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Front Row: Sir David Attenborough and his love of fossils

Sir David Attenborough and his love of fossils

12/11/2010

BBC Radio 4 - Front Row, Sir David Attenborough and his love of fossils

Sir David Attenborough on fossils; war artists on working in Afghanistan.

With Kirsty Lang. Sir David Attenborough on his quest for the origins of life in the new TV series, First Life. Tony Palmer remembers composer Henryk Gorecki who has died.

Sir David Attenborough has returned to the subject closest to his heart in the natural world in his new two-part television series First Life. Fossils reveal the very origins of life on Earth, and David Attenborough discusses why this is such a personal quest for him.

Following the announcement of the shortlisted authors for the BBC National Short Story Award 2010, the first of the five writers, David Constantine, discusses his short story, Tea at the Midland, ahead of its broadcast on Radio 4 on Monday.

Henryk Gorecki, who died today aged 76, was a Polish composer who achieved immense popularity in Western Europe and America in the 1990s thanks to the ethereal splendour of his Symphony No 3, Symphony of Sorrowful Songs. Tony Palmer remembers visiting Auschwitz with Gorecki, for a film about the Symphony, and talks about the power of his music

Painter Marcus Hodge was commissioned by 3 Rifles to spend time with them in Afghanistan and create a portrait of their work in Sangin. Multi-media artist David Cotterrell was sent by the Wellcome Trust to Afghanistan to devise a piece about medicine and war. In the season of Remembrance, Front Row explores the experience of being asked to depict conflict: talking to David Cotterrell, Marcus Hodge and Lt Col Nick Kitson, C.O. of 3 Rifles - and to Roger Tolson, head of collections at The Imperial War Museum, which has been commissioning war artists since the First World War.

Producer Nicki Paxman.

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