Arts & Ideas

The idea of ‘emotions’ did not exist until the nineteenth century but now they are the subject of study and Professor Thomas Dixon was the first director of Queen Mary University of London's Centre for the History of the Emotions. He is currently researching anger and has explored the histories of friendship, tears, and the British stiff upper lip in books Weeping Britannia: Portrait of a Nation i...

The writers of TV sitcoms The Likely Lads, Porridge and Auf Wiedersehen, Pet talk to Matthew Sweet. As a restoration of the film version of The Likely Lads is released, Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais discuss depicting working lives in the 1960s, the pretensions and social changes of the '70s and how their characters might have voted over Brexit. The Likely Lads film has been restored and made ava...

From politics to religion, gangster films to espionage, Philip Dodd considers acts of betrayal, with theologian, Elaine Storkey, columnist Peter Hitchens, author Jenny McCartney and historian Owen Matthews. Producer: Craig Templeton Smith

A history of orphans in Britain, fears about post war brainwashing, childrens' letters to C19 newspapers and portraits on show at Compton Verney. Anne McElvoy presents. New Generation Thinker and historian Emma Butcher is researching writing from children about the trauma of war. She visits Compton Verney. Jeremy Seabrook is researching the treatment of orphans from the 17th century onwards. Histo...

Authors Max Porter, Samantha Harvey and Alisdair Benjamin discuss empathy and the role it plays in writing and reading. How does it work? Is it the same in fiction and non-fiction? And how is it faring in a world where data sometimes seems to have replaced feeling. Chris Harding talks to all three about their latest books, Lanny, Let Me Not be Mad and the Western Wind in his search for answers. Le...

Valeria Luiselli talks to Laurence Scott about the desert border between Mexico and USA & capturing the sound, history and contemporary politics in her novel Lost Children Archive. The poet George Szirtes' first prose work brings his Hungarian mother superbly to life and works backwards through the years to explore the truth of being alive in the world. And Pulitzer-prize-winning short story w...

Artist Hew Locke and historians Suzannah Lipscomb, Aanchal Malhotra & Anindya Raychaudhuri talk to Rana Mitter about using objects and archives to create new images of the past, from Guyana to India and Pakistan to women in C16th France. Suzannah Lipscomb's book The Voices of Nîmes: Women, Sex, and Marriage in Reformation Languedoc uses the evidence of 1,200 cases brought before the consistori...

Painter George Shaw, crime writer Dreda Say Mitchell and drama expert Katie Beswick join Matthew Sweet to look at depictions of estate living - from the writing of Andrea Dunbar to SLICK on Sheffield's Park Hill estate to the images of the Tile Hill estate in Coventry where George Shaw grew up, which he creates using Humbrol enamel - the kind of paint used for Airfix kits. Plus a view of the Frenc...

Gazelle Twin (Elizabeth Bernholz), Julia Bardsley, Hannah Catherine Jones, Luke Turner & William Fowler join Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough and an audience at Café OTO at the Late Junction Festival for a debate about trends within British culture. Gazelle Twin (Elizabeth Bernholz) is a British composer, producer and musician Julia Bardsley,is a performer and lecturer Hannah Catherine Jones is a...

Lying about a sexual attack, resisting parental pressures to marry, using the law to fight for inheritance and divorce. Shahidha Bari talks to the fiction writers Ayelet Gundar-Goshen and Layla AlAmmar about their new books which depict girls who feel they need to conceal truths about sexual encounters. Historian Jennifer Aston looks at examples of nineteenth century British women fighting for div...

How self-revealing and frank should a writer be? Lara Feigel, David Aaronovitch, Melissa Benn and Xiaolu Guo join Matthew Sweet to look at the life of Doris Lessing and her 1962 novel in which she explores difficult love, life, war, politics and dreams. Inspired by her re-reading of Doris Lessing, Lara Feigel has written a revealing book which is part memoir part biography called "Free Woman: Life...

The photographers, David Bailey and Don McCullin, came to prominence in the 1960s but their pictures did more than define a decade. Don McCullin's work in Vietnam, Biafra, Northern Ireland, Cyprus and the Middle East have come to epitomise what we mean by war photography and David Bailey's portraits of Jean Shrimpton, Mick Jagger and Catherine Deneuve established a new idiom for glamour. Yet fame...

Shahidha Bari talks to Fatimah Asghar about poetry and the Emmy nominated web series Brown Girls. We have a look at the miniatures of Nicholas Hilliard and Isaac Oliver – court painters to Queen Elizabeth and James the first who both feature in an exhibition which invites visitors to pick up a magnifying glass to inspect every detail of their jewel-like images. Plus the popular history of sewing w...

Laurence Scott, Will Self and New Generation Thinkers Lisa Mullen and Danielle Thom look at redundant features in design plus a visit to Collect: International Art Fair for Modern Craft and Design, presented at the Crafts Council, at the Saatchi Gallery in London. And, we discuss the 19th century French novelist Karl-Joris Huysmans as art critic, with Huysmans scholar and translator Brendan King....

Historian Hallie Rubenhold reveals the previously untold stories of the five women killed by the Ripper and challenges the myths that have grown up around the Whitechapel Murders of 1888.

Fumio Obata and Jocelyne Allen discuss graphic art and manga.

What is required of a good leader in an age of disruption? Jamie Bartlett, Professor Mary Kaldor, Dame Louise Casey, Dame Heather Rabbatts, Rupert Reid debate at the London School of Economics. Anne McElvoy chairs. Jamie Bartlett is writer and technology industry analyst at the think tank Demos. Mary Kaldor is Professor of Global Governance at LSE. Louise Casey is former head of the Respect Task F...

Shahidha Bari talks poetry and the web series Brown Girls, plus the history of sewing.

How loud should you be? Italian American performer Patti LuPone talks to Philip Dodd about why she doesn’t consider herself an American, her politics, unsuccessful auditions, backbiting, corporate entertainment, #Me Too. Her career has taken her from a Broadway debut in a Chekhov play in 1973 to performances in the original productions of plays by David Mamet and musicals including Evita on Broadw...

Poet Andrew McMillan, philosopher and psychologist Laura Mucha, poet and novelist Lavinia Greenlaw & writer Elanor Dymott explores who and why we love. Presented by Anne McElvoy. Laura Mucha has written Love Factually: the science of who, how and why we love Andrew McMillan's new book of poetry is called Playtime Lavinia Greenlaw's novel In the City of Love's Sleep is out in paperback and her...

West Africa has a fundamental place in the shaping of the modern world and its story is told in a new history by Toby Green. He joins Rana Mitter in the Free Thinking studio alongside Xue Xinran who explores China's recent history through the lives and relationships of one family and Dennis Duncan of the Bodleian Library muses on why the English needed English dictionaries and the desirability of...

The film-maker Spike Lee talks to Matthew Sweet about black power and prejudice, the politics of blackface, and the Oscars as his film BlacKkKlansman is nominated for six Academy Awards. Since 1983, his production company has produced over 35 films. His first film in 1986 was a comedy drama She's Gotta Have It filmed in black and white which he turned into a Netflix drama in 2017. In 1989 Do The R...

Self-knowledge, intellectual vices & conspiracy theories are debated by Professor Quassim Cassam and presenter Matthew Sweet. Plus New Generation Thinker Simon Beard discusses an exhibition of artwork commissioned by the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk. And a re-release of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 1973 sci-fi TV series Wire World on a Wire takes us into cybernetics and art...

Jimmy Wales talks Diderot & collecting knowledge + Tariq Goddard on Mark Fisher aka k-punk. The French writer Diderot was thrown into prison in 1749 for his atheism, worked on ideas of democracy at the Russian court of Catherine the Great and collaborated on the creation of the first Encyclopédie. Biographer Andrew S. Curran and Jenny Mander look at Diderot's approach to editing the first ency...

Gilet jaune and novelist Edouard Louis, food expert Fabio Parasecoli, journalist, Gavin Mortimer and the historians Jerry White & Joanna Marchant with Philip Dodd. Whether it’s Berlin, Moscow or the Paris of the gilet jaunes - streets play a vital role in our history and culture. They're focal points of celebration and of protest ; they're gathering places for the young and old; places for a p...