A Point of View

Edwin Landseer's famous painting of a majestic Highland stag, 'Monarch of the Glen', has been given pride of place in the newly opened galleries at the National in Edinburgh. Alex Massie ponders the role of the deer - and deer stalking - in the Scottish psyche. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Will Self on why - for the past eight weeks - he's lived an almost entirely news-free existence. After a lifetime of keeping up with events and - in recent years - obsessively toggling between news apps 'with all the real cogitation of a commuter playing Candy Crush,' Will has decided to stop paying attention to the news. 'I realised I'd been reading about - and listening to - politicians and pund...

Sarah Dunant argues that the patriarchy of the classical music business is finally starting to change. Reliving her early relationship with music - from excruciating piano lessons to rebellious dancing in the mosh pit - Sarah reflects on the remarkable changes in classical music. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production Coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: China Collins

Stephen Smith on why HS2 is such a cause of national hand-wringing. 'We get railways, we do railways - ever since Stephenson's Rocket in the nineteenth century. We gave railways to the world', writes Stephen. He argues that there would never have been the same sense of dismay if we were talking about a road or a runway. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma As...

'Russell Brand winked at me in the street once', begins Howard Jacobson. He reflects on that chance encounter many years ago and the dishonourable role we all play in the creation of celebrity. 'We watched too much television; we rubbed the lamp and set the extremely egregious genie free; we saw a blank slate and wrote the words ourselves.' Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production...

AL Kennedy discusses the addictive nature of hate. 'Religion', she writes, 'was once called the opium of the masses; hate is now the Oxycontin of the masses. That low thrum of resentment, spikes of rage, hate gives them a logic, an addictive rush.' Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Bridget Harney

Zoe Strimpel discusses the thrills and psychic satisfactions of the spooky. She argues that the disorientating nature of contemporary society creates the ideal breeding ground for our resurgent interest in things supernatural. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound; Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Bridget Harney

Will Self reflects on the spread of the craze for so-called 'bucket lists'. He argues that 'far from introducing the ecstatic into our necessarily ephemeral existence, the bucket list reimposes the clock-watching go-round most of us have endured for most of our lives'. 'What gives life to life is death - nothing else,' he writes, 'while to live that life to the full is to realize this fully'. Prod...

Megan Nolan explores the concept of the 'trad wife'. She argues that 'the failings of mainstream girl-boss feminism' are leading to a resurgence of the sort of women's lifestyle associated with the 1950s. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Bridget Harney

John Gray puts the case for the monarchy in modern Britain. 'Those who campaign for the abolition of a royal head of state in Britain,' he says, 'seem to me to be in thrall to a simple-minded idea of reason, and fail to grasp the subtler rationality embodied in monarchy.' Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Rod Farquhar Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Bridget Harney

Sara Wheeler reflects on the concept of limbo as a way of helping us deal with current uncertainties but she recognizes this will not be easy. 'Limbo is a borderless, undefined, in-between state that is neither one thing nor the other and therefore it is hard to label and harder to accept.' She believes though that an acceptance of unknowability may be increasingly important since 'the rules and c...

This week, UNESCO recommended that Venice should be added to its list of World Heritage in Danger, citing its failure to adequately protect the city from overwhelming tourism and the impact of climate change. As unprecedented numbers of tourists are visiting Europe, Sarah Dunant reflects on how historic cities can manage the challenges of overtourism. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher...

Stephen Smith on our fascination with the belongings of the rich and famous... or infamous. 'Years ago, after the fall of the Romanian dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu,' writes Stephen, 'I entered his by now ransacked hunting lodge and made off with the late president's ....coat hanger. That's right: Ceausescu's coat hanger.' As the possessions of the altogether more savoury personality, Freddie Mercur...

As a seasoned protester, Trevor Phillips explores what’s wrong with protest today. After getting his first taste for protest as a schoolboy in Guyana (which led to detention in an army barracks and an audience with a government minister) Trevor remembers his days of student activism in the 1970s - which he describes as 'the start of a long and undistinguished career of being a pain in the backside...

While viewing a 16th Century painting of St George slaying a dragon, Adam Gopnik reflects on how we all, in life, attempt to slay ‘the dragons of our disorder.’ He concludes that 'dragon and saint are permanently entangled, as our demonic forces are with our better nature.’ Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Michael Morpurgo reflects on age as he approaches his 80th birthday. 'The truth is,' writes Michael, 'that older people are increasing in numbers and will very likely continue to do so. This is clear. But the place - or the role - of older people in society is far from clear.' He says in a 'civilised society' we have to find better ways of bridging the gap in understanding between young and old. P...

AL Kennedy explores how we get information without an overload of negativity. 'Sadness, rage, anxiety...our media use them to hook us, withhold the good news, exhaust us with the bad', she writes. She reflects on why 'selective news avoidance' is on the increase. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Helena Warwick-Cross Editor: Penny Murphy

Will Self reflects on mirrors, past and present. 'The imperfect mirrors of the past', he writes, 'were objectified metaphors of human imperfection, rather than the perfect ones that give contemporary humans the delusion that they too can achieve such earthly perfection.' Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Graham Puddifoot Editor: Penny Murphy

Rebecca Stott reflects on the colours of Midsummer as she attempts to find a paint for the hall in her new home, With an array of paint charts laid out on her kitchen table, she looks to Darwin, Joseph Conrad and the former paint guru of Lewes for inspiration. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

The trend for expensive age-defying treatments is 'an insult to youth itself' says Zoe Strimpel, as she argues against treating youth as a commodity that can be bought. After admiring the seemingly ageless beauty of 41-year-old singing superstar Beyoncé at her recent stadium show in London, Zoe reflects on her own experience of getting older - and the people desperate to avoid it. She hones in on...

John Connell reveals how his love for a pristine lawn gave way to letting the grass grow wild. A leaflet urging the adoption of 'No Mow May' led him to set aside his urge to 'rip and tear and snip' to let nature take its course, above all for the sake of wild bees. 'My lawn is long now, but the green desert is no more. In exchange for neatness there are wildflowers and weeds growing side by side i...

Howard Jacobson deplores the recent vandalising of Eric Gill's sculpture at BBC Broadcasting House as a failure to understand the meaning of art. 'Art, we go on protesting, is not the artist, but some will always believe that whatever is fashioned by evil hands must itself be evil,' he writes. 'If art and the artist were not distinct, the word art itself would have no meaning. For it denotes manuf...

Tom Shakespeare bemoans the fashion for being asked to rate everything we buy or do. "The theory is that this drives up quality for everyone, because we won't tolerate terrible products or services - but have they really improved since these ratings became so commonplace?" Producer: Sheila Cook Sound Engineer: Peter Bosher Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith Production Co-ordinator: Helena Warwick-Cross

When the world's first state pension was introduced in Prussia in 1889, the qualifying age was 70 and the average life expectancy was 40. Half a century later, in 1935, many countries lowered the retirement age to 65, but still barely half the population lived long enough to claim it. Now, it's clearly a very different story. With the help of PD James, Sarah Dunant looks at how the UK can tackle t...

Rebecca Stott ponders the nature of dust, as Spring sunshine sharpens the sight of it gathering in the old house she is restoring. She reflects on the social history of Spring cleaning as traditionally women's work, and sees in the complex substance and symbolism of dust a reflection of our own mortality. "We don't come to dust alone, we come to dust together and in history. And the dust we make a...