Why I Write

Hay Festival: Alex Clark

Literary journalist and writer Alex Clark explains why she writes.

• 15 mins

Why I Write

Hay Festival: Horatio Clare

At the 2015 Hay Festival, author and journalist Horatio Clare explains why he writes.

• 15 mins

Why I Write

Hay Festival: Frank Cottrell Boyce

At the 2015 Hay Festival, novelist Frank Cottrell Boyce explains why he writes.

• 15 mins

Why I Write

Hay Festival: Gillian Clarke

At the 2015 Hay Festival, Welsh poet laureate Gillian Clarke explains why she writes.

• 15 mins

Five Imaginary Scottish Places

Show Me the Way to Tillietudlem

Literary critic Stuart Kelly explores the fictional locations of novelist John Galt.

• 15 mins

Five Imaginary Scottish Places

Thrums

Literary critic Stuart Kelly discusses JM Barrie's fictional Scottish town called Thrums.

• 15 mins

Five Imaginary Scottish Places

Duncairn

Stuart Kelly discusses author Lewis Grassic Gibbon's fictional Scottish town Duncairn.

• 15 mins

Five Imaginary Scottish Places

Unthank

Stuart Kelly explores the fictional city Unthank, from Alasdair Gray's 1981 novel Lanark.

• 15 mins

Five Imaginary Scottish Places

Brigadoon

Stuart Kelly discusses Brigadoon, the village of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical.

• 15 mins

WB Yeats at 150

Yeats by Heart

Fiona Shaw explains the impact of her childhood introduction to the work of WB Yeats.

• 15 mins

WB Yeats at 150

Not Liking Yeats

Writer and commentator Fintan O'Toole on his love-hate relationship with WB Yeats.

• 15 mins

WB Yeats at 150

The Second Coming of the Second Coming

Poet Paul Muldoon discusses WB Yeats's post-First World War poem The Second Coming.

• 15 mins

WB Yeats at 150

The View from the Tower

John Banville explains his long-held love for Yeats's 1928 collection of poetry The Tower.

• 15 mins

WB Yeats at 150

Of Miracle, of Magic

Paula Meehan explores the influence of the magical and the mystical in WB Yeats's work.

• 15 mins

Napoleon and Me

Julia Blackburn

Julia Blackburn looks for the ghost of Napoleon on St Helena, where he died in exile.

• 15 mins

Napoleon and Me

Andrea Stuart

Writer Andrea Stuart celebrates Napoleon's first wife, Josephine de Beauharnais.

• 15 mins

Napoleon and Me

Adam Nicolson

Writer Adam Nicolson recalls being a teenager as father wrote about Napoleon and 1812.

• 15 mins

Napoleon and Me

Kirsteen McCue

Kirsteen McCue discusses singing and interpreting James Hogg's Scottish Napoleonic songs.

• 15 mins

Napoleon and Me

Mark Adkin

Mark Adkin discusses being a military historian in the footsteps of Napoleon.

• 15 mins

Minds at War: Series 2

Tagore's Nobel Lectures

Santanu Das discusses the Nobel lectures of the great Indian thinker Rabindranath Tagore.

• 15 mins

Minds at War: Series 2

Tzara's Dada Manifesto

Comedian Arthur Smith presents a dadaesque account of Tristan Tzara's Dada Manifesto.

• 15 mins

Minds at War: Series 2

Woolf's Mrs Dalloway

How Virginia Woolf and her great novel Mrs Dalloway were shaped by the 1914-18 conflict.

• 15 mins

Minds at War: Series 2

Parade

Richard Cork discusses Pablo Picasso's designs for the Ballets Russes production Parade.

• 15 mins

Minds at War: Series 2

Akhmatova's July 1914

Sasha Dugdale explores the impact of World War I on the great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova.

• 15 mins

A Taste of Summer in America

Corn on the Cob

Author Susan Orlean celebrates corn on the cob, integral to an American summer.

• 15 mins

A Taste of Summer in America

Cheeseheads

American author Nathan Englander discovers an obsession with cheese in Midwestern markets.

• 15 mins

A Taste of Summer in America

The Cookout

Author TC Boyle considers how cookouts are memorable markers of his American summers.

• 15 mins

A Taste of Summer in America

Two Seaside Buns

Author Simon Van Booy, transplanted to New York, compares hot dogs and lobster rolls.

• 15 mins

A Taste of Summer in America

Homecoming

Novelist Audrey Niffenegger on alternatives to delicious ice cream now she cannot eat it.

• 15 mins

Finish the Bottle

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Art historian Martin Gayford recalls visiting the great photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson

• 15 mins