Salt on Your Tongue

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Salt on Your Tongue: Episode 4

Episode 4

BBC Radio 4 - Salt on Your Tongue, Episode 4

Charlotte Runcie considers the cockle pickers of Penclawwd and the fishwives of Newhaven.

Charlotte Runcie considers the cockle pickers of Penclawwd and the fishwives of Newhaven while her pregnancy approaches full term.

Charlotte Runcie has always felt pulled to the sea, lured by its soothing, calming qualities but also enlivened and inspired by its salty wildness. When she loses her beloved grandmother and becomes pregnant with her first child, she feels its pull even more intensely.

In Salt On Your Tongue, Charlotte explores what the sea means to us, and particularly what it has meant to women through the ages. This book is a walk on the beach with Turner, with Shakespeare, with the Romantic Poets and shanty-singers. It's an ode to our oceans - to the sailors who brave their treacherous waters, to the women who lost their loved ones to the waves, to the creatures that dwell in their depths, to beach combers, swimmers, seabirds and mermaids.

Charlotte shows how the sea has inspired, fascinated and terrified us, and how she fell in love with the deep blue. Navigating through ancient Greek myths, poetry, shipwrecks and Scottish folktales, Salt On Your Tongue is about how the wild untameable waves can help us understand what it means to be human.

Read by Jasmine Hyde
Abridged by Polly Coles
Produced by Clive Brill

A Brill production for BBC Radio 4

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

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Charlotte Runcie shows how the sea has inspired and terrified us through the ages.

Book of the week. Charlotte Runcie shows how the sea has inspired, fascinated and terrified us and explores what the sea has meant to women through the ages.

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Salt on Your Tongue

Episode 4

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