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Few artists evoke the British landscape so unforgettably as John Constable, with paintings like The Haywain, The Cornfield and A Country Lane bringing to mind the timeless cycle of the seasons. And so we celebrate English rural life in honour of Constable's birth 250 years ago with the actor and farmer Martin Clunes and The Archers actor Louiza Patikas. Their readings will connect us with rural bliss in John Clare’s Farm Breakfast, with the starker realities of life in the country in Stella Gibbons' Cold Comfort Farm and the unalloyed beauty of the land with John Keats, Gillian Clarke and Thomas Hardy. There is music tracking the seasons and celebrating sowing, growth and harvest from Bach’s Sheep May Safely Graze to Chaminade's Automne to Vaughan William’s Pastoral Symphony.

READINGS:
Anthony Bailey - John Constable; A Kingdom of His Own
Virgil - Georgics
William Wordsworth - Lines Written in Early Spring
Thomas Hardy - Jude the Obscure
John Clare - Farm Breakfast
Christina Rosetti - Spring
Edna St Vincent Milley - April
Anthony Bailey - John Constable; A Kingdom of His Own
Flora Thompson - Lark Rise to Candleford
Joe Dunthorn - Wild Abandon
Bella Bathurst - Field Work
Henry David Thoreau - Walden
Mimi Khalvati - The Black and White Cows
DH Lawrence - The Rainbow
George Eliot - Adam Bede
Anthony Bailey - John Constable; A Kingdom of His Own
Gillian Clarke - Plums
AG Street - Farmer’s Glory
John Keats – To Autumn
Andrew Miller - The Land in Winter
Emily Bronte - Spellbound
Stella Gibbons - Cold Comfort Farm
Helen McDonald - H is for Hawk
Gerard Manley Hopkins - Spring

Produced in Salford by Olive Clancy