Creative

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In five Essays, Rachel Cooke takes a wry and wide-ranging look at disappointment. She believes life is full of let downs, the 'twenty-first century world seems expressly to set us up' for them. From a cup of coffee to new clothes, highly anticipated pleasures often prove to be an anti-climax. In this episode, she takes a look at artistic disappointment from 19th-century artist Benjamin Haydon, whose attempts to stage a grand exhibition were thwarted by the far more popular 'General Tom Thumb', to the contemporary writer whose book event is - disappointingly - empty. Creative disappointment, which often follows years of solitary work, is, Rachel feels, one of the worst kinds. This series of the Essay is being broadcast again to mark Rachel Cooke’s death in November 2025.