Stories of Love
Proust as an agony uncle, Romeo and Juliet rewritten as 21st century Welsh teenagers in a new drama by Gary Owen, the Lesbian coming of age novel by Rita Mae Brown that inspired the lead character in ...
14 Feb 202344min
Donkeys
From Orwell and Shakespeare back to Greek myth, Aesop, and early Christianity: Matthew Sweet and guests look at a cultural history of the donkey. EO, a film out in UK cinemas this month, follows the l...
9 Feb 202344min
The Heir of Redclyffe
Soldiers fighting in the Crimean War lapped up this story and it also influenced the young William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones who read it at Oxford. The Heir of Redclyffe, published in 1853, reflec...
9 Feb 202314min
Lady Macbeth
Playwright Zinnie Harris, author Isabelle Schuler and New Generation Thinker Emma Whipday and Michelle Assay have looked at the murdering husband and wife of Shakespeare's Scottish play. Chris Harding...
8 Feb 202344min
Berji Kristin: Tales from the Garbage Hills
Urbanisation, migration and ‘folk language’ are explored in the 1984 novel by Latife Tekin. The story is a carnivalesque fusion of contrasts like its title – where ‘Berji’ conjures images of an innoce...
8 Feb 202314min
Gwendolyn Brooks
Inner city life in Chicago's Bronzeville and the experiences of ordinary people inspired the first poetry collection published by Gwendolyn Brooks in 1945 and she followed this with a sequence of poem...
7 Feb 202345min
The mermaid-like Mélusine
The legend of Mélusine emerges in French literature of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries in the texts of Jean d’Arras and Coudrette. A beautiful young woman, the progeny of the union b...
3 Feb 202344min
Crossroads and TV soaps
Russell T Davies has written a 3 part mini-series - Nolly - about Crossroads star Noele Gordon. He joins Matthew Sweet along with screenwriter Paula Milne who wrote for Crossroads and Coronation Stree...
2 Feb 202344min
