Arts & Ideas Folgen

Best-selling novelist Philippa Gregory talks to Rana Mitter about writing historical fiction, her fascination with the Tudors, and how her fiction turns the spotlight on the lives on women at significant moments in history. Recorded at The Sage Gateshead at Radio 3’s Free Thinking Festival on Sunday 4th November 2012.

Bernard Rose, whose new film Boxing Day is a modern rework of Tolstoy’s Master and Man, is in conversation with Philip Dodd. In a year when public inquiries have been especially resonant, we consider what we mean by ‘the public’ and its right to justice. Historian Helen Bynum talks about the history of tuberculosis and how the disease has been romanticised in culture. And Radio 3 New Generation Thinker Nandini Das spots an unexpectedly seasonal image in the British Library’s new exhibition about Mughal India.

Matthew Sweet discusses The Girl, a new film about Alfred Hitchcock’s vexed relationship with Tippi Hedren, with the leading lady herself and actor Toby Jones. We celebrate the centenary of Tarzan with author Michael Chabon and the former ‘Ape Man’ stars Johnny Weissmuller and Ron Ely. And Matthew examines the compelling creations of the writer, artist and creative polymath, Alasdair Gray.