MONDAY 27 AUGUST 2012

MON 19:00 The History of Safari with Richard E Grant (b00s6b8q)
Episode 1

For almost 100 years, big game hunters - from Theodore Roosevelt to the British Royal Family - came to British East Africa to bag the 'big five'. Now, luxury 'eco safaris' continue to drive its economy. It has been both East Africa's damnation and its salvation that wildlife is the greatest natural resource it possesses.

Richard E Grant - who grew up in Swaziland - examines the controversial history of the safari. Exploring the world of the big game hunters and the luxury of today's safaris, he goes on a personal journey to experience how the beauty of the bush made Africa the white man's playground.

Plotting the major landmarks in the development of the safari, Grant uncovers a world of danger, glamour and gung-ho. He reveals how the safari was continually reinvented as explorers and ivory hunters were replaced by white settlers, guns gave way to cameras and direct British rule to independence.

He discovers how safari became one of the central constructs through which British rule over East Africa was imposed, provided the social touchstone for the white settlers and was eventually transformed by the glamour of Hollywood, the power of the dollar and the traveller's desire for an 'authentic African experience'.

As someone born and raised in the privileged world of the ex-pats, Grant takes an insider's perspective on the scandals and adventures of the elite class of Brits who ran the show. He meets their descendents and delves into the rich material archives of their family homes, discovering that for the remaining whites in the region this history is still very much alive.

As the trophy hunt became an icon of high society, everyone from Ernest Hemingway to British nobility and Hollywood stars were soon clamouring for a piece of the action. And as hunters decimated Africa's wildlife, they also surprisingly introduced the first conservation laws, if only to protect the supply of animals to shoot.

Embarking on safari himself, Grant experiences the beauty and the danger of being up close to the big game animals and accompanies modern hunters on safaris, where animals are still killed and the patrons still argue that hunting equals conservation.

The film is full of frontier colonial characters whose lives, exploits and attitudes describe a very particular time in Britain's relationship to Africa and its wildlife, when the continent was part Wild West, part idyll and part colonial experiment - where life could be lived between the crack of rifles at dawn and the setting of the sun at cocktail hour, largely oblivious to the indigenous Africans themselves.

Through creative use of film and photographic archive, as well as actuality with those involved in big game hunting and luxury safaris today, the documentary evokes the spirit of decadence, exploration and adventure of the safari. Ultimately, it reveals how safari has been and continues to be a barometer of our attitudes to travel, our colonial inheritance and Africa itself.


MON 20:30 Only Connect (b01m9ty9)
Series 6

Joinees v Draughtsmen

Quiz show presented by Victoria Coren in which knowledge will only take you so far, as patience and lateral thinking are also vital.

Three members of Danny Wallace's Join Me campaign pit their wits against three beer lovers. They compete to draw together the connections between things which, at first glance, seem utterly random.

Connections include:

Family planning, Nazi badge for political prisoners, England's oldest trademark and youth hostel.


MON 21:00 Growing Children (b01m9tyc)
Dyslexia

Laverne Antrobus looks into one of the most common problems for children, dyslexia, and uncovers some incredible developments in neuroscience that are showing how the dyslexic brain works. As many as one in ten are now thought to be affected by this condition. Laverne discovers that when dyslexia is combined with that crucial period of children's lives when they are first starting to learn, it can be disastrous and lead to poor self-esteem, high stress and low achievement. Laverne also learns that dyslexia is not just something that affects children when they are learning to read - it is a lifelong incurable condition that can affect many aspects of someone's life. How can someone with dyslexia cope as they start the process of entering the working world?

We live in a world of words. Almost everything we do involves reading - instructions, computers, phones, newspapers. It's a skill that is fundamental to functioning properly in today's society, and with the internet it has become ever more crucial. It has now been estimated that we see or hear over 100,000 words every day. Laverne meets Lettie, a ten-year-old girl who faces a daily battle with reading. Through an insightful interview, Laverne learns just how challenging this can make things for her. In a fascinating experiment, Laverne also uses computer animations to make her favourite book - Jane Eyre - difficult for her to read. Through this we begin to see the different way in which a dyslexic views the world.

Laverne also meets Alyce, who has just completed her GCSEs and is thinking about her future. How can dyslexia affect someone's working life? Laverne follows her through her child care course and sees how she struggles with reading to the children, but also her determination to follow her chosen career despite her dyslexia. She also accompanies her in a very emotional sequence where she is reassessed to reveal the extent of her dyslexia.

Laverne then investigates how children in the UK are taught to read and write and the reasons why dyslexics can struggle with this. Dyslexics have no problems with their eyes - so the issue with learning must lie elsewhere. Laverne visits the Medical Research Council's Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge where an exciting new scan experiment is taking place. They are trying to mimic the process when children learn to read for the first time, but under laboratory conditions - to study how their brains process visual information. Here we actually see which pathways in the brain are associated with reading and which pathway causes problems for dyslexics.


MON 22:00 If Walls Could Talk: The History of the Home (b0109gmn)
The Living Room

Lucy Worsley, chief curator of the historic royal palaces, looks at the room that has had more names and been through more changes than any other in the house. She tries out the communal medieval great hall, holds a candlelit tea party in a Georgian drawing room, explores the development of taste in a grand country house, discovers the wonders that gas and electric lighting brought to the Victorian parlour, and experiences leisure 1950s style. Includes interviews with historian Amanda Vickery and writer Adrian Tinniswood.


MON 23:00 The Shock of the New (b0074qfl)
Mechanical Paradise

Series on the development of modern art from 1880 to the present, presented by Robert Hughes. The first episode shows how the development of technology influenced art between 1880 and end of WWI.

Hughes discusses Cubism, a movement started by Pablo Picasso and developed by Georges Braque, in which multiple viewpoints of a subject were compressed into a single view. Hughes details how African carvings and Spanish culture had a key influence on works such as Picasso's Demoiselles D'Avignon.


MON 00:00 A Century of Fatherhood (b00szwgg)
The New Father

Three-part series which tells the story of the revolution in modern fatherhood in Britain during the last hundred years. Using intimate testimony, rare archive and the latest historical research it reveals the very important, and often misunderstood, role played by fathers.

The final episode reveals how the experience of being a father was transformed between the 1960s and the present day and looks at the lives of a fascinating cross-section of fathers from all walks of life over the past fifty years.

The modern hands-on father has a more intimate relationship with his children than the past, but the sexual revolution and feminism has also made fathers more insecure than ever before. Modern divorce laws have excluded fathers from family life and from the access they want to their children. The anguish felt by many dads was expressed in the Fathers 4 Justice protest movement.


MON 01:00 Only Connect (b01m9ty9)
[Repeat of broadcast at 20:30 today]


MON 01:30 Growing Children (b01m9tyc)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 today]


MON 02:30 The History of Safari with Richard E Grant (b00s6b8q)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 today]