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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: Happily Ever After

The Essay: Happily Ever After: Episode 4: Julia Eccleshare

Documentaries

Factual: Families & Relationships

Happily Ever After

Episode 4

Episode 4: Julia Eccleshare

Julia Eccleshare

BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, Happily Ever After, Julia Eccleshare

Julia Eccleshare discusses Jacqueline Wilson's thoroughly modern fairytales.

Julia Eccleshare considers the changing role of the family in children's literature. Exploring Jacqueline Wilson's The Illustrated Mum, Julia discusses modern fairytales.

In this series of five essays, contemporary children's authors and editors each look at a fictional family from children's literature. They use it as a focal point to explore the changing portrayal of the family in children's books, and consider both what it tells us about the society it reflects, and how relevant it is to determining a young generation's attitudes to the future. 

In the fourth programme of the series, writer, broadcaster and lecturer Julia Eccleshare looks at Jacqueline Wilson's The Illustrated Mum. 
Although Wilson was appointed Children's Laureate in 2005 in recognition of her work, for the first twenty years of her career her books were treated with caution by many parents who dismissed them as social realism and unsuitable for children. Julia explores the possibility that, instead of breaking the rules of "happily ever after", Jacqueline Wilson is actually telling thoroughly modern fairy stories which reflect the social/economic upheavals of today, in the same way that our original fairy stories reflected the problems of their times. 
Julia goes on to examine our continuing need for such fairy tales, which help to teach children not to be frightened by the world.

First broadcast in February 2012.

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.

Contemporary children's authors and editors each explore a fictional family in literature.

Children's authors and editors explore a fictional family in literature. They consider the changing portrayal of the family, asking what it says about society and young people's attitudes

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Episode 4: Julia Eccleshare

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