Free Thinking

Original version

BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

Discussion & Talk

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

BBC Radio 4

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: Novelist Tahmima Anam, plus was Nero a ruthless tyrant?

Start-Up Culture and a Postcard from Sofia

Novelist Tahmima Anam, plus was Nero a ruthless tyrant?

BBC Radio 4 - Free Thinking, Novelist Tahmima Anam, plus was Nero a ruthless tyrant?

Was Nero really a victim of plots? Bulgaria's hidden past. And a novel about startups.

The British Museum is exploring the myth of Nero. Anne McElvoy talks to the curator, to author Tahmima Anam and to New Generation Thinker Mirela Ivanova about Balkan history.

The Startup Wife is the title of Tahmima Anam's latest novel. Anne McElvoy talks to her about writing about the work/life balance and ideas about risk.  New Generation Thinker Mirela Ivanova, from the University of Oxford, is researching Balkan history. She writes us a postcard about the strangely changing look of the main museum in Sofia, Bulgaria and why it's significant.  And we look back at Roman history as the British Museum opens an exhibition Nero: the man behind the myth, talking to curator, Dr Thorsten Opper and historian, Tom Holland. 

Producer: Ruth Watts 

Tahmima Anam is taking part in the Hay Festival. Her novel The Startup Wife is being read on BBC Radio 4 from June 6th at 22.45
You can hear her on Free Thinking comparing notes about the writing life with crime author Ian Rankin in a conversation organised in partnership with the Royal Society of Literature and Bradford Lit Fest   https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000khk6 
She also discusses writing about love in her novel The Bones of Grace in a conversation with Alain de Boton and AL Kennedy    https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b078xlft
And she's written a Radio 3 Essay about her place of refuge https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000hwzc

Nero: the man behind the myth runs at the British Museum in London from May 27th 2021 to October 24th 2021. 

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who turn their research into radio. 

You can find information about Hay Festival at hayfestival.com

Image: Tahmima Anam
Credit: Abeer Y. Hoque

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Free Thinking

Novelist Tahmima Anam, plus was Nero a ruthless tyrant?

Genres

Brand

BBC Radio 3

About BBC Radio 3