Programme Details

The Divine Michelangelo needs no introduction. According to the art critic James Hall, he reinvented the human body - and launched an obsession with nudity from which culture has never recovered. Isabel Hilton and James Hall dissect the impact of the greatest genius of art.

Anita Ekberg in the fountain. Marcello Mostriani in cool shades. A statue of Christ suspended from a helicopter flying over Rome. Images from Frederico Fellini's 1960 classic, La Dolce Vita.. A new print of this classic is about to go on a nationwide tour. And it still excites so much passion that audiences wept when they couldn't get tickets last summer. But why? Ginette Vincendeau and Stephen Gundle reveal why this film will never lie on a dusty shelf

The internet search engine Google plans to scan in books from some of the world's greatest libraries. What does this mean for the future of libraries, writers and readers? The writer and reader Alberto Manguel, author of A History of Reading, voices his opinion.

Don't you wish you had The Art Of Always Being Right ? That is the title of a collection of thoughts by the philosopher Schopenhauer, just compiled by AC Grayling. But what does this dark philosopher reveal? And what are the best techniques? The barrister Clive Coleman argues the rights - and wrongs - with AC Grayling.

And what was this year's Big Idea? The thinker John Gray believes that 2004 was the year that secularism finally died, and the Enlightenment's ideal was destroyed. Decide for yourself on Night Waves.

Night Waves, live at 9:30pm on BBC Radio 3.


Presenter: IsabelHilton
Producer: ArianeKoek



Additional Information:
1) La Dolce Vita is showing at the National Film Theatre London until 27 December and tours nationwide in the New Year.
2) The Art of Always Being Right, edited by AC Grayling, is published by Gibson Square Books.
3) Michelangelo and the Reinvention of the Human Body by James Hall is published by Chatto and Windus.