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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: Anglo-Saxon Portraits

The Essay: Anglo-Saxon Portraits: Episode 5: King Raedwald

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Factual: History

Anglo-Saxon Portraits

Episode 5

Episode 5: King Raedwald

King Raedwald

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Martin Carver discusses the inhabitant of the Sutton Hoo ship burial.

Martin Carver recreates the life, death and burial of the inhabitant of the Sutton Hoo ship burial, thought to be King Raedwald.

The Anglo Saxons are somewhat out of fashion, yet the half millennium between the creation of the English nation in around 550 and the Norman Conquest in 1066 was a formative one.

This major new series rediscovers the Anglo-Saxons through vivid portraits of thirty individuals by leading historians, archaeologists and enthusiasts in the field. 
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5.Raedwald: Martin Carver on the inhabitant of the magnificent Sutton Hoo ship burial

Martin Carver tells the sensational story of the unearthing of Britain's richest ever grave, at Sutton Hoo, in spring 1939. He goes on to describe the role of his own team from the University of York in the second wave of excavations there, and vividly recreates the life, death and burial of its probable inhabitant, King Raedwald. 

With a fabulous eye for detail, he describes some of the 263 objects of gold, silver, bronze, iron, gems, leather, wood, textiles, feather and fur, laid out in a wooden chamber at the centre of a buried ship. And he uses these to recreate the life and turbulent times of this early Anglo-Saxon king and his clever, devoted wife. 

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.

Portraits of ground-breaking Anglo-Saxon men and women from the era between 550 and 1066AD

Series of portraits of ground-breaking Anglo-Saxon men and women from the era between 550 and 1066AD

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Episode 5: King Raedwald

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