A world of animals

From the dinosaurs we see as fossils to the charismatic big animals and the creepiest of the crawlies we wonder at in nature documentaries. We will visit all seven continents in readings from Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park to Isabel Allende’s Paradise to Kari Herbert’s Antarctica. We’ll hear poetry from Lorca to AA Milne to Pascale Petit. And there will be an archive recording of Sir David Attenborough reading from Life Stories, a memoir of his seventy years of world class nature broadcasting on everything from archaeoptryx to butterflies and sloths.
Music inspired by and evoking all manner of creatures and plants includes pieces by Camille Saint-Saens, Claude Debussy and Elena Kats-Chernin and George Fenton's scores for TV documentaries.

Hugh Bonneville and Anne-Marie Duff perform the readings:

In Memoriam (extract) by Alfred Tennyson
H is for Hawk by Helen McDonald
Life Stories – archaeopteryx by David Attenborough
Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton
Life Stories – sloths by David Attenborough
Sonnet on a Monkey by Marjory Fleming
Crocodile by Thomas Lovell Beddoes
Leaving Times by Jodi Piccoult
The Old Lizard (extract) by Federico Garcia Lorca
Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor
The Overstory by Richard Powers
Life Stories – monstrous flowers by David Attenborough
Animal, Vegetable, Mineral by Barbara Kingsolver
Song of Myself (extract) by Walt Whitman
Between Us And by Anne Carson
White Fang by Jack London
The Pangolin by Fleur Adcock
Life Stores, coelocanth by David Attenborough
Blueback by Tim Winton
The Explorers Daughter by Kari Herbert
At the Zoo by AA Milne
Paradise by Isabel Allende
Turtle Diary by Russell Hoban
Kindness to Animals by Wendy Cope
A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
The Tyger (extract) by William Blake
The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling
Green Bee Eater by Pascal Petit

Produced in Salford by Olive Clancy