麻豆约拍

With Rana Mitter. Bestselling author of Wild Swans, Jung Chang discusses her new biography of the most important woman in Chinese history. Empress Dowager Cixi ruled the countries for decades and according to Jung Chang, brought a medieval empire into the modern age. And yet, until now, she had been portrayed as a diehard conservative despot.

The critics' favourite Young British artist, Sarah Lucas, is given a survey of her anthropomorphic and tragicomic sculptures at the Whitechapel Gallery. Forget Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, according to the art critic Alastair Sooke, she is the most authentic and exciting artist of them of all.

In September 1973 the elected socialist president of Chile Salvador Allende was deposed in a coup that saw the US-backed general Augusto Pinochet take power. In his book 'Story Of A Death Foretold' Oscar Guardiola-Rivera argues these events were important both in the development of a specifically Latin American style of socialism, and in US foreign policy in the second half of the Cold War - a period in which the current doctrine of 'limited intervention' has its roots. Oscar joins Rana along with the US historian Tim Stanley.

And our latest contribution to the Sound of Cinema season: Captain John Noel's extraordinary film about Mallory and Irvine's ill -fated expedition to the Himalayas in 1924- The Epic of Everest. Recently restored, it is due to receive its world premiere at the London Film Festival later this month, complete with a newly commissioned score composed by Simon Fisher Turner.

Image: (c) Freer Sackler Gallery.