Supernumerary Fellow Professor Charles Foster featured on BBC Radio 4’s Free Thinking

Professor Charles Foster, Supernumerary Fellow at Exeter College, recently featured on BBC Radio 4’s Free Thinking programme, joining a discussion on the theme of Eccentrics and Outsiders. 

Presented by Matthew Sweet, the episode explores how figures on the margins of society – from eccentrics and nonconformists to literary outsiders – have shaped English culture, history, politics and attitudes towards nature and the countryside. The discussion takes as one of its starting points Sylvia Townsend Warner’s 1926 novel Lolly Willowes, in which a middle-aged woman abandons suburban convention to forge an unconventional new life. 

Professor Foster joined literary historian Jade Munslow Ong, political philosopher Sophie Scott Brown, and psychotherapist Mark Vernon to examine the enduring appeal of outsiders in the English imagination. Together, the contributors considered how eccentricity has been understood across different periods of history and how those who stand apart from social norms can challenge established ways of thinking. 

The conversation ranged across literature, philosophy, and cultural history, reflecting on the relationship between individuality, belonging and the natural world. The programme also explored the ways in which ideas of eccentricity continue to influence contemporary debates about identity, community, and place. 

Free Thinking is BBC Radio 4’s flagship arts and ideas discussion programme, bringing together leading thinkers to explore the cultural and intellectual questions shaping society today. 

The episode, Eccentrics and Outsiders, is available to listen to on BBC Sounds.