Arts & Ideas

Turkey's best selling female writer, Elif Shafak, talks to Anne McElvoy about imagination and storytelling as she publishes her new novel The Architect's Apprentice. Her cosmopolitan voice is of parti...

11 Nov 201443min

Is man the only political beast? Can other animals be regarded as members of our democratic communities, with rights to political consideration, representation or even participation? Alasdair Cochrane...

10 Nov 201413min

Anne McElvoy explores whether it is worth getting hot under the collar about blue collar history with historian Alison Light, David Almond and Eliza Carthy. Once upon a time the working class were her...

10 Nov 201443min

Historian Alun Withey says beards can shed light on a whole range of things from medicine to the military. Pogonotomy - or the art of shaving - is about more than fashion. Recorded in front of an audi...

7 Nov 201413min

Daisy Hay from Exeter University explores the way in which Disraeli invented the modern politician as a man or woman of feeling, and asks whether the image he projected as an emotionally in-touch ever...

6 Nov 201413min

Which historical 'facts' should be burned on the fire? How do you comb ancient and recent times for evidence? Rana Mitter is joined by Helen Castor and Laura Thompson to discuss the ways mythmaking c...

6 Nov 201443min

Sophie Coulombeau on the origins of the custom for women to take their husband's name. Recorded in front of an audience at BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival of Ideas at Sage Gateshead. New Generati...

5 Nov 201413min

David Willetts MP and the writer and philosopher Roger Scruton discuss the best way to foster knowledge in schools and universities and whether politicians have become too professionalised. In an age ...

5 Nov 201444min