SUNDAY 17 FEBRUARY 2008

SUN 00:00 News and Weather (b008yn0m)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4, followed by weather.


SUN 00:30 Manchester Crime Wave (b00930ns)
Boom

Boom (part 1)

Crime stories set in Manchester. 1/5: Boom, by Cath Staincliffe (part 1). A young detective investigates an explosion in a house. Read by Wendy Kweh.


SUN 00:48 Shipping Forecast (b008yn0n)
The latest shipping forecast.


SUN 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (b008yn0p)
BBC Radio 4 joins the BBC World Service for a selection of news and current affairs, arts and science programmes. BBC Radio 4 resumes at 5.20am.


SUN 05:20 Shipping Forecast (b008yn0q)
The latest shipping forecast.


SUN 05:30 News Briefing (b008yn0r)
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.


SUN 05:43 Bells on Sunday (b008yn0s)
The sound of church bells from St John the Baptist in Burford, Oxfordshire.


SUN 05:45 Profile (b008yj9n)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 on Saturday]


SUN 06:00 News Headlines (b008yn0t)
The latest national and international news.


SUN 06:05 Something Understood (b008yn0v)
Serpents and Doves

Serpents and Doves: Mark Tully considers Jesus's instruction to his disciples to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves as they set out on their mission.


SUN 06:35 On Your Farm (b008yn0w)
Country magazine. Elinor Goodman visits a Hampshire farm shop selling fresh produce inside a hospital.


SUN 06:57 Weather (b008yn0x)
The latest weather forecast.


SUN 07:00 News and Papers (b008yn0y)
The latest news headlines. Including a look at the papers.


SUN 07:10 Sunday (b008yn0z)
Roger Bolton and guests discuss the religious and ethical news of the week.


SUN 07:55 Radio 4 Appeal (b008yn10)
Michael Aspel appeals on behalf of The Children's Trust. Donations: Freepost BBC Radio 4 Appeal. Credit cards: Freephone 0800 404 8144.


SUN 07:58 Weather (b008yn11)
The latest weather forecast.


SUN 08:00 News and Papers (b008yn12)
The latest news headlines. Including a look at the papers.


SUN 08:10 Sunday Worship (b008yn13)
Pathways of Prayer: Social Justice

Pathways of Prayer: The path of social justice, from St Mary's Episcopal Cathedral in Glasgow, led by the Provost, the Very Rev Kelvin Holdsworth.


SUN 08:50 A Point of View (b008xl0z)
A weekly reflection on a topical issue from Prof David Cannadine.


SUN 09:00 Broadcasting House (b008yn14)
News and conversation about the big stories of the week with Paddy O'Connell.


SUN 10:00 The Archers Omnibus (b008yn15)
The week's events in Ambridge.


SUN 11:15 Desert Island Discs (b008yn16)
Martin Evans

Kirsty Young's castaway this week is the Nobel Prize-winning scientist Professor Sir Martin Evans. He is known as the grandfather of embryonic stem-cell research because of the breakthrough he made more than 25 years ago to first isolate the stem cells of mice and then cultivate them in a laboratory. After that leap forward, he worked alongside his fellow Nobel laureates Oliver Smithies and Mario Capecchi to develop the Knock-Out Mouse - a mouse that has had part of its genetic code disabled so the effect on the animal can be studied. The Knock-Out Mouse has become a scientific tool used the world over - and has vastly increased the amount of knowledge we have about how the human body works.

Brought up on the outskirts of London with enthusiastic and encouraging parents, he says that he was always fascinated by science. But, although he was a bright pupil, he was a shy boy and not the kind of student to walk away with glittering prizes.

He was within months of retiring when he got the call, last October, that he had been awarded the greatest honour in science - the Nobel Prize - since then life has been busier than ever and now, he says, he is determined to use his status to try to encourage children to study science, so that they too can be enthused at the miracles of the world around us and the worlds within.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Their Sound is Gone Out in All Lands by George Frideric Handel
Book: Largest anthology of poetry possible
Luxury: A microscope, equipment and a stack of notebooks.


SUN 12:00 Just a Minute (b008x4fd)
Series 52

Episode 6

Nicholas Parsons chairs the devious word game from the Colston Hall, Bristol. Panellists include Paul Merton, Sue Perkins, Tony Hawks and Graham Norton.


SUN 12:32 The Food Programme (b008vl2s)
Spanish Food - Extremadura

Simon Parkes enjoys the flavours of the Spanish region of Extremadura, from the prized pata negra cured ham to the pimenton smoked paprika brought back by Columbus from the New World.


SUN 12:57 Weather (b008yn18)
The latest weather forecast.


SUN 13:00 The World This Weekend (b008yn19)
A look at events around the world with Shaun Ley.


SUN 13:30 Advice to the Living (b008kjj6)
People who only have a short time left to live give advice to the rest of us about what matters and what doesn't, and about enjoying every moment.


SUN 14:00 Gardeners' Question Time (b008yn1b)
Eric Robson chairs the popular horticultural forum. Bob Flowerdew, Anne Swithinbank and Bunny Guinness answer questions from gardeners in Surrey.


SUN 14:45 The Drawings on the Wall (b008yn1c)
Irish Illusions

Archaeologist George Nash explores five of Western Europe's most remarkable rock art sites.

George visits County Meath in Ireland where strange patterns adorn the walls of the Fourknocks Passage Grave. What do the patterns mean?

George finds himself being stared at by a very odd cartoon-like face inside a 5000-year-old Irish tomb. It's a very early example of what we now call "graffiti" - and around it are hypnotic patterns of concentric circles, horizontal zigzags and strings of diamond shapes. Strangely similar carvings occur in Wales, Brittany and the Iberian peninsular. So who created them? What do they all mean? And who was copying who in Neolithic times?

George teams up with the modern-day Muslim graffiti artist Mohammed Ali to study these patterns for their spiritual significance, which may just lie in the fact that they are not as perfect as they seem. And he considers the possibility that Stone Age Man may well have been 'stoned' when he created them.

Producer: Chris Eldon Lee
A Culture Wise production for BBC Radio 4.


SUN 15:00 Classic Serial (b008yn1d)
Fortunes of War

Episode 4

Fortunes of War: Lin Coghlan's sweeping new dramatisation of Olivia Manning's classic war novels. 4/6: Having been forced to leave Romania, Harriet waits in Athens for news of Guy.


SUN 16:00 Open Book (b008yn1f)
Bernhard Schlink, Memoir Writing for Beginners, and New Grub Street

Bernhard Schlink
In 1997 Bernhard Schlink, a German law professor, had a surprise international bestseller when the English translation of his novel The Reader was published. This story about a concentration camp guard made Schlink the first German novelist to top the New York Times bestseller chart. This month Schlink's first novel since The Reader reaches British bookshops. Homecoming tells the story of a publisher's attempt to find a novel which has obsessed him since childhood, and like its predecessor deals with Germany's continuing attempts to come to terms with the events of the Third Reich. Bernhard Schlink talks to Mariella Frostrup about his generation's interest in these events, the relationship between his life as a writer and his profession as a legal academic.

Memoir Writing for Beginners
One of this month's more unusual publications is a completely blank book. Entitled My Story, it's a memoir-writing kit aimed at the complete beginner, and comes with a small paperback offering instruction and advice. Mariella is joined by the biographer and memoirist Miranda Seymour to discuss how the would-be autobiographer can get started.

Politicians' Audio Books
Last week's Grammy awards ceremony in Los Angeles featured an unlikely literary stand-off in the Spoken Word category, when former Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter were beaten to the prize by the Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama. To discuss why all America's leading politicians seem to be making audio books these days, Mariella is joined from New York by the critic John Freeman.

New Grub Street
In 1891 the novelist George Gissing published one of the classic fictional treatments of literary life. New Grub Street is a satirical, sometimes melodramatic, novel about two writers, Edwin Reardon and Jasper Milvain, and their desperate attempts to earn enough to stay alive by the pen alone. Mariella is joined by two fans of the book, the writer and critic D. J. Taylor, and Christopher Douglas, the co-writer and star of the Radio 4 comedy Ed Reardon's Week, who explains his own debt to Gissing.


SUN 16:30 Poetry Please (b008zk9g)
In the last of the series we featured poems by writers perhaps better-known as novelists – such as DH Lawrence, Muriel Spark, Robert Graves, and Dermot Bolger. The readers were John Mackay and Bonnie Hurren. Also rare archive of the Welsh poet WH Davies introducing and reading his poem Leisure – with those famous lines:

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

Piano by DH Lawrence.
From: The Love Poems of D.H. Lawrence
Publ: Kyle Cathie Ltd

From Leinster Street Ghosts by Dermot Bolger
Publ: Raven Arts Press

Leisure by W.H. Davies
From: The New Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1950

That Lonely Shoe Lying on the Road by Muriel Spark
From: All The Poems
Publ: Carcanet

To Paint a Water Lily by Ted Hughes
From: Lupercal
Publ: faber and faber

The Moth by Walter de la Mare
From: The Collected Poems of Walter de la Mare
Publ: faber and faber

To a Mouse by Robert Burns
From: The Poetical Works of Robert Burns
Publ: Senate

The White Goddess by Robert Graves
From: Complete Poems – Volume 2
Publ: Carcanet

The Rider at the Gate by John Masefield
From: The Collected Poems of John Masefield
Publ: William Heinemann Ltd

The Mistake by James Fenton
From: Out of Danger
Publ: Penguin

A Woman of a Certain Age by Carol Rumens
From: Thinking of Skins
Publ: Bloodaxe Books

Going, Going by Philip Larkin
From: Collected Poems
Publ: faber and faber

Wolsey’s Farewell from Henry the Eighth
From: Shakespeare – The Viking Portable Library


SUN 17:00 File on 4 (b008y460)
Concerns are being expressed over the fundraising methods of the British National Party. Fran Abrams investigates.


SUN 17:40 Profile (b008yj9n)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 on Saturday]


SUN 17:54 Shipping Forecast (b008yn1h)
The latest shipping forecast.


SUN 17:57 Weather (b008yn1j)
The latest weather forecast.


SUN 18:00 Six O'Clock News (b008yn1k)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4, followed by Weather.


SUN 18:15 Pick of the Week (b008yn1l)
Sheila McClennon presents a selection of highlights from the past week on BBC radio.


SUN 19:00 The Archers (b008yn1m)
Will's been generous with his money. Nic's pleased with her new coat but desperately wants to sort out a proper money arrangement. When Will asks for her opinion about a trust fund for George, Nic builds up the courage to ask for an allowance. Will's all for it, and realising she feels trapped in the house, he suggests she has driving lessons. Nic's over the moon.

Phil's been looking at the stars with Daniel, who seems to have a real interest. Phil's thinking about getting a telescope.

Heather admits she's been in contact with Jim. It's early days but they've already managed to meet up. It's Pip's birthday and she wants to see her new boyfriend Jonathan, but Ruth wants to know a bit more than just his name. Heather assures Ruth that he's in the Young Farmers, so he's got to be all right, but Jill points out that when David was a member he should have come with a government health warning!

When Pip gets back the first thing she wants to do is phone Izzy. Ruth wonders when she'll get the sensible Pip back. Jill breaks the news to her that she won't.

Episode written by Nawal Gadalla.


SUN 19:15 Go4it (b008yn1n)
Barney Harwood presents the children's magazine. He meets two listeners who adore the Little House on the Prairie series and hears more about author Laura Ingalls Wilder's life.


SUN 19:45 A Brush with Fame (b00771kk)
The Horse He Rode in On

Stories exploring with wit and humour the way we all react to a glancing encounter with fame. 1/5: The Horse He Rode in On, by Jane Stevenson, read by Ann Beach.


SUN 20:00 Feedback (b008xl0r)
Roger Bolton airs listeners' views on BBC radio programmes and policy.


SUN 20:30 Last Word (b008xl0v)
Matthew Bannister presents the obituary series, analysing and celebrating the life stories of people who have recently died.


SUN 21:00 Money Box (b008yj97)
[Repeat of broadcast at 12:00 on Saturday]


SUN 21:26 Radio 4 Appeal (b008yn10)
[Repeat of broadcast at 07:55 today]


SUN 21:30 In Business (b008xh44)
The Long March

The Long March: China has built an economic machine designed to help millions of country people out of poverty. Peter Day meets villagers who are still waiting to see the benefits.


SUN 21:58 Weather (b008yn1p)
The latest weather forecast.


SUN 22:00 Westminster Hour (b008yn1q)
Reports from behind the scenes at Westminster. Including at 10.45pm The Jam Generation.


SUN 23:00 The Learning Curve (b008x51z)
Libby Purves presents a guide to the world of learning, with practical advice, features and listeners' views.


SUN 23:30 Something Understood (b008yn0v)
[Repeat of broadcast at 06:05 today]