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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

Radio 3

The Essay Podcast

The Essay

Discussion & Talk

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: Wild Things

The Essay: Wild Things: Episode 4: The Butterfly

The Butterfly

Episode 4

Episode 4: The Butterfly

Wild Things

BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, Wild Things, The ButterflyClose menu

Writer Ruth Padel considers our attitudes to butterflies in the British landscape.

Poet and writer Ruth Padel considers our attitudes to butterflies in the British landscape and asks how literature, biology and history have shaped our responses to them.

From Meadowbrown to Painted Ladies, the allure of butterflies has traditionally been strong. We love their colours and exotic names and use them as images of freedom and fragility coupled with inner strength. But why do we respond to them in this way? In the fourth of her series of Essays looking at creatures in the British landscape, the poet and writer Ruth Padel explores how our attitudes to the butterfly have been shaped and uncovers a host of associations that it has taken on in literature and science. 

Producer: Emma Kingsley.

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.

Poet and writer Ruth Padel explores our reactions to five British wild animals

Series in which poet and writer Ruth Padel explores our reactions to five British wild animals, through history, literature, folklore, science and cinema

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Episode 4: The Butterfly

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