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A Short History of Solitude

A Short History of Solitude: Episode One: Retreat

Episode One: Retreat

BBC Radio 4 - A Short History of Solitude, Episode One: Retreat

Thomas Dixon explores the surprising history of being alone.

Thomas Dixon discovers how even the most extreme forms of voluntary solitude were often surprisingly social.

Thomas Dixon explores the surprising history of being alone.

In this episode, he discovers some of the most extreme examples of voluntary solitude - anchorites, people who chose to be enclosed as a kind of living sacrifice to God; the hermits who sought isolation in the desert; and an artist who lived as Schrodinger's Cat for 10 days and nights in a light- and sound-proof box.

And yet, even these exceptional feats of isolation were unexpectedly social.

For much of history, the idea of being entirely alone was a fascinating but frightening one. The Renaissance poet Petrarch wrote one of the first defences of solitude but imagined a countryside retreat far from the corrupting life of the city, made comfortable with clever companions and servants. In the 17th century, domestic architecture meant privacy was impossible, and being alone and unobserved was seen as something dangerous and terrifying - a torment not threatened in hell itself.

Contributors include the artists Ansuman Biswas and Nwando Ebizie; Hetta Howes who researches medieval devotional texts; and the historians Barbara Taylor, Miri Rubin and Erica Longfellow.

Music for the series was specially composed and performed by Beth Porter.

The episode also features Samuel West's reading of John Donne's Meditation XVII from his Pandemic Poems project, Nwando Ebizie's Extreme Unction and part of two new pieces commissioned by Sound and Music as part of the Interpreting Isolation project: Wallpaper by Jonathan Higgins and As the World Ain't Square by Douglas MacGregor and George Finlay Ramsey.

Barbara Taylor runs the research project Pathologies of Solitude at Queen Mary University of London and is academic advisor to the series.

Produced by Natalie Steed
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4

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The historian of emotions, Thomas Dixon, explores the surprising history of being alone.

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