Unspeakable

As a teenager, Harriet Shawcross stopped speaking at school for almost a year. As an adult, she became fascinated by the limits of language.

From the inexpressible trauma of trench warfare and the aftermath of natural disaster to the taboo of coming out, Harriet studies wartime poet George Oppen, interviews the author of The Vagina Monologues, meets Nepalese earthquake-survivors and the founders of The Samaritans, asking why words scare us and what makes us silent.