The BBC has announced that it has a sustainable plan for the future of the BBC Singers, in association with The VOCES8 Foundation.
The threat to reduce the staff of the three English orchestras by 20% has not been lifted, but it is being reconsidered.
See the BBC press release here.
RADIO-LISTS: BBC RADIO 4 Extra
Unofficial Weekly Listings for BBC Radio 4 Extra — supported by bbc.co.uk/programmes/
A bitter dispute between sisters 200 years ago means a precious wedding gift must be cared for in the present.
When a paranormal researcher experiments with astral projection, an interested party intervenes. Read by David McAlister.
Few songs can claim to be - quite literally - as far reaching as the 1967 classic 'Can't Take My Eyes off You'. In this edition of Radio 4's 'Soul Music', we hear from former astronaut Christopher Ferguson who heard this song as an early morning wake-up call aboard the space shuttle Endeavour. And from mum of two Michelle Noakes who sang this classic piece to the baby she was told she may never be able to carry. We also hear from the honeymoon couple whose marriage proposal began with a hundred strong 'flash mob' performance of this track and from Frankie Valli himself, who reflects on one of the most moving performances he ever gave when he sang 'Can't Take My Eyes off You' to a crowd of recently returned Vietnam Veterans. DJ Mark Radcliff recalls the many artists since Valli that have covered this song (not least his mum as she sang along to the Andy Williams version) and composer Bob Gaudio tells us how this now universally famous piece of music began life in a room over looking Central Park with a melody originally penned for a children's nursery rhyme.
Producer: Nicola Humphries.
Can the Honourable Richard Rollison finally unravel the mystery - and reveal the murderer's identity?
Terence Alexander stars as the Toff - upper-class amateur sleuth, the Honourable Richard Rollison.
Created by John Creasey, The Toff appears in over 60 novels. First published in 1959, The Toff and the Runaway Bride was dramatised in six-parts for the BBC World Service by Roy Lomax.
With Robert Dorning as Jolly, David Graham as Carruthers, Alan Cuthbertson as Major Guy Lessing, Kevin Brennan as Robert Lawn, Rosalind Shanks as Barbara Lessing and Jean Dryant as the Inspector.
Producer: John Fawcett Wilson
First broadcast on the BBC World Service in June 1975.
One hundred miles east of Nova Scotia lies a 30-mile-long sand dune, Sable Island. It has a population of just two, who work in the weather and research station, and is also home to 300 wild horses. Sean Street reveals how this remote place is providing information vital to us all, and how it has gained a powerful presence in the imagination.
In the middle of the world's worst weather systems, held tentatively in place by ocean currents, Sable Island is the perfect place to monitor climate change, and air and sea pollution. More than 500 ships have been wrecked here. There have been several attempts at colonisation, by the Portuguese, the French (Sable is the French word for Sand) and even a group of prominent Bostonians, and all have failed. The story is cultural as well. Thomas Raddell, Nova Scotia's finest writer, was a radio operator on Sable for a year, and this inspired his novel The Nymph and the Lamp. The poet Elizabeth Bishop visited and wrote about the island.
Sean examines wreckage from some of more than 500 ships that have come to grief on the island. There is poignant baby's crib made from wreck wood, there being no trees. At the Natural History Museum in Halifax, he witnesses the unpacking of the latest consignment of bones and specimens - extraordinary ancient walrus skulls - collected as they are exposed in storms by Zoe Lucas, who has been on the island for decades. Sean meets artist Roger Savage, who had to tie his easel down, clamp his paper and battle with the scouring sand as he captured the landscape of the place in his paintings. And he meets a man who dedicated years to studying the rare Ipswich Sparrow, which nests only on Sable Island.
What emerges is that Sable Island is for the Canadians what the Galapagos are for the people of Ecuador, or Easter Island for Chileans. It is important scientifically and historically, but more than this it is important culturally, as part of their identity, even though hardly any of the Canadian population will ever go there.
Indeed, because of concern about climate change and damage to a unique and fragile ecosystem, people are now anxious not to go there. Which is just as well, because getting to, and from, Sable is difficult, with there being no harbour or regular air service. The wind blows almost constantly, and there is often thick fog. Access is restricted by the Canadian government as well as by nature.
Nearly 30 years on from its original publication, Hilary Mantel's third novel is still as disturbing, incisive and illuminating as ever. In an unusual collaboration, the author has revisited the book to create, with the abridger, this new ten-part serialisation.
Frances Shore is a cartographer by trade, but when her husband's work takes them to Saudi Arabia she finds herself unable to map either the ever changing landscape or the Kingdom's heavily veiled ways of working. The regime is corrupt and harsh, the expatriates are hard-drinking money-grubbers, and her Muslim neighbours are secretive and watchful.
She soon discovers that the streets are not a woman's territory. Confined in her flat, she finds her sense of self beginning to dissolve. She hears footsteps, sounds of distress from the supposedly empty flat above. She has only constantly changing rumours to hang on to, and no one with whom to share her creeping unease.
In the final episode, Frances tries to discover the truth.
Reader: Anna Maxwell Martin
Author: Hilary Mantel
Abridger: Sara Davies
Producer: Alexa Moore
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.
By 1850 identifying and classifying plants had become far more important than mere list making. Establishing the global laws of botany - what grew where and why - occupied the well travelled naturalist Joseph Hooker - son of Kew's director William Hooker and close friend of Charles Darwin. Kathy Willis hears from historian Jim Endersby on how Hooker was to acquire species from all over the world to build up the first accurate maps of the world's flora.
Mark Nesbitt, curator of Kew's economic botany collection, reveals how gifts to Hooker in the collection reveal the relationship between the amateur collector in the field and Hooker back at Kew was one built on trust and mutual understanding.
But, as Jim Endersby explains, the relationships were frought with tension when it came to naming new plants. Arguments between those claiming they had found new species (often called "splitters") versus cautious botanists, such as Hooker, who would often "lump" together species as variants of the same, raised new debates about what constitutes a new species. And as Mark Chase, Keeper of Kew's Jodrell Laboratory reveals, the arguments continue today.
Producer: Adrian Washbourne
Presenter: KATHY WILLIS is director of science at Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. She is also professor of long-term ecology and a fellow of Merton College, both at Oxford University. Winner of several awards, she has spent over 20 years researching and teaching biodiversity and conservation at Oxford and Cambridge.
5/5 Adrian Penketh's adaptation of Maupassant's first novel. In this final episode, we see the coda to the detailed story so far of Jeanne de Lamare, in which we see a whole life pan out.
Directed by Jessica Dromgoole.
Soaking up culture and off to a pub, the American author concludes his sentimental journey around Britain. Read by Kerry Shale.
The wild and tormented Francis Herries begins a new life in Cumberland. 18th-century family saga with Gavin Muir.
Martin Young presents the famous people quiz, with team captains Francis Wheen and Fred Housego and guests Gyles Brandreth and Sheridan Morley. From November 2000.
Chertkoff is St Petersburg's most high-minded young artist, until he makes a pact with the devil. With Stephen Moore. From April 2002.
How to get all loved up. Poetry and sketches from Pam Ayres. With Felicity Montagu and Geoffrey Whitehead. From August 2009.
The cast of TV's hugely popular sketch show return for their second series on BBC Radio 4. Pete Baikie, Morwenna Banks, Moray Hunter, Gordon Kennedy and John Sparkes revisit some of their much-loved sketch characters, while also introducing some newcomers to the show.
In 2013, the group that made their name on Channel Four in the 1980s and 90s got back together for Radio 4's Sketchorama: Absolutely Special - which won the BBC Audio Drama Award for Best Live Scripted Comedy. The first series of The Absolutely Radio Show picked up a Celtic Media Award nomination for Best Radio Comedy.
The opening episode of this series features the Stoneybridge Town Council preparing to receive the town's first ever tourist, the Little Girl giving her explanation of Brexit and Calum Gilhooley launching his own YouTube series. There are sketches about the downside of voice technology on smartphones, while Melania Trump presents a brand new podcast offering an insight into her life as First Lady.
Produced by Gordon Kennedy and Gus Beattie.
An Absolutely/Gusman production for BBC Radio 4.
When young Jim Hawkins discovers a treasure map in a pirate's chest in his parents' inn, he's drawn into a world of danger and high seas adventure.
He's soon joining a crew setting sail to the Caribbean to seek out the booty - and it's set to be a voyage confronting mutiny, murder - and the charismatic and devious Long John Silver...
Robert Louis Stevenson's classic sea saga dramatised by John Scotney.
Starring Peter Jeffrey as Long John Silver, Ben Rodska as Jim Hawkins, Hugh Paddick as Ben Gunn, Glyn Houston as Israel Hands, John Moffatt as Squire Trelawney, Geoffrey Whitehead as Dr Livesey, Stephen Thorne as Captain Smollett, David King as Flint, Brian Haines as Billy Bones and Wally K Daly as "Captain Flint" the Parrot.
Director: Martin Jenkins
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1989.
Jazz musician and broadcaster Humphrey Lyttelton explores the world of British band leaders of the 1920s and '30s. From November 2005.
Surprising history and compelling testimonies of US immigrants using the Ellis Island gateway. With Sarah Baxter. From July 2002.
'I can't go back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.' - Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland.
Lewis Carroll's book 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' is one of the most influential, best loved Victorian English novels. 150 years after the first book was published, it is still inspiring film makers, artists, poets and even chefs.
But who or what inspired Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), and just why has the book been so inspirational to others?
Mel Giedroyc and her guest, children's author Philip Ardagh dive headlong into the rabbit hole after the secret of Carroll's spell.
Archive includes:
* Gyles Brandreth, Just A Minute
* Lewis Carroll, Great Lives
* Alice's Adventures in Wonderland part 1, read by Alan Bennett
* Christchurch, Open Book
* Mad Hatter's Tea Party, The Food Programme
* Mock Turtle Soup, Historic Heston
* The Hatter, Digging Up Your Roots
* The Dodo, Science in Action
* Shrinking Heads, Questions Questions
* The Crying Game
* Lewis Carroll, The Unbelievable Truth
* Alice in Wonderland around the world, The Fifth Floor
* Wonder.land, Front Row
* The Sleep Diaries
Made for BBC Radio 4 Extra and first broadcast in November 2015.
Les Dawson's unique recitation of Marriott Edgar's 'The Channel Swimmer' and 'The Recumbent Posture'.
Stuart McLean reads 'snapshots' of Canadian life as written by listeners and spins a few home-grown platters.
When a grade six teacher, Ms Terry, from Seattle, Washington contacted the Vinyl Cafe asking listeners to send postcards to her students, to help them learn more about Canada - she had no idea what to expect. Imagine how she felt on being inundated with thousands of letters from all across Canada! So sit back as Stuart Mclean shares some of his favourites.
First broadcast by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation from 1994, the variety show Vinyl Cafe sadly lost its host, author and humourist Stuart McLean, after his death in February 2017.
First broadcast by CBC in 2006.
Naomi and Ella are working things out in spite of self-absorbed parents, but a crisis forces the family together. Stars Greg Wise.
Esther Rantzen inherits a 1935 Noel Coward song and passes on 'With a Little Help From My Friends' performed by Wet Wet Wet.
Broadcaster John Peel offers a taste of life as he explores the tiny Suffolk village of Combs and meets the locals.
Down Your Way was a schedule staple for decades - starting on the BBC Home Service in 1946 and ending its run on BBC Radio 4 in 1992. Using a variety of hosts, including Richard Dimbleby and Brian Johnston, the programme toured villages, towns and cities across the UK. At the height of the series' success in the 1950s, it was attracting ten million listeners a week.
John Peel was born in 1939 and died in 2004 aged 65.
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1998.
With The Blood Moon imminent, can the Sixth Doctor thwart the deadly arrival of the Omnim?
An adventure originally written for the BBC's Doctor Who TV series but never made.
Colin Baker stars as the Sixth Doctor.
With Nicola Bryant as Peri, Matt Addis as Kit Marlowe, Luis Solo as Velez, Sean Connolly as Iguano, Tam Williams as Tom, Gemma Wardle as Alys and Ian Brooker as Sir Francis Walsingham.
Written by Barbara Clegg and Marc Platt.
Director: John Ainsworth
Producer: David Richardson
Made by Big Finish and reversioned for broadcast by BBC Radio 4 Extra.
Stephen Fry hosts humorous banter and sketches, with Hugh Laurie, Jim Broadbent, Emma Thompson and Phyllida Law. From May 1988.
Probing a fresh theme each week, the award-winning comic hosts stand-up and sketches. With Ivan Brackenbury. From August 2008.
Radical proposals to change our lives for the better, starting with a monarchy makeover. From October 1992.
John Humphrys gives 28 performers 60 seconds each to entertain with sketches, stand-up, music and surprises. With Arthur Smith and Carrie Quinlan. From January 2008.
Jeanne de Lamare - a sheltered and naive country aristocrat - leaves her convent education filled with thoughts of love and romance.
Guy de Maupassant's early tragicomic novel adapted by Adrian Penketh.
Stars Aimee Ffion Edwards as Jeanne, Adam Nagaitis as Julien, Robert Blythe as the Baron and Christine Absalom as the Baroness.
Director: Jessica Dromgoole.
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2012.
A teacher faces the task of staging the 'Ring Cycle' in a school ranked bottom of the league tables. Read by Barbara Flynn.
Tom is worried for his health when he's invited on an adventure-packed stag weekend of "coasteering", an activity that involves hurling oneself off tall rocks and into the sea. But that's nothing compared with what his dad is preparing himself for: the Sheffield marathon. An event he's decided to enter to, in his eyes, get one over on the next door neighbour.
Archie Andrews and Brough decide it's to move out to the country and buy a farm.
Radio ventriloquism from Peter Brough and schoolboy, Archie Andrews.
With Dick Emery, Deryck Guyler, Ken Platt, Hilda Braid and Peter Hawkins.
Running from 1950- 1958, Educating Archie introduced a number of soon-to-be household names to listeners, including Tony Hancock, Benny Hill, Harry Secombe, Dick Emery, Hattie Jacques, Bruce Forsyth and Max Bygraves - all taking a turn in tutoring Archie.
Script by George Wadmore, Ronald Wolfe and Pat Dunlop.
Music by Ronald Chesney and the BBC Revue Orchestra conducted by Harry Rabinowitz.
Producer: Roy Speer
First broadcast on the BBC Light Programme in January 1957.
Professor Jimmy Edwards must deal with outbreaks of shaving and mixed ballroom dancing at school.
Starting life on BBC TV before transferring to radio, Chiselbury School is run "for the sons of gentlefolk".
Headmaster, Professor James Edwards, M.A. never misses a trick when it comes to exploiting the students and their parents. Sports pitches are given over to growing vegetables, which the boys nurture for their head to sell. Classes never exceed 95 pupils - 50 if private tuition is paid for at five guineas extra. It's only thanks to the efforts of the devoted deputy head, Mr Pettigrew, that the school exists at all.
Written by Frank Muir and Denis Norden and adapted for radio by David Climie.
Producer: Edward Taylor
First broadcast on the BBC Light Programme in July 1961.
When Eddie Izzard was six, he and his brother Mark lost their mother. That day, he lost his childhood too. Read by Eddie Izzard.
Fi Glover introduces a conversation about what you should retain and what you need to change when you take over the family business from your father.
The Listening Project is a Radio 4 initiative that offers a snapshot of contemporary Britain in which people across the UK volunteer to have a conversation with someone close to them about a subject they've never discussed intimately before. The conversations are being gathered across the UK by teams of producers from local and national radio stations who facilitate each encounter. Every conversation - they're not BBC interviews, and that's an important difference - lasts up to an hour, and is then edited to extract the key moment of connection between the participants. Most of the unedited conversations are being archived by the British Library and used to build up a collection of voices capturing a unique portrait of the UK in the second decade of the millennium. You can upload your own conversations or just learn more about The Listening Project by visiting bbc.co.uk/listeningproject
Producer: Marya Burgess.
4 Extra Debut. From Bach to Van Morrison. Film director Anthony Minghella shares his castaway choices with Sue Lawley. From November 1997.
Radiolab stares down the very moment of passing, and speculates about what may lie beyond. With Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich.
Radiolab is a Peabody-award winning show about curiosity. Where sound illuminates ideas, and the boundaries blur between science, philosophy, and the human experience.
First broadcast on public radio in the USA.
Memoir by the world-renowned American composer of symphonies, operas and film scores, Philip Glass. Read by Kerry Shale.
Renowned linguist Professor Eric Hawkins recalls how being a wartime soldier influenced his future ethos in the classroom.
Hilary Mantel's epic account of the French Revolution France is at war. Louis the 16th and Marie Antoinette have been arrested and await execution. And Robespierre and Danton are increasingly at odds over the direction the Revolution should take
Dramatised by Melissa Murray
Part 3: Fraternity
Directed by Marc Beeby.
BBC Radio 4's Poet in Residence, Daljit Nagra revisits the BBC's radio poetry with 'Surtsey and Me' about the emergence of a new island.
Out of the icy seas off the south-west coast of Iceland in November 1963, a massive volcanic eruption gave birth to the island of Surtsey. The same year in West Yorkshire, the poet Simon Armitage was born. They had never met until 2004. More than five decades later, island and poet get together to compare how it's going.
Producer: Tim Dee
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2004.
By Katie Hims. Enoch Cartwright, Victorian gentleman scientist, invests everything in the development of a machine to record the voice of his dead daughter, Emily, unaware that his living daughter Clara talks to her sister every night.
Directed by Jessica Dromgoole
NOTES
After developing the means to make long distance radio transmissions, Marconi devoted much of the rest of his life to listening out for the voices of the dead. If radio can conjure a voice disembodied in space, he expected, as have legions of people since, that radio can capture the voices of those disembodied in other dimensions - in time, in ethereal planes. As technology becomes more sensitive, more diverse, more obscure, there are pioneers always ready to harness the new to the service of this age old fascination.
This is the story of five generations of a family whose members can and can't hear the dead. It's an enterprise to explore the myriad ties, stories and quirks that bind families through the generations, across the spectrum of meanings of 'listening to the dead'. Between allowing the echoes of a beloved's voice to live on, and the notion that the dead can engage in communicating new information, are vast grey areas of misinformation that beguile the bereaved and thrill the imagination.
Katie Hims' previous series with Jessica Dromgoole, Lost Property, won Best Audio Drama in the Audio Drama Awards 2011, and they are now collaborating on Radio 4's epic commission, Home Front.
Elderly novelist Mr Adam has been asked to describe what made him start to write. He recalls an inexplicably bizarre and murderous encounter in an old furniture shop.
Stories abridged by Robin Brooks
Read by Matthew Marsh
Producer: Clive Brill
A Pacificus production for BBC Radio 4.
Uh-oh - Marcus Brigstocke has been put in charge of a thing! Each week, Marcus finds he's volunteered to be in charge of a big old thing and each week he starts out by thinking "Well, it can't be that difficult, surely?" and ends up with "Oh - turns out it's utterly difficult and complicated. Who knew...?"
This week, Marcus has grasped the bull by the horns and become a farmer. After all, what could go wrong? As he himself puts it, "Dairy, livestock, cattle - it's all grist to my mill."
Helping him to plough the fields and scatter will be Rufus Jones (W1A, Holy Flying Circus), William Andrews (Sorry I've Got No Head) and Margaret Cabourn-Smith (Miranda).
The show is produced by Marcus's long-standing accomplice, David Tyler who also produces Marcus appearances as the inimitable as Giles Wemmbley Hogg. David's other radio credits include Jeremy Hardy Speaks To The Nation, Cabin Pressure, Thanks A Lot, Milton Jones!, Kevin Eldon Will See You Now, Armando Iannucci's Charm Offensive, The Castle, The 3rd Degree, The 99p Challenge, My First Planet, Radio Active and Bigipedia.
Written by Marcus Brigstocke, Jeremy Salsby, Toby Davies, Nick Doody, Steve Punt and Dan Tetsell.
Produced by David Tyler
A Pozzitive production for BBC Radio 4.
The best in contemporary comedy. Arthur Smith chats to Dane Baptiste.
Aisling Bea and Yasmine Akram become Ais and Yaz and are the very best pals. They are taking their role as Ireland's freshest story-tellers to the British nation very seriously indeed but they haven't had the time to do much research, learn their lines or work out who is doing which parts.
The girls' unconventional way of telling stories involves a concoction of thoroughly inappropriate modern-day metaphors and references to many of the ancient Irish stories.
With a natural knack for both comedy and character voices Yasmine Akram and Aisling Bea will bring you warm, modern re-workings of popular ancient Irish stories.
Today it's Tir Na Nog.
Written and performed by Aisling Bea and Yasmine Akram
Producer: Raymond Lau.
What do long term partners really argue about? The sharp new comedy from Frank Skinner returns for a second series.
Well observed, clever and funny, Don't Start is a scripted comedy with a deceptively simple premise - an argument. Each week our couple fall out over another apparently trivial flashpoint - the Krankies, toenail trimming and semantics.
The stakes mount as Neil and Kim battle with words. But these are no ordinary arguments. The two outdo each other with increasingly absurd images, unexpected literary references (the Old Testament, Jack Spratt and the first Mrs Rochester, to name a few) and razor sharp analysis of their beloved's weaknesses. Underneath the cutting wit, however, there is an unmistakable tenderness.
Frank says:
"Having established in the first series that Neil and Kim are a childless academic couple who during their numerous arguments luxuriate in their own and each other's learning and wit, I've tried in the second series to dig a little deeper into their relationship. Love and affection occasionally splutter into view, like a Higgs boson in a big tunnel-thing, but can such emotions ever prevail in a relationship where the couple prefers to wear their brains, rather than their hearts, on their sleeves? Is that too much offal imagery?"
Episode 2: The Toenail
Frank's attempts at recycling strike Kim as an unhealthy obsession with death.
Produced and directed by Polly Thomas
Executive Producer: Jon Thoday
An Avalon production for BBC Radio 4.
It's Christmas! - but which town residents are celebrating?
The first incarnation of the award-winning black comedy, about the "local people" of Spent - before it hit TV.
Starring Mark Gatiss, Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton.
Written by the cast and Jeremy Dyson.
The League of Gentlemen won a Perrier Edinburgh Fesvital award in 1997 and this radio series debuted in the same year. They also won a Sony Radio Award. The cult series switched to TV for three series on BBC 2 from 1999, plus stage shows and a feature film.
Producer: Sarah Smith
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in December 1997.
C J Sansom's bestselling Tudor crime novel, adapted for radio by Colin MacDonald.
London, 1537. As he plots to bring down the Abbeys, Thomas Cromwell sends his trusted lawyer-detective, Matthew Shardlake, to investigate the murder of a King's Commissioner in a monastery on the south coast of Kent. Which of the terrified monks is the murderer - and can Shardlake catch him before he strikes again?
Produced and directed by Kirsteen Cameron.
Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway grows up on a belguiling Caribbean island where tensions escalate between her family and former slaves.
Jean Rhys's most famous novel read by Adjoa Andoh and Adam Godley - tracing the early life of the first Mrs Rochester from Jane Eyre.
Abridged by Margaret Busby
Producer: Claire Grove
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2004.
How cabaret star Josephine Baker adopted children from around the world to bring different nationalities together. From November 2007.
by Christopher William Hill. It's 1937 on the remote Scilly Island of St. Martin's, where the islanders are resisting the attempts of the Penzance GPO man to modernise the post office - around which their world revolves.
Episode 2: Omens. Old Grace is convinced that strange things have started to happen since the new telegraph machine was installed.
directed by Mary Peate.
Sound by Jenni Burnett, Anne Bunting and Graham Harper
Production Co-ordinator, Jessica Brown.
The 67th series of Radio 4's multi award-winning 'antidote to panel games' promises yet more quality, desk-based entertainment for all the family. The series starts its run at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford where regulars Barry Cryer and Tim Brooke-Taylor are joined on the panel Andy Hamilton and Jo Brand, with Jack Dee as the programme's reluctant chairman. Regular listeners will know to expect inspired nonsense, pointless revelry and Colin Sell at the piano. Producer - Jon Naismith. It is a BBC Studios production.
It's Big Brother with a twist as the team spoof George Orwell's '1984'.
Starring Fred Harris, Jo Kendall, Nigel Rees and Chris Emmett.
Cult sketch comedy series which originally ran from 1976 to 1980.
Scripted by David Renwick and Andrew Marshall.
Producer: David Hatch
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in October 1980.
When Captain Mainwaring decides to open up his Home Guard unit to women, Mrs Gray catches his eye.
Starring Arthur Lowe as Captain Mainwaring, John Le Mesurier as Sergeant Wilson, Clive Dunn as Corporal Jones, John Laurie as Private Frazer, Ian Lavender as Private Pike, Arnold Ridley as Godfrey, Mollie Sugden as Mrs. Fox and Carmen Silvera as Fiona Gray.
Adapted for radio from Jimmy Perry and David Croft's TV scripts by Harold Snoad and Michael Knowles.
Producer: John Dyas
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in April 1975.
Daniel Defoe is the Author of the Week this episode - a man who both helped establish modern journalism and modern espionage, as well as being the creator of such literary classics as "Moll Flanders" and "Robinson Crusoe", a book that, the Bible excepted, has been translated into more languages than any other.
Team captains Sebastian Faulks and John Walsh are joined by journalist, Jane Thynne, and creator of the DI Thorne novels, Mark Billingham.
For the finale of the show, the teams are asked to imagine Robinson Crusoe's observations were he to be marooned on an island today...the Isle of Dogs or Ibiza, for example.
Marcia quits sophisticated London for a doctor's surgery on a remote Northumbrian island. Stars Joan Sims and Rebecca Front. From June 1997.
Francis Herries encounters Mirabell again and the Jacobite rebels march on Carlisle. 18th-century family saga with Mark Bonnar.
The tale of a middle-aged accountant and the end of an intense love affair that began as an office romance. Read by Niamh Cusack.
An uplifting, romantic comedy about a priest and a nun who fall in love and leave their orders to marry and begin a new life together. By Ray Connolly
Michael................David Neilson
Eleanor............Alexandra Mathie
Jane..............Fiona Clarke
Darrell..............Joe Ransom
Fr Dermot..............Stephen Tomlin
Suzy............Cherylee Houston
Produced by Charlotte Riches.
'Life is only worth living because we hope it will get better and we'll all get home safely"
When beautiful Kitty Finch lands in the middle of what seems a conventional holiday set up - two couples, one teenage daughter and a villa in the south of France - no-one quite knows the effect she will have, though at once the ground shifts.
In the fierce heat of July, fissures yawn open, prised apart by Kitty's unsettling presence. Is she benign? What does she want? Is she an admiring fan or a darker foe? And who is keeping secrets, most of all from themselves?
Deborah Levy's first novel in fifteen years has garnered much praise. Witty and acute by turn, its deceptively simple setting belies the fractured relationships and the sense of imminent chaos that threatens all the characters. In today's episode: 'There's something in the pool'.
Abridged by Sally Marmion
Produced by Di Speirs
Directed by Elizabeth Allard
The Reader is Juliet Aubrey
Deborah Levy is the author of novels, including Beautiful Mutants, Swallowing Geography and Billy and Girl, and also a playwright and a poet. Born in South Africa, she now lives in London.
To the Victorians the Amazonian water lily was more than just a plant. The adventure of finding this exotic piece of the Empire and getting it to grow on home soil involved horticultural ambition, scientific vision and fierce competition amongst the country's wealthy landowners.
Prof Kathy Willis hears about the race during the 1840s between Kew's director William Hooker and the Duke of Derbyshire's gardener Joseph Paxton to get the aquatic lily to flower. Historian and biographer Kate Colquhoun examines how the plant's exacting requirements demanded an entirely new approach to horticultural architecture, engineering and management of water and heat.
Lara Jewett, manager of Kew's tropical house, and Greg Redwood, head of Kew's glasshouses, explain why this voracious feeder and aquatic beauty still proves a challenge to cultivate today.
But botanists were quick to make the connection between repeating modular-like structures on the underside of the lily's leaf and the possibilities of new engineering design, which as Jim Endersby explains, was to inspire the use of essential giant greenhouses to cultivate food in soot laden cities, and for Joseph Paxton to ultimately create the greatest glasshouse ever built - Crystal Palace.
Producer Adrian Washbourne.
By Alexander Pushkin.
Adapted by Duncan Macmillan.
Drama based on one of Russia's best loved poems, and the life of the man who wrote it. As Alexander Pushkin prepares to fight a duel, his wife begs him to tell her his most famous story, Eugene Onegin. Onegin is the darling of St. Petersburg. He is young, handsome and bored. But a trip to the countryside is about to change his life forever.
Directed by Abigail le Fleming
About the adapter
Duncan Macmillan is an award winning writer and director. Former Writer in Residence at Paines
Plough and the Royal Exchange Theatre, he has written extensively for theatre in addition to
working in radio and television.
Duncan is currently writing new plays for the National Theatre, Soho Theatre, Paines
Plough and BBC Radio and is adapting George Orwell's 1984 with director Rob Icke for
Headlong/Nottingham Playhouse.
4 Extra Debut. Contemplating change in her life, writer and poet Gwyneth Lewis visits a remote island in the Bristol Channel. From January 2008.
Peter Marinker reads Tao Lin's curious tale about the discovery of a message from the future in which an elderly prisoner talks about the invention and misuse of a sleep machine. "In 2042, after major worldwide catastrophes in the second and third decades of the 21st century, the world is drastically different. It's much, much worse and maybe more exciting, depending on who you ask." A vision emerges of a society addicted to sleep.
Produced by Gemma Jenkins
In reviewing cult author and poet Tao Lin's novel, Taipei, the TLS writes, "a daring, urgent voice for a malfunctioning age".
Lionel Wallace spends his life searching for a lost world behind a door in a white wall in London. Read by David McAlister.
Sue MacGregor and her guests - economist, Howard Davies, and children's author Eleanor Updale - discuss favourite books by Louisa May Alcott, Diana Souhami and Patrick Hamilton. From 2004.
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Publisher: Penguin
Mrs Keppel and Her Daughter by Diana Souhami
Publisher: Flamingo
Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton
Publisher: Penguin.
The lighthouse tour and the old-fashioned parents. Cerebral sketch show with Neil Edmond and James Rawlings. From October 2005.
Recorded the day before transmission, the satirical sketch show remains as sharp and topical as ever. Impressions and caricatures are the charming couriers of explosively satirical truth-bombs.
The series is written by Private Eye writers Tom Jamieson and Nev Fountain, together with Tom Coles, Ed Amsden, Sarah Campbell, Laurence Howarth, James Bugg, Laura Major, Max Davis, Jack Bernhardt and others.
The series stars Jon Culshaw, Jan Ravens, Lewis MacLeod, Deborah Stephenson and Duncan Wisbey.
A BBC Studios Production.
Recorded in July 1994, Griff Rhys Jones, Kate Robbins and Brian Perkins look forward to the Year of the Toddler Power.
C. J. Sansom's bestselling Tudor crime novel, adapted for radio by Colin MacDonald.
Winter, 1537, the South Kent Coast. Thomas Cromwell's trusted lawyer-detective, Matthew Shardlake, arrives at Scarnsea monastery with orders to investigate the brutal killing of a King's Commissioner, Robin Singleton. As he begins to meet the prime suspects, it soon becomes clear that the case will not be as simple to solve as he had hoped.
Produced and directed by Kirsteen Cameron.
The mother of Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway marries an Englishman in Spanish Town, Jamaica. Read by Adjoa Andoh.
Dan Box attempts to reach the Carteret Islands where a mass evacuation is taking place as the sea level rises. From September 2009.
Heather used to clean for Angela. Now Angela suspects her teenage daughter is on drugs so asks Heather to investigate.
Just this side of nosey, Heather is western movie-mad. She's also the Sherlock Holmes of the rundown Sutter Estate.
Sue Teddern's six-part comedy series star Lindsey Coulson as Heather. (Carol Jackson in BBC TV's EastEnders until 2015)
With Abigail Hart as Natalie, Ben Crowe as Ryan, Gavin Muir as Joe, Lisa Kay as Charlotte, Jilly Bond as Angela and Tim Treloar as the Barman.
Director: David Hunter
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in March 2000.
The Godfather of Alternative Comedy delivers a mixture of stand-up, memoir and philosophy from behind the counter of his Imaginary Sandwich Bar.
Episode 4 - History and the Role of the Entertainer
Alexei explores the role of the entertainer. Along the way he explains why he will never go on Strictly Come Dancing, the reason Newsnight needs to be 11 hours long and questions why TV comedy panel shows help rehabilitate the careers of 'war criminals'.
Starring Alexei Sayle, Jake Yapp, Nicholas Parsons and Paul Merton
Written by Alexei Sayle
Additional Material by Sarah Campbell
Produced by Joe Nunnery
A BBC Studios Production.
Albert's laid up with a bad back leaving poor Harold overworked.
Starring Wilfrid Brambell as Albert and Harry H Corbett as Harold. With Michael McClain.
Following the conclusion of their hugely successful association with Tony Hancock, writers Ray Galton and Alan Simpson wrote 10 pilots for the BBC TV's Comedy Playhouse in 1962. The Offer was set in a house with a yard full of junk, featuring the lives of rag and bone men Albert Steptoe and his son Harold and it was the spark for a run of 8 series for TV.
Written for TV and adapted for radio by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson.
Produced by Bobby Jaye
First broadcast on the BBC Radio 2 in February 1976.
Trouble starts brewing over Sir Gregory's ban on the bumbling bureaucrats making tea.
A weekly tribute to all those who work in government departments.
Stars Richard Murdoch and Deryck Guyler.
With Norma Ronald, John Graham, Ronald Baddiley, Patricia Hayes and John Curle.
Written by Edward Taylor and John Graham.
'The Men from the Ministry' ran for 14 series between 1962 and 1977. Deryck Guyler replaced Wilfrid Hyde-White from 1966. Sadly many episodes didn't survive in the archive, however the BBC's Transcription Service re-recorded 14 shows in 1980 - never broadcast in the UK, until the arrival of BBC Radio 4 Extra.
Producer: Edward Taylor,
First broadcast on the BBC Light Programme in July 1970.
The main political parties are in meltdown, Britain's future is uncertain, the currency has been in free fall. So it's probably time to relax and have a laugh at it all.
The show attempts to make sense of one of the busiest news weeks since... well, since last week.
Competitive capitalism engulfs the CyberPass Bistro as Merv creates an internal market. Stars Mervyn Stutter. From May 2003.
Francis Herries roams the fells searching for something he can never find. 18th-century family saga. Stars Gavin Muir.
A child's impetuous act is finally resolved on a seafront some 50 years later. Read by Penelope Wilton.
Introduced to each other by Lytton Strachey in 1916, the friendship between Katherine Mansfield and Virginia Woolf had to overcome formidable obstacles - the differences of class and culture, the threat of madness and tuberculosis.
But the influence of each on the other was destined, to some degree, to change the direction of women writers this century.
Cherie Rogers' drama stars Penelope Wilton as Virginia Woolf and Rosalind Shanks as Katherine Mansfield.
Producer: John Knight
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1990.
'Life is only worth living because we hope it will get better and we'll all get home safely"
When beautiful Kitty Finch lands in the middle of what seems a conventional holiday set up - two couples, one teenage daughter and a villa in the south of France - no-one quite knows the effect she will have, though at once the ground shifts.
In the fierce heat of July, fissures yawn open, prised apart by Kitty's unsettling presence. Is she benign? What does she want? Is she an admiring fan or a darker foe? And who is keeping secrets, most of all from themselves?
Deborah Levy's first novel in fifteen years has garnered much praise. Witty and acute by turn, its deceptively simple setting belies the fractured relationships and the sense of imminent chaos that threatens all the characters. In today's episode: 'A Very Special Connection'.
Abridged by Sally Marmion
Produced by Di Speirs
Directed by Elizabeth Allard
The Reader is Juliet Aubrey.
Natural rubber derived from latex had long been a curiosity. When Nelson Goodyear perfected his method of vulcanisation of rubber and showcased its applications at the Great Exhibition of 1851 the possibilities now seemed endless.
But by 1860 demand was outstripping supply from Brazil. Kathy Willis examines how Kew was charged with getting seeds of this economically vital plant out of South America to germinate at Kew Gardens, and then to send seedlings off to cultivate in far flung reaches of the Empire.
The historian Emma Reisz explains how Kew acted as the international clearing house for smuggled seeds out of Brazil. Historian Jim Endersby sheds light on why Kew put its faith in one man: Henry Wickham, a travelling plant hunter with dubious botanical credentials. We hear from Mark Nesbitt, curator of Kew's economic botany collection, on how, despite rubber being recognised as an economically essential plant for the British Empire's economy, the whole business of transporting and nurturing the seedlings turned out to be a comically hit and miss affair.
Producer Adrian Washbourne.
By Alexander Pushkin
Adapted by Duncan Macmillan
Drama based on one of Russia's best loved poems, and the life of the man who wrote it. The night before a duel, Alexander Pushkin continues to tell his wife his most famous story: Eugene Onegin. City boy Onegin has inherited his uncle's rural estate. His new friend Lensky persuades him to make a fateful visit to meet his neighbours.
Directed by Abigail le Fleming
About the adapter
Duncan Macmillan is an award winning writer and director. Former Writer in Residence at Paines
Plough and the Royal Exchange Theatre, he has written extensively for theatre in addition to
working in radio and television.
Duncan is currently writing new plays for the National Theatre, Soho Theatre, Paines
Plough and BBC Radio and is adapting George Orwell's 1984 with director Rob Icke for
Headlong/Nottingham Playhouse.
Poet Gwyneth Lewis explores the history of the Lundy, and how the island may help change her life. From January 2008.
John Lloyd and Sean Lock invite guests Tim Minchin, Philip Pullman and Clive James to add to the collection. From June 2009.
Henry's VIII 5th wife Catherine Howard was an ambitious girl - one with a reputation and a Duchess as her adviser.
An unreliable history, created and written in six parts by Barry Grossman.
Starring Jonathan Coy as Henry VIII, Milton Jones as Thomas Cromwell, Alfred Burke as the Chronicler, Helen Longworth as Catherine Howard, Marcia Warren as Duchess Agnes, Geoffrey McGivern as William of Winchelsea and Gyuri Sarossi as Simon of Southwark.
Music by Jim Parker.
Producer: John Fawcett Wilson
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2003.
When Bernie catches the wrong London bus, he's transported back to 16th century Rome to thwart two meddling time travellers - and rescue Michelangelo.
Starring Andrew McGibbon as Raymond, Amanda Donohoe as Hilderghast, Karl Minns as the Conductor, Owen Evans as Bernie, Andy Mulligan as Michelangelo, Dan Freedman as Kurzio and Alex Lowe as the interpolator
Written by Andrew McGibbon. Additional material by Rob Colley and Kevin Greening.
Theme by Ozzy Temple and other music by Nick Romero.
Producer: Julian Mayers
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1999.
4 Extra Debut. Legendary Hollywood crooner Bing Crosby discusses his love of nature and the outdoor life with Derek Jones. From January 1976.
Sitcom by David Nobbs, set in a museum.
Rod Millet ...... Julian Rhind-Tutt
Walter Brindle ...... Geoffrey Palmer
Prunella Edgecumbe ...... Rachel Atkins
Susie Maltby ...... Margaret Cabourn-Smith
Julian Crumb-Loosely ...... Ben Willbond
Wilf Arbuthnot ...... Geoff McGivern
Eva Tattle ...... Julia Deakin
Des Wainwright ...... Michael Smiley
Stelios Constantinopoulis ...... Chris Pavlo
Gloria Brindle ...... Helen Atkinson Wood.
A second chance to hear satirist Craig Brown dip into the private lives of public figures from the 1960's to the present day.
May & June. As the summer heats up passions rise for Barbara Cartland and Edwina Currie.
Voiced by Jan Ravens, Alistair McGowan, Lewis McLeod, Ewan Bailey, Margaret Cabourn-Smith and Dolly Wells.
Written by Craig Brown.
Produced by Victoria Lloyd.
From 10pm to midnight, seven days a week, the Comedy Club has two hours of comedy. Plus Paul Garner chats to Sharon Horgan.
On one hand, Ben is on the trip of a lifetime to Sub-Antarctica. On the other, he's trapped in an icy hell with one other person, a dodgy internet connection and a dictaphone. Loneliness is something of a problem. His fellow travelling scientist Graham should alleviate this, but the tragi-comic fact is, they are nerdy blokes, so they can only stumble through yet another awkward exchange. Ben experiences all the highs and lows that this beautiful, but lonely place has to offer but fails miserably to communicate this to Graham. So, Ben shares his thoughts with us in the form of an audio 'log'.
Apart from his research studying the Albatross on the Island, Ben attempts to continue normal life with an earnestness and enthusiasm which is ultimately very endearing. We're with him as chats awkwardly with Graham, telephones his mother and as he tries to form a long distance relationship with a woman through Chemistry.com. In fact, we follow Ben as everything occurs to him. We also hear the pings and whirrs of machinery, the Squawks and screeches of the birds and the vast expanse outside. Oh, and ice. Lots of ice.
EPISDE TWO:
Bird Island is the story of Ben, a young scientist working in Antarctica, trying to socially adapt to the loneliness by keeping a cheery audio diary on his Dictaphone. An atmospheric 15 minute non audience comedy.
Ben and Graham are short on food supplies and can't radio main base. Tensions rise as they are forced to survive on porridge.
Written by ..... Katy Wix
Produced by ..... Tilusha Ghelani.
The country singer and global activist promotes her new album in Glasgow and traces her tartan in Edinburgh. Stars Christopher Green. From January 2005.
C. J. Sansom's bestselling Tudor crime novel, adapted for radio by Colin MacDonald.
Winter, 1537, the South Kent Coast. Lawyer-detective Matthew Shardlake, and his assistant Mark, delve deeper into the mysteries of Scarnsea monastery. The list of suspects for Commissioner Singleton's murder is getting longer, but a frustrating lack of hard evidence is hampering the investigation.
Produced and directed by Kirsteen Cameron.
Without her brother and parted from her mother, heiress Antoinette is sent off to school. Read by Adjoa Andoh.
4 Extra Debut. Long before Peter Jackson made it respectable, teenage boys fought imaginary orcs and dragons. With writer Kim Newman celebrates. From August 2004.
Freddy is after buzzwords, but will Maddox's scoop on the Prime Minister get spiked? Stars Robert Lindsay. From July 2009.
A chance meeting between Søndergaard and Bunning could very well lead to a new Cold War.
Martin Clunes and Tom Goodman-Hill star in another of the six two-handers written by Cabin Pressure's John Finnemore.
Written by John Finnemore
Produced by David Tyler
A Pozzitive production for BBC Radio 4.
With a top brass inspection due, 50,000 duty-free cigarettes are headed to the island!
Starring Leslie Phillips as the Sub-Lieutenant, Jon Pertwee as the Chief Petty Officer, Dennis Price as Number One, Richard Caldicot as Captain Povey, Pamela Buck as Joyce, Michael Bates as Commander Shaw, Ronnie Barker as AS Johnson and Tenniel Evans as Squadron Leader Pertwee.
Laughs afloat aboard British Royal Navy frigate HMS Troutbridge. The Navy Lark ran for an impressive thirteen series between 1959 and 1976.
Scripted by Lawrie Wyman.
Producer: Alastair Scott Johnston.
First broadcast on BBC Radio 2 in April 1959.
Bored and miserable, the lad tries to decide what to do.
Classic episode starring Tony Hancock. With Sidney James, Bill Kerr, Hattie Jacques and Kenneth Williams.
Written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson.
Theme and incidental music written by Wally Stott.
Producer: Tom Ronald
First broadcast on the BBC Light Programme in April 1958.
Miles Jupp hosts the show in which it's not what you know that matters, but who. And more importantly, how well you know them.
Roisin Conaty, Ed Byrne and Richard Madeley nominate one of their intimate circle to answer a series of questions and they then have to second-guess how their nominees responded. Roisin picks her best friend, Caroline, Ed chooses his mum, Jill, and Richard Madeley opts for his daughter, Chloe - all with varying degrees of success.
The panel also have to try and predict the responses of legendary football commentator, John Motson, as he is asked "what's your favourite film?", "what would you have been if you weren't a football commentator?" and "which other famous TV coat-wearer would you be? The Fonz, Columbo, or Paddington Bear?"
Producer: Sam Michell.
More strange happenings occur following the universes colliding: the King's ex quite literally drops in after being trapped in a vortex for 5 weeks. Robin finds himself playing chief powerbroker in the Royal relationship and manages to turn it to his advantage...
Hugh Bonneville stars in the third series of the comedy drama about a confirmed bachelor Robin Lightfoot dealing with life in a parallel universe where he has kids and an ex-wife who hates him.
With Josie Lawrence as Lesley, Stephen Frost as Dirk, Julian Clary as Adrian, Ann Gosling as Maxine, Sam Bradley as Ned, Christopher Kelham as King John and Arthur Smith as Arthur Smith.
Written by Tony Bagley.
Producer: Claire Jones
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in September 2001.
The conclusion of the 18th-century Lakeland drama, as Francis Herries struggles with his stormy marriage. With Gavin Muir.
A strange recognition across the generations for a schoolboy and an enigmatic maid. Read by Dermot Crowley.
Copeland Spode has been marooned on a desert island with his ukelele since 1939. But now one man has made it his mission to rescue him.
Starring Roger Lloyd-Pack and the play's author, Mervyn Stutter,
All other parts played by Martin Hyder.
Music written and performed by Mervyn Stutter.
Producer: Sally Avens
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2002.
'Life is only worth living because we hope it will get better and we'll all get home safely"
When beautiful Kitty Finch lands in the middle of what seems a conventional holiday set up - two couples, one teenage daughter and a villa in the south of France - no-one quite knows the effect she will have, though at once the ground shifts.
In the fierce heat of July, fissures yawn open, prised apart by Kitty's unsettling presence. Is she benign? What does she want? Is she an admiring fan or a darker foe? And who is keeping secrets, most of all from themselves?
Deborah Levy's first novel in fifteen years has garnered much praise. Witty and acute by turn, its deceptively simple setting belies the fractured relationships and the sense of imminent chaos that threatens all the characters. In today's episode: 'My poem is a conversation with you and no-one else'.
Abridged by Sally Marmion
Produced by Elizabeth Allard
The Reader is Juliet Aubrey.
Orchids are big business. Today over £5m of orchid hybrids are imported as cut flowers into the UK each year. For the Victorians orchids were the chosen ornaments of royalty and captured the 19th century fascination with scientific oddity and imperial conquest.
Prof Kathy Willis explores how orchids, one of the planet's most diverse family of plants, mesmerised Victorian devotees and became not only trophy plants of the rich but also a scientific tool to promote a new theory of evolution. The study of orchids also paved the way for cultivation of exotics for all.
Lara Jewitt tours the orchid glasshouses at Kew where over 3000 species are cultivated, and explains the biology unique to orchids that fuels interest for both scientists and plant lovers.
Darwin was fascinated with these rare and precious plants. Their unique pollination mechanisms helped back up his new evolutionary theory based upon natural selection. As historian Jim Endersby reveals, the delicate orchid was to play a part in getting botany a seat at the top table of scientific respectability.
Even in the 1850s, Kew's director Joseph Hooker had expressed concern about the damage orchid hunters were inflicting on the wild population. Whilst today many species remain endangered, V Sarasan, head of Kew's Conservation Biotechnology Unit, reveals how new conservation efforts in some of the most orchid species-rich areas of Madagascar are helping to successfully reintroduce endangered members of this vast but vulnerable flowering family back into the wild.
Producer Adrian Washbourne.
By Alexander Pushkin
Adapted by Duncan Macmillan
Drama based on one of Russia's best loved poems, and the life of the man who wrote it. Pushkin's wife demands to hear more of his most famous story as they hurtle towards the duel he's about to fight. Onegin finally responds to Tatiana's love letter.
Directed by Abigail le Fleming
About the adapter
Duncan Macmillan is an award winning writer and director. Former Writer in Residence at Paines
Plough and the Royal Exchange Theatre, he has written extensively for theatre in addition to
working in radio and television.
Duncan is currently writing new plays for the National Theatre, Soho Theatre, Paines
Plough and BBC Radio and is adapting George Orwell's 1984 with director Rob Icke for
Headlong/Nottingham Playhouse.
Poet Gwyneth Lewis explores Lundy Island's paradoxical qualities. Can they help to change her life's direction? From January 2008.
The time travellers hit 19th-century Austria, with Sigmund Freud set to reveal his views on telepathy. Stars Amanda Donohoe.
Le Tour de France is the world's biggest annual sports event, bathed in history and controversy. It began as a publicity stunt organised by a struggling French newspaper, and now millions line the route every year. Academics claim the race taught the French what their country actually looked like. Contributors to the programme include Johnny Green, former road manager of The Clash and cycling nut, who sees the participants as rock and roll gods; Agnes Poirier who remembers being dragged to watch the race every year and wonders if the French will ever win again; and Michael Simkins, author of Detour de France, a journey in search of sophistication. The presenter is Dominic Arkwright, the producer Miles Warde.
Stephen K Amos sitcom about his own teenage years growing up black, gay and funny in 1980s South London.
Written by Jonathan Harvey with Stephen K Amos. Produced by Colin Anderson.
Last year, comedian Bridget Christie noticed that misogyny, like shiny leggings, had made an unexpected comeback. But did it ever really go away? Bridget Christie Minds the Gap is a new four-part stand up comedy series on the state of British feminism today.
In episode three Bridget considers women and their relationship with their bodies via a lap dance, TOWIE and a fish called Michael.
Fred MacAuley helps her remember some of the key incidents which brought her to an epiphany and a call to arms.
Producer; Alison Vernon-Smith.
From 10pm to midnight, seven days a week, the Comedy Club has two hours of comedy. Plus Paul Garner chats again to Sharon Horgan.
Boothby Graffoe sorts it out with monologues and sketches. With Simon Evans and singer Richard Thompson. From January 2000.
C. J. Sansom's bestselling Tudor crime novel, adapted for radio by Colin MacDonald.
Winter, 1537, the South Kent Coast. Lawyer-detective Matthew Shardlake, and his assistant Mark, continue their investigation into the murder of a King's Commissioner at Scarnsea monastery. The case has been further complicated by Novice Whelplay's revelation, while delirious with fever, that there has been an earlier, undiscovered murder.
Produced and directed by Kirsteen Cameron.
Fresh from England, Rochester weds Creole heiress Antoinette and takes her to Dominica. Read by Adam Godley.
4 Extra Debut. Poet Kenneth Steven commemorates the final evacuation in 1930 of inhabitants from the Scottish island of St Kilda. From August 2005.
Dick and Richard are having no trouble speaking their minds, and this inevitably gets them both into trouble. With Robert Bathurst, Moray Watson and Matilda Ziegler. From May 1998.
Comedian and quizzer Paul Sinha returns to Radio 4 for a third series of his award-winning History Revision. In previous series, Paul has told you how Portugal's invasion of Morocco in 1415 lead directly to the 2014 World Cup; how the 1909 launch of an Austro-Hungarian submarine prevented Dr Zhivago winning an Oscar; and the story the black woman who refused to give up a seat on an Alabama bus and ended up changing the law - no, it wasn't Rosa Parks.
This series will once again see Paul shine a light on the important historical moments that you never got taught at school, and explain why so much of what you did learn is wrong. There will also, as ever, be puns.
In this third episode of the series, Paul explores the idea of 'greatness'. From an English king who we know less about than we think, to the Pope that accidentally killed millions of people, some leaders seem to get away with their dirty laundry being left unaired. But there are also some leaders who truly deserve the title 'The Great', including another Pope, and a brutal tyrant who changed his ways. Paul also looks at other countries' versions of the BBC's 100 Greatest Britons: who do the foreign general public think are "Great"? The answers may surprise you.
Paul Sinha's History Revision was the winner of the 2016 Rose d'Or for 'Best Radio Comedy'.
Written and performed by ... Paul Sinha
Producer ... Ed Morrish
Production co-ordinator ... Tamara Shilham
A BBC Studios production.
Can Kate and George agree on a holiday destination?
A series based on the mutual love and mistrust of two newly-weds. Starring Richard Briers as George Starling and Prunella Scales as Kate Starling.
With Derek Waring, Rosalind Knight and William Fox
This 1960's newlyweds sitcom brought Richard Briers and Prunella Scales to prominence. Originating on BBC TV, it was adapted for radio due to its popularity. A decade later, Richard Briers went on to play Tom Good in The Good Life and Prunella Scales went on to star as Sybil in Fawlty Towers.
Written by Richard Waring.
Producer: Charles Maxwell
First broadcast on the BBC Light Programme in July 1965.
Ian Carmichael, Hugh Paddick and Joan Sims share the life stories of famous scribes and actors. From August 1964.
James Walton's pop music history quiz with Andrew Collins, Tracey MacLeod, Clare Grogan and Danny Kelly. From June 2006.
Edward and Tabitha finally face their foe, Colonel Brad. Orwellian sitcom with David Threlfall and Hugh Laurie. From May 1987.
When Helen Schlegel goes to stay at Howard's End - the country home of the Wilcox family, her own life, along with that of her sister Margaret, is changed forever
Starring John Hurt as the Narrator, Lisa Dillon as Margaret Schlegel, Jill Cardo as Helen Schlegel, Tom Ferguson as Tibby Schlegel, Alexandra Mathie as Aunt Juley, Malcolm Raeburn as Henry Wilcox and Ann Rye as Ruth Wilcox.
EM Forster's classic English novel adapted for radio in two parts by Amanda Dalton.
Produced in Manchester by Susan Roberts.
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2009.
Can a statue maker's wife help her neighbours and herself, or is her husband being more realistic? Read by Niamh Cusack.
By Peter Souter
What if you couldn't remember a single minute of the ten years you'd spent with the love of your life? Joe can remember everything about Ally; Ally remembers nothing about Joe.
Joe ..... Alex Jennings
Ally ..... Juliet Stevenson
Directed by Gordon House.
'Life is only worth living because we hope it will get better and we'll all get home safely"
When beautiful Kitty Finch lands in the middle of what seems a conventional holiday set up - two couples, one teenage daughter and a villa in the south of France - no-one quite knows the effect she will have, though at once the ground shifts.
In the fierce heat of July, fissures yawn open, prised apart by Kitty's unsettling presence. Is she benign? What does she want? Is she an admiring fan or a darker foe? And who is keeping secrets, most of all from themselves?
Deborah Levy's first novel in fifteen years has garnered much praise. Witty and acute by turn, its deceptively simple setting belies the fractured relationships and the sense of imminent chaos that threatens all the characters. In today's episode: 'She knew a secret no-one else knew'.
Abridged by Sally Marmion
Produced by Di Speirs
Directed by Elizabeth Allard
The Reader is Juliet Aubrey.
The Victorians' pride at the effortless movement of plants around the world during the late 19th century was having an unwelcome side effect. Invasive species were beginning to wipe out native populations of plants. With no natural predators to control them, one man's flower was turning into another man's weed.
Prof Kathy Willis hears how during the late 1800s, many invasive species from Japanese knot weed to Himalayan balsam to water hyacinth came from deliberate introductions and asks if today, trying to control them is ultimately futile?
As historian Jim Endersby explains both Charles Darwin and Kew's director Joseph Hooker were the first to examine the impact of invasives, having noticed on the island of St Helena and Ascension Island the effect on native plants.
One of the current biggest invaders is lantana, familiar to British gardeners as a small pot plant. As Shonil Baghwat of the Open University reveals, since its introduction to Kolkata Botanical garden in the 1870s it decimated native teak plantations. But today opportunities exist to exploit its presence for the wood, basketry and paper industries.
And Kathy Willis hears from Kew conservationist Colin Clubbe on the extent to which we should view invasive plants in our ecosystems as part of a strategy to maintain resilience to environmental change in the future.
Producer Adrian Washbourne.
By Alexander Pushkin
Adapted by Duncan Macmillan
Drama based on one of Russia's best loved poems, and the life of the man who wrote it. Pushkin's wife tries desperately to stop her husband fighting his duel, while Tatiana races to stop Onegin and Lensky fighting theirs.
Directed by Abigail le Fleming
About the adapter
Duncan Macmillan is an award winning writer and director. Former Writer in Residence at Paines
Plough and the Royal Exchange Theatre, he has written extensively for theatre in addition to
working in radio and television.
Duncan is currently writing new plays for the National Theatre, Soho Theatre, Paines
Plough and BBC Radio and is adapting George Orwell's 1984 with director Rob Icke for
Headlong/Nottingham Playhouse.
Writer and poet Gwyneth Lewis visits the remote island in the Bristol Channel as she contemplates a change in direction in her life. She investigates island myths and a particular quality of timelessness.
Mistaking it for the night bus, Bernie is a prisoner on the time-travelling double-decker. Stars Amanda Donohoe and Karl Minns.
Matthew Parris presents the biographical series in which his guests choose someone who has inspired their lives.
Polly Toynbee, David Steel and Dick Taverne argue that Roy Jenkins, former home secretary, chancellor, president of the European Commission and founder member of the SDP, was one of the greatest politicians of the post-Second World War era.
Thom Tuck recounts heart-rending tales of love and loss, laying bare all the failures he's suffered in his relationships and drawing comparisons with the 54 straight-to-DVD Disney movies he's watched, so we don't have to. These underrated gems - perhaps rightfully ignored and forgotten - mirror his experiences with women he has loved too often and too soon.
A show with a huge heart, all about heartbreak in various forms...the perfect antidote for Valentines Day.
Thom Tuck's brilliant debut solo show was nominated for Best Newcomer at the Fosters Comedy Awards in Edinburgh 2011. He is also part of acclaimed sketch group "The Penny Dreadfuls".
"...a seductive experience" The Guardian
Produced by Lianne Coop.
Here comes a Muffin the Mule shock in the spoof boys' adventure paper from yesteryear. With Alistair McGowan. From August 1992.
From 10pm to midnight, seven days a week, the Comedy Club has two hours of comedy. Plus Paul Garner chats again to Sharon Horgan.
The final episode sees The Party take to the streets with their inaugural protest. If only it wasn't raining. Jared's musical attempts to draw attention backfire painfully and Mel is desperate to get arrested.
Duncan ... Tim Key
Jared ... Johnny Sweet
Mel ... Anna Crilly
Phoebe ... Katy Wix
Policeman ... Nick Mohammed
Simon ... Tom Basden
Written by Tom Basden. Producer Julia McKenzie.
C. J. Sansom's bestselling Tudor crime novel, adapted for radio by Colin MacDonald.
Winter, 1537, the South Kent Coast. Lawyer-detective Matthew Shardlake's investigation into the murder of a King's Commissioner is further complicated by the discovery of another suspicious death at Scarnsea Monastery.
Produced and directed by Kirsteen Cameron.
Antoinette and Rochester's honeymoon develops into an intense love affair in Dominica. Read by Adam Godley.
On the 150th anniversary of the birth of Claude Debussy, Richard Langham Smith relishes the lyrical riches of Théodore de Banville, Alfred de Musset, Paul Bourget, Théophile Gautier and Paul Verlaine, the poets Debussy chose to express his love for an older, married woman, Marie Blanche Vasnier.
Hearing her sing moved Debussy, then an impressionable young student, to create a treasury of songs specially with her voice in mind. Among the many songs he wrote for Madame Vasnier, is the unpublished "La fille aux cheveux de lin". It was the starting point of Debussy's fascination with setting words to music, an obsession that reached a high point in "Pélleas et Mélisande" some twenty years later. But it's Madame Vasnier Debussy acknowledges as "the only muse to ever inspire musical feelings", and that's he confesses, "only to talk of the musical ones!".
Pam Ayres returns with a new series packed with poetry, anecdotes and sketches.
Poems include Toaster, about Pam's son's dog and its phobia; I'm the Dog Who Didn't Win a Prize, written by Pam after she was asked to be a judge at a competition; and Tippy Tappy Feet, about the things you miss when your best friend goes to the great kennel in the sky.
Pam is joined on stage by actors Geoffrey Whitehead and Felicity Montagu for sketches on what dogs talk to each other about and how a new puppy can cause more excitement in some families than a new baby.
The cast of TV's hugely popular sketch show return for their second series on BBC Radio 4. Pete Baikie, Morwenna Banks, Moray Hunter, Gordon Kennedy and John Sparkes revisit some of their much-loved sketch characters, while also introducing some newcomers to the show.
In 2013, the group that made their name on Channel Four in the 1980s and 90s got back together for Radio 4's Sketchorama: Absolutely Special - which won the BBC Audio Drama Award for Best Live Scripted Comedy. The first series of The Absolutely Radio Show picked up a Celtic Media Award nomination for Best Radio Comedy.
Cast:
Peter Baikie
Morwenna Banks
Moray Hunter
Gordon Kennedy
John Sparkes
Gus Beattie
Gordon Kennedy
Produced by Gordon Kennedy and Gus Beattie.
An Absolutely/Gusman production for BBC Radio 4.
Delving into the dark side - to explore the unexplainable.
More quick-fire sketches, terrible puns, humorous songs and parodies.
Stars Tim Brooke-Taylor, John Cleese, Graeme Garden, David Hatch, Jo Kendall and Bill Oddie.
Written by John Esmonde & Bob Larbey, Peter Vincent & David McKellar, David Hatch, Eric Idle and Bill Oddie.
Originating from the Cambridge University Footlights revue 'Cambridge Circus', ISIRTA ran for 8 years on BBC Radio and quickly developed a cult following.
Music and songs by Dave Lee, Bill Oddie and Leon Cohen.
Producer: Humphrey Barclay
First broadcast on the BBC Home Service in May 1966.
Simon Sparrow takes Wendy off for a naughty weekend, but events don't quite go to plan...
The misadventures of newly qualified doctor, Simon Sparrow - adapted for radio by Ray Cooney from Richard Gordon's 'Doctor at Large' published in 1955.
Starring Richard Briers as Simon Sparrow, Norma Ronald as Wendy Swithenbank, Ray Cooney as Tony Benskin, Dennis Ramsden as Colonel Brown, David Jason as Harris the Receptionist and Edward Cast as the Waiter.
Producer: David Hatch
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in August 1969.
Martin Young hosts the famous people quiz, with team captains Francis Wheen and Fred Housego and guests Vivienne Parry and Jonathan Meades. From November 2000.
A civil servant's dull existence is transformed when he overhears two dogs talking. With Griff Rhys Jones. From May 2002.
Helen Schlegel is unhappy that her sister Margaret has agreed to marry Henry Wilcox.
Starring John Hurt as the Narrator, Lisa Dillon as Margaret Schlegel, Jill Cardo as Helen Schlegel, Tom Ferguson as Tibby Schlegel, Alexandra Mathie as Aunt Juley, Malcolm Raeburn as Henry Wilcox, Ann Rye as Ruth Wilcox and Joseph Kloska as Charles Wilcox.
EM Forster's classic English novel adapted for radio in two parts by Amanda Dalton.
Produced in Manchester by Susan Roberts.
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2009.
The touching and compassionate story of one man's guilt over his love for two women. Read by Dermot Crowley.
4 Extra Debut. On a small Scottish island in the 1950s, identical twins are forced to confront a long-concealed secret. Stars Paul Young.
'Life is only worth living because we hope it will get better and we'll all get home safely"
When beautiful Kitty Finch lands in the middle of what seems a conventional holiday set up - two couples, one teenage daughter and a villa in the south of France - no-one quite knows the effect she will have, though at once the ground shifts.
In the fierce heat of July, fissures yawn open, prised apart by Kitty's unsettling presence. Is she benign? What does she want? Is she an admiring fan or a darker foe? And who is keeping secrets, most of all from themselves?
Deborah Levy's first novel in fifteen years has garnered much praise. Witty and acute by turn, its deceptively simple setting belies the fractured relationships and the sense of imminent chaos that threatens all the characters. In today's episode: 'Especially when it rains'.
Abridged by Sally Marmion
Produced by Di Speirs
Directed by Elizabeth Allard
The Reader is Juliet Aubrey.
In 1900 three papers by three botanists, unknown to each other, appeared in the same scientific journal. Each had independently "rediscovered" the rules of inheritance that Gregor Mendel had found four decades earlier in his solitary investigations of pea plants.
Kathy Willis reassesses Mendel's famous pea experiments in the light of his attempts to uncover what happens over several generations when hybrid plants are created. As historian Jim Endersby explains, Mendel's initial results may have stunned him and shown what plant breeders might have suspected for decades, but science now had mathematical laws to create new varieties.
Historian Greg Radick sheds light on how Mendelism, in the years leading up to the First World War, became heavily promoted by Cambridge botanist William Bateson and was put into action by the first Professor of Agricultural Botany, Roland Biffen. His success in creating new wheat hybrids is explained by a unique international assembly of wheat ears from the early 1900s, curated by Mark Nesbitt, Head of Kew's economic botany collection.
Producer Adrian Washbourne.
By Alexander Pushkin
Adapted by Duncan Macmillan
Drama based on one of Russia's best loved poems, and the life of the man who wrote it. Pushkin and Onegin have both fought their duels and everyone must now struggle with the consequences.
Directed by Abigail le Fleming
About the adapter
Duncan Macmillan is an award winning writer and director. Former Writer in Residence at Paines
Plough and the Royal Exchange Theatre, he has written extensively for theatre in addition to
working in radio and television.
Duncan is currently writing new plays for the National Theatre, Soho Theatre, Paines
Plough and BBC Radio and is adapting George Orwell's 1984 with director Rob Icke for
Headlong/Nottingham Playhouse.
Writer and poet Gwyneth Lewis visits the remote island in the Bristol Channel as she contemplates a change in direction in her life. She considers the satisfaction of adventure close to home.
Hildegard wants to make music, while Bernie finds out who, or what, is driving the bus. Stars Amanda Donohoe and Karl Minns.
How Brahms' German Requiem, written as a tribute to his mother and designed to comfort the grieving, has touched and changed peoples lives.
Stuart Perkins describes how the piece arrived at the right time in his life, after the death of his aunt.
Axel Körner, Professor of Modern History at University College London, explains the genesis of the work and how the deaths of Brahms' friends and family contributed to the emotional power of the piece.
Daniel Malis and Danica Buckley recall how the piece enabled them to cope with the trauma of the Boston marathon bombings.
Simon Halsey, Chief Conductor of the Berlin Radio Choir, explores how Brahms' experience as a church musician enabled him to distil hundreds of years of musical history into this dramatic choral work.
For Imani Mosley, the piece helped her through a traumatic time in hospital. Rosemary Sales sought solace in the physical power of Brahms' music after the death of her son. And June Noble recounts how the piece helped her find her voice and make her peace with her parents.
Producer: Melvin Rickarby.
The second heat of the BBC New Comedy Award 2017 is to be recorded at Up The Creek in London and it will be hosted by Kerry Godliman.
The judges are the comedian Holly Walsh, BBC Radio Comedy Editor Simon Nicholls, and Steve Bennett from Chortle.
Ten new comedians will perform in the hope of making it through to the semi-final at the Edinburgh Festival.
From 10pm to midnight, seven days a week, the Comedy Club has two hours of comedy. Plus Arthur Smith chats to the Victorian time-travelling magicians, Morgan and West.
A trip round Wunderland, the Poundland of magical realms. It's a kingdom much like our own, and also nothing like it in the slightest. Stay a while and meet waifs and strays, wigshops and witches, murderous pensioners and squirrels of this delightful land as they go about their bizarre business.
A sketch show written and performed by Alice Lowe.
Also starring Richard Glover, Simon Greenall, Rachel Stubbings, Clare Thompson and Marcia Warren.
Produced by Sam Bryant.