Boris Vian, Arne Næss, Karl Ove KnausgÃ¥rd, Javier MarÃas, Nawal El Saadawi, Tale of Genji. All of these programmes are available as Arts and Ideas podcasts via the Downloads tab.
New novels from Jenni Fagan and Salena Godden depict Mrs Death and the devil's daughter.
Rana Mitter reads from a new biography of Dostoevsky, 200 years after his birth.
Ted talks, zoom and lectures :Mary Beard, Homi Bhabha and Seán Williams join Shahidha Bari
Historians Margaret McMillan and Rob Johnson. Novelists Abdulrazak Gurnah and Mia Couto
How do you teach writing? Helen Mort and Blake Morrison compare notes.
Will Harris, Max Porter and Chloe Aridjis, Christine Yao and Shahidha Bari.
Links between biography and poetry. Telling modern Ugandan stories. With Shahidha Bari.
John Gallagher's guests decode changes in Behn's loyalties from her plays and dedications.
Biographers of Tom Stoppard, Sylvia Pankhurst and a little known SS soldier compare notes.
A poet and a crime writer compare notes; plus, lessons for now from a medieval foxy fable
Shahidha Bari looks at some of the best recent LGBTQ+ writing and photography.
From négritude and his Discourse on Colonialism to his long inventive and punning poetry.
Susanna Clarke, author of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, is one of Matthew Sweet's guests.
Ben Okri, Louisa Egbunike and Oladipo Agboluaje discuss Wole Soyinka's life and work.
A pair of authors due to be at the Bradford Literature Festival compare notes on writing.
The Irish novelist talks to Laurence Scott, plus a discussion of gossip past and present.
Writers Ben Lerner, JJ Bola and Derek Owusu on images of masculinity in fiction and life.
From Elizabethan poet Anne Dowriche and Anne Bronte to what women say they read now.
Ali Smith, Jay Bernard and James Graham join Matthew Sweet at the British Library.
Deborah Levy and Laurence Scott talk to Shahidha Bari about novelist EM Forster's work.
From Virginia Woolf's writings on art to dance, stillness and movement in lockdown.
Shahidha Bari talks to a pair of authors about the writing life. Plus a musical monument.
Lara Feigel, Michèle Roberts and New Generation Thinker Alexandra Reza with Shahidha Bari.
In a conversation with Mathew Sweet, the gothic author explores writing past and present.
