Arts & Ideas Folgen

Django Unchained, the newest Quentin Tarantino film causing controversy, is reviewed by Philip Dodd with cultural commentator Kit Davis and film critic Tim Robey. Author Lucy Hughes-Hallett joins Philip to discuss the life of Italian writer Gabriele D'Annunzio, the subject of her new book The Pike. We explore the complex code of English manners with Henry Hitchings, whose new book tells their history, and Chinese writer Xiaolu Guo. And Philip interviews Sharon Olds, winner of this year’s T S Eliot prize for Poetry.

Anne McElvoy and guests discuss the life and work of the Russian director Konstantin Stanislavski, born 150 years ago this month. Adam Mars-Jones reviews Utopia, a new drama on Channel 4. Which should be our priority, growing the economy or protecting the environment? Environmental campaigner Tony Juniper joins Anne, along with Dr Benny Peiser to discuss. And the historian Jonathan Healey, one of our New Generation Thinkers, reflects on the proposals to change succession laws and what they might mean for the future of our monarchy.

To mark the 60th anniversary of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, Rana Mitter is joined by philosophers Rupert Read and Barry Smith, and Wittgenstein’s biographer Ray Monk, to examine his legacy in Western philosophical tradition. Graham Stewart talks about his new book which details the influence and paradoxes of the 1980s. And Aidan Foster-Carter and Shakuntala Banaji discuss the ‘soft’ power that K-Pop and Bollywood have generated for their respective countries.