Books to Make Space For on the Bookshelf: The...

The links between food and philosophy, ideas about experimentation, taste and how food and traditions become part of our identity are explored by Matthew Sweet in Radio 4's round-table discussion programme. His guests are:Author John Lanchester, who writes restaurant reviews and ...  Show more

‘Technologies of the self’ is a phrase from the French philosopher Michel Foucault to describe things people might do to shape the people they are, like dieting, exercise, journaling, or in an earlier age perhaps like prayer, or confession. Shahidha Bari hosts Radio 4's roundtabl ...  Show more

Dinah Mulock Craik achieved fame and fortune as the author of the 1856 bestselling novel John Halifax, Gentleman. New Generation Thinker Clare Walker Gore reads this rags-to-riches tale of an orphan boy who rises in the world through sheer hard work and sterling character and her ...  Show more

Ryan speaks with Sarah Bakewell about her new book Humanly Possible: seven hundred years of humanist freethinking, inquiry, and hope, how growing up surrounded by books shaped her philosop ...

Drawing on an ethnographic study of novel readers in Denmark and the UK during the Covid-19 pandemic, Reading Novels During the Covid-19 Pandemic (Oxford UP, 2022) provides a snapshot of a phenomenal moment in modern history. The ethnographic approach shows what no historical acc ...  Show more

An infinite number of things happen; we bring structure and meaning to the world by making art and telling stories about it. Every work of literature created by human beings comes out of an historical and cultural context, and drawing connections between art and its context can b ...  Show more