Arts & Ideas Folgen

How have attitudes to punishment changed over time, and what ideas about the rationale for punishment are circulating today? In Radio 4's roundtable discussion programme, Matthew Sweet and guests explore the criminal justice system through history.With:Stephanie Brown, Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Hull and BBC / AHRC New Generation Thinker on the scheme which puts research on radioScout Tzofiya Bolton, poet and broadcaster who presents on National Prison Radio, and for Radio 4 the Illuminated episode called The Ballad of Scout and the Alcohol Tag. Her poetry collection is called The Mad Art of Doing TimeJoanna Hardy-Susskind, criminal barrister and presenter for Radio 4 of a series called You Do Not Have To Say AnythingStephen Shapiro, Professor of American Literature at the University of WarwickJonathan Sumption, former Supreme Court judge and now Moral Maze panellist for BBC Radio 4 and author of a five-volume account of The Hundred Years WarProducer: Eliane Glaser

From an impoverished neighbourhood in South London, Charlie Chaplin became one of the most significant figures in the development of cinema. More recently, TV writers like Sophie Willan and Michaela Coel have transformed the way working class lives are depicted on TV, from the concerned paternalism of the 1960s to a more celebratory view from the inside in the 2020s. In this week's edition of Radio 4's arts and ideas discussion programme, Matthew Sweet charts these changes, and considers what they mean for our understanding of class categories in wider society. With TV historian Laura Minor, art historian Jacqueline Riding, novelist Adelle Stripe, and historian Samuel Johnson-Schlee. Plus, an interview with Ian La Frenais, co-creator of such comedy classics as The Likely Lads and Porridge. The paperback of Adelle Stripe's memoir Base Notes, and Jacqueline Riding's book Hard Street: Working Class Lives in Charlie Chaplin's London, are both published in February. Producer: Luke Mulhall

'The strong do what they will, the weak suffer what they must'. So claimed the powerful Athenians, according to the Ancient Greek historian Thucydides. Plato tried to demonstrate that might does not make right, and thinkers ever since, from Hobbes and Rousseau to Kant and Carl Schmitt, have placed the idea that might is right at the centre of their political philosophies, for better or worse. Matthew Sweet traces the intellectual history of the idea, with Angie Hobbs, Margaret MacMillan, Lea Ypi, and Hugo Drochon. Angie Hobbs' book Why Plato Matters Now, and Lea Ypi's book Indignity, are both out now, Hugo Drochon's book Elites And Democracy is published in March Producer: Luke Mulhall