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: A Woman's Lot

A Woman's Lot

BBC Radio 3 - Words and Music, A Woman's Lot

Greta Scacchi and Lydia Wilson with readings about women rebelling and questioning.

Ahead of International Women's Day, an exploration of expectations for women, and writers and composers breaking the mould, including Virginia Woolf, Warsan Shire, and Emily Hall.

"If we escape a little from the common sitting-room and see human beings not always in their relation to each other but in relation to reality". In Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, the author summons up the image of Shakespeare's sister seizing her opportunities. Today's Words and Music looks forward to International Women's Day on March 8th with writers and musicians challenging society's rules.  Jessica Mitford's Hons and Rebels takes us to the Spanish Civil War, Sally Rooney and Aphra Behn imagine adulterous relationships, Warsan Shire writes in praise of Grace Jones, and Athena steps into her chariot of fire in Emily Wilson's new translation of The Iliad. Music includes compositions by Emily Hall, Clara Schumann, Fatoumata Diawara, Cecilia McDowall and Hildegard of Bingen, and pieces arranged or conducted by women including Alison Balsom, Rachel Podger, Barbara Hannigan and Emmanuelle Haim. The readers are Greta Scacchi and Lydia Wilson.
On March 8th Radio 3 has a special focus on women composing and performing.

Producer: Hannah Sander 

READINGS
Virginia Woolf – A Room of One’s Own
Rose Macaulay – Crewe Train
Germaine Greer – The Female Eunuch
Aphra Behn – ‘The Willing Mistriss’
Audre Lorde – Sister Outsider
Susannah Gibson – Bluestockings: The First Women's Movement
Carol Ann Duffy – ‘Salome’
Jane Austen – Pride and Prejudice
Elizabeth Gaskell – Cranford
Jessica Mitford – Hons and Rebels
Elizabeth I – Speech to the Troops at Tilbury, 1588
Gabrielle Zevin – Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Warsan Shire – ‘Bless Grace Jones’
Homer (trans. Emily Wilson) – The Iliad
Simone de Beauvoir – The Second Sex
Hilary Mantel – Wolf Hall
Sally Rooney – Conversations With Friends
Daphne du Maurier – Rebecca
Virginia Woolf – A Room of One’s Own

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

A Woman's Lot

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