Arts & Ideas

Thousands of soldiers fought in kilted regiments during the First World War. But what kind of cultural identity was adopted with the kilt? How far was it pervaded by a fatalistic sense of the Celt who ‘went forth to the war but … always fell’, or by the memory of the Highland Clearances? Peter Mackay of the University of St Andrews explores poetry and first-hand accounts from the war to find out....

For nearly 200 years, the name Cunard has evoked glamorous images of sleek cruise ships and transatlantic sea travel. Yet the legacy of the Cunard family's black sheep, the disinherited granddaughter Nancy Cunard, is less well-known. Sandeep Parmar of the University of Liverpool explores the tragic life of this scion of a wealthy family who became a revolutionary poet, publisher, modernist muse, a...

From TV talent contests such as The Great British Bake Off and Strictly Come Dancing to the pressures of school exams and job interviews – competition is at the heart of the way we live our lives. What can we learn from sports stars whose lives are geared to cultivating a healthy competitive instinct? Is the desire to be successful bringing out the best in us - or the worst? Constructively and co-...

Widows are exceptions to every rule”, Charles Dickens tells us in his first novel, The Pickwick Papers, published in 1837. Eighty years later, in 1917, a tune called “Widows are Wonderful” rings through the theatres and homes of a war-stricken Britain. “Widow! That great, vacant estate!” writes poet Sylvia Plath after the Second World War as the country grieves in silence. Nadine Muller of Liverpo...

'We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further'. Richard Dawkins' book "The God Delusion" created waves when it was first published nearly 10 years ago. Rebutting religions of all kinds Dawkins became one of 'the New Atheists', a group of thinkers including Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett. He first came to publ...

Are the rules of drama increasingly influencing the way the world is presented to us? TV news bulletins now employ chapter headings, dramatisations and music. Hollywood transforms real life stories into dramatized blockbusters at a dizzying rate. As it becomes harder to separate fact from fiction are we overvaluing the ‘real’? In this new multimedia environment, do we understand what the new rules...

For over 400 years it's been claimed that the first Medici Duke of Florence was mixed race, his mother a slave of African descent. Catherine Fletcher of Swansea University asks if this extraordinary story about the 16th-century Italian political dynasty could be true. Or do the tales of Alessandro de' Medici tell us more about the history of racism and anti-racism than about the man himself? The N...

Does Britain need more people like Russell Brand, Vivienne Westwood, Richard Branson and Boris Johnson? In business people talk of the power of the ‘disruptive influence’, but is the route to success actually based on discipline and obeying rules - or should we emulate those mavericks prepared to take risks and think differently? Philip Dodd asks which institutions should consider ripping up their...

This year's Free Thinking Lecture is given by the American poet Claudia Rankine. Her book 'Citizen: An American Lyric' is a New York Times best seller and has become an instant classic. At one of the most volatile moments in American race history, her meditations on the language used to describe tennis star Serena Williams and on events such as the Ferguson riots and the shooting of the teenager T...

This year's Free Thinking Lecture is given by the American poet Claudia Rankine. Her book 'Citizen: An American Lyric' is a New York Times best seller and has become an instant classic. At one of the most volatile moments in American race history, her meditations on the language used to describe tennis star Serena Williams and on events such as the Ferguson riots and the shooting of the teenager T...

Philip Dodd talks to one of the icons of what used to be called the counter-culture, Peggy Seeger. Another chance to hear a conversation recorded earlier this year before Peggy Seeger joins the line up of guests performing at Sage Gateshead over Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival this weekend. Peggy Seeger's voice and career are emblematic of a life lived against the establishment grain. Born in New...

Long Irish novelist Edna O'Brien in conversation. As she publishes her latest novel The Little Red Chairs she looks back at her literary career which has included short stories, a memoir, plays and poems. Her first novel The Country Girls was published in 1960 and it was banned by the Irish censor for its discussion of sex and social attitudes. Her latest story The Little Red Chairs depicts a mult...

Matthew Sweet is joined by chess grandmaster, Garry Kasparov, and former British ambassador to Russia, Tony Brenton, to discuss Putin and Putinism. BBC 6 Music's Stuart Maconie author of The Pie at Night - a book which explores northern leisure pursuits - reviews an exhibition about Salford Lads Club. Feminist and co-founder of the group Justice for Women, Julie Bindel, and Rachael Jolley, editor...

Anne McElvoy talks to New Generation Thinker and medical historian Alun Withey and former NHS executive Mark Britnell about health systems past and present. She discusses with Abigail Morris of the Jewish Museum an exhibition there exploring the cultural significance of blood and hears from Jane Taylor about her lecture and play exploring a strange but true tale of resurrection which is part of th...

Erica Jong has followed her book "Fear of Flying" with "Fear of Dying". She talks to Philip Dodd about feminism and ageing. Richard Jones discusses Eugene O'Neill's 1922 drama The Hairy Ape - which stars Bertie Carvel as the ship labourer trying to find a way to belong in the divided society of New York. Ben Bernanke, former chair of the US Federal Reserve, has a more contemporary view of the divi...

As Halloween fast approaches, Matthew Sweet is joined round the Free Thinking cauldron by guests including Marina Warner and Suzannah Lipscomb to consider the season of the witch. Film critic Larushka Ivan-zadeh and Claire Nally from Northumbria University review new blockbuster The Last Witch Hunter starring Vin Diesel, and consider the depictions of witches on film ahead of a screening of Vincen...

The new James Bond film Spectre is reviewed by New Generation Thinker Sam Goodman. The Egyptian feminist writer Nawal El Saadawi talks to Rana Mitter about facing death threats and surviving prison - and her novels which include Memoirs of a Woman Doctor and God Dies by the Nile. Lord Browne, former CEO of BP, makes the case for business to engage with society in a discussion with Mark Littlewood...

Marilynne Robinson, Thomas Harding, Imtiaz Dharker discuss ideas of home with Philip Dodd. Are we becoming increasingly rootless, or simply finding new ways to put down roots. Pulitzer Prize winning author Marilynne Robinson is the author of a novel called Home and finds her own roots in Iowa and in her Calvinist faith. In her new collection of essays The Givenness of Things, she explores the idea...

Matthew Sweet talks to Richard Mabey about his new book The Cabaret of Plants: Botany and the Imagination and hears how so much of our history has been driven by our discovery and exploitation of their properties but it's time to put our own human social preoccupations aside. Joining them, Andrea Wulf presents her findings on the extraordinary scientist Alexander von Humboldt, a seminal figure in...

The actress and author Meera Syal and playwright Tanika Gupta discuss adapting Syal's novel Anita and Me for the stage. Chosen as a GCSE set text, the novel Anita and Me depicts the friendship of a Punjabi teenager Meena and Anita, a white more rebellious girl living in the same West Midlands village in the 1970s. Filmed in 2002, the autobiographical novel has now been adapted for stage by Tanika...

Salman Rushdie talks to Philip Dodd about a sense of belonging, why we are living in strange times and how his new novel mixes 1001 Nights with comic book heroes. Also historian Niall Ferguson on Henry Kissinger and cold war politics. Salman Rushdie's novel is called Two Years Eight Months and Twenty Eight Nights. Niall Ferguson's biography of Henry Kissinger is called Kissinger: Volume I: The Ide...

Matthew Sweet hears from Alex Clark direct from the 2015 Man Booker Award ceremony on this year's winning novel. There's discussion of imaginative histories of Weather and Twilight with Alex Harris and Peter Davidson. They'll be explaining why painters first noticed the witching hour at the end of the 18th century, and why Anglo-Saxons only told stories about the winter, why April showers were pre...

The American poet Mark Doty, Professor Sarah Churchwell and the young British poet Andrew McMillan join Matthew Sweet for a programme on National Poetry Day dedicated to one of the classics of American poetry, Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. Readings will be performed by William Hope.

Antony Sher and the stars of next Sunday's Drama on 3: Death of a Salesman, Zoë Wanamaker and David Suchet, discuss acting Arthur Miller with Philip Dodd. Also, are university campuses becoming places where free speech and debate is difficult? To discuss Free Thinking brings together Director of Curriculum for Cohesion and university lecturer Dr Matthew Tariq Wilkinson, journalist and Deputy Edito...

James Fenton discusses his career as a poet and journalist ahead of collecting the PEN Pinter Prize 2015 in a ceremony tonight. New Generation Thinker Naomi Paxton researches the plays performed by Suffragettes. She offers her verdict on the film Suffragette, starring Meryl Streep, Helena Bonham Carter and Carey Mulligan. And Margaret Thatcher left Downing Street 25 years ago. Anne McElvoy is at t...