Past Present Future

The second episode in our live series from the Regent Street Cinema explores Louis Malle’s My Dinner with Andre (1981), in which two men discuss the meaning of theatre, capitalism, love, science, fait...

21 Des 20251h 6min

Today it’s the first in our series of live episodes recorded at the Regent Street Cinema in London: David talks to the crime writers Nicci Gerrard and Sean French (aka Nicci French) about Alfred Hitch...

17 Des 202559min

Today’s episode explores the trials of Nelson Mandela, variously charged by South Africa’s apartheid state with treason, incitement, illegal foreign travel, sabotage and conspiracy across a decade tha...

14 Des 20251h 5min

Today’s episode is about a momentous trial and the incendiary book that followed: the trial was of Adolf Eichmann, convicted by an Israeli court in 1961 of orchestrating the Holocaust, and the book wa...

10 Des 20251h 5min

Today we return to our series about epoch-making trials with the case of the book they tried and failed to ban. In 1960 Penguin Books was prosecuted at the Old Bailey under the new Obscene Publication...

7 Des 202558min

David talks to novelist Ian McEwan, who was our first ever guest on PPF, about how the future will view our present once the disasters we are brewing come to pass. How might humanity scrape through th...

3 Des 20251h

Today’s episode is the second part of David’s conversation with historian Robert Saunders about the life and legacy of Margaret Thatcher. What is the meaning of Thatcherism in the twenty-first century...

30 Nov 20251h 3min

Today’s episode in our occasional series about momentous political anniversaries with historian Robert Saunders looks at the life and legacy of Margaret Thatcher one hundred years on from her birth. W...

26 Nov 20251h 9min