Family ties and reshaping history
From the influential part played by Sikh queens, through the ties of marriage and religion which helped shape the Western world, back to the links between Neanderthals and early man: Rana Mitter talks...
17 Sep 202044min
New Thinking: The Mayflower and Native American History
From fancy dress parties using native American head-dresses to the continuing significance of Wampum belts made of shells - how do particular objects help us tell the story of the colonisation of Amer...
16 Sep 202048min
Piranesi and disturbing archecture
Susanna Clarke, Adam Scovell, Lucy Arnold and Anton Bakker are Matthew Sweet's guests. Susanna Clarke talks about the inspiration behind the follow up to her best-selling first novel, Jonathan Strange...
15 Sep 202045min
The Radiophonic Workshop
The BBC Radiophonic workshop was founded in 1958 by Desmond Briscoe and Daphne Oram. This group of experimental composers, sound engineers and musical innovators provided music for programmes includin...
6 Aug 202043min
Greek classics and the sea plus a pair of novels byTolstoy and Dostoevsky
Classicists Edith Hall and Barry Cunliffe explore the importance of the sea in the classical world in a discussion hosted by Rana Mitter. Pat Barker and Giles Fraser look at Tolstoy's War and Peace a...
29 Jul 202041min
Wole Soyinka's writing
Novelist Ben Okri, playwright Oladipo Agboluaje and academic Louisa Egbunike join Matthew Sweet to look at the influential writing of Nigerian playwright and author Wole Soyinka - and specifically at ...
29 Jul 202045min
Bernard-Henri Lévy, Stella Sandford, Homi K Bhabha
The French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy has written a philosophical take on the current pandemic and what it tells us about society. He talks with Stella Sandford, Director of the Society for Europe...
28 Jul 202045min
Anne Applebaum, Ingrid Bergman, Herland
Anne Applebaum's new book The Twilight of Democracy has the subtitle The failure of democracy and the parting of friends. She talks to Anne McElvoy about what happened when she tried to connect up wit...
23 Jul 202045min
