A Point of View

"To stand in the corridor of a crowded locked ward in a contemporary British mental hospital" writes Will Self, "is still to feel oneself closer to Hogarth's hellish vision of Bedlam, than any enlightened healthcare".Will tells the disturbing story of what happened to a friend, recently detained in a London psychiatric hospital. Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Tom Shakespeare is downsizing. But what to do with his books?He points out that he has nothing like the magnitude of problem faced by the Argentine-Canadian author, Alberto Manguel, a few years ago when he downsized from his medieval presbytery in France to an apartment in New York and had to deal with 35,000 books! Or even the 3,000 books Penelope Lively wrote about recently. But Tom ponders how few of his thousand or so books will be enough to live with.Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Tom Shakespeare on why he rejects the idea of a bucket list. He proposes instead an idea dreamt up by one of his mates - a list that rhymes with bucket but begins with an F. "Let's call it a Forget-it-list" he says. Tom shares the top ten items on his Forget it List this week. Producer: Adele Armstrong.

As we near the end of four years of collective reflection on the First World War, Michael Morpurgo talks of the importance of never taking peace for granted. "We have been looking back, remembering, or trying to", he writes, "because remembering a time and a war that none of us can remember is hard". He discusses one particular plan - the dream of a WW1 soldier - to make a new pilgrims way in No Man's Land. Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Michael Morpurgo argues it's time to think again over Brexit. "It is surely time to accept that we have made a mistake", he writes, "that whichever way we voted, things are not turning out the way we expected"."Or are we too proud?" he asks. Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Michael Morpurgo on a new initiative to help refugee children. Michael says "it shames us" that Britain in recent years has done so little to help child refugees. "There are fine examples of how our predecessors have shown great kindness towards the suffering of child refugees", he writes. He argues that we now need to follow their example. Producer: Adele Armstrong.

John Gray argues that in the Brexit debate, few Remainers seem to have noticed the illiberal and fragmented Europe that has recently come into being. "Illiberal forces are advancing across the European continent", he writes, with hard right politics strengthening their hold in many countries. He says the idea that staying in the European Union is a way of protecting liberal values is simply an "illusion".Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Sarah Dunant on her uneasy conundrum over inheritance tax. "Like most intelligent beings", Sarah writes, "I'm passionate about addressing climate change for future generations. But my urgency of commitment also comes from an attachment to one in particular - the next". The desire to hand something on has always been with us, but it raises big moral dilemmas. Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Adam Gopnik sets out to determine the difference between cliche and universal truth. Via Homer, Shakespeare and the Beatles, Adam observes that "the deepest statements in literature are very near relations to the dumbest statements in life". How can Homer get away with writing twenty lines about laundry?! And end up with an epic poem of great beauty. Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Will Self argues that the past is not "a foreign country". He says we often have delusions about the past because of our "failure to grasp how our present shapes our hindsight". Producer: Adele Armstrong.