The Essay

Paul Robeson's life and struggle through songs .Tayo Aluko on Robeson's Zog Nit Keynmol.

Paul Robeson's life and struggle told through music. Matthew Sweet on the Canoe Song.

Paul Robeson's life and struggle through song. Shana Redmond on No More Auction Block.

The life of Paul Robeson in songs. Granddaughter Susan Robeson on Ol' Man River.

Jon Gower, writer and keen walker of the Welsh mountains, explores the unique characteristics of each of Wales's five ranges and reflects on what they mean to the people who live among them. For many people, Wales is synonymous with its mountains. They occupy a unique place in the country's ancient mythology, its history and its culture, defining who rules the country, who lives in it, and how the...

Jon Gower, writer and keen walker of the Welsh mountains, explores the unique characteristics of each of Wales's five ranges and reflects on what they mean to the people who live among them. For many people, Wales is synonymous with its mountains. They occupy a unique place in the country's ancient mythology, its history and its culture, defining who rules the country, who lives in it, and how the...

Jon Gower, writer and keen walker of the Welsh mountains, explores the unique characteristics of each of Wales's five ranges and reflects on what they mean to the people who live among them. For many people, Wales is synonymous with its mountains. They occupy a unique place in the country's ancient mythology, its history and its culture, defining who rules the country, who lives in it, and how the...

Jon Gower, writer and keen walker of the Welsh mountains, explores the unique characteristics of each of Wales's five ranges and reflects on what they mean to the people who live among them. For many people, Wales is synonymous with its mountains. They occupy a unique place in the country's ancient mythology, its history and its culture, defining who rules the country, who lives in it, and how the...

Jon Gower, writer and keen walker of the Welsh mountains, explores the unique characteristics of each of Wales' five ranges and reflects on what they mean to the people who live among them. For many people, Wales is synonymous with its mountains. They occupy a unique place in the country's ancient mythology, its history and its culture, defining who rules the country, who lives in it, and how they...

The novel Miss Marjoribanks (1866) brought to life a large comic heroine who bucked 19th-century conventions. New Generation Thinker Clare Walker Gore outlines the prolific writing career of Margaret Oliphant and laments the way she was used by fellow novelist Virginia Woolf as a symbol of the dangers of needing to write for money to keep yourself and your family afloat. Producer: Paula McGinley

Author of the first prose romance published in England in 1621, her reputation at court was ruined by her thinly veiled autobiographical writing. Visit the family home, Penshurst Place in Kent, and you can see Lady Mary Wroth's portrait, but New Generation Thinker Nandini Das says you can also find her in the pages of her book The Countess of Montgomery's Urania which places centre stage women who...

What is a writer's duty? Katie Cooper considers Storm Jameson's campaigning for refugees, her 1940 appeal To the Conscience of the World, and why her fiction fell out of favour but is now seeing a revival of interest. Born in Yorkshire in 1891, she wrote war novels and speculative fiction, collections of criticism - including an analysis of modern drama in Europe, the introduction to the 1952 Brit...

New Generation Thinker Sophie Coulombeau argues that we should salute this woman who supported her family through her writing, who perfected sonnets about solitude before Wordsworth began writing his, and who explored the struggles of women and refugees in her fiction. Mother to 12 children, Charlotte Turner Smith wrote ten novels, three poetry collections and four children's books and translated...

New Generation Thinker Zoe Norridge describes translating the testimony of a nurse who survived the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. In Rwanda, Yolande Mukagasana is a well-known writer, public figure and campaigner for remembrance of the genocide. She has authored three testimonies, a collection of interviews with survivors and perpetrators and two volumes of Rwandan stories. Her work h...

As an injured soldier under house arrest, Xavier de Maistre staved off boredom by imagining every step around his drawing room was a step across a country; Virginia Woolf’s writerly wandering around central London to buy a pencil exposed the city's transformation in darkness. Inspired by these ironic quests and symbolic expeditions, five contemporary writers embark on walks of entertaining eccentr...

As an injured soldier under house arrest, Xavier de Maistre staved off boredom by imagining every step around his drawing room was a step across a country; Virginia Woolf’s writerly wandering around central London to buy a pencil exposed the city's transformation in darkness. Inspired by these ironic quests and symbolic expeditions, five contemporary writers embark on walks of entertaining eccentr...

As an injured soldier under house arrest, Xavier de Maistre staved off boredom by imagining every step around his drawing room was a step across a country; Virginia Woolf’s writerly wandering around central London to buy a pencil exposed the city's transformation in darkness. Inspired by these ironic quests and symbolic expeditions, five contemporary writers embark on walks of entertaining eccentr...

As an injured soldier under house arrest, Xavier de Maistre staved off boredom by imagining every step around his drawing room was a step across a country; Virginia Woolf’s writerly wandering around central London to buy a pencil exposed the city's transformation in darkness. Inspired by these ironic quests and symbolic expeditions, five contemporary writers embark on walks of entertaining eccentr...

As an injured soldier under house arrest, Xavier de Maistre staved off boredom by imagining every step around his drawing room was a step across a country; Virginia Woolf’s writerly wandering around central London to buy a pencil exposed the city's transformation in darkness. Inspired by these ironic quests and symbolic expeditions, five contemporary writers embark on walks of entertaining eccentr...

Ross Sutherland takes us to the birth of modern art as he traces the extraordinary life of Arthur Cravan. Cravan's anarchic art heralded Dada , surrealism, situationism, punk rock and alternative comedy. His whole life was an extravagant show and his influence spreads right across the 20th century. Cravan went through life using multiple mysterious personas. He was the nephew of Oscar Wilde, a box...

Ross Sutherland takes us to the birth of modern art as he traces the extraordinary life of Arthur Cravan. Cravan's anarchic art heralded Dada , surrealism, situationism, punk rock and alternative comedy. His whole life was an extravagant show and his influence spreads right across the 20th century. Cravan went through life using multiple mysterious personas. He was the nephew of Oscar Wilde, a box...

Ross Sutherland takes us to the birth of modern art as he traces the extraordinary life of Arthur Cravan. Cravan's anarchic art heralded Dada , surrealism, situationism, punk rock and alternative comedy. His whole life was an extravagant show and his influence spreads right across the 20th century. Cravan went through life using multiple mysterious personas. He was the nephew of Oscar Wilde, a box...

Ross Sutherland takes us to the birth of modern art as he traces the extraordinary life of Arthur Cravan. Cravan's anarchic art heralded Dada , surrealism, situationism, punk rock and alternative comedy. His whole life was an extravagant show and his influence spreads right across the 20th century. Cravan went through life using multiple mysterious personas. He was the nephew of Oscar Wilde, a box...

Ross Sutherland takes us to the birth of modern art as he traces the extraordinary life of Arthur Cravan. Cravan's anarchic art heralded Dada , surrealism, situationism, punk rock and alternative comedy. His whole life was an extravagant show and his influence spreads right across the 20th century. Cravan went through life using multiple mysterious personas. He was the nephew of Oscar Wilde, a box...

Ross Sutherland takes us to the birth of modern art as he traces the extraordinary life of Arthur Cravan. Cravan's anarchic art heralded Dada , surrealism, situationism, punk rock and alternative comedy. His whole life was an extravagant show and his influence spreads right across the 20th century. Cravan went through life using multiple mysterious personas. He was the nephew of Oscar Wilde, a box...