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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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Book of the Week

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Serialised book readings, featuring works from various genres

Serialised book readings, featuring works of non-fiction, biography, autobiography, travel, diaries, essays, humour and history

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Book of the Week: Threads of Life: A History of the World Through the Eye of a Needle: Episode 1

Threads of Life: A History of the World Through the Eye of a Needle

Episode 1

BBC Radio 4 - Book of the Week, Threads of Life: A History of the World Through the Eye of a Needle, Episode 1

Textile artist Clare Hunter’s illuminating history of sewing and embroidery.

Textile artist Clare Hunter travels through the centuries uncovering the lives of those who have used sewing and embroidery to tell their stories. Read by Siobhan Redmond.

Textile artist and curator, Clare Hunter travels through the centuries and across continents uncovering the lives of women and men who have used sewing and embroidery to tell their stories, sometimes in the most unlikely and hardest of circumstances.

From the political storytelling of the Bayeux tapestry's anonymous embroiderers, to the POWs who memorialized their lives in the harshest of conditions during WWII, to the marches celebrating one hundred year's of women's suffrage in 2018, this  is a treasure trove of book. Clare Hunters reveals  how sewing and embroidery are as much about identity, politics and memory as they are about craft and art. Threads of Life is also peppered throughout with moments from Clare's own life as a textile artist, for instance, her first adventures with needle and thread, or the discovery of a beautifully worked patchwork quilt in an aunt's attic decades later. Listeners will delight in this celebration of sewing as an intimate and powerful medium for telling stories.

Read by Siobhan Redmond
Abridged by Julian Wilkinson
Produced by Elizabeth Allard

Book of the Week: Threads of Life: A History of the World Through the Eye of a Needle

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

Textile artist Clare Hunter's illuminating history of sewing and embroidery.

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Threads of Life: A History of the World Through the Eye of a Needle

Episode 1

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