A Point of View

"I will now pause for a full two seconds to allow you to throw things at the radio", begins Adam Gopnik. He's working hard, he claims, at a literary festival in Capri. While there he goes in search of a white staircase - the subject of his favourite painting in the world. As he searches, he reflects on art, life and "the sketchbook of the twenty first century", the iphone. Producer: Adele Armstrong.

"It seems indisputable, to me", writes Will Self "that what makes it possible for our attractions to each other to be as deep and profound as they are, is some sort of difference - whether it be given, or something we create". Will reflects on what a truly gender-fluid society might look like. Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Will Self gives a very personal view of high-rise buildings in the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower disaster. "As a commentator on the built environment", Will writes, "I've been too wry, too cynical and too disengaged over the past twenty years". "Grenfell Tower", he says, "was the bonfire of any remaining civic vanity in London ". Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Howard Jacobson reflects on the political ironies that are emerging following the election. What should our response be to losing politically?Producer: Adele Armstrong.

"The election has left many people wondering if politics has morphed into a wholly new condition" writes John Gray. He reflects on whether politics really has been turned upside down by a momentous election. He argues that the situation is not unprecedented but says "the election has punctured what was the ruling illusion of our age - the belief that we'd left behind the ideological antagonisms of the past". Producer: Adele Armstrong.

"It's late in the year to be making a resolution I'm probably going to break, but the words have to be spoken" writes Howard Jacobson. "I hereby renounce Middlemarch". Howard reveals what lies behind his obsession for George Eliot's greatest novel and why he can't stop hymning its praises and quoting chunks of it from memory. Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Howard Jacobson reflects on his home city's response to the Manchester attack. What confronts the city now, he says, is dealing with the fact that the perpetrator came from within itself. "All our cities shelter the same boy", he writes, "studiously immersed in the same story. And if we didn't know it before, stories can kill". Producer: Adele Armstrong.

As the season of literary festivals gets underway, Howard Jacobson tells us not to be lured by their appearance of being civilized. "The prevailing tone of sweet concord shouldn't be allowed to disguise the violent nature of creativity", he says. They're a fiercely competitive business for writers, he believes. "To write is to reconceive the world and only a God, or someone acting like a God, can do that...You don't want some other two-bit deity coming along and bagging the credit for what you've done". Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Howard Jacobson speaks up in defense of the metropolitan liberal elite. He ponders why the word "elitist" has acquired such negative connotations in some fields - but not in others. "It makes no sense to me to love the best when they are footballers or the SAS, but not when they are thinkers or even politicians".Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Howard Jacobson argues that talk of the dangers of artificial intelligence is premature. "The idea that if we feed enough lines of literature into a computer it will eventually be able to write its own Iliad", he writes, "is as preposterous as the old fancy that if a sufficient number of monkeys were given a sufficient number of Olivettis they would eventually hammer out a monkey Macbeth". Producer: Adele Armstrong.