Feature Analysis

A Brief History of Being Cold

This feature was broadcasted on BBC Radio 3, within the programme Sunday Feature that is aired on Sundays at 18:45. 

The feature aims to portray the evolution of the experiencing of cold and how it has influenced British people, paying special attention to its representation in literature and in famous romantic poems, such as The Eve of St. Agnes by John Keats. The presenter of the feature, Alexandra Harris, talks with writers, poets, specialists on art and literature and even a gardener in her way on finding the poetic meaning of cold. It includes several extracts from the poems and novels that are studied and commentaries on them. 

In A Brief History of Being Cold it is very important the use of the sounds, that make the listeners able to transport themselves to the places where the presenter has been and especially to make the cold of these places more real to their imagination. Thus, we hear the sound of the steps on the snow when the presenter is about to talk to the poet Simon Armitage, the wind blowing, far away roads or even bells ringing and bleating sheep in the background. The voice of the presenter also helps creating that feeling, as in certain occasions has the kind of congested tone characteristic of the cold winter days, In the same way, we have the opposite sensation, that of being indoors, during the conversation with the curator of an exhibition of Ice Age art in the British Museum we can perceive the silence of the big rooms of a museum and our mind can perfectly portray the two women talking besides the objects of the exhibition. 

The music is remarkable as well. It accompanies the poems and the narrations and most of the times helps creating a whole between the song and the passage and reinforces its meaning, since they are chosen to fit in the sensation of cold and some of them –for instance, Drive the Cold Winter Away– include it as its theme. 

As a conclusion, this feature presents a very interesting approach to the meaning that cold has and has had in literature, and part of its appealing resides on the use of sound and music, that creates the feeling of travelling with the presenter to the winter of Great Britain in search of this meaning. 

Begoña Martín Lara.