The Essay: Becoming Animal

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The Essay: Becoming Animal: Ned Beauman

Toby Litt

Ned Beauman

Becoming Animal

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Writer Ned Beauman explores the world of the Devon beaver.

Writer Ned Beauman explores the world of the Devon beaver, in a series where writers imagine life as an animal of their choice.

In our world of dissolving distinctions, five contemporary writers imagine life as an animal of their choice and investigate the boundaries between animal and human - each with the help from different animal experts. In this edition, writer Ned Beauman explores the world of the Devon beaver.

In other essays in the series, Isabel Galleymore clings to the side of a rock pool as a limpet, Sarah Kosar at the edge of a London park is a soprano pipistrelle bat, Toby Litt is the brown hare at the outskirts of a wood and Belinda Zhawi imagines herself into the world of the southern African plains zebra. 

Producers Kate Bland and Toby Withers.
Becoming Animal is a Cast Iron Radio production for BBC Radio 3.
Photo Alice Neale

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.

Five writers each choose different animals and imagine what it's like to become them.

Belinda Zhawi, Sarah Kosar, Toby Litt, Isabel Galleymore and Ned Beauman each choose a different animal and with help from species experts, imagine what it's like to be it.

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