Free Thinking

Original version

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

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

Discussion & Talk

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

BBC Radio 4

Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

The ideas shaping our lives today - with artists and thinkers in debates and interviews.

The ideas shaping our lives today - with leading artists and thinkers in extended interview and debate.

Free Thinking: Christopher Logue's War Music

Christopher Logue's War Music

BBC Radio 4 - Free Thinking, Christopher Logue's War Music

Shahidha Bari and guests read Logue's version of Homer's Iliad and look at its language.

First commissioned by the Third programme, Logue's version of The Iliad, makes the point that war is not over. His own reading of it has been released to mark his death in 2011.

Left unfinished at his death in 2011, the poet worked on his version of The Iliad for over 40 years. As a new audio book of Christopher Logue reading War Music is released, Shahidha Bari and her guests, the writers Marina Warner and Tariq Ali, and Logue's widow, the historian Rosemary Hill, examine the work.  Rosemary Hill describes Logue as writing "poems to be read to jazz accompaniment, to be set to music and to be printed on posters. He wanted poetry to be part of everybody’s life."  In War Music he used anachronistic imagery to link this classical war to more modern examples.  In the Second World War Logue served briefly in the Black Watch, before spending sixteen months in a military prison and later becoming a member of CND. 

The British Library has acquired the archive of Christopher Logue, which includes 22 boxes of private papers, along with 53 files of drafts, working materials and correspondence relating to War Music, and annotated printed books and an event in December marks this. 

In the programme you will hear  
Christopher Logue – War Music
The original recording read by the Author
Recorded December 1995, Sound Development Studios, London
Produced and directed by Liane Aukin
Mastered by Simon Heyworth
(P) & © 2021 Laurence Aston and Rosemary Hill 
Clips from War Music are not to be reproduced in any way without prior permission of the copyright holders. 

This programme also includes a clip from a programme Christopher Logue made on 'Minor Poets' for the Third Programme in 1957, and a clip of Christopher Logue reading part of his poem Lecture on Man at the International Poetry Incarnation at the Royal Albert Hall in 1965. 

Producer Luke Mulhall

Image: Christopher Logue

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.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Free Thinking

Christopher Logue's War Music

Genres

Brand

BBC Radio 3

About BBC Radio 3