Novelist Tahmima Anam plus was Nero a ruthless tyrant?

The Startup Wife is the title of Tahmima Anam's latest novel. Anne McElvoy talks to her about writing about the work/life balance and ideas about risk. New Generation Thinker Mirela Ivanova, from the University of Oxford, is researching Balkan history. She writes us a postcard about the strangely changing look of the main museum in Sofia, Bulgaria and why it's significant. And we look back at Roman history as the British Museum opens an exhibition Nero: the man behind the myth, talking to curator, Dr Thorsten Opper and historian, Tom Holland.

Producer: Ruth Watts

Tahmima Anam is taking part in the Hay Festival. Her novel The Startup Wife is being read on BBC Radio 4 from June 6th at 22.45 You can hear her on Free Thinking comparing notes about the writing life with crime author Ian Rankin in a conversation organised in partnership with the Royal Society of Literature and Bradford Lit Fest https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000khk6 She also discusses writing about love in her novel The Bones of Grace in a conversation with Alain de Boton and AL Kennedy https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b078xlft And she's written a Radio 3 Essay about her place of refuge https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000hwzc

Nero: the man behind the myth runs at the British Museum in London from May 27th 2021 to October 24th 2021.

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who turn their research into radio.

You can find information about Hay Festival at hayfestival.com

Image: Tahmima Anam Credit: Abeer Y. Hoque