Free Thinking

Authors Anne Fine and Romesh Gunesekera are Fellows of the Royal Literature Society who signed the Register on the same day. In the first of a series of conversations with writers who would have been sharing a stage at a literary festival, they talk to Shahidha Bari.

The Norfolk and Norwich Festival which would have featured the meeting of Romesh and Anne has more author interviews on its website https://nnfestival.org.uk/

Anne Fine's books include Goggle Eyes, The Granny Project, The Jamie Angus Stories, The Tulip Touch, Battle of Wills and her latest Blood Family. You can hear her discussing family life along with Tobias Jones, Tom Shakespeare and Professor Sarah Cunningham Burley in a Free Thinking Festival discussion called The Family is Dead, Long Live the Family https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06pswsk

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who turn their research into radio. You can find a series of Essays and postcards from them in playlists on the Free Thinking programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0144txn

Producer: Robyn Read

Rutger Bregman challenges ideas about the selfish gene, and survival of the fittest with stories of human co-operation and kindness as he publishes a book called Human Kind - A Hopeful History. Plus in Mental Health Awareness Week, Dr Sylvan Baker on rethinking the way we treat kids in care. And New Generation Thinker Christina Faraday on an anniversary of the fairground.

You can hear a curated selection of readings and music on the theme of travelling fairs and circuses on Radio 3's Words and Music programme broadcast Sunday afternoons at half past five and available for 28 days following on BBC Sounds https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04sv2wr

Producer: Robyn Read

From Indian cricket, a survey of the oceans to the women killed by Jack the Ripper: Rana Mitter with the second set of shortlisted authors for the history writing prize.

David Abulafia The Boundless Sea: A Human History of the Oceans

You can hear the other shortlisted historians in a progarmme broadcast on May 12th and available as an Arts & Ideas Podcast. It features

The winner of the 2020 Wolfson History Prize is announced on June 15th 2020.

In the Free Thinking archives you can find more history -

Producer: Robyn Read

From classical birds to Nazi legacies, Oscar Wilde to Queen Victoria in India, early building to maritime trading: Rana Mitter and an audience at the British Academy debate history writing and hear from the six historians on the 2019 shortlist. The books are:

Building Anglo-Saxon England by John Blair

The winner of the Wolfson History Prize 2019 was Mary Fulbrook. You can find Free Thinking discussions with the 2020 shortlisted historians being broadcast on Radio 3 and available as Arts & Ideas podcasts and there is a playlist showcasing new academic and historical research here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90

Producer: Jacqueline Smith

New takes on Chaucer, the Bible and African trading - Rana Mitter presents the first of 2 prograrmmes featuring 3 of the historians shortlisted for this year's history writing prize.

Marion Turner has written Chaucer: A European Life

A second programme will be broadcast on Tues May 19th hearing from the other shortlisted authors

The winner of the 2020 Wolfson History Prize is announced on June 15th 2020.

Producer: Robyn Read

Matthew Sweet looks at new research from Ludivine Broch, Daniel Lee, Hannah Elias and Cathy Mahoney into religion & propaganda on the radio + French soldiers in Yorkshire & a post WWII gratitude train sent by France and Italy to the USA.

Daniel Lee is a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker who teaches at Queen Mary, London. His books include Pétain's Jewish Children: French Jewish Youth and the Vichy Regime, 1940–42 and The SS Officer’s Armchair due to be published in September 2020.

Producer: Robyn Read

Daniel Lee has written a Radio 3 Essay about Vichy France Listen here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p038dvyt

You can find a collection of episodes of Free Thinking exploring different aspects of War & Conflict on the programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06kgbyb7 and Matthew's discussion with guests including Hadley Freeman on her family's WWII experiences in our discussion on Jewish Identity in 2020 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000fwqd

Jimmy Wales talks Diderot & collecting knowledge + Tariq Goddard on Mark Fisher aka k-punk. The French writer Diderot was thrown into prison in 1749 for his atheism, worked on ideas of democracy at the Russian court of Catherine the Great and collaborated on the creation of the first Encyclopédie. Biographer Andrew S. Curran and Jenny Mander look at Diderot's approach to editing the first encyclopedia. Plus writer and publisher Tariq Goddard on the work and legacy of his collaborator and friend, the critical theorist Mark Fisher who analysed the culture of Capitalism following the economic crash of 2008. Shahidha Bari presents.

Diderot and the art of Thinking Freely by Andrew S Curran is out now.

Producer: Luke Mulhall

You can find a playlist of programmes on the Free Thinking website on The Way We Live Now exploring ideas from boredom, to whether doctors should cry? the joy of sewing to ideas about consent. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p072637b

The Porpoise, Haddon's latest novel is now out in paperback. Anne McElvoy talks to him about the language of bloke, writing female characters and taking inspiration from Shakespeare and the legend of Pericles. The conversation ranges across his career in theatre, children's writing and stories for adults, the impact of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time which he published in 2003 and his recent illness.

Recorded in front of an audience as part of the BBC Proms Plus series of discussions.

You can find a playlist of In Depth Conversations on the Free Thinking website with guests including James Ellroy, Edna O'Brien, Sebastian Faulks, Margaret Atwood, Elif Shafak, Arundhati Roy, Zadie Smith, Hanif Kureishi and others. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04ly0c8

Producer: Fiona McLean.

The double life of the Bristol born Hollywood star of films including Suspicion, The Philadelphia Story and Charade. Matthew Sweet and guests imagine an evening in the film star's company. Born Archie Leach in 1904, he starred in films by Alfred Hitchcock, played opposite actors including Doris Day and Audrey Hepburn, Deborah Kerr, Sophia Loren and Katherine Hepburn, and sat on the board of MGM films, before his death in 1986.

Charlotte Crofts runs the bi-annual Cary Grant Festival and is an Associate Professor of Film-making at the University of the West of England.

The Cary Comes Home weekend in Bristol is due to take place 20-22 November 2020

Producer: Craig Smith

You can find more episodes of Free Thinking in which Matthew discusses films including

They are all in a playlist called Landmarks of Culture https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01jwn44

Presenter Rana Mitter is joined by guests Tony Juniper, Emily Shuckburgh, Dieter Helm and Kapka Kassabova to discuss Rachel Carson’s passionate book, Silent Spring, first published in 1962 and said to be the work which launched the environmental movement. Recorded at the 2019 Hay Festival.

Tony Juniper is a campaigner, sustainability adviser and writer of work including Saving Planet Earth and How many lightbulbs does it take to change a planet?

You might be interested in our episode Soil Stories which hears from agroecologist Jules Pretty and geologist Andrew Scott amongst others https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08fj505

You can find a collection of all the discussions of Landmarks of culture as a playlist on the Free Thinking website / and available to download as BBC Arts&Ideas podcasts https://bbc.in/2Jw9y5Q

Producer: Fiona McLean