The Essay

Thoughts on writing fiction as you get older from the novelist Penelope Lively.

Andrew Martin toasts five 'social phenomena' that are still with us - just. The genesis of this is hazy. It seems the author lost his travel pass in Soho one day, aged 17. And soon felt there the allure of such places: those erotic emporia. Ruminating on this experience, Andrew looks at the history of such retail outlets and why they have almost entirely disappeared. Producer Duncan Minshull.

Writing back the years: thoughts on poetry after retirement by Douglas Dunn.

Writing age: thoughts on keeping going by Diana Hendry.

Writing as you get older: thoughts from Vicki Feaver inspired by a commission from the Scottish Poetry Library. What does it mean to be creatively active for long enough to have a late style? 'Do not let me hear of the wisdom of old men', TS Eliot says, 'but rather of their folly'. Late Beethoven stared human extinction in the face and composed music of stark clarified beauty; late Rubens painted...

The novelist Paul Bailey discusses writing in his ninth decade.

Andrew Martin toasts five 'social phenomena' that are still with us - just. You buy your milk at the supermarket. But what about that noble clan of milkmen still out there? Still up at 3 am, wending their ways along the nation's streets in their floats. We meet some of the best of them. Producer Duncan Minshull.

Andrew Martin toasts five 'social phenomena' that are still with us - just. The author dislikes mobile phones. Because he hankers after the rituals and protocols of the old telephones. On a telephone you can be witty, louche, stylish. Try out the 700-series for instance, in a range of colours each suggesting a certain mood, quality. Producer Duncan Minshull.

Andrew Martin toasts five 'social phenomena' that are still with us - just. Starting in London's Hampstead Cemetery, the author pays homage to some amazing characters of the 'vent' world: Sailor Jim; Lord Charles; Shorty; Arthur Lager. All enjoyed varying degrees of success through the decades - just don't call them dummies. Producer Duncan Minshull.

Andrew Martin toasts five 'social phenomena' that are still with us - just. It starts amidst the elegance of the Jardin du Luxembourg, where the author's sons potter about with model boats on the ornamental lake. This is charmingly anachronistic and will spark off searches for more ponds and model boats in the UK. Places such as Hampstead, Clapham, Southwold, where it's a small but enthusiastic pa...

Christopher Harding explores the Tokyo of a century ago, the bustling, cosmopolitan capital of a growing empire, where the meaning of 'time' was hotly contested. Critics attacked the relentless 'clock time' of new factories and businesses and the 'leisure time' of youngsters who favoured cafes or poetry rather than exerting themselves in empire-building. Buddhist thinkers and folklorists claimed t...

John Gallagher, New Generation Thinker, marks the 400th anniversary of the publication of what might be the greatest, but littlest-known, book of travels of early modern England. Fynes Moryson was a young fellow of a Cambridge college when he left on a journey to Jerusalem and back. His monumental book 'An Itinerary' is a colourful, funny and touching account of one man's curious journey, meeting...

New Generation Thinker Victoria Donovan from the University of St Andrews explores the dilemmas of post-war reconstruction in Soviet Russia and asks why the atheist Communist regime was prepared to spend millions on the restoration of religious architecture. On encountering the war-charred ruins of historic Novgorod in 1944, the Soviet historian Dmitry Likhachev mourned Russia's transformation int...

New Generation Thinker Preti Taneja, Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow at Warwick University, on the creation of modern India. How did a modernist style develop in India between the 1900s and the 1950s? Preti Taneja, who grew up in Letchworth Garden City, traces the way the Garden City Movement inspired the work of Edwin Lutyens in his reshaping of her parents' New Delhi. The first generatio...

Matthew Smith, a New Generation Thinker, goes deep into the American Psychiatric Association archives, where lies an unpublished historical manuscript entitled The Magic Years. Written during the early 1970s, it eulogised the giant strides of post-war American psychiatry made in this period of hope and promise when even the complete eradication of mental illness was thought possible. As a medical...

From 1941 to 1968 Catherine Fletcher's grandfather Donald Hudson was a missionary in India. Catherine tells his story during those turbulent years and reflects on the way British people with family history in India understand that past - in this the anniversary year of the end of colonial India. Originally from Yorkshire, Donald Hudson arrived in Dhaka, now in Bangladesh, to find a city in chaos a...

New Generation Thinker Katherine Cooper looks at literary refugees in the Second World War and tells the untold story of the work done by British writers to save their European colleagues. She shows how HG Wells, Rebecca West and JB Priestley became intertwined with the lives of writers fleeing persecution on the continent. Katherine peeps into drawing rooms, visits the archives of PEN, scrutinise...

New Generation Thinker Edmund Richardson with the story of Alexander the Great's lost city, buried beneath Bagram airbase, a CIA detention site and wrecked Soviet tanks. For centuries, it was a meeting point of East and West. Then it vanished. In 1832, it was discovered by the unlikeliest person imaginable: a ragged British con-man called Charles Masson, on the run from a death sentence. Today, Al...

New Generation Thinker Louisa Egbunike from Manchester Metropolitan University considers images of war and ghosts of the past. News reports of the Biafran war (1967-1970), with their depictions of starving children, created images of Africa which have become imprinted. Biafra endured a campaign of heavy shelling, creating a constant stream of refugees out of fallen areas as territory was lost to N...

The ruined priory of Tynemouth nestles on a Northumbrian clifftop, staring out at the fog and foam of the North Sea. In the 14th century it was a proving ground - and occasional prison camp - for monks from the wealthy mother monastery of St Albans. But the monks here didn't just isolate themselves, pray and complain about the food (though they did do those things). They also studied astronomy. Wr...

Author and broadcaster Sarah Churchwell describes the spell that female stars of the 1930s and 40s have over her. From Joan Crawford, the 'working girl', to someone regarded as 'the quintessential Diva' – none other than Bette Davis. Apart from appearing in some great films, she had the eyes and the laugh, and could smoke like a dragon! Produced by Duncan Minshull. First broadcast on BBC Radio 3 i...

Five writers recall a night they spent somewhere out of the ordinary. Naomi Alderman signs up for a trip to the Arctic, but has to spend a lot of time in her bunk bed. When she feels better and ventures across the ice, small but vital revelations are at hand ... Producer Duncan Minshull.

Five writers recall a night they spent somewhere out of the ordinary. John Walsh lies in a hammock in the jungle in Guyana, with his new friend Helen close by. At two in the morning they set off to explore the undergrowth and soon encounter some other sleepers ... Producer Duncan Minshull.

Five writers recall a night they spent somewhere out of the ordinary. Philip Hoare was thrown off his bike and spent a night in a hospital observation ward. The bed is tiny, the sheets strap him firmly in. Then he takes a look at his fellow patients ... Producer Duncan Minshull.

Five writers recall a night they spent somewhere out of the ordinary. Rachel Cooke was on assignment in the wilds of Scotland, reporting on a deer hunt. Exhausted, after a peaty-coloured bath, bedtime approaches. Dreams ensue and also the rattling of her door-knob ... Producer Duncan Minshull.