Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?

It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music

when it's out of ice cream.

Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds.

This is the BBC.

I'm Philip Dodd, welcome to this edition of Radio 3's Arts and Ideas program, Free Thinking.

In this program, Love, Power, Obsession and Empire. Later we talk about Dido and Ineus as they crash through history, all the way from Virgil to T.S. Eliot, not to mention Purcell's opera

composed after the restoration about the costs of empire. I'll also be talking with the retired

art dealer about collecting the ethics of buying and selling and the contemporary art world.

I never understand actually why reports of the auction sales and who's buying what and so forth

comes out on art pages.

But first, a conversation with a writer whose latest novel is haunted by Antigone, the sister

in Sophocles' tragedy, who's torn between obedience to the state, which commands that her traitorous brother be left unburied outside the city walls,

and the equally important injunction that he be buried.

Camilla Shamsh is the author of seven novels, many garlanded with prizes.

Her new one, Home Fire, centres on two families.

One living in Wembley is made up of two sisters and a brother orphaned. Parvez, the brother, goes to Syria to fight with IS, to connect with the jihadi

father whom he never met. Isma, you've made our brother not able to come home.'

"'Isma touched her sister's face on the screen, felt the cold glass.

"'Listen to me.

"'People in the neighbourhood knew.

"'The police would have found out.

...