Original version

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

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

Twenty Minutes

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media: Arts

Eclectic arts magazine programme, exploring a range of fascinating subjects

Eclectic arts magazine programme, exploring a range of fascinating people, places and events

Twenty Minutes: Requiem for a Garden of Eden

Documentaries

Audiobooks

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Factual: History

Requiem for a Garden of Eden

27/11/2009

BBC Radio 3 - Twenty Minutes, Requiem for a Garden of Eden

Janet Todd's requiem for an abandoned Venetian garden with a magical literary past.

Scholar and writer Professor Janet Todd peers over the wall into an abandoned Venetian garden and recalls its magical literary past.

Scholar and writer Professor Janet Todd stumbled across the abandoned Garden of Eden on the Venetian island of La Giudecca by accident. Curious about this lost and neglected paradise she set about discovering its magical literary past. 

Created in 1884 by Sir Anthony Eden's great uncle Frederick Eden and his wife, the garden was a heavily scented romantic haven visited by a host of writers including Proust, Jean Cocteau and Henry James. It was the backdrop to countless love affairs and quarrels, passing from the Edens to Greek royalty and ending up in the hands of the eccentric Austrian artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser who preferred nettles and brambles to roses and lilies.

Today the garden is overgrown and locked. Todd's requiem to this little known jewel hidden behind high walls recalls the perfumed years when artists and aesthetes revelled in its beauty.

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.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Twenty Minutes

Requiem for a Garden of Eden

Genres

Formats

Brand

BBC Radio 3

About BBC Radio 3