Edward Thomas and the Song of the Path

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BBC Radio 4 - Edward Thomas and the Song of the Path

Robert Macfarlane and Johnny Flynn with Edward Thomas's  Poems and Songs for the Open Air.

Writer Robert Macfarlane with actor and musician Johnny Flynn walk in Edward Thomas's footsteps with his Pocket Book of Poems and Songs for the Open Air, and read and sing from it.

Edward Thomas was a great writer, a great walker, and he loved to sing. In 1907 these attributes came together when he compiled The Pocket Book of Poems and Songs for the Open Air. 

Two contemporary walkers, Robert Macfarlane and Johnny Flynn, one a terrific writer and the other a wonderful actor and musician, met through their love of Thomas's work. They set off with copies of The Pocket Book in their pockets, trying it out, walking in the footsteps of Thomas himself, near his home at Steep. They have been walking companions for years; they often sing as they go. And they have written songs together. So, along the way they create a new song.  

The Pocket Book of Poems and Songs for the Open Air includes poems by Yeats, de la Mare, Masefield, W. H. Davies (the Super-Tramp) and Housman. Macfarlane and Flynn recite from what is, Thomas wrote, a volume for those 'who like a book that can always lighten some of their burdens or give wings to their delight, whether in the open air by day, or under the roof at evening.

Just as important are the songs - sailor songs, folk songs supplied by Cecil Sharp, Westmoreland songs. They sing some of these, delving into an overlooked aspect of Edward Thomas's nature and work, his interest in folk traditions and the lives of the working people he met while walking. 

Working on their new song Macfarlane and Flynn walk up a songline, interrogating the ancient connections between walking, poetry and singing.They might stray from the path, too - musically and geographically. There's a noble tradition, of course, of poems and songs about rights to the land and what it offers, 'The Manchester Rambler', for instance, by Ewan McColl, who wrote it after taking part in the mass trespass of Kinder Scout in 1932.

Producer: Julian May

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