Sunday Feature

Sunday 10th April 2016 (starting this evening)
Time: 6:45 PM to 7:30 PM (45 minutes long)

1816, the Year Without a Summer.

Cultural historian and New Generation Thinker Colin Throsby explores how the extreme weather of 1816, caused by the eruption of Indonesia's Mount Tambora, had a significant cultural and social impact in Europe and beyond. As crops failed, the climatic conditions penetrated every corner of public and personal life: politics, religion and art, including Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Byron's poetry and Turner's sketchbooks. Corin considers the evidence for Tambora's eruption, preserved in ice cores held at the British Antarctic Survey headquarters, where she speaks to Dr Robert Mulvaney. At Tate Britain Corin also discusses environmental art with Professor John Thornes. Other contributors include Gillen D'Arcy Wood, Alexandra Harris, Nicholas Klingaman and Daisy Hay.

Sunday 17th April 2016 (starting this evening)
Time: 6:45 PM to 7:30 PM (45 minutes long)

Menuhin at 100.

Marking the centenary of Yehudi Menuhin's birth, an exploration of his life and career through the great violinist's interviews that are held in the BBC archives. Including Menuhin explaining about his relationship with Enescu and Bartok, and recording Elgar's Violin Concerto with the composer conducting. Menuhin discusses his early life in San Francisco where he went to school only for one morning, going on to then travelling with his family as a violinist and how his upbringing impacted upon how he then raised his own family. Menuhin also recounts conducting various orchestras, including the Berlin Philharmonic standing on his head as they performed Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. Violinists Tasmin Little and Leland Chen also share some of their thoughts and stories about their former mentor and colleague.

Sunday 8th May 2016 (starting this evening)
Time: 6:45 PM to 7:30 PM (45 minutes long)

An Anatomy of Singing.

Mary King investigates how advances in knowledge of anatomy are changing the way people sing. She hears from Andrew Watts, Toby Spence and Connie Fisher, three singers whose personal vocal experiences have resulted in contrasting relationships with their vocal anatomy. Mary gathers the latest findings from within the music and scientific community and tests out some of the more popular theories of yesteryear. And at the Royal College of Surgeons, Dr Sam Alberti explains what our forebears would have discovered by dissecting specimens of the larynx and thorax, still on display today.

Sunday 15th May 2016 (starting this evening)
Time: 6:45 PM to 7:30 PM (45 minutes long)

Arnold Wesker.

Another chance to hear the late playwright Arnold Wesker looking back at his life and career with Matthew Sweet. With contributions from theatre critic Michael Billington, writer Margaret Drabble, actress Nichola McAuliffe and director Dominic Cooke.

Sunday 22nd May 2016 (starting this evening)
Time: 6:45 PM to 7:30 PM (45 minutes long)

God Intoxicated Man - The Life and Times of Benedict Spinoza.

Michael Goldfarb tells the story of Dutch philosopher Benedict Spinoza, who 350 years ago, asked 'who is God?' and what role should religion play in government. Michael describes the world in which Spinoza lived - the Golden Age of the Dutch Republic - and how he has become the philosopher with new relevance for our times. With Spinoza's own words, interviews with philosophers and music inspired by the philosopher's thoughts.

Sunday 29th May 2016 (starting this evening)
Time: 6:45 PM to 7:30 PM (45 minutes long)

Literary Pursuits.
Sarah Dillon discovers how Jane Austen's last completed novel, Persuasion, was written. The novel has sometimes been viewed as Austen's valedictory novel - written while she was suffering with her final illness. Sarah uncovers a more complex story: dates of revisions on the manuscripts in the British Library confirm her sister's story that Persuasion was completed almost a year before Austen's death, although it was only published posthumously. Joined by Dr Kathryn Sutherland from St Anne's College, Oxford, Paula Byrne, and writer Margaret Drabble, Sarah goes behind the scant details of Austen's life and uncovers reasons for the delay. They explore areas such as Austen's last illness, the possibly personal inspirations for the plot of the novel, the state of her finances, her creative process and the radical reaches and determination of her literary ambitions.

Sunday 5th June 2016 (starting this evening)
Time: 6:45 PM to 7:30 PM (45 minutes long)

Literary Pursuits.

Sarah Dillon recounts James Joyce's great struggle to publish his first book, Dubliners. She reveals how Joyce personally rescued the manuscript from fire, lost a major stand-off with his publishers over revisions, orchestrated a press campaign, wrote a despairing letter to the King of England and ultimately left Ireland for good.

Sunday 19th June 2016 (starting this evening)
Time: 6:45 PM to 7:30 PM (45 minutes long)

An Explosion of Geraniums - The International Surrealist Exhibition of 1936.

Ian McMillan tells the story of the International Surrealist Exhibition, exploring the influence it had on art and writing. Including recorded testimony from some of the artists who displayed works there, such as David Gascoyne, Roland Penrose and Eileen Agar. With contributions from editor of an anthology of surrealist poetry Michel Remy, and Dylan Thomas expert John Goodby, as well as composer Robert Worby and art critic Louisa Buck.

Sunday 26th June 2016 (starting this evening)
Time: 6:45 PM to 7:30 PM (45 minutes long)

Sherlock, Sigmund and Signor Morelli.

Naomi Alderman investigates the little-known story of Giovanni Morelli, an Italian doctor and art critic who was the inspiration for Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes character and Sigmund Freud's theory of the unconscious.

Sunday 3rd July 2016 (starting this evening)
Time: 6:45 PM to 7:30 PM (45 minutes long)

Dawn on the Somme.

Kate Kennedy explores the Somme history and legacy through the lives of British composers and musicians who fought on the battlefields of Picardie in 1916. She follows in the footsteps of George Butterworth, Ivor Gurney, Arthur Bliss and his clarinettist brother Kennard, and Frederick Septimus Kelly. Through their own words and their music, Kate traces the human stories and examines some of the wider questions which historians still argue about today, and looks at the role which music plays in this complex narrative. With contributions from historians Gary Sheffield and Marjolaine Boutet, cultural historian Jay Winter and Herve Francois, director of the Historial museum in Peronne.

Sunday 23rd October 2016 (starting this evening)
Time: 18:45 to 19:30 (45 minutes long)

The Other Third.

Alan Dein explores the 'other voice' of the Third Programme: the articulate and expressive voice of so-called ordinary people, brought to the airwaves via a group of producers fascinated with everyday lives and the wild sounds they could collect beyond the confines of the radio studio. Featuring Andrew Barrow, Alecky Blythe, Dame Julia Cleverdon, Tim Dee and Jonathan Miller.

Sunday 6th November 2016 (starting this evening)
Time: 18:45 to 19:30 (45 minutes long)

Let Her Speak.

Emily Maitlis considers the history of women and public speaking. With Fiona Shaw, Patsy Rodenberg and Professor Emma Smith talking about how women were characterised by the ancient Greeks as well as Shakespeare, and what it is to 'inhabit' these voices. Emily asks Lissa Muscatine, Hillary Clinton's chief of speechwriting for more than 20 years, if the first female presidential candidate needs to 'address her femininity' head on. With speechwriter Martha Leyton, Emily tests Aristotle's rhetorical principles: logos, pathos and ethos. She also considers how the female voice is heard and perceived, in addition to physical considerations such as vocal folds, the importance of free breath and the constraints of being corseted or wearing high heels. With early recordings of the arguing and entreating, persuading and encouraging voices of women through the 20th century around the world. Contributors also include Professors Richard Toye, Valerie Hazan, Ruth Perry and Michael Graves.

Sunday 1st January 2017 (starting this evening)
Time: 18:45 to 19:30 (45 minutes long)

Freud versus Music: Stephen Johnson explores Sigmund Freud's enigmatic relationship with music. He talks to American cultural analyst Michelle Duncan, psychoanalysts and writers Darian Leader and Julie Jaffee Nagel, music critic David Nice, whose first job it was to take tours around the Freud Museum in Hampstead, and Barcelona-based neurologist Josep Marco-Pallares, who is studying amusia and music-specific anhedonia, which he proposes might have been the root cause of Freud's problem with music. With excerpts from Freud's writings read by actor Nicholas Murchie.

Sunday 15th January 2017 (starting this evening)
Time: 18:45 to 19:30 (45 minutes long)

Apocalypse How.

Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough asks if we are hard-wired to think apocalyptically. She investigates how different cultures have viewed the end of the world and what that tells us about ourselves.

Sunday 22nd January 2017 (starting this evening)
Time: 18:45 to 19:30 (45 minutes long)

Music on the Brink of Destruction.

Historian Shirli Gilbert, curator of the website Music and the Holocaust, reveals the complex history of music that was composed in the Nazi camps and ghettos, drawing on new research and digitised archives of material collected immediately after the Second World War.

Sunday 29th January 2017 (starting this evening)
Time: 18:45 to 19:30 (45 minutes long)

Boulez and His Rumble in the Jungle.

Using rare recordings, Robert Worby reveals the untold story of how three trips South America in the 1950s changed Pierre Boulez's life, and how his exposure to non-western music is now changing the way we listen to his music. Robert discovers, how on his third and final trip to 1956 South America, Boulez was propelled in a new direction when the young composer conducted a symphony orchestra in Venezuela for the first time. This launched his parallel career as one of the world's greatest conductors.

Sunday 19th March 2017 (starting this evening)
Time: 18:45 to 19:30 (45 minutes long)

Whatcha Doin', Marshall Mcluhan?

Writer Ken Hollings reassesses the life and work of 1960s public intellectual and mass media guru Marshall McLuhan, examining his relevance in today's digital world. Hollings re-examines McLuhan the man and his legacy, hearing from those who have been influenced by McLuhan as well as those who knew him well, including celebrated novelist and journalist Tom Wolfe.

Sunday 2nd April 2017 (starting this evening)
Time: 18:45 to 19:30 (45 minutes long)

Literary Pursuits.

Literary Pursuits: Sarah Dillon explores the stories behind the stories of how great works were written. Sarah considers Jean Rhys's novel Wide Sargasso Sea, focusing on tries to find out why there was a 27-year gap between this and Rhys's previous novel. She travels to the British Library to look at Rhys's original notebooks, as well as talks to the author's biographer, Carole Angier, and her publisher, Diana Athill.

Sunday 7th May 2017 (starting this evening)
Time: 18:45 to 19:30 (45 minutes long)

Reformation 500.

Chris Bowlby explores how the Reformation shaped German culture and what it means today. He visits Wittenberg and discovers how the Reformation transformed life in many different ways, helping make Germany a nation of singers and book-lovers. Chris also reveals how, amid all the culture and kitsch, Luther's anti-Semitism was exploited by dictators and populists.

Sunday 14th May 2017 (starting this evening)
Time: 18:45 to 19:30 (45 minutes long)

Monteverdi 450 - Monteverdi's Women.

Dr Catherine Fletcher explores Monteverdi's innovative and subversive use of female singers and the characters they inhabited. Catherine takes up the story of opera singer Virginia Ramponi, who performed an aria in Il ballo delle ingrate as at female ingrate bemoaning her sentence to the dark and fiery underworld where she will never again have an individual voice. She observes how the fact that it was a woman providing such a powerful performance meant that the means of delivering the message far exceded the message itself.

Sunday 28th May 2017 (starting this evening)
Time: 18:45 to 19:30 (45 minutes long)

The Bloomsbury Lighthouse.

A feature tracing the activities of four unlikely wartime propagandists, Graham Greene, George Orwell, AL Lloyd and Laurie Lee, through the corridors of the University of London's Senate House library building in Bloomsbury. The feature explores effect did the experience have on these four apparent non-conformists and on their subsequent work. With contributions from cultural historian Dr Lara Feigel, writer and journalist Owen Hatherley, storyteller, musician and writer Dave Arthur and literary critic Alexandra Harris. Reader: Dudley Sutton.

Today!

Monday 17th July 2017 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:00 (45 minutes long)

Vladimir Ashkenazy on Ansel Adams - The Print and the Performance.

Celebrated conductor and musician Vladimir Ashkenazy travels to the California home of celebrated photographer Ansel Adams to reveal how classical music inspired and informed his friend's art. Meeting the photographer's friends, family and former colleagues, Ashkenazy hears how Adams effectively 'composed' his images, drawing on his musical background when developing his prints. Vladimir gains an insight into Adams's creative processes and the extent to which his photography was driven by music. Instead of using a clock in his darkroom, he employed a metronome to precisely time his processing. With previously unbroadcast recordings of Adams at the keyboard - playing work by his favourite composers - underscoring the way his pictures fused his two creative passions.

Monday 24th July 2017 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:15 to 23:00 (45 minutes long)

First Folio Road Trip.

Professor Emma Smith traces the story of seven of the original 750 copies of Shakespeare's First Folio to learn how it helped make his reputation as our national poet and turned him into an international star. Emma learns about Sir Edward Dering, the young nobleman from Kent who was the first documented purchaser of a First Folio, which he bought along with scarlet suits, a pot of marmalade and a present for his baby son. She hears about two real-life star-crossed lovers, Thomas and Isabella Hervey, from Ickworth in Suffolk, and examines the signatures they wrote in every copy of their shared library, including a First Folio. Emma also travels to St Omer in Northern France to see the most recently rediscovered copy and learn about the English Catholic schoolboys who may have performed excerpts from it there. She concludes by considering the spread outwards of Shakespeare's reputation and inwards into our lives.

Thursday 27th July 2017 (starting this evening)
Time: 22:00 to 22:45 (45 minutes long)

God Intoxicated Man - The Life and Times of Benedict Spinoza.

Michael Goldfarb tells the story of Dutch philosopher Benedict Spinoza, who 350 years ago, asked 'who is God?' and what role should religion play in government. Michael describes the world in which Spinoza lived - the Golden Age of the Dutch Republic - and how he has become the philosopher with new relevance for our times. With Spinoza's own words, interviews with philosophers and music inspired by the philosopher's thoughts.

>23 antimuzak: I forgot to ask you in the note I sent if there is a schedule for when following episodes of the "Shakespeare First Portfolio" will be broadcast. I want to mark them on my calendar. Yes, I'm being lazy by asking you but you know the BBC3 sites much better than I do!

They were broadcast every night at the same time that week and will probably be available on "listen again" if you visit the Sunday Feature page.