The Essay

As part of the BBC Music Get Playing, supporting amateur music making around the UK, 5 leading writers and artists contribute an Essay in this series, in which they talk about their little-known passions for playing an instrument. In the first programme, the impressionist, actor and writer Alistair McGowan describes his attempts to relearn the piano. He started learning as a child but gave it up to play football instead. He tried it again in his 30s but stopped when his TV series "The Big Impression" took over. Then, later on, after a midnight piano lesson on a cruise ship, he began in earnest again and discovered a new world of music-making. Alistair is fascinated by short pieces in particular. His special favourites are the pieces he heard his mother play and also ones he has discovered on piano courses and through hearing them on the radio. A tiny nugget of Satie, Mompou or John Field carries for him all the weight of human experience and channels a musical history into one small but perfect form. more info visit bbc.co.uk/getplaying Producer: Emma Kingsley.

In this series of The Essay, recorded this week in front of an audience at the Hay Festival, five writers explore The Art of Storytelling. The writers include linguist Prof. David Crystal, artist and memoirist Edmund de Waal, broadcaster and musician Clemency Burton-Hill and novelist Jon Gower.Today, Prof. Emma Smith takes a closer look at Shakespeare's skills as a storyteller and how his plots, where the outcome is often signposted from the beginning, still hold audiences enthralled.Part of Radio 3's week-long residency at the Hay Festival, with programmes In Tune, Lunchtime Concert, Free Thinking and The Verb all broadcasting from the Festival.

In this series of The Essay, recorded this week in front of an audience at Hay Festival, five writers explore The Art of Storytelling. The writers include artist and memoirist Edmund de Waal, broadcaster and musician Clemency Burton-Hill, Shakespeare scholar Professor Emma Smith and novelist Jon Gower. Today, with so many of the world's languages disappearing, Professor David Crystal asks how we can preserve for the future the many different stories of accent, dialect and language. Part of Radio 3's week-long residency at Hay Festival, with programmes In Tune, Lunchtime Concert, Free Thinking and The Verb all broadcasting from the Festival.

In this series of The Essay, recorded earlier this week in front of an audience at Hay Festival, five writers explore The Art of Storytelling. The writers include novelist Jon Gower, linguist Professor David Crystal, artist and memoirist Edmund de Waal and Shakespeare scholar Professor Emma Smith.Today broadcaster Clemency Burton-Hill considers the relationship between storytelling and music.Part of Radio 3's week-long residency at Hay Festival, with programmes In Tune, Lunchtime Concert, Free Thinking and The Verb all broadcasting from the Festival.

In this series of The Essay, recorded this week in front of an audience at Hay Festival, five writers explore The Art of Storytelling. The writers include linguist Professor David Crystal, broadcaster and musician Clemency Burton-Hill, artist and memoirist Edmund de Waal and Shakespeare scholar Professor Emma Smith. Today novelist and short story writer Jon Gower reflects on lessons learned from a master storyteller - his grandfather - and recalls an encounter with The Lady of the Lake.Part of Radio 3's week-long residency at Hay Festival, with programmes In Tune, Lunchtime Concert, Free Thinking and The Verb all broadcasting from the Festival.

In this series of The Essay, recorded this week in front of an audience at the Hay Festival, five writers explore The Art of Storytelling. The writers include linguist Prof. David Crystal, broadcaster and musician Clemency Burton-Hill, Shakespeare scholar Prof. Emma Smith and novelist Jon Gower.Today Edmund de Waal, artist and writer of the memoir 'The Hare With Amber Eyes' considers the idea of storytelling through objects, taking as his starting-point a fragment of 12th century porcelain he bought in a Chinese street-market.Part of Radio 3's week-long residency at the Hay Festival, with programmes In Tune, Lunchtime Concert, Free Thinking and The Verb all broadcasting from the Festival.

In Lines of Work prominent people in a particular job read and reflect on the writings of an illustrious forebear. In this essay the gardener Jackie Bennett responds to the ideas and principles laid out by the Elizabethan thinker Francis Bacon in his Essay 'Of Gardens'.Producer: James Cook.

In Lines of Work prominent people in a particular job read and reflect on the writings of an illustrious forebear of the same trade. The essays are partly about ideas and how they change, but also about the practice and experience of being a certain kind of thing; be it a teacher, a journalist, a soldier or a critic.Journalist Helen Lewis reads the poet John Milton's defence of a Free Press, Aeropagitica. The question of freedom of the press rarely goes away but it feels particularly of the moment. Helen, deputy editor of the New Statesman, reads Milton for the first time to see whether his 17th century concerns can help us think through the post-Leveson age.Producer: James Cook.

Prominent people in a particular line of work read and reflect on the writings of an illustrious forebear of the same trade. The essays are partly about ideas and how they change, but also about the practice and the human experience of being a certain kind of thing; be it a teacher, a soldier a critic or a journalist.Soldier and author Harry Parker, relives The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S Grant, through the lens of his own experiences in Helmand province. Grant fought in the US Mexican War and then commanded the Union armies in the American Civil War. Reading Grant's spare prose Harry reflects on the changes in the way war is experienced, consumed and portrayed.Producer: James Cook.

Prominent people in a particular line of work read and reflect on the writings of an illustrious forebear of the same trade. The essays are partly about ideas and how they change, but also about the practice and the human experience of being a certain kind of thing; be it a teacher, a soldier a critic or a journalist.Theatre critic Susannah Clapp has a passionate exchange of views with Oscar Wilde through his essays on criticism. Many of Wilde's pungent epithets and observations â€" his 'silken arrows' as Susannah describes them - still have the power to thrill, inform and entertain. But Susannah finds Wilde was on the wrong side of anonymity arguments and struggles to make sense of the internet age. Susannah ends telling her illustrious forebear of her fears for Wildean criticism in the age of mere opinion.Producer: James Cook.