Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share The Pleasures and Pains of Denton Welch
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
The Pleasures and Pains of Denton Welch
Denton Welch lived the last years of his short life in Kent during the Second World War. His writing career took off in 1943 and in the same year he met his companion, Eric Oliver.
His writing is mostly autobiographical and carries his readers from a childhood in Shanghai, boarding school in 1930s England, a near-fatal bicycle accident while he was in art college, a slow convalescence and, finally, to his years travelling about the Kent countryside, picnicking, exploring churches and observing rural life with an artist's eye. And a queer eye.
His subtle and gently subversive descriptions of same-sex desire and sexual identity has thrilled and challenged his readers for eighty years.
His preoccupations include art and beauty as well as pain and death. His great ability as a writer is to draw characters - often based entirely on himself and those closest to him - with tiny details which spring to life on the page. These can be very funny, cruel, poignant or erotic.
He wrote novels, stories and journals as well as working with art and poetry.
Regan Hutchins has always been a fan of Denton's writing and he travels to the village of Hadlow in Kent, where Denton lived during the Second World War. There he meets Denton's would-be neighbours who show him the landscape that inspired the writer. Biographers, academics, film-makers and writers help to build a picture of a writer who has, for too long, been out of sight.
Producer Regan Hutchins
Reader Rob Vesty
With thanks to the Hadlow Historical Society.
Sound supervision by Tinpot Productions.
A New Normal Culture production for BBC Radio 3
View all episodes
By BBC Radio 3
4.4
5151 ratings
Denton Welch lived the last years of his short life in Kent during the Second World War. His writing career took off in 1943 and in the same year he met his companion, Eric Oliver.
His writing is mostly autobiographical and carries his readers from a childhood in Shanghai, boarding school in 1930s England, a near-fatal bicycle accident while he was in art college, a slow convalescence and, finally, to his years travelling about the Kent countryside, picnicking, exploring churches and observing rural life with an artist's eye. And a queer eye.
His subtle and gently subversive descriptions of same-sex desire and sexual identity has thrilled and challenged his readers for eighty years.
His preoccupations include art and beauty as well as pain and death. His great ability as a writer is to draw characters - often based entirely on himself and those closest to him - with tiny details which spring to life on the page. These can be very funny, cruel, poignant or erotic.
He wrote novels, stories and journals as well as working with art and poetry.
Regan Hutchins has always been a fan of Denton's writing and he travels to the village of Hadlow in Kent, where Denton lived during the Second World War. There he meets Denton's would-be neighbours who show him the landscape that inspired the writer. Biographers, academics, film-makers and writers help to build a picture of a writer who has, for too long, been out of sight.
Producer Regan Hutchins
Reader Rob Vesty
With thanks to the Hadlow Historical Society.
Sound supervision by Tinpot Productions.
A New Normal Culture production for BBC Radio 3
More shows like The Radio 3 Documentary
View all
In Our Time
5,408 Listeners
The Documentary Podcast
1,828 Listeners
Global News Podcast
7,704 Listeners
Arts & Ideas
294 Listeners
History Extra podcast
3,203 Listeners
Thinking Allowed
303 Listeners
Great Lives
510 Listeners
6 Minute English
1,792 Listeners
Learning English Conversations
1,083 Listeners
World Book Club
360 Listeners
The Forum
276 Listeners
The Infinite Monkey Cage
1,948 Listeners
Newshour
1,037 Listeners
In Our Time: History
1,908 Listeners
In Our Time: Culture
591 Listeners
In Our Time: Philosophy
858 Listeners
The LRB Podcast
289 Listeners
Bookclub
237 Listeners
London Review Bookshop Podcast
120 Listeners
Curious Cases
812 Listeners
Americast
741 Listeners
You're Dead to Me
2,979 Listeners
On the Road with Penguin Classics
24 Listeners
This Cultural Life
103 Listeners