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Radio 3’s flagship arts programme until 2013. Over 350 editions available in the archive.

Radio 3’s flagship arts programme until 2013. Search the extensive archive for interviews, debates and reviews. Go to Free Thinking for the new home of arts and ideas on Radio 3.

Night Waves: Hilary Mantel/Horace Walpole/Helene Cixous/Banksy

Hilary Mantel/Horace Walpole/Helene Cixous/Banksy

02/03/2010

BBC Radio 3 - Night Waves, Hilary Mantel/Horace Walpole/Helene Cixous/Banksy

Rana Mitter talks to Booker Prize winner Hilary Mantel about her novel Wolf Hall.

Rana Mitter talks to Booker Prize winner Hilary Mantel about her novel Wolf Hall and the re-imagining of history, and reviews the V&A Museum's new exhibition on Horace Walpole.

Rana Mitter talks to Booker Prize Winner Hilary Mantel about her winning novel, Wolf Hall. Set in the 1520s it charts the rise of Thomas Cromwell during the reign of Henry VIII. Cromwell was the son of a blacksmith but rose to the very top of English society through a combination of fortune and political brilliance. Rana Mitter talks with Hilary Mantel about the ways we see history and how you rediscover the personalities of an age from 500 years ago. 

Horace Walpole's House, Strawberry Hill, is one of the most extraordinary to have graced London. An evolving Gothic folly modelled on the style, if not quite the scale, of the great Medieval cathedrals. Walpole filled his house with an eclectic collection of objects as impressive as they are random: the supposed hat of Cardinal Wolsey, a wooden cravat, suits of armour, paintings, drawings, books, a cabinet of miniatures and new commissions in the gothic style to complement and enhance the atmosphere of "gloomth". The V&A exhibition attempts recreate Walpole's pioneering collection in the context of the rooms at Strawberry Hill, where visitors experienced a journey through ancient and modern British history and European art. The critic and cultural historian, Sir Christopher Frayling, who's latest book is Horace Walpole's Cat, joins Rana to sift through Walpole's treasures and assesses his reputation and status.

And there's an interview with one France's most celebrated writers and thinkers Helene Cixous. Born in Algeria and raised in a German speaking Jewish household she's written about how growing up in the French colony fed her desire to fight violations of the human body and spirit.

And the art critic Sarah Kent gives her verdict on the street-artist, Banksy's latest project: a feature length film, Exit Through the Gift Shop.

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