Book of the Week - What I Don't Know About Animals - Episode 1

Written by Jenny Diski. Jenny uses her own life as a framework to offer an entertaining and rigorous examination of our relationship to the wild and the stuffed, the cuddly and the caged. Beginning with the early rescue of a bird in Regent's Park, and an indifferent relationship to childhood pets she moves on to look at the way in which fictional animal characters are used to explain the ways of the human world to children. Adulthood brings a series of relationships with cats and the thorny question of how we talk to animals, or if we can. Jacques Derrida and Dr Dolittle are both enlisted to help. A fear of spiders reveals the lurking possibility of darker traumas; a visit to a sheep farm confronts us with innocent charm and lunch; whilst an attempt at horse-riding provokes the question, 'who's in charge ?' Read by Lesley Manville Abridged and Produced by Jill Waters A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4.