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Four essays about free thinking figures and places in North-East England whose ideas challenged their times, recorded in front of live audiences at ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ Radio 3's Free Thinking festival of ideas at The Sage Gateshead in 2009. In the first essay writer and filmmaker Graeme Rigby looks back at the career of T Dan Smith, the Newcastle city boss whose architectural "Brasilia of the North" captured the headlines in the 1960s. Smith's spectacular fall from grace - jailed for corruption in 1974 - has written him out of history. But do the ideas and regional ambitions of this out-of-the-ordinary politician still resonate today?
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