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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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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: The Mystical Turn

The Essay: The Mystical Turn: Episode 4: Adela Curtis

Religion & Ethics

The Mystical Turn

Episode 4

Episode 4: Adela Curtis

Adela Curtis

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Dr Jane Shaw explores the life and writings of little-known mystic Adela Curtis.

Dr Jane Shaw, Dean of Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, explores the life and writings of the little-known, but charismatic, English mystic Adela Curtis, founder of the White Ladies.

In the fourth programme in our series, The Mystical Turn, Dr Jane Shaw, Dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, explores the life and writings of the little-known, but charismatic, English mystic Adela Curtis. 

Mystic, vegetarian, bookseller, sewage expert and much more besides, Adela Curtis was a remarkable woman. Born in 1864, she lived to the age of 96. After running a restaurant and bookshop in Kensington in the early years of the 20th century, she went on to found her own religious order for women - the Order of Silence - in Coldash, near Newbury in Berkshire. Members were celibate, vegetarian and contemplative, but the Order was not aligned with any particular church. 

In 1921, aged 57, Adela Curtis then retired to live near Burton Bradstock in Dorset. But her followers visited with such frequency that a new community was formed. Each member of the community lived in a simple hut surrounded by a small piece of land for cultivation. The women wove their own robes from undyed silk or cotton - resulting in their being dubbed the 'White Ladies' - by the locals. Visitors came from far and wide and Aldous Huxley thought Adela Curtis, who died in 1960, one of the greatest living mystics. 

Producer: Ian Willox
Executive Producer: Alan Hall

A Chrome Radio production for BBC Radio 3.

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.

Jane Shaw on a renewed interest in mysticism from the late 19th to the early 20th century.

Dr Jane Shaw, Dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, explores the revival of interest in mysticism and religious experience generally - at the end of the 19th and in the early 20th century

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