Episodes
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The writer Noreen Masud was brought up in Lahore with her three sisters. When she was a teenager, and with no warning, her doctor father banished them from Pakistan and, since then, she's created a life for herself as an academic. But now suffering from complex post-traumatic stress disorder, Noreen compulsively seeks out flat places in the landscape - bare spaces where she can see for miles and which find an echo in the traumatised, flat place inside herself. Her strange and original memoir A Flat Place, deservedly nominated for top literary prizes, is an ode to flatness and to the power of what lies beneath. Noreen and Charlie walk the flat, muddy shoreline of Severn Beach - and talk about bones, flesh, and beauty.
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Artist Jake Tilson doesn't care if his projects take decades to complete - in fact, he likes it when they do. He's just finished recreating his vision of Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo, an art project which took him years and involved walking around the market for thousands of miles. His recent solo show, which included miniature recreations of some of Tsukiji's 1,700 fish stalls, was a triumph of imagination, technical skill and eccentricity. The work is also a ghostly tribute to a market which no longer exists. In this episode Jake explains why walking and typography are so crucial to his work - and how to make a typeface out of eels.
Jake's miniature fish stalls on show at White Conduit Projects
Photo credit: Jake Tilson
Jake's vast walking map of Tsukiji
Photo credit: Jake Tilson
The legendary pink pay 'phone
Photo credit: Agnese Sanvito
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Missing episodes?
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Jade Angeles Fitton had been living a frenetic, toxic life in London, trapped in an abusive relationship and seemingly willingly to continue living that way. But, having been abandoned in a remote Devon barn when the relationship finally collapsed for good, she discovers the powerful consolation that silence can bring. Living as a hermit, she relishes the soothing solace of living alone and speaking to no-one. Her memoir, Hermit: A memoir of finding freedom in a wild place, celebrates isolation - a way of life that's so often misunderstood. Charlie and Jade take a walk from the Devon beach of Croyde to Baggy Point on the cliffs above - the path that Jade used to tread every day alone....
Jade Angeles Fitton at Baggy Point and, below, the calming presence of Lundy on the horizon.
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This episode takes a walk, but a very short one. That's because my companion is Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, professor of English at Magdalen College, Oxford, who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2017. The disease has wrecked his capacity to walk more than a few hundred metres - and wonky, clumsy metres at that. But Robert has substituted physical walks with imaginative ones, scanning his mind for ways of reading himself through literature. His powerful, funny and frank memoir Metamorphosis: A Life in Pieces is a sparkling demonstration of the places our minds can take us when our feet can't.
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SERIES 2
Episode 2: Night Walking with Anthologist Duncan Minshull
The writer Duncan Minshull has compiled five anthologies about walking, the latest being Where My Feet Fall. In this episode, Duncan and Charlie explore the streets of London at night to see what effect the darkness has on the way they think. There's a long tradition of writers and artists walking at night: Charles Dickens, Virginia Woolf, Thomas de Quincey. What was it about the gloom they craved?
Duncan Minshull on Hamilton Terrace
The canal in Little Venice where Duncan and Charlie start their night walk
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SERIES 2
Episode 1: Dodging Falling Trees with Ian McMillan
The poet Ian McMillan, presenter of The Verb on BBC Radio 3 and poet-in-residence at Barnsley Football Club, tells stories by the yard - eccentric, ridiculous, compassionate and wise. Ian has lived in the same South Yorkshire village of Darfield his entire life and writes about it with a unique mix of pride and hilarity. He's a performance poet and author of biographical stories such as My Sand Life, My Pebble Life: a Memoir of Childhood and the Sea, and Neither Nowt Nor Summat, a perplexed rummage in the mystery of what it means to be 'Yorkshire enough'. His writing has readers weeping with laughter, but there's deep human kindness in there too. Ian and Charlie start their walk in the graveyard of Darfield Church, but they don't get very far before trees intervene...
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EPISODE 6
Tom Chivers' book London Clay: Journeys in the Deep City is erudite and meticulously researched, but it's also funny, poetic and at times very moving. Tom digs down below the surface of the city to find its ancient, lost rivers, whilst also examining his own past. The book is part geological, part historical, and part reflective.
In this episode, Tom and Charlie explore an ancient, subterranean Roman temple, go mudlarking, and find treasure.
The Temple of Mithras (3 AD) 7 metres below ground level
Mudlarking with Tom Chivers on the foreshore of the River Thames
Tom Chivers, London Clay: Journeys in the Deep City (Doubleday, 2021)
Produced, edited, written and presented by Charlie Lee-Potter
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EPISODE 5
Marcus du Sautoy, Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford, has the kind of imagination which draws on complex mathematics, music, science and literature simultaneously. On this walk through a North London park, Marcus and Charlie cover both literal and imaginative ground - and one of them gets lost in the marshes.
Marcus with one of his beloved yellow notepadsTree no. 47 - Marcus's tree of the day -
EPISODE 4
The acclaimed cellist Natalie Clein talks about her music and explains what creativity means to her. Returning to her childhood home on the Dorset coast, she walks with Charlie and they find a tent of trees in the woods.
MUSIC:
Bloch, Ligeti & Dallapiccola: Suites for Solo Cello
Hyperion Records.
Cello: Natalie Clein
https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_CDA68155
Rebecca Clarke: Viola Sonata
Hyperion Records
Cello: Natalie Clein Piano: Christian Ihle Hadland
https://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_CDA68253
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EPISODE 3
Kate Kennedy has written a mesmerising and deeply moving book about the poet and composer Ivor Gurney, Dweller in Shadows. Gurney's life was beset by mental illness, disappointment and the trauma of war. He spent the last fifteen years of his life in an asylum, separated from the Gloucestershire countryside which shines from his work. In this episode Kate and Charlie explore the same fields that Gurney loved to walk, Kate talks about his life, and we hear some of the music Gurney was celebrated for.
Cello: Kate Kennedy
Piano: Simon Over
Tenor: Dominic Bevan
Sound recordist for 'Severn Meadows': Theo Kennnedy
Produced, edited, written and presented by Charlie Lee-Potter
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EPISODE 2
Botanical artist and illustrator Anna Koska uses the ancient, but now rare, medium of egg tempera to create beautiful paintings of the natural world. In this episode she and Charlie take a walk along the coast and find wild garlic, sea kale and an exquisite bird's nest. Anna takes a wild, icy swim, explains how she's developed her unique method of painting, and reads from her new book From Field and Forest: An artist's year in paint and pen.
Produced, edited, written and presented by Charlie Lee-Potter
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EPISODE 1
The writer Sally Bayley had a chaotic, deprived childhood in a household of 12 children and 3 adults. But since placing herself in care at the age of 14, she's gone on to teach English Literature at Oxford and to find a new way of writing fiction. Her books Girl with Dove and No Boys Play Here conjure imaginary and literary landscapes for Sally, Jane Eyre, David Copperfield and Falstaff to walk through together.
In this episode, Sally revisits her early life with artist and writer Charlie Lee-Potter. As they walk along the riverbank in Oxford and around the seaside town she escaped from as a teenager, Sally explains how literature and a powerful imagination shaped her. The programme is layered with sound, memory and reflections on the landscapes of our past.
Produced, edited, written and presented by Charlie Lee-Potter
