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

it. 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. Thanks for downloading

the BBC Arts and Ideas podcast. The conversation you're about to hear picks up on themes inspired by the summer's BBC proms concerts.

If you're moved to listen to the music, you can find every concert broadcast on Radio 3 and BBC Sounds.

Now over to the audience in the Imperial College Theatre next to the Royal Albert Hall.

BBC Sounds, music, Radio, podcasts.

Hello, I'm Sophie Colombo, one of Radio 3's New Generation Thinkers.

I'm a scholar of 18th century and romantic literature,

and this evening I'm going to be concentrating

on the art of letter writing.

Why do we write letters?

Why are they such an endless source of fascination

to novelists, historians, and composers?

And what place, if any, do they have in today's world of digital communication?

To tackle these questions, I'm joined by Sean Usher, editor of the wildly successful anthology

Letters of Note, and by the best-selling author Ruth Ware, who uses letters to drive the

plot of her new thriller, The Turn of the Key.

Now, given our subjects, I have to ask first of all whether you would claim to be letter

writers at yourselves. Ruth, do you often put pen to paper?

Well, it depends what you mean by letter writer, because I don't put pen to paper very often

at all for letters or indeed

...