Words and Music

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

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: Writers and the BBC

Writers and the BBC

BBC Radio 3 - Words and Music, Writers and the BBC

With poems and novels depicting the announcers, auditions, vox pops, concerts and news.

Henry Goodman and Grace Cookey-Gam read from authors including George Orwell, Sue Townsend, Penelope Fitzgerald, Jonathan Coe and James Fenton and music commissioned by the BBC.

From wax discs to colour TV and Marshall McLuhan's "global village", a comedian's audition for the "Deputy Head of Variety" to advice on how to read a poem on radio: to go alongside the celebration of the anniversary of BBC drama marked at this year's Contains Strong Language Festival, today's programme takes its cue from fictional depictions of the corporation and references to specific programmes. Actors Henry Goodman and Grace Cookey-Gam read texts by authors who worked at the BBC including George Orwell who between 1941-1943 was a Talks Producer on what was then the 'Eastern Service' and gives us here his views about poetry on the radio; PH Newby, the first winner of the Booker Prize and a former controller of the Third programme and Penelope Fitzgerald, who worked at the BBC during the Blitz when she was in her twenties. Other extracts from novels include Sue Townsend's Adrian Mole, Gordon Burns's The North of England Home Service, Jonathan Coe's new book Bournville and an imagined Queen's Speech from Alan Bennett. There are archive extracts featuring John Gielgud and an unusual voice for the shipping forecast, poems written by Roger McGough, Wendy Cope and Elizabeth Burns and music commissioned by the BBC, plus pieces by Britten, Debussy, Fauré, Chopin, Bach, Bart Howard, Django Reinhardt and American rock from the 1960s.

Producer: Juan Carlos Jaramillo

Readings:
'A for Announcer' by Eleanor Farjeon (from 'The ABC of the BBC')
'Bournville' by Jonathan Coe (excerpt)
 ‘The North of England Service’ by Gordon Burns (excerpt)
'Three Rooms' by Jo Hamya (excerpt) 
Shipping forecast, read by Alan Bennett on BBC Radio 4
'Listening to Bach’s B Minor Mass in the kitchen' by Elizabeth Burns
'Poetry and the Microphone' by George Orwell (excerpt)
'Sonnet 18' by William Shakespeare
'Lessons' from Ian McEwan (excerpt)
'A is for The Archers and Adultery' by Wendy Cope
'Human Voices' by Penelope Fitzgerald (excerpt)
'The Whistling Woman' by AS Byatt (excerpt)
‘Going Out Live’ by Mark Lawson (excerpt)
‘Feelings have changed’ by P.H. Newby (excerpt)
'Adrian Mole aged 13 ¾' by Sue Townsend (excerpt)
'Afterwards' by Thomas Hardy
'The Uncommon Reader' by Alan Bennett (excerpt)
'To Poetry Please' by Roger McGough

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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