The Five Foot Shelf
Seriously...
BBC
4.1 • 885 Ratings
🗓️ 21 August 2018
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
According to Charles W. Eliot - President of Harvard and cousin of T.S. - everything required for a complete, liberal education could fit on a shelf of books just 5-feet in length. In 1909 the first volume of the Harvard Classics were published - and grew to become a 51-volume anthology of great works, including essays, poems and political treatises. But what if people today from all walks of life were asked to recommend books to be included on a five foot shelf? Which books do they think might be required for a complete home education? Ian Sansom has set a course for Wigtown - Scotland's National Booktown - to find out. Local craftsman Steve has been busy creating just the shelf for the job - exactly five foot long - and fashioned from elm wood and whiskey barrels recycled from a local distillery. Ian will be playing shopkeeper at the Open Book in Wigtown - a B&B meets bookshop which allows visitors to indulge their fantasy of running their own bookstore. With Ian parked behind the counter, all that's needed is for visitors to drop by and try to persuade him of the books they think deserve a rightful place on The Five Foot Shelf. But of course not everything will make it on and as custodian of the shelf, Ian can be ruthless. Well, kind of... No academics. No critics. No nonsense. The Five Foot Shelf is a guide for readers by readers about the books which matter to them. Producer: Conor Garrett.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This was an impregnable fortress. The only way you get out was in a wooden box. |
| 0:05.0 | The controversial maximum security prison impossible to escape from. |
| 0:09.0 | And one of the duties of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.0 | The IRA inmates who found a way. of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.5 | The IRA inmates who found a way. |
| 0:14.5 | I'm Carlo Gableer and I'll be navigating a path |
| 0:19.5 | through the disturbing inside story of the biggest jailbreak in British and Irish history. |
| 0:25.0 | The narrative that they want is that this is a big achievement by them. |
| 0:28.5 | Escape from the Maze, listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:34.0 | This is the BBC. |
| 0:37.0 | Hello, before you listen to this podcast from the BBC, |
| 0:40.0 | great choice by the way, I'm Amanda Litherland and I want to tell you about |
| 0:43.9 | podcast radio hour. Each week we recommend some of the best podcasts out there |
| 0:48.2 | whether they're true crime, comedy or something completely different and we interview podcast creators about the |
| 0:53.9 | inspirations behind their episodes. Find your next favorite with Podcast Radio Hour, |
| 0:58.9 | but first enjoy this. |
| 1:02.3 | Hi, I'm Riana Dylan and you're listening to another seriously great podcast from BBC Radio 4. Oh that is clap! It's absolutely clap! It's quite wide, but the reason for that is I didn't want to cut this lovely piece of a |
| 1:27.4 | own in half. I'm in Scotland dumbfrees and Galloway to be precise |
| 1:32.4 | where a very nice man called Steve has made me a shelf. |
| 1:38.0 | That's a piece of elm from a tree that I cut down, just down at the bottom of the rude. |
| 1:42.6 | Filled a way to that. |
| 1:44.1 | I mean that is just, that has got heft. |
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