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BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

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The Echo Chamber

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media: Arts

Paul Farley presents a series showcasing the best of the latest poetry

The Echo Chamber: Series 11

The Echo Chamber: Series 11: Episode 1: The Long Take

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Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

The Long Take

Episode 1

Episode 1: The Long Take

Series 11

BBC Radio 4 - The Echo Chamber, Series 11, The Long Take

Poet Robin Robertson shares extracts from his new noir narrative, The Long Take.

Paul Farley meets Robin Robertson, who steps into the Echo Chamber to share extracts from his new noir narrative, The Long Take.

Paul Farley meets the poet Robin Robertson, and hears extracts from his new book-length poem, The Long Take. 

1946. Walker is a D-Day veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder; he can't return home to rural Nova Scotia, and looks instead to the city for freedom, anonymity and repair. As he walks the streets of New York, we witness a crucial period of fracture in American history, one that also allowed film noir to flourish. The Dream had gone sour but - as those dark, classic movies made clear - the country needed outsiders to study and dramatise its new anxieties.

While Walker tries to piece his life together, America is beginning to come apart: deeply paranoid, doubting its own certainties, riven by social and racial division, spiralling corruption and the collapse of the inner cities. The Long Take is about a good man, brutalised by war, haunted by violence and apparently doomed to return to it - yet resolved to find kindness again, in the world and in himself.

Reader: Kerry Shale
Producer: Mair Bosworth
Sound Design: Rebecca Ripley and Mair Bosworth.

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

Paul Farley presents a series showcasing new poetry.

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The Echo Chamber

Series 11

Episode 1: The Long Take

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