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Available for 27 days

‘Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks!’ railed King Lear and we start and finish with the violence of winds, on land and sea. Joseph Conrad, Zora Neale Hurston and Seamus Heaney write about the unequal battle with an unseen enemy, and you can hear the smallness of humankind in the eye of a storm, in the works of Britten’s Peter Grimes and Vaughan Williams’s Sinfonia Antartica. Gentler winds feed the senses and summon memories for Derek Walcott and William Wordsworth, while Emily Dickinson welcomes in the footless stranger. But there are unearthly winds that make people behave strangely, in Joan Didion’s description of the Santa Anas, and Voltaire believed an east wind could bring utter despair. Composers from Debussy to Toru Takemitsu and Nirmali Fenn have taken the movement of wind as inspiration in their work. And the Swedish Chamber Choir vocally recall the gusty mountain wind in Jan Sandstrom’s Biegga louthe. There’s more bluster from the readers Adrian Scarborough and Amaka Okafor who bring to life those great windbags and blowhards, Shakespeare’s Polonius and Pam Ayres’s know-it-all husband. Producer: Katy Hickman Readings: Shakespeare - King Lear Thomas Hardy - Far from the Madding Crowd Frances Hodgson Burnett – The Secret Garden Emily Dickinson – The Wind tapped like a tired Man Percy Bysshe Shelley – Ode to the West Wind Derek Walcott – Osmeros Lyall Watson – Heaven’s Breath William Wordsworth – The Prelude Seamus Heaney – Cow in Calf Shakespeare – Hamlet Pam Ayres – They Should Have Asked My Husband Joan Didion – ‘Santa Anas’ Samuel Taylor Coleridge - The Rime of the Ancient Mariner Zora Neale Hurston – Their Eyes Were Watching God Seamus Heaney – Storm on the island Joseph Conrad – Typhoon