The Forum

With its multiple narrators, superb and complex characterisation, the influence of Don Quixote de la Mancha has been acknowledged by great writers through the ages as a masterpiece, and hailed as one of the most important novels in the history of literature. On the surface the novel appears to be a comedy – of situation, of language and of character – but its author Cervantes succeeds in making Do...

They’re slimy and slippery. They’re part of the green film you see on garden ponds. They can clump together and wash up on the shores of beautiful beaches. A lot of them are invisible to the naked eye. These underappreciated organisms called algae are indispensable to the presence of life on earth but not all is straightforward about them. They can be single celled or multi cellular. They can be u...

The Goths were a Germanic tribe infamous for their brief sack of Rome in 410 AD but their cultural and political influence was felt throughout Europe for centuries. They re-shaped the Balkans, preserved the Roman way of life in Italy and presided over a cultural flourishing in Spain. But how, many centuries after their demise, did they come to give their name to an important architectural style in...

The 1821 Greek war for independence from the Ottoman empire became an inspiration for people all over Europe who wanted to dismantle the old multi-ethnic empires. But it is less well known that a number of women played key roles in the uprising. In this programme, Bridget Kendall and guests focus on Laskarina Bouboulina, perhaps the best known of Greek women freedom fighters. For the last two cent...

For someone who was largely self-taught, Mary Somerville's rise to renown in the male-dominated world of science was quite remarkable. Although women were barred from being members of the learned societies where knowledge was shared in the early 19th-Century, Somerville found alternative ways to become one of the most respected figures in maths and science of her day. Scottish-born Somerville play...

One of the earliest Cold War conflicts was a 12-year guerrilla war commonly known as the Malayan Emergency and fought from 1948 in the jungles of what is now Malaysia. This communist insurgency was fuelled not only by ideology but also by the desire for Malayan independence from British colonial rule. There have been a number of books and documentaries devoted to the subject but relatively few in...

The Devils, The Possessed, or Demons, as it’s also known in translation, is Fyodor Dostoevsky’s most political novel but it’s also his bleakest and funniest. It’s a hundred and fifty years since its publication and two hundred years since its author’s birth. The novel tells the story of a group of young revolutionaries who run riot in a small provincial town in Russia, all under the indulgent eye...

If you had to name the innovations that have transformed human civilisation, you might suggest the printing press or the Internet, but the humble pair of spectacles has also revolutionised the way many of us experience the world. It's said that an astonishing three quarters of those in the US use glasses or contact lenses to correct their vision. And the World Health Organisation estimates that mo...

Whether photographed in a coffin or depicted on an Art Nouveau poster, the French actor Sarah Bernhardt knew exactly how to get maximum publicity. Although her first outings on the stage were unremarkable, she refined her skills and rose to become the leading actor of her generation and a world-famous name. Her life off-stage was a further source of endless fascination, her eccentric and occasiona...

We seem to have an almost insatiable appetite for the glitter and sparkle of diamonds. Yet transforming these stones into jewels fit for princesses and film stars involves a long chain of production and distribution. And the diamond industry has long been bound up with a much darker side: the exploitation of workers, environmental damage, all-powerful monopolies and violent mafias, not to mention...

Eva Peron rose from a childhood of poverty to become one of the most powerful figures in Latin America. An illegitimate small town girl, she smashed class and gender barriers to become Argentina’s controversial First Lady. Loved and loathed, Rajan Datar discusses her life, work and remarkable afterlife with biographer Jill Hedges, historian Ranaan Rein, and cultural theorist Claudia Soria. [Photo:...

It’s one of the most popular dishes in the world today, but the story of sushi can be traced back more than 2,000 years. The earliest records document a preserved fish dish in ancient China and it later became a medieval luxury in Japan, before evolving into a variety of different regional styles and recipes. Today, thanks to waves of migration from Japan, there is a veritable smorgasbord of inter...

The American writer Toni Morrison once said, “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” It was an urge which in her case yielded a rich array of novels, children’s books, plays and essays. Toni Morrison stands tall, as the first black woman of any nationality to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Celebrated for her masterpiece Beloved...

Hidden from view, complex to understand and often controversial, algorithms are at the heart of computer coding that underpins modern society. Every time we search the internet, every time we pay by credit card, even the romantic partners suggested to us by online dating sites – they’re all powered by algorithms. And their reach is growing all the time, as some societies use them to automate decis...

Whether it be a kerrang, a chop, a blistering solo, some finger picking or a subtle flange, the electric guitar is one of the defining sounds of the 20th century. Without it – and its constant companion, the amplifier - popular culture would be unrecognisable today: no big gigs, no stadium concerts. And almost certainly no rock music. But why was it needed and how was it created? Who were the pion...

It’s a hundred years since the infamous premiere of Luigi Pirandello’s experimental play Six Characters in Search of an Author, when an enraged Rome theatre audience yelled abuse at the Italian playwright and chased him out of the theatre. Since then, the play has gained iconic status as a piece of theatre which helped move Western culture into modernity. But what of the author of this play? He wa...

With three separate missions exploring the Red Planet in 2021, Mars is once again under the spotlight. But to tell the truth, it’s never been away. Mars has fascinated people for centuries with its seemingly curious motion in the night sky, its red colour and the eternal question as to whether it may or may not harbour life, past or present. Since the 1960s, robotic exploration of Mars has provide...

The writer Amir Hamza is a national hero in Indonesia celebrated for both his poetry and his role in the development of the country’s national language. Hamza was an emotional man who struggled with thwarted love and inner conflict and created a beguilingly intense body of work. His poetry paid homage to Malay literary tradition infused with Islamic mysticism but also reflected new ideas springing...

David Lewis was of one of the most remarkable nautical explorers of modern times. In the mid-1960s, he took his wife and two small daughters - who were less than five years old - on a sailing trip around the world in a small catamaran. What is more, for one part of the journey, he rejected standard 20th-Century navigational equipment and relied on much older methods of finding his way across the P...

Patricia Highsmith was one of the most successful suspense writers of the 20th century. Known especially for her novels The Talented Mr. Ripley, Carol and Strangers on a Train, she created complex and alluring characters, capable of terrible things and at the same time deeply human. Yet for much of her life, Highsmith herself remained an enigmatic figure, often seen as eccentric, troubled and diff...

Over a thousand years ago in the city of Bukhara in modern-day Uzbekistan, a young man was gaining a reputation for his great medical knowledge. His name was Ibn Sina and he was to go on to become one of the most influential physicians and philosophers not just in the Islamic world, but also in the West, where his writings were translated into Latin under the name Avicenna. For over 500 years, his...

Completed in 1914, the Panama Canal has long been regarded as a triumph of American ingenuity, a conquest over nature that helped secure the United States’ position as a world power. Taking ten years to build, it opened up new trading routes between East and West by providing a vital waterway between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. But what was the real story behind this challenging engineering p...

Ida Pfeiffer's desire to see the world was like many childhood fantasies - destined to remain just that. And yet at the age of 44 once her sons had reached adulthood, she set off from her home in Vienna on a series of journeys that no woman of her time or background had contemplated. Beginning with a trip to the Middle East, Pfeiffer travelled mostly alone, documenting her voyages and collecting s...

How did we get from not having any reliable way of predicting the weather just 150 years ago, to today's accurate, tailor-made forecasts for places as small as a village? Bridget Kendall and guests trace the history of meteorology, from its first steps as an aid to quicker trans-Atlantic shipping to the latest methods which can help anticipate weather events as short-lived as a tornado. Bridget is...

A young immigrant to the USA who started out working in a draper's shop, Emile Berliner ended up paving the way for the world of recordings and home entertainment that we delight in today. But even before he got to work on his recording machine - which he would later call the gramophone - Berliner made a major contribution to another piece of technology that's very familiar to us today: the teleph...