The Forum

From the moment the seven-year-old Rudolf Nureyev saw a ballet on stage in his local theatre, he lived and breathed dance. That overwhelming desire to be on stage carried him throughout his life – from his student days in Leningrad to his defection to the West in a blaze of publicity, from theatres around the world to his final curtain in 1992 when his gaunt body was ravaged by Aids. He made good on his promise: “the main thing is dancing, and before it withers away from my body, I will keep dancing till the last moment, the last drop.”In a career spanning more than three decades, he brought new audiences to ballet, and gave new meaning to the role of male dancers. He was a pin-up, a performer whose stage presence and artistry was so mesmerising that those who saw him perform in the 1960s have never forgotten the experience. His leaps defied gravity; he gave the impression of floating through the air. But his demands for perfection could make him a difficult person to be with. His temper was as legendary as his dancing. Bridget Kendall explores how Nureyev’s commitment to transcend his childhood in grinding poverty made him one of the world’s most celebrated dancers, with writer Julie Kavanagh, author of Rudolf Nureyev: The Life; writer and translator, Irina Klyagin, who looks after Harvard University’s extensive theatre collection and specialises in Russian ballet; and Thierry Fouquet, vice chair of the board of trustees of the Rudolf Nureyev Foundation who worked with Nureyev during his time at the Paris opera, the home of France’s leading ballet company.(Photo: Rudolf Nureyev In 'Aureole'. Credit: Linda Vartoogian/Getty Images)

John Harvey Kellogg is best known, along with his brother, for changing the way the world ate breakfast. But cornflakes were actually a by-product of Dr Kellogg’s lifelong mission to improve the dietary health of patients at his Battle Creek Sanitarium, a once world-famous medical centre and spa in the US state of Michigan that he ran from 1876 to 1943. Here Kellogg preached the art of ‘biologic living’: a healthy vegetable-based diet, avoiding alcohol, cigarettes, caffeine and meat, and getting plenty of exercise and fresh air. This was a revolutionary way of living at the time in the US, and Kellogg’s work influenced many of our current ideas about food and its relationship to bodily health, and the concept of ‘wellness’.Rajan Datar discusses John Harvey Kellogg’s life story with Howard Markel, Professor of the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan; Laura J. Miller, Professor of Sociology at Brandeis University in Massachusetts; and Brian C Wilson, Professor of Comparative Religion at Western Michigan University.Image: John Harvey Kellogg Credit: Library of Congress/Getty Images

Indigo: not only one of the seven colours of the rainbow and the dye that makes your jeans look like they do but and a highly valued pigment which is naturally found in some plants and whose use can be traced back at least six thousand years to Peru. Such was the desirability of indigo that along with sugar, cotton, coffee and tobacco it became a major driver for globalised trade and the horrors of slavery. In India it was the source of so much exploitation that a lawyer called Gandhi rose to fame standing up for indigo farmers. Rajan Datar explores the rich history of the dye with Jenny Balfour-Paul, an Honorary Research Fellow at Exeter University and author of Indigo: Egyptian Mummies to Blue Jeans; Lucille Junkere, an artist and textile researcher with a particular interest in the history of indigo in Nigeria and the Caribbean; and Andrea Sella, a professor of chemistry at University College London who delights his students with all kinds of colourful experiments with indigo.Photo: Detail of adire indigo cloth from Nigeria. Credit: Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Domesticated cats are thought to have started living alongside humans more than 9000 years ago. Unlike dogs, it's believed cats domesticated themselves, entering the homes of early arable farmers in the Fertile Crescent to control the rodent population. Since then, they've been worshipped, vilified and revered by various societies around the world. Today, they are one of the world's most popular pets, living on every continent except Antarctica and a favourite on the internet, and yet, they will never have that image of loyalty that is associated with dogs.Rajan Datar welcomes three experts in science, culture and archaeology to discuss the history of the domesticated cat: Katharine Rogers - a Professor Emerita of English Literature from City University of New York and author of numerous books including 'Cat' and 'The Cat and the Human Imagination'; Eva-Maria Geigl - an Evolutionary geneticist at the French National Research Institute CNRS; and John Bradshaw - an anthrozoologist from Bristol University, UK, and author of the book 'Cat Sense'.Photo: Copy of wall painting from private tomb 52 of Nakht, Thebes (I, 1, 99-102) cat eating fish, 20th century Credit: Ashmolean Museum/Heritage Images/Getty Images

Manuela Sáenz was an Ecuadorian revolutionary who for many years was most famous for her role as the lover of Simón Bolívar - the Venezuelan military leader who secured independence from Spain for a number of countries in South America between 1819-1830. Sáenz left her British husband for Bolívar, or 'The Liberator' as he was known, and famously saved the leader from an assassination attempt, earning her the name 'Libertadora'. But Sáenz was a political force in her own right, receiving various honours for her work for the revolutionary cause. She continued her involvement in politics right to the end of her life while exiled in Peru, acting as a spy and creating a network of informants.As many countries in what used to be known as 'Gran Colombia' celebrate 200 years of independence from Spain, Bridget Kendall speaks to three experts about Manuela Sáenz's key role in the independence struggle: Pamela Murray, professor of history at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and author of the biography For Glory and Bolívar: The Remarkable Life of Manuela Sáenz; Matthew Brown, professor in Latin American history at the University of Bristol, UK; and Marcela Echeverri, associate professor at Yale University's Department of History in the United States.(Photo: Portrait of Manuela Sáenz in 1825 by Pedro Durante. Credit: Museo Nacional de Arqueología, Antropología e Historia del Perú)

The invention of the electric telegraph in the mid-19th century brought about a revolution in human communication that some argue rivals the printing press and the internet. Suddenly the ‘tyranny of distance’ could be overcome – messages that once might have taken days or even weeks to arrive could be sent almost instantly using Morse code signals. Soon wires reached across continents and under oceans, connecting the world as never before, and radically changing areas such as commerce, diplomacy, journalism and warfare forever.Bridget Kendall discusses the telegraph’s extraordinary impact with Roland Wenzlhuemer, Professor of Modern History at the University of Munich; Bruce J Hunt, Professor of History at the University of Texas; and Gillian Cookson, Historian of Engineering and Research Fellow at the University of Leeds.Photo: Old-fashioned telegraph pole in Rhineland, Germany Credit: bibi57/GettyImages

Made from the simple juice of the poppy, opium is arguably the oldest and most widely used drug in the world. Since prehistoric times it has been used to relieve physical pain and quieten troubled minds. It has enabled medical breakthroughs, and inspired some of the greatest Romantic poets and composers. But opium, and its later derivatives morphine and heroin, has also brought addiction and untold misery and death, destroyed families, and corrupted entire countries. Its trade has provoked wars, and is still making global headlines today, from its production in Afghanistan to the opioid crisis in the United States.Bridget Kendall explores opium’s long and complex history with Doris Buddenberg, former head of United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Afghanistan, and curator of a recent exhibition on opium; Zhou Xun, Reader of Modern History at the University of Essex; and Mike Jay, author and cultural historian, whose books on the history of drug use include ‘High Society’.Image: Opium poppy flower Credit: yamatao/Getty Images

‘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)