Arts & Ideas

Matthew Sweet discusses Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries with the writer Colm Toibin, the film critic Larushka Ivan-Zadeh and the Swedish Cultural Attaché Ellen Wettmark. Released in 1957 and inspired by Bergman's own memories of childhood holidays in a summerhouse in the north of Sweden, Wild Strawberries tells the story of elderly professor Isak Borg, who travels from his home in Stockholm to...

From Ecuador to the Scottish borders: Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough meets Maren Meinhardt and Graham Robb who explore the land on their doorsteps and also follow in the footsteps of others from Humboldt the naturalist and explorer to the forgotten territory of the Debatable Land. They'll be joined by novelist Natasha Pulley whose fascination with Victorian exploration and empire building is reflect...

Craig Brown, Afua Hirsch, Robert Jobson, A. N. Wilson and New Generation Thinker Joe Moshenska discuss the monarchy as the Royal Academy and the Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace stage exhibitions exploring the painting collections of Charles I and II. How has patronage changed and, in this year of another Royal Wedding, what impact are depictions in TV dramas such as The Crown and biographies in...

Matthew Sweet is joined by critics Ryan Gilbey and Ellen E Jones to look at the films nominated for this year's Academy Awards and the tradition of films with a campaigning message. Film historian Vanda Krefft charts the complicated life of William Fox, the man who founded the Fox Film Corporation. Comedian Lucy Porter and author Steve Massa celebrate the women of the silent era who starred alongs...

Fiona Sampson, Daisy Hay, Christopher Frayling and David H. Guston join Matthew Sweet to discuss Mary Shelley's story in film, fiction and the view of AI scientists now. In Search of Mary Shelley: The Girl Who Wrote Frankenstein by the poet and writer Fiona Sampson is out now. Christopher Frayling has published Frankenstein: The First Two Hundred Years Dr Daisy Hay is Senior Lecturer, English Lite...

Leïla Slimani, President Macron's champion of French culture and language, is interviewed by presenter Shahidha Bari about her new role and her novel Lullaby which won the 2016 Prix Goncourt Plus Emile Chabal from the University of Edinburgh discusses Savages: The Wedding by Sabri Louatah - a novel imagining the first Arab candidate for President is shot. The TV rights for the quartet of books hav...

A car race around Australia is fictionalised in Peter Carey's latest novel. He talks to Rana Mitter about depicting race and racing. Josephine Quinn questions whether the Phoenicians existed as she looks at the way ancient texts and artworks helped construct an identity for the ancient civilization on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, stretching through what is now Syria, Lebanon and northern Is...

Matthew Sweet discusses protests like the 1968 uprising at Columbia University, 1985's Battle of the Beanfield and the acid house movement with guests Paul Hartnoll of Orbital, novelist Tony White, editor Paul Cronin and writer Tessa DeCarlo. The Fountain in the Forest by Tony White is available now A Time To Stir: Columbia '68 edited by Paul Cronin is out now Producer: Debbie Kilbride

Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough explores the uncanny possibilities of the In Between with the neuroscientist Dean Burnett, award-winning poet Vahni Capildeo, artist Alexandra Carr, writer and walker of London and other wastelands, Iain Sinclair, and the philosopher, Emily Thomas. How do our brains and bodies react in the In Between spaces of the airport lounge or the station platform where we're wait...

Amit Chaudhuri, Karen McCarthy Woolf, Daniel Mendelsohn and Emily Wilson join Philip Dodd to explore translating, rewriting and using Homer's epic work to frame a memoir. Emily Wilson has published a new translation of The Odyssey Daniel Mendelsohn has written An Odyssey: A Father, A Son and An Epic Karen McCarthy Woolf wrote Nightshift as part of a BBC Radio 4's Odyssey Project which commissioned...

Diving from Tudor times through the Brooklyn Naval Yard in the Second World War to present day deep water sculpture parks and swimming with whales. Rana Mitter talks to prize-winning writer Jennifer Egan about the Sea as metaphor and how the research for her latest novel, Manhattan Beach, was the inspiration for its time-shifting, punky, award-laden predecessor, The Goon Squad. He hears from histo...

When Philip Astley and his trick riders performed in 1768 in a circle not a straight line in a field behind where Waterloo station is now, the idea of the circus ring was born. Matthew Sweet looks at the career of the impresario, his 42 foot diameter ring which is still the big top template and 250 years of circus with historian Vanessa Toulmin, performer Andrew Van Buren whose family have worked...

Philip Dodd is joined by Roger Scruton, Haroon Mirza, Kevin Davey and Kirsty Gunn to explore writing, modernism and experiment from T. S. Eliot onwards. Roger Scruton's books include 'How to be a Conservative' and 'England: An Elegy'. His most recent is 'Where We Are'. Kevin Davey's novel 'Playing Possum' was shortlisted for the 2017 Goldsmiths Prize - a prize for writing which embodies the spirit...

No need to RSVP just turn up and tune in to Free Thinking's end of year salon. Matthew Sweet is our host and he's promising wit and wisdom as well as a host of guests: Jake Arnott, Malika Booker, Neil Brand, David Aaronovitch and Katherine Cooper. Malika Booker co-founded Malika’s Poetry Kitchen in 2001 to create a nourishing and encouraging community of writers dedicated to the development of the...

Are pets theraputic? Is it moral to domesticate animals? Anne McElvoy explores the history of our relationship with pets with John Bradshaw author of Cat Sense and Dog Sense, Philip Howell who has researched the role of the domestic dog in Victorian Britain, bioethicist and writer Jessica Pierce who questions whether we should keep pets at all and novelist Laura Purcell. John Bradshaw has written...

Philip Dodd discusses the significance of David Storey's groundbreaking 1960 novel with social historian Juliet Gardiner, journalist Rod Liddle, writer Anthony Clavane and the author's daughter Kate Storey.

Catherine Fletcher talks to Professor Stephen Greenblatt about the Adam and Eve story in the Christian tradition; to Islam Issa about Islam's version which tells a rather more gender-equality story of the original first couple. Jennifer Evans and Sara Read reveal how the story impacted on mothers and would-be mothers over centuries through their reading of 16th and 17th century medical textbooks....

Matthew Sweet debates the merits of bad films with critics Larushka Ivan-Zadeh and Tim Robey as The Disaster Artist, James Franco's film inspired by cult classic The Room opens in UK cinemas. Plus the power of underground protest, of art and of the mind as we hear from psychologist Tali Sharot, from Jonathan Lerner on his time in the Weathermen, an organisation dedicated to the violent overthrowin...

Masha Gessen has traced the lives of 4 Russians born as the Soviet Union crumbled. Daniel Beer won the Cundill History Prize for his history of punishment in Tsarist times. Mary Dejevsky writes and reports on Russian politics now. Philip Dodd presents. Masha Gessen's book is called The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia. Daniel Beer's prize winning book is The House of the Dea...

Matthew Sweet discusses the Vietnam War with the film maker Ken Burns who has spent the last decade making a monumental documentary about America's ill fated war in South East Asia. The award winninng poet, Sasha Dugdale, reads from her latest collection, Joy; and Kate Flint traces the history of flash photography from its origins in the nineteenth century to Weegee and Gordon Parks in the twentie...

New Yorker essayist Adam Gopnik talks to Shahidha Bari about city living. Plus artist Lucinda Rogers on depicting changes to a London market, a new report into prosperity and New Generation Thinker Alastair Fraser from the University of Glasgow shares his research . At the Stranger's Gate by Adam Gopnik, a staff writer for the New Yorker, is a memoir recalling 1980s New York and the early years of...

The Rt Hon Lord David Willetts talks to Philip Dodd about universities. The UK Minister for Universities and Science from 2010 to 2014, his new book considers both the history and the global role they now play. Plus a discussion about scandal old and new - is it a driving force for social change or once the outrage has passed does everything revert to the status quo. Historian and New Generation T...

Philip Dodd looks at 2000 years of Arab Christians, at the modern rise of Pentecostalism and a novel depicting a man who decides to build a new church. Laura Premack from Lancaster University researches pentecostalism in Brazil, Nigeria and the USA. Neil Griffiths is author of a novel called As a God Might Be. Aurélie Clemente-Ruiz is Director of Exhibitions Department at the Institut du monde ara...

Kelly and Zach Weinersmith share visions of the future with Rana Mitter. Plus former Australian PM Kevin Rudd on power and what images does Finland conjure 100 years after independence? We hear from Pauliina Stahlberg, Director of the Finnish Institute and Anne Robbins, curator of Lake Keitele: A Vision of Finland which runs at the National Gallery in London until 4 February 2018. Soonish: Ten Eme...

New Generation Thinkers Shahidha Bari & Laurence Scott consider how archives come to life with events from the Being Human Festival including klezmer music, stories from conflict in Northern Ireland and voices from marginalised communities.