Free Thinking

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Free Thinking: The Tudor Mind

The Tudor Mind

BBC Radio 4 - Free Thinking, The Tudor Mind

Donne, Hamlet, mathematics and the Tudor portraits composed by Vaughan Williams.

John Gallagher, Helen Hackett, Eleanor Chan and Christina Faraday explore the Tudor mind through art, portraiture and poetry and they debate Vaughan Williams's take on the Tudors.

Royal Trumpeter John Blanke's image is on show alongside portraits of the Tudor monarchy in an exhibition opening at the Walker Gallery in Liverpool. Blanke is the only black Tudor for whom we have an identifiable picture, painted on horseback in the royal retinue. New Generation Thinker Christina Faraday has been looking at these and other Tudor artworks.  She joins Helen Hackett, author of The Elizabethan Mind and music historian Eleanor Chan for a discussion chaired by New Generation Thinker John Gallagher. And what aspects of the Tudor mind do we see at work in the next generation writing of John Donne? Biographer Katherine Rundell has the answers. 

The Tudors: Passion, Power and Politics runs at Liverpool's Walker Gallery 21 May 2022—29 Aug 2022

John Gallagher is Associate Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Leeds and the author of Learning Languages in Early Modern England

Christina Faraday is a Research Fellow at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where she is working on a project exploring Elizabethan art and music.

Professor Helen Hackett teaches at University College London and her book The Elizabethan Mind is out now. 

Katherine Rundell's biography of John Donne is called Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne

Eleanor Chan is a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker who studies the links between music and art history. She's based at the University of Manchester.

You can find a host of programmes about Vaughan Williams on Radio 3 and BBC Sounds broadcasting this May.  His Tudor Portraits are being performed by the Britten Sinfonia and Norwich Philharmonic Chorus at the Norfolk and Norwich Festival on Sunday 29 MAY, 7.30PM at St Andrews and Blackfriars Hall.  

Producer: Luke Mulhall

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