An English countryside calendar

Available for 24 days

Few artists evoke the British landscape so unforgettably as John Constable, with paintings like The Haywain, The Cornfield and A Country Lane bringing to mind the timeless cycle of the seasons. And so we celebrate English rural life in honour of Constable's birth 250 years ago with the actor and farmer Martin Clunes and The Archers actor Louiza Patikas. Their readings will connect us with rural bliss in John Clare’s Farm Breakfast, with the starker realities of life in the country in Stella Gibbons' Cold Comfort Farm and the unalloyed beauty of the land with John Keats, Gillian Clarke and Thomas Hardy. There is music tracking the seasons and celebrating sowing, growth and harvest, from Bach’s Sheep May Safely Graze to Chaminade's Automne to Vaughan William’s Pastoral Symphony. Your readers are the actor and farmer Martin Clunes and Louiza Patikas, who plays Helen in The Archers on BBC Radio 4. READINGS: Anthony Bailey - John Constable: A Kingdom of His Own Virgil - Georgics William Wordsworth - Lines Written in Early Spring Thomas Hardy - Jude the Obscure John Clare - Farm Breakfast Christina Rossetti - Spring Edna St Vincent Millay - April Anthony Bailey - John Constable: A Kingdom of His Own Flora Thompson - Lark Rise to Candleford Joe Dunthorn - Wild Abandon Bella Bathurst - Field Work Henry David Thoreau - Walden Mimi Khalvati - The Black and White Cows DH Lawrence - The Rainbow George Eliot - Adam Bede Anthony Bailey - John Constable: A Kingdom of His Own Gillian Clarke - Plums AG Street - Farmer’s Glory John Keats – To Autumn Andrew Miller - The Land in Winter Emily Bronte - Spellbound Stella Gibbons - Cold Comfort Farm Helen McDonald - H is for Hawk Gerard Manley Hopkins - Spring Produced in Salford by Olive Clancy