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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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The Essay: Anglo-Saxon Portraits

The Essay: Anglo-Saxon Portraits: Episode 12: Bede, the Father of English History

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Anglo-Saxon Portraits

Episode 12

Episode 12: Bede, the Father of English History

Bede, the Father of English History

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Scholar of the Anglo-Saxons Lilian Groves explores the life and times of St Bede.

Academic Lilian Groves explores the life and times of St Bede, widely regarded as one of the world's greatest theological scholars.

This major new series rediscovers the Anglo-Saxons through vivid portraits of thirty individuals - women as well as men, famous and humble - portraits of thirty key figures from the era 550-1066 written and presented by leading historians, archaeologists and enthusiasts in the field. 

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.

Anglo-Saxon scholar and guide at Durham Cathedral where Bede is buried, Lilian Groves explores the life and times of the saint widely regarded as one of the greatest theological scholars who gave to the world 'The Ecclesiastical History of the English People' and marvels at the thousands of visitors from around the world who still come to worship at his tomb. In his lifetime, Bede lived in Northumbria - the edge of the known world. He never left the confines of his monastery yet he legacy is universal.

Contributors include Nobel prize-winner Seamus Heaney on the Beowulf bard, the departing Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams on the first Archbishop of Canterbury, St Augustine; writer David Almond on the oldest surviving English poet, Caedmon; Michael Wood on King Alfred; Martin Carver on Raedwald; Richard Gameson on Eadfrith the Scribe; Helena Hamerow on the peasant-farmer; Geoffrey Robertson QC on the law-makers. 

Producer: Mohini Patel.

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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