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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 Writer's Dickens

The Essay: The Writer's Dickens: Episode 1: Tessa Hadley - Rooms and Reality

The Writer's Dickens

Episode 1

Episode 1: Tessa Hadley - Rooms and Reality

Tessa Hadley - Rooms and Reality

BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, The Writer's Dickens, Tessa Hadley - Rooms and RealityClose menu

Tessa Hadley on how Dickens paints the reality of his world through characters' houses.

Focusing on Little Dorritt, Tessa Hadley explores how Dickens paints the reality of his world through his characters' houses, and reveals how significant houses are her own writing.

Five contemporary novelists examine the craft of Dickens's prose, and reflect on how the giant of British nineteenth-century fiction is both a role model and a shadow looming over their own writing. Taking as their starting point a favourite extract from one of Dickens's novels, each writer discuss Dickens's themes, narrative techniques and writing craft, and tells us what they themselves have learnt from it. They offer thoughtful, unusually engaged and focused critical appreciation of Dickens's skill, as well as valuable insights into their own work and how they themselves wrestle with the subject and technique under discussion. 

Beginning the series is Tessa Hadley, writing on Rooms and Reality. Taking as her starting point the description of the Clenham's house in Little Dorritt, she explores how Dickens paints the reality of his world through his characters' houses, and reflects on how significant houses are her own writing. 

Other writers in the series are A L Kennedy, Alexander McCall Smith, Romesh Gunesekera and Justin Cartwright.

First broadcast in December 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.

Contemporary novelists examine the craft of Charles Dickens's prose

Contemporary novelists examine the craft of Charles Dickens's prose, and reflect on how the giant of British 19th-century fiction is both a role model and a shadow looming over their own writing.

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Episode 1: Tessa Hadley - Rooms and Reality

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