Free Thinking

Enter a world where huts walk on chicken legs, fish grant wishes and Baba Yaga sharpens her iron tooth with writers Marina Warner and Sophie Anderson. Presented by Victoria Donovan.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

New research on slavery with historians Christienna Fryar, Kevin Waite, and Andrea Livesey. A Different Drummer was the debut novel of Kelley - first published when he was 24. Compared to William Faulkner and James Baldwin, it was forgotten until an article about it led to republication. Kelley died aged 79 in 2017. His story imagines the day the black population of a Southern US town decide to get up and all go. Canadian writer Esi Edugyan has imagined a black slave becoming a scientist in her novel Washington Black. Laurence Scott presents.

Historians Lee Jackson and Kathryn Hughes discuss what kept Queen Victoria's subjects amused indoors and outdoors. Presenter: Rana Mitter

Kathryn Hughes, historian and author of Victorians Unbound

Lee Jackson, the author of Palaces of Pleasure, How the Victorians invented Mass Entertainment.

Berlioz originally presented an early version of The Shepherd's Farewell - part of The Childhood of Christ, at this year's Proms - as the work of ‘Ducré’. It soon emerged that Ducré was not a forgotten 17th century composer, but a hoax created to satirize Parisian high society.

Shahidha Bari presents an exploration of the literary hoax - from Thomas Chatterton's invented 15th century monk to faked Shakespeare deeds and a racy "discovered" diary. She is joined Nick Groom, Professor of English at Exeter University and author of "The Forger's Shadow", to guide us through this long and rich tradition.

Clive Hayward brings these fraudsters, forgeries and fabulations to life with readings from some of the most creative and audacious examples.

Producer: Ciaran Bermingham

From Napoleon impersonators, caricature and ballads, to a play which asks what if he didn't die in exile - presenter Anne McElvoy is joined by actor and director Kathryn Hunter, biographer Michael Broers, historians Oskar Cox Jensen and Laura O'Brien and journalist Nabila Ramdani who looks at how Napoleon is viewed in 21st century France

Michael Broers has published the second instalment of his biography which is called Napoleon The Spirit of The Age.

Recorded as his film Peterloo opened in cinemas and repeated now to mark this week's 200th anniversary of the Manchester massacre

The award-winning author of young adult novels, Patrice Lawrence and historian Emma Butcher - who specialises in 19th century child soldiers - discuss the construction of childhood past and present with New Generation Thinker and literary scholar, Lisa Mullen.

Tchaikovsky’s letters to his brothers and to his nephew - to whom his final Symphony, the Pathétique, is dedicated - are fascinating insights into the composer’s turbulent life and work. Though his sexuality has, in particular, long been a topic of speculation, it is only recently that many of these previously suppressed letters have come to light.

Shahidha Bari presents a selection of the most intimate, witty and revelatory ones, with readings by actor and writer Tom Stuart. She is also joined by composer and pianist Rolf Hind, who will discuss why a "queer" reading of the letters might help our understanding of Tchaikovsky and his contested legacy.

Producer: Ciaran Bermingham

Novelist and Gothic literature specialist Elizabeth Lowry joins the writer, documentarist, film-maker and psycho-geographer Iain Sinclair to discuss the dark glitter of the Gothic and the work of the American poet Edgar Allan Poe, with presenter Matthew Sweet.

Elizabeth Lowry’s latest book is entitled 'Dark Water'

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

One way that people deal with grief and suffering is to turn to tragic stories for example and catharsis. Rana Mitter discusses tragedy, ancient and modern with the award-winning poet Clare Pollard, author of ‘Ovid’s Heroines’, and the literary historian, Jennifer Wallace, whose new book is ‘Tragedy Since 9 /11’