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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: Music on the Brink

The Essay: Cities on the Brink: Episode 2: Paris

Factual: History

Paris

Episode 2

Episode 2: Paris

Cities on the Brink

BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, Cities on the Brink, ParisClose menu

Hugh Schofield on the storm in Paris over the murder of pacifist Jean Jaures before WWI.

Hugh Schofield evokes the storm in Paris over the murder of pacifist Jean Jaures before World War One.

Stepping back in time exactly a century, five BBC News correspondents present their personal perspectives on the principal cities of the major European powers that, later in 1914, would fight the Great War.

The programmes continue with Hugh Schofield reimagining the chic French capital of Maurice Ravel, the Ballets Russes and Henri Matisse - but which politically suffered continuing angst over its neighbour across the Rhine: Germany.

For many, the wounds of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1 had still not healed. And the assassination in Paris of the leading French pacifist and socialist, Jean Jaurès, in late July 1914 convulsed the city and crystallised the diverging views about France's relations with her European neighbours. Hugh Schofield tells the story of why this event provoked such turmoil at the time and why it still resonates powerfully today in the politics and culture of France.

Producer Simon Coates.

The Essay: Cities on the Brink

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.

Perspectives on the capital cities of European powers involved in World War One

BBC news correspondents present personal perspectives on the capital cities of the major European powers that, later in 1914, would face each other in the First World War

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