Free Thinking

A motorbike adorned with a zebu skull is one of the central images of Djibril Diop Mambéty's classic 1973 film, whose title translates as The Journey of the Hyena. Listed as one of the 100 greatest fi...

21 Tammi 202244min

Love during a lockdown is at the centre of Sarah Hall's latest book Burntcoat. Monica Ali's new novel is called Love Marriage and looks at love across two cultures and different ideas about feminism, ...

18 Tammi 202244min

From Aldous Huxley to cat pictures by Louis Wain: altered states of consciousness can be induced by taking drugs, but they also include dreams, tiredness, grief, and various states of mental illness. ...

13 Tammi 202244min

The legend of Mélusine emerges in French literature of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries in the texts of Jean d’Arras and Coudrette. A beautiful young woman, the progeny of the union b...

12 Tammi 202244min

Do we underappreciate comic writing ? It’s 400 years since the birth of France’s great satirical playwright, Jean-Baptiste Pocquelin, better known by his pen-name Molière. Stendhal described him as “t...

11 Tammi 202244min

The conventional view of Neville Chamberlain's dealings with Hitler at the 1938 Munich Conference, paints him as weak and gullible - an appeaser. But why did appeasement become such a dirty word when ...

6 Tammi 202244min

From duels to hygiene and medical protection to the image of the gloved aristocrat whose hands aren’t coarsened by work: Shahidha Bari dons a pair of gloves as she finds out about tranks, fourchettes,...

5 Tammi 202244min

Matthew Sweet explores Belmondo's central role in the revolutionary cinema of 1960s France and how he became one of the most celebrated screen actors of his generation with Ginette Vincendeau, Lucy Bo...

4 Tammi 202244min