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

BBC Radio 3

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Twenty Minutes

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media: Arts

Eclectic arts magazine programme, exploring a range of fascinating subjects

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Twenty Minutes: Rimbaud in London's Desolation Row

Rimbaud in London's Desolation Row

18/11/2010

BBC Radio 3 - Twenty Minutes, Rimbaud in London's Desolation Row

Programme about the last London home of poet lovers Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine.

Programme about the last London home of poet lovers Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine. The building is both shrine and memorial to them.

In the back streets behind London's Kings Cross station, in a rather grimy street, stands the last London home of Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine, the notorious poet lovers. Despite an anonymous exterior 9, Royal College Street, is both shrine and memorial to the poet lovers, who went on an orgy of drinking and debauchery during their infamous sojourn in England. Simon Callow draws on his great knowledge of the two poets, and also invites comment from Kings Cross Poet Aiden Dunn and Graham Henderson, who has devoted himself to trying to turn the house into a cultural centre. 

It was here, in 1873, that the couple moved into their final home together, a garret room that would see both important literary work completed, and more than one violent argument take place. It was also the scene of the final fight that sent Verlaine, furious and wounded, to abandon his love and flee back to the Continent, where their final tragic confrontation would take place. 

London was both refuge and inspiration to the two provocatures and these walls witnessed the love, turmoil and destruction that followed thier last fight. 

Producer: Sara Jane Hall.

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.

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