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BBC Radio 4 - Red Letter Days

Julie Hesmondhalgh celebrates the transformative power of milestone birthdays.

Julie Hesmondhalgh plants 50 trees to mark her own half-century in this celebration of major birthdays and the chance they offer us to step back and reflect upon our lives.

What is it about birthdays - particularly the major milestones - that stop us in our tracks, that marks them out as true red letter days? 

In an uplifting and moving programme, Julie Hesmondhalgh plants 50 trees to mark her own half-century as a means of marking time spent on the earth, reflecting on her past and considering how she might spend the years left to her. 

She talks with others who have used birthdays in similarly salient and sometimes transformative ways - including the actress who revealed to her friends on her 50th that she is a trans woman, and the writer who cycled across America to understand its divisions better. Julie also hears how birthdays offer a powerful opportunity to remember loved ones, and speaks with poet Lemn Sissay about the way birthdays long served as a painful reminder of the family he didn’t have while growing up in care. 

Presenter - Julie Hesmondhalgh
Producer - Geoff Bird
Executive Producer - Eloise Whitmore

A Naked production for BBC Radio 4

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