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Episode details

Radio 4,01 Feb 2026,57 mins

Available for over a year

"I went to the woods, because I wished to live deliberately..." Henry David Thoreau's account of his year living in a cabin in the woods next to Walden Pond in Massachusetts. Matthew Needham (House of the Dragon, Stutterer, Summer and Smoke) stars as Henry in Paul Farley's evocative dramatisation of an attempt to live lightly on the earth, in tune with the rhythms of the natural world and to pay attention to the local and immediate. Henry.....Matthew Needham The Hostess.....Antonia Bernath Sceptical Diners.....Nathan Osgood and Adam Silver Railway Workers.....Jonathan Forbes and Jos Vantyler Mrs Field.....Aisha Lawal Sam Staples.....Clive Haywood The Poet.....Django Bevan Fenda Freeman.....Lorna Lowe William Taylor.....Kel Matsena Walden was dramatized by Paul Farley Sound design was by Rhys Morris A BBC Audio Wales production, directed by Emma Harding

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