RTÉ - Culture File on Classic Drive

Booker Prize winner Samantha Harvey, co-novelists Helen Macdonald and Sin Blaché; and investigative journalist Andrei Soldatov share their favourite photographs of themselves, and explore how writers navigate self-presentation. Recorded Live at Borris Festival of Writing & Ideas 2025.

Caravaggio is celebrated this summer in Rome with a once-in-a-lifetime meetup of paintings normally living in museums around the world. Colm Toibin, Orit Gat and Luke Clancy went to see that blockbuster in the Barberini and then gathered to imagine what the painter might mean to the 21st century.

Artist, Marianne Keating on her archival voyage into the lives of Irish migrants to the UK; Tadgh O'Sullivan's further encounters with artworks that never were; and harpist, Alannah Thornburgh plays the tunes of the fairy folk.

Rachel Ní Bhraonáin reginites her award-winning dance-theatre take on the mosh and the moshers at Dublin Dance Festival; conductor Gabriel Crouch dives the fathomless depths of Jóhann Jóhannsson's enigmatic music-out-of-time choral work, Drone Mass; and Paddy Woodworth's latest book for the Naturalist's Bookshelf.

Recorded live at New Music Dublin 2025 at the NCH in Dublin, the panel explores how creative practices engage with the quiet space of loud sound, as well as the roles of quiet/loud in the contemporary attention economy, with Paula Meehan, Siobhán Cleary, John Godfrey, and Christine Tobin.

Ghost bands and circus values, with LA artist, Marnie Weber; Tadgh O'Sullivan on art that never was; and an in-the-end surprisingly pleasant visit to Berlin's Disgusting Food Museum.

Percussionist, James Larter reboots of the Four Season; the allure of ancient craft in New York; and Paddy Woodworth suggests a new old volume about New England as essential reading for today.

Veteran US cellist and improvisor, Erik Friedlander collaborates with live film score specialist, Matthew Nolan to create new music for Jean Cocteau's 1932 first venture into film.

At this year's New Music Dublin, American Irish clarinetist, Berginald Rash presents Bombast! his program of chamber music from contemporary Black and Latiné composers. He talks to Culture File about a fraunt moment for music and art in the United States, and beyond.

Classical music and hiphop meet with a bang in Belfast composer, Anselm McDonnell's latest project; the textile stories of Gee's Bend, Alabama at a new show at IMMA; and a program of premiers of chamber music from Black and Latiné composers at next month's New Music Dublin.

Pianist and composer, Ethan Iverson, formerly of The Bad Plus, on working solo, standards v hits, and the music of Igor Stravinsky. He plays The Cooler, Dublin on Friday March 14th, and Triskel, Cork on Saturday 15th.

An extended version of our conversation with Sonic Youth co-founder and explorer at the furthermost limits of the sonic spectrum, Thurston Moore, on noise, improvisation, fascism and his new guitar suite based on cloud formations, which debuts at this year's New Music Dublin festival of contemporary music.

Composer, Eoghan Desmond on his nature-infused new work for Chamber Choir Ireland, Guthanna ar an gCnoc; Orit Gat on the slide shows, activism... and playlists of Nan Goldin; and satnav and cacti crash the soundworlds of Foteini Tryferopoulou.

Composer, Eoghan Desmond on his nature-infused new work for Chamber Choir Ireland, Guthanna ar an gCnoc; Orit Gat on the slide shows, activism... and playlists of Nan Goldin; and satnav and cacti crash the soundworlds of Foteini Tryferopoulou.

Mulholland Drive: Anna Kornbluh ("Immediacy") joins Luke Clancy to wave Colm Tóibín off on a journey out of his comfort zone, and into David Lynch's mysterious, melancholic drift into Hollywood's dream machine/mincer.

Artist-farmer Lisa Fingleton's new exhibition takes its title from a sci-fi fruit: The Square Tomato; "corn smut" at The Third Kingdom mushroom-based restaurant in New York; and Paddy Woodworth finds a place for Olivia Laing on The Naturalist's Bookshelf.

The Culture File Debate on breath, from the need for breathable air to states of mind and body rooted in breath. Featuring IMMA's Mary Cremin; artist and climate change activist, Nina McGowan; Ireland's next Venice Biennale representative, Isabel Nolan; and Ian Robertson, co-director Global Brain Health Institute, TCD. (First broadcast 170924)

A "double emergence" of two broods of periodical cicadas near Springfield, Illinois for the first time in more than 200 years inspired a band of sound recordists, musicians, poets, composers and entomologists to gather beneath the trees to listen, record and improvise with a trillion-piece orchestra of singing critters. (First broadcast 29/06/24)

In this special All-Rembrandt-All-The-Time edition, we're in Amsterdam to join in the Netherland's celebrations of the 350th Anniversary of Rembrandt Van Rijn. The Rijksmuseum puts on display every one of its Rembrandt holdings; a treasure through which curator and Rembrandt biographer Jonathan Bikker leads Culture File. (First broadcast 15/03/19)

Recorded live at Beta Festival '24 in Dublin's Liberties, The Culture File Debate brings together artists Basil Al-Rawi and Conan McIvor, researcher Dr Autumn Brown and historian Ciaran Wallace to explore how we preserve and reimagine our cultural archives in a world of digital tools.

Walking a few momentous blocks of Dublin on the scent of a constellation of chancers, charities, literal bigwigs, choristers and 18th century It Girls that somehow resulted in the Irish capital being the venue for the premiere of Handel's Messiah.

The Irish Institute of Music and Song in Balbriggan's "Pathway to the Well" offer children in North County Dublin experiences of Irish music and tradition, such as The Fingal Mummers, who recently brought their mischievous musical theatrics to the children of Balbriggan Educate Together.

Fairy tales, they're not just for kids you know, suggests Tadhg O'Sullivan in his latest Cloud of Unknowing.

A taste of our forthcoming Culture File Debate: Wìngéd Muses, for which we asked some of our favourite writers—Orit Gat, Sara Baume, The Naturalist, Paddy Woodworth and John Banville—to speak to us about a bird they cherish. Here, John Banville puts in a good word for the Swift. Full program Dec 28th, 6.30pm, RTÉ lyric fm.

Artist and perception wrangler, Renata Pekowska, on a few of her favourite things, which include a book about religious relics and the smell of tomato vines.

How do artists capture the limitless beauty and complexity of the natural world? Paddy Woodworth chairs a panel of image-makers, featuring Jane Carkill, Melissa Culhane, Killian Mullarney and Yanny Petters, recorded live at the National Botanic Gardens as part of Dublin Book Festival 24.

As a taster for this week's Culture File Debate: Seeing Natures, Paddy Woodworth asks his panel of nature image-makers - Jane Carkill, Melissa Culhane, Killian Mullarney and Yanny Petters - about the effects of the climate emergency on their work and their lives.

Conversations, impressions and quick sketches from this year's Galway Cartoon Festival, in cartoonist Caoimhe Lavelle's festival notebook.

VR visionary, Curtis Hickman, on how even good old-fashioned legerdemain can teach a creator about working with the "hyper-reality" of VR storytelling.

Paddy Woodworth's latest selection for his ideal shelf of nature books is The Signature Of All Things by 'Eat, Pray, Love' author, Elizabeth Gilbert.

Neuroscientist and cyberdelic evangelist, Till Holzapfel, on some of his favourite things, including Alejandro Jodorowsky's The Magic Mountain and the smell behind his dogs ears.

Conductor and researcher, Peter Whelan on what we're still learning about Handel in Dublin; Orit Gat attempts to see Monet in London through the fog, and artist, Rada Iva Sibila on working with pain.

Among the ingredients for Rada Iva Sibila sound installations are the Zagreb artist's spoken words, captured as she experiences the pain of arthritis. Image credit: Serhii Shapoval @photo_by_shapoval

Is it possible to see once-breathtaking images from Monet or Van Gogh at all now? Orit Gat gives it a go at two current London shows from the Modernist mainstays.

What did George Frideric Handel hear at the Messiah's first performance in Dublin in 1743? Irish Baroque Orchestra's Peter Whelan turns his attention to the composer's little giant.

Rewalking a memorable path through "Handel's Dublin" in the company of the late historian, Jonathan Bardon. (4/4)

Composer, John McLachlan shares some of his favourite things, which include all six volumes of Karl Ove Knausgård's My Struggle, and that perennial scent choice, the smell turf.

On the trail of the probably German writer behind The Treasure of the Sierra Madre with Tadhg O'Sulllivan, the art of playing the violin while reciting verse with soloist, Larissa O'Grady; an unorthodox way of finding a bed for the night in a new Irish short film, Room Taken and a visit the an "art cabin" in Limerick City.

A couch-surfing homeless immigrant who doesn't know his luck encounters a blind woman who doesn't know he's there, in director TJ O'Grady-Peyton's Room Taken.

Culture File makes a studio visit to the "Art Cabin" at Brother Russell House in Limerick City.

Tadhg O'Sullivan's latest journey into the cloud attempts to follow the elusive author of The Treasure of The Sierra Madre, B. Traven.

Rewalking a memorable path through "Handel's Dublin" in the company of the late historian, Jonathan Bardon. (3/4)