Dr Thomas Dixon brings his major new series on the changing face of friendship to a close with a look at how the old and the young are navigating their friendships today through technologies old and new, and at how friendship might look in the future. Episode 15: The Lonely Cyborg A group of Birmingham schoolgirls prove themselves thoughtful and self-aware about how to conduct their friendships online and about the differences between online and face-to-face friendships. Professor Deborah...

Dr Thomas Dixon brings his major history of friendship up to the 1970s, when gender politics began to change friendships once again, and considers how popular culture both reflected and influenced this change. Episode 14: Families of Choice. Professor Barbara Taylor shares with Thomas Dixon her personal memories of how the second-wave feminist movement of the 1970s altered women's friendships in the way that Mary Wolstonecraft had discussed right back in the eighteenth century. Thomas...

Dr Thomas Dixon continues to trace the changing meaning of friendship over the last five hundred years. Episode 13: In Need, In Deed, By Post Mass Observation and the archive of the Co-Operative Correspondence Club provide intimate evidence for friendship during the Second World War. Dr Clare Langhamer discusses how, in 1935, one lonely mother in County Wicklow began a correspondence network that continued through to the 1990s, long preceding today's MumsNet and NetMums. She also...

Continuing his history of friendship over the last five hundred years, Dr Thomas Dixon explores how friendship was changed by a new form of technology and a new type of science in the early years of the twentieth century. Episode 12: The Suburbs of the Heart Just as the internet has been seen as an enemy of friendship, so the new technology of the early twentieth century - the telephone - was initially viewed with mistrust. Magazines and newspaper articles listed it along with the telegram...

Dr Thomas Dixon brings his timely new history of the changing face of friendship into the era immediately after the First World War, when the international friendship movement flourished. Episode 11: Testaments of Friendship At the centre of this episode is the story of Vera Brittain, author of the ever-popular memoirs, Testament of Youth and Testament of Friendship. Thomas Dixon traces Brittain's life through her pre-war loves, the heart-breaking war-time losses of her brother, her two...

Dr Thomas Dixon presents a timely new history of the changing meaning and experience of friendship over the centuries Episode 10: A Battalion of Pals Dr Thomas Dixon tells two contrasting stories for this examination of the impact of World War One on male friendship. He begins and ends with the pacifist Bloomsbury Group, focusing on E.M Forster and his famous remark, "If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my...

Dr Thomas Dixon presents a timely new history of the changing meaning and experience of friendship over the centuries Episode 9: Comrades and Lovers Drawing on the intriguingly ambiguous relationship of Frances Power Cobbe with Mary Lloyd and the more open relationship of Edward Carpenter with George Merrill, Thomas Dixon explores the Victorian borderland between Platonic friendship and homosexual love. Professor Barbara Caine discusses Frances Power Cobbe, the largely forgotten...

Dr Thomas Dixon presents a timely new history of the changing meaning and experience of friendship over the centuries Episode 8: Darwin's Best Friend Charles Darwin loved his dog and praised her in letters to friends as "the beloved and beautiful Polly". He believed that dogs shared qualities such as a sense of shame, honour and affection with humans, and wrote about them in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. It was in this era that dogs were, for the first time, given the...

As the nature and depth of our friendships comes under scrutiny in an era of Social Networking, Dr Thomas Dixon presents a major new history of the changing meaning of friendship over the centuries. Episode 7: Education of the Heart Today, we tend to view friendships among children as a good thing, but in the 18th century, improving "conduct manuals" tended to warn children off friendship, seeing it as fraught with danger. In an era of large families, friendships among siblings were...

As the nature and depth of our friendships comes under scrutiny in an era of Social Networking, Dr Thomas Dixon presents a major new history of the changing meaning of friendship over the centuries. Episode 6: Felons and Oddfellows Thomas Dixon traces the idea of friendship as a form of practical self-help back to the Friendly Societies of the 18th and 19th centuries. At their peak, there were 9000 of these grass-roots institutions - many with quaint, archaic names, such as The Manchester...

Social networking appears to be expanding our circles of friendship just as our sense of community is contracting: Dr Thomas Dixon presents a timely history of how the meaning and experience of friendship have changed over the centuries. Episode Five: When William Met Mary The famous 1989 film, When Harry Met Sally, crystallised for modern viewers the key question of whether a man and woman can truly be friends without any sexual element. This was a question which radical and educated...

Social networking appears to be expanding our circles of friendship just as our sense of community is contracting: Dr Thomas Dixon presents a timely history of how the meaning and experience of friendship have changed over the centuries. Episode Four: Webs of Loyalty Renaissance thinkers insisted that friendships were purely about emotional ties, but, in reality, friendships are often formed for more instrumental reasons - to give practical support in times of need. "That's what friends are...

Social networking appears to be expanding our circles of friendship just as our sense of community is contracting: Dr Thomas Dixon presents a timely history of how the meaning and experience of friendship have changed over the centuries. Episode Three: Love Your Enemies At a time when Christianity taught a gospel of universal love, including loving your enemy, individuals might still find themselves drawn to particular friendships. The Bible itself contained such contradictions, as the 17th...

Social networking appears to be expanding our circles of friendship just as our sense of community is contracting: Dr Thomas Dixon presents a timely history of how the meaning and experience of friendship have changed over the centuries. Episode Two: A Marriage of Minds Having launched the series by exploring the close-knit but instrumental friendships which most people experienced in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Dr Thomas Dixon turns to the elite ideal of friendship as...

Social networking appears to be expanding our circles of friendship just as our sense of community is contracting: Dr Thomas Dixon presents a timely, major new history of how the meaning and experience of friendship have changed over the centuries. Episode One: Gossips and Goodfellows In the 16th century, friendships were generally limited to an overlapping network of family members and neighbours, who lived and worked in close proximity, and shared their lives at home, in church, at the...