The Essay

Kenneth Steven looks at Rum, a wild and windswept Hebridean island, and responds to its landscape in poetry. Rum is the largest of a group making up the 'Small Isles', Rum, Muck, Eigg and Canna, lying west of the fishing port of Mallaig in the Scottish Highlands. 'I don't know a Hebridean island more beautiful to approach. Every time I do I think of it again as a treasure island.'Its remote and rugged beauty attracted an eccentric Victorian industrialist, who bought it and attempted to transform it into his own vision of an island home, complete with a castle. 'The castle itself was built of red sandstone and shaped from the Isle of Arran. Greenhouses were brought for the growing of peaches, grapes and nectarines. There were heated pools for turtles and alligators; an aviary was constructed for birds of paradise and humming birds.' It was not to last, and Kenneth looks at what's left of the island fantasy today, leaving him with a profound sense of sadness.

Poet Kenneth Steven has a special relationship with the small Hebridean island of Iona, set in the Atlantic off the west coast of Scotland. It was the place of learning and worship in the 6th century, when St Columba brought Christianity from Ireland and set up a monastery, and today it still has a spiritual quality for many of its visitors. Kenneth has visited since he was a child and collected stones polished by the sea along its beaches. Today he reflects on Iona's place as a 'meeting of the sea roads, which has had such a profound impact on so many, and has done for longer than we can ever know'. '..That is why I keep returning, thirsty, to this place That is older than my understanding, Younger than my broken spirit.'.

Author and broadcaster Sarah Churchwell describes the spell that female film stars of the 1930s and '40s have over her..From Barbara Stanwyck, 'the tough broad', to a vision of modernity who is all 'satin' and 'chrome'. The author moves on to consider the original 'blonde bombshell' - Jean Harlow.Producer Duncan Minshull.

Author and broadcaster Sarah Churchwell describes the spell that female film stars of the 1930's and 40's have over her.From stately Katharine Hepburn she moves on to think about Barbara Stanwyck - 'the tough dame' - who could do more with a raised eyebrow and 'side-eye' than anybody else around.Producer Duncan Minshull.

Author and broadcaster Sarah Churchwell describes the spell that female film stars of the 1930s and '40s have over her..She begins her series with Katharine Hepburn, the so-called 'Ice Queen', who inspired the young author growing up in Chicago and lacking any role models. One day she watched The Philadelphia Story on television and life changed forever ...Producer Duncan Minshull.

Novelist Ian Sansom has a theory to put to Queen of crime, Agatha Christie.

A letter of apology to Virginia Woolf from novelist, Ian Sansom.

Novelist Ian Sansom pens a missive to George Eliot...

Novelist Ian Sansom fires off a letter to Geoffrey Chaucer...

How James Baldwin's short story helped a doctor and her patient break down the divisions of class, age and race. This is part one of The Essay's five-part series, Narrative Medicine - a term coined to describe the capacity to recognize, absorb, metabolize, interpret, and be moved by stories of illness. Simply - it's medicine practised by someone who knows what to do with stories. Part of the BBC's NHS at 70 season. Warning: this episode deals with serious medical issues and trauma.