A Point of View

As the Man Booker shortlist is published, Sarah Dunant explores how new writers and readers find each other. "While an unhappy 19th century Russian marriage which leads to a fatal adulterous affair may be irresistible to one reader" she writes, "a man who wakes up as a beetle may be what presses the button of another. That is both the wonder and nightmare of selling novels". Sarah explores how - i...

"Once again the snake pit of policing sexual behaviour and the conflict between men and women's attitudes of it have become news" writes Sarah Dunant. She discusses the remarks by the American would-be senator who claimed that after "legitimate rape", women's bodies protect them from pregnancy. She looks at George Galloway's assertion that what Julian Assange did or didn't do in bed was simple bad...

John Gray explores the role of memory in giving meaning to our lives. Through the writings of J.G. Ballard, he reflects on how we struggle to preserve our past but at the same time sometimes long to leave it behind. Gray praises the power of Ballard's imagination - and his enchanting fables - to make good all this. His conclusion is upbeat. "Through the alchemy of memory the leaden buildings in wh...

"We like to tell ourselves an uplifting story in which freedom expands whenever tyranny is overthrown" writes John Gray. "We believe that...when a dictator is toppled the result is not only a more accountable type of government but also greater liberty throughout society". But Gray believes otherwise. Using the nineteenth century liberal John Stuart Mill and his god-son Bertrand Russell, he advanc...

John Gray reflects on the enduring appeal of Sherlock Holmes at a time when we've lost confidence in the power of reason alone to solve problems. "Seeming to find order in the chaos of events by using purely rational methods, he actually demonstrates the enduring power of magic." Producer: Sheila Cook.

John Gray reflects on the climate needed for culture to thrive, recalling Orson Welles' quote from the film "The Third Man" that despotism in Italy produced the Renaissance whereas democracy in Switzerland produced the cuckoo clock."We know that art can flourish under despots but we're reluctant to admit it: if creativity and tyranny can co-exist, the value of freedom seems diminished." Producer:...

The philosopher John Gray wonders what bulk buying of stamps ahead of the price rise tells us about economic gloom. "The relative security that many people enjoyed in the recent past is fading from memory". Producer: Sheila Cook.

The philosopher John Gray reflects on the nature of immortality as expressed by the writer Theodore Powys, 'The longest life may fade and perish but one moment can live and become immortal.' "Powys captures a paradox at the heart of our thinking about death and the afterlife: there's a kind of immortality that only mortals can enjoy." Producer: Sheila Cook.

John Gray takes a fresh look at the thinking of John Maynard Keynes and wonders what he would have really thought about the current economic crises and how to solve them. "It's still Keynes from who we have most to learn. Not Keynes, the economic engineer, who is invoked by his disciples today. It's Keynes the sceptic, who understood that markets are as prone to fits of madness as any other human...

John Gray reflects on the nature of violence which he sees as an inevitable part of the human condition. He analyses the impulses which drive us to fight one another and takes issue with the philosopher Hobbes' view that violence can be tamed principally by the use of reason. "The vast industrial style wars of the last century may have been left behind, but they have been followed by other forms o...

"I have a funny name. I know it," Adam Gopnik starts out. "Don't say it isn't or try to make me feel better about it...If I ever google myself, I find myself as often as not as Adam Gropnik." He explains its unglamorous origins and it's contemporary Russian connotations of meaning "a drunken hooligan". But the trouble is, he says "like every writer, I would like my writing to last". Little chance...

Adam Gopnik reflects on our continuing obsession with the Nazis and ponders the place of the Second World War in our history. He writes: "A German friend once complained to me that educated Westerners often know far more about the German government in those five years of war than they do about all German governments in the sixty years of subsequent peace". Adam quotes a principle frequently used d...

Adam Gopnik ruminates on how to handle a bad review. He ponders the various options. The first is to ignore it and claim the high moral ground, "the Big Ignore" he calls it. The second is to write a late night letter - or three - to the offending publication. But he now has a third option - passed on by a friend just the other evening - which he promises will produce delightful results. An amusing...

"One thing that is written into the human genome" says Adam Gopnik, "is that exactly at the age of thirteen, your child - in a minute, and no matter how close or sympathetic the two of you have been before - will discover that you are now the most ridiculous, embarrassing and annoying person on the planet". Ridiculous "because of your pretensions to be cool...in spite of the obvious truth that you...

"There is something eerie, fated, cosmic about the Beatles" writes Adam Gopnik, writer for The New York Times. "They appear in public as a unit on August 22nd 1962 and disappear as a unit, Mary Poppins like, exactly seven years later". In this talk, he ponders exactly what it is that makes their music endure. Why is it, he asks, that one of the things people never say is "I don't like the Beatles"...

"The other day" Adam Gopnik writes, "my son was working his way through the text of Shakespeare's 'Henry V' with an eye to a student production". He read Canterbury's famous speech on how the well regulated kingdom is like a bee hive. "How could Shakespeare know that much about the division of bee-labour" he ponders "and not know that the big bee in the centre was -- a girl bee?" Gopnik takes us -...

Will Self reflects on the historical tradition of the Loyal Toast. A week before the Jubilee celebrations get underway, he muses on where deference is properly due. "I have never risen for the Loyal Toast, and unless some apoplectic patriot holds a gun to my head I doubt I ever will" he writes. He suggests we should turn our thoughts to who else we might raise a toast to....personally, he believes...

Will Self ponders the future of Europe as he stands by Berlin's Brandenburg gate. "As in Greek mythology" he writes, "the sun god Apollo Helios drives his chariot across the skies...so the charioteer and four horses that surmount the Brandenburg Gate...embody the idea of contemporary German nationhood". On his "quadriga-spotting tour", Will weaves his way through the complex history of this symbol...

"Suppose you've spend the entirety of your working life pushing paper in an office and concocting ways of winning elections - then the heavy wooden door of Number 10 finally swings closed and....in the back garden, a couple of strapping fellows are parading up and down the lawn with Heckler & Koch machine guns around their necks, their mission: to stop the baddies scything you down". Will Self...

Fifteen years ago - Will Self writes - he had afternoon tea in the House of Lords with the late Conrad Russell. The distinguished historian was a hereditary peer who was entirely in favour of Lords' abolition. What Will Self remembers most about the encounter was the crumpets. "'Do have another crumpet" he'd say, 'they really are awfully good'". Fifteen years on, Will says: "Russell was right abou...

"Could it be that human rights simply don't exist?" asks Will Self provocatively. To illustrate his point, he writes: "One man's extraordinary rendition is another man's license to torture, which in turn is a flagrant denial of a third man's human rights". And he ponders how we can conceive of a person having any human rights, unless effective sanctions are in place to stop them being violated. He...

Will Self says we should embrace the intellectual challenge of "difficult" books and art, and value works which are more taxing than our increasingly low-brow popular culture. "The most disturbing result of this retreat from the difficult is to be found in arts and humanities education, where the traditional set texts are now chopped up into boneless nuggets of McKnowledge, and students are encour...

David Cannadine looks ahead to the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, reflecting on the history and significance of royal jubilees worldwide and, in particular, the celebrations for Queen Victoria. "Diamond jubilees... are very much a construction of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries: both in terms of the grandiose ceremonials accompanying them, and also in terms of the narratives that have...

David Cannadine reflects at Easter time on the architectural glories of cathedrals and the part these buildings have played in our national history and culture. He traces early and more recent traditions and identifies the world wide impact of Anglican cathedral building during the era of the British Empire. Producer: Sheila Cook.

David Cannadine reflects on the changing images of the typical policeman and our attitude towards the way they look in the light of a recent report that over half of the members of the Metropolitan Police are overweight. Producer: Sheila Cook.