Arts & Ideas

Left unfinished at his death in 2011, the poet worked on his version of the Illiad for over 40 years. As a new audio book of Christopher Logue reading War Music is released, Shahidha Bari and her guests, the writers Marina Warner and Tariq Ali, and Logue's widow, the historian Rosemary Hill, examine the work. Rosemary Hill describes Logue as writing "poems to be read to jazz accompaniment, to be set to music and to be printed on posters. He wanted poetry to be part of everybody’s life." In War Music he used anachronistic imagery to link this classical war to more modern examples. In the Second World War Logue served briefly in the Black Watch, before spending sixteen months in a military prison and later becoming a member of CND.The British Library has acquired the archive of Christopher Logue, which includes 22 boxes of private papers, along with 53 files of drafts, working materials and correspondence relating to War Music, and annotated printed books and an event in December marks this.In the programme you will hear Christopher Logue – War Music The original recording read by the Author Recorded December 1995, Sound Development Studios, London Produced and directed by Liane Aukin Mastered by Simon Heyworth (P) & © 2021 Laurence Aston and Rosemary Hill Clips from War Music are not to be reproduced in any way without prior permission of the copyright holders.This programme also includes a clip from a programme Christopher Logue made on 'Minor Poets' for the Third Programme in 1957, and a clip of Christopher Logue reading part of his poem Lecture on Man at the International Poetry Incarnation at the Royal Albert Hall in 1965.Producer Luke Mulhall

The Fall of Ceaușescu in 1989 ended 42 years of Communist rule in Romania. How did the experience of living through that make its way into fiction? Georgina Harding published In Another Europe: A Journey To Romania in 1990 and followed that with a novel The Painter of Silence, set in Romania of the 1950s. Mircea Cărtărescu was born in 1956 and has published novels, poems and essays. In the novel Nostalgia published in 1989, he looks at communist Bucharist in the 80's, in a dreamlike narrative seen in part through the eyes of children and young adults. Philippe Sands has chronicled Jewish histories in Eastern Europe in his books and podcast series The Ratline. He recommends Mihail Sebastian's book For Two Thousand Years.Producer: Ruth WattsYou can find a playlist called Prose and Poetry on the Free Thinking website which contains other conversations organised in partnership with the Royal Society of Literature. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p047v6vh

A rainbow monument in Warsaw which has now been destroyed. The response of residents in Belfast to an exhibition commemorating the Somme and the Easter Rising. Dr Martin Zebracki works on the Queer Memorials project which looks at memorials in Amsterdam, Warsaw and New York. Professor Keith Lilley is a geographer who has worked on a series of mapping projects linked to the anniversary of the First World War. New Generation Thinker and researcher of suffragette history, Dr Naomi Paxton, hosts the conversation.

The dining room at Windsor Castle holds one of Grinling Gibbons's carvings, others are found at churches including St Paul's Cathedral and the sculptor developed a kind of signature including peapods in many of his works. As an exhibition at Compton Verney explores his career: Matthew Sweet is joined by the curator Hannah Phillip, the artist and film-maker Alison Jackson who is known for working with lookalike performers. We also hear from artist Lucy McKenzie who has over 80 works on show at Tate Liverpool and Curator and New Generation Thinker Danielle Thom who has been collecting craft for the Museum of London.Grinling Gibbons: Centuries in the Making runs at Compton Verney until January 30th 2022.https://www.alison-jackson.co.uk/Lucy McKenzie's work is on show at Tate Liverpool until 13 March 2022 comprising 80 works dating from 1997 to the present which include large-scale architectural paintings, illusionistic trompe l’oeil works, as well as fashion and design.https://daniellethom.com/bioProducer: Sofie Vilcins

Vietnam, ecological worries and poverty and suffering inspired the lyrics in Marvin Gaye's 1971 album What's Going On. Written as a song cycle from the point of view of a war Vet returning home, it was inspired in part by the letters he was receiving from his brother from Vietnam and from his own questions following the 1965 Watts riots. The Nu Civilization Orchestra is performing their version of the album at the London Jazz Festival tomorrow. Matthew Sweet is joined by jazz journalist Kevin Le Gendre, musician Gary Crosby, Dr Althea Legal-Miller - Senior Lecturer in American History & Culture at Canterbury Christ Church university and poet Roy McFarlaneThe Nu Civilization Orchestra, founded by Gary Crosby, perform their version of the album at the London Jazz Festival at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre 18th November @7.30pm, with subsequent dates in Birmingham, Liverpool & Canterbury.You can hear a host of programmes featuring performers from the London Jazz Festival on BBC Radio 3 including a special Jazz Through the Night. Free Thinking has a playlist of discussions devoted to influential artworks, books, films, music and plays called Landmarks of Culture with everything from the plays of Lorraine Hansberry to the film Jaws. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01jwn44

Kick-starting second-wave feminism with her 1949 book The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir was a key member of the Parisian circle of Existentialists alongside Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Her philosophical influences include Descartes and Bergson, phenomenology via Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger, the assessment of society put forward by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and ideas about idealism from Immanuel Kant and GWF Hegel. Shahidha Bari and her guests consider her role in contemporary philosophy and Lauren Elkin describes translating a newly discovered novel The Inseparables.Kathryn Belle is Associate Professor of Philosophy, Pennsylvania State UniversitySkye Cleary is Lecturer, Barnard CollegeLauren Elkin is a Writer and translator of Simone de Beauvoir's The Inseparables, which follows two friends growing up and falling apart.Kate Kirkpatrick is Fellow in Philosophy and Christian Ethics, Regent’s Park College, University of OxfordRecorded in partnership with LSE Forum for Philosophy. You can find a playlist of Free Thinking discussions about philosophy on the programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07x0twx You can find a Radio 3 Sunday Feature hearing from some of our guests and archive of Simone de Beauvoir called Afterwords: Simone de Beauvoir https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0011m4hProducer: Luke Mulhall

Deciphering Dickens's shorthand, how the National Health Service uses graphic art to convey messages, creating a comic strip from Greek myths: these are some of the events taking place at the annual Being Human Festival in which universities around the UK introduce their research in a series of public talks, walks, workshops and performances. Laurence Scott meets some of those taking part and discusses different ways of recording and presenting information from comics to coded notebooks, to a scheme that projected books onto the ceilings of hospitals, which made it possible for thousands of people with disabilities to read after the Second World War.Dr Claire Wood is at the University of Leicester. Her event is called Cracking the Dickens CodeProfessor Anna Feigenbaum is at the University of Bournemouth. Her event is called Covid Comics and Me. Find out more at https://www.covidcomics.org/Dr Amanda Potter is at the Open University. Her event is called Greek Mythology Comic Writing WorkshopProfessor Matthew Rubery is at Queen Mary University of London. His event is called Projected Books for Veterans of the Second World WarThe Being Human Festival runs from November 11th to 20th https://beinghumanfestival.org/Producer: Phoebe McFarlane.This New Thinking episode of the Arts and Ideas podcast was made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI. You can find other programmes hearing insights from academics in our New Research playlist on the Free Thinking programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90

Melting perma-frost in Alaska has led to crooked housing, an eroded air-strip and changes to the hunting and fishing diets of the inhabitants. But are their views and experiences being properly registered in our discussions about climate change? Today's conversation looks at the idea of climate justice. Des Fitzgerald is talking about community based research with: Dr Tahrat Shahid - the Challenge Leader for Food Systems, and cross-portfolio Gender Advisor at the Global Challenges Research Fund, a UK government fund managed primarily by UK Research and Innovation. https://www.newton-gcrf.org/gcrf/challenge-leaders/dr-tahrat-shahid/ and Dr. Rick Knecht - Senior Lecturer in Archaeology at University of Aberdeen where he specialises in working with the Yup’ik communities of Alaska, both past and present https://www.abdn.ac.uk/geosciences/people/profiles/r.knechtProfessor Des Fitzgerald is a New Generation Thinker based at the University of Exeter.The podcast series Green Thinking is 26 episodes 26 minutes long looking at issues relating to COP26 made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI. It explores the latest research and ideas around understanding and tackling the climate and nature emergency.The podcasts are all available from the Arts & Ideas podcast feed - and collected on the Free Thinking website under Green Thinking where you can also find programmes on mushrooms, forests, rivers, eco-criticism and soil. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07zg0r2For more information about the research the AHRC’s supports around climate change and the natural world you can visit: Responding to climate change – UKRI or follow @ahrcpress on twitter. To join the discussion about the research covered in this podcast and the series please use the hashtag #GreenThinkingPodcast.Producer: Sofie Vilcins

Cold, civil, world, uprising, conflict, war on terror: Anne McElvoy and her guests Elif Shafak, Christina Lamb, Lincoln Jopp and Hilary Roberts explore the impact of the words we use to describe conflict. The Imperial War Museum has just revamped its "Second World War" galleries with changed dates and a wider focus and Cold War history is being rewritten in the light of current politics. So this year's Remembrance discussion asks how does language affect attitudes to war?Elif Shafak's latest novel The Island of Missing Trees explores the division of Cyprus. Journalist Christina Lamb's books include Our Bodies, Their Battlefield: What War Does to Women and Farewell Kabul: From Afghanistan to a More Dangerous World and with Nujeen Mustafa she published The Girl from Aleppo: Nujeen's Escape from War to Freedom and with Malala Yousafzai she published I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban. Hilary Roberts is the IWM's Senior Curator and Historian of Cold War and Late 20th Century Conflict. Total War: A People’s History of the Second World War and The Holocaust by IWM curators Kate Clements, Paul Cornish and Vikki Hawkins an illustrated history of the Second World War, told with the help of personal stories from across the globe has been published to mark the re-opening of the IWM galleries. Lieutenant-Colonel Lincoln Jopp MC (retired) discussed war and modern memory on Free Thinking https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07jlbvp and at the Free Thinking Festival he debated decision making and quick reactions with Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson and Damon Hill https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08j9zshProducer: Torquil MacLeodYou can find a playlist on the Free Thinking website exploring war hearing from historians, writers, soldiers, diplomats, artists and including the previous Remembrance Discussions. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06kgbyb

Eliminating plastic from building houses, creating a house out of construction waste – rubble, chalk, ply timber and second hand nuts and bolts – and designing for circular cities are amongst the projects undertaken by Duncan Baker-Brown from the University of Brighton. Professor Flora Samuel from the University of Reading has been looking at the value of good architecture and how we can measure the social impact of sustainable housing. They talk to Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough. You can find out more about Flora’s work and publications here: https://research.reading.ac.uk/urban-living/people/fsamuel/ and https://www.architecture.com/knowledge-and-resources/resources-landing-page/post-occupancy-evaluationThe Brighton Waste House: https://www.brighton.ac.uk/research-and-enterprise/feature/brighton-waste-house.aspx Designing for Circular Cities: https://research.brighton.ac.uk/en/organisations/design-for-circular-cities-and-regions-dccr-research-and-enterpri-2 Dr Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough is a New Generation Thinker based at the University of Durham.The podcast series Green Thinking is 26 episodes 26 minutes long looking at issues relating to COP26 made in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UKRI. It explores the latest research and ideas around understanding and tackling the climate and nature emergency. New Generation Thinkers Des Fitzgerald and Eleanor Barraclough are in conversation with researchers about a wide-range of subjects from cryptocurrencies and finance to eco poetry and fast fashion.The podcasts are all available from the Arts & Ideas podcast feed - and collected on the Free Thinking website under Green Thinking where you can also find programmes on mushrooms, forests, rivers, eco-criticism and soil. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07zg0r2 For more information about the research the AHRC’s supports around climate change and the natural world you can visit: Responding to climate change – UKRI or follow @ahrcpress on twitter. To join the discussion about the research covered in this podcast and the series please use the hashtag #GreenThinkingPodcast. Producer: Sofie Vilcins