Radical Bookshops, Philip Hensher

Available for over a year

Philip Hensher's novel The Emperor Waltz draws together stories about a man who founds the first gay bookshop in London, a young painter who joins the Bauhaus and a woman fascinated by a Roman cult. He joins Matthew Sweet in the Free Thinking studio. Radical bookshops are also discussed by the poets Linton Kwesi Johnson and Anthony Joseph and the co-founder of New Beacon Sarah White. New Generation Thinker Daisy Hay looks at the Victorian practice of keeping hair as a personal memento. The Sheffield documentary festival has just premiered a film called "Peter De Rome Grandfather of Gay Porn - Matthew Sweet has been to meet him. John La Rose's New Beacon project was the focal point of a black radical publishing industry that emerged in the UK in the late sixties. Its aim was to give a platform and voice to a post-independence generation of Caribbean writers whilst nurturing homegrown work by Britain's growing black population. As the Black Cultural Archives settles into its own home in Brixton and The George Padmore Institute makes New Beacon's archive available, Matthew Sweet asks if this period is now consigned to history or are such small, vibrant, personality led spaces as important as ever for diversity and the enrichment of the literary voice? Producer: Jacqueline Smith.