The Essay

Tom Shakespeare challenges stereotypical ideas about creativity and disability, by celebrating five disabled artists, discussing how their impairments fuelled their genius and demonstrating the variety and achievement of disabled lives.Abul 'Ala Al-Ma'arri became visually impaired in childhood and went on to become the most famous poet in the Arab world, but is still barely known in Britain. He was born near Aleppo in the year 973. Although welcomed in the literary salons of Baghdad, al-Ma'arri became an ascetic, who avoided other people, and refused to sell his poetry. Al-Ma'arri was notable as a religious sceptic; he deemed it a matter of geographical accident what faith people adopted, and rejected the idea that Islam had a monopoly on truth. He opposed all violence and killing, becoming a vegan and avoiding the use of animal skins in clothing and footwear. Al-Ma'arri is a distinguished, if rare, example of a rationalist in the Islamic world, and one who was writing half a millennium before the Enlightenment thinkers of the West such as Voltaire.

One hundred years ago the First World War set the course for the modern world: for the countries that took part nothing would be the same again. In these special editions of The Essay we gain an international perspective on the war as we hear from cultural figures from around the world taking part in an international series of events called The War That Changed The World, made in partnership with the British Council and the BBC World Service. Herlinde Koebl, is an artist and photographer known for her in-depth, political and thematic work. In this essay she draws on the experience of her latest project 'Targets' which was a series of documentary photographs of the targets used for training by soldiers in 30 countries. Contrasting accounts of First World War training, and quoting from contemporary soldiers, Herlinde Koebl asks what makes a soldier able to kill? The essay is performed in front of an audience at the Bundeswehr Military Museum in Dresden.

One hundred years ago the First World War set the course for the modern world: for the countries that took part nothing would be the same again. In these special editions of The Essay we gain an international perspective on the war as we hear from cultural figures from around the world taking part in an international series of events called The War That Changed The World, made in partnership with the British Council and the BBC World Service. Haris Pasovic lived through the Siege of Sarajevo and was the producer of Susan Sontag's legendary 1993 'Waiting for Godot', produced in the city during the war. Since then he has developed theatrical spectaculars with a special focus on the impact of war including The Red Line (11,500 chairs representing those killed in the siege) and 'The Conquest of Happiness' (a massive open-air theatre event for Derry Year of Culture based on the works on Bertrand Russell). His essay 'Divine Uncertainty' is a personal take the war in Bosnia and the First World War. In this essay, recorded at the Sarajevo Theatre of War, Haris explains how he sees politics as a force woefully out of step with science and playfully suggests that a theory of 'political relativity' is needed in which cultural identity is cushioned by tolerance.

One hundred years ago the First World War set the course for the modern world: for the countries that took part nothing would be the same again. In these special editions of The Essay we gain an international perspective on the war as we hear from cultural figures from around the world taking part in an international series of events called The War That Changed The World, made in partnership with the British Council and the BBC World Service. Joanna Bourke stunned academics and the reading public alike with her extraordinary study 'An Intimate History of Killing', since which she has written studies of Fear, Rape, Pain and Humanity. Shell Shock and the Shock of Shells draws on the letters and diaries of soldiers and their families. In this essay she returns to the First World War to reflect not only on shell shock, but also on the actual shells themselves, presenting her latest research into their physical impact and the language which evolved to describe them. Her essay was recorded with an audience at the Imperial War Museum in London.

One hundred years ago the First World War set the course for the modern world: for the countries that took part nothing would be the same again. In these special editions of The Essay we gain an international perspective on the war as we hear from cultural figures from around the world taking part in an international series of events called The War That Changed The World, made in partnership with the British Council and the BBC World Service. Tatyana Tolstaya is an internationally acclaimed Russian novelist and broadcaster, and well known in Russia as a scion of the country's most famous literary family. In this essay 'White Flowers', she tells a moving story from her own family, the story of her grandmother's chance encounter with British journalist William Stead. This is a poetic story about revolution, ideology and the individual, through which we glimpse a different future for Russia and for Europe. It is recorded with an audience at the Hermitage in St Petersburg, which was known as the Winter Palace when it was 'stormed' in 1917.

Christian Carion, Heroism and the Christmas TruceChristian Carion, Heroism and the Christmas TruceOne hundred years ago the First World War set the course for the modern world: for the countries that took part nothing would be the same again. In these special editions of The Essay we gain an international perspective on the war as we hear from cultural figures from around the world taking part in an international series of events called The War That Changed The World, made in partnership with the British Council and the BBC World Service. Christian Carion is the director of the French film 'Joyeux Noël' shortlisted for an Oscar in 2006. He is a child of farmers of the fields of northern France and grew up among the battlefields of the First World War. He has lost friends to the live ordnance which is still being ploughed up every year. This is a war which still claims lives. For this Christmas edition of The Essay, recorded with an audience at Hotel National des Invalides, in Paris - the historic and ceremonial heart of the French Arrmed Forces - Christian Carion will look at heroism and the truce of Christmas 1914.

Oscar-winning screen writer Frederic Raphael reads the final essay in his new series about living abroad across Europe, this time in Greece.It's the early 1960s, and the country is as yet undisturbed by mass tourism. As Raphael travels to a remote island, echoes of the classical world rub up against the realities of post civil war division, and a village life which has barely changed for centuries.

Part four sees the writer journey to early 1960s Italy, where he mixes ancient Roman history, with a very personal experience of some of the key players in the Italian film industry.

Oscar-winning screen writer Frederic Raphael continues his essay series about living abroad across Europe.In programme three Raphael gives an off-the-beaten-track perspective on Franco's Spain, during the late 1950s, where he lived in a small artistic community and witnessed the impact of grand politics on Spanish village life.

'Every man has two countries, his own and France' says Frederic Raphael, quoting Thomas Jefferson, as he begins part two of his essay series about living abroad across Europe.In this programme he explores his life as a young writer in the post-war Paris of Jean-Paul Sartre, and remembers his time living in the Cote d'Azur before it was a popular tourist destination.