The Essay

Novelist Andrew Martin considers attitudes that no longer seem so vital in the modern world. And he continues his series with lamenting the loss of 'not eating too much'..Producer Duncan MinshullFirst broadcast in January 2014.

Novelist Andrew Martin considers attitudes that no longer seem so vital in the modern world. And he begins his series with a lament for a loss of modesty, or 'not boasting'. Producer Duncan MinshullFirst broadcast in January 2014.

Taking Rilke's classic correspondence as inspiration, five leading poets write a personal letter to a young poet. Today, award-winning Scottish poet and editor, Don Paterson.The original Letters to a Young Poet is a compilation of letters by Rainer Maria Rilke, written between 1902 and 1908 to a 19-year-old officer cadet called Franz Kappus. Kappus was trying to choose between a literary career and entering the Austro-Hungarian army. Rilke's letters touch on poetry and criticism, but they range widely in subject matter from atheism and loneliness, to friendship and sexuality:"If your everyday life seems to lack material, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to summon up its riches; for there is no lack for him who creates and no poor, trivial place."In their new letters, five poets imagine a young poet protégé to whom they want to pass on life experience and thoughts about the poetic art.Our poets are: Michael Symmons Roberts, Vicki Feaver, Michael Longley, Moniza Alvi a

Taking Rilke's classic correspondence as inspiration, five leading poets write a personal letter to a young poet. Today, Pakistan-born Moniza Alvi.The original Letters to a Young Poet is a compilation of letters by Rainer Maria Rilke, written between 1902 and 1908 to a 19-year-old officer cadet called Franz Kappus. Kappus was trying to choose between a literary career and entering the Austro-Hungarian army. Rilke's letters touch on poetry and criticism, but they range widely in subject matter from atheism and loneliness, to friendship and sexuality:"If your everyday life seems to lack material, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to summon up its riches; for there is no lack for him who creates and no poor, trivial place."In their new letters, five poets imagine a young poet protégé to whom they want to pass on life experience and thoughts about the poetic art.Our poets are: Michael Symmons Roberts, Vicki Feaver, Michael Longley, Moniza Alvi and Don Paterson.About Moniz

Taking Rilke's classic correspondence as inspiration, five leading poets write a personal letter to a young poet. Today, eminent Belfast poet, Michael Longley.The original Letters to a Young Poet is a compilation of letters by Rainer Maria Rilke, written between 1902 and 1908 to a 19-year-old officer cadet called Franz Kappus. Kappus was trying to choose between a literary career and entering the Austro-Hungarian army. Rilke's letters touch on poetry and criticism, but they range widely in subject matter from atheism and loneliness, to friendship and sexuality:"If your everyday life seems to lack material, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to summon up its riches; for there is no lack for him who creates and no poor, trivial place."In their new letters, five poets imagine a young poet protégé to whom they want to pass on life experience and thoughts about the poetic art.Our poets are: Michael Symmons Roberts, Vicki Feaver, Michael Longley, Moniza Alvi and Don Paterson

Taking Rilke's classic correspondence as inspiration, five leading poets write a personal letter to a young protégé. Today, to coincide with the announcement of the T S Eliot Prize, one of the prize's judges, Vicki Feaver, writes a letter to a young woman poet.The original Letters to a Young Poet is a compilation of letters by Rainer Maria Rilke, written between 1902 and 1908 to a 19-year-old officer cadet called Franz Kappus. Kappus was trying to choose between a literary career and entering the Austro-Hungarian army. Rilke's letters touch on poetry and criticism, but they range widely in subject matter from atheism and loneliness, to friendship and sexuality:"If your everyday life seems to lack material, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to summon up its riches; for there is no lack for him who creates and no poor, trivial place."In their new letters, five poets imagine a young poet protégé to whom they want to pass on life experience and thoughts about the poetic a

Taking Rilke's classic correspondence as inspiration, five leading poets write a personal letter to a young poet. Today, to coincide with the announcement of the T S Eliot Prize, shortlisted poet Michael Symmons Roberts writes a letter about poetry that dares the depths.The original Letters to a Young Poet is a compilation of letters by Rainer Maria Rilke, written between 1902 and 1908 to a 19-year-old officer cadet called Franz Kappus. Kappus was trying to choose between a literary career and entering the Austro-Hungarian army. Rilke's letters touch on poetry and criticism, but they range widely in subject matter from atheism and loneliness, to friendship and sexuality:"If your everyday life seems to lack material, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to summon up its riches; for there is no lack for him who creates and no poor, trivial place."In their new letters, five poets imagine a young poet protégé to whom they want to pass on life experience and thoughts about th

Stepping back in time, BBC News correspondents present a personal perspective on principal cities of the major European powers that fought the First World War. In this Essay, Emma Jane Kirby considers the capital of the largest contemporary modern maritime empire: London.To today's listeners some of Londoners' concerns a century ago will seem extraordinarily familiar. Complaints about the Tube were as frequent and heartfelt then as they are today. To try and divert travellers from their misery, Macdonald Gill - the brother of sculptor and designer Eric Gill - was commissioned to produce a "Wonderground" map. It was intended to amuse them as they waited for their trains which were infrequent, often dirty and overcrowded.The map's whimsical illustrations - together with Cockney asides put in the mouths of some of the invented characters - captured the city's above-ground, pre-war character. It evoked the zeitgeist which George Bernard Shaw simultaneously reflected on stage in "Pygmalion" - and led to a subseque

Stepping back in time, BBC News correspondents present their personal perspectives on the capital cities of major European powers that fought the Great War.The series continues with the remarkable city which would - uniquely - soon be renamed amidst bloody regicide and revolution: St Petersburg.The BBC's Moscow correspondent, Steve Rosenberg, finds a revealing connection, however, between the St. Petersburg of a hundred years ago and its counterpart of today.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.But the tournament also demonstrated the Russian passion for chess that continues to this day and helps define its national identity as well as the fierce competition with other countries.Producer Simon Coates.

Stepping back in time, three BBC News correspondents present their personal perspectives on the capital cities of the major European powers that fought the Great War.The first programme explores the epicentre of turmoil as the conflagration took hold: Berlin, the capital of Kaiser Wilhelm II's empire. Stephen Evans 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".But all this industrial energy and the wealth it created - which we still associate with today's Germany - came at a price. Both male and female workers felt alienated in their work, likening themselves t

Stepping back in time exactly a century, five BBC News correspondents present their personal perspectives on the principal cities of the major European powers that, later in 1914, would fight the Great War.The programmes continue with Hugh Schofield reimagining the chic French capital of Maurice Ravel, the Ballets Russes and Henri Matisse - but which politically suffered continuing angst over its neighbour across the Rhine: Germany.For many, the wounds of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1 had still not healed. And the assassination in Paris of the leading French pacifist and socialist, Jean Jaurès, in late July 1914 convulsed the city and crystallised the diverging views about France's relations with her European neighbours. Hugh Schofield tells the story of why this event provoked such turmoil at the time and why it still resonates powerfully today in the politics and culture of France.Producer Simon Coates.

As part of the Music on the Brink season, each programme in this series of "The Essay" considers the special character of Vienna, Paris, Berlin, St. Petersburg and London.Stepping back exactly a hundred years, five BBC News correspondents present personal perspectives on the capital cities of the major European powers that, later in 1914, would face each other in the Great War. We start in the capital of the Habsburg Empire and the rich multiculturalism of Mitteleuropa.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.It is all too easy to forget, she reminds us, that within months Vienna was home to Adolf Hitler

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 not just to elucidate Aristotle, or to press philosophical ideas into the service of religion but to integrate all branches of philosophy into a single, systematic theory.Producer: M

In a major series for Radio 3, we continue our journey through the Islamic Golden Age. The period ranges from 750 to 1258 CE and over the twenty episodes, we'll hear about architecture, religious scholarship, medicine, innovation and philosophy. In this evening's essay, Professor Hugh Kennedy explores the life of al-Tabari, the chronicler and historian of the early Islamic World.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.Al-Kindi lived in Iraq during the dynamic ninth century, a period when Baghdad was a hive of cultural and intellectual activity easily rivalling the greatness of Athens and Rome. He was hugely influenced by Greek philosophy and supervised the translation of many works by Aristotle and others into Arabic. The author of more than 250 works, he wrote on many different subjects, from optics to mathematics, music and astrology.Producer: Mohini Patel.