Stories of Love

‘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

From taking the middle ground to the mid-life crisis, Middle England to middle managers, to being a middle child - is occupying a position in the middle out of fashion?Anne McElvoy hosts Radio 4's ideas discussion programme and her guests this week for a middling conversation are ...  Show more

To celebrate the bicentenary of Charlotte Brontë’s birth, World Book Club travels back to Victorian England to discuss her captivating and enduring tale, Jane Eyre with writer Tracy Chevalier and biographer Claire Harman in a packed BBC Radio Theatre. The novel traces the fortune ...  Show more

George Eliot was a leading novelist who scandalised Victorian society by eloping to Germany with a married man and living in unlawful conjugal bliss. She dedicated her books to ‘her husband’ and wrote of 'this double life, which helps me to feel and think with double strength' ...

LOVE & ROMANCE – Laurie Taylor unpacks different conceptions of love. He’s joined by Raksha Pande, Senior Lecturer in Social Geography at Newcastle University, whose latest research explores arranged marriages amongst people in the British-Indian diaspora. She finds that they hav ...  Show more

The story of Jane Eyre is one of the best-known in English fiction. Jane is the orphan who survives a miserable early life, first with her aunt at Gateshead Hall and then at Lowood School. She leaves the school for Thornfield Hall, to become governess to the French ward of Mr Roc ...  Show more