A Point of View

In the aftermath of recent headlines coming out of the Commons, Sarah Dunant explores sexual equality through the ages. She looks in particular at the idea that 'women are temptresses who cannot - by definition of their sex - be trusted'. "So ingrained is this within Christian culture," Sarah writes, "that it defined attitudes towards women for millennia". Biblical accounts, renaissance sculpture,...

Will Self presents a very British solution to the issues surrounding the legalisation of marijuana. Considering the pervasiveness of cannabis in the UK, he says the question that should currently be preoccupying us as a society is not whether marijuana should be legalised, but how. "My model here would be the old Tote," he says, "a form of nationalised gambling that for many years mitigated its wo...

"It is a terrible thing to be in possession of a truth that people don't want to hear," writes Howard Jacobson. By way of Primo Levi, the great chronicler of the Holocaust, Coleridge's 'The Ancient Mariner' and stories emerging today from Ukraine, Howard argues that stories of truth must be listened to, no matter how uncomfortable or challenging we find them. "No deceit is ever so perfected," he s...

Zoe Strimpel asks the seemingly simple question 'what is a woman', but finds no simple answer as she explores the question through a brief history of feminist thought. She explores the ongoing controversy over trans women in women's competitive sport, and the reluctance of public figures to define what a woman is. while revealing her own views on the issue. "As the history of feminism itself makes...

The everyday repression of life in Russia, as experienced by an anonymous dissident playwright. In this essay, she reflects on the war in Ukraine and asks what role she and her fellow Russians might have played in it, what they might have done to stop it - and what Ukrainians must think of them now. In turn, she explains how the Russian state is actively controlling the narrative about the war - a...

'Perhaps, like me,' writes A L Kennedy, 'you can now only picture Cabinet meetings as gatherings where ministers and staff sing la-la-la with their fingers in their ears while dancing between the wine fridges.' In the midst of a lot of bad news, Alison finds some room for cheer. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production Coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Vadon

Adam Gopnik seeks enlightenment for our time in Tolstoy's War and Peace, finding parallels in Tolstoy's thinking for today's war in Ukraine. Reflecting on how Russian characters in the book converse in fluent French, Adam considers how mixed identities should not undermine national integrity, writing that the composite nature of Ukrainian identity does not cast doubt on its integrity as a country....

"When war smashes its way into our living rooms as it did three weeks ago", writes Sarah Dunant, "it is pictures rather than words that hit hardest". Sarah discusses the impact of images from war through the centuries and the history they write. And she ponders which image from Putin's war will represent this moment in the future. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinato...

For the past five years, Rebecca Stott and a Russian friend have spent time together... digging heavy soil, planting hawthorn trees and pruning wild roses. Veronika is a translator and a university lecturer, with a talent for gardening. She's helped Rebecca in her garden; Rebecca has discussed translations with Veronika. Now, in the light of events in Ukraine, Rebecca talks about their friendship....

Will Self tells the story of Vasily Arkhipov, the commander of a Soviet nuclear-armed submarine, who during the Cuban Missile Crisis refused to fire his vessel's nuclear weapon and averted, many believe, a Third World War. In the light of President Putin's actions this week, Will argues that the threat of nuclear apocalypse has never really gone away, however much we've tried to convince ourselves...

Sara Wheeler reflects that the attack on Ukraine is not the war of the Russian people she has known. "The calamitous news eroding any remote sense we might have nurtured of peace in our time is, we now know, not going to cease any time soon. Yet while the image of a villainous Russia dominates the news agenda, I remember Russians I have met over the years on my travels in their land. This is not t...

John Connell reflects on planting trees on his family farm in Ireland as reparation for the years he has spent flying round the world, and also as an intrinsic good. "For so many the planting of the tree for nature itself, not for politics, or development or climate change or remembrance of some brutal war but for the contribution of life is never thought of....We do not measure success in knowing...

Sara Wheeler reflects on the harm done by seeing the world only from our own point of view. "At the heart of both day-to-day thoughtlessness and internecine slaughter lies a failure to see things through the eyes of another. If we all tried to see clearly rather than selectively - well, you know, I think the planet would get on quite a lot better." Producer: Sheila Cook Sound: Peter Bosher Product...

Will Self deplores the British attitude to children, seeing a mix of sentimentality and cruelty, and a culture which for decades allowed child sex abuse to hide "in plain view". "I'd argue that under cover of a positively Dickensian level of sentimentality that sees every child as a Tiny Tim, our cruelty and disdain for actual children continues to hold sway....The nauseating oscillation between o...

As she leaves academia, Rebecca Stott says an audit culture is stifling universities. "Once universities had been turned into businesses and forced to compete with each other for students and fees, scores and league tables followed. And now we are assessed and monitored all the time too. It has eroded trust....When a seminar works you can feel the electricity crackle...You can't bottle this or rec...

Sarah Dunant asks if we should judge the past by the standards of the present or future, as shifting social attitudes colour our view of how the past is portrayed. "What current historians share with those historians of the past whose vision we vehemently decry, is that they too thought they were right at the time...If we now find their views abhorrent and unjust then how about us; what might ther...

David Goodhart rejects what he calls the 'Eton conspiracy myth' of a cabal of his old school's alumni at the top of politics and welcomes its declining influence as a sign of growing equality. "The Eton obsession not only overlooks progress made in slowly detaching our elite institutions from privilege, it also distracts from a hard-headed discussion about what we want from our elite." Producer: S...

Zoe Strimpel reflects on the impact of rapid home delivery on the way we live our lives, and asks what our human experience might lose from this democratisation of laziness. "A whole generation is about to come of age experiencing goods and service as simply things you can have delivered to your doorstep, fast. Will their brains cease to distinguish between different types of desire and demand?......

Adam Gopnik on why a visit to get his phone repaired resulted in an unlikely revelation. Watching those waiting alongside him, Adam comes to the realisation that we have poured ourselves so completely into our phones that the devices, paradoxically, are the one place where we can picture ourselves as selves. They have become the equivalent of the confession booths of old, or the diary in the 18th...

Howard Jacobson ponders why he's always associated Christmas with the sea. Strange, he reckons, given he's not exactly maritime by temperament. 'Long ago at Blackpool,' he writes, 'I was lifted onto a donkey and afterwards told to make a sandcastle, but I fell off the donkey and wilder boys in Brillo-pad swimming trunks trampled over my battlements'. He looks to Matthew Arnold for an explanation o...

Will Self reflects on his B&B renaissance. From early memories of B&Bs with his parents...to the anonymous isolation of corporate hotels...to the 'pseudo-hygge' of Airbnbs, Will looks at our changing relationship with property. Producer: Adele Armstrong

A junk shop, a wooden chest, and some old newspapers from 1941 get Sarah Dunant pondering how we can deal with a world turned upside down. "The last time the world shook", Sarah writes, "there was an element of learned resilience". But today, she believes, most of us don't have the benefit of that. Producer: Adele Armstrong

"Landscape made us', writes Sara Wheeler, 'and now, in the dying phase of our divorce from our environment, we are unmaking the landscape'. Sara discusses the importance of place names in linking us to the land. Producer: Adele Armstrong

Tom Shakespeare explains why he can't get enough of University Challenge. Starter for ten, picture round and music round.....it's all here! But thirty-five years after he first appeared on the show, he asks if Britain is a better country. Producer: Adele Armstrong

AL Kennedy attempts to work out why, and how, everything these days seems to annoy us. But, she says, it's up to us to resist the work of 'the crisis engineers, political extremists and paid agents who turned up our emotional thermostat'. Producer: Adele Armstrong