Free Thinking

Anne McElvoy explores some historic tussles over who read what, when, how and why. Bodleian scholar Dennis Duncan reveals how disputatious monks took the book out of the monastery; the novelist and Ne...

1 Nov 201644min

New Generation Thinker Chris Harding presents a discussion with writer Chris Hannan and director Roxana Silbert about a new Birmingham Rep play about Enoch Powell. Also James Zirin describes what he c...

27 Okt 201643min

Does art have to reflect politics and history in South Africa? Is it harder to make art now than it was in the past? As major exhibitions of South African art open in London and Edinburgh Philip Dod...

27 Okt 201645min

Richard Hakluyt who died on 23 November 1616 was an English writer whose writings promoted the British colonisation of North America by the English. Nandini Das talks to Matthew Sweet about Hakluyt's ...

25 Okt 201647min

Artes Mundi was established in 2003 as a biennial contemporary visual arts initiative - the poet, author and playwright Owen Sheers and Catherine Fletcher, historian and New Generation Thinker, report...

20 Okt 201644min

Artist Dave McKean on the way Paul Nash's dreams have inspired a graphic novel.Ahead of the 60th anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution, Philip speaks to poet George Szirtes, who left the country as ...

19 Okt 201644min

How do you restore a silent film? Kevin Brownlow is in conversation with Matthew Sweet about his life's work documenting the early history of cinema and preserving many lost classics - including the c...

18 Okt 201644min

The award of this year's Nobel Prize in Literature to Bob Dylan is discussed by writer Toby Litt and by Anthony Wall, the Editor of BBC TV's Arena series who co-produced the Martin Scorsese documentar...

13 Okt 201644min