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: Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland

BBC Radio 4 - Free Thinking, Northern Ireland

Anne McElvoy marks the 1921 creation of Northern Ireland with historians and writers.

Historians Roy Foster and Charles Townshend chart the past hundred years of partition in Ireland,  Lucy Caldwell and Caroline Magennis describe the writers who inspire them.

A Northern Irish writer- what does that label mean? Lucy Caldwell compares notes with Caroline Magennis about the way authors are charting change and setting down experience - from working class memoirs of life in Derry to the poetry of Seamus Heaney, Sinéad Morrissey and others.  And as we approach the centenary of the creation of Northern Ireland, Anne McElvoy talks to Roy Foster and Charles Townshend about the history and legacy of partition.

Charles Townshend is Professor Emeritus of International History at Keele University, and Roy Foster is Professor and Honorary Fellow at Hertford College, University of Oxford. Amongst other titles, Roy Foster is the author of Vivid Faces: The Revolutionary Generation in Ireland, 1890-1923, and Charles Townshend's new book is The Partition: Ireland Divided, 1885-1925. 

Lucy Caldwell's new book is called Intimacies and is published in May, and she has also edited Being Various: New Irish Short Stories. In the interview she recommends books including the writing of Mary Beckett, The Glass Shore: Short Stories by Woman Writers from the North of Ireland edited by Sinéad Gleeson, and Inventory: A River, A City, A Family  by Darran Anderson.

Caroline Magennis is Reader in 20th and 21st Century Literature at the University of Salford, and her upcoming publication, Northern Irish Writing After the Troubles: Intimacies, Affects, Pleasures, will be available in August.

Producer: Emma Wallace

If you want more conversations with writers from Northern Ireland you can find the following episodes on the Free Thinking website: 
Sinéad Morrissey on winning the TS Eliot Prize in 2014 - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03pdf10
Michael Longley talks about his poetry and winning the PEN Pinter prize - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b098hz1m 
Bernard MacClaverty talks to Anne McElvoy about depicting love and loss in a long relationship in his novel Midwinter Break - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09525cn 
Ruth Dudley Edwards looks at ideas about belonging - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000h2g4 
Roy Foster and Paul Muldoon are in conversation - https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b050xpsd

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