A Point of View BBC Radio 4

When it comes to fast cars or literary festivals, Howard Jacobson reckons that, for the average male, there isn't usually much of a contest.

'You don't get as many men at a literary festival as you do on a street corner where there's a Lamborghini parked,' writes Howard. 'Or you didn't.'
But he senses a change - and a new interest in men talking and reading about love.
It's not that men find female characters too soft - rather, that they often find the male characters aren't soft enough.
Producer: Adele Armstrong
Sound: Peter Bosher
Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman
Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Mark Damazer looks to George Orwell's essay, 'Politics and the English Language', to see if he can be our guide through the fractious language of the next few weeks of the election campaign.
He says Orwell's critique in 1946 of the political slogans, the carefully honed phrases and the rehearsed answers of his day remind us that there's never been a golden age of political language.
A thought to hold on to, perhaps, 'as we enjoy - or endure - the next few weeks'.
Producer: Adele Armstrong
Sound: Peter Bosher
Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman
Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Sara Wheeler asks whether trying to get away from it all is a futile endeavour.
'We go to all that trouble', writes Sara, 'up at 4.30, cancelled planes and trains and bent tent poles - only to find ourselves, boring as ever, glum and pink on a beach or glum and damp in a Welsh cottage!'
But there are still good reasons, Sara argues, why so many of us want a change of scene. And so 'off we go, in large numbers. At every opportunity'.
Producer: Adele Armstrong
Sound: Peter Bosher
Production coordinator: Katie Morrison
Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Tom Shakespeare calls for new thinking to fix the current crisis in our prisons. Against a backdrop of overcrowding, violence and high rates of reoffending, he says we need a clearer vision of what prisons are really for.
"We want them to do lots of rather different things: punish people who have broken our laws; protect the public from violent criminals; rehabilitate offenders and teach them useful employment skills. Yet we are guilty of stigmatising people who have spent some time in prison."
Producer: Adele Armstrong
Sound: Peter Bosher
Production coordinator: Gemma Ashman
Editor: Bridget Harney

Rebecca Stott is on a quest for a decent tasting apple. Along the way she discovers a revival of interest in wonderful heritage varieties: the rough textured russets like Ashmeads Kernel, the rich, aromatic Saltcote Pippin or the sharp tanginess of the Alfriston.
Rebecca asks why - given the UK has an impressive two and a half thousand varieties of apple - we can only buy four or five in the average supermarket.
Producer: Adele Armstrong
Sound: Peter Bosher
Production coordinator: Liam Morrey
Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith

Megan Nolan on the allure of New York and the city's 'main character' syndrome.
The city is, she says, 'the place that makes me happier to be alive than anywhere else - not in spite but because of its thoroughly human hopelessness.'
'Nature is nature, permanent and without moral taint,' writes Megan, 'but cities are paeans to the marvellous filth of the human spirit.'
'The real challenge is being moved by the effort to remain open to one another despite being consoled by surroundings made not of beauty and relief, but of cement and strife.'
Producer: Adele Armstrong
Sound: Peter Bosher
Production coordinator: Liam Morrey
Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith