Free Thinking Folgen

The anti-colonial leader killed 50 years ago (20th January) was a poet, influenced by Marxism and led the nationalist movement of Guinea-Bissau and the Cape Verde Islands. António Tomás, José Lingna Nafafé and New Generation Thinker Alexandra Reza join Rana Mitter to explore his life, thinking and legacy.José Lingna Nafafé is Senior Lecturer in Portuguese and Lusophone Studies at the University of Bristol. His work concentrates on the Black Atlantic abolitionist movement in the 17th Century and the Lusophone Atlantic African diaspora.Alex Reza is a writer and lecturer in comparative literatures and cultures working in French, Portuguese and English at the University of Bristol. She is also a BBC Radio 3/AHRC New Generation Thinker.António Tomás is the author of several publications in Portuguese and English, namely Amílcar Cabral, the Life of a Reluctant Nationalist (2021) and In the skin of the City: Spatial Transformation in Luanda (2022). He is currently an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Architecture, at the University of Johannesburg.Producer: Ruth WattsYou might be interested in other Free Thinking discussions exploring Black History gathered into a collection on the programme website and all available to listen on BBC Sounds and to download as Arts and Ideas podcasts https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08t2qbp They include a conversation about the writing of Aimé Césaire and the Haitian revolutionary Toussaint Louverture https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000nmxf A discussion of Frantz Fanon https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000tdtn

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

Louise Jameson joins Matthew Sweet to recall the women who ran the digs she stayed in as a touring actor and the landladies that she's played (including a homicidal one!). Historian Gillian Williamson looks at how life in boarding houses in Georgian London has been portrayed both in contemporary accounts and in fiction, while Lillian Crawford encounters some memorable landladies in Ealing comedies and other post-war British films.Gillian Williamson is the author of Lodgers, Landlords, and Landladies in Georgian London.Producer: Torquil MacLeod.