Night Waves
Radio 3's flagship arts and ideas programme, featuring in-depth interviews; vociferous debates on key cultural and philosophical questions; and critics' judgement on the latest releases. Get in touch. [email protected] Call: 03700 100 300
Night Waves - 01/05/2008
Isabel Hilton talks to Richard Reynolds about the history of 'guerrilla gardening', which started in the 1970s and has become a global movement dedicated to improving public spaces.
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Night Waves - 01/07/2008
Isabel Hilton talks to Newsweek International magazine's editor Fareed Zakaria about his new book The Post-American World, about the rise of competitor nations to the United States.
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Night Waves - 01/10/2007
In October 1927, the release of the Jazz Singer marked the arrival of the first feature length talkie. Matthew Sweet and guests ask if dialogue is overrated.
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Night Waves - 01/10/2008
Philip Dodd talks to nature writer Tim Robinson about his second book examining life in Connemara, Ireland's most westerly region. Plus a review of the new Statuephilia exhibition.
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Night Waves - 01/11/2007
Matthew Sweet assesses a new production of The Investigation, an acclaimed 1960s play about Auschwitz, performed by Rwandan actors who lived through their own country's genocide.
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Night Waves - 02/02/2009
Philip Dodd talks to American writer John Patrick Shanley about his film Doubt, starring Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman as a nun and priest in a New York Catholic school.
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Night Waves - 02/06/2008
Rana Mitter asks whether Genghis Khan really was a people person or whether the old myths are justified. Plus historian Julian Jackson examines the legacy of Charles de Gaulle.
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Night Waves - 02/06/2009
Matthew Sweet presents news and discussion of the arts events of the week.
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Night Waves - 02/07/2008
Philip Dodd and guests discuss the future of food, in the light of recent price rises and disease pandemics, asking how can today's problems be addressed.
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Night Waves - 02/10/2007
Isabel Hilton presents a review of the Royal Opera House's first complete performance of Wagner's Ring cycle since its Covent Garden home was re-opened.
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Night Waves - 02/10/2008
In a Night Waves Landmark programme, Isabel Hilton and guests explore the significance of the iconic medical text, Gray's Anatomy, 150 years since its first publication.
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Night Waves - 03/02/2009
Isabel Hilton on how African thinkers are rejecting the idea of foreign aid. Western countries want to help poverty-stricken countries, but does their help exacerbate problems?
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Night Waves - 03/03/2008
Journalist Susan Faludi talks to Rana Mitter about 9/11's influence on American women, and journalist and author Asne Seierstad discusses the effect of the the war in Chechnya.
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Night Waves - 03/04/2008
Philip Dodd is joined by writer Claire Tomalin and other guests to discuss The Diary of Samuel Pepys, which provided a unique insight into life in 17th century London.
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Night Waves - 03/06/2008
Isabel Hilton talks to Heidi Holland about Dinner with Mugabe - her new portrait of the Zimbabwean president which traces his journey from 'freedom fighter' to international pariah.
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Night Waves - 03/06/2009
Anne McElvoy and guests explore the latest cultural issues - including news of the winner of the 2009 Orange Prize for Fiction.
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Night Waves - 03/10/2007
As a new exhibition of wartime posters opens at the Imperial War Museum, Rana Mitter explores the politically charged history of advertising at war.
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Night Waves - 03/12/2007
Philip Dodd and guests debate the key cultural issues of the week including the announcement of this year's Turner Prize winner. Plus are the Gospels really revolutionary?
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Night Waves - 03/12/2008
Philip Dodd talks to one of France's best-known intellectuals, Bernard-Henri Levy. Plus a review of the new production of Stephen Sondheim's musical A Little Night Music.
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Night Waves - 04/02/2008
Isabel Hilton talks to sociologist Richard Sennett about the link between the work of the hand and the work of the brain. Plus racial identity in Brazil, and the new hit film Juno.
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Night Waves - 04/03/2008
Philip Dodd talks to Julian Barnes about his new book, actress Fiona Shaw reviews Major Barbara at the National and film critic Nigel Floyd discusses the films of Lenny Abrahamson.
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Night Waves - 04/06/2008
Philip Dodd presents the arts and ideas programme, talking to Albanian writer Ismail Kadare, who won the inaugural Man Booker International Prize in 2005.
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Night Waves - 04/10/2007
Philip Dodd presents a programme dedicated to the classic 1960s film Blow-Up, directed by Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni, who died in July.
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Night Waves - 04/11/2010
Philip Dodd talks to cancer researcher Prof Frances Balkwill about her work to understand a disease that affects one third of Britons.
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Night Waves - 04/12/2007
Isabel Hilton talks to acclaimed Magnum photo-journalist Steve McCurry about his work in war-torn Afghanistan, where he has captured images for the last two decades.
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Night Waves - 05/01/2009
Matthew Sweet talks to behavioural biologist Paul Martin about society's changing attitudes to pleasure and the scientific reasons for our hedonistic impulses.
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Night Waves - 05/02/2008
Matthew Sweet talks to author Peter Carey about his new book His Illegal Self. Plus a review of the film There Will Be Blood and Lisa Appignanesi's book on women and psychoanalysis.
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Night Waves - 05/03/2008
Isabel Hilton talks to writer and academic Samantha Power, now an adviser to Barack Obama. Plus a new exhibition on artist Cranach the Elder and Polish playwright Dorota Maslowska.
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Night Waves - 05/05/2008
Paul Allen and guests with another programme in the series devoted to exploring the great cultural landmarks.
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Night Waves - 05/11/2007
On the eve of the opening of St Pancras Eurostar terminal, Matthew Sweet is joined by historian Tristram Hunt to consider the changing fortunes of Britain's Victorian architecture.
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Night Waves - 06/01/2009
Bidisha talks to director Danny Boyle about his new film Slumdog Millionaire, which tells the story of a poor Indian boy trying to win the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire jackpot.
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Night Waves - 06/02/2008
Gabriel Gbadamosi visits a new exhibition of the work of pioneering avant-garde Russian photographer Alexander Rodchenko at London's Hayward Gallery.
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Night Waves - 06/03/2008
Matthew Sweet and guests discuss DW Griffith's controversial silent film classic The Birth of a Nation, whose subject matter is the Ku Klux Klan.
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Night Waves - 06/05/2008
Kenan Malik talks to a group of laywers about trading the courtroom for the stage as they prepare to perform in Christopher Sergel's version of Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird.
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Night Waves - 06/10/2008
Bidisha is joined by artist Grayson Perry who says that when it comes to creativity, society is too obsessed with the new. Plus American satirist Barbara Ehrenreich on her new book.
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Night Waves - 06/11/2007
Philip Dodd talks to Richard Reeves, author of a new biography of philosopher John Stuart Mill, about the continuing relevance today of Mill's work about freedom, 'On Liberty'.
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Night Waves - 07/01/2008
Matthew Sweet takes a tour behind the scenes at the Natural History Museum, where Richard Fortey explains how museum culture has been revolutionised in recent decades.
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Night Waves - 07/01/2009
Philip Dodd discusses the enduring fascination with the Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara, the subject of a new biography and film directed by Steven Soderbergh.
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Night Waves - 07/02/2008
Philip Dodd and guests look at Plato's The Trial and Death of Socrates, exploring the subject's character and questions he asked about truth, citizenship and immortality.
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Night Waves - 07/04/2008
Gabriel Gbadamosi talks to Misha Glenny about his new book on international crime. Plus Brazilian theatre director Augusto Boal and a new exhibition of photographs of Muhammad Ali.
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Night Waves - 07/05/2008
Philip Dodd is joined by pirate radio and club DJ Matt Mason to explore whether 'youth culture' has anything meaningful to offer to society.
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Night Waves - 07/07/2008
Anne McElvoy talks to Richard Thaler about his book Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth and Happiness. Plus a history of waxworks and a TV drama about Saddam Hussein.
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Night Waves - 07/10/2008
Matthew Sweet discusses the winners of the 2008 Nobel Prize for Physics and Medicine. Plus, to coincide with the release of the film Gomorrah, a discussion on the Italian Mafia.
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Night Waves - 07/11/2007
Isabel Hilton's guest is historian and television presenter Simon Schama, who talks about a new translation of the classic novel War and Peace.
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Night Waves - 08/01/2008
Philip Dodd talks to literary scholar and writer George Steiner about his new work, which imagines all the books that Steiner hoped to write, but never did.
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Night Waves - 08/01/2009
As part of Radio 3's Free Thinking festival 2008, Susan Hitch presents KLF musician and conceptual artist Bill Drummond discussing his campaign against recorded music.
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Night Waves - 08/04/2008
Presented by Isabel Hilton. With Lord Lawson and Prof Mike Hulme on climate change, a look at new literary magazines and a review of George Clooney's new film Leatherheads.
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Night Waves - 08/05/2008
Rana Mitter talks to Xu Bing, one of China's leading artists, about his new work and the emerging Chinese art scene.
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Night Waves - 08/07/2008
Lawrence Pollard talks to Russian writer and journalist Masha Gessen about her book Blood Matters, which explores how genetic knowledge is changing the way we see ourselves.
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Night Waves - 08/10/2008
Presented by Philip Dodd. With Stephen Fry on his journey across America in a taxi, Richard Holmes and Marcus du Sautoy on science's new image, and the Forward Poetry prize 2008.
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Night Waves - 08/11/2007
Exploring the cultural legacy of Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse-Five, which focuses on the Allied fire bombing of Dresden during the Second World War.
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Night Waves - 08/12/2008
The arts and ideas programme. Rana Mitter talks to India's greatest living artist MF Husain, known as India's Picasso.
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Night Waves - 09/01/2008
Presented by Kenan Malik. Nigel Floyd reviews Tom Hank's new film, William Boyd talks about guest editing Granta and Slavoj Zizek discusses his new book on the meaning of violence.
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Night Waves - 09/04/2008
Philip Dodd presents a special programme devoted entirely to an interview with one of Britain's foremost poets and dramatists, Tony Harrison.
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Night Waves - 09/06/2008
Gabriel Gbadamosi reviews Nicholas Hytner's new production of Verdi's Don Carlo at the Royal Opera House, and talks to writer and academic Eva Hoffman about her novel Illuminations.
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Night Waves - 09/07/2008
Matthew Sweet speaks to writer Christopher Hitchens about his decision to undergo 'waterboarding'. Plus a black comedy play set in Camden and writer Edna Fernandes on her new book.
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Night Waves - 09/10/2008
Anne McElvoy talks to Simon Schama about his book The American Future: A History, which argues that the US is undergoing period of self examination unparalleled in its history.
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Night Waves - 10/01/2008
A panel including playwright Alan Bleasdale and veteran producer Michael Wearing re-examine one of British TV's most celebrated dramas, Boys from the Blackstuff. With Paul Allen.
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Night Waves - 10/02/2010
Rana Mitter presents the arts and ideas magazine, with interviews, debates and discussion of the key cultural events of the week.
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Night Waves - 10/03/2008
Philip Dodd talks to Mike Davies, the architect in charge of the new Heathrow Terminal 5, and to Norman Rosenthal, who is retiring as Exhibitions Secretary at the Royal Academy.
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Night Waves - 10/03/2009
Matthew Sweet discusses the new film about armed robber Charles Bronson and also looks back at the controversy sparked in 1984 over a Bishop's comments about the Resurrection.
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Night Waves - 10/04/2008
In an extended interview, celebrated British film director Mike Leigh talks to Matthew Sweet about his new film, Happy-Go-Lucky, which is set in present-day Camden.
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Night Waves - 10/06/2008
Philip Dodd talks to Michael Frayn about his new play Afterlife, about the founder of the Salzburg Festival, Max Reinhardt. Plus Sidney Blumenthal, a former advisor to Bill Clinton.
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Night Waves - 10/07/2008
Rana Mitter talks to conceptual artist and former KLF member Bill Drummond about his latest project. Plus novelist Andrew Sean Greer and a review of the documentary The Qur'an.
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Night Waves - 10/11/2008
Philip Dodd discusses the Baader-Meinhof group with Stefan Aust, whose book about the notorious but glamorous gang of young people has been adapted for the big screen.
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Night Waves - 10/12/2007
Philip Dodd talks to Italian writer Umberto Eco (The Name of the Rose) about his wide-ranging and diverse career.
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Night Waves - 10/12/2008
Anne McElvoy talks to French scholar Gilles Kepel about his vision for a future of co-operation between Islam and the West, and the vital role Mediterranean alliances must play.
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Night Waves - 11/02/2008
Matthew Sweet and guests discuss the idea of the miracle, Edward Cullinan talks about architecture's climate change challenge and James Wood unpicks how novels are written.
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Night Waves - 11/03/2008
Matthew Sweet talks to Booker Prize-winning writer Anne Enright about her latest collection of short stories, Taking Pictures, which describe women's stormy relationships with men.
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Night Waves - 11/06/2008
Matthew Sweet has a first night review of The Chalk Garden, by Enid Bagnold. It's directed at the Donmar by Michael Grandage, and stars Penelope Wilton and Margaret Tyzack.
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Night Waves - 11/12/2007
Gabriel Gbadamosi talks to novelist Richard Ford about an anthology of American short stories that he has edited. Plus he looks at the work of Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer.
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Night Waves - 12/01/2009
Rana Mitter talks to psychologist Penelope Leach, author of the bestelling book Your Baby and Child, which sparked the growth of 'child-centred parenting' in the 1970s.
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Night Waves - 12/02/2008
With Rana Mitter and guests debating the state of Pakistani democracy. Plus Coen Brothers' cinematographer Roger Deakins, and a review of Mamet's Speed the Plow at the Old Vic.
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Night Waves - 12/03/2008
Kenan Malik looks at how Liverpool's Bluecoat Gallery has been transformed by a 12 million pound refit. Plus historian David Levering Lewis on Islam's early impact on Europe.
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Night Waves - 12/05/2008
In a programme-length interview Kenan Malik talks to neuroscientist Prof Susan Greenfield about her new book and her role as director of the scientific body the Royal Institution.
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Night Waves - 12/06/2008
Rana Mitter talks to journalist John Laughland about the history of political trials. Plus photographer Susan Meiselas on Kurdistan's history and a review of Bob Dylan's paintings.
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Night Waves - 12/07/2010
Philip Dodd with the arts and ideas programme, including a debate on the value of optimism and the story of Philip Larkin's love affair with jazz.
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Night Waves - 12/10/2009
Rana Mitter talks to Harvard moral philosopher Michael Sandel about justice, examining how we arrive at our notions of right and wrong. Should we sometimes not tell the truth?
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Night Waves - 12/11/2007
On stage in Liverpool, Philip Dodd chairs one of the keynote debates recorded at Radio 3's Free Thinking festival of ideas, asking 'Are we freer than we think?'.
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Night Waves - 12/11/2008
Matthew Sweet discusses Gethsemane, a new play by David Hare which is set in the world of modern political fundraising and is being performed at the National Theatre.
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Night Waves - 12/12/2007
Philip Dodd meets Tom Loosemore, one of the leading British thinkers on the internet, and reviews Youth Without Youth, the first Francis Ford Coppola film in ten years.
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Night Waves - 13/01/2009
Philip Dodd discusses the virtues of kindness with psychoanalyst Adam Phillips and historian Barbara Taylor, who argue in a new book that it is essential to our emotional health.
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Night Waves - 13/02/2008
Philip Dodd meets Sudhir Venkatesh, a sociologist who became a gang leader, architect Jan Kaplicky talks about a new plan for Prague and two experts discuss 18th century fashion.
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Night Waves - 13/03/2008
Another chance to hear architect Lord Richard Rogers talks to Philip Dodd about his life's work, which includes buildings such as the Pompidou Centre in Paris.
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Night Waves - 13/05/2008
Gabriel Gbadamosi talks to playwright Shelagh Stephenson about her latest work, The Long Road, addressing the repercussions of a futile murder. Plus the 2008 Turner Prize shortlist.
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Night Waves - 13/10/2008
Presented by Matthew Sweet. With art historian Evelyn Welch, a discussion on anti-Semitism, a review of Sophocles' Burial at Thebes and sculptor Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster.
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Night Waves - 13/11/2007
From this year's Radio 3 Free Thinking festival of ideas in Liverpool, Tim Smit, co-founder of the Eden Project in Cornwall, outlines his vision for 'Inspiration in Education'.
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Night Waves - 14/01/2008
Matthew Sweet and a round table of guests debate the cultural issues and key arts events of the week, including the announcement of the winner of the TS Eliot prize for poetry.
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Night Waves - 14/01/2009
Matthew Sweet interviews Holocaust survivor Thomas Buergenthal whose new memoir describes his childhood experiences in Auschwitz and his subsequent career as a human rights judge.
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Night Waves - 14/02/2008
Kenan Malik talks to German writer Bernard Schlink about his latest book. Plus an exhibition of photographs from Vanity Fair including classic images of early 20th century stars.
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Night Waves - 14/05/2008
Paul Allen talks to the Nobel Prize-winning author Doris Lessing about her new book Alfred and Emily, partly a memoir and partly a fictionalised account of her parents' lives.
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Night Waves - 14/07/2008
Rachel Campbell-Johnston and guests discuss Errol Morris' new documentary, which explores human rights violations at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
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Night Waves - 14/10/2008
Rana Mitter talks to Richard Evans about his distinguished career as a historian as the final volume of his trilogy on Hitler's Germany The Third Reich at War is published.
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Night Waves - 14/10/2009
Matthew Sweet talks to Dave Eggers about his novel The Wild Things, about the confusions facing a boy growing up and based on the story Where The Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak.
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Night Waves - 14/11/2007
From Radio 3's Free Thinking festival of ideas in Liverpool, Roger Philips of Radio Merseyside hosts a debate which asks 'Have we destroyed the dream of equality?'.
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Night Waves - 14/12/2010
Matthew Sweet presents the arts and ideas magazine with interviews, reviews and debate.
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Night Waves - 1492/Mo Mowlam/The Germans/Atul Gawande
Presented by Rana Mitter. Including historian Felipe Fernandez Armesto on his new book on the year 1492, a new TV drama about Mo Mowlam and Britain's relationship with the Germans.
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Night Waves - 15/01/2008
Isabel Hilton talks to Chinese author Xiaolu Guo about her new novel 20 Fragments of a Ravenous Youth, which follows a girl's attempt to find fame in the Chinese film industry.
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Night Waves - 15/01/2009
Bidisha hosts a debate from Liverpool's FACT centre for Radio 3's Free Thinking festival, with Sean Spence discussing the ethics of using pharmacology to regulate human behaviour.
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Night Waves - 15/04/2008
Will Self talks about his new novel The Butt, an allegorical tale which takes a swipe at the War on Terror, the liberal reaction to the Iraq war and much else in between.
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Night Waves - 15/05/2008
With Rana Mitter. QC Phillipe Sands talks about what went wrong at Guantanamo Bay and Rupert Cornwell remembers American civil rights campaigner Mildred Loving.
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Night Waves - 15/07/2008
Philip Dodd and guests explore whether we have become an emotionally incontinent society and ask if it is time we resurrected the stiff upper lip.
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Night Waves - 15/09/2008
Philip Dodd talks in an extended interview to one of America's most feted living writers, Philip Roth, who discusses his life and work, including his latest book Indignation.
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Night Waves - 15/11/2007
A keynote lecture delivered before an audience at BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking festival of ideas. Professor of Space Science John Zarnecki asks 'Space. Why are we there?'.
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Night Waves - 16/01/2008
Gabriel Gbadamosi talks to the Booker Prize winning author AS Byatt about a new anthology of writing on memory, including work by Shakespeare, Carl Jung and Terry Pratchett.
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Night Waves - 16/04/2008
Salman Rushdie talks to Philip Dodd about his new novel The Enchantress of Florence, as well as the consolations of writing, his attitude to religion and writing about women.
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Night Waves - 16/06/2008
Philip Dodd marks the twentieth anniversary of the publication of A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking - said to be a book bought by many and read to the end by few.
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Night Waves - 16/07/2008
Rana Mitter talks to writer Marshall Berman about a series of essays on New York he has co-edited. Plus a look at shopping malls and young author Andrew Sean Greer's latest book.
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Night Waves - 16/09/2008
Rana Mitter talks to historian Tom Holland about his book, Millenium, which tells the story of Western Europe's ascendancy and the forging of Christendom.
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Night Waves - 16/10/2008
Bidisha gives the verdict on Burn after Reading, the latest film from Hollywood film director siblings Joel and Ethan Coen that boasts a cast including George Clooney and Brad Pitt.
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Night Waves - 17/01/2008
Philip Dodd hosts a debate recorded in Liverpool at BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking festival of ideas, asking whatever happened to childhood?
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Night Waves - 17/03/2008
Matthew Sweet looks at the work and influence of French playwright Yasmina Reza, whose play Art was one of the biggest theatrical hits of the 1990s.
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Night Waves - 17/04/2008
Matthew Sweet talks to film maker Paul Watson about one of his new plays for radio, a satire of TV called How Now TV. He also talks to writer and neurologist Professor Ray Tallis.
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Night Waves - 17/06/2008
Rachel Campbell-Johnston and guests review the new BBC4 series Jews, which explores what it means to be Jewish in Britain today. Plus James Cuno discussing cultural restitution.
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Night Waves - 17/07/2008
Matthew Sweet investigates stories that feature the last surviving person on earth, from Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend to Thomas Glavinic's newly published book Night Work.
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Night Waves - 17/09/2007
The writer Sukhdev Sandhu leads Matthew Sweet into the dark heart of night-time London.
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Night Waves - 17/09/2008
Matthew Sweet speaks to celebrated novelist and travel writer Paul Theroux about his latest book Ghost Train To The Eastern Star, a sequel to The Great Railway Bazaar.
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Night Waves - 17/11/2008
Bidisha presents the arts and ideas programme - with interviews, debate and reviews of this week's key cultural events.
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Night Waves - 17/12/2007
Matthew Sweet talks to director Ang Lee about his new film Lust, Caution; which is set in Shanghai under the Japanese occupation during the Second World War.
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Night Waves - 17/12/2008
Philip Dodd and guests debate the state of global capitalism, asking whether the conditions that led to the credit crisis are an aspect of capitalism's essential nature.
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Night Waves - 18/02/2008
Matthew Sweet and three writers ask what our pets say about ourselves and our place in the cosmos. Plus Lewis Hyde's new book Trickster and the new film from Wong Kar Wai.
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Night Waves - 18/03/2008
With Philip Dodd talking to psychotherapist George Makari about his book on Freud, a review of BBC One's The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, and a discussion on the idea of society.
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Night Waves - 18/06/2008
As part of Radio 3's Focus on China, Isabel Hilton reports from Beijing talking to journalists, editors, academics, lawyers and commentators about the health of the media in China.
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Night Waves - 18/09/2007
Composer Michael Nyman tells Rana Mitter about his new work, 50,000 Pairs Of Feet Can't Be Wrong.
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Night Waves - 18/09/2008
Philip Dodd talks to novelist Howard Jacobson about his latest book The Act of Love, a wry and shocking meditation on love, jealousy and betrayal.
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Night Waves - 18/12/2007
Rana Mitter explores a new translation of Niccolo Machiavelli's The Prince, the famous treatise on the exercise of state power still resonant 500 years after it was published.
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Night Waves - 18/12/2008
Matthew Sweet presents more highlights from the 2008 Free Thinking festival of ideas, including a debate on the history and significance of Liverpool's two great cathedrals.
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Night Waves - 19/01/2009
Bidisha speaks to celebrated British fashion designer Hussein Chalayan, the subject of a retrospective at the Design Museum, about the inspiration behind his designs.
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Night Waves - 19/02/2008
Philip Dodd visits a new exhibition of artworks by three pioneering figures from 20th century art: Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and Francis Picabia.
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Night Waves - 19/03/2008
Matthew Sweet and guests discuss whether Thomas Malthus' controversial theories of population growth from the 18th century are making a return in response to today's crowded world.
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Night Waves - 19/05/2008
Military historian Richard Holmes talks to Paul Allen about his book Marlborough: England's Fragile Genius, which tells the story of John Churchill, First Duke of Marlborough.
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Night Waves - 19/06/2008
Presented by Kenan Malik. With writer Marek Kohn discussing trust and its origins, a debate on whether homosexuality is hardwired and artist Gavin Turk on pop artist Colin Self.
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Night Waves - 19/09/2007
On the eve of a major London exhibition of international designers' work, Isabel Hilton assesses the current health of design in Britain.
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Night Waves - 19/11/2007
Kenan Malik talks to historian Peter Hennessy about his new book, 'Cabinets and the Bomb', which explores the relationship between government ministers and the nuclear bomb.
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Night Waves - 19/11/2008
Anne McElvoy and guests discuss the important cultural issues of the week.
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Night Waves - 19/12/2007
Isabel Hilton and guests assess the new film I'm Not There, which uses seven actors to embody different aspects of the life of singer Bob Dylan.
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Night Waves - 20/01/2009
Philip Dodd examines the life of German sociologist Max Weber, most famous for showing that capitalism and Protestantism were intimately linked.
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Night Waves - 20/03/2008
With Gabriel Gbadamosi talking to Susan Pinker about her book on gender difference, a review of the new film version of Love in the Time of Cholera and photographer Sonia Katchian.
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Night Waves - 20/04/2009
Bidisha introduces a lecture by Richard Reynolds on 'guerrilla gardening', involving taking over abandoned land to cultivate crops or plants as a form of non-violent direct action.
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Night Waves - 20/05/2008
Kenan Malik and guests with a first night review of the musical Margueritte, an updating of Alexander Dumas's novel La Dame aux camelias to World War II.
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Night Waves - 20/09/2007
Cultural critic Peter Conrad tells Philip Dodd about his new book, Creation, which explores how artists and scientists have challenged the creator-role of gods.
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Night Waves - 20/10/2008
Matthew Sweet discusses the film Quiet Chaos, starring Italian actor-director Nanni Moretti and focusing on a father's love for his daughter as he copes with the death of his wife.
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Night Waves - 20/11/2007
As a new retrospective exhibition opens at the building that made his name, the Pompidou Centre in Paris, architect Lord Richard Rogers talks to Philip Dodd about his life's work.
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Night Waves - 20/12/2007
Philip Dodd talks to one of the leading figures in Britain's post-war cultural life, Richard Attenborough, whose career has lasted since his first film role in 1942.
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Night Waves - 20th Century British sculpture; Wilbert Rideau; Black Swan; Nina Raine interview
Anne McElvoy talks to playwright Nina Raine, whose new work, Tiger Country, is set in a busy hospital ward. Plus writer and former death row inmate Wilbert Rideau.
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Night Waves - 21/01/2008
With Rana Mitter and guests discussing the art of argument and persuasion, a look at Tim Burton's new film version of Sweeney Todd and the artist Marc Quinn on his new exhibition.
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Night Waves - 21/01/2009
Isabel Hilton talks to Daniel Tammet, author of a memoir about growing up with Asperger's syndrome.
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Night Waves - 21/02/2008
Gabriel Gbadamosi visits Bradford to explore the state of social cohesion in modern Britain. Plus a review of David McVicar's new production of Salome at the Royal Opera.
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Night Waves - 21/04/2008
Matthew Sweet talks to writer David Lodge about his new novel, Deaf Sentence, about a man coming to terms with growing deafness and the feeling that his world seems to be shrinking.
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Night Waves - 21/05/2008
Philip Dodd and historian Tony Judt discuss history and myth-making. Plus debate on natural disasters and democracy, images of Mao and an American civil rights hero.
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Night Waves - 21/10/2008
Presented by Rana Mitter. With a biography of William Hazlitt, a film on religion in US politics, Bettany Hughes on the Royal Academy's Byzantium exhibition and measuring cynicism.
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Night Waves - 21/11/2007
Philip Dodd's guest is director and artist Patrick Keiller, whose two idiosyncratic films London and Robinson in Space marked him out as a unique voice in British cinema.
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Night Waves - 22/01/2008
Philip Dodd talks to Orlando Figes about the new exhibition of Masterpieces from Russian Museums. Plus a discussion on grief and mourning a review of David Hare's new play.
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Night Waves - 22/01/2009
Bidisha reviews Valkyrie, which stars Tom Cruise as Colonel Count Claus von Stauffenberg, the real-life German aristocrat who almost succeeded in assassinating Hitler.
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Night Waves - 22/04/2008
Isabel Hilton is joined by former editor of The Economist Bill Emmott to consider Japan's role alongside China and India in a newly emerging world order.
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Night Waves - 22/05/2008
Rana Mitter talks to writer Robert Kagan about his new book The Return of History and the End of Dreams, which debates the issues facing liberal democracies today.
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Night Waves - 22/09/2008
Isabel Hilton talks to veteran foreign correspondent Ann Leslie about her autobiography Killing My Own Snakes.
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Night Waves - 22/10/2007
Matthew Sweet and guests test the cultural temperature of Ireland. What effect is its new-found wealth having on the spiritual and moral health of the nation?
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Night Waves - 22/10/2008
Anne McElvoy talks to film director Terence Davies about his highly personal documentary detailing life growing up in post-war Liverpool, called Of Time and the City.
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Night Waves - 23/01/2008
How Well Do We Understand China? Isabel Hilton introduces a special edition of the programme dedicated to the many new books being published about contemporary China.
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Night Waves - 23/04/2008
Philip Dodd presents a look at the art, literature and culture inspired by Armageddon and how in the last 25 years it has reflected the changing threats to world security.
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Night Waves - 23/10/2007
Frederic Raphael's 1976 TV series The Glittering Prizes traced a group of post-war Cambridge undergraduates. Now Raphael has updated the story. Keenan Malik assesses the results.
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Night Waves - 23/10/2008
Matthew Sweet and a panel discuss the ideas that are currently being debated in the field of economics.
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Night Waves - 24/01/2008
Matthew Sweet talks to Paul Haggis, director of Crash, about his new film, In the Valley of Elah. Plus a review of a new exhibition of slapstick and joke-filled photos and videos.
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Night Waves - 24/03/2008
Philip Dodd and guests discuss the cultural issues of the week, and in a series of four reports from spring festivals around the world, novelist Ahdaf Soueif writes from Egypt.
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Night Waves - 24/04/2008
Rana Mitter and guests discuss the British fashion for 'Chinese Style' in the 17th and 18th centuries, as displayed in a new exhibition in Brighton.
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Night Waves - 24/06/2008
Rana Mitter and guests discuss Red Sorghum, Zhang Yimou's classic 1987 debut film examining peasant life in China in the 1930s.
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Night Waves - 24/09/2007
Gabriel Gbadamosi joins one of Britain's foremost nature writers, Richard Mabey, on a journey to explore society's long-standing relationship with its trees.
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Night Waves - 24/09/2008
Matthew Sweet and guests discuss former Czech president Vaclav Havel's play Leaving, which explores themes of change and power in its story of a politician leaving office.
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Night Waves - 24/10/2007
Gabriel Gbadamosi looks at France's North African community. Despite existing for over 50 years, its artists are only finding a wider audience now through recent films.
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Night Waves - 24/11/2008
Matthew Sweet discusses the actress and suffragette Sybil Thorndike with her biographer Jonathan Croall. A feminist and pacifist, she led the pioneering Old Vic theatre company.
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Night Waves - 24/11/2010
Matthew Sweet talks to the American political satirist PJ O'Rourke, the artist Philippe Parreno and Rab Bennetts, who has re-designed the RSC's Stratford home.
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Night Waves - 25/02/2008
Matthew Sweet talks to the playwright David Edgar about Testing the Echo, his new play about group of immigrants preparing to take the new British citizenship test.
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Night Waves - 25/03/2008
Rana Mitter talks to Israeli journalist Ron Leshem about his novel set amongs soldiers in occupied southern Lebanon. Plus a report from the Kurdish spring festival of Nowruz.
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Night Waves - 25/06/2008
Philip Dodd talks to important figures in the contemporary Chinese cultural scene, asking them about their hopes and fears for the future of Chinese identity and culture.
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Night Waves - 25/09/2007
Kenan Malik visits a new exhibition of the work of John Everett Millais and explores the controversial life of the artist who was a founding member of the Pre-Raphaelite group.
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Night Waves - 25/09/2008
Philip Dodd is joined by Jonathan Glancey and Prof Jonathan Zeitlin to look at the economic and cultural legacy of the Ford Model T, and by Zoe Heller to discuss her new book.
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Night Waves - 25/10/2007
Philip Dodd talks to Craig Venter, one of the key scientists in human genome research. Venter discusses his autobiography A Life Decoded and his project to create artificial life.
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Night Waves - 25/11/2008
Philip Dodd looks at what makes certain people successful with The Tipping Point author Malcolm Gladwell.
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Night Waves - 26/01/2009
Rana Mitter talks to Christopher Frayling, outgoing chair of Arts Council England, to get his assessment of the state of the country's cultural sector. Plus author Jonah Goldberg.
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Night Waves - 26/02/2008
Rana Mitter's guests are Joseph Stiglitz, winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics, whose new book attacks the cost of the war in Iraq, and sound recordist and artist Chris Watson.
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Night Waves - 26/03/2008
With Philip Dodd talking to the new head of the National Gallery, the latest play from Howard Brenton, creator of The Romans in Britain, and architect Ole Sheeren on the CCTV Tower.
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Night Waves - 26/05/2008
In a special programme, Philip Dodd is joined by lawyer Anthony Julius and other guests to discuss the subject of censorship, asking whether Mary Whitehouse was right after all.
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Night Waves - 26/06/2008
Gabriel Gbadamosi talks to Stuart Murray about how autism is represented in contemporary culture, exploring how it was depicted before being identified medically in the 1940s.
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Night Waves - 26/09/2007
Philip Dodd is joined by historian Orlando Figes and innovative film-maker Julie Taymor to discuss their new projects.
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Night Waves - 26/11/2007
Gabriel Gbadamosi presents a first night review of the new English National Opera and Mariinksy Theatre production of Benjamin Britten's ghost story opera, The Turn of the Screw.
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Night Waves - 26/11/2008
Bidisha discusses the work of Saul Steinberg, the celebrated illustrator of The New Yorker who died in 1999, and whose retrospective is at the Dulwich Picture Gallery.
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Night Waves - 27/01/2009
Arts and cultural news and debate. Philip Dodd has an extended conversation with Tariq Ramadan, one of Europe's leading Muslim thinkers.
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Night Waves - 27/02/2008
Kenan Malik talks to Hanif Kureishi about Something to Tell You, his new novel in which a psychologist looks back on his youth in 1970s London suburbia.
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Night Waves - 27/03/2008
Matthew Sweet and guests explore the life and work of the First World War poet Isaac Rosenberg, and novelist Sunetra Gupta reports from the Indian spring festival of Holi.
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Night Waves - 27/05/2008
Paul Allen presents the arts and ideas programme and talks to American short story writer Lorrie Moore.
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Night Waves - 27/09/2007
Ahead of the return of Eugene Ionesco's absurdist play Rhinoceros to the Royal Court Theatre, Matthew Sweet finds out if the new version is as powerful as the original.
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Night Waves - 27/10/2008
Philip Dodd talks to nature writer Tim Robinson about the second volume of his trilogy on life in Connemara in Ireland. Plus Terence Davies's film Of Time and the City.
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Night Waves - 27/11/2007
Philip Dodd and guests analyse and debate the key cultural issues of the week.
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Night Waves - 28/01/2008
Kenan Malik and guests the sensory condition of synaesthesia and its link to creativity. Plus a former child soldier's book on his war experiences and a debate on art by committee.
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Night Waves - 28/01/2009
Anne McElvoy talks to psychotherapist Susie Orbach about our growing obsession with body image, and Richard Coles reviews the UK premiere of Korngold's rediscovered Die tote Stadt.
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Night Waves - 28/02/2008
Philip Dodd is joined by a round table of guests to discuss some of the key social and cultural issues facing Britain's Jewish community as the annual Jewish Book Week takes place.
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Night Waves - 28/04/2008
Matthew Sweet talks to Bishop Gene Robinson who, in 2003, was elected the Bishop of New Hampshire and was the first openly gay man to be appointed to such a position.
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Night Waves - 28/05/2008
Matthew Sweet talks to Julia Neuberger about her new book Not Dead Yet, a ten-point manifesto for 'grey power', which argues for a new attitude towards older people in our society.
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Night Waves - 28/10/2008
Philip Dodd talks to nature writer Tim Robinson about the second volume of his trilogy about life in Connemara, Ireland. Plus Peter Hall's version of Love's Labour's Lost.
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Night Waves - 29/01/2008
Isabel Hilton talks to a human rights lawyer about the plight of women in Pakistan. Plus a TV series on political summits and a film about life near China's Three Gorges Dam.
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Night Waves - 29/01/2009
Matthew Sweet and guests discuss the Israeli film Waltz with Bashir, winner of a Golden Globe award, and a new biography of Charles Darwin.
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Night Waves - 29/04/2008
Gabriel Gbadamosi talks to author Sebastian Barry about The Secret Scripture - the follow up to his Booker-shortlisted novel A Long Long Way.
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Night Waves - 29/05/2008
Bidisha talks to psychoanalyst Adam Philips about his new book Intimacies, which explores the problems and possibilities of intimacy in today's society.
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Night Waves - 29/09/2008
Matthew Sweet reviews a new film version of Evelyn Waugh's classic novel Brideshead Revisited.
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Night Waves - 29/10/2007
Matthew Sweet examines the success of Channel 4 television as it prepares to celebrate its 25th birthday. Has it lived up to its early promise to serve minority groups in Britain?
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Night Waves - 29/11/2007
As part of BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking festival of ideas, Academy Award-nominated film director Mike Figgis delivers a lecture entitled 'Is There Too Much Culture?'.
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Night Waves - 30/01/2008
Philip Dodd meets two of the most important voices in contemporary British writing: Martin Amis and JG Ballard, who are both publishing new works of non-fiction.
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Night Waves - 30/04/2008
Philip Dodd talks to American writer Nicholson Baker about his new book Human Smoke, which explores the social landscape and political decisions which led to the Second World War.
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Night Waves - 30/04/2009
Arts and cultural news and debate with Philip Dodd. Screenwriter Christopher Hampton talks about a new adaptation of Cheri by French author Colette and directed by Stephen Frears.
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Night Waves - 30/06/2008
Bidisha talks to Lou Reed about his album Berlin, the subject of a new film, while critic Michelle Roberts talks about the posthumous publication of a 1963 book by Janet Frame.
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Night Waves - 30/09/2008
Rana Mitter talks to Elie Wiesel, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986 and author of Night, a memoir that described his experiences as a teenager during the Holocaust.
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Night Waves - 30/10/2007
Philip Dodd explores how recent waves of immigration are changing British culture. Should there be a national debate about the volume of migration across the UK borders?
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Night Waves - 31/01/2008
Matthew Sweet talks to a leading mathematician about his new book on symmetry and documentary maker Nick Broomfield discusses his new film Battle for Haditha, set in the Iraq War.
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Night Waves - 31/03/2008
Julie Andrews talks to Matthew Sweet about her new autobiography, in which she reveals her humble and often difficult early life as well as her complex family background.
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Night Waves - 31/10/2007
Rana Mitter explores the relationship between scientific progress and science fiction. A new study claims sci-fi acts as an accelerator for those in real scientific research.
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Night Waves - A bout de souffle, Sally Mann, Leonora Carrington, Permissive Society
Presented by Matthew Sweet. With a reissue of Jean Luc Godard's film Breathless, the photography of Sally Mann, surrealist Leonora Carrington and post war 'permissive society'.
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Night Waves - A New Age of Austerity?
Philip Dodd and guests discuss the politics, the culture and the morality of a possible age of austerity.
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Night Waves - Abraham Lincoln
Anne McElvoy reassesses the legacy of Abraham Lincoln on the 200th anniversary of his birth, discussing what his ambivalent attitudes to African-American meant for his generation.
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Night Waves - Adam Phillips, Nudity, Barbara Kingsolver, The Pyramids
Presented by Philip Dodd. With Adam Phillips on his new book about greed and excess, and a debate about why art, religion and society still have varied reactions to the naked body.
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Night Waves - Alan Lomax, Idea of the Year
Anne McElvoy discusses Alan Lomax - pioneering oral historian who created an irreplaceable archive of early American folk and Blues. Plus a suggestion for the 'idea of the year'.
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Night Waves - Alastair Campbell, Elif Shafak, Girl on a Train
Presented by Philip Dodd. With Alastair Campbell on the first volume of his diaries, Turkish writer Elif Shafak on her novel The Forty Rules of Love and the film Girl on the Train.
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Night Waves - Alberto Manguel/Westminster Abbey/Aminatta Forna/Science
Anne McElvoy talks to the writer Alberto Manguel, expert in the art of reading, and scales the heights of Westminster Abbey's Chapter House to see its restoration in action.
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Night Waves - Alex Callinicos/Macbeth
Philip Dodd talks to political theorist Alex Callinicos about his latest book 'Bonfire of Illusions', and meets Philip Zimbardo, the scientist behind the Stanford experiment.
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Night Waves - Alex Ross, Climate Science, Of Gods and Men, Nannerl O Keohane
Rana Mitter talks to the music critic Alex Ross. And as the Science Museum launches a new gallery devoted to Climate Science, can scientific bodies remain neutral on the issue?
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Night Waves - Alvaro Siza
Presented by Anne McElvoy. With a review of a new TV drama about Lady Thatcher, Miri Rubin on the cultural history of the Mother of God, plus Portuguese architect Alvaro Siza.
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Night Waves - Amanda Foreman
Rana Mitter talks to historian Amanda Foreman about her new book A World on Fire, about the thousands of British citizens who took part in the American Civil War.
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Night Waves - Amanda Vickery/Damien Hirst/David Chipperfield/Modern Family
Presented by Anne McElvoy. With historian Amanda Vickery, Damient Hirst at the Wallace Collection, architect David Chipperfield at the Design Museum and the TV series Modern Family.
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Night Waves - Amartya Sen/Mark Ravenhill/Richard English/Schumann
Presented by Anne McElvoy. With economist Amartya Sen on his new book, playwright Mark Ravenhill on British writers' popularity abroad and Richard English on responses to terrorism.
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Night Waves - Amit Chaudhuri
Rana Mitter talks to celebrated Indian writer Amit Chaudhuri about his latest novel The Immortals and also discusses the contrast between Catholic and Protestant art.
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Night Waves - Amos Oz
Rana Mitter presents an extended conversation with Israeli writer Amos Oz, author of novels such as Black Box and Don't Call it, and essays on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
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Night Waves - Amy Bloom/Shutter Island/Simon Russell Beale/Dai Williams
Presented by Matthew Sweet. With novelist Amy Bloom, Martin Scorsese's film Shutter Island, actors Simon Russell Beale and Fiona Shaw, plus Dai Williams of the Wales Arts Council.
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Night Waves - Andrew Marvell
Matthew Sweet and biographer Nigel Smith discuss the life of 17th-century poet, civil servant and suspected spy Andrew Marvell, whose personal life is shrouded in mystery.
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Night Waves - Andrew O'Hagan, Aida, World War Two
Presented by Matthew Sweet. With Andrew O'Hagan on his latest novel, Susan Hitch reviewing a new production of Aida at Covent Garden and the British interest in the World War Two.
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Night Waves - Andrzej Wajda - Katyn
Anne McElvoy discusses Andrzej Wajda's controversial film Katyn, which depicts the massacre of thousands of Polish soldiers by the Soviet Army in Katyn forest in 1940.
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Night Waves - Andy Martin
Philip Dodd talks to professor Andy Martin, a surfing enthusiast, about his new book, Beware Invisible Cows: My Search for the Soul of the Universe Domestic.
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Night Waves - Anne Enright, David Thomson, Data Silos, Les Parents Terribles
Philip Dodd talks to Booker Prize winning writer Anne Enright and the film writer David Thomson about the latest edition of his Biographical Dictionary of Film.
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Night Waves - Anne McElvoy
Anne McElvoy and a round-table of guests debate the pressing cultural issues and big ideas of the week.
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Night Waves - Anthony Caro/Modern Sculpture/Mark Haddon/David Baddiel
Presented by Matthew Sweet. With sculptor Anthony Caro and and a look at the future of sculpture. Plus Mark Haddon's first stage play and David Baddiel talking about his new film.
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Night Waves - Anthony Julius/An Enemy of the People/Scandals/Baftas
Presented by Anne McElvoy. With Anthony Julius on the long history of English anti-Semitism, Susannah Clapp reviewing An Enemy of the People and Michael Goldfarb on the Baftas.
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Night Waves - Antichrist/Harvey Klehr/Desperate Romantics/Shaw and Priestley/Margot Fonteyn
Presented by Matthew Sweet. With a review of Lars von Trier's film Antichrist, Harvey Klehr on the KGB in America and Peter Bowker discussing his TV drama Desperate Romantics.
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Night Waves - Antonia Fraser
Philip Dodd talks to historian Lady Antonia Fraser about her husband, playwright Harold Pinter, who died in late 2008. Her new memoir Must You Go recounts their life together.
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Night Waves - Art in China, Socrates, Psychoanalysis
Presented by Philip Dodd. With China's burgeoning art scene; historian Bettany Hughes and philosopher Jonathan Ree on Socrates; the Science Museum's psychoanalysis exhibition.
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Night Waves - Arundhati Roy
Bidisha talks to novelist Arundhati Roy about Listening to the Grasshoppers, her collection of essays tracking the faultlines that threaten India's democracy.
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Night Waves - AS Byatt
Matthew Sweet presents an extended conversation with novelist AS Byatt, whose latest novel The Children's Book is set in the 'Edwardian summer' leading up to the First World War.
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Night Waves - Atiq Rahimi
Afghan writer Atiq Rahimi discusses his new novel The Patience Stone, which centres on a young woman in modern-day Afghanistan keeping vigil at the bedside of her comatose husband.
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Night Waves - Azar Nafisi
Anne McElvoy meets Iranian author Azar Nafisi, whose Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books was an international bestseller. Plus a review of the new film State of Play.
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Night Waves - Baby Boomers/Peter Brook/Turkey
Presented by Philip Dodd. With an appraisal of the baby boomer generation, theatre director Peter Brook on his new touring production and a discussion on how European Turkey is.
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Night Waves - Barbara Ehrenreich
Anne McElvoy talks to the American journalist Barbara Ehrenreich about her new book Smile and Die which attacks her country's addiction to positive thinking and blind optimism.
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Night Waves - Baroness Warnock
Anne McElvoy presents an interview with Baroness Warnock, who wrote the first report on reproductive ethics. She discusses her life, careers and religious and moral views.
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Night Waves - Barry Humphries, Juliet Gardiner, Alan Plater
Matthew Sweet hosts the arts and ideas programme, featuring debate about the cultural issues of the week and an interview with controversial French film director Gaspar Noe.
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Night Waves - Bauhaus
To mark the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Bauhaus, Philip Dodd looks at the effect of the German design school that brought sleek lines and minimalism to everyday design.
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Night Waves - Berlin Wall 20th Anniversary Debate
Philip Dodd hosts a debate marking 20 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Has the loss of the Wall left a gaping hole in German intellectual life which has yet to be filled?
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Night Waves - Bidisha
Bidisha talks to South Africa's most significant novelist, essayist and poet, Andre Brink, and discusses the musical Spring Awakening. The programme includes some strong language.
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Night Waves - Biutiful, Lizzie Collingham, Jerusalem Biography, Laughter
Matthew Sweet presents. With a review of the film Biutiful; how Germany went to war for food self-sufficiency; Simon Sebag Montefiore on Jerusalem; and why we should all laugh more.
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Night Waves - Boys
Matthew Sweet presents a programme about the world of boys, discussing how they learn, how they play and how they look. Plus a review of the new Star Trek film and a look at piracy.
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Night Waves - Bret Easton Ellis, The Miners' Hymns, Georg Buchner
Anne McElvoy talks to Bret Easton Ellis about Imperial Bedrooms, the sequel to his 1985 debut novel Less Than Zero, and sees a new collaboration between brass bands and video art.
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Night Waves - British Philanthropy, Ideas of the Year
Philip Dodd discusses Alan Lomax, a pioneering oral historian who created an irreplaceable archive of early American folk and Blues. Plus Will Self's idea of the year.
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Night Waves - Caryl Phillips
In a rare interview, Matthew Sweet talks to award-winning writer Caryl Phillips about his novel In the Falling Snow - a story about living in contemporary Britain.
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Night Waves - Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
Matthew Sweet reviews a new West End production of Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which features an all-black cast. It stars James Earl Jones and was a hit on Broadway.
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Night Waves - Catherine the Great
Isabel Hilton explores the life of Catherine the Great with Prof Simon Dixon, whose new biography examines the popular myths surrounding the powerful Russian empress.
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Night Waves - Charles Darwin
Rana Mitter explores the legacies of the three titans of 20th Century thought - Darwin, Marx and Freud, asking whose ideas have influenced us the most.
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Night Waves - Charlie Kaufman
Matthew Sweet talks to Oscar-winning screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, who has made his directorial debut with Synecdoche, New York, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Samantha Morton.
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Night Waves - Chess, Tannhauser
Philip Dodd and Peter Millican explore the use of chess as a measure of human intelligence. Plus John Deathridge on the new Royal Opera House production of Wagner's Tannhauser.
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Night Waves - Children's Laureate/Mary Tudor/Sam Mendes plays
Matthew Sweet talks to the new Children's Laureate and discusses the controversial reign of England's first Queen, Mary Tudor. Plus Sam Mendes' The Cherry Orchard reviewed.
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Night Waves - China Mieville, Kent State Shootings, Florence Nightingale, Four Lions
Presented by Matthew Sweet. With China Mieville on his new book, the Kent State Shootings in Ohio in 1970, the lasting impact of Florence Nightingale and Chris Morris' new film.
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Night Waves - Christians in the Arab World
As Jerusalem fills with visiting pilgrims for Holy Week, Rana Mitter and guests look at the experiences and beliefs of Christian communities in the Arab world.
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Night Waves - Christopher Caldwell
Philip Dodd talks to American author and polemicist Christopher Caldwell, whose latest book argues that European culture is seriously challenged by mass immigration.
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Night Waves - Civilisation
Bidisha looks at what it means to be civilised, and asks whether it is an outdated concept. She talks to philosopher John Armstrong who calls for a new debate about civilisation.
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Night Waves - Claire Denis
Philip Dodd talks to Tony Harrison and Edith Hall about class and the classics, plus interviews with crime journalist Jake Adelstein and maverick French film-maker Claire Denis.
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Night Waves - Clint Eastwood
Matthew Sweet discusses Clint Eastwood's continuing significance in cinema, and talks to theatre producer Michael Kustow about his new book In Search of Jerusalem.
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Night Waves - Clive James/Agnes Varda
Matthew Sweet talks to essayist and cultural commentator Clive James, and also explores the work of Agnes Varda - the first lady of French New Wave cinema.
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Night Waves - Colm Toibin, Gauguin, Christopher Isherwood
Philip Dodd talks to the writer Colm Toibin - whose previous novel Brooklyn won the 2009 Costa Novel Award - about his new collection of short stories, The Empty Family.
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Night Waves - Confessions of a Justified Sinner
Matthew Sweet is joined by Ian Rankin and a panel of guests in Edinburgh for an extended discussion on James Hogg's The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner.
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Night Waves - Constable's Portraits
Artist Maggi Hambling discusses John Constable's lesser-known portraits, on show at London's National Portait Gallery, and her own of jazz musician George Melly.
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Night Waves - Correct English, John Le Mesurier, Made in Dagenham, Martin Parr
Presented by Matthew Sweet. With journalist Simon Heffer on writing 'correctly', a biography of John Le Mesurier, a review of the film Made in Dagenham and photographer Martin Parr.
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Night Waves - Craig Raine, Uncle Boonmee, John Maeda, Scott Atran
Philip Dodd talks to poet Craig Raine, meets design guru John Maeda in a sandpit and reviews the surprise Cannes Palme d'Or winning film Uncle Boonmee.
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Night Waves - Credit Crunch
Isabel Hilton and guests examine the reputation of economic theory in the wake of the credit crunch and the implications of the failure of economists to predict the crisis.
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Night Waves - Crime Special
Philip Dodd presents a crime special, including an interview with PD James, a comparison of literary detectives across Europe and a look at the secret codes used by criminal groups.
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Night Waves - Danny Boyle, British Philanthropy, Idea of the Year
Presented by Matthew Sweet. With film director Danny Boyle on his career after Slumdog Millionaire; the phenomenon of British philanthropy; the best ideas of 2010.
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Night Waves - Danton/Peter Randall-Page/Michael Goldfarb
Isabel Hilton discusses French revolutionary Danton, and talks to sculptor Peter Randall-Page and author Chris Anderson. Plus Michael Goldfarb's reflections on the summer of 1969.
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Night Waves - David Cesarani
Philip Dodd and David Cesarani discuss attacks on Britain by Zionist groups in the 1940s, and how the British secret service tried to make a last defence of British-run Palestine.
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Night Waves - David Edgar/Bassam Abu Sharif/Psychoville
Philip Dodd talks to playwright David Edgar about the art of writing for the stage. Bassam Abu Sharif was press officer to the PLO and talks about his life and work.
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Night Waves - David Kynaston/Royal Academy Sculpture Exhibition/Miriam Margolyes
Presented by Philip Dodd. With historian David Kynaston on his book Family Britain, 1951-1957, a review of the Royal Academy's British sculpture exhibition, plus Miriam Margolyes.
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Night Waves - David Lloyd George, Faust, Winter's Bone and Neville Brody
Presented by Anne McElvoy. With a new biography of David Lloyd George, the new film Winter's Bone, Neville Brody on the the Anti-Design Festival and our fascination with Faust.
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Night Waves - David Mitchell, Sheila Rowbothan, Michael Goldfarb, Eurydice
Presented by Rana Mitter. With David Mitchell on his latest novel, feminist writer Sheila Rowbotham, Michael Goldfarb on the 1970 Kent State shootings and Eurydice at the Young Vic.
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Night Waves - David Nash, Michael Winterbottom, Samuel Beckett
Presented by Matthew Sweet. With a review of a David Nash retrospective, Michael Winterbottom on his new film The Killer Inside Me and a discussion on Samuel Becket's prose writing.
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Night Waves - David Remnick, EM Forster, Dutch Football
Presented by Phillip Dodd. With David Remnick on his biography of Barack Obama, a discussion on EM Forster's homosexuality and David Goldblatt on Dutch football and its metaphors.
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Night Waves - Derek Jacobi
Derek Jacobi plays King Lear. Philip Dodd assesses one of our finest stage actors taking on Shakespeare's great and failing King.
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Night Waves - Diarmaid MacCulloch/Moctezuma Exhibition/China's Public Image
Presented by Rana Mitter. With Diarmaid MacCulloch on his book The History of Christianity, critic Bill Feaver on the British Museum's Moctezuma exhibition and China's public image.
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Night Waves - Don McCullin
Rana Mitter reviews a retrospective of the work of war photographer Don McCullin, and discusses the state of photography today as an art form and a tool of reportage.
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Night Waves - Douglas Hurd/Arthur Koestler/The Lovely Bones/Irving Penn
Philip Dodd talks to former Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd about the history of the office he once held. He also asks whether Arthur Koestler is still a key intellectual figure.
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Night Waves - Dylan Thomas's The Art of Conversation
Matthew Sweet discusses the first ever production of Dylan Thomas's recently discovered radio play The Art of Conversation and reviews Julia, the new film starring Tilda Swinton.
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Night Waves - Egyptian Book of the Dead, The Sun, Universal Theory of History
Presented by Philip Dodd. Jonathan Miller and Julia Neuberger on the British Museum's Egyptian Book of the Dead show; our relationship with the sun; a universal theory of history.
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Night Waves - Elections and the Visual Arts, David Greig, Climate Change, Fred Halliday
Presented by Rana Mitter. With a discussion on elections and the visual arts, playwright David Greig on his Edinburgh based version of Peter Pan, plus history and climate change.
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Night Waves - Elizabeth Gaskell, Collapse, Dominic Sandbrook, Mona Saudi
Presented by Anne McElvoy. With a discussion about novelist Elizabeth Gaskell; a review of the documentary Collapse; the significance of the early 1970s; sculptor Mona Saudi.
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Night Waves - Elizabethan Garden
Bidisha visits the first complete re-creation of an Elizabethan garden at Kenilworth Castle, designed by the Earl of Leicester to seduce Elizabeth I and win her hand in marriage.
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Night Waves - Eonnagata
Bidisha discusses Eonnagata, a Sadler's Wells project from dancer Sylvie Guillem, director Robert Lepage, choreographer Russell Malipant and fashion designer Alexander McQueen.
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Night Waves - Eric Rohmer/Frank McGuinness/New Ice Age/Grand Palais/Gary Lachman
Matthew Sweet talks to playwright and poet Frank McGuinness about his new play. Plus science writers Brian Appleyard and Gabrielle Walker on the 1970s' predictions of a new ice age.
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Night Waves - Erik Gandini, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Duke Ellington's America
Presented by Philip Dodd. With director Erik Gandini on his documentary about Silvio Berlusconi, Somali writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Duke Ellington's importance to American culture.
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Night Waves - Errol Flynn/ Acropolis Museum/ Dominique Moisi/ Roger McGough
Matthew Sweet talks to screen icon Olivia de Havilland about Errol Flynn, classicist Mary Beard reports from the Acropolis Museum in Athens and Roger McGough discusses Moliere.
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Night Waves - Europe in Crisis, Political Picasso, John Osborne
Presented by Philip Dodd. With a debate on European divisions brought to light by the Greek crisis, the lost John Osborne The Devil Inside Him and Picasso's political significance.
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Night Waves - Eva Hoffman/Cornish Identity/The Catwalk/Words and History
Presented by Rana Mitter. With Eva Hoffman on her new book about time; the current renaissance in Cornish identity; a discussion on the catwalk; understanding history through words.
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Night Waves - Feminism
Anne McElvoy is joined by guests including writer Natasha Walter to discuss whether feminism is central to 21st century civilised society and if it got things wrong about sex.
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Night Waves - Fintan O'Toole, Alasdair Gray, Horror Films, Saatchi Gallery
Presented by Philip Dodd. With Fintan O'Toole, who argues for the creation of a new republic in Ireland; writer and artist Alasdair Gray; horror films; a new Saatchi Gallery show.
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Night Waves - Frank Kermode/Studying English/Portraying the Queen
Presented by Matthew Sweet. Including an interview with literary critic Frank Kermode, a debate on the value of studying English and a look at the art of portraying the Queen.
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Night Waves - Frans de Waal, The Song of Lunch, Or You Could Kiss Me, WWI Reparations
Presented by Rana Mitter. Primatologist Frans de Waal on understanding human behaviour; the BBC TWO drama The Song of Lunch; the play Or You Could Kiss Me; German WWI reparations.
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Night Waves - Frederick Wiseman/Centurion/The Politics of Aid/South African Writers
Anne McElvoy talks to the acclaimed American documentary maker Frederick Wiseman, about his new film going behind the scenes at the Ballet de l'Opera National de Paris.
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Night Waves - Free Thinking
Matthew Sweet presents more highlights from this year's Free Thinking Festival in Liverpool, including debates on the drawbacks of computers and learning to change one's bad habits.
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Night Waves - Free Thinking 2008
Matthew Sweet presents a special programme from the 2008 Free Thinking festival, with debates, interviews, dramas and lectures as well as audience reaction and commentary.
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Night Waves - Free Thinking 2009
Radio 3's festival of ideas, featuring interviews, talks, public debates, drama and live performance. With contributions from today's leading thinkers, artists, scientists and writers
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Night Waves - Free Thinking 2010
Radio 3's ideas festival, with interviews, talks, debates, drama and live performance. With contributions from leading thinkers, artists, scientists and writers. The theme is the pursuit of happiness
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Night Waves - Free Thinking: Being Green can be Dangerous
Philosopher John Gray presents a talk from the 2008 Free Thinking festival in which he argues that 'being Green' can be dangerous and that we need to look to technology.
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Night Waves - Free Thinking: Is Privacy Dead
As part of Radio 3's Free Thinking festival in Liverpool, Philip Dodd chairs a debate asking whether, in the age of Facebook and CCTV, the notion of privacy is dead.
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Night Waves - Free Thinking Special
Matthew Sweet is joined in a debate at the festival by Robert Smith, Andrew O'Hagan, Charles Armstrong and Susan Blackmore to explore the value of experience in society today.
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Night Waves - Free Thinking Special
In a rare extended interview from the 2008 Free Thinking festival, Philip Dodd talks to the Rev Ian Paisley about politics, religion, faith, books and peace.
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Night Waves - Free Thinking Special
A debate from the 2008 Free Thinking Festival where Matthew Sweet and two guests - one teenager and one octagenarian - try to draw up a manifesto to bridge the generation gap.
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Night Waves - Free Thinking Special
In an event from the 2008 Free Thinking Festival, Trevor Phillips, head of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, asks six vital questions which our society can't answer.
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Night Waves - Free Thinking Special
Ruth Deech, former chair of the UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, argues that divorce settlements show that the law is out of touch with the reality of relationships.
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Night Waves - Free Thinking: The US Constitution
Susan Hitch presents a special debate about the US Constitution, recorded at the 2008 Free Thinking Festival in Liverpool. With Andrew O'Hagan and Diane Roberts.
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Night Waves - Friedrich Engels
Rana Mitter is joined by Tristram Hunt to explore the life of the philosopher Friedrich Engels, asking why his book The Condition of the Working Class in England inspired Karl Marx.
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Night Waves - Galileo, Birdsong, Nigeria, Sound in Art
Presented by Rana Mitter. Including two biographies of Galileo; the stage version of Sebastian Faulks's Birdsong; fifty years since Nigeria's independence; art that uses sound.
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Night Waves - George Carey
Anne McElvoy reviews the National Theatre's new production of The White Guard, and talks to the film-maker George Carey about his documentary Long Weekend with the Son of God.
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Night Waves - Glen David Gold
Matthew Sweet talks to writer Glen David Gold about fictionalising Charlie Chaplin in his new novel Sunnyside.
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Night Waves - Green Zone/'New' Atheism/Alex Butterworth/Bill Buford
Anne McElvoy reviews Paul Greengrass's new film Green Zone. Plus a discussion on the 'new' atheism, Alex Butterworth on 19th-century anarchists and Bill Buford's new BBC TV series.
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Night Waves - Handel Week - Handel's Borrowing
Presented by Rana Mitter. For Handel Week, the programme revisits the 18th century debates about artistic originality. Plus historian Margaret MacMillan on the abuse of history.
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Night Waves - Hanif Kureishi
Rana Mitter talks to writer Hanif Kureishi as a version of his novel The Black Album opens at the National Theatre. It tells of a British Pakistani boy's search for identity.
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Night Waves - Hans Magnus Enzensberger
Philip Dodd travels to Munich to talk to Hans Magnus Enzensberger, regarded as Germany's greatest living poet and a natural successor to Bertolt Brecht.
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Night Waves - Harold Evans
Anne McElvoy talks to Harold Evans, one Britain's most celebrated newspapermen. He discusses investigative reporting and the apparently parlous state of print journalism today.
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Night Waves - Henry Mayhew
Philip Dodd explores the work of the Victorian journalist, social investigator, dramatist and novelist, Henry Mayhew and his masterpiece, London Labour and the London Poor.
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Night Waves - HG Wells/The Pacific/Slum Cities/No Greater Love
Philip Dodd and his guests ask if sprawling slum cities are the future of urban life around the world. He also discusses a new revisionist biography of HG Wells.
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Night Waves - Highlights from the Free Thinking festival 2008
Matthew Sweet presents highlights from the 2008 Free Thinking festival, including Paul Preston's views on Britain's sense of historical superiority and Mark Haddon's new book.
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Night Waves - Hilary Mantel/Horace Walpole/Helene Cixous/Banksy
Rana Mitter talks to Booker Prize winner Hilary Mantel about her novel Wolf Hall and the re-imagining of history, and reviews the V&A Museum's new exhibition on Horace Walpole.
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Night Waves - History of the Druids
Matthew Sweet and historian Ronald Hutton discuss the Druids in Britain, looking at how for the last 300 years they have been reinvented by visionaries, radicals and fraudsters.
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Night Waves - How to make a good Egyptian gallery
As Liverpool's World Museum re-opens its Egyptian Gallery, Isabel Hilton finds out what ingredients are necessary to make a gallery about Ancient Egypt a success.
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Night Waves - Howard Brenton, Perfection, 'Jewish Comedy'
Philip Dodd talks to playwright Howard Brenton about dramatising the life of Henry VIII's wife Anne Boleyn and adapting Robert Tressell's The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.
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Night Waves - Hugh Pennington
At 2010's Free Thinking Festival, Professor Hugh Pennington discusses the science and politics behind food fashions of our own time and considers the challenges of food shortages.
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Night Waves - Ian McEwan/Jeremy Rifkin/Katya Kabanova/Tony Cragg
Rana Mitter talks to Ian McEwan about his much-anticipated new novel Solar, set against the background of the global environmental crisis. Plus a review of Katya Kabanova at ENO.
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Night Waves - Ideas Election/Maggi Hambling
Anne McElvoy discusses the Crucifixion in art with Maggi Hambling in Canterbury Cathedral. And thinkers of various political persuasions ponder if this will be an 'ideas election'.
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Night Waves - International Edition
Matthew Sweet hosts an international edition of the programme and is joined by cultural critics from around the world to assess some of the big issues of the week.
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Night Waves - International Edition/Moon Landing Anniversary
Matthew Sweet and international guests debate the 1969 moon landing. In a modern world where TV is widespread, does space travel now have the same resonance all over the planet?
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Night Waves - International Review
International Review: Matthew Sweet entertains guests from Ghana, Russia, America and the UK to discuss Herta Muller's Nobel Prize, climate change art, and Strictly Come Dancing.
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Night Waves - International Review
Matthew Sweet chairs an 'international review' edition, reviewing Ferdinand Mount's new book and the film Eyes Wide Open, and featuring arts and cultural news from around the world.
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Night Waves - International Review
Anne McElvoy hosts an International Review edition, with critics from across the world discussing the latest arts events and topical cultural issues that have a global impact.
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Night Waves - Isaiah Berlin
Philip Dodd and guests discuss the ideas, life and legacy of Sir Isaiah Berlin, widely considered to be the leading liberal philosopher of the 20th century.
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Night Waves - James Earl Jones/Albert Camus Legacy/French Colonialism/Nadifa Mohamed
Presented by Rana Mitter. With actor James Earl Jones on playwright August Wilson; the legacy of Albert Camus; pre-colonial Africa; and novelist Nadifa Mohamed on her debut novel.
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Night Waves - James Lovelock
In an extended conversation, Philip Dodd talks to pioneering scientist James Lovelock - originator of the concept of Gaia - about his remarkable life and the future of our planet.
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Night Waves - Jane Campion/Michael Goldfarb
Matthew Sweet talks to Oscar-winning director Jane Campion about her new film Bright Star. Plus writer Michael Goldfarb on his personal experience of the 1989 revolutions in Europe.
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Night Waves - Javier de Frutos/Dinah Birch
Presented by Matthew Sweet. With Venezuelan choreographer Javier de Frutos, the British and the Second World War, plus a discussion on elections in fiction, from Eliot to Trollope.
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Night Waves - Jean Marie Le Clezio
Philip Dodd talks to Nobel prize-winning author Jean Marie Le Clezio as a new translation of his great novel Desert is published.
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Night Waves - Jennifer Homans, Turner Prize 2010, Rob Lemkin
Anne McElvoy talks to Jennifer Homans about the history of classical ballet from its origins among Europe's courts to the present day and assesses the winner of the Turner Prize.
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Night Waves - Jenny Uglow/Robert Service/Swastika/Inherit the Wind
Presented by Anne McElvoy. With author Jenny Uglow, historian of Russia Robert Service, a review of the new film Swastika and Susannah Clapp on a new production of Inherit the Wind.
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Night Waves - Joe Penhall/Edmund White
Matthew Sweet talks to playwright Joe Penhall, who has adapted Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road for the cinema. Plus novelist Edmund White on his memoir of 1960s and 70s New York.
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Night Waves - John Evelyn
Rana Mitter is joined by writer Claire Tomalin to discuss the life and work of diarist, gossip and horticulturalist John Evelyn.
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Night Waves - John Pawson
Matthew Sweet talks to British architect, designer and champion of simplicity John Pawson.
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Night Waves - John Simpson, Jack Fuller/Angels/Childhood/No One Knows about Persian Cats
Anne McElvoy talks to the BBC's John Simpson and ex-Chicago Tribune editor Jack Fuller. Plus angels in fiction, great thinkers on childhood and a film about modern culture in Iran.
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Night Waves - Jonathan Coe, Yinka Shonibare, Graphic Design, Ondaatje Prize
Matthew Sweet talks to novelist Jonathan Coe and Nigerian artist Yinka Shonibare, a former Turner Prize nominee, whose work is set to stand on Trafalgar Square's fourth plinth.
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Night Waves - Jonathan Fenby, Sarah Dunant, Tudor Parfitt
Rana Mitter talks to Jonathan Fenby about new book on Charles de Gaulle's legacy. Plus Sarah Dunant on historical fiction and Tudor Parfitt on the origins of the Jewish Diaspora.
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Night Waves - Joseph Stiglitz/Hussein Chalayan/Tom Ford/Alexander McQueen Tribute/Stasi Exhibition
Presented by Anne McElvoy. With economist Joseph Stiglitz, fashion designer Hussein Chalayan, designer turned film maker Tom Ford and an appreciation of Alexander McQueen.
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Night Waves - Julia Franck/Futurism/Occupation
With Isabel Hilton. Including German prize-winning author Julia Franck, a review of the Futurism exhibition at Tate Modern and Justine Hardy's book about the Kashmir conflict.
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Night Waves - Karen Armstrong/Pompeii/China/Mindaway
Isabel Hilton talks to bestselling religious writer Karen Armstrong about her book The Case for God, a passionate defence of religion and an attack on prominent atheists.
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Night Waves - Knots
Isabel Hilton looks at the cultural history of knots, from the Gordian Knot of Alexander the Great to mathematical knot theory and from Chinese artwork to the Tibetan Endless Knot.
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Night Waves - Lady Chatterley Trial, HP Lovecraft, Tribes, Comprehensive Spending Review
Presented by Matthew Sweet. With arts cuts in the Comprehensive Spending Review; novels that have caused social change; HP Lovecraft's Legacy; a review of the play Tribes.
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Night Waves - Landmarks
Matthew Sweet is joined by directors Nicolas Roeg and Roger Michell for an in-depth celebration of David Lean's classic 1962 film Lawrence of Arabia, starring Peter O'Toole.
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Night Waves - Landmarks: Jules et Jim
Philip Dodd explores Francois Truffaut's classic film Jules et Jim with director Mike Leigh, film historian Ginette Vincendeau and novelist Michele Roberts.
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Night Waves - Landmarks: The Master and Margarita
Landmarks: As part of Night Waves' series on seminal works in our culture, Anne McElvoy presents an in-depth examination of Mikhail Bulgakov's masterpiece The Master and Margarita.
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Night Waves - Landmarks: The Norman Conquests
In a Night Waves Landmark programme, Matthew Sweet marks Alan Ayckbourn's 70th birthday with an exploration of his most famous work, the 1974 trilogy The Norman Conquests.
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Night Waves - Landmarks - The Second Sex
Rana Mitter hosts a special programme celebrating the sixtieth anniversary of Simone de Beauvoir's book The Second Sex, regarded by many as the bible of modern feminism.
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Night Waves - Landmarks: The Silent World
Matthew Sweet and his guests explore Jacques Cousteau's revolutionary documentary The Silent World, one of the first films to use underwater cinematography.
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Night Waves - Landmarks: The Threepenny Opera
Landmarks: Philip Dodd explores one of the most groundbreaking pieces of musical theatre of all time - The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill.
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Night Waves - Laura Wade/Will Self/Rock and Roll Films/AK Shevchenko
Presented by Anne McElvoy. With up-and-coming playwright Laura Wade; Will Self on the Holocaust in WG Sebold's writing; new rock and roll films; and AK Shevchenko's first novel.
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Night Waves - Laurie Anderson/Compromise/Grace Kelly Dresses/Anish Kapoor
Presented by Matthew Sweet. With experimental artist and musician Laurie Anderson, a debate on the art of compromise, Grace Kelly's dresses at the V&A and Anish Kapoor's sculpture.
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Night Waves - Leo Tolstoy, Violence and Photography, Happiness, The Tea Party
Presented by Anne McElvoy. With a discussion on Tolstoy's life and work; the ethics of looking at media images of violence; philosopher Julian Baggini on happiness; the Tea Party.
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Night Waves - Liberalism
Rana Mitter and guests discuss liberalism at the start of the 21st century. Does the coalition government mean it has returned as an idea? Or is it under threat in an insecure age?
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Night Waves - Lisa Jardine, Cultural Olympiad, Air, Chinese History
Rana Mitter talks to academic Lisa Jardine about her scientist father, Jacob Bronowski. Plus our relationship with air and China's rediscovery of its imperial history before Mao.
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Night Waves - Lorraine Adams, Francis Alys, Wendy Buonaventura, Spencer Wells
Presented by Anne McElvoy. With American journalist Lorraine Adams on her new novel, an exhibtion of artist Francis Alys's work and choreorapher Wendy Buonaventura's latest book.
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Night Waves - Louise Bourgeois, Christopher Hitchens, Cultural Attitudes to Skin, The Late Middle Classes
Anne McElvoy looks back on the work of the late sculptor Louise Bourgeois. Plus Christopher Hitchens on his new memoir, cultural attitudes to skin and The Late Middle Classes.
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Night Waves - Madame de Sade
Matthew Sweet sees Dame Judi Dench in the play Madame de Sade by Japanese writer Yukio Mishima about the women in the life of the infamous Marquis de Sade.
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Night Waves - Mao Zedong, The Human Comedy, Ashmolean Museum, David Grossman
Rana Mitter returns with the arts and ideas magazine - including a new powerful book which examines the rule of Chairman Mao and the catastrophic Chinese famine of 1958-1962.
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Night Waves - Marilynne Robinson
Philip Dodd talks to the Orange Prize winning novelist Marilynne Robinson about her novels and her recent collection of essays on science and culture.
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Night Waves - Mario Vargas Llosa, Peter Lanyon, Che Guevara, Mona Saudi
Presented by Anne McElvoy. Includes Mario Vargas Llosa's Nobel literature prize win; the St Ives group of artists; a new biography of Ernesto 'Che' Guevara; sculptor Mon Saudi.
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Night Waves - Mark Twain/Maps/Billy Bragg and Mick Gordon
Philip Dodd explores the life and legacy of Mark Twain, the creator of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, and versatile grandfather of American letters, who died in 1910.
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Night Waves - Martha Nussbaum, Nina Bawden, Tudormania, Museum of London
Presented by Anne McElvoy. With philosopher Martha Nussbaum's new book, Nina Bawden's shortlisting for the Lost Booker Prize, Anne Boleyn and Tudormania, and the Museum of London.
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Night Waves - Martin Amis
In an extended interview, Philip Dodd talks to novelist Martin Amis about his latest novel The Pregnant Widow, as well as his strong political opinions and his back catalogue.
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Night Waves - Mary Midgley
Ahead of Radio 3's 2009 Free Thinking festival, Rana Mitter talks to philosopher Mary Midgley about subjects such as reductionist science and what humans can learn from animals.
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Night Waves - Mary Midgley, Havi Carel
Two interviews with philosophers from the 2010 Free Thinking Festival - Philip Dodd talks to veteran moral philosopher Mary Midgley and Tom Shakespeare talks to Havi Carel.
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Night Waves - Melvyn Bragg, Lebanon, Political Representation
Melvyn Bragg talks about a life in the arts, and Anne McElvoy and guests tackle the idea of political representation. Plus a review of Lebanon, a film set inside an Israeli tank.
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Night Waves - Mexico/The Ghost/WWII/Mark Morris
Anne McElvoy discusses the cultural legacy of the Mexican Revolution 100 years on. Plus Roman Polanski's new film, The Ghost, and historian Ben Shephard on World War II's aftermath.
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Night Waves - Michael Burleigh, Sean Sculley and Abstraction, Opera: Do the Words Matter?
Presented by Rana Mitter. With economist Muhammad Yunus on his new book, Michael Burleigh on moral perceptions of different sides in World War II and the work of artist Sean Scully.
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Night Waves - Michael Goldfarb
With Anne McElvoy. Michael Goldfarb recalls his personal experience of the 1989 revolutions in Europe and reflects on their significance 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
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Night Waves - Michael Goldfarb - Woodstock
Philip Dodd presents the arts and ideas programme. In a series of letters remembering the summer of 1969, American writer Michael Goldfarb recalls the music festival Woodstock.
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Night Waves - Michael Holroyd, Bridget Riley, Thilo Sarrazin, Garry Trudeau
Philip Dodd talks to the biographer Michael Holroyd about writing his final book - part biography and part memoir. Plus the new National Gallery exhibition of artist Bridget Riley.
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Night Waves - Modern Architecture
Bidisha discusses a lecture by Prince Charles to the Royal Institute of British Architects, given 25 years after he attacked modern architecture in his 'monstrous carbuncle' speech.
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Night Waves - Money, Globish, Tyler Perry, Nicolai Lilin
Rana Mitter presents a review of a TV version of Martin Amis's Money. Plus Robert McCrum on the 'Globish' phenomenon, film maker Tyler Perry and former gang member Nicolai Lilin.
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Night Waves - Nandan Nilekani and William Blake
Philip Dodd talks to Nandan Nilekani, an Indian computer technology guru, about his new vision for his nation and how it will shape the global future.
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Night Waves - Ngugi Wa Thiong'o
Philip Dodd is in extended conversation with Kenyan writer Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, who has been considered one of Africa's leading literary voices since independence from colonialism.
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Night Waves - Niall Ferguson, Hugh Trevor-Roper
Rana Mitter talks to Niall Ferguson about the history of ethics and money. He also discusses a new biography of one of post-war Britain's most famous historians, Hugh Trevor-Roper.
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Night Waves - Night Waves
Isabel Hilton talks to South African Justice Albie Sachs in an interview recorded before an audience in Liverpool for BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking festival in 2007.
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Night Waves - Night Waves
Philip Dodd talks to historian David Starkey, who discusses his new biography of Henry VIII, a lifelong focus of his research.
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Night Waves - Norman Rockwell
Anne McElvoy discusses American illustrator Norman Rockwell, who over six decades created 322 covers for the Saturday Evening Post. Plus more from Radio 3's series exploring chess.
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Night Waves - Opera on the Big Screen
As a film version of La boheme opens, starring Rolando Villazon, Matthew Sweet and guests discuss why operas are increasingly finding their way onto the big screen.
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Night Waves - Opera Producers, Rude Britannia, Argentina, Women in Politics
Presented by Anne McElvoy. With a debate on the role of an opera producer, the Rude Britannia exhibition at Tate Britain, reflections on Argentina and plays about women in politics.
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Night Waves - Painting History/Ron Arad/The Last Station/Barbara Demick
Matthew Sweet discusses French versions of the British past across literature, painting and formal history writing. Plus a review of a new film about the last days of Leo Tolstoy.
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Night Waves - Pat Barker
Anne McElvoy talks to writer Pat Barker about her acclaimed novels set during the First World War, in a discussion at BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking festival.
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Night Waves - Patrick Tyler
Isabel Hilton talks to veteran New York Times journalist Patrick Tyler about his career reporting from the Middle East, and the changing role America has played in the region.
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Night Waves - Patrick Wright, Carlos, Ordinance Survey Map, Benoit Mandelbrot, Brain Drain
Presented by Rana Mitter. Historian Patrick Wright on a British delegation to China in 1954; the new film about Carlos the Jackal; a tribute to mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot.
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Night Waves - Per Wastberg, Modern Masters, The Candidate, Heiner Goebbels
Presented by Anne McElvoy. With Nobel literature prize chair Per Wastberg, a review of Modern Masters, a BBC TV series on modern art, and Don Guttenplan on the film The Candidate.
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Night Waves - Pete Townshend
Philip Dodd talks to Pete Townshend of The Who. He discusses the influence on him of Gustav Metzger's auto-destructive art.
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Night Waves - Peter Ackroyd, Norman Wisdom, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, Jonathan Franzen
Presented by Matthew Sweet. With Peter Ackroyd on his new book about ghosts; a celebration of Norman Wisdom; Oliver Stone's Wall Street sequel; Jonathan Franzen's new novel Freedom.
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Night Waves - Peter Carey/The Music Instinct/Gwyneth Lewis/Catcher in the Rye
Presented by Matthew Sweet. With Peter Carey on his latest novel, science writer Philip Ball on listening to music, Welsh Poet Laureate Gwyneth Lewis and Catcher in the Rye.
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Night Waves - Peter Greenaway/Vikram Seth/Art and Love Exhibition/Coalitions
Presented by Anne McElvoy. With Peter Greenaway on his new film, novelist Vikram Seth and historian Lynn Nead on a new exhibtion about Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.
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Night Waves - Peter Grimes
Rana Mitter reviews English National Opera's new version of Peter Grimes, Benjamin Britten's opera about a reclusive fisherman who is suspected of foul play by his local community.
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Night Waves - Peter Singer
Philip Dodd talks to philosopher Peter Singer about his plan to eradicate world poverty. Plus writer Jed Mercurio on his novel about John F Kennedy.
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Night Waves - Phedre/Democracy/Venice Biennale/Religion and Women
Presented by Rana Mitter. With a review of Helen Mirren's portrayal of Phedre, John Keane on the future of democracy and a debate about whether the world's religions oppress women.
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Night Waves - Philip Dodd
Philip Dodd interviews the novelist Howard Jacobson, reviews Mark Rylance's latest show and, as the Government calls for shorter prison sentences, discusses rehabilitation.
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Night Waves - Philip Larkin, Attutides to the State, Clio Barnard, Edwidge Danticat
Presented by Philip Dodd. A new cache of letters between Philip Larkin and his lover; our attitudes to the state; Clio Barnard's film about Andrea Dunbar; writer Edwidge Danticat.
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Night Waves - Philip Pullman
Best-selling writer Philip Pullman talks to Philip Dodd about his new book The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ.
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Night Waves - Picasso at the National Gallery
Matthew Sweet reviews a new exhibition at the National Gallery which examines the ways in which Picasso challenged and reconfigured the traditions of European painting.
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Night Waves - Polish Directors
Bidisha presents the arts and ideas programme, which includes a discussion on the often overlooked influence of Polish directors and theatre-makers on cultural life in Britain.
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Night Waves - Posh/City of Life and Death/The Prisoner
Rana Mitter reviews Posh, a new play about an elite dining society like the Bullingdon Club. Plus a new film about the Nanking Massacre and a remake of the TV series The Prisoner.
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Night Waves - Racine
Philip Dodd asks why Jean Racine's plays, in spite of sharing much with Shakespeare, have not been as popular in Britain as those of his French compatriot Moliere.
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Night Waves - Radio 3 Sonnets Day Preview
Phillip Dodd previews Radio 3's Sonnets Day, which celebrates the 400th anniversary of the publication of Shakespeare's sonnets.
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Night Waves - Rana Mitter
Rana Mitter with a new biography of Caravaggio, and a debate on business and environmental change.
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Night Waves - Rank in British Society/the Wilson twins
Matthew Sweet and guests discuss an exhibition on rank in British society. Plus artists Jane and Louise Wilson on their new project, and Nigel Andrews at the Berlin Film Festival.
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Night Waves - Raymond Tallis/JMG Le Clezio
Matthew Sweet talks to philosopher, doctor, poet and critic Raymond Tallis about his new book. Plus a review of the first English translation of JMG Le Clezio's novel Desert.
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Night Waves - Religion
Philip Dodd and John Micklethwait, editor of The Economist magazine, discuss the revival of religion and how this is shaping the world.
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Night Waves - Revolution
Philip Dodd presents a special edition dedicated to one of the most momentous and dangerous ideas of recent centuries - revolution. Does the concept still have any real meaning?
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Night Waves - Richard Bean
Matthew Sweet talks to playwright Richard Bean about his new play England People Very Nice. Set in London's East End, the work explores the area's rich immigrant past and present.
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Night Waves - Richard Linklater
Philip Dodd talks to director Richard Linklater about his film Me and Orson Welles, about the life of the great film-maker when he was working in New York theatre in the late 1930s.
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Night Waves - Richard McGregor, Terrence Rattigan Revival, Azadeh Moaveni, Italy
Presented by Philip Dodd. With journalist Richard McGregor on what he sees as China's true nature, the Terrence Rattigan revival and writer Azadeh Moaveni on Iran's middle class.
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Night Waves - Richard Overy
Isabel Hilton talks to historian Richard Overy about his new book The Morbid Age, which examines the culture and ideas of Britain between the First and Second World Wars.
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Night Waves - Rita Dove
Anne McElvoy talks to Pulitzer prize-winning former US Poet Laureate Rita Dove, whose new work is a lyric narrative of the life of George Bridgetower, the black virtuoso violinist.
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Night Waves - Roberto Benigni
Bidisha talks to Italian actor Roberto Benigni - best known for his film Life Is Beautiful - about his obsession with Dante and his one-man show inspired by the Divine Comedy.
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Night Waves - Robin Hood, Abi Morgan, Moral Understanding, Parodies
Presented by Matthew Sweet. With a review of Ridley Scott's Robin Hood, dramatist Abi Morgan on her interest the 1980s, babies and moral understanding, and parodies.
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Night Waves - Rose Tremain/Vanity/Ibsen's Ghosts/The Day the Immigrants Left
Presented by Matthew Sweet. With Rose Tremain on her new novel, a debate on vanity in literature, the new version of Ibsen's play Ghosts and a BBC ONE documentary on immigration.
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Night Waves - Rudyard Kipling, Dambisa Moyo, Neds, Evgeny Morozov
Matthew Sweet debates Rudyard Kipling's place in literary history, to mark the 75th anniversary of his death. Plus actor and director Peter Mullan on his new film, Neds.
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Night Waves - Russell T Davies
Matthew Sweet talks to Russell T Davies, the man who resurrected Dr Who. He also debates Pre-Raphaelite painter JW Waterhouse, and sees what makes an enduring artistic partnership.
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Night Waves - Russian Art/Where the Wild Things Are
Anne McElvoy talks to critic Andrew Graham-Dixon about the history of Russian art, and also discusses why the children's book Where the Wild Things Are has become a modern classic.
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Night Waves - Russian Plays, John Gray, Susan Hiller
Presented by Philip Dodd. With a season of Russian plays in London's West End; Philosopher John Gray on our search for immortality; artist Susan Hiller.
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Night Waves - Sacred Monsters
Series considering some of the big cultural figures who have seen their reputations wither in the last decades. Are they worth reviving or is it right they are no longer as important
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Night Waves - Saki
Saki: HH Munro, or Saki, has long been acknowledged the master of the short story. Isabel Hilton explores the surprising depths of patriotic fervour that lie beneath his tales.
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Night Waves - Salman Rushdie
Matthew Sweet talks to novelist Salman Rushdie about Luka and the Fire of Life, a sequel to his 1990 book Haroun and the Sea of Stories.
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Night Waves - Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses
Matthew Sweet and guests explore the legacy of the fatwa issued against Salman Rushdie in 1989 after he published his novel The Satanic Verses.
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Night Waves - Samson Agonistes
Philip Dodd discusses Milton's classic text Samson Agonistes, and whether Samson's suicidal act of destruction condones terrorism, as some scholars claim, or should be reassessed.
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Night Waves - Science under Barack Obama
Philip Dodd and guests assess science in America under Barack Obama, one year after his inaugural pledge to 'restore science to its rightful place'.
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Night Waves - Shakespeare
Matthew Sweet talks to leading scholars James Shapiro and Stanley Wells about the sexuality, thinking and identity of William Shakespeare.
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Night Waves - Shirley Williams
Philip Dodd talks to Shirley Williams, who discusses her many roles as academic, writer, politician and wife, as well as her Catholicism and her relationship with her mother.
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Night Waves - Shlomo Sand/School of Saatchi/Literary Adaptations
Rana Mitter talks to Shlomo Sand, author of a controversial new history of the Jewish people. Plus a new talent show for artists, and adapting great literary works for the cinema.
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Night Waves - 'Should Britain Give up its Delusions of Grandeur?'
Philip Dodd presents a debate asking 'should Britain give up its delusions of grandeur?'. With former ambassador to Washington Sir Christopher Meyer and writer Pankaj Mishra.
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Night Waves - Simon Callow, To Kill a Mockingbird
Matthew Sweet talks to Simon Callow about his new book, My Life in Pieces, and celebrates the fiftieth anniversary of Harper Lee's classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird.
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Night Waves - Slavoj Zizek
Rana Mitter talks to Marxist philosopher Slavoj Zizek, nicknamed 'the Elvis of cultural theory' because his writings mix political analysis, pop culture, and flamboyant delivery.
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Night Waves - Slavoj Zizek, Jared Diamond
Anne McElvoy talks to the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek about his new book 'Living in the End Times' and scientist Jared Diamond begins a series of columns on global history.
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Night Waves - Stephen Daldry/Utilitarian Architecture/Joseph P Kennedy
Presented by Matthew Sweet. With director Stephen Daldry, a discussion on utilitarian architecture and biographer Cari Beauchamp on Joseph P Kennedy's Hollywood years.
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Night Waves - Stephen Poliakoff/The White Ribbon/Michael Goldfarb
Matthew Sweet talks to film-maker Stephen Poliakoff and reviews The White Ribbon, the new film by one of Europe's leading directors, Michael Haneke.
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Night Waves - Steven Soderbergh/Steven Levitt/Hockney Retrospective
Matthew Sweet talks to film director Steven Soderbergh, who made a big impact with his first film Sex, Lies and Videotape. Plus a co-author of economics cult hit book Freakonomics.
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Night Waves - Susan Blackmore: The Myth of Free Will
As part of Radio 3's Free Thinking festival 2008, brain scientist and author Susan Blackmore explores the notion of free will, asking whether the choices we make really are free.
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Night Waves - Sylvain Chomet, Resentment, Alice in Wonderland
Presented by Anne McElvoy. With animated film maker Sylvain Chomet on his latest work, The Illusionist, a debate about the idea of resentment and the latest play from Laura Wade.
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Night Waves - Sylvia Earle
Matthew Sweet talks to Dr Syliva Earle, one of the world's best known and respected oceanographers, famous for her pioneering diving projects and her campaigns against pollution.
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Night Waves - Tariq Ali/Johann Zoffany/Julia Lovell/Departures
Presented by Rana Mitter. With writer and film-maker Tariq Ali, Penelope Treadwell on painter Johann Zoffany, Julia Lovell on Chinese author Lu Xun and the Japanese film Departures.
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Night Waves - Terry Eagleton, Douglas Murray, Zinody A Room and a Half
Philip Dodd explores the nature of modern diplomacy with Charles Kupchan, a former advisor to President Clinton and discusses the existence of evil with Terry Eagleton.
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Night Waves - Terry Gilliam/2009 Turner Prize/What Scares Audiences/Friendliness
Presented by Matthew Sweet. With director Terry Gilliam on his new film, the nominees for the 2009 Turner Prize and a discussion about which art form scares audiences best.
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Night Waves - Tetro, Christie's Auction, Art Forgeries, Matthew Crawford, Welcome to Thebes
Presented by Matthew Sweet. With Francis Coppola's new film, a look at how art forgeries are found, Matthew Crawford on the virtues of manual labour and the play Welcome to Thebes.
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Night Waves - The Atomic Bomb
Philip Dodd presents a programme devoted to the creation in 1945 of the first atomic bomb - and the artworks and history books it continues to inspire.
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Night Waves - The Duchess of Malfi, Went the Day Well?, Henry IV, Burma
Presented by Matthew Sweet. With a review of a new version of The Duchess of Malfi, the 1942 war film Went the Day Well?, Henry IV at the Globe, and government and society in Burma.
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Night Waves - The Enlightenment
Rana Mitter and guests debate the question: 'Is the Enlightenment still relevant today?' To some, it is the cornerstone of the modern world, but to others it has become intolerant.
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Night Waves - The Enlightenment
Rana Mitter and guests debate the question of whether the Enlightenment is still relevant today? With historian Justin Champion, English professer Karen O'Brien and Baroness Afshar.
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Night Waves - The Fool
Matthew Sweet explores the role of the comic Fool both past and present with Barry Cryer, Steve Punt, Kathryn Hunter and Paul Allen.
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Night Waves - The Free Thinking Lecture - Will Self
Author and columnist Will Selt gives the opening lecture for Radio 3's festival of ideas, criticising the way the mind is portrayed in novels.
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Night Waves - The Free Thinking Lecture - Will Self
In front of an audience at the Bluecoat arts centre, author and columnist Will Self delivers the opening lecture at Free Thinking 2008, Radio 3's festival of ideas in Liverpool.
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Night Waves - The Future of A Levels
Matthew Sweet chairs a round-table of teachers, academics, students and a former secretary of state for education for a debate about the future of A levels.
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Night Waves - The Homecoming
Philip Dodd presents a Night Waves Landmark dedicated to Harold Pinter's The Homecoming, a play which, in the eyes of many, confirmed him as Britain's foremost dramatist.
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Night Waves - The Kids Are All Right, Nicholas Ostler, Merce Cunningham, Silbury Hill
Presented by Anne McElvoy. With the new film The Kids Are All Right; Nicholas Ostler on the future of English as a global language; the final Merce Cunningham tour; Silbury Hill.
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Night Waves - The Limits of Science, Serge Diaghilev
Anne McElvoy talks to physicist Russell Stannard about the limits to scientific understanding, and discusses Serge Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes head of a exhibition on his work.
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Night Waves - The Original of Laura/Vatican Conference/Hoerengracht/The Habit of Art
Presented by Anne McElvoy. With Vladimir Nabokov's previously unpublished final novel, a Vatican conference involving leading artists and Alan Bennett's new play, The Habit of Art.
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Night Waves - The Origins of Magic Books
Bidisha explores the origins of magic books, from Ancient Egypt and medieval sorcery to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and talks to the author of the first ever full-length study.
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Night Waves - The Real Thing/Pascal Bruckner/Antony Griffiths/
Presented by Matthew Sweet. With Tom Stoppard's play The Real Thing, French writer Pascal Bruckner on the power of Western guilt and Antony Griffiths of the British Museum.
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Night Waves - The Social Network, Germany and Shakespeare
Anne McElvoy talks to The West Wing creator Aaron Sorkin about his film The Social Network. She explores the German love of Shakespeare. And Howard Jacobson on winning the Booker.
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Night Waves - The Tsarina's Slippers/Artists' Lives/Anglo-Saxon Gold
Presented by Anne McElvoy. With a review of Tchaikovsky's opera The Tsarina's Slippers at Covent Garden, judging artists by their lives and work, plus the Anglo-Saxon gold hoard.
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Night Waves - The Woman in White
Matthew Sweet brings together a round table of guests to explore one of the best selling novels of the 19th century - Wilkie Collins's influential The Woman in White.
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Night Waves - Thomas Keneally and Richard Flanagan
Matthew Sweet talks to Australian novelists Thomas Keneally and Richard Flanagan - both of whom have new books about unexplored and intriguing parts of their country's history.
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Night Waves - Thomas Paine
Presented by Philip Dodd. With a discussion on the legacy of Thomas Paine, South African judge Albie Sachs, a play about the Kursk disaster and John Woo's new film Red Cliff.
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Night Waves - Through a Glass Darkly, Nell Irvin Painter, Absent Fathers, Cornelia Parker
Presented by Philip Dodd. With a stage version of Through a Glass Darkly, writer Nell Irvin Painter on ideas of race, the absent father in literature and artist Cornelia Parker.
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Night Waves - Tim Burton/Don Delillo/Jonathan Safran Foer
Philip Dodd finds out how Lewis Caroll's classic Alice in Wonderland has fared under its Tim Burton makeover. Plus novelist Jonathan Safran Foer on why we should be vegetarians.
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Night Waves - Timothy Garton Ash
Philip Dodd talks to political historian Timothy Garton Ash about Europe, 20 years on from the collapse of the Berlin Wall.
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Night Waves - Tom Murphy/The Kreutzer Sonata/Godfrey Barker
Matthew Sweet meets Irish playwright Tom Murphy. Plus a review of the new film The Kreutzer Sonata and art market analyst Godfrey Barker discussing the world's biggest art fair.
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Night Waves - Tom Paulin/Chekhov Anniversary/Free Will/Precious
Presented by Philip Dodd. With poet and playwright Tom Paulin, Konstantin Eggert and Rosamund Bartlett on Anton Chekhov, plus anthropologist Kit Davis on the new film Precious.
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Night Waves - Tony Benn
In an event from the Free Thinking festival 2008, Tony Benn talks about the value of experience and discusses his own life experience with presenter Susan Hitch and the audience.
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Night Waves - Tony Blair
Philip Dodd in extended conversation with former prime minister Tony Blair in the aftermath of the publication of his much-anticipated memoirs, A Journey.
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Night Waves - Tony Judt/Bill Fontana/Dystopian Science Fiction/Treme
Presented by Philip Dodd. With historian Tony Judt on the case for a renewed belief in social democracy, sound artist Bill Fontana and the new vogue for dystopian science fiction.
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Night Waves - Tracey Emin
Bidisha talks to artist Tracey Emin about her drawings. Her new show and book feature hundreds of drawings, and deal with subjects like death, loss, love, passion, sex and lust.
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Night Waves - Translating Foreign Poetry
Philip Dodd explores the complexities of translating poetry with Radio 3's Ian McMillan, who loves collecting poems in foreign languages.
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Night Waves - Travels in the Reich, Bronco Bullfrog, Anish Kapoor, Tintoretto, Ghana and Football
Presented by Matthew Sweet. With a book on literary travellers to pre-WWII Germany, the film Bronco Bullfrog, Anish Kapoor's new sculpture, a lost Tintoretto and football in Ghana.
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Night Waves - TS Eliot Prize/Class Consciousness/A Prophet/Whitechapel Gallery Exhibition
Presented by Matthew Sweet. With the first interview with the winner of the 2009 TS Eliot prize for poetry, a debate about class consciousness in Britain and the new film A Prophet.
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Night Waves - Tyson
Matthew Sweet is joined by art critic and boxer Lynda Nead to review the much-anticipated documentary about the life of Mike Tyson.
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Night Waves - Tzvetan Todorov/Artist Film-Makers/Artists in the Theatre
Presented by Philip Dodd. With philosopher Tzvetan Todorov on his new book about the Enlightenment, a debate on artists-turned film-makers plus theatre's fascination with artists.
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Night Waves - Ulysses/Gay Identity/Omega Workshops/South African Theatre
Bidisha discusses whether James Joyce's Ulysses could be a self-help guide in disguise, and asks if the establishment has reconciled itself to gay identity.
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Night Waves - Universities
Rana Mitter chairs a discussion on the future of Britain's universities, amid claims of a possible crisis in funding and student numbers, as well as a bias towards the sciences.
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Night Waves - Untitled
Isabel Hilton talks to Joanna Bourke, author of critically acclaimed books on the history of killing and the idea of fear, about her new book on sexual violence.
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Night Waves - Untitled
Philip Dodd talks to Canadian novelist Douglas Coupland – who popularised the terms Generation X and McJob – about his new novel The Gum Thief.
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Kenan Malik talks to best-selling yet controversial psychologist Steven Pinker, known as one of the chief proponents of the idea that we all have an innate instinct for language.
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Matthew Sweet talks to Will Self, one of the leading proponents of psychogeography, a theory of how people interact with their surroundings.
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Night Waves - Untitled
Matthew Sweet presents the arts and ideas programme, with interviews and debate on this week’s most important cultural issues.
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Philip Dodd talks to Patrick Wright about his new book charting the history and influence of what in effect was the symbol for so many years of a divided world – the Iron Curtain.
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Gabriel Gbadamosi talks to Senegalese singer/songwriter Youssou N'Dour. Youssou chats about local landscapes and tradition, and the humanitarian concerns driving his music.
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Night Waves - Van Dyck
To coincide with an exhibition of his paintings, Bidisha discusses the work of the portraitist Van Dyck. Plus film director Laurent Cantet, maker of the award-winning The Class.
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Night Waves - Van Gogh
Anne McElvoy is joined by critic Richard Cork to discuss the Royal Academy's exhibition The Real Van Gogh: The Artist and his letters. Plus reviews of the week's cultural events.
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Night Waves - Violet Gibson/Burying Ancient Remains/Michael Foot/Nicholas Christakis
Anne McElvoy discusses Violet Gibson, who tried to kill Benito Mussolini in 1926. Plus a discussion on re-burying ancient remains, Michael Foot remembered and social networks.
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Night Waves - Waiting for Godot
Anne McElvoy presents the arts and ideas programme. Including a review of the new production of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot starring Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart.
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Night Waves - Wayne McGregor
Anne McElvoy talks to multi award-winning choreographer and dancer Wayne McGregor about his new productions of Handel and Purcell at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden.
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Night Waves - Why People Lie, Hal Prince, Elia Suleiman, Science and Literature
Presented by Anne McElvoy. With psychologist Dorothy Rowe on our capacity for lying, Broadway director Hal Prince on his new musical and Palestinian film director Elia Suleiman.
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Night Waves - William Dalrymple/The Power of Yes/Madeleine Bunting/Hanan Al-Shaykh
Presented by Rana Mitter. With William Dalrymple on the sacred in modern India, journalist Madeleine Bunting on the human need for connection to the land and David Hare's new play.
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Night Waves - Wolfgang Tillmans, Die Meistersinger, Archeological Remains, Lise Eliot
Presented by Anne McElvoy. With artist Wolfgang Tillmans, Die Meistersinger at Welsh National Opera, archeologist Mike Pitts on identifying remains and neuroscientist Lise Eliot.
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Night Waves - Year of Science 2010
Series of extended interviews with leading scientists from Britain and the rest of the world, given as part of the BBC's year of science programmes in 2010
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Night Waves - Zadie Smith/Dieter Rams/A Serious Man
Presented by Philip Dodd. With writer Zadie Smith on her new collection of essays, a discussion of the work of designer Dieter Rams and a review of the Coen brothers' latest film.
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