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Available for 24 days

Readers Alex Kingston and Iain Glen consider the element which has fascinated humans for over one-and-a-half million years: fire. In poetry and prose they reflect on fire’s power to fuel and destroy, its beauty and ability to create ugliness, the way it can purify and refine what’s raw. Charlotte Brontë praises Jane Eyre’s quick thinking to prevent a house fire, whilst Matilda in Hilaire Belloc’s poem raises a false alarm. Elsewhere, a diary entry by Samuel Pepys recalls the morning after the Great Fire of London, and Jack Spicer takes us to hell alongside Orpheus on his quest for Euridice. Fiery music includes a Mexican conga by composer Arturo Márquez, Verdi explores the infernos of hell, Judith Weir depicts musical embers and Beethoven is inspired by the punishment of Prometheus, who took fire from the gods and gave it to humanity. Producer in Salford: Joseph Zubier Readings: Autumn Fires (From Child’s Garden of Verses) by Robert Louis Stevenson Fire and Ice by Robert Frost Matilda [excerpt] by Hilaire Belloc Diaries of Samuel Pepys - Great Fire of London, Sunday 2 September 1666 [excerpt] by Samuel Pepys Fire Weather: Prologue [excerpt] by John Vaillant Fifth of November Customs [excerpt], from Folklore, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Mar., 1903) by Mabel Peacock Jane Eyre [excerpt] by Charlotte Brontë Hell by Jack Spicer Rilke: After the Fire by Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. Seamus Heaney A Day by Emily Dickinson truth by Gwendolyn Brooks The Furnace Men by Ronald Wallace Prometheus [excerpt] by Lord Byron Song by Simon Armitage The Firebird [excerpt] by Edmund Dulac