Original version

BBC Radio 4 Extra

Your digital radio entertainment station showcasing the best in comedy and drama

Your digital radio entertainment station showcasing the best in comedy and drama. With recent favourites from BBC Radio 4.

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 FM

BBC Radio 4 LW

Book of the Week: Strands

Book of the Week: Strands: Episode 5

Strands

Episode 5

BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week, Strands, Episode 5

Jean experiences a very physical brush with the past.

A year of discoveries on Ainsdale Sands. For a brief time, the tide reveals ancient footprints. Concluded by Jean Sprackland.

A year of discoveries on the beach. Jean Sprackland meditates on objects revealed by the shape-shifting sands, or washed up on the wild beaches between Blackpool and Liverpool.

Recorded on location on Ainsdale Sands, 'Strands' is a book about what is lost and buried, then re-discovered; about all the things you find on a beach, dead or alive, natural or man-made; about mutability and transformation - about sea-change. 

In today's episode, Jean experiences a very physical brush with the past, when she places her feet in the prehistoric footprints of humans from the Late Mesolithic to mid-Neolithic period, which are revealed briefly by the tide.

Read by Jean Sprackland

Abridged by Miranda Davies

Produced by Emma Harding

About the author: Jean Sprackland is the author of three books of poetry and a collection of short stories. Her most recent poetry collection, Tilt (Cape, 2007), won the Costa Poetry Award. Hard Water (Cape, 2003) was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation, and was shortlisted for both the T S Eliot Prize and the Whitbread Award for Poetry. She was chosen as one of the Next Generation Poets in 2004.

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.

By Jean Sprackland. Meditation on a year of discoveries on the beach

A year of discoveries on the beach. Jean Sprackland meditates on objects revealed by the shape-shifting sands, or washed up on the wild beaches, between Blackpool and Liverpool

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Book of the Week

Strands

Episode 5

Genres

Formats

Brand

Series

BBC Radio 4 Extra

About BBC Radio 4 Extra