The Essay

How great artists and thinkers responded to the First World War in individual works of art Cartoonist and writer Martin Rowson reflects on Otto Dix's Der Krieg, a harrowing cycle of prints of wartime experience.In 1924, six years after the end of hostiliies, the painter Otto Dix, who had been a machine-gunner in the German Army, produced his 51 Der Krieg prints. Gruesome, hallucinatory, and terribly frank, these postcards of conflict tell the soldier's ghastly tale.Cartoonist Martin Rowson, whose own work is similarly direct and uncompromising, tells Dix's story, exposing what the War did to the man and ponders why Der Krieg remains such a powerful statement.Producer: Benedict Warren.

How great artists and thinkers responded to the Frst World War in individual works of art2.Sarah LeFanu reflects on Rose Macaulay's 1916 novel, Non-Combatants and OthersRose Macaulay is perhaps best remembered for her final novel, The Towers of Trebizond, but her biographer, Sarah LeFanu, has long believed that one of her earlier novels, Non-Combatants and Others, is a work of striking originality. She also argues for its importance to our understanding of the impact of the First World War not only on soldiers at the front but on the entire nation.The books which have become the foundational texts of our perception and understanding of the war are all by men who had served as soldiers - Edmund Blunden, Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves - but all were written more than a decade later, when their authors had had time to shape and mediate their experiences through a process of post-war reflections.The immediacy of Non-Combatants and Others - written and set in 1915 - is another reason for its claim to be regarded as a key text of the war.Sarah LeFanu brings the novel alive by interweaving a re-telling of its story with her reflections on how it sheds light on Macaulay's own changing attitude to the war, and her later commitment to the League of Nations Union and the Peace Pledge Union.Producer : Beaty Rubens.

How great artists and thinkers responded to the First World War in individual works of art 1. BBC Correspondent Allan Little reflects on C.R.W.Nevinson's great 1917 painting, Paths of GloryC.R.W.Nevinson's painting, Paths of Glory, is a distant cry from the rallying recruitment posters which appeared at the start of the war. It depicts the bloated corpses of two dead soldiers, stretched out in the mud, against a backdrop of tangled barbed wire, somewhere on the Western Front.Unsuprisingly, it was censored at the time.Perhaps part of its shock value was in its title. In his Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, the 18th century poet, Thomas Gray, had declared "the Paths of Glory lead but to the grave", but in Nevinson's painting, the two fallen soldiers are far from the comfort even of a grave in an English country churchyard, and, indeed, from any decent burial at all.In his many years as a BBC Special Correspondent, Allan Little has witnessed some shocking scenes of war and has also reflected on the depiction of war in news footage and photography as well as in the works of contemporary war artists.He considers the continuing power of Nevinson's painting and the role of art both in recruiting soldiers and in denouncing war.Producer; Beaty Rubens.

It's over the mountains, it has no major roads, it's too dangerous, or tourists don't get it at all. Five writers with a desire for travel or living elsewhere, recall a city that once captured their hearts and minds for reasons of secrecy or isolation, or simply being off limits.Simon Calder recalls the small-scale delights of Holguin in Cuba. It' so different to the capital city, but worth the detour - if you can get there!Producer Duncan MinshullFirst broadcast in April 2013.

It's over the mountains, it has no major roads, it's too dangerous, or tourists don't get it at all. Five writers with a desire for travel or living elsewhere, recall a city that once captured their hearts and minds for reasons of secrecy or isolation, or simply being off limits.Travel writer Michela Wrong sees beautiful Italianate buildings, and all things Futurist - in Africa. In Asmara, the capital of Eritrea, to be precise.Producer Duncan MinshullFirst broadcast in April 2013.

It's over the mountains, it has no major roads, it's too dangerous, or tourists don't get it at all. Five writers with a desire for travel or living elsewhere, recall a city that once captured their hearts and minds for reasons of secrecy or isolation, or simply being off limits.Vanora Bennett describes Makhachkala in Russia as 'beyond the mountains', yet these days it's on the brink of enormous change...Producer Duncan MinshullFirst broadcast in April 2013.

It's over the mountains, it has no major roads, it's too dangerous, or tourists don't get it at all. Five writers with a desire for travel or living elsewhere recall a city that once captured their hearts and minds for reasons of secrecy or isolation, or simply being off limits.The novelist Romesh Gunesekera can't wait to tell us about Kunming, which is so unlike any other modern Chinese city...Producer Duncan MinshullFirst broadcast in April 2013.

It's over the mountains, it has no major roads, it's too dangerous, or tourists don't get it at all. Five writers with a desire for travel or living elsewhere recall a city that once captured their hearts and minds for reasons of secrecy or isolation, or simply being off limits.Novelist Nicholas Shakespeare once lived in Hobart, Tasmania, and reveals to us its convict and whaling past, and the story of a monkey...Producer Duncan MinshullFirst broadcast in April 2013.

Recorded at the Laugharne Live Festival 2014, in the grounds of Laugharne Castle, West Wales. Five leading writers and artists reflect on the ways in which they connect with one of Wales's most famous cultural exports, Dylan Thomas. Poet and musician Twm Morys explores the links between Wales's poetic heritage and Dylan Thomas's writing. Drawing on memories of living in Thomas's hometown of Swansea, he considers whether Thomas's writing is universally acknowledged to represent the cultural landscape that nurtured its creation.

Five leading writers and artists reflect on the ways in which they connect with one of Wales's most famous cultural exports, Dylan Thomas. Linking up from New York, writer, poet and activist Kevin Powell looks at Dylan Thomas's far-reaching influence on Black American writers, from his own introduction to Thomas's words in the new poetry and spoken-word scene happening in New York in the early 90s, to the new wave of Black American artists inspired through hip-hop, spoken word and America's oral tradition. Recorded in front of an audience at the Laugharne Live Festival.