Podcasts about suzi feay

This week, Suzi Feay sizes up the public intellectuals, deadbeat aristocrats, hedonistic oligarchs and hardened street soldiers of Andrew O'Hagan's panoramic new novel; and Michael Caines on the prolific and endlessly imaginative world of Ray Bradbury.'Caledonian Road', by Andrew O'Hagan'Remembrance: Selected Correspondence of Ray Bradbury', edited by Jonathan R. EllerProduced by Charlotte Pardy Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Musician Corinne Bailey Rae performs live in the studio and discusses the inspiration for her new album, Black Rainbows. Writer Peter Arnott on his new play about the 2014 Scottish Independence Referendum, Group Portrait In A Summer Landscape, opening at Pitlochry Festival Theatre on Friday. Plus short stories: critics Stephanie Merritt and Suzi Feay on two new collections - by Kate Atkinson and by US 'flash fiction' writer Diane Williams. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Emma Wallace

Is Gogglebox the main place on TV where you now find criticism? What does that tell us about the role of the critic today? Suzi Feay, Arifa Akbar and Charlotte Mullins join Matthew Sweet to review a new art exhibition at the Barbican showcasing the art and ideas of Jean Dubuffet and to reflect on what being a critic means. Matthew pays tribute to the thinking of Kevin Jackson (3 January 1955 – 10 May 2021) who took part in many critical discussions on BBC Radio 3. New Generation Thinker Vid Simoniti teaches philosophy and art at Liverpool University and he's written us a postcard reflecting on what it means when algorithms dictate the culture we consume. Jean Dubuffet: Brutal Beauty runs at the Barbican, London from May 17th 2021 to August 22nd 2021. Dubuffet (1901-1985) collected artwork made by people outside the arts establishment and in his own work he incorporated butterfly wings, sand, lava, collages of cut up paintings and graffiti. Talking about the portraits he made he said, ‘Funny noses, big mouths, crooked teeth, hairy ears, I’m not against all that’. You can find a playlist focusing on the Visual Arts on the Free Thinking website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p026wnjl New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio. Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Author Lynsey Hanley and Mykaell Riley, founding member of the British roots reggae group Steel Pulse, tell the story of the search for a ‘common culture’, following its permutations in the post-war era with the rise of ‘the common voice’ and a new wave of documentary making, fiercely negotiated around issues of social class, race and the impact of multiculturalism, to the present. At a time of huge division and polarisation in civil society they ask if its time has come again in the digital age. Writing in post-war Britain, for critics like Raymond Williams, Richard Hoggart, Stuart Hall and others 'culture' meant two things: first, a whole way of life and the everyday, not just a series of great works accessed and curated by an elite; second, as a way of sharing the arts and learning with the whole of society, of open access for everyone in a properly civic space. Lynsey Hanley, who has written on the history of council estates and urban planning, explores how these two ideas were conjoined. 'Common culture' was for the first time inclusive, involving all the strands of everyday living from youth culture to the pub, the football terrace and the cinema. ‘Culture is ordinary’ wrote Raymond Williams in 1958. The idea of a common culture meant the opening up of 'high' culture too, tied to mass literacy and learning as part of a wider sense of cultural outreach aimed at the British working class. This was boosted by the work of intellectuals like George Orwell and EP Thompson as well as Richard Hoggart’s landmark book 'The Uses of Literacy' which argued for the democratisation of culture and cultivation of learning through what the author called, in a powerful phrase, ‘civic literacy’. Mykaell Riley builds on this story, of how ‘common culture’ became deeply contested in the 1970s and ‘80s, forged from representations of working-class identity but weaponised around ideas of race. For the post-Windrush generation of Black British youth the idea of a ‘common culture’ was wrapped around the British flag and harshly policed. Music, especially British reggae groups like Steel Pulse, became part of a cultural fightback - an expression of the new political multiculturalism and proliferation of sub-cultures. Perhaps there has never been a truly 'common' culture that belongs everyone – that the very idea has a deep ambivalence when used in public life, either championing inclusivity or excluding diversity. But does the first always have to mean the second, can we move beyond this stalemate? In our rancorous post-Brexit era and a wide sense of fatigue with division always seeming more important than what we could - and perhaps do - share in common, could the idea of common culture be thought again in new, de-toxifying and inventive ways? Or have we just become better at thinking about what separates us than what we have in common, more comfortable with difference than what we share in public space? Contributors include director Ken Loach, curator and writer Aliyah Hasinah, critic and author DJ Taylor, dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson, director Terence Davies, literary journalist Suzi Feay, singer songwriter Peggy Seeger, political journalist Peter Obourne, illustrator and author Nick Hayes, urbanist Adam Greenfield, documentary historian John Corner, director at Byline TV Caolan Robertson and Farrukh Dhondy, a founding commissioning editor for Channel 4. Presented by Lynsey Hanley and Mykaell Riley Produced by Simon Hollis A Brook Lapping production for BBC Radio 4

Fela Kuti was the creator of Afrobeat – a blend of traditional Yoruba and Caribbean music with funk and jazz that exhilarated the global music scene in the 1970s and gave rise more recently to the Afrobeats scene from Burna Boy to Tiwa Savage. A new documentary by the Nigerian novelist and playwright Biyi Bandele aims to chart Fela Kuti’s rise to fame and politicisation in 1960s Lagos and the US. As Nigerians march the streets to protest at police brutality, using Fela Kuti’s music as a backdrop, Samira talks to Biyi Bandele about his musical and political legacy. With the Booker shortlist featuring books which deal with trauma – from Diana Cook’s The New Wilderness following a mother trying to keep her daughter safe after an environmental disaster and Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain about a childhood blighted by poverty and addiction in 1980s Glasgow we explore the issues for writers in writing about trauma in both fiction and non fiction with writers Meg Rosoff and Monique Roffey and the critic Suzi Feay. The Queen’s Gambit is a new miniseries on Netflix which tells the story of a young female chess genius. It’s being hailed as “one of their best ever shows” but how is a drama about 32 chess pieces and 64 black and white squares so compelling? Roisin O’Connor is a big fan and eager to tell everyone how wonderful it is. Main image: Fela Kuti Image credit: Ian Dickson/Redferns

As novelist John Connolly publishes a prequel to his hugely successful Charlie Parker thriller series, he and critic Suzi Feay discuss the art of creating a prequel, both in books and on screen, from Endeavour to Hannibal Rising to The Wide Sargasso Sea. From the Minack Theatre, nestled in the cliffs of west Cornwall, to Cirencester’s Barnfest, and Brighton Open Air Theatre, many theatre-goers have turned to the great outdoors as indoor theatres remain shuttered due to Covid-19 restrictions. The Maltings Theatre in St Albans has just kicked off its 6th annual outdoor festival, set in a Roman Theatre built in 140AD, with a programme that includes The Merry Wives of Windsor, Henry V and HMS Pinafore. Its Artistic Director, Adam Nichols, joins John Wilson to discuss the joys, challenges and opportunities of outdoor theatre. Around the UK, the pandemic has caused arts venues, organisations and establishments to have to make dramatic cuts to their output and costs just to stay afloat. With no definite end in sight when they can start generating income again, redundancies seem inevitable. Plus Suzi Feay comments on the publication of 25 books by female authors who will be known, for the first time, by their real names. All of them are women who wrote under male pen-names - including George Eliot, whose Middlemarch will now be republished with the name Mary Anne Evans on the cover. Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Dymphna Flynn Studio Manager: Giles Aspen

To mark the 75th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki this week, the Imperial War Museum commissioned artist and stage designer Es Devlin and her Japanese collaborator Machiko Weston to make a short film in memory of those who died. They discuss their resulting artwork, I Saw the World End. New Perspectives, the Midlands company that takes theatre to rural areas and usually performs in village halls, has come up with a novel idea. For its latest production created during lockdown it has embraced old technology: 'Love from Cleethorpes' is a drama told on postcards. Every few days a new postcard arrives at the homes of the audience and, over a couple of weeks, the story unfolds. Tom Sutcliffe is joined by New Perspectives artistic director Jack McNamara. Literary critic Suzi Feay and arts journalist Kohinoor Sahota review Ali Smith's new novel Summer, the final instalment in her seasonal quartet of books, and discuss arts stories from the week including I'm a Celebrity moving from the Australian jungle to a British castle and Vogue theming their September issue on activism. The final guest for the Front Row Lockdown Discoveries, where artists and creators select something cultural that has given them pleasure or inspiration in the dark months of isolation, is Alys Tomlinson, Photographer of the Year at the 2018 Sony World Photography Awards. She describes her discovery – zoom portraiture. Presenter: Tom Sutcliffe Producer: Timothy Prosser

Emilio Estevez discusses his forthcoming film The Public which he has written, directed and stars in, along with Alec Baldwin and Christian Slater, set in Cincinnati Public Library in the middle of winter. 100 Novels That Shaped Our World have just been chosen by a panel including Front Row presenter Stig Abell. The list is part of a BBC Arts season celebrating 300 years since the publication of Robinson Crusoe, often regarded as the first novel in English. The list has thrown up some controversial choices. Panellist and author Kit de Waal and literary critic Suzi Feay join Stig to discuss the premise, categories, inclusions and omissions. Brighton-based DJ Tom Burland is the recently-announced winner of the David Attenborough Songlines Remix Competition. The annual competition invited UK music creators to remix Gender Wayang, a field recording made 50 years ago by Sir David Attenborough while making programmes in Bali. Presenter Stig Abell Producer Jerome Weatherald

We consider the connection between the public house and the arts. Why do pubs make such great settings, provide so much inspiration and serve as great venues for the arts? Al Murray ponders the longevity of his pub landlord and what this character allows him to explore about Britishness, as literary journalist Suzi Feay considers the representation of pubs in books and TV. Musician Eliza Carthy remembers her first ever public performance in The Bay Hotel in Robin Hood’s Bay, where she was a regular at the folk club there, while crime novelist David Mark tells us how he finds inspiration from the host of intriguing characters he meets down his local, the Samson Inn in Gilsland, Cumbria. But, as pubs continue to be in decline – 25% of pubs have closed since 2001 - we consider how some hostelries are reinventing themselves as cultural destinations. Dawn Badland runs The Inn Crowd, a project which supports rural pubs to host spoken word performances, and Adam Lacey is manager of The Old Joint Stock, a Birmingham pub with its own 100 seater theatre. Presenter: John Wilson Producer: Hannah Robins

For the second of three episodes recorded at the Port Eliot festival in Cornwall, John and Andy are joined by songwriter and activist Billy Bragg and journalist and critic Suzi Feay to talk about George Orwell's The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius. This special episode features audience participation on a scale never before heard on Backlisted - make sure you keep listening until the very end of the Q&A session...

Nancy Meyers has made her career making hugely popular romantic comedies such as The Holiday, It's Complicated and What Women Want. As her latest venture, Home Again, comes to cinemas we speak to Nancy Meyers about the rom-com and her career in Hollywood. Last week, UK book publishers Bloomsbury launched their first 'Modern Classics' series, joining the likes of Picador, Faber & Faber and of course Penguin, who established their iconic series way back in 1961. But why are certain books deemed worthy of the label? And what exactly does the term mean in the first place? The curator of Bloomsbury's new series, Alison Hennessey, and literary critic Suzi Feay discuss what makes a modern classic.The migration crisis was seen as a key factor in Germany's election results this weekend with the nationalist AfD party winning enough parliamentary seats to become the third-largest party in the Bundestag. Award-winning novelist Jenny Erpenbeck was born in East Germany and she discusses her latest novel - Go, Went, Gone - which explores the crisis from the perspective of a recently-retired German professor based in East Berlin, who discovers that the transitions in his own life connect him in ways he had never imagined to the thousands seeking new lives in Germany.With the Turner Prize scrapping its eligibility age limit of 50, the work of the four artists who've made the shortlist - two of whom are over 50 - goes on display this week. Critic Jonathan Jones casts an eye over the Turner Prize exhibition which this year takes place at the Ferens Art Gallery in Hull for the first time. Presenter Kirsty Lang Producer Jerome Weatherald.

As Evelyn Waugh's classic first novel Decline and Fall has been made into a new BBC television series starring Jack Whitehall, we speak to its adapter James Wood and literary critic Suzi Feay and discuss how Waugh's distinctive but potentially offensive brand of satire plays for a modern audience.Sunday 2 April 2017 is the 50th birthday of Adrian Mole, diarist, poet and would be novelist. In 1982 Leicester-born Sue Townsend took the publishing world by storm with her first book, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4 and became the best-selling author of the 1980s, with follow up volumes until her death in 2014. Adrian's poems are now published together in one volume, Adrian Mole the Collected Poems. Radio 4's Poet in Residence Daljit Nagra reads and discusses them with Stig.A new touring play Offside focuses on the beautiful game and puts women centre stage. Poet Hollie McNish, who co-wrote the play, joins director Caroline Bryant to discuss their depiction of women, football, race, sexuality, and the politics of the sport across the centuries.This year Australian artist Patricia Piccinini drew bigger crowds that any contemporary artist worldwide. While the Tate Modern in London remains the most popular modern and contemporary art museum in the world. Facts revealed this week as The Art Newspaper publishes its annual museum and exhibitions visitor surveys. Javier Pes, the papers' editor in chief, talks us through the results.Presenter: Stig Abell Producer: Ella-mai Robey.

What is an outsider? Gary Lachman and Suzi Feay discuss the writings of Colin Wilson with presenter Matthew Sweet 60 years on from the publication of Wilson's best-seller which analysed literary characters in works by Camus, Hemingway, Dostoyevsky and figures including Van Gogh, T.E. Lawrence and Nijinsky. The Vulgar is the title of an exhibition of fashion on display at the Barbican - Linda Grant and Sarah Kent discuss the messages our clothing choices send out. And New Generation Thinker Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough on Norse gods. Beyond the Robot: The Life and Work of Colin Wilson by Gary Lachman is out now. He has also written the introduction to a new edition of The Outsider published by Penguin. Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough has published Beyond The Northlands: Viking Voyages and the Old Norse Sagas. She was selected as one of the New Generation Thinkers in 2013 in a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council which works with academics who want to turn their research into radio. The Vulgar: Fashion Redefined runs at the Barbican Art Gallery from October 13th to 5th February 2017. Linda Grant's new novel The Dark Circle is out in November.Producer: Torquil MacLeod

“Those who live to please, must please to live.” But these days it’s often our privilege to watch the performers having a good time See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Mariella Frostrup discusses Chinese literature and how we can view this emerging superpower through its novels, with author Mo Yan's translator Howard Goldblatt and novelist and film maker Xiaolu Guo. Eleanor Updale talks about how she tells a story in the space of one minute in her latest novel, The Last Minute. And literary critic Suzi Feay delves into the world of the debut novel examining the latest Waterstones' 11 list of new fiction writers, how well their past predictions have done and why she feels now is a good time to be a debut novelist.

5 November 2012 Bestselling crime writer Ian Rankin discusses his latest book Standing In Another Man’s Grave with journalist & blogger Suzi Feay in the Gallery at Foyles.

Spoken word is a form of poetry usually written to be performed in front of an audience, and often associated with hip hop culture. In recent years its popularity has soared in the UK – and now, as part of the London Literature Festival, the Southbank Centre is hosting the final of “Shake the Dust”, a national poetry slam for teenagers. So, what’s the difference between “page” and “stage” poetry? Does spoken word have a political bent? And can poets hope to change anything? Jan Dalley puts these questions to the poet, rapper and playwright Kate Tempest; poet and artistic director of the “Shake The Dust” Jacob Sam-La Rose; and critic Suzi Feay. Produced by Griselda Murray Brown See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

At Last (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) Acclaimed British novelist Edward St. Aubyn (Mother's Milk, shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize) will read and sign his new novel At Last. "Sparkling... With the wit of Wilde, the lightness of Wodehouse, and the waspishness of Waugh, [St. Aubyn] wraps his fancy prose style around the self in extremis ('suffocated, dropped, born of raped as well as born to be raped"), situations more familiar to readers of Cooper or Burroughs."  --Zadie Smith, Harper's "A miraculously wrought piece of art." --Suzi Feay, The Financial Times "St. Aubyn's technique is to crystallise emotional intensity into sentences of arctic beauty, which can be caustically witty or brutal. His novels are uncommonly well controlled, and thus their impact is all the more powerful... In At Last this crystallisation and control are on glittering display... We have reached the pinnacle of a series that has plunged into darkness and risen towards light. At Last is both resounding end and hopeful beginning." -- Philip Womack, The Telegraph "Ferociously funny, painfully acute and exhilaratingly written... Brimming with witty flair, sardonic perceptiveness and literary finesse." --Peter Kemp, The Sunday Times Edward St. Aubyn was born in London in 1960. He is the author of A Clue to the Exit and On the Edge, and of a series of novels about the Melrose family, the trilogy Some Hope and Mother's Milk, which was shortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize. Photo of the author by Timothy Allen. THIS EVENT WAS RECORDED LIVE AT SKYLIGHT BOOKS FEBRUARY 19, 2012

From shouts of “he’s behind you” at a Christmas pantomime to truly “immersive” productions in which audience members shape the action, audience participation is rife. The radical Belgian theatre company Ontroerend Goed – known for shows that test theatrical as well as moral boundaries – are now staging their latest play, Audience, at London’s Soho Theatre. Sarah Hemming, FT theatre critic, talks to Matthieu Sys, an actor in Audience, Neville Hawcock, the FT’s deputy arts editor, and the critic Suzi Feay about the changing role of the audience. Produced by Griselda Murray Brown See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Robert Harris talks about his latest book The Fear Index with Mariella Frostrup and discusses why he wanted to base it around the money orientated world of Swiss Hedge Fund managers. We discover the unprecedented appeal of The Iliad. Two debut novels have been shortlisted for Man Booker prize - Suzi Feay discusses if this is the place for new writing and how to find that great first novel.

Mariella talks to novelists Eoin Colfer and John Boyne about their new books as they cross the divide between writing for children and adults. Jim Crace, author of Booker nominated novel Quarantine, talks about writing his last book in a career which has lasted 25 years. And hot new Irish writer Kevin Barry and critic Suzi Feay discuss the way in which long running television drama series have influenced the contemporary novel.