Original version

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: Free Thinking 2017

The Essay: Free Thinking 2017: Episode 6: Faith, Fire and the Family

Faith, Fire and the Family

Episode 6

Episode 6: Faith, Fire and the Family

Free Thinking 2017

BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, Free Thinking 2017, Faith, Fire and the FamilyClose menu

Catherine Fletcher on the story of her grandfather, a missionary in India.

New Generation Thinker Catherine Fletcher tells the story of her grandfather, Donald Hudson, who was a missionary in India in the turbulent years between 1941 and 1968.

From 1941 to 1968 Catherine Fletcher's grandfather Donald Hudson was a missionary in India. Catherine tells his story during those turbulent years and reflects on the way British people with family history in India understand that past - in this the anniversary year of the end of colonial India.

Originally from Yorkshire, Donald Hudson arrived in Dhaka, now in Bangladesh, to find a city in chaos amid communal riots. He stayed for two years and then moved to one of the most significant British missionary institutions in India, the Baptist Missionary College at Serampore, outside Kolkata, where he was based through famine and then Partition in 1948.

Catherine Fletcher is a Radio 3 New Generation Thinker from Swansea University.

Recorded as part of Radio 3's Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead.

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select 10 academics each year who work with us to turn their research into radio. 

Producer: Luke Mulhall.

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.

New Generation Thinkers give talks in front of an audience at Free Thinking 2017

Talks given in front of an audience at Sage Gateshead by New Generation Thinkers, for the 2017 Free Thinking festival. The theme is 'the speed of life'

Accessibility links

Programme Index

The Essay

Free Thinking 2017

Episode 6: Faith, Fire and the Family

Genres

Formats

Brand

Series

BBC Radio 3

About BBC Radio 3