Afterwords

As well as writing about music - most famously in A Clockwork Orange and his non-fiction book This Man and Music - there are over 300 works composed over a fifty year span, from preludes and fugues for keyboard via a 'flatulent fanfare' for four tubas (dedicated to an eminent - and scornful - music critic) to orchestral works.

This episode of Afterwords explores Burgess' musical ambitions and abilities and reveals new insight into his antagonistic relationship with the musical establishment. With Belgian pianist Stephane Ginsburgh, American musicologist Christine Lee Gengaro, the British academic Christopher Wintle and Professor Andrew Biswell of the International Anthony Burgess Foundation in Manchester.

The premiere of 'Homage to Hans Keller' has been specially recorded by Crystal Palace Band tuba section.

Produced by Alan Hall with Phoebe McIndoe.

An exploration of the musical ambitions of the novelist Anthony Burgess.

An exploration of the artistic ambitions of the writer Anthony Burgess who was also, throughout his life, deeply engaged with music.

As well as writing about music - most famously in A Clockwork Orange and his non-fiction book This Man and Music - there are over 300 works composed over a 50-year span, from preludes and fugues for keyboard via a 'flatulent fanfare' for four tubas (dedicated to an eminent - and scornful - music critic) to orchestral works.

This episode of Afterwords explores Burgess's musical ambitions and abilities and reveals new insight into his antagonistic relationship with the musical establishment. With Belgian pianist Stephane Ginsburgh, American musicologist Christine Lee Gengaro, the British academic Christopher Wintle and Professor Andrew Biswell of the International Anthony Burgess Foundation in Manchester.

The premiere of Burgess's sketch 'Homage to Hans Keller' has been specially recorded by Crystal Palace Band tuba section.

Other music includes extracts from:

Blooms of Dublin (first broadcast in February 1982), the musical version of A Clockwork Orange and Burgess' setting of The Brides of Enderby,

Symphony in C (BBC Philharmonic conducted by Michael Francis, first broadcast in October 2017),

Manchester Overture (BBC Philharmonic conducted by Juanjo Mena, first broadcast September 2013),

Wendy Carlos: Ninth Symphony (Scherzo), from the soundtrack for A Clockwork Orange,

The Bad-Tempered Electronic Keyboard - Prelude no. 22, Fugue no. 17, Prelude no. 23 (performed by Stephane Ginsburgh)

and private recordings of Burgess at the piano.

A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 3

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Celebrated as “the Father of Modern African literature, ? Achebe blazed a trail for African people centring themselves and their culture in their own stories. This began with the release of his debut novel, Things Fall Apart, in 1958. He believed fiercely in the power of stories to obscure or reveal identities, depending on who does the telling, and with that, came a duty to speak out about the failings and corruption of postcolonial Nigeria, and its suppression of stories around Biafra.

With contributions from Achebe's close friend, the Somali novelist and poet Nuruddin Farah, the author Caryl Phillips, who began a friendship with Achebe after interviewing him in 2003, the young Nigerian writer Esther Ifesinachi Okonkwo who has taken inspiration from Achebe's essays, and the Igbo historian (and Achebe's youngest child) Dr Nwando Achebe.

Produced by Redzi Bernard.

The work of CHINUA ACHEBE, in his own words, and in the words of those who knew him.

The life and ideas of the Nigerian novelist, poet and critic, Chinua Achebe, in his own words, and in the words of those who knew, loved, and were inspired by him.

With contributions from Achebe's close friend, the Somali novelist and poet Nuruddin Farah, the author Caryl Phillips, who began a friendship with Achebe after interviewing him in 2003, the young Nigerian writer Esther Ifesanichi Okonkwo who has taken inspiration from Achebe's essays, and the Igbo historian (and Achebe's youngest child) Dr Nwando Achebe.

First broadcast 19th June 2022

The life and ideas of Nigerian novelist, poet and critic Chinua Achebe, in his own words, and in the words of those who knew him, loved him and were inspired by him.

In this episode we focus on the words of Martha Gellhorn, one of the most prescient and insightful journalists of the 20th century. During her sixty-year career, from the 1930s onwards, Gellhorn's work often focused on the 'sufferers of history' - those who find themselves caught up in the decisions of leaders from which they neither have the influence nor means to extricate themselves. She reported on almost every major world conflict that occurred within that period - from the Spanish Civil War through to conflicts in Nicaragua and El Salvador in the 1980s. Through her ideas, contemporary writers and journalists reflect on modern reporting - on capturing truth amidst the chaos of conflict, on the responsibility of the reporter, on memory, objectivity and the failures of political imagination.

Featuring contributions from Patrick Cockburn, Rosie Boycott, John Pilger, Lindsey Hilsum, Janine di Giovanni and Jon Snow, this programme explores how her approach might inform the way we document the world we live in now.

Produced by Eleanor McDowall and Arlie Adlington

Contemporary writers reflect on modern reporting through the work of Martha Gellhorn

In this edition of Afterwords, we explore Oliver's poetic invitations to finding redemption, devotion and love within a harsh and beautiful world. Her words sing the natural landscape - alive with awe, ecstasy, wildness - but also with a deep awareness of its capacity for heartbreak, pain and brutality.

In 'Our World', Mary Oliver's elegy for the photographer Molly Malone Cook - her partner of over four decades - Oliver wrote 'Attention without feeling... is only a report. An openness — an empathy — was necessary if the attention was to matter'. Using the image of Cook tenderly observing the world in the slow bloom of her photographer's darkroom, Oliver reflects on how this notion of attention wove into her writing, 'M. instilled in me this deeper level of looking...

We hear from Helene Atwan, her publisher at Beacon Press, poet and friend Lisa Starr and the writers Mary Jean Chan and Nadine Aisha Jassat

Archive recordings include excerpts from the On Being podcast ('Mary Oliver - Listening to the World' interview by Krista Tippett, 5.02.15 - hear the conversation in full at www.onbeing.org), the Lannan Foundation ('Mary Oliver in Conversation with Coleman Barks', 4.08.01), Literary Hub ('A Phonecall from Paul: A Conversation with John Waters', 18.07.19) and Beacon Press ('At Blackwater Pond', 15.04.06).

Poems feat. (Reprinted by the permission of The Charlotte Sheedy Literary Agency as agent for the author.)

`In Blackwater Woods`

Copyright © Mary Oliver 1983

`Sleeping in the Forest`

Copyright © Mary Oliver 1978

`Wild Geese`

Copyright © Mary Oliver 1986

`The Whistler`

Copyright © Mary Oliver 1999

`When Death Comes`

Copyright © Mary Oliver 1992

Produced by Eleanor McDowall

A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 3

RPT - first broadcast 21st November 2021

A dive into the world of American writer Mary Oliver, with recordings of the poet herself.

A dive into the poetic world of American writer Mary Oliver through rare recordings of the poet herself, interviews with those who knew her and writers for whom her work has been a guiding light.

In 'Our World', MARY OLIVER's elegy for the photographer Molly Malone Cook - her partner of over four decades - Oliver wrote Attention without feeling... is only a report. An openness — an empathy — was necessary if the attention was to matter. Using the image of Cook tenderly observing the world around her through her photographs, in the slow bloom of the darkroom and in her interactions with friends and strangers, Oliver reflects on how this notion of attention wove into her writing, M. instilled in me this deeper level of looking and working, of seeing through the heavenly visibles to the heavenly invisibles.

This attention - close, precise, full of curiosity - is written through her poetry. A devotion equally applied to the movements of a grasshopper, eating sugar out of her hand, as to the body of a lover. Her words sing the natural world - alive with awe, ecstasy, wildness - but also with a deep awareness of its capacity for heartbreak, pain and brutality.

I would say that there exist a thousand unbreakable links between each of us and everything else, and that our dignity and our chances are one. The farthest star and the mud at our feet are a family... we are at risk together, or we are on our way to a sustainable world together. We are each other's destiny. - MARY OLIVER in her essay 'Winter Hours

Lead by rare recordings of the poet herself and In the company of Helene Atwan, her publisher at Beacon Press, poet and friend Lisa Starr and the writers Mary Jean Chan and Nadine Aisha Jassat, we explore Oliver's poetic invitations to finding redemption, devotion and love within a harsh and beautiful world.

A dive into the poetic worlds of MARY OLIVER, led by rare recordings of the poet herself.

Afterwords dives into the wild, feverish imagination of Maurice Sendak. The Brooklyn-born writer and artist dreamed some of the most beloved picture books of the 20th Century into being - from Where the Wild Things Are to In the Night Kitchen and Outside Over There - these books offered a doorway into the vast inner landscapes of childhood. In this documentary, we hear archive recordings of Sendak himself alongside interviews with a Jungian analyst and poets and writers who've been inspired by his work.

Featuring the writers Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Emily Berry and Michael Rosen alongside Jungian analyst and interviewee in Jonathan Cott's 'There's a Mystery There: The Primal Vision of Maurice Sendak', Margaret Klenck; art historian, artist and curator for the Maurice Sendak Foundation, Jonathan Weinberg and the president of the Maurice Sendak Foundation, Lynn Caponera. As well as archive of Studs Terkel and Terry Gross, in her radio show Fresh Air, in conversation with Sendak himself.

Archive courtesy of the Studs Terkel Archive (interviews from 1970, 1984 and 1990 and Fresh Air from WHYY

Produced by Eleanor McDowall

A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 3

Dive inside the wild, feverish imagination of Maurice Sendak.

A forest grows, we tumble into a dream and cross into Outside Over There. Afterwords dives into the wild, feverish imagination of Maurice Sendak.

New arts feature for BBC Radio 3.

Muriel Spark is probably still best known for the novel based on her own schooling in Edinburgh in the 1930's, 'The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie'. But she published over twenty other novels, as well as essays and poems - she always thought of herself as a poet first - and, though 'Scottish by formation', she left Scotland for 'adventures' in what used to be Rhodesia, London, New York and Rome, before finally settling into a kind of 'spiritual exile' for the last thirty years of her life in Arezzo, Tuscany.

But her work and her ideas about what a writer is still resonate, as can be heard in recordings with her from the early 1970s onwards and through the observations of the writers Ian Rankin and Zoe Strachan, Colin McIlroy of the National Library of Scotland and Muriel Spark's friend and author of 'Appointment in Arezzo', Alan Taylor.

With extracts from Spark's writing read by Kate Arneil.

Everything happens to an artist; time is always redeemed, nothing is lost and wonders never cease.' (Loitering With Intent)

Produced by Alan Hall

First broadcast 12th June 2022

Reflections on the work of Muriel Spark, through archive of the author and new interviews.

Reflections on the work of Muriel Spark through the author's archive and new interviews.

Her published career ran from the 1970s until her death in 2006, across decades of economic, environmental and political upheaval. She is now considered an important part of the science fiction canon, but during her lifetime she experienced works going in and out of print and the archive of her recorded voice is sparse. In this documentary, we examine the notion of legacy and question who gets to be remembered.

Feat. Professor of Sociology Akwugo Emejulu, Butler biographer Gerry Canavan, Ayana Jamieson, Researcher and co-founder of the Octavia E. Butler Legacy Network, Professor of Literature and Ethnic studies - and current Director of the ground-breaking Clarion Writer's Workshop, where Butler first got her head start - Shelley Streeby, and Assistant Professor Cassandra L. Jones, whose work focuses on memory in Butler's work.

The archive includes an interview with Octavia Butler from Nov 1998 by Richard Wolinsky and Richard A. Lupoff for the programme `Probabilities` which aired on KPFA-FM/Pacifica Radio in Berkeley, California, courtesy of Richard Wolinsky & Richard A. Lupoff, and an interview of Octavia Butler from 14 Dec 1993 for Fresh Air by Terry Gross.

Readings by Stacia L. Brown

Produced by Shanida Scotland

A Falling Tree Production for BBC Radio 3

Writers reflect on the work of celebrated science fiction writer Octavia E Butler.

For her 21st birthday, Pauline Oliveros (1932-2016) was given a tape recorder. It changed her life. She recorded sounds outside her window, then played the tape back, and heard things she hadn't previously noticed. Thus began her philosophy of listening and sonic exploration.

Pauline Oliveros became a virtuoso accordionist, ground-breaking composer and experimentalist, and pioneering member of the San Francisco Tape Music Center, who went on to develop the practice of ‘Deep Listening'. She was, 'an artist, a thinker, whose life's work was around opening up listening as an anti-hierarchical form of transformation for everyone'.

Archive interviews reveal her energy and creativity, her generosity, her self-confidence, her activism, her responses to sexism – all underpinned by her deep commitment to equity, and her playful humour.

Featuring reflections and observations from:

Annea Lockwood, composer and long-time friend,

Irene Revell, curator, writer and researcher,

Louise Gray, writer, and teacher of Sound Arts,

Maria Chávez, sound artist, abstract turntablist and DJ,

Stephanie Loveless, Director of the Center for Deep Listening

Archive courtesy of the Oral History of American Music (1983 and 1998 interviews) at Yale University, KPFA interviews (1972 and 1985) from the Other Minds archive, plus BBC interviews (1993, 2009, 2012, 2016).

Produced by Steve Urquhart

A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 3

An exploration of the work of composer and 'deep listening' pioneer, Pauline Oliveros.

Listen to everything all the time, and remind yourself when you're not - '. Afterwords explores the work of the composer and 'deep listening' pioneer, Pauline Oliveros.

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The musician Pierre Boulez - one of the dominant composers of the 20th Century and a deeply respected conductor - is perhaps most widely known for his iconoclastic utterances, suggesting we 'blow the opera houses up' and that 'all art of the past must be destroyed'.

In the week of what would have been his 100th birthday, figures who were close to him - the composer George Benjamin and the pianist Mitsuko Uchida - and others who have been touched by his thinking - Errollyn Wallen, Master of the King's Music, and Gillian Moore, former Director of Music at the Southbank Centre in London - engage with Boulez's creativity, his personality (an uncompromising, faultlessly charming manner) and his lasting legacy.

Produced by Alan Hall with Phoebe McIndoe

An exploration of Pierre Boulez - composer, conductor and writer.

An exploration of the musician and writer Pierre Boulez who was born 100 years ago this week.

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Best known for his ground-breaking study of working class culture, The Uses of Literacy, published in 1957, Richard Hoggart was a 'scholarship boy' from the back streets of Leeds who became a prime mover in the foundation of cultural studies, a public intellectural and Reith lecturer, Assistant Director-General of UNESCO and a key witness in the Lady Chatterley trial of 1960.

With archive from his many television and radio appearances, Hoggart's prophetic thinking and pertinence today are reflected upon by the author and cultural critic Nathalie Olah, novelist and biographer DJ Taylor, sociologist and writer Dan Evans, the writer Lynsey Hanley and his son, the journalist Paul Hoggart. (Including an extract from an early episode of Granada Television's Coronation Street.)

Produced by Alan Hall

Best known for his ground-breaking study of working class culture, The Uses of Literacy, published in 1957, Richard Hoggart was a 'scholarship boy' from the backstreets of Leeds who became a prime mover in the foundation of cultural studies, a public intellectual and Reith lecturer, Assistant Director-General of UNESCO and a key witness in the Lady Chatterley trial of 1960.

De Beauvoir's position was simply stated, in line with a philosophical position that existence precedes essence: one is not born but becomes a woman. De Beauvoir herself became a formidable figure in the world of philosophy, literature and politics. It is this iconic image - 'brand Beauvoir' - that has dominated in the thirty-five years since her death and which this episode of Afterwords seeks to deconstruct.

Through archive from 1949 onwards and through the words of those who knew her (such as the writer and former diplomat Claudine Monteil who lives within sight of de Beauvoir's grave) and those who've studied her work (the philosopher and de Beauvoir biographer Kate Kirkpatrick, Professor Ursula Tidd of Manchester University and American philosopher Kathryn Sophia Belle), an intimate, nuanced portrait of Simone de Beauvoir emerges - a woman who embraced the 'matter of being a human being' and modelled new ways of engaging ethically with the world.

With the voice of Simone de Beauvoir, courtesy of the Studs Terkel Radio Archive, and readings by Caroline Crier.

Produced by ALAN HALL

A portrait of Simone de Beauvoir through her own words and those of critics and admirers.

First broadcast 14th November 2021

In his memoir, published three years after his death in 2014, Stuart Hall wrote, “You could say I have lived, metaphorically speaking, on the hinge between the colonial and post-colonial worlds; because of radically changing locations, I have belonged, in different ways, to both at different times of my life without ever being fully of either. ? It was this position of belonging and not-belonging, of being perpetually ‘in-between' his homeland, Jamaica, and the place he made his home - Britain - that inspired many of Hall's progressive theories on identity, art, politics and culture, making him one of the most influential and respected British thinkers of our time.

Through his own words, and with contributions from loved ones, academics, artists, and a new generation inspired by his work, Afterwords explores Hall's ideas, influence and identities, from Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University, to founding editor of the New Left Review, co-creator of the first Cultural Studies department at Birmingham University, Professor of Sociology at the Open University, champion of black British art, TV presenter, political activist, lover of music and family man.

With Catherine Hall, Aicha Merez, Julian Henriques and Imani Robinson.

Research by Redzi Bernard.

Produced by Zakia Sewell

First broadcast 28th November 2021

The writer and academic Stuart Hall in his own words and those of admirers of his work.

Reflections on the life and work of Jamaican-British cultural studies pioneer Stuart Hall through archive and contributions from those who knew him and his work.

Reflections on the life and work of Jamaican-British academic, writer and cultural studies pioneer STUART HALL through archive and contributions from those who knew him and his work.

With, among others, Catherine Hall, Aicha Merez, Julian Henriques and Imani Robinson.

Through the 1960s and '70s up to her death in 2004, Susan Sontag was the embodiment of the fashionable, metropolitan, 'public intellectual'. Her writings on 'camp', on photography, on illness (she endured cancer at a time when the 'C word' was almost taboo) and the suffering of others, together with her activism and her art, came to be shared with millions through the medium for which she had very little time as a viewer - television. And her radio interviews on the BBC and elsewhere cemented her reputation.

With contributions from her West Coast friend and scholar Terry Castle, the war correspondent Allan Little who got to know her well during the Siege of Sarajevo, the writer and broadcaster Lisa Appignanesi who achieved a rare intimacy in one interview for Radio 3's Night Waves, Andrew Bolton (curator of the exhibition called 'Camp: Notes on Fashion' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York), the journalist, critic and Sontag 'fan-boy' Boyd Tonkin and the writer Elif Shafak who continues to work in Sontag's long shadow, we take a close listen to the American writer and examine her legacy.

(Including archive from Studs Terkel Radio Archive, courtesy Chicago History Museum and WFMT Radio Network.)

Produced Alia Cassam and Alan Hall

A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 3

A fragmentary look at the writer Susan Sontag through her own words and those of her peers

Dubbed the “Father of Mindfulness ? by Time Magazine, Thich Nhat Hanh's scholarship of Zen traditions, his desire to renew Buddhism for his age, and his ability to translate the teachings across cultures has led to a quiet revolution in the history of consciousness in the West. This radio portrait looks to find Thich Nhat Hanh amongst lines from his poems and at key moments from the many hours of talks and teachings he gave, as well as in the words of some of the monastic followers who continue his practice, and in those of writers and artists inspired by his life and work. And it finds, in his concept of Interbeing and his calls for collective spiritual awakening, provocative and compelling ideas for how we might meet the crises of our times.

With contributions from retired Professor of Economics Richard Layard; Christiana Figueres, former Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change; the Rt. Rev. Dr. Marc Andrus, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of California; and Sister Ā?inh Nghiem and Brother Phap Huu of Plum Village.

Produced by Phil Smith

A radio portrait of Vietnamese Buddhist monk and author Thich Nhat Hanh.

The words of the author Toni Morrison, whose work received the Nobel Prize and many other awards, take us on a journey that spans her literary career and the black American story. Through a selection of Morrison's interviews for BBC outlets, spanning her entire career, Morrison is placed in dialogue with contemporary thinkers, writers and activists - as well as with readings from her work. Afterwords outlines the events that shaped her powerful command of language and the great visionary force through which she chronicled the black American experience.

With contributions from writers, historians and curators, including Jay Bernard, Nydia Swaby, Ifeanyi Awachie, Dana Williams and Morrison's friend, Professor Farah Jasmine Griffin, .

Produced by Shanida Scotland

Reflections on American writer Toni Morrison in her own words and those of her peers.

But as she transported readers across space and through time, she opened portals into our own society and pointed to a fundamental truth: “There are different ways to do almost everything, there isn't just one right way. And God did not ordain it to be such, and so, forever ?. We hear archive recordings of Le Guin herself alongside interviews with people who knew, loved or were inspired by her.

Afterwords looks back over Le Guin's life to ask why she felt moved to ask those questions, and re-examines some of them to glean what we can learn from her writing today. Many of her worlds were built around fundamental questions: what if we removed gender imbalances from society? What if we removed ownership? What if we treated the environment, and other people, with respect? What if we valued different aspects of our being? How would that change society?

With contributions from the writers Katherine Rundell and So Mayer, anthropologist and drag artist Cheddar Gorgeous, collaborator, friend and musician Todd Barton, and Ursula's youngest child, Theo Downes-Le Guin.

Including sound archive from the Freedom From Religion Foundation, The Nation, UC Berkley's Townsend Center for the Humanities, Thurston Community Library, Portland Community College and the National Book Foundation.

Produced by Redzi Bernard

Discover other ways of being, with science-fiction writer Ursula K Le Guin.

Truth teller, space crone, world builder, wit - travel through the work of American science-fiction writer Ursula Le Guin to discover what she can tell us about society.

New arts feature for BBC Radio 3.