ARTS & DRAMA
The Red Shoes
Thursday 21 September 2006 15:45-16:00 (Radio 4 FM)
Poet Ruth Padel investigates why Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales still speak to us now and what they tell us about the man who wrote them.
The iconic Powell/Pressburger film brought parts of Andersen's story to a wide cinema audience, but the tale itself is much less well known and far more disturbing. Why did Andersen display such a ruthlessly violent streak and what were his secret fears while writing it?
