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BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

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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: Why I Write

The Essay: Why I Write: Episode 2: Hay Festival: Alex Clark

Why I Write

Episode 2

Episode 2: Hay Festival: Alex Clark

Hay Festival: Alex Clark

BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, Why I Write, Hay Festival: Alex Clark

Literary journalist and writer Alex Clark explains why she writes.

In a recording made in front of an audience at the 2015 Hay Festival, literary journalist and writer Alex Clark explains why she writes.

Literary journalist and writer Alex Clark has written many of our leading publications, and is a former Booker and Granta judge. She comes to Hay to ask 'Why I Write'.

In this series of The Essay, recorded in front of an audience at the Hay Festival earlier this week, five writers take George Orwell's title Why I Write as a starting point for their own explorations. The writers include the screenwriter, novelist and author of the opening ceremony for the 2012 Olympics, Frank Cottrell-Boyce; the editor and translator Daniel Hahn; Horatio Clare, whose first book was set on the hillsides where he grew up around Hay itself; and the Welsh poet laureate, Gillian Clarke.

Part of Radio 3's week-long residency at the Hay Festival, with programmes CD Review, Lunchtime Concert, In Tune, Free Thinking, The Verb and World on 3 all broadcasting from the festival.

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.

Recordings taking the title of George Orwell's essay Why I Write as a starting point

Series of recordings made in front of an audience at the 2015 Hay festival, taking the title of George Orwell's essay Why I Write as a starting point

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Episode 2: Hay Festival: Alex Clark

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