Arts & Ideas

Gillian Clarke, Sabrina Mahfouz and Michael Symmons Roberts respond to the war poet Wilfred Owen with their own new commissions from the Royal Society of Literature. Shahidha Bari hosts a discussion recorded with an audience at the British Library on the 100th anniversary of Owen's death during the crossing of the Sambre–Oise Canal on 4 November 1918, exactly 7 days (almost to the hour) before the signing of the Armistice which ended World War I. Born in Cardiff, Gillian Clarke’s work has been on the GCSE and A Level exam syllabus for the past thirty years. She was the first woman to win the Wilfred Owen Award – for a sustained body of work that includes memorable war poems – in 2012. Sabrina Mahfouz was brought up in London and Cairo, and is a playwright, poet, novelist and editor. She was elected an RSL Fellow in 2018. Poet and Professor of Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University, Michael Symmons Roberts grew up less than a mile from Greenham Common and has often written about the Cold War ‘peace’.Producer: Fiona McLean

Henry Hardy has written In Search of Isaiah Berlin: A Literary Adventure Diving For Seahorses: A Journey Through the Science of Memory by Hilde Østby and Ylva Østby explores the study of memory from the Renaissance to the present day. Dafydd Daniel is a New Generation Thinker and the McDonald Lecturer in Theology and Ethics, University of Oxford.

The exile of English Catholics 450 years ago, suffragette Punch and Judy plus Shahidha Bari interviews Kapka Kassabova, the winner of a prize for fostering global understanding.The British Academy’s Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding was announced this week. The winner Border: A Journey to the Edge of Europe by Kapka Kassabova is out in paperback.Dr Lucy Underwood teaches at the University of Warwick and is the author of Childhood, youth and religious dissent in post-Reformation England. Dr Caroline Bowden is Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the School of History at Queen Mary University of London.Alison Shell is Professor of English at UCL. She is currently writing a monograph on ‘The Drama of the British Counter-Reformation’New Generation Thinker Naomi Paxton is running an event day at the National Theatre in London on November 17th featuring suffragette Punch and Judy. She has also helped curate - What Difference Did the War Make? World War One and Votes for Women which is on show in November in Westminster Hall, LondonProducer: Torquil MacLeod

The memes that make us laugh - have we become meaner or can schadenfreude be a positive thing? Philosophical traditions around the world - can you outline the ideas of Nishida as well as Nietzsche? Is Japan facing a key moment of change in what it means to be Japanese? Julian Baggini, and New Generation Thinkers Tiffany Watt Smith and Christopher Harding join Rana Mitter. Plus "starchitects" - inspirational big names or a symptom of what has gone wrong with architecture? Professor James Stevens Curl and Christine Murray discuss. Professor James Stevens Curl's most recent book is Making Dystopia: The Strange Rise and Survival of Architectural Barbarism. Christine Murray is former Editor in Chief of the Architectural Review and Architect's Journal. She is founder of a new magazine The Developer. Tiffany Watt Smith has written Schadenfraude: The Joy of Another's Misfortune. You can find her programme about babies laughing here https://bbc.in/2OVRDbh Julian Baggini's latest book is called How The World Thinks. You can hear him debate identity at the Free Thinking Festival https://bbc.in/2DN2Jok Christopher Harding's book is called Japan Story. You can find his series of Radio 3 Essays: Dark Blossoms exploring aspects of Japanese cultural history https://bbc.in/2NDfAhU and tne Free Thinking programme website has a playlist of discussions about Japanese culture https://bbc.in/2A5vnme New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select academics who can turn their research into radio. Producer: Robyn Read

From a hanged man who came back to life to walk from Swansea to Hereford, to a woman who travelled from London to Evesham in a wheelbarrow, studying pilgrimage opens up a unique window on the world of the middle ages. Catherine Clarke, Anthony Bale, and Sophie Ambler explain to Shahidha Bari how research into pilgrimage helps us understand how medieval people thought about themselves and their lives, the kinds of things they worried about, how they spent their disposable income, and interacted with the politics of their day. Catherine Clarke is Professor of English at the University of Southampton and leads a project to reconstruct the medieval pilgrimage route from Swansea to Hereford. Anthony Bale is Professor of Medieval Studies at Birkbeck University of London. Sophie Therese Ambler is Lecturer in Later Medieval British and European History at Lancaster University. This podcast was made with the assistance of the AHRC - the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) which funds research at universities and museums, galleries and archives across the UK into the arts and humanities. The AHRC works in partnership with BBC Radio 3 on the New Generation Thinkers scheme to make academic research available to a wider audience.

Michael Rosen and Kimberley Reynolds talk to Anne McElvoy about socialist fairy tales and radicalism in books for children. Nikita Gill and Katherine Webber on giving traditional tales a modern twist.Reading & Revolution: An Anthology of Radical Writing for Children 1900-1960 is out nowWorkers' Tales: Socialist Fairy Tales, Fables and Allegories from Great Britain is published on 13th November Fierce Fairytales & Other Stories to Stir Your Soul by Nikita Gill is out nowKatherine Wheeler is the author of Only Love Can Break Your Heart and Wing JonesA Very Very Very Dark Matter by Michael McDonagh is at the Bridge Theatre in London until 6th JanuaryProducer: Torquil MacLeod

The film director talks to Matthew Sweet about his career and his approach to dramatising history. His new film Peterloo depicts the 1819 massacre at a rally in Manchester where a crowd of 60,000–80,000 were demanding the reform of parliamentary representation. It follows his film about the painter Mr Turner and the 2004 film Vera Drake which depicted the 1950s - a period when abortions were illegal in England. Peterloo is in UK cinemas from 2 November Jacqueline Riding's Peterloo - The Story of the Manchester Massacre is available nowProducer: Debbie Kilbride

How do you put the Bible on stage or make a modern medieval mystery play? Shahidha Bari talks to the National Theatre of Brent's Patrick Barlow as his play The Messiah starts at UK tour. New Generation Thinker Daisy Black watches a new medieval mystery play in Stoke. Plus the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms exhibition at the British Library sees a giant Northumbrian Bible returned to Britain for the first time in 1300 years. And historian Iona Hine discusses her research into how we understand biblical stories and what difference translation makes. The Messiah by Patrick Barlow, with additional material by John Ramm, Jude Kelly and Julian Hough opens at Birmingham Repertory Theatre 18 Oct 2018 - 27 Oct 18 starring Hugh Dennis, Lesley Garrett and John Marquez. It tours to Cardiff, Sheffield and Chichester and then goes to the London West End. Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War runs at the British Library from Fri 19 Oct 2018 - Tue 19 Feb 2019 covering 600 years and featuring 180 treasures including the Codex Amiatinus, a giant Northumbrian Bible taken to Italy in 716The Mysteries - newly created dramas by Sam Pritchard and Chris Thorpe have been performed in five different venues across the North of England exploring the impact of different landscapes on communities. All of them can be seen at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester from 25 October–11 November 2018. Iona Hine researches at the University of Sheffield. https://www.dhi.ac.uk/hine/ Her thesis was called Englishing the Bible in Early Modern Europe. Producer: Luke Mulhall

Matthew Sweet takes to the woods with thoroughly modern witch, William Hunter, and writer and folklorist, Zoe Gilbert, to look for green men and suitable spots for a ritual. If modern magic is all about re-enchanting the world then old magic was more about fear and keeping witches out but as a new exhibition opens in Oxford, Dafydd Daniel and Lisa Mullen discuss whether magical thinking is an inevitable part of being human while in Marie Darrieussecq's new novel set in a not very far away and dystopian future, the forest is the last haven for fugitives. Our Life in the Forest by Marie Darrieussecq also looks at clones and trafficking. Her first novel, Pig Tales, was translated into thirty-five languages. As Radio 3 explores the idea of forests of the imagination she joins presenter Matthew Sweet along with New Generation Thinkers Dr Dafydd Daniel, who teaches at Jesus College, University of Oxford and Dr Lisa Mullen, who is the Steven Isenberg Junior Research Fellow, Worcester College. Zoe Gilbert's novel Folk is out now.Spellbound: Magic, Ritual & Witchcraft runs at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford until 6 January 2019. A playlist of Radio 3's Into the Forest programmes is here https://bbc.in/2RUE1LaProducer: Jacqueline Smith.

What's it like to be banned from your own country or to have your writing spark a row? Rana Mitter's guests talk identity, borders, forest landscapes and the long impact of the Ottoman empire. The American political scientist Francis Fukuyama is associated with the phrase "the end of history". His latest book Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment looks at what he sees as the threats to Liberalism. Alev Scott has travelled through 12 countries, talking to figures including warlords and refugees for her book Ottoman Odyssey: Travels Through a Lost Empire but she can't return to her birthplace. She's joined by New Generation Thinker Michael Talbot who teaches at the University of Greenwich and whose research has uncovered the drunken antics of soldiers in post World War I Istanbul. He's a contributor to http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/ and he reviews Like a Sword Wound by Ahmet Altan -published now in an English translation by Yelda Türedi and Brendan Freely. It's the first book in the Ottoman Quartet, a narrative that spans the history of Turkey during the decline of the Ottoman Empire. The writer is now in prison for life. The Polish novelist Olga Tokarczuk won the 2018 Man Booker International Prize for her novel Flights. Her latest novel to be translated into English by Antonia Lloyd Jones is called Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead and became the film Spoor directed by directed by Agnieszka Holland. Her writing has been called anti-Catholic. You can find more discussions about borders, home and belonging in this playlist of programmes https://bbc.in/2QALzkL