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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

Audiobooks

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 LW

Book of the Week: The Vanishing Man

Siobhan Redmond

Laura Cumming

Isobel Creed

Jill Waters

Book of the Week: The Vanishing Man: Episode 3

Factual: Science & Nature

The Vanishing Man

Episode 3

BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week, The Vanishing Man, Episode 3

John Snare decides to show his famous picture north of the border.

John Snare decides to show his famous picture north of the border, but he fails to anticipate the extent and the kind of interest it might generate.

Laura Cumming charts the obsession of a 19th century Reading bookseller with a portrait of Charles I - painted when the Monarch was a young man on a visit to Madrid. The Spanish genius Velasquez painted very few pictures, so did John Snare discover a long-lost treasure? And if so, where is it now?

Episode 3:
The Lost Velasquez is put on show in Edinburgh at the beginning of 1849. But soon Snare finds himself having to fend off not just challenges over the portrait's authenticity,but also overownership.

This is a story about the intense emotions that great art can provoke - passions that sometimes verge on the irrational and which transcend considerations of value.

John Snare's conviction about the painting he bought evolved into a dispute with those who had more money, power and influence. In a sense, the missing Velasquez became a battleground for class war and the individual against the establishment.

But at the heart of the story lies a work of art, created with such skill and delicacy that it inspired the fiercest of feelings and continues to exert its mysterious pull to this day.


Read by Siobhan Redmond
Abridged by Isobel Creed
Produced by Jill Waters

A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4.

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

Laura Cumming charts the obsession of a 19th-century Reading bookseller with a portrait.

Siobhan Redmond reads Laura Cumming's account of the obsession of a 19th-century Reading bookseller with a portrait of Charles I.

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