Free Thinking

Anne McElvoy is joined by the Booker Prize-winning writer Julian Barnes to discuss the painters he admires, and his new collection of essays on 19th and 20th century artists. The Pakistani novelist and women's rights activist Bapsi Sidhwa talks about her 1978 novel The Crow Eaters, which is about to be re-published. And Anne discusses poetry inspired by light, and in particular the work of Jackson Mac Low with James Wilkes and Greg Lynall.

Philip Dodd reports on the first night of Carol Ann Duffy's new adaptation of Everyman with Elaine Storkey, Michael Arditti & Tim Stanley and also talks to the the play’s choreographer Javier De Frutos. Clive James reads a new poem and the New York-based Iranian intellectual Hamid Dabashi talks about his book Can Non-Europeans Think.

Matthew Sweet interviews Alberto Manguel about his new book, Curiosity. As Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland turns 150 and a new exhibition opens at the Museum of Childhood in London, New Generation Thinker Naomi Paxton, and curator Kiera Vaclavik, consider the cultural impact of the Mad Hatter's Tea Party. And as Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd is released in the cinema, we ponder the Victorian writers who fall in and out of fashion in the modern era with Will Abberley.

As Caryl Churchill's Light Shining in Buckinghamshire is revived at The National's Lyttelton Theatre, Anne McElvoy hears how it resonates with current historical research with historians Justin Champion and Emma Wilkins. Anne also visits the British Museum's exhibition Indigenous Australia: Enduring Culture in the company of curator Gaye Sculthorpe, and hears from australian aboriginal scholar Christine Nicholls. And then joined in the studio by anthropologist Howard Morphy to discuss the difficulty of translating the concept of Dreamtime into english and the role its related art has played in shaping views of aboriginal history and contemporary frustrations.

Philip Dodd explores what a world view of Shakespeare means. Guests include Globe Director Dominic Dromgoole, Professor Sonia Massai from Kings College London, Preti Taneja, Global Shakespeare Research Fellow and a Radio 3 New Generation Thinker and Professor David Schalkwyk, head of Global Shakespeare.

Caryl Phillips talks to Matthew Sweet about his new novel The Lost Child which re-imagines Heathcliff. The Shakespeare scholar Stanley Wells will be discussing his new book, Great Shakespearean Actors. The writer Lesley Lokko joins Matthew to discuss the events in South Africa after statues have been removed and vandalised. And a first night review of Eugene O'Neill's only comedy Ah, Wilderness! with Susannah Clapp.

Anne McElvoy is joined by the German novelist Eugen Ruge, British author Lawrence Norfolk, the journalist Oliver Kamm; and the literary historians, Karen Leeder and Julian Preece for a programme devoted to Günter Grass and his landmark novel, The Tin Drum published in 1959.

Philip Dodd considers violence in culture with crime writer Frances Fyfield, historian Professor Richard Bessel, Forensic Psychiatrist Mayura Deshpande, and writer Peter Stanford

As Mexico takes centre stage at London's Book Fair Matthew Sweet speaks to two of the country's award-winning writers - Valeria Luiselli and Francisco Goldman. Playwright Simon Stephens talks about transplanting Carmen into a modern urban idiom. And Christopher Doyle: No Glass Twice as Big as It Needs to Be - the cinematographer and film director has his first solo art show in Europe opening at London Gallery Rossi & Rossi.

Rana Mitter discusses a new model for understanding the brain, with researcher and writer Norman Doidge. Polish film director Krzysztof Zanussi talks about his latest film - Foreign Body - and a new touring festival of classic Polish cinema selected by Martin Scorsese. Activist Srdja Popovic is a proponent of non-violent protest and was a founder of the student movement Otpor! which helped to bring about the downfall of Slobodan Milosevic. He and writer Kate Maltby talk about the strengths and weaknesses of peaceful resistance.