Megan Nolan questions why women writers still struggle to be taken seriously.'The appearance of the woman writer', she says, 'is often clumsily welded together with her work in an effort to make the two inseparable, or indeed to act as a sort of explanation of her work, that she is able to create it at all'.Megan discusses the pressures this imposes.Photo credit: Sophie DavidsonProducer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Penny Murphy

Will Self reflects on success...and failure. 'Ours is a society', he writes, 'in which that hoary old saying, 'Nothing succeeds like success', has been elevated to the status of a political, philosophic and indeed moral credo.' But, Will argues, this is a world typified by hyperbole and exaggeration, where the successful, 'with plenty of cake to eat, have no need to partake of the true bread of life, which is, of course, failure'. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Penny Murphy

Linda Colley argues that President Putin's invasion of Ukraine is a wake-up call which should remind people that the days of empire are far from over. And these enduring imperial habits, she says, are evident in some unexpected quarters - not just in places like Russia and China. 'When Donald Trump floated the idea of the US purchasing Greenland in 2019, this was widely dismissed as just another Trumpian eccentricity', she writes. 'But this 'real estate deal' as the former president characteristically described his Greenland project, was actually in line with large portions of American history'. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Rod Farquhar Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

John Connell goes fishing in northern Spain, home to one of the oldest populations of Atlantic salmon in the world. But he discovers a world on an ecological edge - with water at dangerously low levels, distraught fishermen and virtually no fish. 'What is a fish without a river?' he asks. 'Indeed what is a river without a fish?' Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Neil Churchill Production Coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Sara Wheeler has just been appointed the authorised biographer of the travel writer, Jan Morris. But she faces a dilemma. She's concerned that she is 'effectively appropriating the story of a woman who appropriated hundreds of other stories'. How, she wonders, can she navigate this tricky territory. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

From boyhood, through young adulthood, to the present day, Howard Jacobson ponders his relationship with dancing.As summer festivals get underway across the UK, Howard tries to understand the attraction.'I didn’t dance to Paul McCartney in the 60s, and I’m not going to start now... dancing isn’t what I do,' he says. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Tom Shakespeare decided several years ago he was no longer going to fly for pleasure. But his father's cousin - who lives in the US - has just turned 90 and he'd love to see her again. He describes his fraught decision - as he grapples with his environmental conscience.Reading from WH Auden's poem, 'Musée des Beaux Arts'. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

As the Tory leadership election highlights questions of social mobility, David Goodhart looks at why some people seem to have more luck than others. To what extent can we create our own opportunities, regardless of background? What role does personality play? And is it really possible to engineer and cultivate our own luck by being open to chance encounters? Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

'We're witnessing a major change in British politics,' writes John Gray. 'But to what?' With Boris Johnson on the way out, many Conservatives, he says, believe the party needs a new 'big idea'. But that is a fundamental error, he believes. 'What the party needs is not another new philosophy but a healthy dose of pragmatism...new thinking, but not some grand new theory'.Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Penny Murphy

Zoe Strimpel argues that wealth creation should be the bedrock of politics. She says that while she loathes the arrogance sometimes displayed by the super rich - especially in the present climate where millions are sinking into poverty - it's not billionaires who are the problem. 'My view is that we need not fewer billionaires but more, the richer the better,' she writes. 'In fact, the more rich people the better'. Hatred of billionaires, she believes, is perplexing at a time when government can't, or won't, fill huge gaps in funding. Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith.