The Essay

What is it about forests that inspires our imagination? In this series of Essays for our Into the Forest season, Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough takes five woodland walks with writers and artists who find themselves moved by the sounds, textures and smells of the forest.She's joined first by Fiona Stafford, author of 'The Long, Long Life of Trees' and expert on the Romantic poets. Fiona is fascinated by the moment in the late 18th century when Britain's great forests were swept away by the demands of the Royal Navy and the Enclosure Acts. As the dark forests with their brigands and wild beasts disappeared, novelists and visual artists were free to conjure up their own dappled glades, to create spaces of romantic imagination.Producer: Alasdair CrossIn midsummer week, Radio 3 enters one of the most potent sources of the human imagination. 'Into the Forest' explores the enchantment, escape and magical danger of the forest in summer, with slow radio moments featuring the sounds of the forest, allowing time out from today's often frenetic world.

Recorded at this week's Hay Festival 2018, Mab Jones introduces us to her favourite female character in literature - Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, with whom she identifies most - and extracts the lessons we could all learn from her.Mab is a poet and a recent recipient of a Creative Wales Award, and a frequent presenter of BBC radio documentaries, including 'Hiraeth' and 'The Black Chair'. Mab is also the coordinator of International Dylan Thomas Day, consisting of 62 events around the globe. Her publications include 'Poor Queen' and 'take your experience and peel it'.In this series of The Essay, five female writers offer a personal guide to favourite and well-known female fictional characters - extracting the lessons we could all learn from them.The writers in this series include broadcaster Afua Hirsch, historian Bettany Hughes, poet Fiona Sampson and award-winning novelist Francesca Rhydderch.With Lunchtime Concert, In Tune, Free Thinking, The Verb and The Listening Service all broadcasting from the festival, The Essay is part of Hay Week at BBC Radio 3.

Recorded at this week's Hay Festival 2018, Francesca Rhydderch introduces us to her favourite female character in literature - Virginia Woolf's, arguably, most playful and ground-breaking character Orlando from her novel 'Orlando: A Biography' - and extracts the lessons we could all learn from her.Francesca is an Associate Professor at Swansea University, with her area of expertise in creative writing. Her debut novel, 'The Rice Paper Diaries', won the Wales Book of the Year Fiction Prize 2014 and her novel 'The Taxidermist's Daughter' was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award in the same year.In this series of The Essay, five female writers offer a personal guide to favourite and well-known female fictional characters - extracting the lessons we could all learn from them.The writers in this series include broadcaster Afua Hirsch, historian Bettany Hughes and poets Fiona Sampson and Mab Jones.With Lunchtime Concert, In Tune, Free Thinking, The Verb and The Listening Service all broadcasting from the festival, The Essay is part of Hay Week at BBC Radio 3.

Recorded at this week's Hay Festival 2018, Fiona Sampson introduces us to her favourite female character in literature - Bertolt Brecht's anti-heroine Mother Courage, from his play 'Mother Courage and Her Children' - and extracts the lessons we could all learn from her.Fiona is an award-winning poet and writer, who has published nearly 30 books, including collections of poetry and works on writing process. She contributes articles to newspapers including The Guardian, Sunday Times and The Independent. Her most recent publication is 'On the White Plain: the search for Mary Shelley'. Fiona was awarded an MBE in 2017.In this series of The Essay, five female writers offer a personal guide to favourite and well-known female fictional characters - extracting the lessons we could all learn from them.The writers in this series include broadcaster Afua Hirsch, historian Bettany Hughes, award-winning novelist Francesca Rhydderch and poet Mab Jones.With Lunchtime Concert, In Tune, Free Thinking, The Verb and The Listening Service all broadcasting from the festival, The Essay is part of Hay Week at BBC Radio 3.

Recorded at this week's Hay Festival 2018, Bettany Hughes introduces us to her favourite female character in literature - Helen of Troy; a character written about in fiction for millennia - and extracts the lessons we could all learn from her.Bettany is an historian, author and broadcaster, with her speciality in classical history. She has written a number of books including 'Helen of Troy: Goddess, Princess, Whore' and has presented for BBC Radio 3 for the Sunday Feature strand, for 'The Romans in Britain' in 2011 and for BBC Radio 4 in for a 3-part series 'Amongst the Medici' in 2006.In this series of The Essay, five female writers offer a personal guide to favourite and well-known female fictional characters - extracting the lessons we could all learn from them.The writers in this series include broadcaster Afua Hirsch, poets Fiona Sampson and Mab Jones and award-winning novelist Francesca Rhydderch.With Lunchtime Concert, In Tune, Free Thinking, The Verb and The Listening Service all broadcasting from the festival, The Essay is part of Hay Week at BBC Radio 3.

Afua Hirsch introduces us to her favourite female character in literature - Maggie Tulliver from George Eliot’s ‘Mill on the Floss’ – and extracts the lessons we could all learn from her. Recorded at this week’s Hay Festival 2018,Afua is a writer, broadcaster and journalist; she is also a barrister with a speciality in international development. Her first book, titled ‘Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging, was published in January 2018.In this series of The Essay, five female writers offer a personal guide to favourite and well-known female fictional characters - extracting the lessons we could all learn from them.The writers in this series include historian Bettany Hughes, poets Fiona Sampson and Mab Jones and award-winning novelist Francesca Rhydderch.With Lunchtime Concert, In Tune, Free Thinking, The Verb and The Listening Service all broadcasting from the festival, The Essay is part of Hay Week at BBC Radio 3.

Joanna Robertson is a journalist and mother who has lived in five foreign countries, where she has observed that local shopping habits tell you a lot about the place. In these Essays, she argues that when people go shopping, they don't just purchase goods, they also buy into something else. Joanna Robertson takes us shopping with the locals and explores these ulterior motives and what they reveal about the residents of five cities: Rome, New York, Berlin, Tirana and Joanna's current home, Paris. Thus book-shopping in New York is also about intellectual validation - or, as Joanna found when shopping for books with the late Susan Sontag, about building intellectual bridges to Europe. Producer: Arlene Gregorius.

Joanna Robertson is a journalist and mother who has lived in five foreign countries, where she has observed that local shopping habits tell you a lot about the place. In these Essays, she argues that when people go shopping, they don't just purchase goods, they also buy into something else. Joanna Robertson takes us shopping with the locals and explores these ulterior motives and what they reveal about the residents of five cities: Rome, New York, Berlin, Tirana and Joanna's current home, Paris. When Parisians shop for, or sell, traditional, locally produced high-quality food, it's not just because they revere it, but also because it's part of a deeply entrenched culture that dates back to the nineteenth century. Owners of specialist food shops like Madame Acabo and her to-die-for chocolates are the heirs of key individuals like the lawyer, politician and gastronome of genius, Brillat-Savarin (whose Physiology of Taste, published in 1825, has never been out of print), and the aristocrat Grimod de la ReyniÃre who wrote not only gastronomic almanacs and journals, but also reviews of the new phenomenon called "le restaurant" - one of which, a very successful one using only locally sourced ingredients, he set up himself. Producer: Arlene Gregorius.

Joanna Robertson is a journalist and mother who has lived in five foreign countries, where she has observed that local shopping habits tell you a lot about the place. In these Essays, she argues that when people go shopping, they don't just purchase goods, they also buy into something else. Joanna Robertson takes us shopping with the locals and explores these ulterior motives and what they reveal about the residents of five cities: Rome, New York, Berlin, Tirana and Joanna's current home, Paris.In this edition, she finds that shopping for toys in Berlin reveals an attitude to childhood and nature that's unique to Germany. Germany's concept of nature is deeply rooted in the concepts of nineteenth-century German Romanticism, which in turn is reflected in German toys, and childhood. The child is the Wanderer, journeying through the boundless realms of creativity and dreams, close to the beauty, teachings and wonders of Nature. It's a childhood of great freedom, and responsibility. Producer: Arlene Gregorius.

Joanna Robertson is a journalist and mother who has lived in five foreign countries, where she has observed that local shopping habits tell you a lot about the place. In these Essays, she argues that when people go shopping, they don't just purchase goods, they also buy into something else. Joanna Robertson takes us shopping with the locals and explores these ulterior motives and what they reveal about the residents of five cities: Rome, New York, Berlin, Tirana and Joanna's current home, Paris. When Romans shop for traditional foods and delicacies in local family-run businesses, they also buy into a local identity - that's now under threat.Italy was only unified in the nineteenth century, and local roots and identities often go deeper than national ones. One way that Romans express and nourish this local identity is by shopping in traditional family-run businesses that take pride in their products. The "forno" bakery on Campo de' Fiori has counted the Borgias and Rossini among its regulars. In the Trastevere area, Romans queue up for the pizzas and black cherry tarts of the Boccioni kosher bakery that dates back to the eighteenth century. However, many traditional shops are selling up because the children head into professions rather than behind the counter, or because of cash offers from mysterious buyers that the owners can't refuse. Previously legitimate family businesses like bars and restaurants are being taken over by the mafia, who keep the names and decor, but put in their own staff, and use ingredients from mafia controlled farms. Romans are deeply distressed by how unrecognisable their city has become, and the erosion of identity that this has brought. Producer: Arlene Gregorius.