The Essay

'Dear Geoffrey Chaucer, Can I call you Geoff..?' In a series of imaginary correspondences, novelist Ian Sansom is writing letters to five of literary history's most celebrated figures and interrogating them about their art.'Oh Agatha Christie, Please - do tell - what is the secret of your success?'As his correspondence unfolds, queries are raised and jealousies revealed.'Dear Virginia Woolf, Please accept my apologies. For a long time I thought you represented everything that's wrong with literature...'How exactly does George Eliot do it? And why does she keep ignoring Ian's letters?'Dear George Eliot, You are simply so far out of my league as a correspondent that it is embarrassing even to put pen to paper and to address you directly.In his on-going epistolary quest, Ian attempts to find out everything you wanted to know about some of our best-loved writers but just were too afraid to ask.Producer: Conor Garrett.

Film and theatre director Sir Richard Eyre describes how he was inspired by "The People's War" by Angus Calder. This social history of the Second World War relives the experience of ordinary citizens during the conflict: "their endurance and patience and their cowardice, complaints, and selfishness, as much as their heroism and humanity." It provided Eyre with a vision - albeit unfulfilled - of social justice, which was in sight during the social revolution of wartime. "So I return to this book, this litany of courage and misery and endurance and hardship - the only book I return to constantly and obsessively - for solace." Producer: Smita Patel.

The artist Tacita Dean describes how "Fires" by Marguerite Yourcenar changed her life and art. She discovered the book of prose poems as an undergraduate. "Somehow, her pithy and uncompromising language appealed to me, and my own love tragedy," she says. Yourcenar's work helped her find her voice as a feminist, writer and film-maker. "She gave a female voice to my passionate and romantic younger self who was trying to find an artistic context for the desire I had to reach out and touch the classical past."Producer: Smita Patel.

Ben Anderson, correspondent with Vice News, on how "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" led him to become a journalist. He discovered the book, ghost-written by Alex Haley, as "a skinny white kid living in Bedford". Yet the story of the American firebrand for the cause of black power became his touchstone. He was inspired by the way Malcolm X devoured every possible book while in prison. "Suddenly a fire was lit inside me. I had a path to follow," Anderson says. And Malcolm X's urge to see the world for himself was another source of inspiration. "This basic approach of just getting there and witnessing has become my job," he says. Malcolm X's " constant search, his relentless curiosity, his willingness to face unpleasant facts and reinvent himself, set an example that I?ve tried to follow ever since." Producer: Smita Patel.

Pauline Black, the singer who found fame with the ska band The Selecter, on how Harper Lee's "To Kill A Mockingbird" helped her understand her place as a black girl adopted by a white family. She both identified with Scout, the tomboyish main character, while it was the first book she read in which the black characters "shared a dignity and gravitas". It allowed her to understand the racial tensions and hypocrisy which surrounded her childhood. "This novel gave the little black girl that timidly lingered inside me the security to come out and fight against racial injustice with my chosen profession, music." Producer: Smita Patel.

David Simon, the author and creator of the TV series "The Wire", describes how "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" by James Agee and Walker Evans changed his work as a journalist. The celebrated work capturing the lives of ordinary people during the depression made him realise the importance of sharing "the simple, raw vulnerability" of lived experience. "Page after page was fully ripe with the delicate work of a thinking journalist who knows with all moral certitude that he is approaching and attempting to capture the love, fear and sadness of real lives." Producer: Smita Patel.

Novelist Kit de Waal reflects on the architecture of Winson Green Prison, in Birmingham, where she worked. This week's Essays are part of the 70th birthday celebrations of the Third Programme: the network discussed architecture from its earliest days, covering both new initiatives and historic buildings, most notably in talks by Nikolaus Pevsner. Producer Clare Walker.

Author Dr Gavin Francis passes the new Queensferry Crossing every morning on his way to work. When it is finished in May 2017, it will be the largest balanced cantilever ever built. Gavin believes it is the most impressive structure under construction in these islands today. This week's Essays are part of the 70th birthday celebrations of the Third Programme: the network discussed architecture from its earliest days, covering both new initiatives and historic buildings, most notably in talks by Nikolaus Pevsner. Producer Clare Walker.

Poet Helen Mort can see Chesterfield's Crooked Spire Church - The Church of St Mary's and All Saints - from the window of her house. She explains why it has inspired her since childhood. This week's Essays are part of the 70th birthday celebrations of the Third Programme: the network discussed architecture from its earliest days, covering both new initiatives and historic buildings, most notably in talks by Nikolaus Pevsner. Producer Clare Walker.

British Painter Humphrey Ocean RA introduces us to Impington College, the only building the Bauhaus architect Walter Gropius built in Britain. Humphrey believes it accidentally became the template for the proliferation of the kind of brave, new, post-war architecture he grew up with. This week's Essays are part of the 70th birthday celebrations of the Third Programme: the network discussed architecture from its earliest days, covering both new initiatives and historic buildings, most notably in talks by Nikolaus Pevsner. Producer Clare Walker.

Novelist Mark Haddon reflects on the house in Northamptonshire which was his childhood home, until the age of 12: "It was a detached, three bedroom, two storey new-build on a thin strip of reclaimed rubbish dump between the end of a red-brick terrace and the Smarts' bungalow. My father was an architect and although he didn't design the building himself it was, in its modest way, an architect's house, a couple of cuts above provincial 1960s boilerplate." This week's Essays are part of the 70th birthday celebrations of the Third Programme: the network discussed architecture from its earliest days, covering both new initiatives and historic buildings, most notably in talks by Nikolaus Pevsner. Producer Clare Walker.

In 1815 an anonymous author published "Memoirs of an Old Wig" and lamented the influx of French hairdressers to England. From the writings of ETA Hoffmann and Charles Dickens, from Hans Christian Andersen to Balzac and beyond, New Generation Thinker Seán Williams considers the depiction of hairdressers in prints and prose and what it tells us about a transformative period in British and European history. The Essay is recorded in front of an audience as part of Sound Frontiers: BBC Radio 3 live at Southbank Centre celebrating 7 decades of pioneering music and culture. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio. Producer: Jacqueline Smith.

In October 1884 the playwright August Strindberg took a train from exile to face a charge of blasphemy in court. New Generation Thinker Leah Broad, from the University of Oxford, reflects on "the woman question" in nineteenth century Scandinavian countries and what their debates have to say to us today.The Essay is recorded in front of an audience as part of Sound Frontiers: BBC Radio 3 live at Southbank Centre celebrating 7 decades of pioneering music and culture.New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio.Producer: Torquil MacLeod.

In 1912 Freud compared psychoanalysis to using the telephone, an instrument he disliked. Reflecting on this fear of the phone, the poet and New Generation Thinker Sarah Jackson, from Nottingham Trent University, explores the telephone's voices in philosophy and fiction.The Essay is recorded in front of an audience as part of Sound Frontiers: BBC Radio 3 live at Southbank Centre celebrating 7 decades of pioneering music and culture.New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio.Producer: Fiona McLean.

Memories of Partition explored by New Generation Thinker Anindya Raychaudhuri, from the University of St Andrews. He listens to oral histories and looks at film and literature depicting this key moment in history and the shadows it has cast. He reflects on the way people now frame their own experiences through representations of the mass migration which they have seen in news reels, films and fiction.The Essay was recorded in front of an audience as part of Sound Frontiers: BBC Radio 3 live at Southbank Centre celebrating 7 decades of pioneering music and culture.New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio. Applications are now open for the 2018 scheme. Further details and examples of other essays and broadcasts from New Generation Thinkers can be found on the Free Thinking programme website.

From Spanish Inquisition stews and Reformation sausages to pork in French school dinners, New Generation Thinker Christopher Kissane from the London School of Economics explores the significance of food in past and present conflicts over identity. The Essay is recorded in front of an audience as part of Sound Frontiers: BBC Radio 3 live at Southbank Centre celebrating 7 decades of pioneering music and culture. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio.Producer: Luke Mulhall.

To celebrate the 70th anniversary of Radio 3, the network invited five writers with whom it shares a birthday, also turning 70 this year, on a birthday outing. Our contributors chose to visit places that have some personal significance for them where they could look back and reflect on their feelings in this special birthday year.Today, Ukrainian-British Novelist Marina Lewycka, best known for her 2005 novel A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian which won the 2005 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, takes a trip up the Eiffel Tower to reflect on a lifetime of visiting the city and a look at what the future holds for the Europe she loves. Essayist and reader: Marina Lewycka Producer: Simon Richardson.

To celebrate the 70th anniversary of Radio 3, the network invited five writers with whom it shares a birthday, also turning 70 this year, on a birthday outing. Our contributors chose to visit a places that have some personal significance for them where they could look back and reflect on their feelings in this special birthday year.Today, novelist and memoirist Gervase Phinn, a former teacher and schools inspector, recalls joining the pilgrims on a visit to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, to pay homage to the relics of the apostle St James and to the act of pilgrimage itself. Essayist and reader: Gervase Phinn Producer: Simon Richardson.

To celebrate the 70th anniversary of Radio 3, the network invited five writers with whom it shares a birthday, also turning 70 this year, on a birthday outing. Our contributors chose to visit places that have some personal significance for them where they could look back and reflect on their feelings in this special birthday year.Liverpool-born novelist and former politician Edwina Currie returns to her native city for a ferry ride across the River Mersey where, over 50 years ago, in an end of school ritual, she and her peers threw their hated green school berets into the river. Essayist and reader: Edwina Currie Producer: Simon Richardson.

To celebrate the 70th anniversary of Radio 3, the network invited five writers with whom it shares a birthday, also turning 70 this year, on a birthday outing. Our contributors chose to visit places that have some personal significance for them, where they could look back and reflect on their feelings in this special birthday year.Today, poet and broadcaster Michael Rosen visits Eastwood and the childhood home of DH Lawrence, the poet who inspired him to write.Essayist and reader: Michael Rosen Producer: Simon Richardson.