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BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

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The Essay Podcast

The Essay

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Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Essays from leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond.

Leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond, themed across a week - insight, opinion and intellectual surprise.

The Essay: Postcards from Istanbul

The Essay: Postcards from Istanbul: Episode 5: Huzun

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Postcards from Istanbul

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Episode 5: Huzun

Huzun

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Writer Maureen Freely on the great feeling of melancholy that enveloped 1960s Istanbul.

Writing from Istanbul today, academic Maureen Freely reflects on 'huzun', the great feeling of melancholy described by Orhan Pamuk that seemed to envelop the city of her youth.

Hüzün: writer Maureen Freely delivers her own despatch from the city of her youth, in which she explores 'hüzün', the feeling of collective melancholy that used to linger over the city that she knew as a child. 

Famously described by Orhan Pamuk, whose work Freely translates, 'hüzün' is the feeling of decay, sadness and nostaligia that seemed to envelop the Istanbul of the sixties and seventies, a time when things were changing fast, but when 'Old Istanbul' was still visible in the boats, buildings and even the people of the city. Now, some fifty years on, Istanbul is certainly a very different, more modern city, but one in which the feeling of 'hüzün' can still be sensed in its isolated, hidden-away corners. 

Istanbul, historically also known as Byzantium and Constantinople, is the largest city in Turkey, and uniquely straddles both the continents of Europe and Asia. These essays paint three very different and very personal views of this extraordinary city.

Maureen Freely is a journalist, novelist, translator and lecturer. She grew up in Istanbul, and much of her family is still based there. She is also the English translator of Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk's recent 
works.

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Five writers and intellectuals give their views on Istanbul, Turkey's largest city

Celebrating Istanbul's year as European Capital of Culture in 2010, five writers and intellectuals give their views on Turkey's largest city

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