Main content
This programme will be available shortly after broadcast

Fathers and Daughters

Featuring musical fathers and daughters Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and Avril, Clara Schumann and Friederich Wieck, and Ravi Shankar, Anoushka and Norah Jones, alongside poems and prose.

Starting with Samuel Coleridge-Taylor and his daughter Avril Coleridge-Taylor, we hear music from other families; Clara Schumann, who was coached by her father Friedrich Wieck, and Ravi Shankar with daughters Anoushka Shankar and Norah Jones, who followed in his footsteps.
There are famous fictional fathers, from the beloved Mr Bennet to the more daunting father figure in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Purple Hibiscus and the absent father in The Railway Children. We also hear from precocious daughter Cassandra Mortmain in Dodie Smith's I Capture The Castle, poetry from Helen Mort, who confronts her father's old age, and from Virginia Woolf, who paints a literary portrait of her father Leslie Stephen.

Musical extracts include O Mio Babbino Caro from Puccini's Gianni Schicchi, John Alden Carpenter's Adventures in a Perambulator and Debussy's Children's Corner, dedicated to his daughter Claude-Emma.

The readers are Sam Dale, recently on stage at Crewe Lyceum in The Witches of Eastwick, and Isis Hainsworth, recently on the West End stage in Tom Stoppard's Arcadia.

Produced in Salford by Jessica Treen

Readings:
Heritage of Samuel Coleridge-Taylor by Avril Coleridge-Taylor suggested by the biographer Leah Broad

Release date:

1 hour, 14 minutes

On radio

Sun 18 Oct 202619:45

Broadcast

  • Sun 18 Oct 202619:45

The hidden history of plant-based diets

The hidden history of plant-based diets

Forget social media influencers - the meat-free movement started with the Victorians.

Books website

Books website

Get closer to books with in-depth articles, quizzes and our picks from radio & TV.