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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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Radio 3’s flagship arts programme until 2013. Over 350 editions available in the archive.

Radio 3’s flagship arts programme until 2013. Search the extensive archive for interviews, debates and reviews. Go to Free Thinking for the new home of arts and ideas on Radio 3.

Matthew Sweet

Melanie Phillips

Simon Godwin

Susannah Clapp

Philip Martin

Night Waves: Melanie Phillips, Breaking the Fourth Wall, Jonathan Dee

Melanie Phillips, Breaking the Fourth Wall, Jonathan Dee

25/06/2013

BBC Radio 3 - Night Waves, Melanie Phillips, Breaking the Fourth Wall, Jonathan Dee

With Matthew Sweet. Including Melanie Phillips on her autobiography Guardian Angel.

Including Melanie Phillips on her memoir, why and how theatre and TV has broken the fourth wall by addressing its audience and an interview with American writer Jonathan Dee.

With Matthew Sweet.

Journalist and broadcaster Melanie Phillips discusses her autobiography Guardian Angel, which reveals details of her unhappy and stifling childhood and her relationship with her fragile mother. Through the prism of this family story, Melanie also explains her dramatic transition from the darling of Britain's liberal left, to the Daily Mail's star columnist and reflects on why she felt it was important to tell this very personal story.

The National Theatre is currently mounting Eugene O'Neill's 1928 play Strange Interlude. It is a naturalistic drama performed in a traditional box set, but the characters interrupt the dialogue to share their thoughts with us and even come forward and address the audience directly. Breaking the imaginary fourth wall is usually a theatrical trick but TV characters like Mrs Brown and Miranda do it and of course Shakespeare is famous for soliloquies. Director Simon Godwin, theatre critic Susannah Clapp and TV writer Philip Martin discuss just how porous the fourth wall can be with contributions from Charles Edwards, who is appearing in Strange Interlude.

Pulitzer Prize-nominated author Jonathan Dee on his new novel A Thousand Pardons.

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.

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