Mark Strong and Bettrys Jones with various kinds of connections from writers including Anne Sexton, Arthur Conan Doyle and Wendy Cope, plus music that ranges from Brahms to Kate Bush
"Only connect" is the epigraph to EM Forster's novel Howards End - and as the BBC broadcasts a series of programmes for mental well-being - it provides the inspiration for this week's Words and Music. We'll hear readings which describe attempts to connect with others and the pain when those attempts fail. The solace provided by seeking a connection with nature, communication with alien species, the ingenious process of deduction, the technology that connects us to one another, the associations we draw from treasured objects. And there are musical connections from Brahms, Kate Bush, Messiaen, Suzanne Ciani and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan among others. Our readers are Mark Strong and Bettrys Jones
Readings:
EM Forster – Howards End
Robert Browning – Two in the Campagna
Samuel Taylor Coleridge – To Nature
Paul Muldoon – Milkweed and Monarch
John Masefield – Up on the downs
Adrienne Rich – Face To Face
RS Thomas – They
Wendy Cope – For My Sister, Emigrating
Arthur Conan Doyle – The Stockbroker’s Clerk
Ivor Gurney – The Telegraph Post
Jenny Erpenbeck – Go Went Gone
Anne Sexton – When Man Enters Woman
John Keats – On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer
Naomi Mitchison – Memoirs of a Spacewoman
George Herbert – Denial
Producer: Torquil MacLeod
