Use BBC.com or the new BBC App to listen to BBC podcasts, Radio 4 and the World Service outside the UK.

Find out how to listen to other BBC stations

Episode details

Radio 3,14 Feb 2020,14 mins

SeriesStrange Strolls

Sophie Coulombeau - Walking Matilda

The Essay

Available for over a year

As an injured soldier under house arrest, Xavier de Maistre staved off boredom by imagining every step around his drawing room was a step across a country; Virginia Woolf’s writerly wandering around central London to buy a pencil exposed the city's transformation in darkness. Inspired by these ironic quests and symbolic expeditions, five contemporary writers embark on walks of entertaining eccentricity. Author and academic Sophie Coulombeau completes these imaginative journeys with her newborn baby navigating York - a city and self once familiar, but now elusive and uncanny. Producer: Ciaran Bermingham

Programme Website
More episodes