The Kristapurana
Amazing travels of the first Englishman in India & a hunt for a lost poetic masterpiece.
Nov 18, 2018•44 min
The Radio 3 Documentary
In-depth documentaries which explore a different aspect of history, science, philosophy, film, visual arts and literature. The Sunday Feature is broadcast every Sunday at 6.45pm on BBC Radio 3.
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Episodes
Sunday Feature: New Generation Thinkers
Two features by R3 New Generation Thinkers. Dr Simon Beard and Dr Islam Issa
Nov 04, 2018•43 min
Sunday Feature: New Generation Thinkers Hetta Howes and Eleanor Lybeck
Two Features by R3 New Generation Thinkers Hetta Howes and Eleanor Lybeck.
Oct 28, 2018•44 min
Inside Stories
Author Carlo Gebler has spent nearly three decades working in the Northern Ireland prison system as a teacher of creative writing. He's been in all the prisons there - including the notorious Maze/Long Kesh H-Blocks - and has done everything from basic literacy to high end literature; letters to victims to Open University essays. As many of the prisoners Carlo has worked with in their cells would testify, he's spent a long time inside. Now Carlo wants to know if prison arts and education made an...
Oct 22, 2018•44 min
Forests of The Imagination
Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough enters the forests of our imagination, looking for stories. Alternative realities, holy quests and fairytales hidden among the glories of the Autumn forest. Despite our evolution in the African rainforests, Eleanor wonders whether it is tales from the frozen North that have given us the most potent forests of the imagination, invading our psyche, inhabiting our stories, inspiring our architecture, Legendary fairytale guru Jack Zipes introduces us to the darker side o...
Oct 15, 2018•43 min
A Portrait of Parry
Sir Hubert Parry is largely remembered today for a handful of iconic works including Jerusalem, I was Glad, Blest Pair of Sirens, and for writing the hymn tune to Dear Lord and Father of Mankind. But Parry was far more significant than these few works which have remained in the public consciousness. In this centenary year since the composer’s death, Simon Heffer argues for a reevaluation of Parry not only as a composer, but as a writer and educationalist. In interview with biographer Jeremy Dibb...
Oct 08, 2018•43 min
Sunday Feature: A Life in Study: Robert Lowell
Author Colm Toibin profiles the turbulent and brilliant life of American poet Robert Lowell, once considered the greatest living poet in English. Four decades ago, the American poet Robert Lowell (1917-1977) died quietly in the back of a New York taxi. In his arms, he clutched a priceless portrait of his third wife, the Guinness heiress Lady Caroline Blackwood. Yet Lowell was on his way to see - and hopefully reconcile with - another woman: his beloved second wife, Elizabeth Hardwick. At the tim...
Sep 24, 2018•44 min
Ken Campbell As Never Heard Before
Actors Jim Broadbent, Toby Jones and Sylvester McCoy join David Bramwell to celebrate Ken
Sep 09, 2018•44 min
From the Ashes
Allan Little looks at arts festivals started in the aftermath of World War Two
Aug 14, 2018•44 min
Monteverdi's Women
Catherine Fletcher explores Monterverdi's pioneering use of female roles and performers
Aug 13, 2018•44 min
The Killers
Adam Smith traces the birth and afterlife of Hemingway's explosive short story.
Aug 09, 2018•44 min
v. is for Tony
To mark Tony Harrison's 80th birthday, Paul Farley profiles the unique poet. (R)
Aug 07, 2018•43 min
I Know an Island - RM Lockley
Jon Gower uncovers the work of the pioneering naturalist RM Lockley, whose work inspired Watership Down, paying tribute to the stunning coastline and island where Lockley worked.
Aug 06, 2018•44 min
In Search of Yves Klein
Liliane Lijn explores the work of postwar French artist Yves Klein, famous for patenting ultramarine blue and jumping from a window in the suburbs of Paris. Leap into the Void!
Jul 16, 2018•44 min
Tony Harrison's Prague Spring
Chris Bowlby travels with Tony Harrison to Prague, to discover how one of Britain's best known poets was shaped by the cultural energy and tragedy of 1960s Czechoslovakia. Harrison reads from his Prague poems in the locations where they were written. And he relives with Czech friends stories of cafes and cartoons, sex and surveillance and the hope and despair of a people fighting Soviet tanks and secret police with words, plays and tragic self-sacrifice. Producer: Chris Bowlby Editor: Penny Murp...
Jul 08, 2018•44 min
Binary and Beyond: part two
Emma Smith on how coverage of gender in the arts might help us understand today's debate
Jul 01, 2018•44 min
Binary and Beyond Part 1
Might explorations of gender in great art of the past help illuminate today's issues?
Jun 24, 2018•43 min
The Summer Forest
Once upon a time, Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough woke up in the summer forest.
Jun 15, 2018•45 min
David Attenborough - World Music Collector
David Attenborough reveals a side of himself that nobody knows, as a collector of music from all over the world. We hear the stories that surround it, and the music itself. One of David Attenborough's first projects was 'Alan Lomax - Song Hunter', a television series he produced in 1953-4. The famous collector of the blues and folk music of America gathered traditional musicians from all over Britain and Ireland and, for the first time, they appeared on television. David loved the music, the peo...
May 21, 2018•44 min
Japan's Never Ending War
Rana Mitter visits Tokyo to explore how Japan remembers World War Two today through film.
May 11, 2018•44 min
Oh Dr Kinsey Look What You've Done to Me
Exploring different aspects of history, science, philosophy and the arts.
May 06, 2018•44 min
Japan's Never-Ending War
Rana Mitter visits Tokyo to explore how Japan remembers World War Two through movies.
May 03, 2018•44 min
Japan's Never-Ending War
Rana Mitter visits Tokyo to explore how Japan remembers World War Two today through film.
Apr 29, 2018•44 min
Sunday Feature: Supernatural Japan
In this Sunday Feature, historian Chris Harding travels from Tokyo to the deep countryside of Japan's north east to tell the alternative story of the country, looking at how, throughout their history, Japanese people have used ghosts and ghost stories to make sense of themselves and their place in the world. In the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, taxi drivers in the area reported 'ghost riders' in their vehicles. The local fire services were called out regularly to locations...
Apr 22, 2018•44 min
Exit Burbage - The Man Who Created Hamlet
Imagine where we’d be without Shakespeare’s plays. It’s difficult to contemplate now. But it was thanks to another man that many of them were brought to life. Today, Richard Burbage is a not a household name. But he should be. He’s the man for whom many of the great Shakespearean roles were created. One of the founding members of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, playing at the newly built Globe in 1599, he’s one of the foundations upon which British theatre was built. Andrew Dickson talks to leading ...
Apr 16, 2018•44 min
Too Many Artists
Paul Morley asks "Can there be too many artists in the world?"
Apr 08, 2018•44 min
Sunday Feature - Blind, Black and Blue
There were many real blind, black bluesman, scraping a living in the Deep South a hundred years ago. From Blind Willie Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson on opposite street corners in Dallas to Blind Blake and Blind Boy Fuller in Georgia and the Carolinas, the early 20th century saw blind bluesmen playing everything from the lewd, raw blues of the juke joint to the God-fearing spirituals beloved of the new wave of Southern churches and with a musical legacy that's lasted through the decades. How ...
Mar 19, 2018•43 min
Sunday Feature - Concerto: The One and the Many
Acclaimed actor Simon Russell Beale is fascinated by the concerto and how the role of the soloist has evolved from baroque times to now. In this Sunday Feature (exploring the theme of this year's Free Thinking Festival - The One and the Many), Simon explores the complex dynamics between the soloist and orchestra, drawing parallels between the world of the concerto and that of the stage. He asks whether the concerto really is a competition between the soloist and the orchestra or a deeper musical...
Mar 15, 2018•44 min
Literary Pursuits - Jekyll and Hyde
Sarah Dillon discovers the story behind the writing of R.L. Stevenson's horror classic
Feb 26, 2018•44 min
The Radio 3 Documentary: Radio Controlled
Robert Worby on how post-war German radio and new music were conscripted to fight the cultural cold war, juggling political, economic and cultural forces outside of their control.
Feb 12, 2018•44 min
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