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BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

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Something Understood

Religion & Ethics

Ethical and religious discussion that examines some of the larger questions of life

Ethical and religious discussion that examines some of the larger questions of life, taking a spiritual theme and exploring it through music, prose and poetry

BBC Radio 4 LW

Something Understood: When an Angel Passes

When an Angel Passes

23/12/2012

BBC Radio 4 - Something Understood, When an Angel Passes

Alan Hall reflects on those moments in life 'when an angel passes'.

A glimpse of the angelic in the everyday can surprise, delight and unsettle us at any moment. Alan Hall reflects on those moments 'when an angel passes'.

William Blake's childhood vision of a tree on Peckham Rye filled with angels, 'bright angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars', offers a starting point for Alan Hall's reflections on the angelic in the everyday.

He makes reference to a short story by Gabriel Garcia Marquez about a 'very old man with enormous wings', poems by Rainer Maria Rilke and John Agard, and an extract from the moving conclusion of James Agee's novel about the death of his father. 

The programme also includes music by Sufjan Stevens, Gillian Welch and Johannes Brahms and a clip from the Powell and Pressburger film 'A Matter of Life and Death'.

Produced by Eleanor McDowall.
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4.

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

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