Animal Farm

The Gospel According to Dylan. Sixty years ago, Bob Dylan was on stage at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester when a fan shouted "Judas!" from the audience. Giles is joined by Michael Gray, and writer, poet, philosopher, priest, and blues-singer, Malcolm Guite to discuss the spirit ...  Show more

Giles Fraser gets under the skin of the religious significance of tattoos. We hear from Wassim Rassouk - the owner of the oldest tattoo business in the world and head of a family business going back 27 generations.His panel are Revd Wendy Dalrymple, Canon of Ripon Cathedral who h ...  Show more

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Animal Farm, which Eric Blair published under his pen name George Orwell in 1945. A biting critique of totalitarianism, particularly Stalinism, the essay sprung from Orwell's experiences fighting Fascists in Spain: he thought that all on the left w ...  Show more

The novel Animal Farm was an allegory about the dangers of Soviet communism and of the communist leader Joseph Stalin. It was first published shortly after the end of World War Two, as the Cold War was just beginning. Louise Hidalgo has been speaking to Orwell's adopted son, Rich ...  Show more

Whilst at school, a young Alan Johnson was given some money by a teacher and told to go and buy four copies of any book for the school library.

He headed down the Kings Road in Chelsea, stopping only for a sly cigarette along the way.

Having already read 'Animal F ...

The vision of the future evoked in George Orwell’s last novel Nineteen Eighty-Four was so terrifying to its first readers that some claimed to be unable to sleep at night. When the book was adapted by the BBC for the new medium of television after Orwell’s death, millions became ...  Show more