The Essay

Blade Runner's future is now 40 years old. 5 writers explore the impact and legacy Ridley Scott's 1982 classic where replicants escape to a retrofitted Earth only to meet their end at the hands of the washed out, titular Blade Runner played by, Harrison Ford. Adapted from Philip K. Dick's equally classic 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.Both film and book are meditations on what it is to be human but we have been looking through the eyes of the film ever since it plunged us into its acid rain, neon coated, West Coast nightmare of flaming night skies, commercial ziggurats, flying cars and fake animals. Now its future is our present. We live in a world of mass species die off, environmental crisis, rapidly developing A.I., all powerful corporations & extreme divides between rich and poor.Film and book have bled into our culture in many different ways. Frances Morgan, writer and researcher into electronic music at the Royal College of Art, pierces the sound barrier of a film that defined the fu

Blade Runner's future is now 40 year's old. Ridley Scott's 1982 classic SF vision of replicants escaping to a retrofitted Earth and meeting their end at the hands of the washed out, titular Blade Runner, Harrison Ford as Rick Deckard, is adapted from Philip K Dick's equally classic 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.Both film and book are meditations on what it is to be human but we have been looking through the eyes of the film ever since it plunged us into its acid rain, neon-coated West Coast nightmare of flaming night skies, commercial ziggurats, flying cars and fake animals. Now its future is our present. We live in a world of mass species die-off, environmental crisis, rapidly developing AI, all-powerful corporations and extreme divides between rich and poor. Just that neon umbrellas never caught on and flying cars are still a luxury.Film and book have bled into our culture in many different ways and in this series of The Essay 5 writers explore what it is to be human or a machine, the sonic

Camilla Smith looks at the art of the Weimar Republic.

In the first of five personal takes on the Weimar Republic, historian Jochen Hung presents his view of the Weimar Republic from Berlin.

The annual Arts Over Borders festival reaches into rural and urban communities on both sides of the Irish border. Curated with a strong sense of place and extending across four counties – from Fermanagh to Donegal, Tyrone to Derry/Londonderry- the border itself looms large in the festival.Recorded in front of live audiences at the 2019 Arts Over Borders festival in Enniskillen and Derry/Londonderry, five writers explore the theme of boundaries. At the Royal Grammar School, Enniskillen, the author Philip Hoare transcends the elements and talks about being shaped and reshaped by the sea. Producers: Ophelia Byrne & Cathy Moorehead

The annual Arts Over Borders festival reaches into rural and urban communities on both sides of the Irish border. Curated with a strong sense of place and extending across four counties – from Fermanagh to Donegal, Tyrone to Derry/Londonderry- the border itself looms large in the festival.Recorded in front of live audiences at the 2019 Arts Over Borders festival in Enniskillen and Derry/Londonderry, five writers explore the theme of boundaries. At Derry's Guildhall, the writer and journalist Ed Vulliamy talks about the musicians transgressing the perceived barriers between youth and age, from John Cale and Bob Dylan, to Leonard Cohen and Joan Baez.Producers: Ophelia Byrne & Cathy Moorehead

The annual Arts Over Borders festival reaches into rural and urban communities on both sides of the Irish border. Curated with a strong sense of place and extending across four counties – from Fermanagh to Donegal, Tyrone to Derry/Londonderry- the border itself looms large in the festival.Recorded in front of live audiences at the 2019 Arts Over Borders festival in Enniskillen and Derry/Londonderry, five writers explore the theme of boundaries. At the Royal Grammar School, Enniskillen, the writer Wendy Erskine takes us through doorways as portals into other worlds in art, literature and life.Producers: Ophelia Byrne & Cathy Moorehead

The annual Arts Over Borders festival reaches into rural and urban communities on both sides of the Irish border. Curated with a strong sense of place and extending across four counties – from Fermanagh to Donegal, Tyrone to Derry/Londonderry- the border itself looms large in the festival.Recorded in front of live audiences at the 2019 Arts Over Borders festival in Enniskillen and Derry/Londonderry, five writers explore the theme of boundaries. At the Guildhall in Derry/Londonderry, poet Stephen Sexton is prompted by a description of a traditional Tory Island wedding, to talk about the margins between language and image.Producers: Ophelia Byrne & Cathy Moorehead

The annual Arts Over Borders festival reaches into rural and urban communities on both sides of the Irish border. Curated with a strong sense of place and extending across four counties – from Fermanagh to Donegal, Tyrone to Derry/Londonderry- the border itself looms large in the festival.In this series of The Essay, recorded in front of live audiences at the 2019 Arts Over Borders festival in Enniskillen and Derry/Londonderry, five writers explore the theme of boundaries. At the Royal Grammar School, Enniskillen, Irish writer and broadcaster Sinéad Gleeson talks about the ways in which pain, inequality and borders can separate us.Producers: Ophelia Byrne & Cathy Moorehead

There’s a shadow creeping across the forest in the works of JRR Tolkien. Nature may be incorruptible but the creatures of the forest cannot withstand the relentless march of evil. Slowly but surely the songbirds are replaced by giant spiders, black squirrels and rampaging goblins. Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough is joined by Mark Atherton from Oxford University for a walk through Tolkien’s forest, uncovering the influence of Anglo-Saxon legends and Middle English poems in the creation of Middle Earth.Producer: Alasdair Cross

Lose yourself in a forest of fair maidens and knights with suspiciously shiny armour. This is a forest where the romantic couplings may be fantastical but the backdrop is meticulously drawn. Each leaf, each clump of moss is taken directly from nature. This is the mediaeval forest as reimagined by late Victorian aesthetes aghast at the grit and grime of industrialisation.Eleanor Rosamund Baraclough is joined by Ingrid Hanson from Manchester University for a walk through this Pre-Raphaelite forest. Their spirit guide is William Morris, the writer and designer who helped create the forest in his works of fantasy fiction such as The Wood Beyond the World, beating a path to be followed by Tolkien, C.S. Lewis and J.K. Rowling.Producer: Alasdair Cross

As he enters a woodland, perfumer, Roja Dove can be overwhelmed. This legendary nose of the perfume industry can identify 800 different scents blindfolded. Place him in a forest and he can sense narratives of sex, birth, decay and death. Roja joins Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough for a walk in the woods to discuss how the base notes of the forest scent inspire him. The foundation of damp moss and rotting wood is warm and comforting, but a change in the breeze can bring fresh inspiration to excite the senses, just the kind of effect Roja looks for when he formulates a new perfume.Producer: Alasdair Cross

Forests are the perfect place for outlaw artists to enact their vision. Just fourteen stops from Soho on the Central Line, Epping Forest provides a particularly convenient place to lose yourself and hide from worldly distractions.Sculptor, Jacob Epstein used Epping as artistic inspiration and venue for innumerable affairs. But was he lost in the forest or hiding there? John Clare was incarcerated there in an asylum, a place where he lost his status as the peasant poet but found a new identity. First he believed himself to be Lord Byron, latterly he was William Shakespeare. Skip forward a hundred years and the forest continued to intrigue, sheltering the Punk collective, Crass from Big Bang London and providing a surreal playground for theatrical provocateur and forest pixie, Ken Campbell.Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough is joined on a walk through the artistic hotspots of Epping Forest by Will Ashon, author of 'Strange Labyrinth', a cultural guidebook to the lungs of North-East London. Producer: Alasdair Cross

The folk singer, Nancy Kerr joins Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough for a walk in the woods. Forests play a vital role in folk music, as a refuge for romantic outlaws, as a metaphor for freedom and as a space for sexual couplings, usually with the traditionally tragic ending.Nancy explains how the early folk song collectors such as Cecil Sharp and Ralph Vaughan Williams found a vibrant folk vocabulary bristling with bushes and briars, stout oaks and wily willows. She understands just how powerfully symbolic trees and forests can be, composing her own songs of the woods and interpreting classic tales of sylvan sensuality.Producer: Alasdair Cross

Radio 3 presenter Kate Molleson celebrates a composer whose music is particularly important to her: the Frenchwoman Eliane Radigue, whose calm and long-form sense of perspective Kate finds inspirational.

Radio 3 presenter Andrew McGregor reflects on the powerful Lamentations of English composer Thomas Tallis and their special place in his life.

Radio 3 presenter Kathryn Tickell celebrates a composer whose music is particularly important to her: the Australian-American folksong fanatic Percy Grainger.

Radio 3 presenter Tom McKinney celebrates the birdsong-inspired music of the twentieth-century French composer Olivier Messiaen and its special place in his life.

Radio 3 presenter Penny Gore celebrates a composer particularly important to her: the Moravian, Leoš Janáček, whose music is shot through with the uncertainties of life.

Radio 3 presenter Petroc Trelawny celebrates a composer whose fascinating life story and music are particularly special to him: the Englishman Lennox Berkeley.