Peggy Seeger in Iffley

After a life on the road, folk legend Peggy Seeger has settled in the village of Iffley on the outskirts of Oxford.  In this episode she talks poignantly about her mother, Ruth Crawford, a talented composer who died when she was fifty-three and Peggy was just eighteen.  Peggy recites a poem called “My Mother is Younger Than Me”.  She sings old union songs, including “The Miner’s Prayer” which she says she doesn’t like because it asks the rich for pity – and “asking the rich to have pity is stupid – they won't”. Peggy recalls her time on the Greenham Common protests, shows us a piece of the wire fence she keeps on her mantelpiece and sings a song called “A Woman on Wheels” which is about a protester in a  wheelchair who she saw using bolt cutters to breach that fence. There’s time to reflect on the influence of her older brother Pete and her husband Ewan Macoll and, of course to hear the true story behind the writing of “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”. Come with us on a walk through Peggy Seeger’s life in an unforgettable episode of Folk on Foot.