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: Forests

The Essay: Forests: 100 Acre Wood

Forests

100 Acre Wood

BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, Forests, 100 Acre WoodClose menu

Brian Sibley guides Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough around the home of Winnie the Pooh.

Brian Sibley guides Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough around the Ashdown Forest, home of Winnie the Pooh.

Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough braves the fearsome heffalumps as she steps into the world of AA Milne.  

There's no secret about the inspiration for Winnie the Pooh. Thousands of people flock to the Ashdown Forest in East Sussex every year to track down Christopher Robin's tree and play Pooh Sticks. In his autobiography, Christopher Robin Milne wrote of a brief but blissful childhood spent amongst the trees with his battered teddy bear. Pooh's forest and the Ashdown Forest are, he wrote, identical.

The writer, Brian Sibley, joins Eleanor for a walk through the forest and an appreciation of one of the saddest endings in literature. Christopher knows he has to leave his friends and return to school.  That's enough to drive many adult readers to tears but Brian believes there will always be a boy and his bear sharing adventures in the 100 Acre Wood.

Producer: Alasdair Cross

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.

Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough examines the great fictional forests of art and literature.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

The Essay

Forests

100 Acre Wood

Genres

Brand

Series

BBC Radio 3

About BBC Radio 3