England and the Touch of Rain
Nandini Das curates essays from across the globe on differing sensory responses to rain.
The Essay · BBC Radio 3
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Show Notes
If there's a subject in which England has every right to claim knowledge through experience, it is the subject of rain. Poets, politicians, or labourers, we've lived a literally and metaphorically sheltered life if we haven't felt the chill of rain on our face. In her Rainsong Essay Dr Tess Somervell pulls together the many ways in which rain has been gathered and responded to in her native land, from the bedraggled and almost inevitably soon to be betrothed costume-drama heroine, to the high romance of the romantic poets and the ancient wisdom of an unknown medieval bard. While smell and taste and sound and sight might all play a part in our collective response to rain, we also feel it, not just on our skin but in our bones.