Hello from Suffolk, England. Here's five minutes of civilised calm to start your day right. With a poem by Theo Dorgan, The Promised Garden.

"There is a garden where our hearts converse,

From the show:

Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village by Ronald Blythe – also a wonderful film

John Wilkes and Liberty

Jerry Lordan, who wrote Wonderful Land for The Shadows, was born today in 1934

Celebrate Walpurgisnight with Cunning Folk

Music to wake up to – Summer Is Icumen In sung by the Oxford Girls' Choir

(Listen to the full playlist on YouTube)

Sign up to receive email alerts and show notes with links when a new episode goes live at marcsalmanac.substack.com

Please share this with anyone who might need a touch of calm, and keep sending in your messages and requests. You can leave a voice message at https://anchor.fm/marc-sidwell/message. If you like Marc's Almanac please do leave a review on Apple podcasts. It really helps new listeners to find me.

Have a lovely day.

Hello from Suffolk, England. Here's five minutes of civilised calm to start your day right. With a poem by Siegfried Sassoon, Everyone Sang.

"Everyone suddenly burst out singing;

And I was filled with such delight..."

From the show:

Sweet Danger by Margery Allingham

Catherine of Siena

The 2011 Royal Wedding

Music to wake up to – One Love by Bob Marley

(Listen to the full playlist on YouTube)

Sign up to receive email alerts and show notes with links when a new episode goes live at marcsalmanac.substack.com

Please share this with anyone who might need a touch of calm, and keep sending in your messages and requests. You can leave a voice message at https://anchor.fm/marc-sidwell/message. If you like Marc's Almanac please do leave a review on Apple podcasts. It really helps new listeners to find me.

Have a lovely day.

Hello from Suffolk, England. Here's five minutes of civilised calm to start your day right. With a poem by Percy Shelley, Ozymandias.

"I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert..."

From the show:

The Mutiny on the Bounty

Captain Cook's landing place at Botany Bay

The Sanctuary of Peter Chanel, Futuna Island

Wild Earth virtual safaris

Music to wake up to – Living in a Ghost Town by The Rolling Stones

(Listen to the full playlist on YouTube)

Sign up to receive email alerts and show notes with links when a new episode goes live at marcsalmanac.substack.com

Please share this with anyone who might need a touch of calm, and keep sending in your messages and requests. You can leave a voice message at https://anchor.fm/marc-sidwell/message. If you like Marc's Almanac please do leave a review on Apple podcasts. It really helps new listeners to find me.

Have a lovely day.

Hello from Suffolk, England. Here's five minutes of civilised calm to start your day right. With a poem translated by Edward Fitzgerald, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.

"Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring

From the show:

Fitzgerald's translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

Why Paradise Lost matters, and In Our Time on John Milton

A Vindication of the Rights of Women

The Alde Valley Spring Festival

Music to wake up to – Just a Closer Walk With Thee by The Hillbilly Thomists

(Listen to the full playlist on YouTube)

Sign up to receive email alerts and show notes with links when a new episode goes live at marcsalmanac.substack.com

Please share this with anyone who might need a touch of calm, and keep sending in your messages and requests. You can leave a voice message at https://anchor.fm/marc-sidwell/message. If you like Marc's Almanac please do leave a review on Apple podcasts. It really helps new listeners to find me.

Have a lovely day.

Hello from Suffolk, England. Here's five minutes of civilised calm to start your day right. With a poem by T.S. Eliot, Portrait of a Lady.

"Now that lilacs are in bloom

She has a bowl of lilacs in her room..."

From the show:

Weekend Wodehouse: Joy in the Morning

Halley's comet, which menaced the skies in 1066, taken as a portent of the Norman Yoke.

John Graunt, father of epidemiology

Pro Corda's Piano Sanctuary, live from Leiston Abbey, every Friday at 7pm, on Soundcloud

Music to wake up to – Wash Your Hands by Roaring Lion

(Listen to the full playlist on YouTube)

Sign up to receive email alerts and show notes with links when a new episode goes live at marcsalmanac.substack.com

Please share this with anyone who might need a touch of calm, and keep sending in your messages and requests. You can leave a voice message at https://anchor.fm/marc-sidwell/message. If you like Marc's Almanac please do leave a review on Apple podcasts. It really helps new listeners to find me.

Have a lovely day.

Hello from Suffolk, England. Happy St George's Day. Here's five minutes of civilised calm to start your day right. With a poem by Rudyard Kipling, The Glory of the Garden.

"Our England is a garden that is full of stately views,

From the show:

The Shepherd's Crown by Terry Pratchett

The tomb of St George, in Lod and Winston Churchill's wartime aeroplane, Ascalon

Why is Shakespeare so great?

Music to wake up to – Making of a Man by Steeleye Span

(Listen to the full playlist on YouTube)

Sign up to receive email alerts and show notes with links when a new episode goes live at marcsalmanac.substack.com

Please share this with anyone who might need a touch of calm, and keep sending in your messages and requests. You can leave a voice message at https://anchor.fm/marc-sidwell/message. If you like Marc's Almanac please do leave a review on Apple podcasts. It really helps new listeners to find me.

Have a lovely day.

Hello from Suffolk, England. Here's five minutes of civilised calm to start your day right. With a poem by Norman MacCaig, Summer Farm.

"Straws like tame lightnings lie about the grass

And hang zigzag on hedges..."

From the show:

Figurehead of the Sirius in Hull Maritime Museum, and Around the World in 80 Days

Phil May's groundbreaking cartoons

Heaven in Ordinary, Malcolm Doney's Something Understood

Music to wake up to – Spring, from the Victorian Kitchen Garden Suite, by Paul Reade

(Listen to the full playlist on YouTube)

Sign up to receive email alerts and show notes with links when a new episode goes live at marcsalmanac.substack.com

Please share this with anyone who might need a touch of calm, and keep sending in your messages and requests. You can leave a voice message at https://anchor.fm/marc-sidwell/message. If you like Marc's Almanac please do leave a review on Apple podcasts. It really helps new listeners to find me.

Have a lovely day.

Hello from Suffolk, England. Here's five minutes of civilised calm to start your day right. With a poem by William Shakespeare, John of Gaunt's speech from Richard II.

"This royal throne of kings, this sceptr'd isle,

This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars..."

From the show:

Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, just one of the remarkable novels from her richly-talented family

The Single Petal of a Rose, from Duke Ellington's Queen's Suite

Nub.news – hyperlocal news sites around the UK, sharing Marc's Almanac on its Suffolk sites for Felixstowe and the Shotley Peninsula

A song to wake up to – We'll Meet Again, sung by Johnny Cash

(Listen to the full playlist on YouTube)

Sign up to receive email alerts and show notes with links when a new episode goes live at marcsalmanac.substack.com

Please share this with anyone who might need a touch of calm, and keep sending in your messages and requests. You can leave a voice message at https://anchor.fm/marc-sidwell/message. If you like Marc's Almanac please do leave a review on Apple podcasts. It really helps new listeners to find me.

Have a lovely day.

Hello from Suffolk, England. Here's five minutes of civilised calm to start your day right. With a poem by a 9th-century Irish monk, Pangur Ban.

"I and Pangur Ban my cat,

From the show:

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

John Halifax, Gentleman by Dinah Craik

Leslie Phillips: "Ding Dong!"

The White Cat and the Monk

Art History at Bedtime, read by Dr Bendor Grosvenor

A song to wake up to – The Bones, by Maren Morris

(Listen to the full playlist on YouTube)

Sign up to receive email alerts and show notes with links when a new episode goes live at marcsalmanac.substack.com

Please share this with anyone who might need a touch of calm. If you like Marc's Almanac please do leave a review on Apple podcasts. It really helps new listeners to find me.

Have a lovely day.

Hello from Suffolk, England. Here's five minutes of civilised calm to start your day right. With a poem by Geoffrey Chaucer, the opening of his prologue to The Canterbury Tales.

"When April's gentle rains have pierced the drought

Of March right to the root..."

From the show:

Weekend Wodehouse: The Aunt and the Sluggard

The Canterbury Tales

Henry Vaughan and Philip K Dick

A Canterbury Tale, Powell and Pressburger's meditation on what it means to be English in wartime

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes

Songs to wake up to – The Doobie Brothers' Listen to the Music

Sign up to receive email alerts and show notes with links when a new episode goes live at marcsalmanac.substack.com

Please share this with anyone who might need a touch of calm. If you like Marc's Almanac please do leave a review on Apple podcasts. It really helps new listeners to find me.

Have a lovely day.