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BBC Radio 4 FM

BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

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Book of the Week

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Factual

Serialised book readings, featuring works from various genres

Serialised book readings, featuring works of non-fiction, biography, autobiography, travel, diaries, essays, humour and history

BBC Radio 4 Extra

BBC Radio 4 LW

Francesca Dymond

Kirsteen Cameron

Laurence Wareing

Helena Attlee

Book of the Week: The Land Where Lemons Grow: Episode 5

The Land Where Lemons Grow

Episode 5

BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week, The Land Where Lemons Grow, Episode 5

A journey to the citrus groves of Calabria in search of liquid green gold: bergamot oil.

In the bergamot groves of Calabria citrus oil is harvested for use in perfume and Earl Grey tea. Read by Francesca Dymond.

A journey to Calabria, in the deep south of Italy, to discover one of the rarest and most precious of citrus fruits:  the bergamot. 
 
Bergamot is the product of a natural cross-pollination between a lemon tree and a sour orange that occurred in Calabria in the mid-seventeenth century.  It's very particular about its environment and fruits successfully only on a thin strip of land that runs for seventy-five kilometres from the Tyrrhenian coast to the shores of the Ionian Sea.
 
Mixing travel writing, history and horticulture, Helena Attlee's celebratory journey through Italy explores the special place that citrus holds in the Italian imagination.
 
 
Read by Francesca Dymond

Written by Helena Attlee

Abridged by Laurence Wareing

Produced by Kirsteen Cameron

First broadcast on Radio 4 in 2014.

Book of the Week: The Land Where Lemons Grow

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

Helena Attlee explores why citrus holds a special place in the Italian imagination

Mixing travel writing, history and horticulture, Helena Attlee takes a celebratory journey through Italy, exploring why citrus holds a special place in the Italian imagination

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