In this first programme of the series, actor and writer Catherine Harvey heads to Blackpool for the annual Dialect Festival, which took place before lockdown.

The festival is a celebration of dialect speaking and writing - with participants from as far afield as Cornwall and Northumberland, Kent and Cumbria, gathering for a weekend of poetry, storytelling and song.

Catherine catches up with festival founder Sid Calderbank at a hotel on the seafront to discuss this unique meeting of dialect enthusiasts, and enjoys dialect performances from all over England. She talks to Rod Dimbleby, Chair of the Yorkshire Dialect Society, about Joseph Wright and the first Dialect Dictionary, and to writer and historian Paul Salveson about the future of dialect in our modern world, before the Festival draws to a close at nearby Little Marton windmill - now a museum to local dialect writer Allen Clarke (aka Teddy Ashton) whose work once inspired Tolstoy.

Other episodes in this series look at dialect poetry in East Lincolnshire, The Black Country and The Forest of Dean.

A Made in Manchester production for BBC Radio 4 Show less