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Donkeys
From Orwell and Shakespeare back to Greek myth, Aesop, and early Christianity: Matthew Sweet and guests look at a cultural history of the donkey. EO,…
2 years, 11 months ago
The Heir of Redclyffe
Soldiers fighting in the Crimean War lapped up this story and it also influenced the young William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones who read it at Oxfor…
2 years, 11 months ago
Lady Macbeth
Playwright Zinnie Harris, author Isabelle Schuler and New Generation Thinker Emma Whipday and Michelle Assay have looked at the murdering husband and…
2 years, 11 months ago
Berji Kristin: Tales from the Garbage Hills
Urbanisation, migration and ‘folk language’ are explored in the 1984 novel by Latife Tekin. The story is a carnivalesque fusion of contrasts like its…
2 years, 11 months ago
Gwendolyn Brooks
Inner city life in Chicago's Bronzeville and the experiences of ordinary people inspired the first poetry collection published by Gwendolyn Brooks in…
2 years, 11 months ago
The mermaid-like Mélusine
The legend of Mélusine emerges in French literature of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries in the texts of Jean d’Arras and Coudrette. …
2 years, 11 months ago
Crossroads and TV soaps
Russell T Davies has written a 3 part mini-series - Nolly - about Crossroads star Noele Gordon. He joins Matthew Sweet along with screenwriter Paula …
2 years, 11 months ago
The English Civil War
If the Tudors are the soap opera of English history, the restless years of the mid 17th century, often called the English Civil War, are more like a …
2 years, 11 months ago
Holocaust Memorial Day 2023
Romani history and how mass murder is intertwined with a modern day pilgrimage site and the experiences of Portuguese Jewish communities are discusse…
2 years, 11 months ago
William Stukeley
Stone circles, Roman Britain, a fossil crocodile and the flood described in the Book of Genesis, the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, a fake monk's manuscript…
2 years, 11 months ago