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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: The Meaning of Beaches

The Essay: The Meaning of Beaches: Episode 3: Scarborough Beach

Episode 3

Episode 3: Scarborough Beach

The Meaning of Beaches

Scarborough Beach

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Fiona Stafford explores Scarborough beach - a true entrepreneur and survivor.

Professor Fiona Stafford explores Scarborough beach, which symbolises entrepreneurialism, reinvention and the great British seaside tradition past and present.

A further series of essays by Fiona Stafford, Professor of Literature at Somerville College Oxford, following her much-praised The Meaning of Trees and The Meaning of Flowers, Fiona explores the symbolism, importance, topicality and surprises of five British beaches, all of which are unique and quintessentially British in very different ways. Fiona deconstructs what we thought we knew of these five beaches, with the multiple surprises and eloquent wordsmithery which has captured so much attention for her previous five series of essays.

Scarborough beach in North Yorkshire with its crumbling cliffs and booming, then declining and now re-invented tourism, symbolises so much about modern and Victorian Britain, and the British coastal town tradition that is so unique. Reinventing itself with medicinal and artistic pasts now resurgent, the collapsing of cliff top buildings into the sea is a thing of the recent past. Scarborough is quintessentially English and yet distinctly Yorkshire. South Bay and North Bay of Scarborough beach have different feels; South Bay has attractions and entertainment, with the harbour and pleasure boats heading out to sea, whereas North Bay is quieter with brightly coloured beach chalets for rent and nature more in evidence in the wild and in its sea life centre. The south bay is where the Scarborough spa is built, originally founded in the 18th century for the medicinal waters and now finding very different ways to harness the healing powers of the sea and beach. Entrepreneurial Scarborough beach leads where other British beaches wish they could follow. 

Producer - Turan Ali 
A Bona Broadcasting production for BBC Radio 3.

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.

Fiona Stafford's portraits of five iconic British beaches.

Fiona Stafford, professor of literature at Somerville College, Oxford, with portraits of five iconic British beaches.

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Episode 3: Scarborough Beach

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