Original version

BBC Radio 4 LW

Open Book

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Programme looking at new fiction and non-fiction books

Programme looking at new fiction and non-fiction books, talking to authors and publishers and unearthing lost classics

BBC Radio 4 FM

Mariella Frostrup

Sarah Hall

Hilary Dunn

Open Book: Literary Landscapes - The Lake District with Sarah Hall

Literary Landscapes - The Lake District with Sarah Hall

11/08/2013

BBC Radio 4 - Open Book, Literary Landscapes - The Lake District with Sarah Hall

Sarah Hall takes Mariella Frostrup around the places that have inspired her novels.

Sarah Hall takes Mariella Frostrup around the Lake District landscape that has inspired and informed her novels.

Literary Landscapes - The Lake District


Open Book's summer series on Literary Landscapes begins at the Haweswater Dam, with only a waist high wall separating presenter Mariella Frostrup from 80 billion litres of water, which is what Haweswater Reservoir holds when full, and surrounded by beautiful and majestic mountains on all sides. It's a charged, vital, visceral landscape - immortalised by writers since Wordsworth first wrote about daffodils.

Open Book's literary guide to this "carnal realm of water and earth" is award winning writer Sarah Hall - who this year was on Granta's coveted list of the best 20 British writers under 40.

Sarah was born in a cottage in a mountain range just to the east of Haweswater, and her award winning eponymous first novel, Haweswater, provides a fictional account of the construction of the dam. Sarah talks about a brutal landscape made beautiful by the Romantic poets, and how it's been a challenging legacy for a writer to inherit.

Producer: Hilary Dunn.

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.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Open Book

Literary Landscapes - The Lake District with Sarah Hall

Contributors

Genres

Brand

BBC Radio 4 LW

About BBC Radio 4