Free Thinking: Writing and Rewriting the Past

BBC Radio 3’s Arts and Ideas programme brings together the authors of three historical novels to discuss the way research and family history have informed their fiction in a discussion chaired by New Generation Thinker Sarah Dillon from the University of Cambridge. Jake Arnott has set novels in the 1960s, the 1940s and the 1900s and in his latest novel The Fatal Tree, he depicts the criminal world in 18th-century London.  Madeleine Thien’s novel Do Not Say We Have Nothing explores the impact of the Cultural Revolution on two generations of musicians. It has won prizes in her native Canada and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Sebastian Barry won the Costa Book of the Year for his novel Days Without End, which imagines the gay relationship between soldiers caught up in the American Civil War.

This will be be broadcast on Thursday 1 June at 10PM on BBC Radio 3 and available as an Arts and Ideas download