The Essay

Gilbert and Sullivan gave university-educated women the English comic operetta treatment in their eighth collaboration, Princess Ida (1884) but why did the most famous musical duo of their day choose to make fun of them? To find out, New Generation Thinker Dr Eleanor Lybeck, from the University of Oxford, looks at protests, popular culture and a group of pioneering Victorian women who saw educatio...

Tom Simpson looks at a study of suspicion in a 1950s Italian village and the lessons it has for community relations and social tribes now. Edward Banfield's book, The Moral Basis of a Backward Society, depicts a village where everyone is out for themselves. New Generation Thinker Tom Simpson is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Public Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of...

An apple a day is said to keep the doctor away but could a poem, painting or play have the same effect? Daisy Fancourt is a Wellcome Research Fellow at University College London. In her Essay, recorded with an audience at Sage Gateshead for the Free Thinking Festival, she looks at experiments with results which which prove that going to a museum is known to enhance neuronal structure in the brain...

Hetta Howes looks at male fears and why Margery Kempe was criticised for crying and bleeding Medieval mystic Margery Kempe's excessive, noisy crying made her travelling companions so irritated that they wanted to throw her overboard, while others accused her of being possessed by the devil. But Kempe believed she was using her tears as a way to connect with God, turning the medieval connection bet...

With its title drawn from an essential work by ARB Haldane, 'New Ways through the Glens' is Kenneth Steven's personal reflection on the changes brought to the people and landscape of the Scottish Highlands by the arrival of roads and canals in the 18th and 19th centuries. In his final Essay, he finds that the new routes are opening up the Highlands to tourists for the first time and a romantic vie...

With its title drawn from an essential work by ARB Haldane, 'New Ways through the Glens' is Kenneth Steven's personal reflection on the changes brought to the people and landscape of the Scottish Highlands by the arrival of roads and canals in the 18th and 19th centuries. In this Essay, he looks at the ambitious project to build a canal through the heart of the Highlands along the Great Glen, link...

With its title drawn from an essential work by ARB Haldane, 'New Ways through the Glens' is Kenneth Steven's personal reflection on the changes brought to the people and landscape of the Scottish Highlands by the arrival of roads and canals in the 18th and 19th centuries. In the second in the series, he explores how the central belt of Scotland was transformed by land clearance, just where the Hig...

With its title drawn from an essential work by ARB Haldane, 'New Ways through the Glens' is Kenneth Steven's personal reflection on the changes brought to the people and landscape of the Scottish Highlands by the arrival of roads and canals in the 18th and 19th centuries. In the first programme, he looks at the road-building programme of General Wade, who was determined to pacify the warring clans...

Writer Louise Welsh reflects on the theme of the Uncanny in the writing of Muriel Spark through her story "The House of the Famous Poet." Muriel Spark was a Scot, an exile, a poet, a codebreaker, a convert to a particularly Calvinist form of Catholicism from a particularly low-key Judaism and the cosmopolitan author of slender, sophisticated novels whose bestselling book mined her own schooldays i...

In "Dial M for Muriel" crime writer Val McDermid discusses Muriel Spark - crime novelist. Muriel Spark was a Scot, an exile, a poet, a codebreaker, a convert to a particularly Calvinist form of Catholicism from a particularly low-key Judaism and the cosmopolitan author of slender, sophisticated novels whose bestselling book mined her own schooldays in the Edinburgh of the 1930s. She may be most fa...

Muriel Spark worked as a black propagandist during the war. Janice Galloway discusses two novels influenced by that work, The Comforters, and The Hothouse by the East River. Muriel Spark was a Scot, an exile, a poet, a codebreaker, a convert to a particularly Calvinist form of Catholicism from a particularly low-key Judaism and the cosmopolitan author of slender, sophisticated novels whose bestsel...

Muriel Spark is best known for her witty novels but she began as a poet, and her gravestone describes her as "poeta." Poet Kate Clanchy discusses Muriel Spark - poet. Muriel Spark was a Scot, an exile, a poet, a codebreaker, a convert to a particularly Calvinist form of Catholicism from a particularly low-key Judaism and the cosmopolitan author of slender, sophisticated novels whose bestselling bo...

Ali Smith presents the first in a series of essays from five Scottish women writers on Muriel Spark. Muriel Spark, was a Scot, an exile, a poet, a codebreaker, a convert to a particularly Calvinist form of Catholicism from a particularly low-key Judaism and the cosmopolitan author of slender, sophisticated novels whose bestselling book mined her own schooldays in the Edinburgh of the 1930s. She ma...

Five writers consider the pleasures of viewing a phenomenon or social activity closely: Lavinia Greenlaw is on the road in 'intense darkness'. She's visualising what it's like to walk along it and drive along it too. What insights and treasures are revealed ahead? Producer Duncan Minshull.

Five writers consider the pleasures of viewing a phenomenon or social activity closely: Rachel Cooke considers the way people eat, what it says about them that is good and bad and amusing. Yet her starting line is unnerving - "the optics of eating are inherently violent." How so? Producer Duncan Minshull.

Five writers consider the pleasures of viewing a phenomenon or social activity closely: Every year Nicholas Shakespeare visits the River Hodder in Lancashire. The aim is to catch sea-trout. But to catch sea-trout you have to understand them, and to understand them you have to read their river - expertly. Producer Duncan Minshull.

Five writers consider the pleasures of viewing a phenomenon or social activity closely: Lauren Elkin reckons that the way people walk, their gait, is a signifier. It also tells us something about ourselves as we watch people file past us, the quick and the slow. And it makes her think of George Sand strolling Paris. Producer Duncan Minshull

Five writers consider the art of viewing a phenomenon or social activity closely: Art historian James Fox drew a yellow disc and put a face on it, he was very young at the time. Since then he has been beguiled by the star that gives our planet light and warmth. And, as he says, looking up to the sky, "there is much that is god-like about it." Producer Duncan Minshull.

The poet Fiona Hamilton contrasts the different states of clay before and after it's baked hard. The satisfying tactile quality of clay squished in the hand, compared to the dry ordinariness of a brick. It's part of this week's series of Cornerstones - nature writing about how rock, place and landscapes affect us. Mud bricks are as old as civilisation, and have been used throughout the world, but...

The artist and archaeologist Rose Ferraby gets to grips with something that is always around us, but which we almost never stop to consider: gypsum, the chief constituent of the plaster on the walls around us. It's part of this week's series of Cornerstones - nature writing about how rock, place and landscape affects us. Gypsum's use dates back to at least the ancient pyramids of Egypt. Rose expla...

The writer Esther Woolfson contrasts the solidity of Aberdeen, the 'Granite City', with the decline of the North Sea oil and gas industry, on which its economy has so relied since the 1970s. It's part of this week's series of Cornerstones - nature writing about rock, place and landscape. Author of 'Field Notes from a Hidden City', about her encounters with Aberdeen's wildlife, Esther reflects on t...

The writer Sara Maitland conjures with a rock of ages, Lewisian gneiss. Two-thirds the age of the earth itself, and the oldest stone in the UK, it makes up parts of the Northwest Highlands and the Western Isles. It's part of this week's series of Cornerstones - nature writing about rock, place and landscape. Sara reflects on how the gneiss began its slow journey across the face of the earth more o...

The writer Alan Garner sparks with flint, the stone that, perhaps more than any other, has enabled human civilisation. It's a stone that has featured in some of his novels, such as Red Shift, where the same Neolithic hand axe resurfaces across different times to haunt his characters. And it is time and evolution that he looks at in this essay: "My blood walked out of Africa ninety thousand years a...

Nikesh Shukla on Watershed in Bristol and how it helped him fall in love with the city. 5/5 Nikesh edits Rife magazine for young people in the building and explains how the spirit of Watershed is summed up in the community who use the space. "People are generous with their time, their ideas and their skills. People can be interrupted and can interrupt." Producer Clare Walker.

Travel writer Phoebe Smith on Hafod Eryri - the visitor centre on Mount Snowdon's summit. 4/5 Phoebe explains how despite herself, Hafod Eryri has grown on her, and that she has found unexpected joy at being able to drink hot chocolate on top of a mountain. Its presence says something about our chutzpah in putting a building where it doesn't belong. Producer Clare Walker.