A Short History of Solitude
BBC Radio 4

The first part of Thomas Dixon’s new series (31 August) began with its presenter at large in the Surrey countryside and contemplating the spectacle of a stonewalled compartment 4ft wide and 6ft high. The clue to its origins lay in the proximity of the local church. This, it turned out, was the cell of Christine Carpenter, the celebrated fourteenth-century Anchoress of Shere.

At first glance her life looked barely supportable. The enclosure ceremony sounded more like a funeral, what with the entombment and the sprinkled earth. The Ancrene Wisse, an early medieval instruction manual for aspiring self-sequestrators, made it clear that the injunction to grub up dirt from the floorspace was simply another way of digging your own grave.