Four essays about free thinking figures and places in North-East England whose ideas challenged their times, recorded in front of live audiences at BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking festival of ideas at The Sage Gateshead in 2009.

In the first essay writer and filmmaker Graeme Rigby looks back at the career of T Dan Smith, the Newcastle city boss whose architectural "Brasilia of the North" captured the headlines in the 1960s. Smith's spectacular fall from grace - jailed for corruption in 1974 - has written him out of history. But do the ideas and regional ambitions of this out-of-the-ordinary politician still resonate today? Show less