Arts & Ideas Folgen

With Rana Mitter. Bestselling author of Wild Swans, Jung Chang discusses her new biography of the most important woman in Chinese history; Empress Dowager Cixi. Alastair Sooke survey's a new show by The critics' favourite Young British artist, Sarah Lucas. US historian Tim Stanley joins Rana to discuss former Chilean President Salvador Allende along with the author of a new book on the subject, Oscar Guardiola-Rivera. And our latest contribution to the Sound of Cinema season: Simon Fisher Turner discusses his new soundtrack to The Epic of Everest.

Samuel Huntington’s essay ‘The Clash of Civilisations?’ was published twenty years ago; Philip Dodd and guests Douglas Murray, Maria Misra and Gideon Rose discuss the importance and relevance of the essay today. Karen Leeder reviews a new exhibition of the work of George Grosz which focuses on his satirical depictions of bourgeois life in Weimar Berlin. Simon Heffer on his new book High Minds, which explores 1840s-1880s as a period which laid the foundations for modern Britain.

Actress Cate Blanchett joins Samira Ahmed to discuss her role in Woody Allen's latest film, Blue Jasmine. Renaissance scholar Alexander Lee, Sarah Dunant and Radio 3 New Generation Thinker John Gallagher reassess the Renaissance and consider whether our view of the period is seen through rose-tinted glasses. Maxim Leo on his new memoir, Red Love, and the compromises involved in living in the DDR. Art critic Joanne Harwood reviews Tate Modern's retrospective of the late Brazilian artist Mira Schendel.