The Essay: Lundy, Fastnet, Irish Sea

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

The Essay Podcast

The Essay

Discussion & Talk

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Essays from leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond.

Leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond, themed across a week - insight, opinion and intellectual surprise.

The Essay: Lundy, Fastnet, Irish Sea: Wales and its Coastal Waters: Whipping Up a Storm

Whipping Up a Storm

Lundy, Fastnet, Irish Sea: Wales and its Coastal Waters

BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, Lundy, Fastnet, Irish Sea: Wales and its Coastal Waters, Whipping Up a Storm

How the water west of Wales is a bringer of bounteous gifts but a wrecker of ships too.

Jon Gower charts the way the water west of Wales is a bringer of bounteous gifts but a wrecker of ships too.

In this series of Essays writer Jon Gower explores the patches of sea water around Wales, sailing past Viking slave traders, soft crumbling coastlines, industrial scale smuggling, marathon chess matches between lighthouse keepers, ghost ships, whales and walruses along the way. For the country of Wales, surrounded on three sides by the sea, that sea has always been important – a trade route, a means to export ideas such as Christianity, or as a source of fish - especially herring, so many herring.

Whipping Up a Storm - Jon charts the way the water out west is a bringer of bounteous gifts but a shipwrecker too, a creature of wild mood swings where a calm surface can summarily change as the wind gets up and erupts into a wild and avenging anger. The waves and the wind are able to lick the very land into shape, and occasionally reveal the ancient landscapes embodied in Welsh myths.

Produced by Megan Jones and Philippa Swallow.

The Essay: Lundy, Fastnet, Irish Sea: Wales and its Coastal Waters

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.

Writer Jon Gower explores the relationship between Wales and its coastal waters.

Accessibility links

Programme Index

The Essay

Lundy, Fastnet, Irish Sea: Wales and its Coastal Waters

Whipping Up a Storm

Genres

Brand

Series

BBC Radio 3

About BBC Radio 3