Main content

Jon Boden, singer with folk big-band Bellowhead, reveals how post-apocalyptic literature by writers from John Christopher to Cormac McCarthy influences his work.

Jon Boden is a folk musician who loves post-apocalyptic literature, works such as 'The Changes Trilogy' by Peter Dickinson, in which the people of England develop a dread of technology, Russell Hoban's 'Riddley Walker', set in the aftermath of such destruction that even the language has fragmented and Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road', in which a father and his son desperately push a cart with their few possessions, some tins of food and a pistol through a devastated land.

He thought this was at odds with his work as a performer of traditional English song, music that sometimes celebrates a bucolic idyll. But, after becoming a father, he began to consider the implications of contemporary geo-politics. With the end of an oil dependent economy, would reality and the world depicted in the literature he enjoys coincide? Or might this lead to a world closer to that described in traditional song, and the kind of society that produced that music?

Producer: Julian May.

Available now

15 minutes

Last on

Mon 16 Jul 2012 22:45

Broadcasts

  • Mon 28 Mar 2011 23:00
  • Mon 16 Jul 2012 22:45

Death in Trieste

Death in Trieste

A 1760s murder still informs ideas about aesthetics, a certain sort of sex, and death.

Watch: My Deaf World

Watch: My Deaf World

Five compelling experiences of what it is like to be deaf in 21st-century Britain.

The Book that Changed Me

The Book that Changed Me

Five figures from the arts and science introduce books that changed their lives and work.

Download The Essay

Download The Essay

Download all the episodes from the series and listen at your leisure.

Podcast