The Royal Albert Hall: Building the Arts and Sciences (Brepols, 2024) by Dr. Simona Valeriani takes one of London’s most iconic buildings and deconstructs it to offer new insights into the society that produced it. As part of the new cultural quarter built in South Kensington on the proceeds from The Great Exhibition of 1851, the Royal Albert Hall was origin ... Show More
Feb 3
Itohan I. Osayimwese, "Africa's Buildings: Architecture and the Displacement of Cultural Heritage" (Princeton UP, 2025)
Between the nineteenth century and today, colonial officials, collectors, and anthropologists dismembered African buildings and dispersed their parts to museums in Europe and the United States. Most of these artifacts were cataloged as ornamental art objects, which erased their i ... Show More
1h 19m
Jan 28
Iain Jackson et. al., "Architecture, Empire, and Trade: The United Africa Company" (Bloomsbury, 2025)
Architecture, Empire, and Trade: The United Africa Company (Bloomsbury, 2025) pieces together a new architectural history of West Africa from the high colonial period through to independence. From the imperial Royal Niger Company’s charter in the 1890s through to commercial deve ... Show More
40m 43s
Jan 28
Bram de Maeyer, "Building for Belgium: Belgian Embassies in a Globalising World (1945-2020)" (Leuven UP, 2025)
Embassy buildings are the most tangible evidence of a state’s diplomatic presence abroad. State authorities have invested in the architectural conception of purpose-built embassies to flex their diplomatic muscle and project nationhood on foreign soil. While scholars have primari ... Show More
37m 1s
Nov 2024
Episode 1: Good Governance | Chris Bryant MP, Jeremy Deller and Victoria Siddall
'What do we want the UK to look like in 10 years, 20 years, 50 years in terms of culture?' – Victoria Siddall The first episode of the 2024 Frieze Masters Podcast brings together Sir Chris Bryant MP, artist Jeremy Deller and new director of the National Portrait Gallery Victoria ... Show More
33m 44s
Jun 2024
Next to Normal, British TV history, In the Eye of the Storm
Next to Normal stormed Broadway in 2009 with its portrayal of a woman struggling with her mental health. It went on to win three Tonys and a Pulitzer Prize. Now staged in London, its creator Tom Kitt and star Caissie Levy talk about this deeply emotional musical and Caissie perfo ... Show More
42m 22s
Apr 2025
Es Devlin
Es Devlin is a British artist and stage designer celebrated for creating large-scale, emotionally resonant installations and performances that fuse light, music, language, and space. Her work has shaped the visual identity of global tours for artists including Beyoncé, Adele, The ... Show More
1h 1m
May 2025
Owen Hopkins: Home made manifestos.
In this episode of the A is for Architecture Podcast, author, curator and currently director of the Farrell Centre at Newcastle University, Owen Hopkins discuss his recent book, The Manifesto House: Buildings that Changed the Future of Architecture, published by Yale University P ... Show More
50m 41s
Mar 2024
Jonas Tinius, "State of the Arts: An Ethnography of German Theatre and Migration" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
State of the Arts: An Ethnography of German Theatre and Migration (Cambridge UP, 2023) is a bold and wide-ranging account of the unique German public theatre system through the prism of a migrant artistic institution in the western post-industrial Ruhr region. State of the Arts a ... Show More
53m 28s
May 2025
Hamlet Radiohead mashup, Stoke-on-Trent pottery in crisis
In the wake of President Trump's proposed film tariffs, Jake Kanter, International Investigations Editor at Deadline, discusses what the impact could be for the British film industry.Last week Moorcroft became the latest heritage ceramic company to close its doors in Stoke-On-Tre ... Show More
42m 23s
Jan 2024
Susanna Phillips Newbury, "The Speculative City: Art, Real Estate, and the Making of Global Los Angeles" (U Minnesota Press, 2021)
Underlying every great city is a rich and vibrant culture that shapes the texture of life within. In The Speculative City: Art, Real Estate, and the Making of Global Los Angeles (U Minnesota Press, 2021), Susanna Phillips Newbury teases out how art and Los Angeles shaped one anot ... Show More
35m 21s
Apr 2025
Living Heritage: Dr. Tristram Hunt on Museums in a Changing World
In this episode, Violet Manners is joined by Dr Tristram Hunt, Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum and former MP, for a wide-ranging conversation about the role of museums in public life. They discuss how institutions like the V&A are evolving in the 21st century - from ad ... Show More
58m 26s