Free Thinking Folgen

"We suffer from Johnson" - those words come in a poem written by his friend, the diarist Hester Thrale Piozzi (who died May 2nd 1821). Patience Agbabi's new novel time travels back to eighteenth century London and takes its teenage heroes to a tea party at Samuel Johnson's house. Thomas Lawrence sketched his biographer Boswell. His Jamaican servant Francis Barber inherited his watch. So Laurence Scott convenes his own virtual tea party to look at Samuel Johnson's world.New Generation Thinker Sophie Coulombeau is co-organiser of the first international conference on Hester Thrale Piozzi and will share her findings from her research into Piozzi's life and works. As an exhibition of Lawrence's portraits prepares to open at the Holburne Museum in Bath, we hear from curator, Amina Wright, about the young artist. Patience Agbabi's novel is called The Time-Thief and she explains why she was drawn to depict Samuel Johnson. And, New Generation Thinker Jake Subryan Richards writes a postcard reflecting on ideas about slavery, abolition and the law in eighteenth century England.New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to turn academic research into radio. You can find a playlist of discussions, features and Essays on the Free Thinking programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08zhs35Producer: Ruth WattsImage: Patience Agbabi Credit: Lyndon Douglas

A Northern Irish writer - what does that label mean? Lucy Caldwell compares notes with Caroline Magennis about the way authors are charting change and setting down experience - from working class memoirs of life in Derry to the poetry of Seamus Heaney, Sinéad Morrissey and others. And as we approach the centenary of the creation of Northern Ireland, Anne McElvoy talks to Roy Foster and Charles Townshend about the history and legacy of partition.Charles Townshend is Professor Emeritus of International History at Keele University, and Roy Foster is Professor and Honorary Fellow at Hertford College, University of Oxford. Amongst other titles, Roy Foster is the author of Vivid Faces: The Revolutionary Generation in Ireland, 1890-1923, and Charles Townshend's new book is The Partition: Ireland Divided, 1885-1925.Lucy Caldwell's new book is called Intimacies and is published in May, and she has also edited Being Various: New Irish Short Stories. In the interview she recommends books including the writing of Mary Beckett, The Glass Shore: Short Stories by Woman Writers from the North of Ireland edited by Sinéad Gleeson, and Inventory: A River, A City, A Family by Darran Anderson.Caroline Magennis is Reader in 20th and 21st Century Literature at the University of Salford, and her upcoming publication, Northern Irish Writing After the Troubles: Intimacies, Affects, Pleasures, will be available in August.Producer: Emma WallaceIf you want more conversations with writers from Northern Ireland you can find the following episodes on the Free Thinking website: Sinéad Morrissey on winning the TS Eliot Prize in 2014 - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03pdf10 Michael Longley talks about his poetry and winning the PEN Pinter prize - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b098hz1m Bernard MacClaverty talks to Anne McElvoy about depicting love and loss in a long relationship in his novel Midwinter Break - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09525cn Ruth Dudley Edwards looks at ideas about belonging - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000h2g4 Roy Foster and Paul Muldoon are in conversation - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b050xpsd

From the Jewishness of the New Testament to attempts by 19th- and early 20th-century British Jews to blend in to Christian England, Giles Fraser shows how the two religions have a vexed history but are also surprisingly interconnected in his new book called Chosen. He also looks back at 2011, when the Occupy London took over the steps and surroundings of St Pauls and the resulting division in the church about how to react to this protest movement led him to leave his job and to a crisis of confidence. Miri Rubin, Professor of Medieval and Early Modern History at Queen Mary, University of London, and David Feldman, Professor of History and Director of the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism at Birkbeck, University of London, join Giles Fraser and Matthew Sweet to explore the degree to which you can emphasise similarities between Christianity and Judaism - what do you gain and what do you lose? Producer: Eliane GlaserYou can find a playlist of programmes exploring religious belief on the Free Thinking website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03mwxlp which includes Jonathan Freedland, Hadley Freeman, Howard Jacobson and Bari Weiss on Jewish Identity in 2020 Simon Schama and Devorah Baum on Jewish history and jokes and Frank Skinner, Jeet Thayil and Yaa Gyasi on Writing about Faith