麻豆约拍

When Soft Voices Die: John McCarthy explores the way smells, tastes and sounds can transport us to our pasts and summon the feelings we had back then.

The most famous example of this is Marcel Proust's tasting of a teaspoon of tea and cake crumbs which causes a shudder of pleasure and an involuntary memory of childhood setting him off on a seven volume search of times past.

In this programme, John McCarthy reflects on how the experience of involuntary memory can bypass the intellect, surprise us with emotions and sensations we thought we had forgotten and unsettle our sense of self.

John remembers how a cool, damp passageway plunged him back into the past, discusses the power of scent with the perfume archivist of Les Senteurs, James Craven, and hears from Justin Champion, a historian, about the music and memories he finds inside and MRI scanner.

There are poems by Helen Dunmore, Edward Thomas and Seamus Heaney, music by Schubert and Lou Read and songs sung by Eartha Kitt and Bryan Ferry.

The readers are Emily Taaffe, Matthew Addis and Seamus Heaney.

Producer: Natalie Steed
A Whistledown production for 麻豆约拍 Radio 4.