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BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

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The Essay Podcast

The Essay

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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: Weird England: Horn Dance

Horn Dance

Weird England

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Poet Lila Matsumoto visits Abbots Bromley in Staffordshire and the ancient Horn Dance.

Poet Lila Matsumoto was born in Japan but has made the Midlands her home. In the final essay, she takes us to Abbots Bromley in Staffordshire, to watch the ancient Horn Dance.

In this series of Essays, we usher you into a secret world of hidden folklore. Five young writers explore the odder, darker corners of English tradition: this is not an England of bluetits, roses and white cliffs, nor of country lanes and thatched cottages, but an invitation into a compendium of bizarre and sometimes creepy rural rituals. 

Each writer lives or has lived in the area. Their impression of the event stirs childhood memories, fires new convictions, deepens an understanding of ritual and reveals the awkward transposition of ancient ceremonies in contemporary life. In the final essay, the Japanese poet Lila Matsumoto takes her visiting parents to a Staffordshire horn dance. 

This series attempts to hear younger witnesses writing for the times in which we live: dispatches on Englishness from the weird frontline.

5.	Horn Dance

Poet Lila Matsumoto was born in Japan but has made the Midlands her home. In the final essay, she takes her visiting parents to Abbots Bromley in Staffordshire, to watch the ancient Horn Dance. A group of local men carry stags’ horns on their heads, dancing through the village and the surrounding countryside. As Lila watches with her Japanese parents she explores the meaning of home, and what it feels like to be cast as an outsider in this weird England.

The Essay: Weird England

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.

Five writers explore the odder, darker corners of English tradition.

Five writers explore the odder, darker corners of English tradition, ushering you into a secret world of hidden folklore.

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