Words and Music

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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: Antarctica - from Shackleton to Happy Feet

Antarctica - from Shackleton to Happy Feet

BBC Radio 3 - Words and Music, Antarctica - from Shackleton to Happy Feet

Readings and music inspired by Antarctica - the 'White Continent'.

Jessica Turner and John Lightbody are the readers for this celebration of Antarctica marking the 150 anniversary of Shackleton's birth.

If you call to mind an image of Antarctica, it is likely you will come up with something informed by the heroic but ultimately unsuccessful Endurance Expedition led by Sir Ernest Shackleton. That’s because the extraordinary photographs and film from that trip planted the so-called White Continent in our imaginations for ever. Shackleton, who was born in Ireland in February 1874 before moving to London as a boy, might be best known for that failed trip but the fact that his crew survived, when so many did not, is now seen as a credit to his exceptional leadership skills. 

Today’s Words and Music is a tribute to the frozen landscape that inspired the heroic age of exploration. It is not just remote - it contains the world's highest, driest, coldest and windiest places. And these days it’s a hub of scientific discovery, international diplomacy and environmental change too. We’ll hear fiction from Beryl Bainbridge to Edgar Allan Poe, poetry from Samuel Taylor Coleridge to Derek Mahon, memoir from Jenny Diski and Sara Wheeler as well David Attenborough, Maori scientists and other Polar Explorers. Alongside you’ll hear hugely varied music inspired by Antarctica from Vaughan Williams to Tanya Ekanayaka, from The Muppets to Nigel Westlake and Cab Calloway. Our readers are Jessica Turner and John Lightbody.

Produced in Salford by Olive Clancy

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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Words and Music

Antarctica - from Shackleton to Happy Feet

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