The Verb

Ian McMillan bursts onto the air with Radio 3's language and literature cabaret. This week the cellist Steven Isserlis performs excerpts from his musical fairy stories for children and characterises the distinctive storytelling voice of the cello. The novelist David Vann sets out his theory that American writers unconsciously turn to Anglo-Saxon words when they're evoking landscape and scale. Storyteller Rachel Rose Reid performs extracts from her show I am Hans Christian Andersen. And writer Alison Carr introduces a new story about a man who has only a million words left to say - as told by his wife, who never stops talking. Producers: Erin Riley and Dymphna Flynn