White Rabbits in Sussex, review: Story of 'psychedelic' Alice was radio at its best

Radio 3's terrific and terrifically odd documentary revolved around a small village in the South Downs and a 45-year-old production of Alice Through The Looking Glass

White Rabbits in Sussex was presented by David Bramwell (BBC)

This month Alice's Adventures in Wonderland turns 150. This is, of course, a significant moment and entirely deserving of some dedicated programmes.

I'll admit, though, that I was steeling myself for dreary roundtable discussions inhabited by dandruff-smothered academics, all sucking the magic out of the book and making me long for an early death.

Well, those radio people showed me. As if last week's excellent Radio 4's Alice is Still in Wonderland, in which Siouxsie Sioux went on an excursion to Oxford, land of Lewis Carroll, wasn't enough, Sunday night brought White Rabbits in Sussex, a terrific and terrifically odd doc revolving around a small village in the South Downs and a 45-year-old production of Alice Through The Looking Glass.

It was presented by David Bramwell, a musician who lives in Brighton and who, in recent years, has made a Sony Award-winning documentary capturing the sounds of murmurating starlings near Glastonbury Tor, and a programme about a 100-year-old Victorian moustache he inherited from an eccentric aunt. Bramwell clearly has an eye (and an ear) for the oddball and arcane.

Here it was a rare recording that had captured his attention, one that was made during The Ditchling Players' performance of Alice Through The Looking Glass in January 1969 (Alice, it turned out, was played by the journalist and one-time Sussex resident Martha Kearney, then aged eight).

It was later pressed into vinyl as a keepsake for the cast, since when the legend has grown. A US critic called the album "the high point of British rural psychedelia", while Bramwell deemed it "a worthy companion to the Incredible String Band and early Pink Floyd".

Bramwell wanted to track down those who played on it, while getting to the bottom of what he called "the pastoral psych-folk conundrum". How was it that a musical movement was born in deepest Sussex?

His quest took him to the doorstep of the erstwhile God of Hellfire, Arthur Brown, who now lives a quiet life near Lewes, and folk heroine Shirley Collins who said she couldn't stand Alice in Wonderland but has spent most of her life spellbound by the Sussex landscape and had seen ghosts on the Downs.

Equally fascinating were the two unknown musicians, Peter Howell and John Ferdinando, who made the original recording and who employed unusual techniques involving echoes, reverse sounds, telephones, breadboards and the twanging of elastic bands (it's no wonder Howell ended up joining the BBC's Radiophonic Workshop). Bramwell met a few of the original actors too. "How do you feel about the psychedelic label being attached to Ditchling", he asked one? "I wouldn't know anything about that," came the suspicious reply.

This was more than a story of rural am-dram. It was a hugely atmospheric tale of psychedelic folk and ghostly landscapes, eccentric artists and lost treasures. It was the kind of programme that telly wouldn't touch, and at which radio excels. Bravo.

On Radio 4 Extra, Inspiring Alice was a three-hour retrospective of all things Wonderland. Hosted by Mel Giedroyc, it included great archive material, like the first part of the book, beautifully read by Alan Bennett. The programme was decent enough but if 4Extra commissioners had cleared the schedule and aired the whole reading, I'd have been happy as a clam.

Twitter: @FionaSturges