Arts & Ideas Folgen

Prize-winning first novelists Eimear McBride and Nathan Filer join Anne McElvoy to discuss literary experimentation. Matt Thorne gives us a first night review of the European premiere of Anne Washburn's play Mr Burns which is set in a world without electricity. New Generation Thinker Sophie Coulombeau examines British philosopher and social reformer Jeremy Bentham€'s €'Universal Tattoo'€™. And as Chancellor George Osborne makes his annual Mansion House speech to the City of London we get Peter Knight and Janette Rutterford to consider the image of finance past and present.

The director of the Hayward Ralph Rugoff, former principal Royal Ballet dancer Deborah Bull and neuroscientist Professor Patrick Haggard explore presentations of and research into the human body. And what is the meaning of 'community' with philosopher and writer Julian Baggini, journalist and historian Tim Stanley and writer Ziauddin Sardar. Plus Preti Taneja, one of the 2014 Radio 3 New Generation Thinkers, on the female casting of King Lear.

Amma Asante's film Belle depicts an illegitimate mixed-race girl brought up in eighteenth-century London in Kenwood House, the household of Lord Mansfield. Director Amma Asante and Dr Kit Davies talk to Matthew Sweet about the issues raised in the film. Writer Rosamund Bartlett has a first night review of Brian Friel's stage version of Turgenev's Fathers and Sons which opens at London's Donmar Warehouse tonight. There's the first column from the 2014 Radio 3 New Generation Thinkers: Tom Charlton brings those who would question the value of a research library to book. Plus Andrew Pendleton and Ryan Bourne discuss whether a globalised economy an environmental problem or a solution.