The Essay: Let Me Take You There

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The Essay: Let Me Take You There: Alan Hollinghurst

Alan Hollinghurst

Let Me Take You There

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Leading writers share the secrets of their internal places of refuge in times of crisis.

Leading writers share the secrets of their real or imaginary internal places of refuge in times of crisis. Alan Hollinghurst evokes a hidden copse of poplars in Gloucestershire.

Where can we escape to at times when we are cooped up, locked down, trapped indoors? Some people recall a real location - a favoured corner to which they return again and again, what the Swedes call a "wild strawberry place"; others find a refuge deep in the imagination. 

In these exceptional times, Radio 3 has specially commissioned five major writers to share their special place, and each night of the week, one of them offers to take us there and share it with us. 

For Alan Hollinghurst, who has lived in London for the past 40 years, it is a plantation of poplars in the Gloucestershire countryside, near to the house where he grew up: In these dark times, as spring advances outside his urban window, he says: "I think of myself ducking and threading my way through the wood and into the great nave of trees as it bursts into life."


Producer: Beaty Rubens

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.

Leading writers share the secret of an internal place of refuge in times of crisis.

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