The Essay

With Scotland and all things Scottish very much in the air, acclaimed writer, comedian and now ex-pat, AL Kennedy, reflects on what Scottishness means to her in this series of The Essay. Today: morality and misery - is dourness necessarily such a bad thing? Written and performed by AL Kennedy Producer: Justine Willett.

With Scotland and all things Scottish very much in the air, acclaimed writer, comedian and now ex-pat, AL Kennedy, reflects on what Scottishness means to her in this new series of The Essay. Today: a good sense of humour. Written and performed by AL Kennedy Producer: Justine Willett.

With Scotland and all things Scottish very much in the air, acclaimed writer, comedian and now ex-pat, AL Kennedy, reflects on what Scottishness means to her in this new series of The Essay. Today: tartan, the kilt and a sense of identity. Written and performed by A L Kennedy Producer: Justine Willett.

Novelist and critic Ian Sansom believes that the idea of the average is one of the key terms and principles of the modern age, encompassing human productivity, relationships, politics and art. So, how did average become a byword for mediocrity? In the final essay of the series, he attempts to locate the most average place in the UK, the heart of Middle England, the spiritual home of Joe and Joseph...

Novelist and critic Ian Sansom goes in search of the 'average' man or woman.

Novelist and critic Ian Sansom believes that the idea of the average is one of the key terms and principles of the modern age, encompassing human productivity, relationships, politics and art. So, how did average become a byword for mediocrity? In the third essay of the series, he explores the changing concept of the average working week in an age of zero hours contracts. Is the idea of an average...

Novelist and critic Ian Sansom believes that the idea of the average is one of the key terms and principles of the modern age, encompassing human productivity, relationships, politics and art. So, how did average become a byword for mediocrity? In the second essay of the series, he uncovers the unlikely history of the scientific measurement of the dimensions of the average man and woman. We learn...

Novelist and critic Ian Sansom believes that the idea of the average is one of the key terms and principles of the modern age, encompassing human productivity, relationships, politics and art. So, how did average become a byword for mediocrity? 'Average Is Over' proclaims the title of one recent best-selling book about economics. 'Start: Punch Fear In the Face, Escape Average And Do Work That Matt...

World War One ravaged Tanzania. East Africans were recruited as carriers and fighters, and many more were affected by the destruction of crops by retreating forces. As many as a million died from starvation and sickness as well as from their wounds, yet the war is barely remembered there now. Oswald Masebo, Professor of History at the University of Dar es Salaam, explores the conundrum with an aud...

The First World War is a difficult history for Indians to remember. Although over a million soldiers from India served, their contribution was not rewarded with independence for their country and disappointment was met with harsh repression. The writer, diplomat and Indian MP Shashi Tharoor presents his essay at the Indian International Centre in Delhi, in partnership with the British Council. In...

There are currently wars in two of Jordan's neighbouring countries. The kingdom has a long history of absorbing trouble from its orders and has its origins in the settlement after World War One. Lina Attel is Director General of the King Hussein Foundation, National Centre for Culture and Arts. In this essay, recorded with partners the British Council at the Haya Cultural Centre, Amman, she explai...

David Frum is a Washington-based political advisor and an editor of the Atlantic Magazine. He is also the former Special Advisor and speech writer to President George W Bush, and was working at the White House when America was attacked by terrorists on September 11th 2001. In this essay, recorded with BBC Partners the British Council at the United States Library of Congress, he explains how World...

Celebrated playwright and theatre director Wesley Enoch is a proud Noonuccal Nuugi man. During his career he has directed many plays by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artists. Building up to the First World War centenary, Wesley developed the Black Diggers project about the experience of indigenous soldiers in World War One with the playwright Tom Wright. In these special editions of The Es...

The poet and translator Sasha Dugdale explores the impact of the First War on the great Russian poet, Anna Akhmatova. Her focus is on the collection, White Flock, published in 1917, but written during the war. In many poems, Akhmatova mentions the war directly, and in others, echoes of loss and war sound, refracted through peculiarly Russian folk imagery. Sasha focuses on a two-part poem called 'J...

The long-running series in which scholars, writers and critics explore the impact of the First World War on individual artists through a single work of art. 4.The distinguished art critic, Richard Cork, discusses Pablo Picasso's designs for the Ballets Russes production, Parade, which premiered in Paris in 1917, with music by Erik Satie and a one-act scenario by Jean Cocteau. Picasso's sets and co...

Virginia Woolf spent the First World War on the Home front mainly in London. It was an anxious time; she lost several cousins in the conflict, and her brother-in-law Cecil Woolf died at the Front; in 1915 she suffered a mental breakdown. For Woolf the war had changed everything, and her three novels written soon after it - Jacob's Room (1922), Mrs Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927) - dis...

How great artists and thinkers responded to the horrors of the First World War in individual works of art. 2.Stand-Up comedian Arthur Smith presents a suitably Dada-esque account of Tristan Tzara's Dada Manifesto. Arthur Smith has long been fascinated by the Dada movement, which began one hundred years ago in 1915. His interest was re-ignited by a recent visit to the Cabaret Voltaire in Zurich, wh...

Further Essays in the major Radio Three series exploring how great artists and thinkers responded to World War One in individual works of art. 1.Rabindranath Tagore: Santanu Das explores the great Indian thinker's Nobel lectures Afer Rabindranath Tagore won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1913, he became one of the most feted literary figure of the war years. He was read at home but also in the...

To mark the anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, a series of essays about Napoleon Bonaparte and his relationship with a a group of writers. In this edition, Kirsteen McCue on singing and interpreting the history behind the 'Ettrick Shepherd' James Hogg's Scottish Napoleonic songs.

To mark the anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, a series of essays about Napoleon Bonaparte. When the writer Adam Nicolson was a teenager he lived with his father who was writing about Napoleon and 1812. What was it like?

To mark the anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, a series of essays about Napoleon Bonaparte. The writer Andrea Stuart was born and raised in the Caribbean. The subject of her second book Josephine de Beauharnais, the first wife of Napoleon, was born on Martinique to a wealthy white Creole family. In a narrative crossing back and forth between their shared Caribbean origins, Andrea Stuar...

Julia Blackburn tells an extraordinary tale of sleuthing for the ghost of Napoleon on St Helena, his last island and his final unsought home. The first of five essays as part of BBC Radio 3's 2012 Napoleon Season, marking two hundred years since his historic retreat from Moscow. Julia had long wanted to write about Napoleon's final days. She set off for St Helena and Longwood House - the Emperor's...

Winner of the Nobel Prize in 1923, William Butler Yeats is a commanding presence in 20th-century literature and has inspired, and occasionally infuriated, successive generations of readers, writers, and performers ever since. Marking the 150th anniversary of his birth on 13th June 1865, five of Ireland's leading cultural figures reflect on their relationship with his work. The authors include nove...

Winner of the Nobel Prize in 1923, William Butler Yeats is a commanding presence in 20th-century literature and has inspired, and occasionally infuriated, successive generations of readers, writers, and performers ever since. Marking the 150th anniversary of his birth on 13th June 1865, five of Ireland's leading cultural figures reflect on their relationship with his work. The authors include acto...

Winner of the Nobel Prize in 1923, William Butler Yeats is a commanding presence in 20th-century literature and has inspired, and occasionally infuriated, successive generations of readers, writers, and performers ever since. Marking the 150th anniversary of his birth on 13th June 1865, five of Ireland's leading cultural figures reflect on their relationship with his work. The authors include nove...