An ancient Sussex church - home to a medieval anchorite and the cottage where William Blake received the poetic spirit of Milton are two of the places explored in the new book from Alexandra Harris, as she returns to her home country Sussex and consults sources ranging from parish maps, paintings by Constable to records of the fish caught on the River Arun. In her new book Harriet Baker explores the impact of a move away from city life on three twentieth century writers - Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Townsend Warner and Rosamond Lehmann. Julien Clin talks about his research into place in contemporary London writing and ideas of heimat in the work of Heidegger. Shahidha Bari hosts the conversation.
Producer: Torquil MacLeod
Rural Hours: The Country Lives of Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Townsend Warner and Rosamond Lehmann by Harriet Baker is published April 2024 The Rising Down: Lives in a Sussex Landscape by Alexandra Harris is out now. You can hear her in other Free Thinking discussions exploring trees in art and twilight available as Arts & Ideas podcasts. She has also written Essays for Radio 3 exploring A Taste for the Baroque, Dark Arcadias, and a series of walks for Radio 4 in the footsteps of Virginia Woolf. Julien Clin is a researcher based at Kingston University London working on a project about the poetics of place in contemporary London writing.
Kant today, Spice Girls Reunited, Impersonating an Animal
New Thinking: Exploring the local
Tacitus, Byron's fanmail and Bluey
Change, scrabble and cultural christianity
Hobbes, Abba, Waterloo and margarine
Unravelling plainness
Pranks
What does feminist art mean?
New Thinking: Light and Darkness
Approaches to death
New Thinking: East West artistic connections
Rock, Paper, Saints and Sinners
Arteries of tomorrow
New Thinking: How water shapes our history and environment
The Legacy of the Laundries
Gas, oil and the Essex blues
Weird Viking Bodies
From algorithms to oceans
Germany’s Mary Wollstonecraft
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Global News Podcast
Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4
The Infinite Monkey Cage
You’re Dead to Me
Elis James and John Robins