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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 Book that Changed Me

The Essay: The Book that Changed Me: Episode 2: Tracey Thorn on The Female Eunuch

Tracey Thorn on The Female Eunuch

Episode 2

Episode 2: Tracey Thorn on The Female Eunuch

The Book that Changed Me

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Singer Tracey Thorn on how Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch spoke to her as a teenager.

Singer Tracey Thorn describes how Germaine Greer's book The Female Eunuch spoke to her as a teenager, but now reads very differently.

Singer Tracey Thorn describes how she as a rebellious teenager she seized on the feminist classic "The Female Eunuch" by Germaine Greer. "It seemed brand new, and it spoke to me of things I'd long thought and felt without ever having words or names for," she says. She explains how the book was a deep influence on the lyrics she wrote for her band Everything but the Girl. But now she is herself a mother, she finds herself questioning Greer's contemptuous dismissal of parenting. "As feminists, I feel we are more forgiving now than Greer was; more inclusive, less dismissive, and perhaps that's because greater freedoms have brought with them greater liberties for us to be so. It's not such a threat now to admit to being happily married and enjoying motherhood when we are not utterly constrained and defined by these roles."
Producer: Smita Patel.

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 in which five people discuss the books that inspired them in their chosen careers

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Episode 2: Tracey Thorn on The Female Eunuch

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