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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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A journey of discovery, weaving music with poetry and prose read by leading actors.

A weekly journey of discovery, weaving together a range of music with poetry and prose read by leading actors.

Words and Music: Suburbs

Suburbs

14/07/2013

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Texts and music on the theme of the suburbs, with readers Emily Joyce and Philip Frank.

Texts and music on the theme of the suburbs, with readers Emily Joyce and Philip Frank. With Betjeman, Dickens, Kureishi, and DH Lawrence, plus Bach, Glass and Kaikhosru Sorabji.

Emily Joyce and Philip Franks take a literary walk through the suburbs, to music by JS Bach, Philip Glass, Kaikhosru Sorabji and others. 

Suburbs sprung up in the 19th century along the rail routes that led out of rapidly growing cities like London and the major industrial centres. Suburbs now cover large swathes of our post-industrial landscape and have led to a particular culture which has evolved from the daily commute to work.

This edition of Words and Music wanders through suburbs, from those dark industrial places of Dickens's times to the uniform towns experienced by Hanif Kureishi and Adrian Henri. Suburbs provide a peaceful haven at the end of the working day, a near-rural setting, a nice place in which to grow up, in which to learn certain morals, but also a place of ennui, monotony and rebellion. The programme includes texts from Dickens's Old Curiosity Shop, Hanif Kureishi's Buddha of Suburbia, and poems by John Betjeman, DH Lawrence, William Cowper, Emerson, Tennyson, Arthur Guiterman, Gwen Harwood, Aesop, Margaret Atwood, Hardy, Kipling, TS Eliot, John Davidson, EE Cummings and Adrian Henri.

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.

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