Radio 3 Essay

Inspired by Rilke's classic text, Michael Symmons Roberts writes to a young poet of today.

Emma Jane Kirby considers the capital of the largest contemporary modern maritime empire: London. Some of Londoners' concerns in 1914 may seem remarkably familiar. Complaints about the Tube were as frequent and heartfelt a hundred years ago as they are today. To try and divert travellers from their misery, Macdonald Gill - the brother of Eric Gill, the sculptor and designer - was commissioned to produce a "Wonderground" map. Emma Jane Kirby considers the idea of Britain which London was presenting to both the wider world and Britons themselves in 1914. And she assesses how far these attitudes still resonate today.

Steve Rosenberg, finds a revealing connection, however, between the St. Petersburg of 1914 and its counterpart of today. Foreshadowing the appalling conflict to come across the European continent, he tells the remarkable story of the Grand International Masters' Chess Tournament of 1914, with its starring cast of Russian, German, French, British and American competitors and its dramas of who won and who lost.

Berlin, the capital of Kaiser Wilhelm II's empire. Stephen Evans, the BBC's Berlin Correspondent, reminds us that the German capital on the eve of war was the world's most innovative technological centre. Einstein was here, the director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics from 1914. Mark Twain called Berlin the "German Chicago" because of its dizzying sense of modernity and progress. Immigrants were sucked in by industry. In 1895, 20,000 Berliners worked in the factories being built on the outskirts of the city, living cheek-by-jowl in new blocks which became known as "rental barracks".

Hugh Schofield reimagines the French capital of the Ballets Russes and Pablo Picasso - but which politically suffered continuing angst over its neighbour across the Rhine: Germany. The assassination in Paris of the leading French pacifist and socialist, Jean Jaurès, in late July 1914 convulsed the city. It crystallised the divergent views in France about the country's relations with her European neighbours reflected by Jaurès on the one hand and Charles Péguy - also soon to die - on the other. Hugh Schofield tells the story of why the two men's thinking was so powerful and why it still resonates across the politics and culture of France a hundred years later.

In this programme, Bethany Bell, the BBC's Vienna Correspondent, evokes both the public face of Austria-Hungary's capital and the simmering tensions which underlay its multi-national empire on the eve of the greatest conflagration the world had yet seen. Taking us on a richly evocative tour of the embodiment of Mitteleuropa, she tells us about a world that was soon to be torn asunder but of which telling - and not always attractive - elements remain.

Seeing the Future: There's never been a better time to go blind. The digital world transforms the way information can be appreciated, doing great things for the sighted as well as the blind - breaking down barriers to absorbing, manipulating, and transmitting culture. But access can be denied by considerations of politics and trade, rooted in the history of copyright. Visually impaired people sometimes end up as collateral damage in the war on digital piracy. Rupert Goodwins looks into how the future could be brighter for blindness.

Long, Slow, Journey Through the Night: Disability isn't limited to the physical fact of what it does to mind and body - the isolation it brings has compounded its cruelty throughout history. As a technology journalist who started off building computers, Rupert Goodwins decided to find out if he could use some of the tools of his trade to change that situation, and make our hyper-connected modern environment solve some very old problems.

Doctoring the Evidence: The experience of being a patient in modern medicine is little discussed by doctors and often badly handled by the media. Through months of investigation as the medics tried to find the why behind the what, Rupert Goodwins finds much has changed in what it means to be a patient, and old assumptions are not a good guide for what will happen next.

Behind the Eyes: Even perfect eyesight is nothing of the sort- it just looks the part. As the world changed and darkened around him, Rupert Goodwins found that not only did the real nature of sight became clearer, the revelations led to realisations about philosophy and reality that are too easily lost in the dazzle of daylight.

Let There Be Dark: When journalist Rupert Goodwins started losing his sight, he wasn't expecting a journey to the back of his eyeballs that would take him 500 million years through time with stops for the evolution of modern philosophy, the nature of experience and the curious nature of sight itself. The surprise began in the night sky when the stars started going out...

In a major series for Radio 3, we rediscover some of the key thinkers and achievements from the Islamic Golden Age. The period ranges from 750 to 1258 CE and over twenty episodes, we'll hear about architecture, invention, medicine, innovation and philosophy. In the final essay in this first set of ten essays, Professor Peter Adamson reflects on the magnitude of Al-Farabi's contribution to philosophy in the Islamic Golden Age. Al-Farabi studied and taught amongst the Christians of the Baghdad school, and later went to Syria and Egypt, dying in the middle of the 10th century in Damascus. His writings reflect the agenda of the Baghdad school: he wrote commentaries on Aristotle, concentrating on the logical works so prized by the school founder Matta. But Farabi seems to have had a more ambitious aim than his colleagues did. He wanted to integrate all branches of philosophy into a single, systematic theory. Producer: Mohini Patel

In a major series for Radio 3, we rediscover some of the key thinkers and achievements from the Islamic Golden Age. The period ranges from 750 to 1258 CE and over twenty episodes, we'll hear about architecture, invention, medicine, innovation and philosophy. Hugh Kennedy chronicles the life and times of the great historian of early Islam, Al-Tabari who studied in Iraq, Syria, and Egypt, but spent most of his life in Baghdad teaching and writing. He condensed the vast wealth of historical and exegetical knowledge in his major works. He wrote numerous commentaries on the Koran and laid the foundations for Koranic and historical sciences. The influence of Tabari's historical works and commentary on the Koran can be traced in later writers and scholars. Tabari died in 933 AD aged 85 and was buried at Baghdad. Producer: Mohini Patel

In a major series for Radio 3, we rediscover some of the key thinkers and achievements from the Islamic Golden Age. The period ranges from 750 to 1258 CE and over twenty episodes, we'll hear about architecture, invention, medicine, innovation and philosophy. Professor James Montgomery explores the life and work of the Arab philosopher al-Kindi, widely regarded today as one of the greatest scholars of the medieval Islamic world. He was the first significant thinker to argue that philosophy and Islam had much to offer each other and need not be kept apart. Producer: Mohini Patel

In a major series for Radio 3, we rediscover some of the key thinkers and achievements from the Islamic Golden Age. The period ranges from 750 to 1258 CE and over twenty episodes, we'll hear about architecture, invention, medicine, mathematics, innovation and philosophy. In today's essay, Iraqi-born scientist, writer and broadcaster Jim Al-Khalili tells us about the legacy of Al-Khwarizmi. Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi was a Persian mathematician, astronomer, astrologer geographer and a scholar in the House of Wisdom in Baghdad. The House of Wisdom was a renowned centre of scientific research and teaching in his time - attracting some of the greatest minds of the Islamic Golden Age. Al-Khwarizmi was born in Persia around 780 and was one of the learned men who worked in the House of Wisdom under the leadership of Caliph al-Mamun, the son of the caliph Harun al-Rashid, who was made famous in the Arabian Nights. Producer: Mohini Patel