Arts & Ideas

June 793 when Scandinavian raiders attacked the monastery of Lindisfarne in Northumbria, used to be the date given for the beginning of the Viking age but research by Neil Price shows that it began centuries before. He traces the impact of an economy geared to maritime war and the central role of slavery in Viking life and trade. Judith Jesch is Professor of Viking Studies at the University of Nottingham and Dr Kevan Manwaring is an author and Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the Arts University Bournemouth. New Generation Thinker Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough presents.The Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings by Neil Price is out in paperback in April Vikings Valhalla is available now on Netflix New Generation Thinker Eleanor Barraclough researches this history and has written Beyond the Northlands: Viking Voyages and the Old Norse Sagas. You can find her presenting the Radio 3 Sunday feature on runes, and the supernatural north https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006tnwpProducer: Luke MulhallImage: A reconstruction of the Viking life at Murton Park Dark Age Village (part of Yorkshire Museum of Farming).Words and Music - Radio 3's weekly curation of prose, poems and music choices also looks at Vikings. You can hear it on Sunday at 5.30pm and then on BBC Sounds https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006x35f

In 1982, the East German security force was deeply concerned with subversive literature and decided to train soldiers and border guards to write lyrical verse. Decades earlier in 1933, a group of elite boarding schools modelled along the lines of English public schools were founded on Hitler's birthday. A new play explores the disappearance of English schoolboys in the Black Forest in 1936. Why did the authoritarian regimes of 20th-century Germany concern themselves so heavily with cultural output and influence? Anne McElvoy discusses some of the curious initiatives of Nazi Germany and the DDR and responses to them.Pamela Carter is the author of The Misfortune of the English runs at The Orange Tree Theatre in Richmond, London from 25 April to 28 May 2022Karen Leeder is Professor of Modern German Literature at the University of Oxford. Her books include Rereading East Germany: The Literature and Film of the GDR and a translation of Durs Grünbein's Porcelain: Poem on the Downfall of My CityPhilip Oltermann is Berlin Bureau Chief for The Guardian and the author of The Stasi Poetry Circle: The Creative Writing Class that Tried to Win the Cold WarHelen Roche is Associate Professor in Modern European Cultural History at the University of Durham. Her second book is The Third Reich’s Elite Schools: A History of the NapolasProducer: Ruth Watts

"Delight in disorder" was celebrated in a poem by Robert Herrick (1591-1674) and the long hair, flamboyant dress and embrace of earrings that made up Cavalier style has continued to exert influence as a gender fluid look. Lauren Working's essay considers examples ranging from Van Dyck portraits and plays by Aphra Behn to the advertising for the exhibition called Fashioning Masculinities which runs at the Victoria and Albert museum this spring.Fashioning Masculinities: The Art of Menswear is at the V&A from March 19th 2022. Radio 3 broadcast a series of Essays from New Generation Thinkers exploring Masculinities which you can find on BBC Sounds https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00061jm Lauren Working is a Lecturer in Early Modern Literature at the University of York and a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to turn academic research into radio. You can hear her discussing The Botanical Past in a Free Thinking discussion https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000wlgv

From school to work to the military – uniforms can signal authority and belonging. But what happens when uniforms are worn by those whom institutions normally exclude? Or when they’re used out of context? New Generation Thinker Tom Smith explores playful, creative and queer uses of uniforms, from the cult film Mädchen in Uniform, recently released in the UK by the BFI, to documents he discovered in German archives, to his take on the styles embraced in subcultures today.Producer: Ruth WattsTom Smith is a Senior Lecturer at the University of St Andrews. You can find other Essays by him for Radio 3 exploring Berlin, Detroit, Race and Techno Music https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000kfjt and Masculinities: Comrades in Arms https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00061m5 and hear him in this Free Thinking episode debating New angles on post-war Germany and Austria https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0006sjx

Fashion from the 1990s to the 1790s and back again: Jade Halbert traces the history of Droopy & Browns, a fashion business renowned for the flamboyant and elegant work of its designer, Angela Holmes. While many British designers of the late twentieth century looked to replicate a lean, monochromatic, almost corporate New York sensibility, Angela Holmes gloried in drama and historicism. A favourite of actresses, artists, writers, and stylish women everywhere, the closure of the business soon after Angela’s death, aged 50, in 2000 marked the end of an era in British fashion.Producer: Jessica TreenJade Halbert lectures at the University of Huddersfield and is a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker on the scheme which turns academic research into radio. You can find another Essay called Not Quite Jean Muir about learning to make a dress on BBC Sounds https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000kgwq and a short Radio 3 Sunday feature on the state of high street fashion shopping https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000gvpn

Oscar Wilde's famous line from The Importance of Being Earnest focuses on what we might not expect to find - Shahidha Bari's essay considers the range of objects we do carry around with us and why bags have been important throughout history: from designs drawn up in 1497 by Leonardo to the symbolism of Mary Poppins' carpet bag in PL Travers' novel to the luggage carried by refugees travelling across continents often in what's called a Ghana Must Go bag.Producer: Ruth WattsShahidha Bari is a writer, critic, Professor of Fashion Cultures and Histories at London College of Fashion and presenter of Free Thinking. She was one of the first New Generation Thinkers on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year to share their research on the radio. You can find a playlist featuring essays, discussions and features by New Generation Thinkers on the Free Thinking website and a whole host of programmes presented by Shahidha. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0144txn

"My lady's corselet" was developed by a pioneer of free verse on the frontlines of feminism, the poet Mina Loy. Celebrated in the 1910s as the quintessential New Woman, her love of freedom was shadowed by a darker quest to perfect the female body, as her unusual designs for a figure-correcting corset show. Sophie Oliver asks how she fits into a history of body-correcting garments and cosmetic surgery, feminism and fashion. Working on both sides of the Atlantic writing poetry and designing bonkers body-altering garments: like a bracelet for office workers with a built-in ink blotter, or her ‘corselet’ to correct curvature of the spine in women - in the end Mina Loy couldn’t stop time, and her late-life poetry is full of old clothes and outcast people from the Bowery, as she reckons with – and celebrates – the fact that she has become unfashionable.Producer: Torquil MacLeod Sophie Oliver teaches English Literature at the University of Liverpool and is a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council which turns academic research into radio programmes. You can find a collection of essays, discussions and features with New Generation Thinkers on the Free Thinking programme website under the playlist Ten Years of New Generation Thinkers https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08zhs35

An artist murdered in his studio - the blackmailer thinks he knows who removed vital clues. This plot from Charles Bennett premiered in London's West End in 1928 and was subsequently turned into an early sound film by Alfred Hitchcock. Now playwright Mark Ravenhill has written a new version. He joins Matthew Sweet to discuss blackmail and our changing ideas about shame. New Generation Thinker and medieval historian Hetta Howes looks at ideas of shame in the middle ages, with critic and literary scholar Kaye Mitchell tracing those ideas today. Plus criminologist Paul Bleakley, who's researched the history of blackmail.Blackmail, a new version written by Mark Ravenhill and directed by Anthony Banks, runs at Mercury Theatre, Colchester in Essex from March 4th - 19thProducer: Luke Mulhall

Sex strikes suggested by Suffragettes, a theatre company devoted to exploring the experiences of women in the UK prison system and the campaign to make women's rights at the heart of human rights and its links with socialist Eastern Europe: Naomi Paxton finds out about new research into women's history.Her guests are:Tania Shew specialises in the history of feminist thought. She's currently a Scouloudi Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research working on sex strikes and birth strikes as tactics in the British and American women’s suffrage movements, 1890-1920.Dr Celia Donert is Associate Professor in Central European History at the University of Cambridge. She is writing a book exploring How Women's Rights became Human Rights: Gender, Socialism, and Postsocialism in Global History, 1917-2017.Caoimhe Mcavinchey is Professor of Socially Engaged and Contemporary Performance at Queen Mary University London. She has been working on a project Clean Break: Women, Theatre Organisation and the Criminal Justice SystemChloë Moss is a playwright who has worked with Clean Break on a number of projects.You can see a film of Chloë's drama Sweatbox on the website https://www.cleanbreak.org.uk/This New Thinking episode of the Arts and Ideas podcast was made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research council – part of UKRI. Presenter: Naomi Paxton Producer: Paula McFarlane

Sex strikes suggested by Suffragettes, a theatre company devoted to exploring the experiences of women in the UK prison system and the campaign to make women's rights at the heart of human rights and its links with socialist Eastern Europe: Naomi Paxton finds out about new research into women's history.Her guests are:Tania Shew specialises in the history of feminist thought. She's currently a Scouloudi Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research working on sex strikes and birth strikes as tactics in the British and American women’s suffrage movements, 1890-1920.Dr Celia Donert is Associate Professor in Central European History at the University of Cambridge. She is writing a book exploring How Women's Rights became Human Rights: Gender, Socialism, and Postsocialism in Global History, 1917-2017.Caoimhe Mcavinchey is Professor of Socially Engaged and Contemporary Performance at Queen Mary University London. She has been working on a project Clean Break: Women, Theatre Organisation and the Criminal Justice System. Chloë Moss is a playwright who has worked with Clean Break on a number of projects.You can see a film of Chloë's drama Sweatbox on the website https://www.cleanbreak.org.uk/Presenter: Naomi Paxton Producer: Paula McFarlane