Arts & Ideas

Actor Richard Wilson, Professor Naoko Shimazu and film critic Larushka Ivan-Zadeh join Rana Mitter to look at this cinematic classic which was one of the 53 films made by Yasujiro Ozu before his death in 1963. Tokyo Story follows an elderly couple who go to visit their busy grown up children and their widowed daughter-in-law. It is being rereleased this month by the BFI as part of their season of Japanese Film – the Ozu collection goes on BFI Player on 5 June (with 25 titles available) and TOKYO STORY is released on BFI Blu-ray on 15 June. You can find more on their website www.bfi.org.uk/japan You might also be interested in the Free Thinking playlist on Japanese culture which includes discussions about the Kurosawa films Rashomon and Seven Samurai https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0657spqAnd if you want more discussions about significant cultural landmarks from The Tin Drum, This Sporting Life and 2001 to novels by Iris Murdoch, Muriel Spark and George Orwell we have a playlist of landmarks too https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01jwn44Producer: Laura Thomas

Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has written about Auden, Dostoevsky and tragedy. At Hay Festival he talks to poet Simon Armitage about the imprint of landscapes in Yorkshire, West Wales, and the Middle East, the use of dialect words and reinterpreting myths. Chaired by Rana Mitter. Books by Rowan Williams include Dostoevsky: Language, Faith and Fiction and The Tragic Imagination. He is Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge. Books by Simon Armitage include The Unaccompanied, Flit, Selected Poems, Walking Home, Travelling Songs, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Homer's Odyssey. He is now the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom. You can find out more from his website https://www.simonarmitage.com/A playlist featuring other conversations and in depth interviews with writers is available on the Free Thinking website with episodes free to download as Arts & Ideas podcasts https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04ly0c8 and you can find more programmes from this year's online Hay Festival https://www.hayfestival.com/homeProducer: Fiona McLean

Matthew Sweet talks to author Sarah Perry about her gothic imagination, writing about religion, rationalism and disease in novels including The Essex Serpent, After Me Comes The Flood and Melmoth. Recorded from her home in Norwich, Sarah discusses her experience of these times as someone who has an auto-immune condition, her interest in comets and the way she used sewing to overcome a temporary inability to write. You can hear more from authors in the Norfolk area on the website of the Norfolk and Norwich Festival https://nnfestival.org.uk/There is a collection of in depth interviews with guests including Zadie Smith, Mark Haddon, Sebastian Faulks, Marilynne Robinson and other authors on the Free Thinking website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04ly0c8Sarah Perry can be found discussing her novel Melmoth in detail in this episode of Free Thinking called Sarah Perry, Spookiness and Fear https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0000kk2 and she discusses the Essex Serpent in this episode Still Loving Victoriana Jokes and All https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b081tkr7Producer: Robyn Read

Jay Griffiths, Vincent Deary, Louise Robinson and Matthew Smith discuss our mental health.How does depression affect our sense of time and the rhythms of daily life? Our body clocks have long been seen by scientists as integral to our physical and mental health - but what happens when mental illness disrupts or even stops that clock? Presenter Anne McElvoy is joined by those who have suffered depression and those who treat it - and they attempt to offer some solutions.Jay Griffiths is the author of Tristimania: a Diary of Manic Depression and a book Pip Pip which explores attitudes to time across the world.Doctor Vincent Deary teaches at Northumbria University, works as a clinician in the UK's first trans-diagnostic Fatigue Clinic and is the author of a trilogy about How To Live - the first of which is called How We Are.Professor Louise Robinson is Director of Newcastle University's Institute for Ageing and Professor of Primary Care and Ageing.Professor Matthew Smith is a New Generation Thinker from 2012 who teaches at Strathclyde University at the Centre for the Social History of Health and Healthcare.This programme was recorded as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival in front of an audience at Sage Gateshead in 2017 and is being broadcast now as part of the BBC's contribution to Mental Health Awareness week.You might be intereseted in Sleep;Freedom to Think from the Festival Lecturer Professor Russell Foster https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08hz9yw and another Festival discussion from 2019 looking at how medical staff cope Should Doctors Cry ? https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000488q and an interview with Buddhist monk and thinker Haemin Sunim about coping with the pace of life https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08jb1mpProducer: Zahid Warley.

Authors Anne Fine and Romesh Gunesekera are Fellows of the Royal Literature Society who signed the Register on the same day. In the first of a series of conversations with writers who would have been sharing a stage at a literary festival, they talk to Shahidha Bari. Plus a postcard from 2020 New Generation Thinker Diarmuid Hester on the saving of Derek Jarman’s house and garden - also the subject of Sunday’s Words and Music which you can find on BBC Sounds and here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000jdz0 The Norfolk and Norwich Festival which would have featured the meeting of Romesh and Anne has more author interviews on its website https://nnfestival.org.uk/ Romesh Gunesekera's latest book is Suncatcher. You can hear him discussing it in more detail with William Dalrymple and Susheila Nasta in an episode of Free Thinking called The Shadow of Empire and Colonialism https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000c0f7Anne Fine's books include Goggle Eyes, The Granny Project, The Jamie Angus Stories, The Tulip Touch, Battle of Wills and her latest Blood Family. You can hear her discussing family life along with Tobias Jones, Tom Shakespeare and Professor Sarah Cunningham Burley in a Free Thinking Festival discussion called The Family is Dead, Long Live the Family https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06pswskNew Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who turn their research into radio. You can find a series of Essays and postcards from them in playlists on the Free Thinking programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0144txn Producer: Robyn Read

Rutger Bregman challenges ideas about the selfish gene, and survival of the fittest with stories of human co-operation and kindness as he publishes a book called Human Kind - A Hopeful History. Plus in Mental Health Awareness Week, Dr Sylvan Baker on rethinking the way we treat kids in care. And New Generation Thinker Christina Faraday on an anniversary of the fairground.You can hear a curated selection of readings and music on the theme of travelling fairs and circuses on Radio 3's Words and Music programme broadcast Sunday afternoons at half past five and available for 28 days following on BBC Sounds https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04sv2wrProducer: Robyn Read

From Indian cricket, a survey of the oceans to the women killed by Jack the Ripper: Rana Mitter with the second set of shortlisted authors for the history writing prize.David Abulafia The Boundless Sea: A Human History of the Oceans Hallie Rubenhold The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper Prashant Kidambi Cricket Country: An Indian Odyssey in the Age of EmpireYou can hear the other shortlisted historians in a progarmme broadcast on May 12th and available as an Arts & Ideas Podcast. It features Marion Turner has written Chaucer: A European Life Toby Green is the author of A Fistful of Shells: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution John Barton is nominated for A History of the Bible: The Book and Its FaithsThe winner of the 2020 Wolfson History Prize is announced on June 15th 2020.In the Free Thinking archives you can find more history - Diarmuid McCulloch on Martin Luther in Breaking Free Martin Luther's Revolution https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08nf02y William Dalrymple on The Shadow of Empire and Colonialism https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000c0f7 Peter Frankopan and Maya Jasanoff on What Kind of History Should We Write https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00016vf Tracy Borman on the Tudors in The Way We Used to Feel https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0003zp2 Fern Ridell, Kate Lister and Robin Mitchell on How we talk about women's bodies and sex https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000f5n6 Producer: Robyn Read

From classical birds to Nazi legacies, Oscar Wilde to Queen Victoria in India, early building to maritime trading: Rana Mitter and an audience at the British Academy debate history writing and hear from the six historians on the 2019 shortlist. The books are:Building Anglo-Saxon England by John Blair Reckonings: Legacies of Nazi Persecution and the Quest for Justice by Mary Fulbrook Trading in War: London’s Maritime World in the Age of Cook and Nelson by Margarette Lincoln Birds in the Ancient World: Winged Words by Jeremy Mynott Oscar: A Life by Matthew Sturgis Empress: Queen Victoria and India by Miles TaylorThe winner of the Wolfson History Prize 2019 was Mary Fulbrook. You can find Free Thinking discussions with the 2020 shortlisted historians being broadcast on Radio 3 and available as Arts & Ideas podcasts and there is a playlist showcasing new academic and historical research here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03zws90Producer: Jacqueline Smith

New takes on Chaucer, the Bible and African trading - Rana Mitter presents the first of 2 prograrmmes featuring 3 of the historians shortlisted for this year's history writing prize.Marion Turner has written Chaucer: A European Life Toby Green is the author of A Fistful of Shells: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution John Barton is nominated for A History of the Bible: The Book and Its FaithsA second programme will be broadcast on Tues May 19th hearing from the other shortlisted authors David Abulafia The Boundless Sea: A Human History of the Oceans Hallie Rubenhold The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper Prashant Kidambi Cricket Country: An Indian Odyssey in the Age of Empire The winner of the 2020 Wolfson History Prize is announced on June 15th 2020. Producer: Robyn Read

Matthew Sweet looks at new research from Ludivine Broch, Daniel Lee, Hannah Elias and Cathy Mahoney into religion & propaganda on the radio + French soldiers in Yorkshire & a post WWII gratitude train sent by France and Italy to the USA.Daniel Lee is a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker who teaches at Queen Mary, London. His books include Pétain's Jewish Children: French Jewish Youth and the Vichy Regime, 1940–42 and The SS Officer’s Armchair due to be published in September 2020. Ludivine Broch is a historian at the University of Westminster who researches Vichy France, resistance and the commemoration of World War Two. Cathy Mahoney is Derby Fellow in Communication and Media at the University of Liverpool who has written on women's experiences in World War Two and depictions in the media. Hannah Elias is Lecturer in Black British History at Goldsmiths, University of London where she works on Modern Britain, religion, propaganda, and the transatlantic history of race and social protest in the 20th century.Producer: Robyn Read Technical Production by Bob Nettles.Daniel Lee has written a Radio 3 Essay about Vichy France Listen here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p038dvyt You can find a collection of episodes of Free Thinking exploring different aspects of War & Conflict on the programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06kgbyb7 and Matthew's discussion with guests including Hadley Freeman on her family's WWII experiences in our discussion on Jewish Identity in 2020 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000fwqd