“I read and read and time passed”
Girl With Dove: A Life Built By Books, Sally Bayley
This year’s Oxford ReLit Summer School takes as its focus works of art which explore and facilitate moments of rest and reflection. Music, literature, the visual arts: all these can offer a thoughtful, restorative escape from the stresses of everyday life.
We enjoyed taking a pause every day last week to listen to Summer School director Sally Bayley’s Girl With Dove, which was serialised as BBC Radio 4’s “Book of the Week”. Sally’s book tells the story of a childhood spent avidly reading, of an imaginative world populated by the brilliant characters of fiction.
“Reading”, as Girl With Dove tells us, “is a form of escape and an avid reader is an escape artist”. Hearing stories told is a form of escape too. Take some time for yourself to listen to Girl With Dove, available until 18 February on BBC Sounds: