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

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

Night Waves

Discussion & Talk

Magazines & Reviews

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Radio 3’s flagship arts programme until 2013. Over 350 editions available in the archive.

Radio 3’s flagship arts programme until 2013. Search the extensive archive for interviews, debates and reviews. Go to Free Thinking for the new home of arts and ideas on Radio 3.

Night Waves: 12/07/2010

12/07/2010

BBC Radio 3 - Night Waves, 12/07/2010

Philip Dodd with the arts and ideas programme, including a debate on the value of optimism

Philip Dodd with the arts and ideas programme, including a debate on the value of optimism and the story of Philip Larkin's love affair with jazz.

Philip Dodd will be discussing Philip Larkin's love of jazz. For many years the poet was the jazz reviewer of The Telegraph - 'few things in life have given me greater pleasure than listening to jazz', he wrote. Philip is joined by Larkin's friend John White who has compiled a new CD compilation of Larkin's favourite music and the poet Paul Farley to discuss the relationship between poetry and jazz in Larkin's work.

What is the value of optimism? Mark Twain once said that an optimist is a person who travels on nothing from nowhere to happiness. And yet today our culture seems suspicious of optimism. Where hope once pervaded the arts it is now generally regarded as shallow and unsophisticated. Philip is joined by Tony Benn, the former Bishop of Edinburgh Richard Holloway, Anne Karpf and the political theorist Kenneth Minogue to debate the nature of optimism.

John Akomfrah, director of the influential 1986 film 'Handsworth Songs' will be talking to Philip about his new work, 'Mnemosyne', a meditation on migration and the West Midlands.

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.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Night Waves

12/07/2010

Genres

Brand

BBC Radio 3

About BBC Radio 3