Free Thinking Folgen

Bernardine Evaristo, Keith Piper, Miranda Kaufmann and Kehinde Andrews consider the question what it means to be Black British and how should a wider history be taught and reflected in literature. New Generation Thinker Nandini Das presents.Kehinde Andrews is at Birmingham City University where his research includes looking at black activism. He is series editor of Blackness in Britain with Rowman and Littlefield InternationalMiranda Kaufmann is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London. Her book Black Tudors will be published by Oneworld in autumn 2017. Bernardine Evaristo is the author of prose and poetic novels including The Emperor's Babe and Mr Loverman. She teaches creative writing at Brunel University.Keith Piper's exhibition Unearthing the Banker’s Bones, in partnership with Iniva, is at Bluecoat in Liverpool and runs until 22 January 2017.Producer: Torquil MacLeod.

Matthew Sweet talks to 21st-century novelists Sarah Perry and Carol Birch about why the 19th century illuminates their writing. And can the Victorians still make us laugh? Cultural historians Fern Riddell and Bob Nicholson, consider the question raised by a new exhibition. Plus neo-Victorians - historian Mark Llewellyn on the curiously enduring presence of the 19th century in contemporary culture.Victorian Entertainments: There Will Be Fun at the British Library in London runs from Fri 14 October 2016 - Sun 12 March 2017. There is a special Friday Night Late on November 25th.Presenter: Matthew SweetGuests: Sarah Perry, The Essex Serpent Carol Birch, Orphans of the Carnival Mark Llewellyn (with Ann Heilmann), Neo-Victorianism: The Victorians in the Twenty-First Century Fern Riddell, The Victorian Guide to Sex Bob Nicholson from Edge Hill University is the author of many articles about Victorian literature and periodicals and he has been working with Dr Mark Hall (Computing) and the British Library on a digital humanities project that aims to create an online archive of one million Victorian jokes. Producer: Jacqueline Smith

Today perhaps, Brand Britain is showing its age, but once upon a time it was nothing less than one of the most dynamic political projects in the world. In a Free Thinking Landmark on Walter Scott's Waverley, Rana Mitter reflects on the writer and the books which helped the British like the idea of Britain. Joining Rana in discussion: the writer, Jenni Calder who has recently adapted 'Waverley' for a modern audience; the poet and literary historian, Robert Crawford, who is interested in the originality and reception of Scott's writing and its affect on the imagination; and Andrew Lincoln, an English literature scholar, who has explored Scott as a forward-looking thinker, one who evoked patriotism in the Unionist cause. You can find more programmes in the BBC #LoveToRead campaign http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04b5zz8/members And hear more over the #LovetoRead weekend 5-6 November. As an acclaimed romantic poet, beloved of Byron, then a best-selling novelist, envied by Jane Austen, Sir Walter Scott wrote into existence many of the myths and legends we still re-tell and he used this past to examine and explore the political problems of his own day. Waverley' appeared in 1814 when the Napoleonic Wars had not yet drawn to a close -- and the events the novel describes, the 1745, (when Charles Edward Stuart and his army rocked the stability of a still youthful Anglo-Scottish political Union) were as close in time as the Second World War now is to us. In 'Waverley', 'Rob Roy', 'Red Gauntlet' and 'Ivanhoe', Scott conjured up heroic pasts - not just for Scotland, but for England too - romantic highlanders like Rob Roy on the one hand, the anglo-saxon Robin of the Greenwood on the other. The Waverley novels instilled in their readers a great sense of national pride along with the belief that the two countries, now politically mature, their internal struggles behind them, really could and would be stronger together. In the by-going he conjured up a portrait of the British as an effortlessly multicultural people with deep roots who were now uniquely qualified to take on the world. Presenter: Rana Mitter Guests: Robert Crawford: University of St Andrews, 'Bannockburns: Scottish Independence and the Literary Imagination 1314-2014' Jenni Calder: 'Sir Walter Scott's Waverley': Newly Adapted for the Modern Reader' Andrew Lincoln: Queen Mary, University of London, 'Walter Scott and Modernity' Producer: Jacqueline Smith