Episodes
| First Broadcast | Repeated | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| 20210921 | 20211024 (R4) |
The Tuscan town of Pieve Santo Stefano is home to a very unusual collection - Italy's National Diary Archive. It preserves diaries, letters and memoirs sent from all over the country, everything from contemporary accounts of life under lockdown to centuries-old journals, fragile with age.
Writer and translator Orla O'Neill visits Pieve to delve into the archive's holdings. She shares the intimate thoughts and reflections that she discovers - accounts of ordinary' lives recorded in the telling, and often touching, domestic detail that tends to be omitted from textbook history.
Along the way, she meets the town's Story Eaters - a committee of local people who read every new diary - and hears the moving story of how Pieve, once described as the town without memories', came to be the archive's home.
Presenter: Orla O'Neill
Producers: Orla O'Neill and Cathy FitzGerald
Executive Producer: Sarah Cuddon
Mix Engineer: Mike Woolley
Sound Recording: Stefano Ferrara
Photography: Luigi Burroni
Interviewees: Luisa Oelker, Giacomo Benedetti, Lisa Marri
Readers: Tommaso Ghiazza, Alessandra Normanno, Erica De Lazzari, Alessandro Pini and Penelope Nicholson
Diary writers: Massimo Bartoletti Stella, Silvana Baldini, Luisa T. Claudio Foschini and Clelia Marchi
`Lu Pulverone` performed by Paola Nepi
With thanks to the Archivio Diaristico Nazionale.
A White Stiletto production for BBC Radio 4.
Orla O'Neill peeks into other people's diaries at the National Diary Archive in Italy.
The Tuscan town of Pieve Santo Stefano is home to a very unusual collection - Italy's National Diary Archive. It preserves diaries, letters and memoirs sent from all over the country, everything from contemporary accounts of life under lockdown to centuries-old journals, fragile with age.
Writer and translator Orla O'Neill visits Pieve to delve into the archive's holdings. She shares the intimate thoughts and reflections that she discovers - accounts of ordinary' lives recorded in the telling, and often touching, domestic detail that tends to be omitted from textbook history.
Along the way, she meets the town's Story Eaters - a committee of local people who read every new diary - and hears the moving story of how Pieve, once described as the town without memories', came to be the archive's home.
Presenter: Orla O'Neill
Producers: Orla O'Neill and Cathy FitzGerald
Executive Producer: Sarah Cuddon
Mix Engineer: Mike Woolley
Sound Recording: Stefano Ferrara
Photography: Luigi Burroni
Interviewees: Luisa Oelker, Giacomo Benedetti, Lisa Marri
Readers: Tommaso Ghiazza, Alessandra Normanno, Erica De Lazzari, Alessandro Pini and Penelope Nicholson
Diary writers: Massimo Bartoletti Stella, Silvana Baldini, Luisa T. Claudio Foschini and Clelia Marchi
`Lu Pulverone` performed by Paola Nepi
With thanks to the Archivio Diaristico Nazionale.
A White Stiletto production for BBC Radio 4.
Orla O'Neill peeks into other people's diaries at the National Diary Archive in Italy.
| First Broadcast | Repeated | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| 20210921 | 20211024 (R4) |