The Essay

Five writers and artists not normally associated with classical music, discuss a specific example of Vaughan Williams’ work to which they have a personal connection, and why it speaks to them.Following on from the successful Five Kinds of Beethoven Radio 3 essay series in 2020, where a wide range of Beethoven fans shared their personal relationship to the composer and his work, this new series gives similar treatment to Vaughan Williams. Our essayists share their unexpected perspective on Vaughan Williams’ work, taking it outside the standard ‘English pastoral’ box, in a series of accessible essays, part of the Vaughan Williams season on Radio 3. Luke Turner – nature writer and music journalist The Wasps – Aristophanic Suite was an EMI and John Player Special cassette tape that Luke’s family listened to on long car journeys in the 1980s. Obviously the cassette opens with The Lark Ascending, but like a pop smash hit drawing your attention to an album, that piece was merely the introduction to The Wasps - Aris

Five writers and artists not normally associated with classical music, discuss a specific example of Vaughan Williams’s work to which they have a personal connection, and why it speaks to them.Following on from the successful Five Kinds of Beethoven Radio 3 essay series in 2020, where a wide range of Beethoven fans shared their personal relationship to the composer and his work, this new series gives similar treatment to Vaughan Williams. Our essayists share their unexpected perspective on Vaughan Williams’s work, taking it outside the standard ‘English pastoral’ box, in a series of accessible essays, part of the Vaughan Williams season on Radio 3. Essay 3: Adrian McNally - producer/arranger/pianist for The Unthanks Self-taught and raised in a South Yorkshire pit village, Adrian McNally is pianist, composer and band leader for The Unthanks. From humble beginnings to scoring for his band to perform with Charles Hazelwood's Army of Generals, Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band and the BBC Concert Orchestra for T

Five writers and artists not normally associated with classical music, discuss a specific example of Vaughan Williams’s work to which they have a personal connection, and why it speaks to them.Following on from the successful Five Kinds of Beethoven Radio 3 essay series in 2020, where a wide range of Beethoven fans shared their personal relationship to the composer and his work, this new series gives similar treatment to Vaughan Williams. Our essayists share their unexpected perspective on Vaughan Williams’s work, taking it outside the standard ‘English pastoral’ box, in a series of accessible essays, part of the Vaughan Williams season on Radio 3. The Lark Ascending is Dr Rommi Smith’s favourite piece by Vaughan Williams. It has accompanied her all over the world in her travels as a poet and teacher, reminding her of her Englishness and her home, even when as a Black woman, she is often not ‘seen’ as being English. The piece is a key part of her English DNA. This was brought home to her vividly when the vio

Five writers and artists not normally associated with classical music, discuss a specific example of Vaughan Williams’s work to which they have a personal connection, and why it speaks to them.Following on from the successful Five Kinds of Beethoven Radio 3 essay series in 2020, where a wide range of Beethoven fans shared their personal relationship to the composer and his work, this new series gives similar treatment to Vaughan Williams. Our essayists share their unexpected perspective on Vaughan Williams’s work, taking it outside the standard ‘English pastoral’ box, in a series of accessible essays, part of the Vaughan Williams season on Radio 3. Essay 1: Clare Shaw – poet/dramatistClare considers the role that Vaughan Williams’ setting to music of the Welsh hymn Rhosymedre has played in their life. They first played it as a teenager on the viola, for the Burnley Youth Orchestra. It symbolised an expression of beauty, love and hope, a sense of voice and connection to place and possibility... It is also tha

Poet, editor and writer Alvin Pang loves Singapore. It’s just that he doesn’t necessarily want to be in Singapore. He loves it, but the cause for this is a wanderlust and a need for movement which has given him an instinct to push down walls. He explores how the Singapore mindset of the convivial host can set a writer in good stead for a creative life. Presented by Alvin Pang Produced by Kevin Core

Anil Pradhan says he is defined by his “inbetween-ness”. As a gay, Indian, Nepali poet he considers the strange duality - that while English may be linked with the colonial mindset that defined India – it is also a language that allows him to express his true self. This episode was recorded at the BBC Contains Strong Language Festival in Birmingham.Presented by Anil Pradhan Produced by Kevin Core

Isabelle Baafi has a unique take on healthcare, forged by the Caribbean origins of a succession of female healers in her family. Reaching back in time from her own childhood visit to A&E, Isabelle explores her mother’s adage – that to heal someone is to change their destiny. Presented by Isabelle Baafi Produced by Kevin Core

Roy McFarlane, former Birmingham Laureate, recalls the mask worn by his Jamaican late father – a mask designed to help him integrate into his new UK home. But did it work? Roy recalls the dignity of a man who worked hard to put money on the table – and encyclopaedias on the shelves. His essay was recorded at the BBC's Contains Strong Language Festival in Birmingham.This essay contains strong racist language which some may find offensive.Presented by Roy McFarlane Produced by Kevin Core

The Indian writer and dancer Tishani Doshi considers the impact of her mother’s upbringing thousands of miles away in the UK and how her imagination returns to the exotic idea - of a row of small terraced houses in the seemingly endless summer nights of Wales. Her essay was recorded at the BBC's Contains Strong Language Festival in Birmingham. Presented by Tishani Doshi Produced by Kevin Core

Poet and writer Casey Bailey is returning to Birmingham after a holiday and reliving memories of his childhood in Nechells. Casey is the Birmingham Poet Laureate 2020-2022. He’s a writer, performer and educator born and raised in Nechells, Birmingham. Casey has performed nationally and internationally, spent time on a residency with the Royal Shakespeare Company. His debut poetry pamphlet ‘Waiting at Bloomsbury Park’ was published in 2017. His first full collection of poetry ‘Adjusted’ in 2018 was followed by his second collection Please Do Not Touch in 2021.Producers: Rosie Boulton and Melvin Rickarby A Must Try Softer Production A co-commission between BBC Radio 3 and the Space with funding from Arts Council England.

Poet Naush Sabah is re-visiting her childhood home in Sparkbrook, BirminghamNaush is a poet, writer, editor, critic and educator based in the West Midlands. In 2019, she co-founded the Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal where she is currently Editor and Publishing Director. Naush also co-founded Pallina Press where she is Editor-at-Large and she currently serves as a trustee at Poetry London. Her writing has appeared in The Poetry Review, the TLS, PN Review, The Dark Horse, Modern Poetry in Translation, and elsewhere. She was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature’s 2021 Sky Arts Writers Award. Her debut pamphlet Litanies was published by Guillemot Press in November 2021. She's a visiting lecturer in creative writing at Birmingham City University. Producers: Rosie Boulton and Melvin Rickarby A Must Try Softer Production A co-commission between BBC Radio 3 and the Space with funding from Arts Council England.

Writer Professor Thomas Glave has been in London and is returning on a train at night to his home city of Birmingham.Thomas was born in the Bronx and grew up there and in Kingston, Jamaica. His work has earned many honours, including the Lambda Literary Award in 2005 and 2008, an O. Henry Prize, a Fine Arts Center in Provincetown Fellowship, and a Fulbright fellowship to Jamaica. He's the author of Whose Song? and Other Stories, Words to Our Now: Imagination and Dissent, The Torturer's Wife, and Among the Bloodpeople: Politics and Flesh. Thomas has been Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Professor at MIT, a Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the University of Warwick, a Visiting Fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge and writer-in-residence at the University of Liverpool. He lives in the Jewellery Quarter in Birmingham. Producers: Rosie Boulton and Melvin Rickarby A Must Try Softer Production A co-commission between BBC Radio 3 and the Space with funding from Arts Council England.

Writer Dr Shahed Yousaf is driving home to Birmingham from a very demanding day at work in prison.Shahed is a GP who works in prisons, substance misuse centres and with the homeless community. He has just published a memoir: Stitched Up. He spends his time running between emergencies - from overdoses to assaults, from cell fires to suicides - with one hand always hovering over the panic button. He was shortlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Prize 2016 and commended for the Faber & Faber FAB Prize 2017. Shahed won a place on to the Writing West Midlands Room 204 Mentoring scheme and the Middle Way Mentoring Project in 2019.Producers: Rosie Boulton and Melvin Rickarby A Must Try Softer Production A co-commission between BBC Radio 3 and the Space with funding from Arts Council England.

Writer Helen Cross is remembering how clubbing in 90s Birmingham and an encounter with an oil painting in Birmingham's Museum and Art Gallery led her to feel at home in this city.Helen is the author of novels, stories, radio plays and screenplays. Her first novel, My Summer of Love, won a Betty Trask Award and became a BAFTA award-winning feature film. Her recent work includes a BBC Afternoon Play The Return of Rowena The Wonderful and a five-part audio drama series: English Rose. Helen teaches creative writing at various international venues, at UK universities and on many online and community courses. Helen lives in Kings Heath, Birmingham.Producers: Rosie Boulton and Melvin Rickarby A Must Try Softer Production A co-commission between BBC Radio 3 and the Space with funding from Arts Council England.

For the final essay in the series, architectural designer Christopher Laing gives a personal account of how he started Signstrokes, which introduces standardised sign language for architecture. Deaf people are not new to architecture, however they face significant barriers because the sign language vocabulary of the profession is not standardised and lacks terms to express architectural concepts uncommon in everyday language.Christopher, drawing upon his own difficult experience at university, where he suffered the consequence of few deaf people before him studying architecture anywhere. The knock-on effect was that very few British Sign Language interpreters knew architectural terms or context, having never worked in the field before. Christopher had to take on the additional responsibility, on top of his degree, of helping the university interpreters familiarise themselves with the jargon and signs to use when interpreting the lectures.Christopher collaborated with Adolfs Kristapsons to create the corpus di

Dr Robert Adam is an assistant professor at Heriot-Watt University and a lecturer in Linguistics, British Sign Language and Deaf Studies.In the course of his essay, Robert asks, who are the arbiters of British Sign Language? How can its evolution be managed?Robert shares how fewer deaf children are learning British Sign Language at school, and more are now learning it later in life, as young adults. From an outsider’s perspective this may seem relatively harmless, but this language deprivation and dispersal of deaf people from each other, means that deaf children do not get the chance to develop extensive peer groups, or learn to sign from a fluent or native signer. Robert goes on to explore the colonial history of British Sign Language and how there is no single country that ‘owns’ the one language, and British Sign Language is certainly not owned solely by the British Deaf community. He talks wryly of the irony of deaf people in the UK continuing to struggle with equal access to information and participatio

Deepa Shastri, an actress, sign song performer and British Sign Language consultant. Deepa explores how Deaf culture and sign language being represented in the arts is so important to the deaf community but also how the arts and sign language naturally go hand in hand - due to the visual and expressive nature of sign language. Back in the 80s, when Marlee Matlin became the first deaf Oscar winner for her performance in 'Children of a Lesser God', things were about to become very exciting for the deaf arts. Fast forward a few decades, Deepa shares how we are now entering a new era where deaf people are being represented on screen and on stage with the likes of Rose Ayling-Ellis picking up the Glitterball, Sophie Stone appearing in Dr. Who and Nadeem Islam making waves on series such as ITV's 'The Bay'. Theatre companies such as Deafinitely Theatre were and continue to be the breeding ground of deaf talent. Within the context of exploring Deafinitely Theatre's work, Deepa explores the complex process of transla

Tina Kelberman shares her experience of growing up in a large deaf Jewish family. Her family has inherited deafness for six generations now and are probably also the biggest Deaf Jewish family in the UK. Whilst their culture is steeped in history, spanning back almost two centuries, it's been a rocky road for them - as Tina shares. She hated the feeling of people watching her family communicate in sign language. Her parents also hated it and so did her grandparents- to the point where their signs were smaller and more secretive when out in public. 70 years on, not much has changed. But Tina talks of how we are bolder these days, and how her own children stare right back until the people staring look away.Tina talks candidly about how sign language is like any other language and so it evolves. Tina gives us examples of the evolution such as the telephone - how signs evolved from the candlestick phone to the mobile phone as we know it today. Tina used to correct her mother’s signing, just like all kids groan at

Dr Robert Adam is an assistant professor at Heriot-Watt University and a lecturer in Linguistics, British Sign Language and Deaf Studies.In his essay, 'Sign Language through the Ages', Robert explores the rich and layered history of British Sign Language. He recalls the first time he read a piece of deaf history - his father’s school published ‘Utmost for the Highest’ for its centenary in 1962, and was full of black and white photos of stern looking people and impressive edifices. The faces and names of long-dead deaf people leapt out at Robert and made him wonder what was life like for those deaf people then? They achieved so much but would have had to find their way in times where there were no anti-discrimination laws. Robert shares with us how Deaf people and sign languages have existed since antiquity. Quintus Pedius, a painter in the first century AD, is the first recorded deaf person in history. The first clear record of sign language being used was a wedding in Leicester in 1575. So why is sign langu

In 1945, when World WarII finally ended and while Europe's artistic centres smouldered, in New York City an artistic renaissance, in music, painting, theatre, and literature, burst forth out of the city’s bohemia.Most of this work was generated in a single neighbourhood of Manhattan: Greenwich Village. World War II in America was a time of national unity, a singleness of purpose where non-conformity had no place in military or civilian life. Yet somehow as soon as the war ended, a full-blown non-conformist bohemia exploded in New York. Membership of this Bohemia, for men at least, was signified by wearing an undergarment - the T-shirt - in public. Today that means nothing. In 1945, in a society that was still mobilized with military single-mindedness, it was shocking.In this series for The Essay, Michael Goldfarb explores the how and why of this extraordinary eruption through the stories of some of T-shirt Bohemia's key figures: Marlon Brando, Jackson Pollock, James Baldwin, Charlie Parker and Jack Kerouac.In