The Essay

"Each remembered moment is a keyhole. Time doesn't 'flow like a river', doesn't exist in Odesa at all; the numbers of years, 1986 or 1989 or 2006 are like signs hanging about the corner grocery shop, with names of owners, swaying. In these streets, everything is ever-present. There are places like this on the planet: you can stop in the middle of the street and stick a finger into the skin of time, tear a hole, and see through." Across a week of personal essays, the Ukrainian-American poet Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic, writes about the city of his birth and reflects on fatherland, mother tongue, memory, Deafness, exile and oppression. He writes about the Odesa of his childhood and his family's flight from Ukraine to the USA in the early 1990s. He writes of invasion, war, regimes and revolution. Of Odesa's poets, past and present (editing their poems in the bomb shelters). Of the statues in the city squares - Leo Tolstoy, Taras Shevchenko, Catherine the Great. In his fourth essay, he tells the stor

Kenneth Steven considers the introduction of wild animals into the Highlands of Scotland and the impact on rural life, reflecting in poetry at the end of each Essay. Kenneth Steven recounts the story of American bison introduced in Victorian times to Scotland by William Stewart. ‘They were enclosed in a paddock with a circumference of five or six miles, but had become completely tame – they were however healthy and with an addition of two calves.’ Those buffalo were obviously still there when Queen Victoria and Albert famously came to visit Taymouth Castle in 1842 for she makes mention of them too: ‘We saw part of Loch Tay and drove along the banks of the Tay under fine trees and saw Lord Breadalbane’s American buffaloes’. What we’re actually talking about here are American bison, very different from the buffalo that live in Africa and Asia. American bison live only in North America. It may be that early French fur trappers inadvertently coined the name buffalo when they used the French word ‘boeufs’ for

Kenneth Steven considers the introduction of wild animals back into the Highlands of Scotland and the impact on rural life, reflecting in poetry at the end of each Essay. There’s plenty of evidence to suggest that at one time beavers were distributed widely throughout mainland Scotland. That would seem no great surprise, given the wealth of rivers and lochs in the country, and when you think how much native woodland was present in earlier centuries. But it would seem that by the 12th-century beavers were growing rare in Scotland; a record suggests they were to be found in just one river, though it’s impossible to know how reliable that record was. The last time we hear of them is in the 1526 ‘Cronikils of Scotland’ where beavers are mentioned as being abundant in the Loch Ness area. At some point after that they’re reckoned to have died out. In 2009, beavers were re-introduced into the Knapdale forest, Argyll, in the west of Scotland. Sixteen beavers from Norway were released during the first year and a fu

Kenneth Steven considers the introduction of wild animals into the Highlands of Scotland and the impact on rural life, reflecting in poetry at the end of each Essay. Kenneth Steven explores his visit to an island in the largest of freshwater lakes, Loch Lomond. There was nothing; possibly the soft murmur of birdsong, but precious little more than that. I walked on until I must have been about the middle of the island and then I stopped again, looked around me. And all at once, to my amazement and my great joy, were exactly what I had come to find, and the last thing in the world you would ever imagine: wallabies. There were perhaps half a dozen with me in the glade, and they were watching me. They were standing upright and probably they’d have come up to the height of my thighs: somehow akin to giant rabbits; furry-faced and doe-eyed. And as I stood there watching them one or two bounced about between the growing patches of sunlight. And now I knew at last I had proved the story true after all: there were i

Kenneth Steven considers the introduction of wild animals back into the Highlands of Scotland and the impact on rural life, reflecting in poetry at the end of each Essay. At one time sea eagles are likely to have been revered in Scotland. The Tomb of the Eagles, a Neolithic burial site in Orkney, is testament to that, as are the carved Pictish stones depicting what’s hard not to believe have to be sea eagles. For all that, they most certainly became a hated species in more recent centuries, after the Clearances in the Highlands when the era of the Victorian hunting estate had been ushered in. When they were reintroduced, Rum was the location chosen by the then Nature Conservancy Council for the release of the first sea eagles in 1975. It’s somehow an island made for eagles, and set in a wider wildscape designed for them every bit as much. Across the water from Scotland, Norway had and has a very healthy population of the birds. So it was eaglets were collected at 6-8 weeks of age from nests in Norway: over

Kenneth Steven considers the introduction of wild animals into the Highlands of Scotland, reflecting in poetry at the end of each Essay. A consignment of eight reindeer landed at Clydebank near Glasgow on April 12th in 1952 thanks to a Swedish Sami Mikel Utsi who hailed from a long line of reindeer herders. There were eight reindeer and they were from Mikel Utsi’s own family herd in Arctic Sweden. The crossing had taken four days and by all accounts it had been pretty rough. Those first eight beasts spent the next month in quarantine at Edinburgh Zoo and then they completed their journey to Highland Scotland and the area of ground that had been granted for them. There are echoes of the old stories of attempted re-introductions of reindeer: low and wet ground, the prevalence of insects. It took time, but in 1954 Mikel Utsi was given permission for free grazing up to the summits of the northern corries of the Cairngorms: in other words, where they needed to be. Further clusters of reindeer were introduced in 1

Writer and musician Kate Kennedy takes a personal look at five lost cellos, and what they can tell us of those who played and loved them and how our identities are shaped by the physical, social and psychological impacts of performance What happens when you re-imagine what a cello can be? From pieces of derelict instruments, and offcuts of wood, along with cutting edge technology, Kate Kennedy is making a prototype of a new, hybrid cello, that looks nothing like we might expect. This is a cello whose story is yet to begin. Working amidst the wood shavings and priceless instruments in the historic workshop of Hill and Sons, the cello parts are destined for a youth orchestra in Argentina and designed to be easily reassembled by the young players. Every aspect of the instrument has been re-imagined. As Kate stumblingly creates the very first cello for them, getting to know a cello’s every contour, she reflects on perhaps the weirdest cello ever made, and its role as an instrument for the future, shaping young

Writer and musician Kate Kennedy takes a personal look at five lost cellos, and what they can tell us of those who played and loved them and how our identities are shaped by the physical, social and psychological impacts of performance. Destroyed and resurrected, how does an instrument's identity change? The 'Mara' Stradivarius is one of the greatest cellos in the world, but in the 1960s it was completely destroyed when the Trieste Trio nearly drowned jumping with it from a burning boat in thick fog into the River Plate. In travelling to Trieste, Kate Kennedy discovers how the Trio’s mental escape into a world of music during the second world war, shutting out the massacres around them, helped them to survive the accident that killed 55 others. She reflects on the cello’s unlikely rescue and lengthy reconstruction and how in the aftermath of its turbulent history its sound is considered by many to be better than ever. Producer: Adrian Washbourne Technical production by Mike Sherwood Executive Producer: Ram

Writer and musician Kate Kennedy takes a personal look at five lost cellos, and what they can tell us of those who played and loved them and how our identities are shaped by the physical, social and psychological impacts of performance. What does it mean to be saved by an instrument? Anita Lasker-Wallfisch became known as the cellist of Auschwitz. Her beloved Ventepane cello disappeared at the same time as her parents were taken by the Nazis from her home in Breslau (now Wroclaw). When she was sent to Auschwitz, she narrowly avoided death by being recruited to the camp orchestra and filling the vacant role of cellist. Kate Kennedy working with archivists, finds the hut in which Anita practised with the other musicians, seeking answers as to why there was cello in Auschwitz, who had previously played it - whilst reflecting on how being saved by a cello, changes your relationship to the instrument. Producer: Adrian Washbourne Technical production by Mike Sherwood Executive Producer: Rami Tzabar A TellTale Ind

Writer and musician Kate Kennedy takes a personal look at five lost cellos, and what they can tell us of those who played and loved them and how our identities are shaped by the physical, social and psychological impacts of performance An abandoned cello rescued from a skip stands alone under a pergola in an orchard of a stately home on the outskirts of Nottingham. In an eccentric experiment, created by one of the world experts in honeybees, apiarist and physicist Prof. Martin Benscik has donated the instrument to 400,000 bees who now live very happily inside the cello. Kate Kennedy reflects on how the colony has 'improved' the cello's design by gluing wax onto specific resonant parts whilst the intelligent bees’ buzzing, duets with the cello as the wind whistles through its strings in its exposed location. This is the story of sharing vibrations with them, sharing music, and learning what a cello means to a community of bees. Producer: Adrian Washbourne Technical production by Mike Sherwood Executive Produ

Writer, musician and broadcaster Kate Kennedy takes a personal look at five lost cellos, and what they can tell us of those who played and loved them and how our identities are shaped by the physical, social and psychological impacts of performance. Can a cello hold its player's soul? Jewish-Hungarian Pal Hermann was hailed as 'the next Pablo Casals' in the 1930s. He is now completely forgotten. Kate Kennedy retraces his steps across Europe, with his unique Gagliano cello as he attempted to escape the Nazis, from Berlin to Paris, to Toulouse and finally to Lithuania. Hermann’s cello has been lost since 1952, but the key to finding it, she discovers, is an inscription burnt into the side of it. 'I am the soul of music'. She reflects on her quest to find Hermann's soul, his cello, and how near we can get to recovering a great and neglected musician himself. Producer: Adrian Washbourne Technical production by Mike Sherwood Executive Producer: Rami Tzabar A TellTale Industries production for BBC Radio 3

"Each remembered moment is a keyhole. Time doesn't 'flow like a river', doesn't exist in Odesa at all; the numbers of years, 1986 or 1989 or 2006 are like signs hanging about the corner grocery shop, with names of owners, swaying. In these streets, everything is ever-present. There are places like this on the planet: you can stop in the middle of the street and stick a finger into the skin of time, tear a hole, and see through." Across a week of personal essays, the Ukrainian-American poet Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic, writes about the city of his birth and reflects on fatherland, mother tongue, memory, Deafness, exile and oppression. He writes about the Odesa of his childhood and his family's flight from Ukraine to the USA in the early 1990s. He writes of invasion, war, regimes and revolution. Of Odesa's poets, past and present (editing their poems in the bomb shelters). Of the statues in the city squares - Leo Tolstoy, Taras Shevchenko, Catherine the Great. In his third essay, Ilya revisits the

"Each remembered moment is a keyhole. Time doesn't 'flow like a river', doesn't exist in Odesa at all; the numbers of years, 1986 or 1989 or 2006 are like signs hanging about the corner grocery shop, with names of owners, swaying. In these streets, everything is ever-present. There are places like this on the planet: you can stop in the middle of the street and stick a finger into the skin of time, tear a hole, and see through." Across a week of personal essays, the Ukrainian-American poet Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic, writes about the city of his birth and reflects on fatherland, mother tongue, memory, Deafness, exile and oppression. He writes about the Odesa of his childhood and his family's flight from Ukraine to the USA in the early 1990s. He writes of invasion, war, regimes and revolution. Of Odesa's poets, past and present (editing their poems in the bomb shelters). Of the statues in the city squares - Leo Tolstoy, Taras Shevchenko, Catherine the Great. In his second essay of the week, Ilya

"Each remembered moment is a keyhole. Time doesn't 'flow like a river', doesn't exist in Odesa at all; the numbers of years, 1986 or 1989 or 2006 are like signs hanging about the corner grocery shop, with names of owners, swaying. In these streets, everything is ever-present. There are places like this on the planet: you can stop in the middle of the street and stick a finger into the skin of time, tear a hole, and see through." Across a week of personal essays, the Ukrainian-American poet Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic, writes about the city of his birth and reflects on fatherland, mother tongue, memory, Deafness, exile and oppression. He writes about the Odesa of his childhood and his family's flight from Ukraine to the USA in the early 1990s. He writes of invasion, war, regimes and revolution. Of Odesa's poets, past and present (editing their poems in the bomb shelters). Of the statues in the city squares - Leo Tolstoy, Taras Shevchenko, Catherine the Great. In the first essay of the week, Ilya r

In this series of The Essay, five leading cultural voices choose a great work of art and talk about a small, under-appreciated aspect of the piece that carries great meaning for them. Art historian and author of The Story of Art Without Men, Katy Hessel draws our attention to the spine as a symbol of feminine strength and survival in Frida Kahlo's Broken Column. No matter how ambitious and brave she was in her painting, life was a constant battle: in love, in her physicality, and her struggle to be taken seriously as a woman and as an artist. Kahlo was stunted by her life – from her operations to her heartbreak, her miscarriage to her constant fight to be heard – Broken Column is a message to us that justice will come; life will be reborn. Producer: Mohini Patel

Essays on the underappreciated aspects of well known pieces of culture. Writer Sarfraz Manzoor describes a moment from the film Field of Dreams and what it means to him.

It’s in the minutiae of masterpieces that we feel their thrill and power. In this series of The Essay, five leading cultural voices choose a great work of art and talk about a small, underappreciated aspect of the piece that carries great meaning for them. Spectator Literary Editor Sam Leith explores his fascination with a background figure in Judith Kerr’s classic picture book ‘The Tiger Who Came to Tea’. Producer: Sam Peach

Michael Goldfarb looks at five authors and their books on the receiving end of cancel culture in liberal America of the 1960s. Each author and the work being discussed was the subject of a controversy that altered their lives and deeply affected their careers. In this essay, he focuses on Joan Williams and her novel Old Powder. After her first novel was shortlisted for the National Book Award, this one failed. Did her former lover William Faulkner have something to do with it? For much of the 60s, literary fiction remained a male preserve, Joan Williams looked like being the person to break that mould, then she disappeared. Why?

Michael Goldfarb looks at five authors and their books on the receiving end of cancel culture in liberal America of the 1960s. Each author and the work being discussed was the subject of a controversy that altered their lives and deeply affected their careers. In this essay, he focuses on Philip Roth. Roth became permanently alienated from American Jews and even his own mother asked him if he was anti-Semitic. In light of his continuous production and the miraculous late flowering of his art, from The Counterlife to The Plot Against America, it's easy to forget that Portnoy’s Complaint, despite its sales, nearly destroyed his career within his own community. It also coloured how he was seen until his death: as a misogynist who, depending on one's view, had to be forgiven because of his talent, or could not be forgiven, because of his talent. The irony is that while many Jews at the time would like to have had Portnoy's Complaint pulled from bookshops and libraries and pulped, his authorised biography, publi

Michael Goldfarb looks at five authors and their books on the receiving end of cancel culture in liberal America of the 1960s. Each author and the work being discussed was the subject of a controversy that altered their lives and deeply affected their careers. In this essay, he focuses on Norman Mailer. His reputation as a novelist had gone down the toilet before he reinvented himself with the non-fiction novel. But there was a cost. Writers should be read and not heard was the ethos of the profession. But mass media provided authors with many different platforms to reach the public. Mailer was on all of them, courting controversy - too successfully. Mailer was a monstrous misogynist before Harvey Weinstein and #metoo. For a while his talent gave him a pass, and then it didn't.