A Point of View

"I have a funny name. I know it," Adam Gopnik starts out. "Don't say it isn't or try to make me feel better about it...If I ever google myself, I find myself as often as not as Adam Gropnik." He explains its unglamorous origins and it's contemporary Russian connotations of meaning "a drunken hooligan". But the trouble is, he says "like every writer, I would like my writing to last". Little chance of that with a name like Gopnik, he believes. He bemoans why he hasn't a name like Jane Austen or Anthony Trollope. Writers are, he believes, condemned to greatness or otherwise, by their names. The great exception is William Shakespeare, whose ridiculous surname - much mocked in his day - is now part of everyday speech. Via a detour through name history, he reaches the conclusion that his fate is fixed. "I shall remain and say goodbye -- and then vanish as a, and A., Gopnik". Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Adam Gopnik reflects on our continuing obsession with the Nazis and ponders the place of the Second World War in our history. He writes: "A German friend once complained to me that educated Westerners often know far more about the German government in those five years of war than they do about all German governments in the sixty years of subsequent peace". Adam quotes a principle frequently used during internet discussions called "Godwin's Law". It states that "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler gets greater". Godwin's conclusion - broadly speaking - is that we should not mention the war. But Adam proposes what he calls "Gopnik's Amendment". "When we see the three serpents of militarism, nationalism and hatred of difference we should never be afraid to call them out, loudly, by name and remind ourselves and other people, even more loudly still, of exactly what they have made happen in the past". We should, he says, "never be afraid to mention the war". Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Adam Gopnik ruminates on how to handle a bad review.He ponders the various options. The first is to ignore it and claim the high moral ground, "the Big Ignore" he calls it. The second is to write a late night letter - or three - to the offending publication. But he now has a third option - passed on by a friend just the other evening - which he promises will produce delightful results.An amusing guide on how to get your own back on your critics.Producer: Adele Armstrong.

"One thing that is written into the human genome" says Adam Gopnik, "is that exactly at the age of thirteen, your child - in a minute, and no matter how close or sympathetic the two of you have been before - will discover that you are now the most ridiculous, embarrassing and annoying person on the planet".Ridiculous "because of your pretensions to be cool...in spite of the obvious truth that you are barely sentient, with one foot rooted in the dim, ancient past while with the other your toes are already tickling eternity"; embarrassing because, "in spite of being ridiculous, you are not content to keep your absurdity decently to yourself" and annoying because "in the face of the wild obvious public embarrassment you cause, you still actually think that you can give advice and counsel".He takes us on a generational analysis of the plight of the parent - and offers some light-hearted consolation!Producer: Adele Armstrong.

"There is something eerie, fated, cosmic about the Beatles" writes Adam Gopnik, writer for The New York Times. "They appear in public as a unit on August 22nd 1962 and disappear as a unit, Mary Poppins like, exactly seven years later".In this talk, he ponders exactly what it is that makes their music endure. Why is it, he asks, that one of the things people never say is "I don't like the Beatles". For his children, he says, "the Beatles are as uncontroversial as the moon. Just there, shining on". To underline how strange this is, he points out that had the same thing been true for his generation, then the pop music of his childhood would have dated from before the First World War. And that, he says "would have been more than bizarre". Gopnik concludes that the reason their music lasts is that it was a perfect collaboration of opposites. Producer: Adele ArmstrongFirst broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in June 2012.

"The other day" Adam Gopnik writes, "my son was working his way through the text of Shakespeare's 'Henry V' with an eye to a student production". He read Canterbury's famous speech on how the well regulated kingdom is like a bee hive. "How could Shakespeare know that much about the division of bee-labour" he ponders "and not know that the big bee in the centre was -- a girl bee?" Gopnik takes us - via a bunch of bee experts - on a journey of "long and buzzing thoughts". He discovers a transgendered bee in Virgil's Georgics, dressed up as a king bee. He finds himself deep in the world of the Dutch biologist, Swammerdam. "Swammerdam!" he writes. "One of those great Northern European names, like Erasmus of Rotterdam that carries its credibility within its consonants". He draws lessons about the theory of knowledge and the working of the human mind. He rejects the notion "that thought proceeds in fortresses as ordered and locked as a beehive seems to be." In truth, he argues, "no age thinks monolithically, and no mind begins with absolute clarity ... The sticky honey of uncertainty, the buzz around the beehive's entrance - these are signs of minds at work".Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Will Self reflects on the historical tradition of the Loyal Toast. A week before the Jubilee celebrations get underway, he muses on where deference is properly due."I have never risen for the Loyal Toast, and unless some apoplectic patriot holds a gun to my head I doubt I ever will" he writes.He suggests we should turn our thoughts to who else we might raise a toast to....personally, he believes it should be his postwoman. In that case, he says "I'd be on my hind legs before you could scream 'Treason!'"Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Will Self ponders the future of Europe as he stands by Berlin's Brandenburg gate. "As in Greek mythology" he writes, "the sun god Apollo Helios drives his chariot across the skies...so the charioteer and four horses that surmount the Brandenburg Gate...embody the idea of contemporary German nationhood". On his "quadriga-spotting tour", Will weaves his way through the complex history of this symbol and its relevance for the rest of Europe. In the end, he controversially asks whether "an end to the European Union in its current banjaxed form might allow all of us to experience a new dawn, drawn by a new charioteer". Producer: Adele Armstrong.

"Suppose you've spend the entirety of your working life pushing paper in an office and concocting ways of winning elections - then the heavy wooden door of Number 10 finally swings closed and....in the back garden, a couple of strapping fellows are parading up and down the lawn with Heckler & Koch machine guns around their necks, their mission: to stop the baddies scything you down".Will Self asks what can drive political leaders into the arms of the military. From the era of Margaret Thatcher on, he says, "a key aspect of the premiership seems to have become posing with tough, tough boys and their tough, tough toys". In Will Self's view, this close relationship between politicians and the military helps no-one. His solution - to bring back National Service. "The cry", he writes, "beloved of the ramrod-straight and the crew-cut is joined by me with all my bohemian heart". And he says he would be first in line! Producer: Adele Armstrong.

Fifteen years ago - Will Self writes - he had afternoon tea in the House of Lords with the late Conrad Russell. The distinguished historian was a hereditary peer who was entirely in favour of Lords' abolition. What Will Self remembers most about the encounter was the crumpets. "'Do have another crumpet" he'd say, 'they really are awfully good'". Fifteen years on, Will says: "Russell was right about the crumpets - and he was right about the hereditaries". He looks forward to the Queen's Speech, which is widely expected to include a bill on Lords reform. A waste of time, he believes. But that matters little in his view. "After all, the first bill to create an elected second chamber was introduced over a century ago - and doesn't this simply prove that the great and glorious fudge that's the unwritten British constitution thrives on such slow and organic change". Via what he calls the "Googlisation" of the political process, he attacks the move towards the centre ground by all three main UK parties. "We...are tormented by politicans who look the same, sound the same and spout so-called 'policies' that are usually only marginally different versions of the same routine ideas".Back at the Lords, he concludes, hereditary peers "are still busily tucking into their excellent crumpets. Yummy-yummy". Producer: Adele Armstrong.