The Essay

From 1941 to 1968 Catherine Fletcher's grandfather Donald Hudson was a missionary in India. Catherine tells his story during those turbulent years and reflects on the way British people with family history in India understand that past - in this the anniversary year of the end of colonial India.Originally from Yorkshire, Donald Hudson arrived in Dhaka, now in Bangladesh, to find a city in chaos amid communal riots. He stayed for two years and then moved to one of the most significant British missionary institutions in India, the Baptist Missionary College at Serampore, outside Kolkata, where he was based through famine and then Partition in 1948.Catherine Fletcher is a Radio 3 New Generation Thinker from Swansea University.Recorded as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead.New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select 10 academics each year who work with us to turn their research into radio. Producer: Luke Mulhall.

New Generation Thinker Katherine Cooper looks at literary refugees in the Second World War and tells the untold story of the work done by British writers to save their European colleagues. She shows how HG Wells, Rebecca West and JB Priestley became intertwined with the lives of writers fleeing persecution on the continent. Katherine peeps into drawing rooms, visits the archives of PEN, scrutinises the correspondence and draws on the fiction of key literary figures to explore crucial allegiances formed in wartime London. Why did these British writers believe that by saving Europe's literary voices they were saving Europe itself?Katherine Cooper is Senior Research Associate at the University of East Anglia, School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing. Recorded as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival in front of an audience at Sage Gateshead.New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select 10 academics each year and then work with them to turn their research into radio.Producer: Torquil MacLeod.

New Generation Thinker Edmund Richardson with the story of Alexander the Great's lost city, buried beneath Bagram airbase, a CIA detention site and wrecked Soviet tanks. For centuries, it was a meeting point of East and West. Then it vanished. In 1832, it was discovered by the unlikeliest person imaginable: a ragged British con-man called Charles Masson, on the run from a death sentence. Today, Alexander's lost civilization is lost again. And Masson? For his next trick, he accidentally started the most disastrous war of the nineteenth century.Edmund Richardson's Essay tells the story of the liar and the lost city, of how the unlikeliest people can change history.Recorded in front of an audience as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 with the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio.Producer: Jacqueline Smith.

New Generation Thinker Louisa Egbunike from Manchester Metropolitan University considers images of war and ghosts of the past. News reports of the Biafran war (1967-1970), with their depictions of starving children, created images of Africa which have become imprinted. Biafra endured a campaign of heavy shelling, creating a constant stream of refugees out of fallen areas as territory was lost to Nigeria.Within Igbo culture specific rites and rituals need to be performed when a person dies. To die and be buried 'abroad', away from one's ancestral home or to not be buried properly, impedes the transition to the realm of the ancestors. Louisa Egbunike explores the legacy of the Biafran war and considers the image of those spirits unable to journey to the next realm, and left to roam the earth.Recorded in front of an audience as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select 10 academics each year who can turn their research into radio.Producer: Zahid Warley.

The ruined priory of Tynemouth nestles on a Northumbrian clifftop, staring out at the fog and foam of the North Sea. In the 14th century it was a proving ground - and occasional prison camp - for monks from the wealthy mother monastery of St Albans. But the monks here didn't just isolate themselves, pray and complain about the food (though they did do those things). They also studied astronomy. Writing treatises, computing tables and designing new instruments, they contemplated the nature of a divinely-wound clockwork universe.New Generation Thinker Seb Falk from the University of Cambridge brings to life a world where science and religion went hand-in-hand, where monks loved their gadgets, and where a wooden disc, a brass ring and some silk threads were all you needed to model the motions of the stars.Recorded as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival in front of an audience at Sage Gateshead. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio.Producer: Jacqueline Smith.

Author and broadcaster Sarah Churchwell describes the spell that female stars of the 1930s and 40s have over her.From Joan Crawford, the 'working girl', to someone regarded as 'the quintessential Diva' – none other than Bette Davis. Apart from appearing in some great films, she had the eyes and the laugh, and could smoke like a dragon!Produced by Duncan Minshull.First broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in March 2017.

Five writers recall a night they spent somewhere out of the ordinary.Naomi Alderman signs up for a trip to the Arctic, but has to spend a lot of time in her bunk bed. When she feels better and ventures across the ice, small but vital revelations are at hand ...Producer Duncan Minshull.

Five writers recall a night they spent somewhere out of the ordinary.John Walsh lies in a hammock in the jungle in Guyana, with his new friend Helen close by. At two in the morning they set off to explore the undergrowth and soon encounter some other sleepers ...Producer Duncan Minshull.

Five writers recall a night they spent somewhere out of the ordinary.Philip Hoare was thrown off his bike and spent a night in a hospital observation ward. The bed is tiny, the sheets strap him firmly in. Then he takes a look at his fellow patients ...Producer Duncan Minshull.

Five writers recall a night they spent somewhere out of the ordinary.Rachel Cooke was on assignment in the wilds of Scotland, reporting on a deer hunt. Exhausted, after a peaty-coloured bath, bedtime approaches. Dreams ensue and also the rattling of her door-knob ...Producer Duncan Minshull.