‘There is no sun without shadows, and it is essential to know the night,’ the words of Albert Camus, a writer whose exploration of the absurd nature of the human condition made him a literary and intellectual icon. Camus was born in Algeria but is celebrated in France as one of its great twentieth-century novelists and philosophers. His first publishing success, The Stranger, focused on the absurdity of existence but in his later works, including The Plague and The Rebel, he developed his thoughts on the human instinct to revolt. But who was Albert Camus? How far were his ideas shaped by his Algerian upbringing and by the turbulent political times he lived through in the 1940s and '50s? Bridget Kendall explores these questions with three Camus experts: Nabil Boudraa, Algerian professor of French and Francophone Studies at Oregon State University, Eve Morisi, professor of French at Oxford University and Samantha Novello, research fellow in Political Philosophy at Verona University.(Photo: Albert Camus Credit: Kurt Hutton/Getty Images)

Fernando Pessoa is Portugal’s national poet and a giant of 20th Century literature but he’s also a writer who multiplied himself, who wrote under dozens of alter egos, ranging from an engineer trained in Glasgow in Scotland, to a hunchback who is helplessly lovesick, to a doctor and Latin scholar who’s a fervent Royalist. His masterpiece The Book of Disquiet, considered to be one of the defining works of modernist literature, is equally fragmented - written on scraps of paper and consisting of hundreds of virtually unordered manuscripts. So what makes Fernando Pessoa such a great writer and so relevant today? Joining Rajan Datar to discuss Fernando Pessoa and his many selves are his translator and biographer Richard Zenith, and the literary scholars and Pessoa experts Dr Mariana Gray de Castro and professor Bernard McGuirk.(Photo: Statue of Portuguese poet and writer Fernando Pessoa outside Café Brasilera, Lisbon, Portugal. Credit: Anne Khazam/BBC)

Albert Einstein’s inability to get a job on graduating has given hope to generations of students. Knowing what we know now about the genius scientist, it’s hard to avoid smiling on reading his father’s pleas to physics professors to give his son an academic post.Perhaps it was just as well that these attempts failed, as the job Einstein eventually secured gave him the opportunity to daydream. Assessing new inventions at the Swiss capital’s patent office, Einstein allowed his imagination to run riot, creating ‘thought experiments’ that questioned centuries of knowledge about time, space and motion. In 1905 he published a series of papers that scientists today still use as a reference point. While Einstein himself didn’t foresee the technological application of his work, his research has since been used as the basis of modern inventions such as the atomic bomb, lasers, solar panels and GPS. Neither did he realise immediately the potential of his theories to help us understand the beginning of the universe.Rajan Datar explores the complexity of Einstein’s theories as well as what made him tick, with expert guests Janna Levin, professor of physics and astronomy at Barnard College, Columbia University, USA; science historian Jimena Canales, author of The Physicist and the Philosopher: Einstein, Bergson and the Debate that changed our understanding of Time; and Matthew Stanley, professor of the history of science at New York University whose book Einstein’s War: How Relativity Conquered Nationalism and Shook the World was published in 2019.(Image: Portrait of German-born physicist Albert Einstein on his 75th birthday. Photo by American Stock/Getty Images)

Fans of Hollywood cinema may recognise the name Imhotep from the original The Mummy film from 1932, and its various remakes. In the movie, Imhotep (played by Boris Karloff) is an Ancient Egyptian high priest who was mummified alive because he had attempted to resurrect his forbidden lover. Fast forward several thousand years, and an archaeologist brings the mummy back to life, with dangerous consequences.The real Imhotep was a far cry from this Hollywood invention. A high priest yes, but also possibly the architect of the first monumental building fashioned entirely of stone, the Step Pyramid which dates from around 2,600 BC. Imhotep was also an adviser to one of the most important pharaohs, King Djoser, as text on a statue base found at the Step Pyramid confirms. Later generations revered Imhotep as a sage and a scribe, one of the highest honours a person could be paid in Ancient Egypt. He eventually became linked with the Greek god of medicine, Asclepius, and then worshipped as a saint. Bridget Kendall journeys through the centuries to understand all the different titles that have attached themselves to this legendary figure, with experts Dr David P Silverman, curator in charge of the Egyptian Section of the Penn Museum and Professor of Egyptology at the University of Pennsylvania, USA; Dr Salima Ikram, Distinguished Professor of Egyptology at The American University in Cairo, Egypt, and Dr Aidan Dodson, Honorary Professor of Egyptology at the University of Bristol in the UK.(Image: Step pyramid of King Djoser, Saqqara, Egypt Credit: Print Collector/Contributor/Getty Images)

"In the future everybody will be world-famous for fifteen minutes” is probably the best known quote attributed to Andy Warhol. Warhol was an American artist who became a superstar in the visual art movement known as Pop Art. He crossed the boundaries between art and celebrity becoming famous for what we now call branding, but the private Warhol was a deeply religious man and to his close relatives was known simply as ‘Uncle Andy’. In a world where some of what he predicted has come true, we look back at the life and work of this iconic figure.With Bridget Kendall to explore Andy Warhol are Eric Shiner the former Director of the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh USA and New York Director of London’s White Cube, Professor Jean Wainwright the British art historian and curator and a leading expert on Warhol and Andy Warhol’s nephew, the artist and illustrator James Warhola.(Photo: Andy Warhol. Credit: Ullstein Bild/Getty Images)

“I didn’t like my life, so I created my life,” the French fashion designer, Coco Chanel declared. And what a life it was: from her humble beginnings in an orphanage, Chanel blazed a trail as a fiercely independent woman, rising to become the toast of French high society. She mixed with the artists who defined modernism in the 1920s and ‘30s, and created a fashion empire which today is a multi-billion dollar business that still dominates the luxury clothes and accessories market.The suit, the little black dress and the handbag are just some of the items Chanel shaped in a career which covered much of the 20th century. Luxurious and elegant, but also practical, her designs gave women freedom to move and pursue the kinds of activities which were now opening up as society’s barriers were being broken down.But the woman herself was a web of contradictions. While she contributed to the emancipation of rich women, she limited her workers’ rights. And controversially, she was involved with a Nazi officer in occupied France during World War II. She even tried to capitalise on Nazi laws to seize back her hugely profitable perfume business, having previously sold the majority shares to a Jewish family.Joining Bridget Kendall to discuss the complex life of Coco Chanel are dress historian Amy de la Haye, author of Chanel: Couture and Industry and professor at the London College of Fashion; fashion historian Emilie Hammen from the Institut Français de la Mode in Paris; and Madelief Hohé, curator of the fashion and costume department at the Gemeentemuseum in The Hague, and the author of Femmes Fatales: Strong Women in Fashion.Image: Coco Chanel Credit: Roger Viollet/Getty Images

The vision of the future evoked in George Orwell’s last novel Nineteen Eighty-Four was so terrifying to its first readers that some claimed to be unable to sleep at night. When the book was adapted by the BBC for the new medium of television after Orwell’s death, millions became aware of the novel’s concepts and language which have since seeped into Western popular culture. Big Brother, Room 101, the thought police, doublethink: few novels of the 20th century have had such a lasting impact.Over the seventy years since its publication, world events have brought Orwell’s vision into focus at various points. The Cold War, the collapse of Communism, the rise of surveillance, and the inauguration of President Trump are among those moments in history which have made readers return to the novel time and again.Joining Bridget Kendall to discuss the origins of Orwell’s novel and its ongoing relevance are Professor John Rodden, author of George Orwell: Life and Letters, Legend and Legacy; journalist and writer Dorian Lynskey whose biography of Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Ministry of Truth, was published in 2019; and editor of the George Orwell Society Journal Masha Karp, writer of the forthcoming George Orwell and Russia (Bloomsbury Academic).Photo: A man holding a German translation of George Orwell's 1984. (Adam Berry/Getty Images)

For over two and a half thousand years the Ancient Greek Spartans have been known for their military might, discipline and self-sacrifice. Recent popular culture has portrayed them as the ultimate fearless warriors, especially ‘the 300’ Spartans who fought to the death at Thermopylae. But where does this image come from, and what do we really know about Spartan society and the peculiar utopia it tried to create? The city-state of Sparta has been admired for its stability, frugality, and the unusual social and sexual freedom of its women. But Sparta was also famous for its brutality towards its huge slave population, its authoritarian rule, and its policy of racial purity and eugenics that would eventually prove its undoing.Bridget Kendall talks to Christy Constantakopoulou, Professor of Classics and Ancient History at Birkbeck, University of London; Paul Rahe, Professor of History at Hillsdale College in the US; and Angie Hobbs, Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield.Photo: Statue of King Leonidas in Sparta, Greece (TPopova/Getty Images)

Antonie van Leeuwenhoek opened up a whole new world to us; he was the first to observe bacteria and other microscopic lifeforms which could not be seen by the naked eye. He is now regarded as the father of microbiology and yet he had neither scientific training nor university education, and spent his life first as a linen merchant and then a civil servant in a small Dutch city. To understand quite how game-changing Leeuwenhoek’s discoveries were, you have to imagine a world where just about everyone on the planet could only see things that were within the range of unaided human eyesight. Magnifying glasses were the preserve of a privileged few, and other optical instruments, such as simple telescopes and microscopes, were rarer still. So it’s little wonder that Leeuwenhoek was met with disbelief when he claimed that he had seen bustling, vibrant lifeforms in what for everyone was just a drop of clear, pure water.To find out how this extraordinarily curious Dutchman arrived at his discoveries, Rajan Datar is joined by Elisabeth Entjes who is one of the editors of Leeuwenhoek’s Collected Letters, Tiemen Cocquyt who as curator at the Boerhaave Museum of the history of science in Leiden has a special interest in Leeuwenhoek’s microscopes, and by biochemist and writer Nick Lane who is professor of Evolutionary Biochemistry at University College London.(Photo: Antonie van Leeuwenhoek's microscope. Credit: Rijksmuseum Boerhaave)

A man wakes up in the body of a verminous insect – this is the plot of one of the most celebrated short stories of all time – Franz Kafka’s 1915 novella The Metamorphosis. Dealing with the isolation and absurdity of modern existence, it has fascinated readers all over the world in its openness to varying interpretations, and the way it questions the very norms of society as well as literary form.Joining Rajan Datar to explore this most enigmatic work is Dr Carolin Duttlinger, the author of four books on Kafka and co-director of the Oxford Kafka research centre, Professor Alice Staskova, native of Kafka’s home city of Prague and specialist on Kafka and music, Dr Peter Zusi from the department of Czech Literature at University College London, and with the contribution of the Nigerian novelist Adrian Igoni Barrett who wrote his own take on The Metamorphosis – about a black man in Lagos who wakes up white.(Photo: Kafka's The Metamorphosis choreographed and directed by Arthur Pita at the Linbury Studio Theatre, Royal Opera House, UK. Credit: Robbie Jack/Corbis/Getty Images)