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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

Radio 3

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: The Darkest Hour

The Essay: The Darkest Hour: Episode 5

Documentaries

The Darkest Hour

Episode 5

BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, The Darkest Hour, Episode 5Close menu

Actor Juliet Stevenson on why a creative life often means a life in want of sleep.

Juliet Stevenson looks back on her own struggle with insomnia, both as an actor and mother, and asks why a creative life often means a life in search of sleep.

Insomnia is one of the great obsessions of our time. From Van Gogh to Dickens, Winston Churchill to Margaret Thatcher, our writers, artists, thinkers and leaders seem to have been in constant battle with sleep. But in our current 24-hour culture, insomnia, this ability to switch off, has become something of a modern obsession. 

In the last of this series, in which five night owls explore their own battles with sleeplessness, Juliet Stevenson looks back on her own struggle with insomnia, both as an actor and mother, and asks why a creative life often means a life in search of sleep.

Producer: Justine Willett

First broadcast in October 2011.

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.

Series on sleeplessness and the creative life

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