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Ian McMillan begins a fifty-part series celebrating 70 years of Radio 3's recording of poets and poetry since it was launched as the Third Programme in September 1946. We start with the flamboyant Dame Edith Sitwell from a programme broadcast in 1947. She reads a section from Façade, a series of poems Sitwell wrote to be recited over an instrumental accompaniment by composer William Walton. Then a complete change of tone with her poem Still Falls the Rain written in 1941.

Three Score and Ten features archive recordings from the last seven decades of the Third Programme and Radio 3, with 70 remarkable poets reading their own poems. Amongst them T.S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath, WH Auden, Seamus Heaney and Carol Ann Duffy. Plus ten brand new poems by contemporary poets commissioned specially for the series and broadcast on The Verb.

Producer: Sharon Sephton; Research by Caitlin Crawford.