West Country Dreaming: Words and Music (BBC Radio 3); England, West Country

West Country Dreaming, Words and Music, BBC Radio 3, Listen
Sarah Parish and John Nettles celebrate the counties of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and Somerset.

'And citizens dream of the south and west' writes Hardy in his much-loved poem 'Weathers', and who indeed can resist the lure of the westerning sky? West-country memories and images in this week's programme range from family holidays to romantic medieval legend, and from the warmth of Betjeman's Dawlish to the unfriendly air of Hardy's Egdon Heath. Water is always near, whether beating the Cornish cliffs, flushing the boat of Brutus, son of Aeneas, up the River Dart (local legend says he came that way to found Britain), or flooding the fields of Glastonbury. And the West Country's own local talents are celebrated in poems by Charles Causley and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and the music of The Fishermen's Friends (Cornwall), The Yetties (Dorset), and Bristol bands Spiro and Portishead.

Producer: Lindsay Kemp