Arts and Ideas

With Anne McElvoy. Curator Frances Spalding and Dr Alexandra Harris discuss what portaits of Virginia Woolf convey of her character as a new exhibition opens at the National Portrait Gallery. Richard Flanagan's father was a Japanese POW on the "Death Railway". The Australian novelist's new book The Narrow Road to the Deep North was inspired by this.New Generation Thinker Alun Withey looks back at medical history. Stella Rimmington, former director general of MI5 and diplomat Alan Judd discuss turning their experiences of the security services into fiction.

Philip Dodd is joined by political commentator Steve Richards to discuss the new production of Richard III which stars Martin Freeman and is set in the 1970s. Historian Joanna Bourke considers changing medical attitudes to pain. She's joined by Marion Coutts, who has written about her husband's death in The Iceberg, and by the comedian Arthur Smith. Should we equate animals with humans when talking about rights? New Generation Thinker Alasdair Cochrane argues for a shift in our thinking.

Richard Linklater filmed the actor who stars in Boyhood over 12 years from a 6 year old to a college youth. Matthew Sweet and author Toby Litt review the project and discuss growing up. Artist Cory Arcangel talks about his book composed from tweets and working in digital media. He also explores the themes explored in Digital Revolution at the Barbican Centre, which brings together film-makers, artists, game developers and musicians. As state schools across England prepare for the introduction of coding to the curriculum, journalist Aleks Krotoski and Benjamin Southworth - digital entrepreneur and former deputy chief executive of the government's Tech City initiative, join Matthew to discuss how - if at all - we should be preparing for the 'digital age'. Plus we hear another column from one of this year’s New Generation Thinkers, Jo Cohen, who asks whether we need to rethink the American Constitution, as the country recovers from its Independence day celebrations.

'€˜Oh what a lovely Savas' begins Rana Mitter in this edition of Free Thinking, using the Turkish word for War. Along with Sean McMeekin of the Koc University in Istanbul, the novelist Kamila Shamsie, Naoko Shimazu of Birkbeck College and Erez Manela of Harvard University Rana puts Japan, China, India, the Ottomans, Koreans and others centre stage in the years 1914 to 1918. If you weren’t from one of the European Great Powers could you even get into the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 which was to lead to the Treaty of Versailles? And was the failure of the Racial Equality Clause to get on the statute books at this conference the beginning of the end of Empire even for those who won the war?

Yael Farber directs Richard Armitage in the Crucible at the Old Vic. She talks to Philip Dodd about fear, conspiracy and her South African roots. Also Liberalism past and present. Edmund Fawcett author of Liberalism: The History of an Idea is in the studio alongside historian and Telegraph writer Tim Stanley and Alex Callinicos, Professor at King's College, London. Plus another column from one of the 2014 Radio 3 New Generation Thinkers: Tiffany Watt-Smith explores war neuroses and shell shock after the first World War.

From Paul Nash paintings of blasted tree stumps in the first world war to today's commemorative planting: Paul Gough, Gabriel Hemery and Gail Ritchie join Samira Ahmed to explore woods and trees in war and peacetime.

Jonathan Powell and historians Margaret MacMillan, Orlando Figes and Adam Tooze explore the Great Powers with Anne McElvoy. The First World War shattered the power balance in Europe. As we confront an uncertain world order, who are the great powers today, how has their role changed and where do they now stand in determining geo-politics?

Samira Ahmed discusses feminism with American artist Barbara Kruger and journalist Laurie Penny;and cartoonist Posy Simmonds talks about the role of cartoonists responding to politics and international affairs

The Thirty-Nine Steps first appeared in Blackwoods Magazine in August and September 1915 and depicts Europe on the edge of war in May and June 1914. It quickly became popular reading in the trenches and on the home front, and nearly a hundred years and three film adaptations later, its popularity is enduring. In a special edition of Free Thinking, as part of Radio 3's focus on World War One, Matthew Sweet talks to Buchan's biographer Andrew Lownie and Buchan scholars Dr Michael Redley and Dr Kate Macdonald about the connections between Buchan's own war experience and The 39 Steps, and to Professors Elleke Boehmer and Terence Ranger about how ideas about empire and adventure play out in the novel.

A new collection of Ranter writings from the English Civil War sheds light on their extreme libertarian views. Anne McElvoy is joined by the book's editor Nigel Smith. Plus journalist Rod Liddle and Conservative Party politician Douglas Carswell discuss libertarianism today. New Generation Thinker Naomi Paxton reflects on the Actresses' Franchise League. And a 62 metre photographic installation unveiled at London's Gloucester Road Tube station depicts the US reconnaissance base in North Yorkshire. Anne speaks to the image's creator Trevor Paglen.

Philip Dodd talks to the artist, Sean Scully, about his latest show and explores our perception of colour with neuroscientist Jamie Ward and fashion expert, Caroline Cox.

Matthew Sweet talks to Philip Hensher, who's novel The Emperor Waltz draws together stories about a man who founds the first gay bookshop in London, a young painter who joins the Bauhaus and a woman fascinated by a Roman cult. We also discuss John La Rose's New Beacon project which was was the focal point of a black radical publishing industry that emerged in the UK in the late sixties, with the poets Linton Kwesi Johnson and Anthony Joseph and the co-founder of New Beacon Sarah White. New Generation Thinker Daisy Hay looks at the Victorian practice of keeping hair as a personal memento. Plus the Sheffield documentary festival has just premiered a film called "Peter De Rome Grandfather of Gay Porn - Matthew Sweet has been to meet him.

Prize-winning first novelists Eimear McBride and Nathan Filer join Anne McElvoy to discuss literary experimentation. Matt Thorne gives us a first night review of the European premiere of Anne Washburn's play Mr Burns which is set in a world without electricity. New Generation Thinker Sophie Coulombeau examines British philosopher and social reformer Jeremy Bentham€'s €'Universal Tattoo'€™. And as Chancellor George Osborne makes his annual Mansion House speech to the City of London we get Peter Knight and Janette Rutterford to consider the image of finance past and present.

The director of the Hayward Ralph Rugoff, former principal Royal Ballet dancer Deborah Bull and neuroscientist Professor Patrick Haggard explore presentations of and research into the human body. And what is the meaning of 'community' with philosopher and writer Julian Baggini, journalist and historian Tim Stanley and writer Ziauddin Sardar. Plus Preti Taneja, one of the 2014 Radio 3 New Generation Thinkers, on the female casting of King Lear.

Amma Asante's film Belle depicts an illegitimate mixed-race girl brought up in eighteenth-century London in Kenwood House, the household of Lord Mansfield. Director Amma Asante and Dr Kit Davies talk to Matthew Sweet about the issues raised in the film. Writer Rosamund Bartlett has a first night review of Brian Friel's stage version of Turgenev's Fathers and Sons which opens at London's Donmar Warehouse tonight. There's the first column from the 2014 Radio 3 New Generation Thinkers: Tom Charlton brings those who would question the value of a research library to book. Plus Andrew Pendleton and Ryan Bourne discuss whether a globalised economy an environmental problem or a solution.