Night Waves - Lisa Jardine, Cultural Olympiad, Air, Chinese History

Rana Mitter talks to academic Lisa Jardine about her father, Jacob Bronowski, and the professional dilemmas he faced as a scientist in the Second World War. The documentary 'My Father, the Bomb and Me' is broadcast this Thursday evening on BBC 4 at 9pm (followed by an episode of The Ascent of Man). Ruth Mackenzie, director of the Cultural Olympiad, gives more details of the 12-week countrywide arts programme planned to run alongside the Olympic Games in 2012. Professor Steven Connor talks to Rana about his new book on the human relationship with air: scientific, technical and philosophical. 'The Matter of Air: Science and the Art of the Ethereal' is published by Reaktion Books. And there's discussion of China's rediscovery of its history pre-Mao, as an exhibition of Qing Dynasty robes from the Forbidden City opens at London's Victoria and Albert Museum. With Julia Lovell, lecturer in modern Chinese history and literature, and Sun Shuyun, author of 'The Long March'.