RNZ: Saturday Morning

Arthur Tompkins is a trustee of the NZ Art Crime Research Trust and a District Court Judge in Wellington. Each year for nearly a decade he has abandoned a New Zealand winter to teach Art in War in Umbria, Italy, as part of a graduate certificate programme in Art Crime Studies. In 2016 he edited Art Crime and Its Prevention (Lund Humphries, London), and the same publisher has just released his new illustrated book, Plundering Beauty: A History of Art Crime During War.

Alan Taylor is the founding editor of the Scottish Review of Books, and the author of Appointment in Arezzo, a memoir on Muriel Spark. A former Booker Prize judge, he has written for the TLS, The New Yorker and The Melbourne Age, and edited four anthologies as well as Glasgow: The Autobiography. Taylor will be speaking on the art of the critic and Muriel Spark at the Auckland Writers Festival in May and is the the international judge assisting the panel selecting the winner of the Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize in this year's Ockham New Zealand Book Awards.

Greek myths were bedtime stories for theatre artist Miranda Manasiadis as a child. Her new version of the Icarus story takes a parent's perspective on the boy who flew too close to the sun.

Former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil has this week been ordered to turn himself in to serve 12 years in prison over a graft conviction. It's a turn of events that has enraged the country's left and forced them onto the streets, and blown the upcoming general election wide open, with Lula expected to have announced his candidacy soon. Kim will discuss the latest on Brazil with Professor Idelber Avelar, who teaches Latin American fiction, literary theory, and Cultural Studies at Tulane University in Louisiana. Professor Avelar has been a guest lecturer in 15 countries and dozens of US institutions of higher learning, including Yale, Brown, and Princeton.

Kim Hill reads emails and text messages from listeners to the Saturday Morning programme.

Kate De Goldi is a fiction writer and book reviewer. Her most recent novel, From the Cutting Room of Barney Kettle, won the Esther Glen Medal at the 2016 NZ Children's and Young Adult Book Awards, and last year she published ANNUAL 2 with Susan Paris, a miscellany for 9-to-12 year olds. She will review Landscape with Invisible Hand by MT Anderson (Candlewick Press) and Where the world ends by Geraldine McCaughrean (Usborne).

The Catholic church in Sydney this week began the formal process for the beatification of Australian Eileen O'Connor, who co-founded the religious order Our Lady's Nurses of the Poor - also known as the ''Brown Nuns'' because of their distinctive brown cloaks and bonnets. O'Connor died in 1921 aged 28, and the Sisters - who still provide nursing care to the poor, have prayed for her sainthood ever since. To talk about O'Connor, her legacy, and the role of saints in modern life, Kim is joined by Mary O'Connell, historian and author of Our Lady of Coogee: Eileen O'Connor and the founding of Sydney's Brown Nurses, and Sister Margaret Mary Birgan, a Brown Nun who is in charge of the Sydney diocese's investigation into the cause of Eileen O'Connor's sainthood.

Ngugi wa Thiong'o is a novelist, essayist, playwright, journalist, editor, academic and social activist, and currently Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine. Born in Kenya when it was a British colony, as an adolescent he lived through the Mau Mau War of Independence (1952-1962), the central historical episode in the making of modern Kenya and a major theme in his early works. In 1977, wa Thiong'o was arrested as a result of his play Ngaahika Ndeenda (I Will Marry When I Want), which was critical of the injustices of Kenyan society, and he was imprisoned without charge. It was at Kamiti Maximum Prison that wa Thiong'o wrote, on toilet paper, one of his most famous novels Caitani Mutharabaini (Devil on the Cross) (1981). Forced into exile in 1982, first to Britain and then to US, he has continued to talk, teach and write prolifically, including his memoirs Dreams in a Time of War (2010) and In the House of the Interpreter (2012). His latest is a prison memoir, Wrestling with the Devil (2018). Ngugi wa Thiong'o will be appearing at this year's Auckland Writers Festival. As referred to in the interview, you can see wa Thiong'o's story The Upright Revolution, translated into dozens of languages, here, and why it's such a milestone in African literature here.

If you want to live a long healthy life, exercise, socialise and eat a Mediterranean-style diet, says medical academic and author of Ageing for Beginners Doug Wilson.

Pattie Boyd inspired George Harrison and Eric Clapton to write some of the greatest love songs of the 20th century: Harrison wrote 'Something' and 'I Need You' for her, while Clapton penned 'Layla' and 'Wonderful Tonight'. Boyd will be telling her life story in Auckland in May.

Drs Rochelle Constantine and Regina Eisert have both recently returned from expeditions to the new Ross Sea region Marine Protected Area. Dr Constantine, an associate professor in biological sciences at the University of Auckland, studied the distribution of baleen whales throughout the northern Ross Sea on an MBIE-funded voyage on the research vessel Tangaroa. Some 68 groups of whales were spotted during almost 500 hours of dedicated watches in Antarctic waters. Dr Eisert, a marine mammal expert at the University of Canterbury, conducts research on the Antarctic Type-C killer whale, a toothfish predator and one of the focal species for the MPA. Starting from Scott Base, Dr Eisert studies whales by helicopter and from the sea ice, allowing her to get very close to them. This season, Dr Eisert and her team trialed new multimedia whale traps and were able to capture rare underwater footage of killer and minke whales. Dr Eisert will show video footage of her encounters with whales in Antarctica at a free public event on April 5, details here.

Kim Hill reads emails and text messages from listeners to the Saturday Morning programme.

David Stratton was born and educated in Britain, migrating to Australia in 1963. He served as director of the Sydney Film Festival for 18 years, during which time he was credited with being a prime figure in the renaissance of Australian cinema. In 1986 he and co-presenter Margaret Pomeranz launched The Movie Show, which had a 28-year run on Australian television, ending in 2014. Stratton has also worked as a film critic for The Australian from 1988 until the present and for a range of other titles, including Variety. A film about him, called David Stratton: A Cinematic Life, will have its NZ television premiere on the Rialto Channel on March 28.

Catherine Callaghan is the daughter of the late physicist, Sir Paul Callaghan. She's qualified as a barrister and solicitor in New Zealand and has been practicing at the English Bar since 2000. As a UK barrister, she acted for the Government and regulatory bodies, as well as individual claimants, in the Administrative Court, Court of Appeal, and Supreme Court. She has recently been appointed a Queen's Counsel (QC) in London ("taking silk") - the first New Zealand woman practicing at the bar to have done so - despite an arduous battle with illness. On March 24, it is exactly six years since Sir Paul died from colon cancer at 64.

A baby’s first year is its toughest, but for premature babies even more so, with an increased risk of dying, or, for those who survive, subsequent health problems. US researchers hope new technology could improve their chances.