Words and Music

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BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

Drama

Music: Classical

A journey of discovery, weaving music with poetry and prose read by leading actors.

A weekly journey of discovery, weaving together a range of music with poetry and prose read by leading actors.

Words and Music: Gratitude

Gratitude

BBC Radio 3 - Words and Music, GratitudeClose menu

Florence Nightingale to VE day, Clive James on critics to Audrey Hepburn's note of thanks.

Rory Kinnear and Pandora Colin read from Lytton Strachey, a film star's letter to the composer Mancini, and Yeats in praise of teachers, with music by Beethoven and The Kinks.

Rory Kinnear and Pandora Colin read diary extracts from 1945, recalling visits to see the royal family waving from the balcony of Buckingham Palace and the pubs extending their licensing hours for a programme exploring gratitude on Remembrance Sunday.  We hear from Hadley Freeman’s book House of Glass, recalling the trains sent from France to America laden with gifts after the US had sent France food trains in the Second World War.  Gratitude to medical staff is much on our minds at the moment so we picture Florence Nightingale, depicted in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem Santa Filomena  ‘A lady with a lamp shall stand / In the great history of the land’. Plus poems about our feline friends and the benefits of childhood piano lessons - as well as a thank you letter from Audrey Hepburn to the composer Henry Mancini.  And in a reading by Clive James, a poem in which he gives thanks that "the book of my enemy has been remaindered".  

The soundtrack includes Beethoven, writing in thanks for the restoration of his health after illness, a very grateful Pharaoh created by Verdi and The Kinks, who are just thankful for The Days.  

Producer: Georgia Mann

Readings

Welcome Morning - Anne Sexton
Extract from I Hear You Say So - Elizabeth Bowen
Pied Beauty - Gerard Manley-Hopkins
Extract from Eminent Victorians -  Lytton Strachey
St Filomena - Henry Wadsworth-Longfellow
Gratitude To The Unknown Instructors - Yeats
The Book Of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered - Clive James
Extract from The House of Mirth - Edith Wharton
Extract from Twelfth Night - Shakespeare
Audrey Hepburn’s Thank You note to Henry Mancini
Extract from We Shall Never Surrender: British Voices 1939-1945 - Penelope Middelboe and Christopher Grace
Extract from House of Glass -  Hadley Freeman
Extract from Wild Gratitude -  Edward Hirsch
Extract From My Own Life - Oliver Sacks
Extract from Hope Is The Last To Die - Helen Birenbaum
Thanks In Old Age - Walt Whitman

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.

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