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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: Furniture - A Personal History of Movable Objects

The Essay: Furniture - A Personal History of Movable Objects: Episode 1: 'Whereyouwanttogoto' - The Wardrobe and the Other World

'Whereyouwanttogoto' - The Wardrobe and the Other World

Episode 1

Episode 1: 'Whereyouwanttogoto' - The Wardrobe and the Other World

Furniture - A Personal History of Movable Objects

BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, Furniture - A Personal History of Movable Objects, 'Whereyouwanttogoto' - The Wardrobe and the Other WorldClose menu

Novelist Ian Sansom explores the history and symbolism attached to wardrobes.

Writer Ian Sansom presents a personal perspective on the wardrobe. As well as being a place to store clothes, might it also store our secrets, our imaginations and our conscience?

Novelist and academic Ian Sansom steps into the history of wardrobes, to discover not only how and why we store clothes in large upright wooden boxes, but also why wardrobes feature so largely in fairy tales, memoirs and stories. From E. Nesbit's 'The Aunt and Anabel' to C.S Lewis's 'The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe', via Guy De Maupassant's tragic tale of a child in a wardrobe, Rimbaud's poem about a wardrobe with missing keys, and Roman Polanski's short film about two men who carry a wardrobe out of the sea; Ian explores the symbolism of wardrobes as a place where secrets are stored, imaginations inspired, consciences hidden, and our 'selves' reinvented.

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.

Novelist and academic Ian Sansom explores the history and symbolism of furniture

Series in which novelist and academic Ian Sansom explores the history and symbolism of furniture

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The Essay

Furniture - A Personal History of Movable Objects

Episode 1: 'Whereyouwanttogoto' - The Wardrobe and the Other World

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