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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: I've Never Told Anyone This Before

The Essay: I've Never Told Anyone This Before: Episode 3: Erica Wagner - A History of My Family in One Object

I've Never Told Anyone This Before

Episode 3

Episode 3: Erica Wagner - A History of My Family in One Object

Erica Wagner - A History of My Family in One Object

BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, I've Never Told Anyone This Before, Erica Wagner - A History of My Family in One ObjectClose menu

Erica Wagner examines her mother's stories about her father and an unusual wedding gift.

Erica Wagner looks back at her childhood and wonders what it means when you start to question the stories you have heard all your life.

Continuing our series in which five writers were invited to reveal something which they'd never told anyone before. From difficult and awkward truths to personal and challenging experiences, this series of essays offers an intriguing and provocative glimpse into the inner lives of others.

At a time of the year when it's traditional for families to gather together, the journalist and author Erica Wagner looks back on the stories her mother told about her father through the medium of the wedding present she gave him in 1965: a Norden bombsight taken from a Second World War B29 bomber.

The narratives we build around ourselves and those we love are just that - constructed stories - and sometimes the boundary between fact and fiction is a fine one. Erica Wagner's father died in 2007; her mother a couple of years later. During the period when she was packing up their belongings and also spending time with her parents' surviving friends, she began to discover that her mother's proud story about her father's years as a pilot didn't entirely make sense. Her father had never spoken about his wartime experiences, and records from the USAF were either missing or destroyed. With no one left to ask, what does it mean when the stories you cherish may not even be true?

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 writers reveal something they have never told anyone before

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Episode 3: Erica Wagner - A History of My Family in One Object

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