Shanties, pictures, trees and PMG
May. 7th, 2010 11:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anteros_lmcTime is completely running away from me this week which is why I didn't have a chance to post a heads up about the latest programme shown as part of BBC4's Sea Fever season Shanties and Sea Songs, presented by Gareth Malone, who looks rather like Jack Davenport's younger brother. The programme included some interesting material, amazing archive film footage and lots of men with beards, some of whom actually did put their fingers in their ears. In addition to the presenter, the programme also had an invisible narrator whose voice and accent bugged me they whole time I was watching because it sounded so damn familiar. Which is hardly surprising because it turned out to be Paul McGann. Unfortunately the programme isn't available on iPlayer so you'll just have to take my word for it that he sounded in very fine voice. The programme is now up on iPlayer so those in the UK can now enjoy PMG's dulcet tones for themselves. :)
Earlier in the week I also watched another programme in this season called Art of the Sea which was excellent. It's still available on iPlayer and hopefully I'll get round to posting a review eventually.
One last thing that might be of interest, A Point of View on BBC Radio 3 tonight was a meditation on the English oak by Simon Schama which unsurprisingly referred to the tree's importance for naval ship building in the 17th and 18th centuries. He also mentions the, presumably apocryphal, story of Collingwood surreptitiously scattering acorns through holes in his pockets. However Schama credits the lord-lieutenant of Cardiganshire, Colonel Thomas Johnes as being "the all-time champion, who between 1795 and 1801 planted some 922,000 sturdy oaks." The programme ends with an extraordinary plea to the new UK government to continue funding reasearch into oak disease as "to cut that would be to cut the timber of our patrimony." A transcript of the programme is available here and you can also still listen to it online depending on where you happen to be.
Earlier in the week I also watched another programme in this season called Art of the Sea which was excellent. It's still available on iPlayer and hopefully I'll get round to posting a review eventually.
One last thing that might be of interest, A Point of View on BBC Radio 3 tonight was a meditation on the English oak by Simon Schama which unsurprisingly referred to the tree's importance for naval ship building in the 17th and 18th centuries. He also mentions the, presumably apocryphal, story of Collingwood surreptitiously scattering acorns through holes in his pockets. However Schama credits the lord-lieutenant of Cardiganshire, Colonel Thomas Johnes as being "the all-time champion, who between 1795 and 1801 planted some 922,000 sturdy oaks." The programme ends with an extraordinary plea to the new UK government to continue funding reasearch into oak disease as "to cut that would be to cut the timber of our patrimony." A transcript of the programme is available here and you can also still listen to it online depending on where you happen to be.
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no subject
Date: 2010-05-07 10:30 pm (UTC)I knew it was PMG right off - he narrates Air Medics, which I watch occasionally on cable. And now I'm listening to my playlist of sea-shanties, which is something I haven't listened to right through for a while.
I was a little disappointed that they didn't specify at the beginning that shanties weren't sung on Navy vessels at all, though they would have had a fiddler or fifer to give a tune when raising the anchor (think of that little bit in M&C - I thik it might only be in the deleted scenes, though). They sang forebitters in the dog-watches, which are songs with a story to them.
Art of the Sea was good, too - what I managed to see of it. I thought right at the beginning "They've GOT to have Geoff Hunt on here..." and lo and behold, he was. I punched the air at that point. Was a little disappointed they didn't mention Turner's most famous painting, of Temeraire being towed to Rotherhithe to be broken up, but they did talk about him.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-07 10:54 pm (UTC)Hmm the availability notes on the BBC read "Sorry, this programme is not available to watch again here but is currently available on these devices: Selected wi-fi/3G enabled mobile phones." Never seen that before!
I knew it was PMG right off
Hats off m'dear! It was driving me nuts before I saw the credits.
You're right of course about the issue of shanties and the navy, but it was very much about sea songs in the widest sense wasn't it? I particularly loved the songs of the herring lassies as my home town was one of the herring ports.
They sang forebitters in the dog-watches
Indeed they did. I was listening to some forebitters just the other day. I've got a whole series of posts on music and the navy which I'm dying to write it I just had the time :}
Was a little disappointed they didn't mention Turner's most famous painting, of Temeraire
That's true but I loved the interview with Anish Kapoor talking about Turner, really inspiring.