Explore every episode of the podcast A Point of View

In the week that one of Britain's most famous Paralympians Tanni Grey-Thompson was forced to crawl off a train, Tom Shakespeare describes his encounters with crawling.

'Don't get me wrong,' Tom says, I am not against crawling.' His holidays, he says, involve a lot of crawling: in Egypt to visit the apartment of the poet Constantine Cavafy or in Italy to see the childhood home of the communist revolutionary, Antonio Gramsci.

But in day to day life, Tom argues, 'crawling is no way for adults to go about their business.'

Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Tom Bigwood

At a village fete in rural France, AL Kennedy finds herself among barrel organs, sleeping piglets and 'a guy in a flowing blue smock gliding about on an ancient motor bicycle, just because he could.'

After US Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Tim Walz turned the word 'weird' into 'the soundtrack of our summer,' Alison relishes how the concept is reclaiming its roots.

Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Tom Bigwood

Megan Nolan ponders her generation's housing crisis.

'Sometimes it all crashes over me, how adrift I am, and how laughably inconceivable the idea is that I would ever own a place on my own,' writes Megan.

But there are other ways of framing this dilemma too, she believes. 'My favourite of those is to think that I'm unusually capable of feeling at home in the world at large, instead of just one building, or just one town....There are parts of me that would not exist except for my privilege to live in other places, those parts were born all over the world, and I remember the luck of that when I feel at a loss about bricks and mortar.'

Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Bernardine Evaristo reflects on notions of blackness in the aftermath of comments made this week by the Labour MP, Rupa Huq, who described the Chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, as 'superficially' black.

'If one of the most egregious features of racism' Bernardine writes, 'is to reduce people to stereotypes, to homogenise and generalise the qualities of people according to their racialised identities, then what does it say about us when we describe a person as not really being black or Asian because they do not behave according to our values, cultural codes or political interests?'

Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

As Vladimir Putin warns he is willing to use any military means necessary in the war with Ukraine, Zoe Strimpel - a recent convert to chess - examines how Mr Putin is likely to play his next hand.

'The future of the world once more hangs in the balance of moves between the West and Russia,' she writes.

'The question of whether Russia really does have a strategic grandmaster at the helm - and whether the West can outmanoeuvre him - has become a matter of horrible urgency'.

Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Michael Morpurgo reflects on the remarkable life of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

'The crown and the jewels were costume, the Palace was a stage. She knew that, we knew that', writes Michael. 'It was a charade, but one that worked wonderfully well, because she was centre stage in our national drama, because enough of us believed in her'.

As the world changed around her, Michael argues, the Queen at all times looked to the future, helped us find our place in the world and discover who we are as a people.

Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Megan Nolan questions why women writers still struggle to be taken seriously.

'The appearance of the woman writer', she says, 'is often clumsily welded together with her work in an effort to make the two inseparable, or indeed to act as a sort of explanation of her work, that she is able to create it at all'.

Megan discusses the pressures this imposes.

Photo credit: Sophie Davidson

Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Penny Murphy

Will Self reflects on success...and failure.

'Ours is a society', he writes, 'in which that hoary old saying, 'Nothing succeeds like success', has been elevated to the status of a political, philosophic and indeed moral credo.'

But, Will argues, this is a world typified by hyperbole and exaggeration, where the successful, 'with plenty of cake to eat, have no need to partake of the true bread of life, which is, of course, failure'.

Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Penny Murphy

Linda Colley argues that President Putin's invasion of Ukraine is a wake-up call which should remind people that the days of empire are far from over. And these enduring imperial habits, she says, are evident in some unexpected quarters - not just in places like Russia and China.

'When Donald Trump floated the idea of the US purchasing Greenland in 2019, this was widely dismissed as just another Trumpian eccentricity', she writes.

'But this 'real estate deal' as the former president characteristically described his Greenland project, was actually in line with large portions of American history'.

Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Rod Farquhar Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

John Connell goes fishing in northern Spain, home to one of the oldest populations of Atlantic salmon in the world.

But he discovers a world on an ecological edge - with water at dangerously low levels, distraught fishermen and virtually no fish.

'What is a fish without a river?' he asks. 'Indeed what is a river without a fish?'

Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Neil Churchill Production Coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Sara Wheeler has just been appointed the authorised biographer of the travel writer, Jan Morris. But she faces a dilemma. She's concerned that she is 'effectively appropriating the story of a woman who appropriated hundreds of other stories'.

How, she wonders, can she navigate this tricky territory.

Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

From boyhood, through young adulthood, to the present day, Howard Jacobson ponders his relationship with dancing.

As summer festivals get underway across the UK, Howard tries to understand the attraction.

'I didn’t dance to Paul McCartney in the 60s, and I’m not going to start now... dancing isn’t what I do,' he says.

Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Tom Shakespeare decided several years ago he was no longer going to fly for pleasure. But his father's cousin - who lives in the US - has just turned 90 and he'd love to see her again. He describes his fraught decision - as he grapples with his environmental conscience.

Reading from WH Auden's poem, 'Musée des Beaux Arts'.

Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Zoe Strimpel reflects on the 'commercial exploitation' of fandom.

From Swiftie 'friendship bracelets' to beauty products and sportswear, she argues that you can no longer be a true superfan, or a true popstar, without the merch.

'But it is striking,' writes Zoe, 'that rather than reject the purely cynical commercialism of their fandom, fans demand it. Which begs the question of whether we are really fans of artists these days, or whether fandom has been consumed by corporations who have shape-shifted into the form of pop stars.'

Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

As the Tory leadership election highlights questions of social mobility, David Goodhart looks at why some people seem to have more luck than others. To what extent can we create our own opportunities, regardless of background? What role does personality play? And is it really possible to engineer and cultivate our own luck by being open to chance encounters?

Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

'We're witnessing a major change in British politics,' writes John Gray. 'But to what?' With Boris Johnson on the way out, many Conservatives, he says, believe the party needs a new 'big idea'. But that is a fundamental error, he believes. 'What the party needs is not another new philosophy but a healthy dose of pragmatism...new thinking, but not some grand new theory'.

Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Penny Murphy

Zoe Strimpel argues that wealth creation should be the bedrock of politics.

She says that while she loathes the arrogance sometimes displayed by the super rich - especially in the present climate where millions are sinking into poverty - it's not billionaires who are the problem. 'My view is that we need not fewer billionaires but more, the richer the better,' she writes. 'In fact, the more rich people the better'.

Hatred of billionaires, she believes, is perplexing at a time when government can't, or won't, fill huge gaps in funding.

Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith.

Sarah Dunant relives a road trip she took 50 years ago, travelling across the USA at a time when Roe v Wade was the talk of America, and revolution was in the air.

'I can only imagine what it must be like to be a woman living in America this week, she writes in the aftermath of the decision by the US Supreme Court - a decision which almost instantly makes abortion illegal in more than 20 US states.

She takes us back to 1972 and her travels across America in a beat-up car, when radical lawyers were honing their arguments to first present the case to the country's highest court.

'America's post-war abundance and energy, its style, its movies and its music saturated our youth', she says. 'We had the time of our lives - even the bad bits were good, we were living the dream'.

And, fifty years on, she reflects on what has happened to 'the fabric of this extraordinary country'.

Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

'It's time to acknowledge', writes Will Self, 'that we don't really feel nostalgia at all - only something far more worrying and debilitating: a condition I've named no-stalgia'.

Will argues that the West is particularly in thrall to rose-tinted nostalgia and looks to Japan - and its concept of 'mono no aware' - as an alternative and healthier way of thinking about the past.

Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production Coordinator: Iona Hammond Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Howard Jacobson reflects on his upcoming 'significant birthday' and why he's become a willing participant in the ways of personal trainers.

'I say trainer but I am past training,' writes Howard. 'He's more my stretcher. My wife's stretcher, actually, but she doesn't want to be stretched while I shrink. I refused to have him at first. But I capitulated. It was either that or watch my wife by stretched to twice my length'.

So down on the floor he goes, 'hoping someone - anyone - will think I'm a weekend younger than I actually am'.

Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith.

Adam Gopnik grew up in Canada, where he saw the Queen age gracefully on the country's bank notes - though he says the royal connection often felt vague. Arriving in London this week amid union flags and flowers, Adam reflects on the constancy of the Queen's reign.

"What lasts for seventy years," he writes, "and never takes a turn into indecency or becomes cruel or sordid in any of the obvious ways has my vote. Well, not my vote, obviously....my allegiance. Well, okay, not my allegiance... my admiration."

Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Nigel Appleton Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

After recently discovering the secret of her local meadow, which hides the ruins of World War Two, Rebecca Stott reflects on how we rebuild lives and landscapes, from 6th Century Britain to post-war Berlin to Beirut.

She reflects on the damage currently being inflicted on Ukraine, and highlights recent discussions held by the Mayor of Kharkiv to plan the rebuilding of his city.

'It struck me as remarkable that despite the war, despite seeing his city in ruins... the mayor had the capacity to start thinking about the future.'

Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production Coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith.

'Over the centuries', writes Michael Morpurgo, 'we have been a safe haven to so many, and they have helped make us the people we are today - at our best, a deeply humanitarian people. I fear we are not at our best today'.

Michael argues that, although we need to address the issue of people smuggling and deaths from dangerous Channel crossings, we must not lose our capacity for kindness and 'generosity of spirit' towards those who need our help.

Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production Coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Hugh Levinson

'We must never underestimate the power of words to shape public opinion and politics', writes Bernardine Evaristo.

This comes in the aftermath of a call from a school authority in South Dakota for the banning of her novel, 'Girl, Woman, Other' on the grounds that it - and four other novels - are unsuitable for seventeen and eighteen-year-olds.

Bernardine argues that we should avoid vocabulary that fosters outrage and try instead to find words that convey our exact, and reasoned, argument.

Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

When it comes to fast cars or literary festivals, Howard Jacobson reckons that, for the average male, there isn't usually much of a contest. 'You don't get as many men at a literary festival as you do on a street corner where there's a Lamborghini parked,' writes Howard. 'Or you didn't.'

But he senses a change - and a new interest in men talking and reading about love.

It's not that men find female characters too soft - rather, that they often find the male characters aren't soft enough.

Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

In the aftermath of recent headlines coming out of the Commons, Sarah Dunant explores sexual equality through the ages.

She looks in particular at the idea that 'women are temptresses who cannot - by definition of their sex - be trusted'.

"So ingrained is this within Christian culture," Sarah writes, "that it defined attitudes towards women for millennia".

Biblical accounts, renaissance sculpture, fairy tales and politics are all put under the spotlight.

Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production Coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Will Self presents a very British solution to the issues surrounding the legalisation of marijuana.

Considering the pervasiveness of cannabis in the UK, he says the question that should currently be preoccupying us as a society is not whether marijuana should be legalised, but how.

"My model here would be the old Tote," he says, "a form of nationalised gambling that for many years mitigated its worst effects by limiting opportunities and hence possible losses."

He says that we must avoid the "commercialised free-for-all that's emerging in the US and parts of Canada."

Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

"It is a terrible thing to be in possession of a truth that people don't want to hear," writes Howard Jacobson.

By way of Primo Levi, the great chronicler of the Holocaust, Coleridge's 'The Ancient Mariner' and stories emerging today from Ukraine, Howard argues that stories of truth must be listened to, no matter how uncomfortable or challenging we find them.

"No deceit is ever so perfected," he says, "that it doesn't require the connivance of the deceived".

Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Zoe Strimpel asks the seemingly simple question 'what is a woman', but finds no simple answer as she explores the question through a brief history of feminist thought.

She explores the ongoing controversy over trans women in women's competitive sport, and the reluctance of public figures to define what a woman is. while revealing her own views on the issue.

"As the history of feminism itself makes clear, gender and sex are genuinely complicated. That overconfident or oversimplified definitions of woman - which apparently we're all supposed to be able to produce - can be limiting and crude. Not just in relation to trans women but biological women too," she writes.

She continues: "The bitter debate about trans women versus women is a debate about the meaning and realness of biology. And yes, biological difference matters, sometimes hugely. It is certainly real. But there is room for nuance: indeed, there is a necessity for it. Without it, I fear a relapse into arguing that women are defined by their biology beyond the swimming pool or the cycling track or the locker room."

Producer: Sheila Cook Sound: Peter Bosher Production Coordinator: Janet Staples Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

The everyday repression of life in Russia, as experienced by an anonymous dissident playwright.

In this essay, she reflects on the war in Ukraine and asks what role she and her fellow Russians might have played in it, what they might have done to stop it - and what Ukrainians must think of them now.

In turn, she explains how the Russian state is actively controlling the narrative about the war - and reveals the harsh consequences for those who dare veer from the approved 'truth'.

"They arrest protestors for carrying blank sheets of paper. It doesn’t matter what’s written on it, only that you are carrying it. If you are suspected of opposing the government, then you must be guilty."

Reflecting on Russia's history, she weighs up how life today both mirrors and is profoundly different to the harshest days of Stalinist rule, while pointing out the numerous violations of the country's constitution.

The essay is translated and read by poet and translator Sasha Dugdale.

Producer: Sheila Cook Sound: Peter Bosher Production Coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

'Perhaps, like me,' writes A L Kennedy, 'you can now only picture Cabinet meetings as gatherings where ministers and staff sing la-la-la with their fingers in their ears while dancing between the wine fridges.'

In the midst of a lot of bad news, Alison finds some room for cheer.

Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production Coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Vadon

Adam Gopnik seeks enlightenment for our time in Tolstoy's War and Peace, finding parallels in Tolstoy's thinking for today's war in Ukraine.

Reflecting on how Russian characters in the book converse in fluent French, Adam considers how mixed identities should not undermine national integrity, writing that the composite nature of Ukrainian identity does not cast doubt on its integrity as a country.

He also explores Tolstoy's debunking of the 'great man' theory of history, and a reminder that 'history lies outside the control of any one hero, or heroine' while conceding that heroism is in itself a plausible concept, and 'if great men and women do not cause history, they surely make history. We seem to be seeing it made in action right now.'

Producer: Sheila Cook Sound: Peter Bosher Production Coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

"When war smashes its way into our living rooms as it did three weeks ago", writes Sarah Dunant, "it is pictures rather than words that hit hardest".

Sarah discusses the impact of images from war through the centuries and the history they write.

And she ponders which image from Putin's war will represent this moment in the future.

Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Hugh Levinson

For the past five years, Rebecca Stott and a Russian friend have spent time together... digging heavy soil, planting hawthorn trees and pruning wild roses.

Veronika is a translator and a university lecturer, with a talent for gardening. She's helped Rebecca in her garden; Rebecca has discussed translations with Veronika.

Now, in the light of events in Ukraine, Rebecca talks about their friendship.

Producer: Adele Armstrong Production Coordinator: Gemma Ashman Sound: Peter Bosher Editor: Penny Murphy

Will Self tells the story of Vasily Arkhipov, the commander of a Soviet nuclear-armed submarine, who during the Cuban Missile Crisis refused to fire his vessel's nuclear weapon and averted, many believe, a Third World War.

In the light of President Putin's actions this week, Will argues that the threat of nuclear apocalypse has never really gone away, however much we've tried to convince ourselves otherwise.

Producer: Adele Armstrong Production Coordinator: Gemma Ashman Sound: Rod Farquhar Editor: Hugh Levinson

Mark Damazer looks to George Orwell's essay, 'Politics and the English Language', to see if he can be our guide through the fractious language of the next few weeks of the election campaign.

He says Orwell's critique in 1946 of the political slogans, the carefully honed phrases and the rehearsed answers of his day remind us that there's never been a golden age of political language.

A thought to hold on to, perhaps, 'as we enjoy - or endure - the next few weeks'.

Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Sara Wheeler reflects that the attack on Ukraine is not the war of the Russian people she has known. "The calamitous news eroding any remote sense we might have nurtured of peace in our time is, we now know, not going to cease any time soon. Yet while the image of a villainous Russia dominates the news agenda, I remember Russians I have met over the years on my travels in their land. This is not their war."

Producer: Sheila Cook Production Coordinator: Gemma Ashman Sound: Peter Bosher Editor: Penny Murphy

John Connell reflects on planting trees on his family farm in Ireland as reparation for the years he has spent flying round the world, and also as an intrinsic good.

"For so many the planting of the tree for nature itself, not for politics, or development or climate change or remembrance of some brutal war but for the contribution of life is never thought of....We do not measure success in knowing the way of the earth because for the most part, the greater part of society is cut off from the political act of growing something to produce oxygen and sequester carbon."

Producer: Sheila Cook Sound: Peter Bosher Production Coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Hugh Levinson

Sara Wheeler reflects on the harm done by seeing the world only from our own point of view.

"At the heart of both day-to-day thoughtlessness and internecine slaughter lies a failure to see things through the eyes of another. If we all tried to see clearly rather than selectively - well, you know, I think the planet would get on quite a lot better."

Producer: Sheila Cook Sound: Peter Bosher Production Coordinator: Gemma Ashman Editor: Penny Murphy

Will Self deplores the British attitude to children, seeing a mix of sentimentality and cruelty, and a culture which for decades allowed child sex abuse to hide "in plain view".

"I'd argue that under cover of a positively Dickensian level of sentimentality that sees every child as a Tiny Tim, our cruelty and disdain for actual children continues to hold sway....The nauseating oscillation between outrage at the news of another child murdered by its parents or carers, often as a result of poverty and its drunken, drugged abusive sequels; and the prosecution of some benighted young soul for this or that 'crime' - in almost all cases actions themselves determined by exactly the same kinds of deprivation - has been a constant in my life...And then came the pandemic and its associated social measures - and exposed once more the fundamental British misopedia... A pervasive addiction to screen based work, entertainment and now education marches in lock-step with a view of children not as vitally distinct - and so necessarily in need of nurturance - but merely as little adults in waiting with all the troubling appetites that this implies."

Sound: Peter Bosher Production Coordinator: Gemma Ashman Producer: Sheila Cook

As she leaves academia, Rebecca Stott says an audit culture is stifling universities.

"Once universities had been turned into businesses and forced to compete with each other for students and fees, scores and league tables followed. And now we are assessed and monitored all the time too. It has eroded trust....When a seminar works you can feel the electricity crackle...You can't bottle this or record it or give it a score or sell it because it happens in the moment and in the room. "

Sound Engineer :Peter Bosher Production Coordinator: Gemma Ashman Producer: Sheila Cook

Sarah Dunant asks if we should judge the past by the standards of the present or future, as shifting social attitudes colour our view of how the past is portrayed.

"What current historians share with those historians of the past whose vision we vehemently decry, is that they too thought they were right at the time...If we now find their views abhorrent and unjust then how about us; what might there be about our present moral certainty that the future might take issue with. What might we be missing?"

Producer: Sheila Cook Sound: Peter Bosher Production Coordinator: Gemma Ashman

David Goodhart rejects what he calls the 'Eton conspiracy myth' of a cabal of his old school's alumni at the top of politics and welcomes its declining influence as a sign of growing equality.

"The Eton obsession not only overlooks progress made in slowly detaching our elite institutions from privilege, it also distracts from a hard-headed discussion about what we want from our elite."

Producer: Sheila Cook

Zoe Strimpel reflects on the impact of rapid home delivery on the way we live our lives, and asks what our human experience might lose from this democratisation of laziness.

"A whole generation is about to come of age experiencing goods and service as simply things you can have delivered to your doorstep, fast. Will their brains cease to distinguish between different types of desire and demand?...Will they lose the capacity to form plans and commit to them, plans as minor as what to cook later that night?"

Producer: Sheila Cook

Adam Gopnik on why a visit to get his phone repaired resulted in an unlikely revelation.

Watching those waiting alongside him, Adam comes to the realisation that we have poured ourselves so completely into our phones that the devices, paradoxically, are the one place where we can picture ourselves as selves. They have become the equivalent of the confession booths of old, or the diary in the 18th century.

"We all need some box to hold our fears and desires as the winds of the world threaten to blow us away," he concludes.

Producer: Adele Armstrong

Howard Jacobson ponders why he's always associated Christmas with the sea.

Strange, he reckons, given he's not exactly maritime by temperament.

'Long ago at Blackpool,' he writes, 'I was lifted onto a donkey and afterwards told to make a sandcastle, but I fell off the donkey and wilder boys in Brillo-pad swimming trunks trampled over my battlements'.

He looks to Matthew Arnold for an explanation of this 'mysterious nexus of sea and Santa'.

Producer: Adele Armstrong

Sara Wheeler asks whether trying to get away from it all is a futile endeavour.

'We go to all that trouble', writes Sara, 'up at 4.30, cancelled planes and trains and bent tent poles - only to find ourselves, boring as ever, glum and pink on a beach or glum and damp in a Welsh cottage!'

But there are still good reasons, Sara argues, why so many of us want a change of scene. And so 'off we go, in large numbers. At every opportunity'.

Producer: Adele Armstrong Sound: Peter Bosher Production coordinator: Katie Morrison Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Will Self reflects on his B&B renaissance.

From early memories of B&Bs with his parents...to the anonymous isolation of corporate hotels...to the 'pseudo-hygge' of Airbnbs, Will looks at our changing relationship with property.

Producer: Adele Armstrong

A junk shop, a wooden chest, and some old newspapers from 1941 get Sarah Dunant pondering how we can deal with a world turned upside down.

"The last time the world shook", Sarah writes, "there was an element of learned resilience". But today, she believes, most of us don't have the benefit of that.

Producer: Adele Armstrong

"Landscape made us', writes Sara Wheeler, 'and now, in the dying phase of our divorce from our environment, we are unmaking the landscape'.

Sara discusses the importance of place names in linking us to the land.

Producer: Adele Armstrong