Night Waves - 21/10/2008

Rana Mitter talks to English Romanticism expert Duncan Wu on his new biography of essayist and journalist William Hazlitt. He describes Hazlitt's role at the centre of the movement and how his career was destroyed by the publication of a book in which he described his obsessive love for his landlady's daughter. Israeli film-maker Ilan Zev talks about his new documentary Jesus Politics which explores how, in the run-up to next month's presidential election, religious faith is shaping American politics. Historian Bettany Hughes discusses the Royal Academy's exhibition devoted to art and objects from Byzantium, including icons, wall paintings, mosaics and silver metalwork. And as social psychologists at the London School of Economics claim to be developing ways of measuring cynicism, Rana asks how they can measure this, and if, as some say, it's on the increase, whether this is necessarily bad for society.