Classicists Edith Hall and Barry Cunliffe explore the importance of the sea in the classical world in a discussion hosted by Rana Mitter. Pat Barker and Giles Fraser look at Tolstoy's War and Peace and Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov and the depiction of faith in those novels with presenter Ian McMillan.
The Ancient Greeks often preferred to take sea journeys rather than risk encounters with brigands and travelling through mountain passes inland and colonised all round the Black Sea and Mediterranean. In the writings of Xenophon and Homer, Greek heroes show skills at navigating and fighting on sea and the sea shore is a place people go to think.
Sir Barry Cunliffe is Emeritus Professor of European Archaeology at the University of Oxford and the author of books including Facing the Ocean - the Atlantic and its peoples; Europe Between the Oceans; By Steppe, Desert and Ocean - the Birth of Eurasia. Edith Hall is Professor in the Department of Classics and Centre for Hellenic Studies at King's College, London. Her books include Introducing The Ancient Greeks: From Bronze Age Seafarers to Navigators of the Western Mind; Aristotle's Way - How Ancient Wisdom Can Change Your Mind; A People's History of Classics. You can find her discussing her campaign for schools across the UK to teach classics in a Free Thinking discussion called Rethinking the Curriculum https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08hq0ht
Pat Barker is the author of novels including her Regeneration Trilogy, Life Class, The Silence of the Girls and Noonday. Giles Fraser is an English Anglican priest, journalist and broadcaster.