A reader suggested recording longer pieces, allowing busy people to tune in and making it easier to share ‘slow’ quotations which might look daunting in a sweeping stretch of text. Thank you for listening!

Thank you for the podcasts! I only wish they were longer as they are great companions.

Liisa Välikangas

Thank you for these wonderful podcasts Béatrice. Apart from the joy in the writing with its images and sentiments, it’s lively to hear your voice, which is an excellent story-telling voice that is lovely to listen to. You are a natural seanchaí (Irish for story-teller).

As Eva rightly says, time is an issue for me, and to be honest, at the end of a day, concentration span is too. These podcasts enable me to enjoy writing redux as I gaze out the window of the train and watch the landscape go by.

I look forward to the next podcasts.

Wishing you a lovely September.

Tanya Strevens

Poems for my family 012 – Thomas

Poems for my family 012 – Thomas

Listening time: under 4 minutes.  A poet describes the driving force of his art, not one of fame, trophies and applause, but rather the 'common...

Poems for my family 011 – Stanton

Poems for my family 011 – Stanton

Listening time: under 4 minutes.  This delightful poem was written by a great uncle on our mother's side and reached me in a home-printed collection...

Oh, for dog’s sake!

Oh, for dog’s sake!

Listening time: 5 minutes. A touching account of mutual support and succour between labour camp prisoners and some of the camp dogs.  In this and...

How to hide a poem (II)

How to hide a poem (II)

Listening time: under 5 minutes.   This disturbing quotation is striking on several levels.   By the Hungarian poet György Faludy concerning his...

A bulwark against brain-washing

A bulwark against brain-washing

Listening time: under 9 minutes.   Sadly, some things in the state of the world are driving me to spend more time thinking about how simple citizens...

Highly suspicious

Highly suspicious

Listening time: under 3 minutes. A journalist in Moscow at the height of the Cold War, read out this description of the host country. It's several...

Intimations of radiance

Intimations of radiance

Listening time: 3 minutes.An intricate description of the effect an ancient temple can work on the spirit - a falling away of complication and...

And I shall teach the boy

And I shall teach the boy

Listening time: under 4 minutes.The Countess of Gormenghast ponders her personal curriculum for her newborn son Titus, soon after despatching him to...

Learning by heart

Learning by heart

Listening time: 10 minutes. It's been playing on my mind, the fact that recently I haven't learned any new poems by heart.  This led me to revisit a...

Meet the Barone

Meet the Barone

Listening time: under 4 minutes. Casting back across the sweep of history, there is only a handful of creatures, human and otherwise, whom I regret...

Playfulness across the divide

Playfulness across the divide

Listening time: under 5 minutes.We play with dogs and cats and some other creatures.  I used to play with a fox in our garden in London: he made a...

Poems for my family 010 – Gumilyov

Poems for my family 010 – Gumilyov

Listening time: under 4 minutes.  I discovered this poem in my early twenties, possibly while first living and studying in China where I also got to...

Poems for my family 009 – Milton

Poems for my family 009 – Milton

Listening time: 3 minutes.  Surely one of the sweetest love poems of all time (alongside this one), in which Adam and Eve enjoy each other's company...

Poems for my family 008 – Drayton

Poems for my family 008 – Drayton

Listening time: under 5 minutes.  One of the greatest love poems in English, this was written by Michael Drayton (1563-1631) the night before he...

What is peace?

What is peace?

Listening time: under 4 minutes.  This is Saint-Exupéry's definition of peace, in which everything is in its place and friends can be reached,...

Poems for my family 006 – Cavafy

Poems for my family 006 – Cavafy

This poem has been in my mental saddlebags for about a quarter of a century.  I can't remember how I came across it but after a few readings it...

It will do what it is supposed to do

It will do what it is supposed to do

Listening time: 7 minutes.  This marvelous prose-poem comes from a travel book by the Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski, who toured a number of...

And this is my epic…

And this is my epic…

Listening time: under 4 minutes.A marvelous account of a butcher bursting in to Lawrence Durrell's office during the short period after the war when...

Poems for my family 004 – Durrell

Poems for my family 004 – Durrell

Listening time: under 5 minutes. Durrell has long been a favourite writer and poet.  When I first read his Alexandria Quartet in my twenties, I went...

Poems for my family 003 – Donne

Poems for my family 003 – Donne

Listening time: under 3 minutes. This is the third poem I chose to share with my family, copied out by hand and sent by post.  Written as part of a...

Poems for my family 002 – Frost

Poems for my family 002 – Frost

Listening time: under 4 minutes. This is the second poem I chose to share with my family, in what will be a series to be sent approximately once a...

Poems for my family 001 – Yeats

Poems for my family 001 – Yeats

Listening time: under 3 minutes. The first time I heard this poem was when my mother recited it to my step-father in the kitchen. She had tears in...

The mule and the mare

The mule and the mare

Listening time: under 3 minutes Grossman writes with great empathy of animals and their experiences. Here an Italian mule, requisitioned to the war...

Of pens and pencils

Of pens and pencils

Listening time: under 3 minutes.   This is a charming account of negotiating communist bureaucracy at the height of the Cold War.  John Steinbeck...

War wounds

War wounds

Listening time: 4 minutes.Among the warm-hearted and even funny accounts of people they met in the Soviet Union, this searing...

My publisher, falsely so called…

My publisher, falsely so called…

Listening time: under 3 minutes. I loved this drawn out account of Thoreau's dealings with a publisher wanting to clear out his cellar of Thoreau's...

The happiest time of life

The happiest time of life

Listening time: 3 minutes.  A beautiful description of the sheer, unbounded joy of being alive in a small mongrel dog who finds herself on the...

A Greek showed up

A Greek showed up

Listening time: under 5 minutes.  From Steinbeck's masterful and lively account of travelling in the Soviet Union with Robert Capa. Chmarsky is...

Cocktails in Kiev

Cocktails in Kiev

Listening time: 2 minutes.  On their travels to the Soviet Union in 1946, John Steinbeck and Robert Capa were surprised to encounter something as...

Survival savvy

Survival savvy

Listening time: under 4 minutes. Inspired by the true story of a dog trained by the Soviets to go into space, Vasily Grossman imagines her life in...

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