Arts & Ideas Folgen

How does France look when viewed from different places and at different times? Graham Robb knows France well from his academic career and decades of travels and offers an alternative route through French history in his new book. Hannah Scott has looked at the role of low-brow music in forming an idea of ‘Britishness’ for the French at the height of cross-channel rivalry in the last century. Tash Aw has translated the latest work of biographical writing by Édouard Louis. Professor Ginette Vincendeau is currently co-editing a book on Paris in the cinema. They join Anne McElvoy to explore ideas of France and the French through it's history and culture.Graham Robb has published widely on French literature and history and was a fellow of Exeter College, Oxford. His latest book is France: An Adventure HistoryHannah Scott is an academic track fellow at the University of Newcastle. She is the author of Singing the English: Britain in the French Musical Lowbrow 1870-1904Ginette Vincendeau is a Professor in Film Studies at King's College, University of London. She is is currently co-editing a book on Paris in the cinema. She has recently published on ethnicity in contemporary French cinema and is researching popular French directors of the 1950s and 1960s.A Woman's Battles and Transformations by Édouard Louis (author)and translated by Tash Aw is out now.Édouard Louis's earlier book Who Killed My Father has been adapted into a stage drama by Ivo Van Hove. You can see that at the Young Vic in London between 7th September and the 24th September and you can hear Édouard talking to Philip Dodd about street protest, gilets jaunes and his own upbringing in this episode of Free Thinking https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0704m92Producer: Ruth Watts

Aethelflaed and Bertha are two of the figures discussed in the new history of women in the Middle Ages written by Janina Ramirez. Choreographer Shobana Jeyasingh has taken the heroine who fights Tancredi the crusading knight and reframed the story set to the music composed by Monteverdi's Il Combattimento. Cat Jarman is a bioarchaeologist who has tracked the way a Viking ‘Carnelian’ bead travelled to England from 8th-century Baghdad, with all that it tells us about women and power.They join Shahidha Bari to discuss ideas about women as warriors and power brokers.Femina: A New History of the Middle Ages, Through the Women Written Out of It by Janina Ramirez is published July 21st 2022Shobana Jeyasingh's new dance work Clorinda Agonistes premieres on July 13th and 14th at Grange Festival, Hampshire and then can be seen at Sadlers Wells Sept 9th and 10th, Snape Maltings October 8th, the Lowry Oct 18th and 19th, Oxford Playhouse 15th and 16th November.River Kings: A New History of the Vikings from Scandinavia to the Silk Roads by Cat Jarman is out now.Producer in Salford: Cecile WrightYou might be interested in another discussion about women fighting hearing from Maaza Mengiste, Christina Lamb, Julie Wheelwright https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000g4bz available on the Free Thinking programme website and to download as an Arts & Ideas podcast our our discussion about Vikings https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0015582and we have a whole collection called Women in the World https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p084ttwp

From Beyonce to Octavia Butler, from Chris Ofili to Jordan Peele, the speculative and the mythical have been used as powerful tools to shape Black art, film, music and writing. Ekow Eshun, who has curated a new exhibition on this theme at the Hayward Gallery, joins Shahidha Bari along with DJ/turntablist NikNak and New Generation Thinker Louisa Egbunike to discuss how this idea of the Black Fantastic relates to and in some ways challenges Afrofuturism.In the Black Fantastic runs at the Hayward Gallery, London until 18th September 2022. The exhibition is accompanied by a book and by a season of films at the BFI, including Djibril Diop Mambéty's 1973 film Touki Bouki which you can hear being discussed by Matthew Sweet and guests in another edition of Free Thinking available on BBC Sounds.NikNak is touring the UK with Sankofa, her latest multi-media project and album, from 12th-18th July. Details can be found on the Sound UK website.Producer: Torquil MacLeod