Once Upon a Time...
From Sleeping Beauty and Little Red Riding Hood to Bluebeard's Castle and Mother Goose, plus modern fairy tale versions by Angela Carter, Helen Oyeyemi and Nikita Gill.
Once upon a time there was a princess, and a prince and a wicked stepmother... and a whole host of other characters we're meeting in this fairy tale-inspired edition of Words and Music. We're travelling back in time with readings from some of the earliest written versions of classic stories from fairy tale masters Hans Christian Anderson, The Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault; and we're also bang up to date with modern retellings from Nikita Gill and Helen Oyeyemi. There's music from Tchaikovsky's ballet Sleeping Beauty, Stephen Sondheim's Into The Woods and Ravel's Mother Goose.
We're visiting Bluebeard's Castle with music from Bartok and Angela Carter's version, The Land of Nod in Robert Louis Stevenson's poem and visiting grandma with Rachmaninoff's Little Red Riding Hood. But will it all end happily ever after?
The readers are Pearce Quigley and Lydia Wilson
Producer: Jessica Treen
The British Library exhibition Fairy Tales runs until August 23rd, and you can find a host of linked 麻豆社 programmes, including on Radio 3 from 20th March to 25th special episodes of Classical Live between 13.00 and 16.00
On radio
Broadcast
- Sun 19 Apr 2026 19:45麻豆社 Radio 3
The hidden history of plant-based diets
Forget social media influencers - the meat-free movement started with the Victorians.
Books website
Get closer to books with in-depth articles, quizzes and our picks from radio & TV.