Sunday Feature: Cave Life

Cave Life

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Sunday Feature: Cave Life for Beginners

Cave Life for Beginners

BBC Radio 3 - Sunday Feature, Cave Life for Beginners

Down down, deeper and down - Ben Cottam overnights in a cave in search of inspiration.

Is it the dark, the smell, the disorientation or the discomfort? Why do hermits seek the solitary life within nature’s dark rooms? And what has this to do with art, myths & music?

Caves have long been a source of inspiration to artists, writers, poets and prophets, but what precisely is it that inspires? 

Is it the dark or the smell, the disorientation or the discomfort?  Why do hermits seek the solitary life within nature’s dark rooms? And what has this to do with inspiration? Can caves induce euphoria? Mania? Visions? 

Ben Cottam heads for the Lake District to spend a damp, dripping night or two in imitation of his hero -  the self-styled ‘Professor of Adventure’ Millican Dalton (1867-1947). At thirty-six, Dalton gave up working in the insurance business in the City of London, to live a simple, outsider life, and devote himself to outdoor pursuits in Cumbria.  Making his home in a beautiful slate cave on a fellside above Borrowdale, he set himself up as an early mountain guide, hosting men, and more shockingly, women, in his beloved ‘cave hotel’, where he was to live, for the next fifty years. 

Vegetarian, teetotaller, pacifist - Dalton lived an alternative lifestyle long before the term had come into use…

How could anyone make a home in a cave? Ben travels to Cumbria to spend some nights in Dalton’s cave in the company of psychiatrist and fellow Dalton enthusiast Giles Story. 

Ben is joined in the mouth of the Borrowdale cave by the actor Peter MacQueen, writer and performer of a one-man show about Dalton, in a final attempt to understand the enigmatic ‘Professor of Adventure’, whilst relating the success - or otherwise - of his own time living in a cave.  Soon he is on a journey back into the past to better understand the illumination man has derived from his darkest environment.

He receives advice and inspiration from Will Hunt, author of Underground, who has spent a decade exploring subterranean spaces - from a rare glimpse of an ochre mine in Western Australia, to spending 24 hours in total darkness underground in West Virginia. 

Archaeologist Rebecca Wragg Sykes, author of Kindred, rebuts the traditional image of the cave dweller as brutish and uncultured, revealing a world of fine dining and artistry. Professor Yulia Ustinova, author of Caves And The Ancient Greek Mind – Descending Underground in the Search for Ultimate Truth, tells him both the sensory deprivation and poisonous gases found in caves might have inspired many Greek myths and legends. 

And, talking to Paul Hanley, former drummer of cult post-punk group The Fall, and author of "Have A Bleedin Guess - The Story of Hex Induction Hour; he examines a more recent rock myth - did The Fall record some of their 1982 album Hex Enduction Hour in a cave? 

Producer: Sara Jane Hall

With musical inspiration from Danny Webb.

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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