The Essay

Kenneth Steven looks at Rum, a wild and windswept Hebridean island, and responds to its landscape in poetry. Rum is the largest of a group making up the 'Small Isles', Rum, Muck, Eigg and Canna, lying west of the fishing port of Mallaig in the Scottish Highlands. 'I don't know a Hebridean island more beautiful to approach. Every time I do I think of it again as a treasure island.'Its remote and rugged beauty attracted an eccentric Victorian industrialist, who bought it and attempted to transform it into his own vision of an island home, complete with a castle. 'The castle itself was built of red sandstone and shaped from the Isle of Arran. Greenhouses were brought for the growing of peaches, grapes and nectarines. There were heated pools for turtles and alligators; an aviary was constructed for birds of paradise and humming birds.' It was not to last, and Kenneth looks at what's left of the island fantasy today, leaving him with a profound sense of sadness.

Poet Kenneth Steven has a special relationship with the small Hebridean island of Iona, set in the Atlantic off the west coast of Scotland. It was the place of learning and worship in the 6th century, when St Columba brought Christianity from Ireland and set up a monastery, and today it still has a spiritual quality for many of its visitors. Kenneth has visited since he was a child and collected stones polished by the sea along its beaches. Today he reflects on Iona's place as a 'meeting of the sea roads, which has had such a profound impact on so many, and has done for longer than we can ever know'. '..That is why I keep returning, thirsty, to this place That is older than my understanding, Younger than my broken spirit.'.

Author and broadcaster Sarah Churchwell describes the spell that female film stars of the 1930s and '40s have over her..From Barbara Stanwyck, 'the tough broad', to a vision of modernity who is all 'satin' and 'chrome'. The author moves on to consider the original 'blonde bombshell' - Jean Harlow.Producer Duncan Minshull.

Author and broadcaster Sarah Churchwell describes the spell that female film stars of the 1930's and 40's have over her.From stately Katharine Hepburn she moves on to think about Barbara Stanwyck - 'the tough dame' - who could do more with a raised eyebrow and 'side-eye' than anybody else around.Producer Duncan Minshull.

Author and broadcaster Sarah Churchwell describes the spell that female film stars of the 1930s and '40s have over her..She begins her series with Katharine Hepburn, the so-called 'Ice Queen', who inspired the young author growing up in Chicago and lacking any role models. One day she watched The Philadelphia Story on television and life changed forever ...Producer Duncan Minshull.

Novelist Ian Sansom has a theory to put to Queen of crime, Agatha Christie.

A letter of apology to Virginia Woolf from novelist, Ian Sansom.

Novelist Ian Sansom pens a missive to George Eliot...

Novelist Ian Sansom fires off a letter to Geoffrey Chaucer...

How James Baldwin's short story helped a doctor and her patient break down the divisions of class, age and race. This is part one of The Essay's five-part series, Narrative Medicine - a term coined to describe the capacity to recognize, absorb, metabolize, interpret, and be moved by stories of illness. Simply - it's medicine practised by someone who knows what to do with stories. Part of the BBC's NHS at 70 season. Warning: this episode deals with serious medical issues and trauma.

Dr Rita Charon finds a model physician in the pages of Henry James: someone who though on the sidelines of a person's life remains a loyal advocate. This is part two of The Essay's five-part series, Narrative Medicine - a term coined to describe the capacity to recognize, absorb, metabolize, interpret, and be moved by stories of illness. Simply, it's medicine practised by someone who knows what to do with stories. Part of the BBC's NHS at 70 season. Warning: this episode deals with serious medical issues and trauma.

Dr Rita Charon considers Kazuo Ishiguro's novel and the questions that it raises. What it means to be human? And how can physicians respond to life's mysteries and paradoxes? This is part three of The Essay's five-part series, Narrative Medicine - a term coined to describe the capacity to recognize, absorb, metabolize, interpret, and be moved by stories of illness. Simply, it's medicine practised by someone who knows what to do with stories. Part of the BBC's NHS at 70 season. Warning: this episode deals with serious medical issues and trauma.

Dr Rita Charon traces parallels between the portents of war in Virginia Woolf's novel and the responses of her New York City patients to the 9/11 attacks. This is part four of The Essay's five-part series, Narrative Medicine - a term coined to describe the capacity to recognize, absorb, metabolize, interpret, and be moved by stories of illness. Simply, it's medicine practised by someone who knows what to do with stories. Part of the BBC's NHS at 70 season. Warning: this episode deals with serious medical issues and trauma.

Dr Rita Charon explains how Colson Whitehead's 2016 novel about American slavery is used to train medical students, encouraging them to "write what can't be told".This is the final part of The Essay's five-part series, Narrative Medicine - a term coined to describe the capacity to recognize, absorb, metabolize, interpret, and be moved by stories of illness. Simply, it's medicine practised by someone who knows what to do with stories. Part of the BBC's NHS at 70 season. Warning: this episode deals with serious medical issues and trauma.

170 years ago one woman launched the beginning of the modern women's rights movement in America. New Generation Thinker Joanna Cohen of Queen Mary University of London looks back at her story and what lessons it has for politics now. In the small town of Seneca Falls in upstate New York, Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote The Declaration of Sentiments, a manifesto that took one of the nation's most revered founding documents, Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, and turned its condemnation of British tyranny into a blistering attack on the tyranny of American men. But why did Stanton choose to rebrand her claim for rights with the power of sentiment?Recorded with an audience at the York Festival of Ideas.New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio programmes. Producer: Jacqueline Smith.

The lawyer turned poet whose response to political upheaval has lessons for our time - explored by New Generation Thinker Seb Falk with an audience at the York Festival of Ideas The 14th century's most eloquent pessimist, John Gower has forever been overshadowed by his funnier friend Chaucer. Yet his trilingual poetry is truly encyclopedic, mixing social commentary, romance and even science. Writing 'somewhat of lust, somewhat of lore', Gower's response to political upheaval was to 'shoot my arrows at the world'. Whether you want to be cured of lovesickness or learn the secrets of alchemy, John Gower has something to tell you.New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio. Producer: Jacqueline Smith.

A radical community of women set up in 1760s rural England is explored in an essay from New Generation Thinker Lucy Powell, recorded with an audience at the 2018 York Festival of Ideas.Sarah Scott's first novel, published in 1750, was a conventional French-style romance, the fitting literary expression of a younger daughter of the lesser gentry. One year later, she had scandalously fled her husband's house, and pooled finances and set up home with her life-long partner, Lady Barbara Montagu. Her fourth novel, Millennium Hall, described in practical detail the communal existence of a group of women who had taken refuge in each other's company and created an all-female utopia in rural England. On Lady Bab's death, in 1765, Scott would attempt to create this radical community in actuality. Lucy Powell will explore the life, work, and far-reaching influence of this extraordinary writer. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to select ten academics e

The most famous imposter of the seventeenth century - Mary Carleton. John Gallagher, of the University of Leeds, argues that the story of the "German Princess" raises questions about what evidence we believe and the currency of shame. Her real name was thought to be Mary Moders and she became a media sensation in Restoration London, after her husband's family, greedy for the riches they believed her to be concealing, accused her of bigamy and put her on trial for her life. Her life, and what remains to us of it, forces us to ask hard questions of the sources from her time. Whose word do we trust? Recorded with an audience at the 2018 York Festival of Ideas. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio. Producer: Jacqueline Smith.

Sophie Coulombeau tells the story of John Trusler, an eccentric Anglican minister who was the quintessential 18th-century entrepreneur. He was a prolific author, an innovative publisher, a would-be inventor, and a 'medical gentleman' of dubious qualifications. Dismissed by many as a conman and scoundrel, today, few have heard of the man but his madcap schemes often succeeded, in different forms, a century or two later. In his efforts we can trace the ancestors of the thesaurus, the self-help book, Comic Sans, professional ghostwriting, the Society of Authors, and electrotherapy. New Generation Thinker Sophie Coulombeau argues that telling his story can help us to reinterpret and rehabilitate the very idea of 'failure'. Recorded with an audience at the York Festival of Ideas 2018.New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the AHRC to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio. Producer: Jacqueline Smith.

Forests are a potent source of inspiration for artists, writers and composers but the truly creative force in the forest is fire. Andrew C Scott from Royal Holloway, University of London is the author of 'Burning Planet'. He stands in awe of the power of fire to reshape our forests and the ability of nature to bounce back, offering fresh space for new plants and animals to colonise.Andrew takes Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough for a walk through Swinley Woods in Berkshire, site of a spectacular fire in 2011 that, for one terrible day, threatened Windsor Castle and thousands of homes.Producer: Alasdair CrossIn midsummer week, Radio 3 enters one of the most potent sources of the human imagination. 'Into the Forest' explores the enchantment, escape and magical danger of the forest in summer, with slow radio moments featuring the sounds of the forest, allowing time out from today's often frenetic world.