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

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The Essay Podcast

The Essay

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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: British War Films of the 50s

The Essay: British War Films of the 50s: Episode 4: Carve Her Name with Pride

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British War Films of the 50s

Episode 4

Episode 4: Carve Her Name with Pride

Carve Her Name with Pride

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Writer Simon Heffer celebrates the 1958 film Carve Her Name with Pride.

Historian and writer Simon Heffer celebrates the 1958 film Carve Her Name with Pride, a sober and shocking war story which, unusually for its era, had a female lead character.

Simon Heffer is passionate about the British Second World War films which were made after the war was over. While it is easy to mock some of these films for their cliche-ridden characters - thin-lipped Nazi officers, cheerful British Tommies and understated heroic officers - Carve Her Name with Pride is an exception. 

Amongst the most sober and shocking of films from this era, Carve Her Name with Pride is also one of the few films in this genre which has a female lead. 

Virginia McKenna stars at Violette Szabo, an ordinary south London shop girl who became a member of the Special Operations Executive, parachuted into Occupied France where she aided the Resistance until her luck ran out and she was captured, tortured and killed by the Germans. 

Simon Heffer discusses the adaptation of this real-life story and looks at how it was depicted on screen, from basic training through courage and torture to the tear-jerking closing scenes. 

Producer: Beaty Rubens.

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.

Historian and writer Simon Heffer celebrates British military films made in the 1950s

Historian and writer Simon Heffer discusses British military films made in the 1950s, celebrating their individual qualities and their depiction of the changing world of post-war Britain

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