Free Thinking

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

Free Thinking: Piranesi and disturbing archecture

Piranesi and the architecture of a disturbed mind

Piranesi and disturbing archecture

BBC Radio 4 - Free Thinking, Piranesi and disturbing archecture

Susanna Clarke, author of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, is one of Matthew Sweet's guests.

Susanna Clarke's debut novel sold 4 million copies and her follow-up, Piranesi, is the springboard for a discussion about haunted spaces and mind-bending architecture.

Susanna Clarke, Adam Scovell, Lucy Arnold and Anton Bakker are Matthew Sweet's guests. Susanna Clarke talks about the inspiration behind the follow up to her best-selling first novel, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. Piranesi is the springboard for a discussion about haunted spaces and mind-bending architecture in film, fiction and art from MC Escher to Christopher Nolan's Inception, Shirley Jackson to Mervyn Peake. The print maker Giovanni Battista Piranesi, who was born 300 years ago on Oct 4th 1720, became known for his etchings of Rome and images of imagined prisons. 

Piranesi drawings: visions of antiquity is an exhibition planned by the British Museum now due to open early in 2021. 
Susanna Clarke's novel Piranesi is out now. 
Adam Scovell writes on film for Sight and Sound and is the author of books including Folk Horror: Hours Dreadful and Things Strange and two novellas: Mothlight and How Pale the Winter Has Made Us.
Dr Lucy Arnold researches contemporary literature at the University of Worcester and is the author of Reading Hilary Mantel: Haunted Decades.
Anton Bakker's virtual exhibition Alternative Perspective at the National Museum of Mathematics in NYC can be visited via the MoMath website.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

You might also be interested in this Halloween ghost stories episode featuring Jeremy Dyson, Irving Finkel, writers Kirsty Logan, Nisha Ramayya and Adam Scovell https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0009t19

and Matthew Sweet's visit to a haunted house in Portsmouth in this episode about Blade Runner and ghost stories https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b096j27n 

The surreal world of Alejandro Jorowsky is explored in this episode https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000fg99

Or you can find pansychism in our collection of programmes about philosophy https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000czv3

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