Michael Caine and Noel Coward and The Brain, which starred David Niven alongside Jean Paul Belmondo and comedian Bourvil. If you want more programmes exploring China include this discussion of Patriotism Beyond the West: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08583zz The Cultural Revolution https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b079mcg9 Rana talks to the leading Chinese thinker Zhang Weiwei in Japanese History, Chinese Democracy https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03q5gdy Jung Chang discusses her book on Empress Dowager Cixi https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01hy158 Producer: Harry Parker.

Shahidha Bari discusses the state of scholarship on George Eliot at her bicentenary with Ruth Livesey and Helen O'Neill, both at Royal Holloway, University of London, and Gail Marshall at the University of Reading. Ruth Livesey's AHRC funded research project on George Eliot is ‘Provincialism: Literature and the Cultural Politics of Middleness in Nineteenth-Century Britain’ https://georgeeliotprovincialism.home.blog/ Gail Marshall's blog on reading Middlemarch is here https://middlemarchin2019.wordpress.com/ A Free Thinking discussion of Mill on the Floss with writer Rebecca Mead, actor Fiona Shaw and academics Philip Davis, Dafydd Daniel and Peggy Reynolds is here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07vsc2hThis episode is one of a series of conversations - New Thinking - produced in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UK Research & Innovation. Producer: Luke Mulhall

Writer Rebecca Mead, actor Fiona Shaw + academics Dafydd Mills Daniel, Philip Davis & Peggy Reynolds read George Eliot's 1860 novel portraying sibling relationships. Shahidha Bari hosts.George Eliot was born on 22 November 1819. Rebecca Mead is the author of The road to Middlemarch: my life with George Eliot. Dafydd Mills Daniel is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the BBC and AHRC to put academic research on the radio. Professor Peggy Reynolds teaches at Queen Mary University London and has edited anthologies of Victorian poets, the Sappho Companion and the Penguin edition of George Eliot's Adam Bede. Professor Philip Davis teaches at the University of Liverpool and is the author of The Transferred Life of George Eliot.Listen out for Radio 3's weekly curation of Words and Music which broadcasts each Sunday at 5.30pm and is available to listen here https://bbc.in/2E72xV0 A special episode also featuring Fiona Shaw as one of the readers hears extracts from Eliot's fiction, essays and journal set alongside the music she might have had on her playlist - composers including Clara Schumann, Liszt, whom Eliot met in 1854; and Tchaikovsky, who said his favourite writer was George Eliot.Producer: Fiona McLean

Investigating regeneration and gentrification, the Turner Contemporary, the 2019 Turner Prize exhibition, writer Maggie Gee on her novel Blood, & the town in literature.The seaside town of Margate has both struggled and thrived over the past two centuries – it thronged with holidaymakers from the Victorian era onwards but limped through the latter half of the 20th century and was one of the most deprived parts of the UK before the £17.5m Turner Contemporary opened in 2011. Many hoped that the new art gallery would spearhead change and eight years on there has clearly been growth – the town sometimes jokingly referred to as Shoreditch-on-Sea has been through a wave of gentrification, complete with the common trappings of independent cafés, vintage shops and yoga studios, frequented by an ever-growing artistic community bolstered by regular arrivals of Londoners fleeing the capital. Tourist numbers are up, with the Dreamland amusement park reopening and over 3.2m visitors to the Turner Contemporary reported since its launch. This narrative of a successful arts-led regeneration however ignores that fact that Margate remains in the top 1% of deprived communities in the country and in some wards around half of all children live in poverty. The painter JMW Turner once remarked of Margate that it had the ‘loveliest’ skies in Europe, but can they brighten prospects for the local community, as well as for the artists that flock there?As this year’s Turner Prize comes to Margate for the first time, Philip Dodd looks at whether the arts are a successful driver of regeneration, with Turner Contemporary Director Victoria Pomery and the social artist Dan Thompson, who has looked at people, place and change throughout his career.We reflect on the Turner Prize exhibition itself, and the work of shortlisted artists Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Helen Cammock, Oscar Murillo and Tai Shani. The exhibition runs at Turner Contemporary until January 12th and the winner is announced on December 3rd.The author Maggie Gee’s new novel Blood is set in Margate and the surrounding area of Thanet. A darkly comic crime thriller set in Brexit Britain East Kent where the political atmosphere bleeds into the action. Her imposing protagonist Monica is accused of murdering the tyrannical patriarch of her family – a situation complicated by the fact she’s armed with an axe ready to do just that, when she finds her father’s body. Maggie tells us about Blood and how the local area is a perfect canvas for the story.Margate is hosting several events as part of Being Human, the UK’s national festival of the humanities which runs from November 14th to the 23rd – you can find more information on their website https://beinghumanfestival.org/Literary historian Professor Carolyn Oulton is hosting a Murder Mystery trail in Margate for Being Human, amongst other things, and has been studying seaside towns in literature during the railway age. She gives us a view of Margate from the Victorian era – a bustling, promiscuous, populist place full of tourists – and the kind of stories set there. Crime and romance reads for the beach did particularly well for the holiday market, with works like Love in a Mist and Death in a Deckchair key tomes in the Margate canon.Producer: Karl Bos

New research looking at at reporting secret assassinations, countering propaganda & how we could update TV news bulletins, from the Being Human Festival, an annual event which involves public events put on by universities across the UK, presented by Shahidha Bari. Steve Poole teaches at the University of the West of England and is involved in a project - Romancing the Gibbet - that uses smartphone apps to evoke memories of C18th hangings hidden in the English landscape Dr Clare George is Miller Archivist at the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies at the University of London. She is involved in recreating the Austrian political cabaret theatre that operated in London during WWII to counter Nazi propaganda. Andrew Calcutt teaches at the University of East London and is part of a project which asks what new ways can we tell the news, putting forward experimental formats and asking for audience responses to them. Luca Trenta teaches at Swansea University and is working on a project looking at Kings, Presidents, and Spies: Assassinations from Medieval times to the Present - asking what we are told and what is kept hidden from news reports.You can find out more at https://beinghumanfestival.org/You can find more insights from cutting edge academic studies in our New Research Collection on the Free Thinking programme website and available to download as the BBC Arts & Ideas podcast from BBC Sounds https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90Producer: Torquil MacLeod