Charles Dickens. Walt Disney. The Romantic poets..These renowned artists and entertainers were all accused of being “over-sentimental”. But is our own age topping them all – with its culture of grief memoirs, gushing obituaries and feel-good fiction? Three Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature join Rana Mitter at the Free Thinking Festival to take a hard look at whether contemporary culture has “gone soft”.

Lisa Appignanesi is the author of books including Everyday Madness: On Grief, Anger, Loss and Love; Mad, Bad, and Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors; All About Love: Anatomy of an Unruly Emotion and Trials of Passion: Crimes in the Name of Love and Madness. She is Chair of the Royal Society of Literature Council.

Irenosen Okojie is author of a novel Butterfly Fish and a short story collection Speak Gigantular - surreal tales of love and loneliness. She has written for The New York Times, The Observer, and The Huffington Post and is currently running a writing workshop at London’s South Bank.

Rachel Hewitt’s books include A Revolution of Feeling:The Decade that Forged the Modern Mind and Map of a Nation: A Biography of the Ordnance Survey. She is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Newcastle University, where she is also Deputy Director of the Newcastle Centre for Literary Arts.

Producer: Zahid Warley