Free Thinking

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Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

The ideas shaping our lives today - with artists and thinkers in debates and interviews.

The ideas shaping our lives today - with leading artists and thinkers in extended interview and debate.

Free Thinking: Failure and female friendship

Failure and female friendship

BBC Radio 4 - Free Thinking, Failure and female friendship

Lara Feigel, Michèle Roberts and New Generation Thinker Alexandra Reza with Shahidha Bari.

Lara Feigel's first novel takes inspiration from Mary McCarthy's 1963 novel about female friendship whilst Michèle Roberts has written a memoir of the year spent rewriting a book.

How do you cope with a sense of failure? Michèle Roberts has been Booker shortlisted and has 12 novels under her belt but her latest book is a clear-eyed account of a year spent rewriting after having a novel rejected.  What sustained her in part were her female friends and cooking.  Lara Feigel is the author of acclaimed non-fiction books and her first novel takes the template of Mary McCarthy's 1963 novel about female friendship and examines the lives of women now set against the backdrop of the publishing world.  Alexandra Reza has been thinking about the place of the kitchen in novels such as Maryse Condé’s Morsels and Marvels, Marie N’Diaye’s The Cheffe, Calixthe Beyala’s How to cook your husband the African way, and Sarah Maldoror’s Pudding for Constance.   Shahidha Bari presents. 

Michèle Roberts's latest book is called Negative Capability.  You can find her talking to Free Thinking about smell and her novel The Walworth Beauty  https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08n24f5

Lara Feigel's novel is called The Group.  You can hear her in Free Thinking discussions about Doris Lessing https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09tml77  and a debate about Fiction of 1946 https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07wrq03 

Alexandra Reza is a 2020 New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year to turn their research into radio. 

Producer: Robyn Read

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Failure and female friendship

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