Arts & Ideas

How does writing about art help us embrace a new way of seeing the work ? Rana Mitter is joined at the Hay Festival by the novelist and art essayist Siri Hustvedt , the writer and broadcaster Simon Schama and, marking the 500th anniversary of the Italian Renaissance painter Leonardo da Vinci, the Radio 3/AHRC New Generation Thinker and historian of Renaissance and early modern Europe Catherine Fletcher. Siri Hustvedt’s books include her novels What I Loved, The Summer without Men and The Blazing World and her essays on paintings, Mysteries of the Rectangle and Living, Thinking, Looking. Simon Schama is the author of Rembrandt’s Eyes, Landscape and Memory and The Power of Art. Catherine Fletcher’s work includes Our Man in Rome: Henry VIII and his Italian Ambassador and The Black Prince of Florence. She teaches at Swansea University. Producer: Fiona McLean

Rachel Carson’s passionate book, Silent Spring, first published in 1962 is said to be the work which launched the environmental movement. But how does it speak to us now? For a recording of Free Thinking’s Cultural Landmark series at the Hay Festival, presenter Rana Mitter is joined by guests Tony Juniper, Emily Shuckburgh, Dieter Helm and Kapka Kassabova.Tony Juniper is a campaigner, sustainability adviser and writer of work including Saving Planet Earth and How many lightbulbs does it take to change a planet? Emily Shuckburgh is a climate scientist and mathematician at the British Antarctic Survey and the co-author (with the Prince of Wales and Tony Juniper) of the Ladybird Book on Climate Change. Dieter Helm is an economist specialising in utilities, regulation and the environment. His recent books include Burn Out: the Endgame for Fossil Fuels, The Carbon Crunch, Nature in the Balance and Natural Capital: Valuing the Planet. Kapka Kassabova is a novelist, poet and journalist whose work includes Border,, Someone else’s life and Villa Pacifica. You can hear her talking to Free Thinking about winning the Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding here https://bbc.in/2TsFZ51You can find a collection of all the discussions of Landmarks of culture as a playlist on the Free Thinking website / and available to download as BBC Arts&Ideas podcasts https://bbc.in/2Jw9y5QProducer: Fiona McLean

Author Nicola Upson has imagined the life of Stanley Spencer from the viewpoint of his maidservant. Ella Parry-Davies researches the lives of women from the Philippines who work as domestic and care workers. The novel The Farm by Joanne Ramos imagines a surrogacy service provided by Filippina women for wealthy American clients. Gulzaar Barn researches the ethics of surrogacy. Naomi Paxton presents. Nicola Upson has turned from novels featuring Josephine Tey as a detective to write a potrait of the British artist Stanley Spencer, his relationships with his wives Hilda Carline and Patricia Preece and her partner Dorothy Hepworth in her novel called Stanley and Elsie. Joanne Ramos was born in the Philippines and moved to Wisconsin when she was six. The Farm, her first novel, imagines the lives of Hosts at a surrogacy service. New Generation Thinker Gulzaar Barn is at King's College London working on the ethics of surrogacy. You can hear her Free Thinking Festival Essay https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0003t1w New Generation Thinker Ella Parry-Davies has just returned from a research trip in Lebanon. Hear more from the 2019 New Generation Thinkers in this broadcast from the Free Thinking Festival https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p036y2hb/members/all Producer: Robyn Read

Matthew Sweet hears from Naomi Wolf about ways in which the state interfered in the private lives of its citizens in the 19th century, resulting in a penal codification of homosexuality with long-reaching consequences. They're joined by literary scholar Sarah Parker who tells the story of Michael Field, the pseudonym of two female poets and dramatists who sought literary fame in the late 19th century, and by philosopher Luis de Miranda who explains why neon is good to think with as a metaphor for the present and a better future. Naomi Wolf's Outrages: Sex, Censorship and the Criminalisation of Love is out now Luis de Miranda's Being and Neoness is out now Sarah Parker teaches at School of Arts, English and Drama at the University of Loughborough. She has edited a collection of essays on Michael Field, out in December. Prod: Jacqueline Smith

The walking & photographs of WG Sebald on show in Norwich, American poet Carolyn Forché on the stranger who gave her an insider's view of politics in El Salvador whilst she was in her '20s. Plus an exhibition of money and Jewish history. Laurence Scott presents.Adam Scovell, Philippa Comber and Sean Williams discuss the influence of the German writer WG Sebald who settled in Norfolk. His novel The Rings of Saturn follows a narrator walking in Suffolk, and in part explores links between the county and German history and emigrants. Lines of Sight: W.G. Sebald’s East Anglia An exhibition celebrating the work of the author W.G. Sebald on the 75th anniversary of his birth runs at Norwich Castle Museum & Art Gallery 10 May 2019 – 5 January 2020 in collaboration with The University of East Anglia Adam Scovell is a film critic and author whose new novella is called Mothlight. Dr Seán Williams is a New Generation Thinker who teaches Germanic Studies at the University of Sheffield Phillippa Comber is the author of Ariadne's Thread – In Memory of W.G. Sebald and In This Trembling Shade, ten poems set to music as a song cycle.BBC Radio 3/AHRC New Generation Thinker Brendan McGeever is at the Pears Institute for the Study of Anti-Semitism at Birkbeck University London which was involved in developing the exhibition Jews Money Myth running at the Jewish Museum London until July 7th 2019. Carolyn Forché's Memoir is called What You Have Heard is True. A man who might be a lone wolf, a communist, a CIA operative, a sharpshooter, a revolutionary, a small coffee farmer, drives from El Salvador to invite the 27 year old Forché to visit and learn about his country and she decides to say yes. Producer: Eliane Glaser

Should we widen the net of who has a say over river management and would this be better for our rivers and ultimately ourselves. What are rivers themselves trying to tell us. Shahidha Bari meets four people with artistic, scholarly and personal relationships with fresh running water. Veronica Strang has studied the way peoples and rivers interact around the world and contributed the UN's work on bringing culture into water management; poet John Clarke is working on a poetic soundscape of one polluted Cornish river with his musical collaborator, Rob Mackay ; archaeologist Susan Greaney is an expert on the Neolithic and how people in prehistory would have understood rivers in a holistic way while environmentalist, angler and author, Charles Rangeley-Wilson takes a holistic approach to the health of rivers today from source to sea. Veronica Strang, Executive Director of the Institute for Advanced Study at University of Durham and her books include Water: Nature and Culture and The Meaning of Water; in 2007 she was awarded an International Water Prize as one of UNESCO's, Les Lumières de L'Eau [Water's Leading Lights] and was subsequently involved in editing a major UNESCO/MAB publication on Water and Cultural Diversity. Dr John Clarke teaches at the University of Exeter. Red River: Listening to a Polluted River explores global river pollution and the emotional impact of environmental damage through a small polluted river in West Cornwall. Susan Greaney is an archaeologist with a specialism in British prehistory and is a PhD researcher at Cardiff University and AHRC/BBC New Generation Thinker Charles Rangeley-Wilson is a passionate fly-fisherman and author of Silver Shoals: The Five Fish that made Britain and Silt Road – the Story of a Lost River

With an audience at the British Library, Professor Bhabha gives a short talk and discusses ideas about nations and a postcolonial approach to politics, literature and history. Shahidha Bari hosts in a Free Thinking event organised with the Royal Society of Literature. ‘Nations, like narratives, lose their origins in the myths of time and only fully realise their horizons in the mind’s eye. Such an image of the nation – or narration – might seem impossibly romantic and excessively metaphorical, but it is from those traditions of political thought and literary language that the nation emerges as a powerful historical idea in the west.’ So begins Nation and Narration, first published in 1990. For Professor Bhabha, one of the world’s leading cultural theorists, known for his work on hybridity, mimicry, difference, ambivalence and the ‘Third Space’, ‘literature is the repository of culture, tradition, the life in language itself.’ Homi K Bhabha is the Director of the Mahindra Humanities Center, and Senior Advisor to the President and Provost at Harvard University. His works exploring postcolonial theory, contemporary art, and cosmopolitanism, include Nation and Narration and The Location of Culture, which was reprinted as a Routledge Classic in 2004.Producer: Zahid Warley

The worlds large water infrastructure projects often result in geo-political flashpoints - Rana Mitter hears from Majed Akhter about problems from the US to Pakistan while Dustin Garrick outlines a water crisis that is also a crisis in governance and why new management of the Murray-Darling basin in Australia may provide hints about a way forward. And aside from Romulus and Remus, what prompted the founding of Ancient Rome. Archaeologist Andrea Brock outlines her new research that shows the emergence of a new island at a special spot on the Tiber in the 7th century BC led to massive infrastructure projects and urban growth. Dr Dustin Garrick is the co-director of the Smith School Water Programme at the University of Oxford and American Association of Science Leshner leadership fellow. Dr Majed Akhter is a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker who lectures at King's College, London. Before becoming a geographer, he was a resource economist and an industrial engineer.Dr Andrea Brock is a lecturer in ancient history at the University of St Andrews. Producer: Jacqueline Smith

Matthew Sweet talks Spaghetti Westerns and Sergio Leone with Christopher Frayling and Samira Ahmed. They also look at the film worlds of Stanley Kubrick as an exhibition runs at London's Design Museum. Plus magic, mind games and the role of the magician's assistant. New Generation Thinker Naomi Paxton and Gustav Kuhn from Goldsmiths, University of London bring their conjuring tricks into the studio.You can hear Christopher Frayling with Brian Cox and the actors Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood discussing Kubrick's 2001 here https://bbc.in/2H8q76pStanley Kubrick: The Exhibition runs to 15th September 2019 at the Design Museum in London.Smoke and Mirrors: The Psychology of Magic runs at the Wellcome Collection in London until 15th September 2019 including performances of magic by Dr Gustav Kuhn and a Friday Late on May 10th.Experiencing the Impossible by Gustav Kuhn is published by MIT Press.

Anne McElvoy reads a new biography of Chaucer by Marion Turner called Chaucer: A European Life and talks to writer Bernardine Evaristo about her depiction of 12 characters aged 12 to 93 in her novel Girl, Woman, Other and to Candice Carty-Williams about her best-selling first novel and podcast Queenie. Plus Matt Wolf looks at representations of money, capitalism and the American dream on stage. You can hear Queenie being read on BBC Radio 4 here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p075drzyAll My Sons by Arthur Miller with Sally Field and Bill Pullman in the cast runs at the Old Vic Theatre until June 8th.Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller with Wendell Pierce, Sharon D Clarke and Arinzé Kene runs at the Young Vic Theatre until 29th June The Lehman Trilogy by Stefano Massini adapted by Ben Power runs at the Picadilly Theatre in London's West End in May for a 12 week run. King Hedley II by August Wilson runs at the Theatre Royal Stratford East from 17th May to 15th June. Producer: Fiona McLean