The Essay

Recorded at the Laugharne Live Festival, in the grounds of Laugharne Castle, West Wales. Five leading writers and artists reflect on the ways in which they connect with one of Wales's most famous cultural exports, Dylan Thomas. The poet and writer Gwyneth Lewis, whose words are emblazoned over Wales Millennium Centre, takes a personal journey through the language of Dylan Thomas. She argues that to appreciate the work fully we must understand the poet's rigorous practice and detailed knowledge of poetic history and tradition.

Recorded at the Laugharne Live Festival, in the grounds of Laugharne Castle, West Wales, in 2014. Five leading writers and artists reflect on the ways in which they connect with one of Wales's most famous cultural exports, Dylan Thomas.Andrew Davies reflects on the influence of Dylan Thomas on a child growing up in Wales in the 1950s, with aspirations to be a writer. A day trip to Rhossili beach and a Cornish pasty chimed with Davies's role model's account in "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Dog", but was this the gateway to a future as a poet?

Recorded at the Laugharne Live Festival, in the grounds of Laugharne Castle, West Wales. Five leading writers and artists reflect on the ways in which they connect with one of Wales's most famous cultural exports, Dylan Thomas. Professor John Goodby is one of the world's most respected academic authorities on the poetry of Dylan Thomas. Using poems such as the radiant "In the White Giant's Thigh", "And death shall have no dominion" and "A Refusal to Mourn" he explores how the boundaries which Dylan Thomas crossed in both life and art have made it difficult for critics to pigeon-hole his legacy.

In today's essay, historian Dan Cruikshank explores his passion for Georgian architecture through the work of the Scottish neoclassical architect and interior designer Robert Adam.Producer: Mohini Patel.

In today's essay shedding light on key figures of the Georgian era, the writer and cartoonist Martin Rowson discusses the satiric genius of William Hogarth and his lasting influence on the development of the political cartoon.Producer: Mohini Patel.

In today's essay shedding light on key figures of the Georgian era, historian Amanda Vickery explores the life of gentlewoman Elizabeth Parker Shackleton, member of the lesser gentry and mercantile elite of 18th-century Lancashire.Producer: Mohini Patel.

In today's essay shedding light on key figures of the Georgian era, actor and writer Ian Kelly explores the life and times of David Garrick - actor, playwright and one of the most influential theatre managers of his generation.Producer: Mohini Patel.

In the first essay of the week, shedding light on key figures of the Georgian era, biographer Claire Tomalin explores the life of Dora Jordan, the greatest comic actress of her day and renowned for being lover to the future king.The rest of the essays in this series are by the actor and writer Ian Kelly on actor, playwright, and theatre manager David Garrick; historian Amanda Vickery on Lancashire gentlewoman Elizabeth Parker Shackleton; writer and cartoonist Martin Rowson on Hogarth and historian Dan Cruikshank on architect Robert Adam.Producer: Mohini Patel.

dNovelist and academic Ian Sansom explores the symbolism of beds in literature, art and film, and asks what beds reveal about human nature. 'Beds are where we are most physical, most elemental, and where we experience the great highs and lows of life. Everything significant that happens to us tends to take place in bed'. Certainly many of history's greatest thinkers and writers are thought to have been inspired in bed; G.K. Chesterton wished he had a pencil long enough to write on the ceiling while lying down, Milton is said to have written Paradise Lost in bed, and Truman Capote started his day in bed with coffee, mint tea, sherry and martinis. Ian thinks the bed is where we are most ourselves 'the place where you cannot hide', and perhaps we try to avoid spending too much time there because we fear what it signifies - 'the never-ending lie-in to come'.

Novelist Ian Sansom delves into cupboards and cabinets to explore what they reveal about human nature. Le Corbusier didn't approve of the clutter cupboards encourage, wanting to free our lives of 'junk'; whereas artist Herbert Distel filled a cabinet with trinkets donated by Man Ray, Annette Messager, Andy Warhol, and John Cage - 'a roll-call of twentieth-century conceptualists, creatives, collagists and curators of the curious' in his Museum of Drawers. Rimbaud wrote about an old sideboard crammed with memories, and Duchamp fitted his life's work in a suitcase, but Ian wonders if the contents of our cupboards really do tell our life stories, complete with the all the hopes, dreams and broken promises suggested by unused pasta machines and unfinished jigsaws - or in the end does it all 'amount to nothing, just so much junk?'.

Are you sitting comfortably? Despite his bad posture, novelist and academic Ian Sansom explores our complex physical, mental and emotional relationship with the chair. Chairs can symbolise who we are, like Ian's comfy old overstuffed armchair, and in 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears', the little bear asks 'Who's been sitting in my chair?' which Ian reads as "Who am I?" Van Gogh painted two empty chairs after his famous fall-out with Gauguin; Henry Thoreau, out in his cabin at Walden Pond, had just three chairs 'one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society'. Ian has 26 chairs in total, but not a 'named chair', which is the 'scholar's burnished throne'. Apart from beds, we share more intimacy with chairs than with any other piece of furniture, but often their symbolism is most powerful when empty, because Ian believes that empty chairs always imply people.

Novelist and academic Ian Sansom steps into the history of wardrobes, to discover not only how and why we store clothes in large upright wooden boxes, but also why wardrobes feature so largely in fairy tales, memoirs and stories. From E. Nesbit's 'The Aunt and Anabel' to C.S Lewis's 'The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe', via Guy De Maupassant's tragic tale of a child in a wardrobe, Rimbaud's poem about a wardrobe with missing keys, and Roman Polanski's short film about two men who carry a wardrobe out of the sea; Ian explores the symbolism of wardrobes as a place where secrets are stored, imaginations inspired, consciences hidden, and our 'selves' reinvented.

Five writers set out on foot to sample the transforming qualities of Spring. They report back with tales that are climatically confused - it could be warm or chilly out there ...5. Philip Hoare is quickly at the water's edge in Sholing, well before the waking hour. Then meetings with many animals are recalled.Producer Duncan Minshull.

Five writers set out on foot to sample the transforming qualities of Spring. They report back with tales that are climatically confused - it could be warm or chilly out there ...4. Kirsty Gunn is in Sutherland, debating whether to ford the chilly River Brora on an afternoon hike.Producer Duncan Minshull.

Five writers set out on foot to sample the transforming qualities of Spring. They report back with tales that are climatically confused - it could be warm or chilly out there ...3. John Walsh reckons that 'below' it feels wintry; yet ascend near a village called Steep and spring beckons. But where is he?Producer Duncan Minshull.

Five writers set out on foot to sample the transforming qualities of Spring. They report back with tales that are climatically confused - it could be warm or chilly out there ...2. Ross Raisin recalls the Yorkshire Wolds, getting greener all the time, and scene of some famous new paintings by David Hockney.Producer Duncan Minshull.

Five writers set out on foot to sample the transforming qualities of Spring. They report back with tales that are climatically confused - it could be warm or chilly out there ...1. Michele Roberts pounds the pavements of Poznan and is reminded of Persephone under scudding clouds.Producer Duncan Minshull.

Radio 3 presenter Sara Mohr-Pietsch celebrates a composer whose music has particularly inspired her: the remarkable twelfth-century abbess and mystic Hildegard of Bingen - perhaps the earliest actual "composer" in the history of Western music.

Radio 3 presenter Martin Handley celebrates a composer whose music has particularly inspired him: Malcolm Arnold, creator of symphonies of great emotional depth and complexity - as Martin discovered as a teenage violinist, playing Arnold's Second Symphony with the composer conducting.

Radio 3 presenter Lucie Skeaping celebrates a composer whose music has particularly inspired her: the Elizabethan Thomas Ravenscroft, a contemporary of Shakespeare who wrote songs that became incredibly popular - or, like Shakespeare, borrowed from the popular imagination and made it his own.