The Essay: Let Me Take You There

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The Essay: Let Me Take You There: Tahmima Anam

Tahmima Anam

Let Me Take You There

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

Leading writers share the secrets of their internal place of refuge in times of crisis. Tahmima Anam builds a house on the plot of land her family own in rural New Hampshire.

Where can we escape to at times when we are cooped up, locked down, trapped indoors? Some people recall a 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. 

Tahmima Anam was born in Bangladesh but her place of refuge is an empty plot of land which she and her American husband own in rural New Hampshire. They have long hoped to build a house there, but now she plans it for real, and pictures herself and her family there - her husband as minister for education, herself a capable homesteader who grows her own vegetables, , bakes, taps maple syrup and has been transformed into the sort of super-fastidious person she has always wanted to be - "the kind who labels everything and always knows where the scissors are kept". She concludes with the kind of scene we all need at present, an image of a courtyard house where "the trees will rustle and cast patterned shadows over us as we sit on the porch with our iced teas."

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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