BBC Radio 4 - Free Thinking

Toys

How toys are shaped by politics and why they have a spooky side.

Shahidha Bari and guests read Logue's version of Homer's Iliad and look at its language.

Novelists Mircea Cărtărescu and Georgina Harding and historian Philippe Sands on Romania.

From fake flowers carved by Grinling Gibbons to modern craft and internet images.

Matthew Sweet and guests discuss what inspired Marvin Gaye's 1971 album What's Going On?

One of the key French existentialists in the 50s, how does Simone de Beauvoir read today?

Reseach into covid comics, codes in Dickens, projecting books onto hospital ceilings.

Labradors Olive and Mabel became a Covid internet hit - can we know what a dog thinks?

How do we define a war? Anne McElvoy and guests look at how language changes attitudes.

Francesca Stavrakopoulou, Hetta Howes and Mark Vernon join Matthew Sweet.