The Essay Episodes Available now
Ceyx and Alcyone—Transformations: 5 stories from Ovid's Metamorphoses
1/5 The first of five stories about love dramatized from tales told in Ovid's Metamorphoses.
Clay Bricks—Cornerstones
5/5 Poet Fiona Hamilton contrasts clay's different states, before and after it's baked hard.
Gypsum and Alabaster—Cornerstones
4/5 Archaeologist Rose Ferraby gets to grips with gypsum, the key mineral in plaster.
North Sea Oil and Gas—Cornerstones
3/5 Esther Woolfson contrasts Aberdeen, the 'Granite City', with its oil and gas industry.
Lewisian Gneiss—Cornerstones
2/5 Writer Sara Maitland conjures with Lewisian gneiss, two-thirds the age of the earth.
Flint—Cornerstones
1/5 Alan Garner sparks with flint, the stone that has enabled human civilisation.
Watershed—Brick, Stone, Steel, Glass
Nikesh Shukla on Watershed in Bristol and how it helped him fall in love with the city.
Hafod Eryri—Brick, Stone, Steel, Glass
Travel writer Phoebe Smith on Hafod Eryri and the chutzpah of building on mountains.
Chingle Hall—Brick, Stone, Steel, Glass
Andrew Hurley on the haunting qualities of a 17th-century manor house near Preston.
Gladstone's Library—Brick, Stone, Steel, Glass
Novelist Melissa Harrison on the joy of 'sleeping with books' at Gladstone's Library.
