The Essay

The trial of sisters begging on the streets of South London led to donations sent in by Victorian newspaper readers and an investigation by the Mendicity Society. New Generation Thinker Oskar Jensen, from Newcastle University, unearthed this story of the Avery girls in the archives and his essay explores the way attitudes to former slaves and to the reform of criminals affected the sisters' sentencing. Producer: Ruth Watts Ten New Generation Thinkers are selected each year to share their research on radio as part of the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. You can find a collection of discussions, essays and features from academics who have been part of the scheme over the past ten years on the Free Thinking programme website. You can hear more from Oskar in a Free Thinking programmes called Victorian Streets, Busking and Billy Waters. His book Vagabonds: Life on the Streets of Nineteenth-century London is out now.

An 8-year-old who condemns his own mother to execution in 1582: New Generation Thinker Emma Whipday, who researches Renaissance literature at Newcastle University, has been reading witch trial records from Elizabethan and Jacobean England to explore how they depict single mothers. And she finds chilling echoes of their language in newspaper articles in our own times.Producer: Ruth Watts Emma Whipday is a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker 2022 on the scheme which puts research on the radio. You can find her sharing her thoughts on Free Thinking episodes about Lady Macbeth, Shakespeare, Cross-dressing, Step-mothers, and Tudor families.

The noisy Victorian world annoyed the mathematician, philosopher and inventor Charles Babbage, who came up with the idea of a programmable computer. He wrote letters complaining about it and a pamphlet which explored ideas about whether the sea could record its own sound, had a memory and could broadcast sound. New Generation Thinker Joan Passey, from the University of Bristol, sets these ideas alongside the work done by engineers cabling the sea-bed to allow communication via telegraph and Rudyard Kipling's images of these "sea monsters." Producer: Torquil MacLeod New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the Arts and Humanities Research Council in partnership with BBC Radio 3. Ten early career academics are chosen each year to share their research on radio. You can find a collection of discussions, features and essays on the Free Thinking programme page. Joan Passey can be heard in Free Thinking episodes discussing Cornwall and Coastal Gothic, Oceans and the Sea at the Hay Festival 2022, Vampires and the Penny Dreadful.

Race relations aren't always thought of as being linked with the experimental writing and art promoted by the Bloomsbury set in 1920s Britain but New Generation Thinker Jade Munslow Ong, from the University of Salford, argues that without a group of South African authors who came to Britain we might not have Virginia Woolf's Orlando. But Roy Campbell, William Plomer and Laurens Van der Post weren't the only writers from that country with a Bloomsbury connection. A founder of the Native National Congress - later the ANC - was also hard at work on a novel which depicted an interracial friendship. Producer: Ruth ThomsonNew Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year to turn their research into essays, features and discussions. You can find a collection featuring their insights on the Free Thinking programme page, available on BBC Sounds and to download as the Arts and Ideas podcast. You can hear more from Jade in discussions called Modernism around the World and South African writing.

There are 43 tidal islands around the UK, accessible just briefly each day, along beguiling and perilous paths.As the tide retreats, five writers walk their favourite causeway to islands of refuge, pilgrimage, magic and glamour.Today, WN Herbert follows in the footsteps of pilgrims to Lindisfarne and reflects on the causeway connecting to a meditational space and how we are all now connected by various versions of a tidal causeway, advancing and retreating through social media.Across the series:Claire McGowan sees time change as she enters the freezing waters off Burgh Island and sips cocktails in the art deco hotel bar.Ben Cottam almost gets stuck in the mud as he searches for the grave of a black slave and questions his family’s past at Sunderland Point. And between kite surfers and dog walkers, Patrick Gale is suspended between two worlds as he follows the S shaped causeway, shaped by relentless tides and currents to St Michael’s Mount.Evie Wyld boards the ferry at Lymington pier and retraces a path well-travelled in her childhood -the Western Yar on the Isle of Wight.As sea levels rise and the sands shift, causeways are in flux. The essayists draw us down onto the sands, revealing what these liminal routes mean to both them and the cultural history of the UK.Producer: Mohini Patel

Five Bicycle-Shaped Musings from writer, raconteur and life-long cyclist Andrew MartinToday Andrew Martin discusses all the reasons there are to get cycling. Today just 2 per cent of journeys are made by bike in the UK although our European neighbours in Holland and Belgium put us to shame with far higher levels of enthusiasm for the humble velocipede. But cycling used to be the default method of transport for many in the UK and with all the health and environmental benefits that cycling brings, there is now a stronger movement than ever to encourage us all to get back on our bikes.Written and read by Andrew Martin Produced by Karen Holden

Five Bicycle-Shaped Musings from writer, raconteur and life-long cyclist Andrew MartinOn a visit to bucolic Derbyshire, Martin pootles happily along a disused railway on a Sustrans National Cycle Network. Early cyclists resisted dedicated cycle lanes; today cycle lanes are regularly created to foster the new cycling boom.Written and read by Andrew Martin Produced by Karen Holden

Five Bicycle-Shaped Musings from writer, raconteur and life-long cyclist Andrew MartinIn this episode the sport of cycling and the problem of the MAMIL (Middle-Aged Man in Lycra) as scrutinised by staunch utility cyclist Andrew Martin. He is amused to discover that Lycra endows a speed advantage of 0.0001% over a three-piece tweed suit and a pipe. Written and read by Andrew Martin Produced by Karen Holden

Five Bicycle-Shaped Musings from writer, raconteur and life-long cyclist Andrew MartinToday how socialism and cycling conjoined. A traditionally working-class transport mode is counterpointed with the idea of the cyclist as supreme individualist, riding on pavements and ignoring red lights. Cycling clubs today focus on environmentalism and sociability rather than socialism, but their slogan is still ‘Fellowship is Life.’ Written and read by Andrew Martin Produced by Karen Holden

Five Bicycle-Shaped Musings from writer, raconteur and life-long cyclist Andrew Martin.Growing up in York, a flat cycling town, despite failing his Cycling Proficiency Test, Martin had about 30 bikes in the 1970s. Crossbars have since become top tubes, oil become lube, cycle clips become trouser bands. He resisted mountain bikes in the 80s as ugly and pompous and anyway never cycled up mountains. He currently owns a Dawes racer, aka road bike, and still cycles daily, finding himself now engaged in – thanks to congestion, environmentalism and Covid – a fashionable pursuit.Written and read by Andrew Martin Produced by Karen Holden