Comedian and history buff Al Murray is joined by historian Dan Snow, writer Natalie Haynes and broadcaster and film expert Matthew Sweet for a fresh look at a subject very close to his heart - the great British war movie. This roundtable discussion looks at both the films themselves, from A Bridge too Far to Zulu, and uses them as a lens on British history, cultural attitudes and our changing views on conflict over the decades.

Al Murray's Great British War Movies

'Funny, sharp explications of what these sometimes not-very-nice women were up to, and how they sometimes made idiots of . . . but read on!' - Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid's Tale The Greek myths are among the world's most important cultural building blocks and they have been retold many times, but rarely do they focus on the remarkable women at the heart of these ancient stories. Stories of gods and monsters are the mainstay of epic poetry and Greek tragedy, from Homer to Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, from the Trojan War to Jason and the Argonauts. And still, today, a wealth of novels, plays and films draw their inspiration from stories first told almost three thousand years ago. But modern tellers of Greek myth have usually been men, and have routinely shown little interest in telling women's stories. And when they do, those women are often painted as monstrous, vengeful or just plain evil. But Pandora - the first woman, who according to legend unloosed chaos upon the world - was not a villain, and even Medea and Phaedra have more nuanced stories than generations of retellings might indicate. Now, in Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths, Natalie Haynes - broadcaster, writer and passionate classicist - redresses this imbalance. Taking Pandora and her jar (the box came later) as the starting point, she puts the women of the Greek myths on equal footing with the menfolk. After millennia of stories telling of gods and men, be they Zeus or Agamemnon, Paris or Odysseus, Oedipus or Jason, the voices that sing from these pages are those of Hera, Athena and Artemis, and of Clytemnestra, Jocasta, Eurydice and Penelope.
 
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Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths

Burada anlatılan hikâyeler, hayatları Troya Savaşı'nın ilmeklerine dolanmış kadınların hikâyeleri. Gecenin yarısında bir kadın uykusundan uyanır ve sevdiği şehrin alevler içinde olduğunu görür. Grekler ve Troyalılar arasındaki on yıllık savaş artık sona ermiştir. Troya düşmüştür. Kaderleri artık Greklerin elinde olan Troyalı kadınlardan onlar adına Akhilleus'la savaşan Amazon prensesine, Odysseus'un dönüşünü bekleyen Penelopeia'dan kan davaları yüzünden her şeyi başlatan üç tanrıçaya... “Bana şarkını söyle Musa, dedi ve ben de söyledim. Kadınların, gölgeler içindeki kadınların şarkısını söyledim. Unutulmuş, göz ardı edilmiş, adı anılmamışların şarkısını söyledim. Bu asla bir veya iki kadının hikâyesi değildi. Bu hepsinin hikâyesiydi. Bir savaş, yaşamlarına dokunduğu insanların yarısını göz ardı etmez. Öyleyse biz neden edelim?” “Natalie Haynes, kendine özgü tutkusu, zekâsı ve feminist bakış açısıyla Troya Savaşı'nın sessiz kadınlarına ihtiyaç duyulan sesi veriyor.” – Madeline Miller, Ben, Kirke'nin yazarı “Sürükleyici bir feminist başyapıt.” – Deborah Frances-White “Natalie Haynes hızla bu neslin Mary Renault'su olmakta; Troya Savaşı'nı tamamen kadınların bakış açısıyla anlattığı Bin Gemi, yazarın eserleri içinde en iyisi.” – Observer “Haynes mesleğinin ustası. En eski hikâyelerimizden birine sıcacık bir hayat üflemeyi başarıyor.” – Telegraph
 
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Bin Gemi

Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2023.
In Stone Blind, the instant Sunday Times bestseller, Natalie Haynes brings the infamous Medusa to life as you have never seen her before.
'Witty, gripping, ruthless' – Margaret Atwood via Twitter 'Beautiful and moving' – Neil Gaiman
‘So to mortal men, we are monsters. Because of our flight, our strength. They fear us, so they call us monsters’
Medusa is the sole mortal in a family of gods. Growing up with her Gorgon sisters, she begins to realize that she is the only one who experiences change, the only one who can be hurt.
When Poseidon commits an unforgiveable act against Medusa in the temple of Athene, the goddess takes her revenge where she can: on his victim. Medusa is changed forever – writhing snakes for hair and her gaze now turns any living creature to stone. She can look at nothing without destroying it.
Desperate to protect her beloved sisters, Medusa condemns herself to a life of shadows. Until Perseus embarks upon a quest to fetch the head of a Gorgon . . .
‘A fierce feminist exploration of female rage, written with wit and empathy’ – Glamour
 
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