Arts & Ideas

The first under-water film, the making of Moby Dick in Fishguard, Wales, the poetry of Marianne Moore and the secret world of whale scavengers are conjured by Rana Mitter's guests: In a new book, Strandings, Peter Riley, Associate Professor in Poetry and Poetics at the University of Durham, loses himself in the secretive world of whale-scavengers who descend on coastlines to claim trophies from wa...

New Generation Thinker Christienna Fryar is joined by four scholars whose work on composers has fed into concerts being recorded by BBC Philharmonic. Musicologist and pianist Dr Samantha Ege from the University of Oxford, is working on the American composer and pianist Margaret Bonds (1913 – 1972) Dwight Pile-Gray, who is studying at the London College of Music at the University of West London, is...

"The beauty of speed. Time and Space died yesterday. We already live in the absolute, because we have created the eternal, omnipresent speed." Part of the 1909 manifesto drawn up by Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti that declared the aims of the groundbreaking futurist branch of modernism. Their rejection of the past included embracing the march of machinery, the power of youth and of violenc...

Murals which aimed to synthesise the history and culture of Mexico, Japanese novels exploring urban alienation, an exhibition of Bauhaus paintings from Germany which inspired a generation of Indian artists. Presenter Rana Mitter is joined by Jade Munslow Ong, Christopher Harding, Maria Blanco, and Devika Singh. Amongst the Modernist writers and artists mentioned are: Chilean poet Vicente Huidobro...

From paper bullets to Tibetan rituals, early printing presses to present day recycling: Laurence Scott explores the cultural and social history of paper, from the Chinese Han Dynasty in 105 AD to the 20th-century workplace. His guests are: Adam Smyth, a Professor of English Literature and the History of the Book at the University of Oxford. His books include Material Texts in Early Modern England;...

A "house on chicken legs” in Moscow designed by Viktor Andreyev, Virginia Woolf’s novel Jacob’s Room first published on 26 October 1922, Coal Cart Blues sung by Louis Armstrong drawing on his own experiences of pulling one round the streets of New Orleans where he started his teenage years living in a Home for Waifs; Duchamp’s 1912 painting Nude Descending a Staircase, No 2 are picked out as novel...

Censored by the US, Europe's greatest early film star played leading roles in love triangle melodramas, comedies, stories of women trapped by tragic circumstances, and she took the role of Hamlet: Asta Nielsen (11 September 1881 – 24 May 1972) is the focus of a BFI season in February and March. To discuss the life and work of the silent movie pioneer, Matthew Sweet is joined by: Historian and film...

A tour guide at Polish holocaust sites is at the centre of a new novel by Yishai Sarid. The author talks to Anne McElvoy about his own trips to Poland as a teenager and then as a father and the questions they made him ask about how that history is taught and commemorated. Plus three researchers share insights from their studies. Roland Clark has co-curated an exhibition at The Wiener Holocaust Lib...

Widening the repertoire of classical music comes under the spotlight in today's Free Thinking conversation as New Generation Thinker Christienna Fryar speaks to researchers uncovering music that has been left out of the canon. Ahead of concerts featuring their work, she hears about the stories of three composers: the 18th-century French polymath Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, the Japa...

A motorbike adorned with a zebu skull is one of the central images of Djibril Diop Mambéty's classic 1973 film, whose title translates as The Journey of the Hyena. Listed as one of the 100 greatest films of all time in the Sight and Sound magazine poll, it mixes West African oral traditions with influences from the French New Wave and Soviet cinema. Mory and Anta are two young people growing up in...

Love during a lockdown is at the centre of Sarah Hall's latest book Burntcoat. Monica Ali's new novel is called Love Marriage and looks at love across two cultures and different ideas about feminism, family and careers. Adam Mars-Jones' Box Hill is a darkly affecting love story between men set in 1975. The authors join Shahidha Bari for a conversation exploring writing about relationships. Burntco...

From Aldous Huxley to cat pictures by Louis Wain: altered states of consciousness can be induced by taking drugs, but they also include dreams, tiredness, grief, and various states of mental illness. Matthew Sweet is joined by Turner Prize winning artist Tai Shani, whose recent work Neon Hieroglyphs explores the history and culture of the hallucinogenic fungus ergot; Sarah Shin, editor of an antho...

The legend of Mélusine emerges in French literature of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries in the texts of Jean d’Arras and Coudrette. A beautiful young woman, the progeny of the union between a king and a fairy, is condemned to spend every Saturday with her body below the waist transformed into the tail of serpent. She agrees to marry only on the condition that her husband should ne...

Do we underappreciate comic writing ? It’s 400 years since the birth of France’s great satirical playwright, Jean-Baptiste Pocquelin, better known by his pen-name Molière. Stendhal described him as “the great painter of man as he is” and his works have continued to be translated and performed on both the French and British stage with recent adaptations by Christopher Hampton, Anil Gupta and the Sc...

The conventional view of Neville Chamberlain's dealings with Hitler at the 1938 Munich Conference, paints him as weak and gullible - an appeaser. But why did appeasement become such a dirty word when negotiation and accommodation are such valuable diplomatic tools? Rana Mitter is joined by historian Tim Bouverie, screenwriter Alex von Tunzelmann and journalist Juliet Samuel to reassess Chamberlain...

From duels to hygiene and medical protection to the image of the gloved aristocrat whose hands aren’t coarsened by work: Shahidha Bari dons a pair of gloves as she finds out about tranks, fourchettes, lace, wool and glove making which is on The Heritage Craft Assosicaion's 'Red List' of Endangered crafts. The Glove maker Riina Oun creates high-fashion bespoke gloves. She has collaborated with desi...

Matthew Sweet explores Belmondo's central role in the revolutionary cinema of 1960s France and how he became one of the most celebrated screen actors of his generation with Ginette Vincendeau, Lucy Bolton and Phuong Le. Ginette Vincendeau is Professor of Film Studies at King's College London. Lucy Bolton is Reader in Film Studies at Queen Mary University of London. Phuong Le is a film critic based...

90% are unknown still but the species which have been studied have given us penicillin, ways of breaking down plastics, food and bio fuels but they can also be dangerous. Neither animal nor vegetable, they are both amongst us and within us, shaping our lives in ways it is difficult to imagine. Merlin Sheldrake's book about fungi, Entangled Life, has won the Royal Society Science book of the year a...

Sticking in stamps and killing animals were the main achievements of King George V - according to his biographer Harold Nicholson. Now Jane Ridley has written a new book about him subtitled "Never a Dull Moment" so can dullness be a virtue. Anne McElvoy chairs the discussion, which also looks at the history and image of Roundheads and Cavaliers with New Generation Thinker Tom Charlton and the appe...

Helping start the Women's Liberation Movement in Britain is just one of the key moments in Sheila Rowbotham's life. This year she published Daring to Hope: My Life in the 1970s and she compares then and now talking to Rana Mitter. Also a discussion of early Buddhism and new research uncovered by Sarah Shaw and Kate Crosby. The Art of Listening: A Guide to the Early Teachings of Buddhism by Sarah S...

From unwrapping Egyptian mummies to her theories about witch trials and the influence of her 1921 book The Witch-Cult in Western Europe on Wicca beliefs: Margaret Murray's career comes under the spotlight as Matthew Sweet is joined by guests including New Generation Thinker Elsa Richardson and historian of witchcraft Ronald Hutton. Producer: Luke Mulhall You might also be interested in the Free Th...

James Graham’s play exploring the encounters between the American political commentators Gore Vidal and William F Buckley Jr, opens at the Young Vic in London this week. We also have Germaine Greer v Norman Mailer at New York's Town Hall, April 1971 which was filmed as a documentary Town Bloody Hall. More recent Presidential debates have become part of the British political landscape during our el...

The Cundill Prize and PEN Hessell-Tiltman prizes for non-fiction writing about history are announced in early December. Rana Mitter talks to Cundill judge Henrietta Harrison about why their choice this year was Blood On The River by Marjoleine Kars. And with the news tonight that Rebecca Wragg Sykes book Neanderthals has won the PEN Hessell Tiltman - we revisit the conversation Rana recorded when...

Killer plants, a blinding meteor shower, the spread of an unknown disease: John Wyndham's 1951 novel explores ideas about the hazards of bio-engineering and what happens when society breaks down. Matthew Sweet is joined by writers Amy Binns and Tanvir Bush, broadcaster Peter White and New Generation Thinker Sarah Dillon to look at the book that spawned film, TV and radio adaptations and discuss wh...

Aubrey Williams, Horace Ové, Sonia Boyce, Lubaima Himid, Peter Doig, Chris Ofili, Hurvin Anderson, Grace Wales Bonner and Alberta Whittle have works on show at Tate Britain as part of an exploration of artists from the Caribbean who made their home in Britain, and British artists who have looked at Caribbean themes and heritage in their work. Shahidha Bari's guests include the curator David A Bail...