The European Eel

Ian McMillan explores the language and imagery of sea myths and folklore from Mermaids and Selkies to Shapeshifters and other mysterious sea creatures, both real and imagined.

Ian's guests include the poet Steve Ely whose book The European Eel is an epic poetic odyssey following the imagined journey of a single eel from the Sargasso Sea to the rivers of Europe, and back to its birthplace, to mate and die, Robin Robertson whose new collection Grimoire is a series of retellings and imaginings of Scottish folktales that are often brutal, but with a strange beauty, the film maker Alastair Cole who takes us into the Gaelic language and its stories of the tide and waves, and Imogen Hermes Gowar whose novel The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock, set in 18th-century London, explores the destructive sexual power of the mermaid, combining myth and legend with the harsh realities of the past.

Producer: Cecile Wright