Arts & Ideas

Exploring the brisk and brutal style of playwright Edward Bond, his commitment to socialist writing, and the disturbing scene in 'Saved' where a baby is stoned. Delving into Bond's craft, impactful characters, surreal plays, and his influences and legacy. Reflecting on the defiance of the Royal Court Theatre against censorship and the significant impact of 'Saved' on playwrights.

There's nothing like a good night's sleep, but Laurence Scott discovers that our ability to enjoy one may be related to other societal inequalities, giving rise to the idea of sleep justice. His guests, researchers Sally Cloke, Jonathan White, Alice Vernon and Alice Bennett, also provide insights into sleep disorders, including night terrors, and the tyranny of the alarm clock.Producer: Torquil MacLeodJonathan White is Professor of Politics and Deputy Head of the European Institute at the London School of Economics whose books include In the Long Run: The Future as a Political Idea and an article for the Journal of Political Philosophy Circadian Justice Dr Sally Cloke is a designer, researcher and writer on design and care ethics based at Cardiff Metropolitan University Dr Alice Vernon, a creative writing lecturer at Aberystwyth University is the author of Night Terrors: Troubled Sleep and the Stories We Tell About It Dr Alice Bennett, who lectures at Liverpool Hope University is the author of Alarm and Contemporary Fictions of AttentionIn the Free Thinking archives and available as Arts & Ideas podcasts you can find other discussions relating to sleep hearing from Russell Foster, Sasha Handley, Diletta de Cristofaro, Kenneth Miller and Matt Berry

The medieval poet Hafez and how his work speaks to today, the impact of digs undertaken by 19th-century feminist archaeologist Jane Dieulafoy and the novels she wrote looking back to a Persian past, the role of classical singing and the impact of the Mongol invasion are discussed by the academics Julia Hartley, Lecturer in Comparative Literature at the University of Glasgow; Michelle Assay, Principal investigator of the Marie Curie/UKRI project, “Women and Western Art Music in Iran” at King’s College London; Sussan Babaie, Professor in the Arts of Iran and Islam at the Courtauld Institute and Ide Haghi, Lecturer in Modern Foreign Languages at the University of Glasgow. Chris Harding presents.Producer: Jayne EgertonJulia Hartley's book Iran and French Orientalism: Persia in the Literary Culture of Nineteenth-Century France is out now. You can hear more from Julia in a Free Thinking discussion about Alexander the Great and in a Radio 3 Essay called Alexander and the Persians. Michelle Assay contributed to a discussion about Lady Macbeth. All are available as Arts & Ideas podcasts and on BBC Sounds.

Gene Hackman is a brilliant but troubled surveillance expert who gets drawn unwittingly into a conspiracy to murder. Released at the height of the Watergate scandal, Coppola's 1974 film about covert surveillance and wire-tapping reflected the mood of paranoia in the USA at the time. Matthew Sweet his guests, film historians Lucy Bolton and Phuong Le, writer Michael Goldfarb and writer and filmmaker Adam Scovell discuss the film and how our attitudes to being subjected to surveillance have changed in the fifty years since it was released.Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Iseult Gonne is the daughter of the Irish suffragette, actress and republican who became a muse for WB Yeats. Novelist Helen Cullen has been researching her troubled life. Rochelle Rowe's research looks at women of colour who modelled for artists including Jacob Epstein and Dante Gabriel Rosetti, tracing the histories of women like Fanny Eaton and Sunita Devi. Tabitha Barber is curating an exhibition of women's art opening at Tate Britain in May. Naomi Paxton hosts a conversation about muses, women making art and carving out a public name for themselves.Victorian Radicals: From the Pre-Raphaelites to the Arts and Crafts Movement runs at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery until 31 October From16 May, Tate Britain opens Now You See Us: Women Artists in Britain 1520 - 1920 Angelica Kauffman runs at the Royal Academy (1 March - 30 June 2024) Julia Margaret Cameron runs at the National Portrait Gallery (21 March - 16 June)You can find a collection of episodes exploring Women in the World on the Free Thinking programme website

1,300 women met in The Hague in 1915 to discuss votes for women, human rights and the importance of peace. Jennifer Thomson shares her research into how this fed into the development of the women's movement and fed into organisations like the United Nations. Storm Jameson (1891-1986) was President of the English branch of PEN International during WWII and helped many writers flee war torn Europe. Katie Cooper has been reading her newly re-published autobiography Journey From the North. Sarah Maldoror ( 1929 −2020) is best known for her feature film Sambizanga which looked at the 1961–1974 war in Angola. New Generation Thinkers Alex Reza and Sarah Jilani discuss her film-making career. Shahidha Bari hosts.Producer: Ruth WattsYou can find a collection of Free Thinking episodes exploring Women in the World from Julian of Norwich to Hilma Af Klint, women warriors to stepmothers, landladies and divas.

Adam Smyth loves books - as well as being a Professor of English Literature he runs an experimental printing press from a cold barn in Oxfordshire. Who better then to tell us about the quirky pioneers of print, the subject of his new publication The Book-Makers? In this programme he takes us to 1490s London to tell the story of Wynken de Worde, a Dutch immigrant who came to work at William Caxton's press, the very first printing enterprise in England. A canny businessman, de Worde set about making all things printed into Early Modern must-haves.At the same time as books and printing took hold in England, a network of communications grew across Early Modern Europe. Dr Esther van Raamsdonk is an expert in Anglo-Dutch relations and the people, goods and ideas that moved back and forth across the North Sea at the time. We will learn how myriad changes they brought continue to shape our society and also about the many cheese-based jokes published about the low countries when relations soured.And Dr Elise Watson researches books and early modern Catholicism. She has stories to tell about crafty Dutch Catholic lay sisters running bookshops, establishing schools and outselling the guilds in Amsterdam with their book stalls and door-to-door peddling. What sort of influence did they have on Early Modern England?Producer in Salford: Olive Clancy

Travelling in Woody Guthrie's footsteps inspired a history of hitchhiking written by Jonathan Purkis. He joins Matthew Sweet for a conversation which ranges across hitchhiking in the UK and in Eastern Europe, where Poland operated a kind of voucher system. We look at the influence of film depictions from the Nevada desert depicted in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and the hippie vibe of Easy Rider to the horror of The Hitcher and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the female focus of Je Tu Il Elle by Chantal Akerman. Has the idea of hitchhiking now had its day? Joining Matthew to assess the idea of risk and our perception of thumbing a lift are Timandra Harkness, film critic Adam Scovell, plus Sally J Morgan, winner of the Portico prize for her book Toto Among the Murderers, based on her experience of being offered a lift by Fred and Rosemary WestJonathan Purkis's book is called Driving with Strangers Sally J Morgan's book Toto Among the Murderers is out now Timandra Harkness is the author of Big Data: does size matter? has performed at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe with a show called Take a Risk and contributes to and presents programmes on BBC Radio 4. Adam Scovell writes about film for Sight and Sound magazine and is a published novelist. His books include How Pale The Winter Has Made Us and Nettles.Producer: Jessica TreenWe've a whole playlist of discussions exploring The Way We Live Now with topics ranging from Breakfast, to Gloves, Toys to Punk, Rationality and Tradition. Find them on the Free Thinking programme website and available to download as Arts and Ideas podcasts

Recycling Victorian clothes, the history of costume design, the messages conveyed in art made from textiles and the stories encoded in ancient embroidery are explored by Shahidha Bari and her guests Isabella Rosner, Rianna Norbert-David, Jade Halbert and Danielle Dove. They also look at exhibitions at the Barbican Gallery in London and the Museum of London in Docklands.Isabella Rosner is the curator of the Royal School of Needlework and a New Generation Thinker. You can hear an Essay from her about Quaker needlework broadcast on BBC Radio 3 in March Jade Halbert is a New Generation Thinker based at the University of Leeds working on the project https://www.constructingcostumehistories.co.uk/ Danielle Dove is a Fellow of the Institute for Sustainability at the University of Surrey researching second hand clothes in the Victorian period Rianna Norbert-David is an assistant curator at the Museum of London and has a MA in textile design from the Royal College of ArtUnravel: The Power and Politics of Textiles in Art runs at the Barbican Art Gallery in London from Tue 13 Feb—Sun 26 May 2024 Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners shaped global style runs at the Museum of London in Docklands until 14 April 2024 Sargent and Fashion runs at Tate Britain in London from 22 Feb - 7 July 2024 Leeds Art Gallery runs monthly stitch art events using works in their collection as the inspiration for textile art. The University is home to the M&S archive https://archive.marksandspencer.com/ Producer: Robyn Read

Formed in 1968, the German group Can's founding members included Irmin Schmidt and Holger Czukay who had both studied under Karlheinz Stockhausen. Joined by jazz drummer Jaki Liebezeit, guitarist Michael Karoli and Japanese vocalist Damo Suzuki for the group's 'classic' line-up that recorded Tago Mago (1971) and Ege Bamyasi (1972), their fourth album - Future Days - saw them exploring a more ambient, blissed-out sound, in contrast to their previous releases. Matthew Sweet is joined by musicians Jah Wobble and Gwenno, novelist Alan Warner and cultural historian Mererid Puw Davies to take a deep dive into the album and explore the blend of influences that made Can such a unique musical proposition.Producer: Torquil MacLeodAn expanded edition of Jah Wobble's autobiography Dark Luminosity: Memoirs of a Geezer is out on 7th March.