Arts & Ideas

TV shows Hinterland and Hidden are bilingual using Welsh and English. Caryl Lewis, who has written scripts for these TV dramas and award-winning novels, joins Catherine Fletcher for an exploration of Cymraeg, the Welsh language. We hear from Richard King, whose book Brittle with Relics is an oral history of Wales in the second half of the twentieth century, Dr Elen Ifan from Cardiff University, and composer, performer and actor Seiriol Davies, whose new musical Milky Peaks is set in the 'bosom of Snowdonia'. Caryl Lewis's many novels include Martha, Jac a Sianco and Y Gemydd and she has just published her first novel written first in English and it is called Drift. Producer: Ruth Thomson

How decoding Erewash, Trent, Averham and other field, river and place names from old maps can help us understand flooding patterns in Britain. Dr Richard Jones, Associate Professor of Landscape History at the University of Leicester is one of Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough’s guests. Her second guest is Dr Rebecca Wright, a Social and Cultural Historian of Energy from Northumbria University.The research projects featured are:Flood and Flow: https://waternames.wordpress.com/team/ Forthcoming manuscript Moral Energy in America: From the Progressive Era to the Atomic Bomb which explores the birth of an ‘energy consciousness’ in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century.This episode was made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI Producer: Paula McFarlaneYou can find more conversations about New Research gathering into a playlist on the Free Thinking programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90

Soho in films from 1948-1963 and the 1970s glamour and porn industry discussed by Matthew Sweet and his guests Jingan Young, Benjamin Halligan and David McGillivray.Producer: Torquil MacLeodHotbeds of Licentiousness: The British Glamour Fillm and the Permissive Society by Benjamin Halligan is out now and so is Soho On Screen: Cinematic Spaces of Bohemia and Cosmopolitanism, 1948-1963 by Jingan Young David McGillivray is the author of Doing Rude Things: The History of the British Sex FilmYou can find a Free Thinking discussion with architects Eric Parry and Alison Brooks, pianist Belle Chen and novelists Fiona Mozley and SI Martin who have set their work in Soho in a programme about Building London https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000x6kv and A discussion about Harlots and 18th century working women with the historians Hallie Rubenhold and Laura Lammasniemi and script writer for the TV series Moira Buffini https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000rdfz

From a death row prisoner to the schemes to raise money dreamt up by his father: human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith has written a memoir exploring the impact of mental health on his family, his clients in the legal system and himself. New Generation Thinker Sabina Dosani is a Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist. She writes a postcard for Mental Health Week about Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness. Curator George Vasey discusses activism on air pollution and curator James Taylor-Foster explains the sensations of ASMR. Anne McElvoy hosts.Trials of the Moon: My Father's Trials by Clive Stafford Smith is out now. Sabina Dosani is a 2022 New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to turn research into radio https://sabinadosani.com/ In the Air runs at the Wellcome Collection from 19 May 2022—16 October 2022 Weird Sensation Feels Good: The World of ASMR runs at the Design Museum from May 13thProducer in Salford: Cecile WrightYou can find a new Music & Meditation podcast on BBC Sounds or take some time out with BBC Radio 3’s Slow Radio podcast. And Radio 3’s Essential Classics has a slow moment every weekday at 11.30am There is also a Free Thinking episode called Breathe hearing from Writer James Nestor, saxophonist Soweto Kinch, Imani Jacqueline Brown of Forensic Architecture and New Generation Thinker Tiffany Watt Smith https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000xszq

Isaac Babel, born in Odessa in 1894, became a journalist and writer before being executed in 1940 in Stalin's purges. In stories of extreme economy and compression, he depicted the Polish-Soviet War of 1918-21, and the exploits of Jewish gangsters in Odessa in the years before the Soviet revolution. Matthew Sweet is joined by Linda Grant, AD Miller, Boris Dralyuk, and Diana Vonnak to discuss Babel's work and its resonances today.Producer: Luke Mulhall You might also be interested in Radio 3's series The Essay: Words for War in which Oksana Maksymchuk introduces the words of Ukrainian poets https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0016b7h

From full stops to emojis, a Tudor letter to texting - how has the use of punctuation marks developed over the centuries? Florence Hazrat thinks about the way brackets help us understand the pandemic. The first parentheses appear in a 1399 manuscript by the Italian lawyer Coluccio Salutati, but - as her essay outlines - it took over 500 years for the sign born at the same time as the bracket, the exclamation mark (which printers rather aptly call “bang”) to find its true environment: the internet.Florence Hazrat is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, University of Sheffield. She is a 2021 New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year to turn their research into radio. You can find a collection of Essays, discussions and features showcasing the research of New Generation Thinkers on the Free Thinking programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08zhs35Producer: Robyn Read

Linking tea, sugar, opium, addiction and trade, Fariha Shaikh's essay looks at the novel An Insular Possession published in 1986 by Timothy Mo, and at Amitav Ghosh's trilogy which began in 2008 with Sea of Poppies and how their depiction of the opium trade differs from the publication in 1821 of Thomas de Quincey's Confessions of an Opium Eater, which paved the way for drug memoirs. She also quotes from her researches into The Calcutta Review, Fraser's Magazine for Town and Country and the book Tea and Coffee written by the campaigning vegetarian William Alcott. Dr Fariha Shaikh teaches in the Department of English Literature at the University of Birmingham. She is a 2021 New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to turn research into radio.Producer: Robyn Read

What made him great? Celebrated as a military leader, Alexander took over an empire created by the Persians. Julia Hartley's essay looks at two examples of myth-making about Alexander: The Persian Boy, a 1972 historical novel by the English writer Mary Renault and the Shānāmeh or ‘Book of Kings’, an epic written by the medieval Persian poet Abdolghassem Ferdowsi.Julia Hartley lectures at King's College London. She was selected in 2021 as a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council which turns research into radio. You can hear her in this Free Thinking discussion Dante's Visions https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000zm9b and in another episode about Epic Iran, Lost Cities and Proust https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000xlzhProducer: Torquil MacLeod

From Hitchcock to George Formby, stained glass to Rachel Whiteread, Cindy Sherman to Rembrandt. A new exhibition called Reframed: The Woman in the Window is the starting point for today's conversation about windows covering everything from voyeurism and vandalism to stained glass and modernism. Shahidha Bari is joined by film scholar Adam Scovell, art curator Dr Jennifer Sliwka, architectural critic Hugh Pearman and stained glass expert Jasmine Allen.Reframed: The Woman in the Window runs at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in London from 4th May to 4th September 2022 Jasmine Allen is Director of The Stained Glass Museum, ElyProducer: Torquil MacLeod

Frogs, farting competitions, art connoisseurs, courtesans and crows all feature in the art of Kawanabe Kyōsai,- a key Japanese figure who challenged traditions of Japanese art. Kyōsai blurred the lines between popular and elite forms and we take a look at a new exhibition of his work at the Royal Academy. In today’s Free Thinking, Chris Harding looks at both his art and the writing of Yukio Mishima. Mishima was one of Japan's most infamous writers when he died in 1970, writing both for the mass market novels and readers of high literature, fusing traditional Japanese and modern Western styles. In his final years he became increasingly interested in extreme politics, a call for the restoration of the Emperor to his pre-war power and culminated in his death by seppuku, the Samurai’s ritual suicide. With a new translation of Beautiful Star, we learn about him and the recent reappraisal of his work.Israel Goldman is a leading collector and dealer in the field of Japanese prints, paintings and illustrated books. The exhibition, Kyōsai: The Israel Goldman Collection, is at the Royal Academy from 19th March to 19th June 2022.Koto Sadamura specialises in Japanese art history of the late nineteenth century, with a particular focus on the painter Kawanabe Kyōsai.Stephen Dodd is Professor Emeritus of Japanese Literature at SOAS, University of London. He has written widely on modern Japanese literature and translated two novels by Yukio Mishima, including a new version of Beautiful Star published in April 2022.Kate Taylor-Jones is Professor of East Asian Cinema at the University of Sheffield.Producer: Ruth Watts