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: Essay writing

Essay writing

BBC Radio 4 - Free Thinking, Essay writing

From Montaigne to modern Scottish writing - Rana Mitter discusses what makes a good essay.

Kirsty Gunn, Chris Arthur, Emma Claussen and Paul Lay join Rana Mitter to discuss essays by Montaigne, Orwell, Bacon and Eleanor Parker, Virginia Woolf and Alexander Lee.

Montaigne's literary self-portraits led to him popularising the Essay form in the mid 1500s.  With online articles, long reads in newspapers and magazines and a number of publishing houses interested in promoting essays and reprinting authors, Rana Mitter and guests look at what makes a good Essay drawing on examples from the past and present.  Rana's guests are the author Kirsty Gunn; the essayist Chris Arthur, author of Hidden Cargoes; Paul Lay, Senior Editor at Engelsberg Ideas and a former editor of History Today and Emma Claussen is a lecturer in French at Trinity College, University of Cambridge who studies the work of Montaigne.

Producer: Ruth Watts 

In the Free Thinking archives you can find a collection of episodes available as Arts and Ideas podcasts exploring Prose, Poetry and Drama including discussions about libraries, the history of paper, and what makes a good lecture.

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