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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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Radio 3’s flagship arts programme until 2013. Over 350 editions available in the archive.

Radio 3’s flagship arts programme until 2013. Search the extensive archive for interviews, debates and reviews. Go to Free Thinking for the new home of arts and ideas on Radio 3.

Night Waves: Sir John Major, Salman Rushdie, Julietta

Sir John Major, Salman Rushdie, Julietta

18/09/2012

BBC Radio 3 - Night Waves, Sir John Major, Salman Rushdie, Julietta

Matthew Sweet talks to Salman Rushdie about his time living under the Iranian Fatwa.

Matthew Sweet meets former prime minister Sir John Major, whose new book examines the history of music hall. Plus writer Salman Rushdie and a review Martinu's opera Julietta.

The English National Opera's new season continues with Julietta, a rarely performed surrealist work by Bohuslav Martinu. It tells the story of Michel, a travelling salesman, who returns to a village he visited several years ago, in search of his lost love. However, when he arrives he discovers all of the villagers suffer from amnesia and the woman of his dreams may in fact be just that, a figment of his imagination. Susan Hitch reviews.

Sir John Major's upbringing was far from conventional: his father was a comedian and singer. In his memoir, My Old Man, the former Prime Minister uses his father's story as a springboard to look behind the curtain of the music hall - from its origins in Elizabethan times through to its heyday in the 19th century, and its eventual decline with the rise of radio and cinema. He's joined by music hall legend Roy Hudd to discuss the performers and history of this quintessentially British public entertainment. 

Joseph Anton lived a quiet life, as quiet as was humanly possible. He is the pseudonym of Salman Rushdie during his life under Fatwa. 'Joseph' after Joseph Conrad and 'Anton' after Chekhov. In his new autobiographical novel, Rushdie describes how Joseph Anton tried to hide in the dark while out in the real world many Salman Rushdies were pilloried and hunted. He examines what happens when you lose control of the way in which you are represented in the world - is this man Joseph the real Salman Rushdie or were the others? Matthew Sweet talks to the real Salman Rushdie about life under a death sentence.

Producer: Gavin Heard.

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.

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