Arts & Ideas

Inspired by Beethoven's penchant for musical jokes, Sahidha Bari is joined by writer Meg Rosoff for a selection of readings of comic fiction from Kingsley Amis to Paul Beatty. The reader is Carl Preko...

28 Jul 201820min

Ever since the ancient Greeks, writers have waxed lyrical about rural life, associating it with beauty, innocence and goodness. Will Abberley, BBC New Generation Thinker and senior lecturer in English...

27 Jul 201836min

Helen Macdonald, author of H Is For Hawk and Tim Birkhead, Professor of Behaviour and Evolution at the University of Sheffield and author of Bird Sense, share their experiences of observing birds clos...

27 Jul 201833min

Lauren Elkin, author of 'Flaneuse' and BBC Radio 3 New Generation Thinker Seán Williams talk to Rana Mitter about the joys of a wandering life and the inspiration that walking brought to writers from ...

25 Jul 201821min

Sarah Dillon and novelist Richard Beard on narrative voices in literature

21 Jul 201820min

Longus’s charming pastoral novel Daphnis and Chloe about teenage love and pirates was written in the second century AD. Tim Whitmarsh, AG Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at Cambridge, discusses hi...

17 Jul 201821min

Why We Need the Novel Now. Man Booker Prize winner Howard Jacobson delivers a keynote lecture and talks to presenter Shahidha Bari and an audience at the Southbank Centre in London as part of the Man ...

12 Jul 201850min

Helaine Blumenfeld is a sculptor who divides her time between her family in England and her work-family in Italy. As an exhibition featuring much new work opens in Ely Cathedral, she talks to Anne McE...

12 Jul 201848min