Sea Longing - a radio drama for BBC Radio 3.

This 75 minute radio drama was commissioned by the BBC, produced by Sweet Talk productions and was first broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 23/12/18. It explored the motivations of a fictional archivist and folklorist Robert Whyman who collected 'selkie' stories and seal lore from the coasts of Scotland, the Hebrides, and Shetland. The drama examined why selkie stories (folk tales in which seals become human and vice versa) have such a magnetic hold on the imagination, and what truths about the human condition they express. Archival recordings and original music were an intrinsic part of the production. The resons for Whyman's sense of being 'homeless' and 'between two worlds' - just as the selkies are, being neither human nor animal but continually moving between the two, and being completely at home neither at land nor at sea - are gradually uncovered in the drama, as the whole piece meditates on how folk lore can poetically express complex truths.