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A blind woman who temporarily regains her sight is the heroine of Wilkie Collins’ 1872 novel Poor Miss Finch. Matthew Sweet is joined by Clare Walker Gore, Tom Shakespeare and Tanvir Bush to discuss how Collins’ own poor health led him to write about disability and physical difference in a more nuanced way than many of his contemporaries. Apart from Lucilla Finch, who has more agency when blind than sighted, other examples include the apparently monstrous Miserrimus Dexter ('the new centaur: half-man, half-chair') in The Law and the Lady, and the shockingly moustachioed Marian Halcombe in The Woman in White.Tanvir Bush is the author of Cull. You can also hear her discussing John Wyndham's novel The Day of the Triffids on Free Thinking. Clare Walker Gore has contributed to a Free Thinking discussion about Depicting Disability and written essays for Radio 3 about authors including Dinah Mulock Craik and Margaret Oliphant. Tom Shakespeare is Professor of Disability Research at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. You can hear his Radio 3 essay on Tolkien on BBC Sounds.Producer: Torquil MacLeod

How tennis stars developed in the 1920s. Historian David Berry and poet Matt Harvey talk to Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough about Centre Court, its opening in the new home of the All England Club in 1922, the styling of stars and how participation in tennis changed.Producer: Torquil MacLeod You can find more conversations about art and culture of the 1920s in a collection called Modernism on BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07p3nxh

A new craze for body building and that distinctive figure of the 20th century, the hobbyist, are the topic of conversation as we continue our series of features looking at cultural life in 1922. John Gallagher considers what the expansion of free time in the 1920s meant for leisure and the things people did for fun. He is joined by historian Elsa Richardson and literary scholar Jon Day.Producer: Luke MulhallFind more discussions about culture and the arts of the 1920s in a collection called Modernism on the BBC Radio 3 Free Thinking programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07p3nxh