The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
Mark Vanhoenacker always had a passion for flying, but didn't ever really consider it as a job, until his research as a young academic began to frustrate him and the tug of the skies once more made its presence felt.
BBC Radio 4 joins the BBC World Service. BBC Radio 4 resumes at
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with the Rev'd Dr Craig Gardiner.
'Life's too short to pretend to be somebody I'm not.' When one listener got in touch about her daughter's experience of using Facebook, we were curious to hear more. Presented by Eddie Mair and Jennifer Tracey. Email iPM@bbc.co.uk.
The latest news headlines. Including a look at the papers.
Caz Graham visits the shores of Solway Firth to discover the folk and wildlife that live around the stunning coastline.
Caz pulls on her wellies and heads to the shoreline at low tide with the help of Ann Lingard.
Ann is a 'low-tide' guide and leads Caz on a tromp through a rarely explored landscape: one of rock pools and rare reefs. Ann shows Caz the home of the honeycomb worm, Sabellaria. The creature creates a reef close to the low water mark and it is exposed at low tide. They also visit a submerged forest that the sea reveals when the tide rolls back.
Caz meets former miner Tom Norman to find out more about the Solway coast's industrial heritage. At the site of the former Haig Colliery in Whitehaven Tom recounts tales of mining under the sea dating back to the 1700s. Mining was enormously important in shaping the industrial past of Whitehaven and the towns along the coast. It, along with fishing, was the main employer in the area.
Further up the Solway Firth, where England and Scotland are a stone's throw away, Caz is given a lesson in Haaf Net fishing by Mark Messenger and Mark Graham. They are two of a dying breed fishing using a method that dates back to Viking times that involves standing chest-deep in the Solway Firth with a wide net to catch salmon and trout.
Robert Bertram has lived in the same valley in Northumberland since he was born, in 1947, and his local knowledge was crucial to saving his neighbour's life in January this year.
A blizzard was raging when, late one evening, Laura Hudson came to Robert's door with her two very young children. Her partner, Mark Dey, had failed to return from the hill where he'd been feeding sheep, and because her phone was cut off, she had struggled to get the family into the car to drive and get help. Robert didn't hesitate to set out in search of Mark. By the time Robert found him, lying where he'd been trapped for eight hours under his quad bike in freezing temperatures, Mark, his back broken, was close to death. He had been kept warm in the snow only by his sheepdog, Roy, who heard Robert's own quad approaching and ran to lead him back to Mark.
Robert, Mark and Laura tell Charlotte the story of that night from their own perspectives, and talk about life in the sheep-farming hills of Northumberland, where communications are tenuous and the locals rely more than most on the neighbours around them.
Morning news and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Thought for the Day and Weather.
In the studio with Aasmah Mir and Richard Coles this week is Conchita Wurst winner of Eurovision 2014. Conchita hails from Columbia and is the alter ego of Tom Neuwirth who was born in Austria. When she won the Eurovision Song Contest in 2014 with her song "Rise Like A Phoenix" she gained international fame - and also became a gay icon to the LGBT community all over the world. Conchita is a Drag Queen - not transgender.
Jo Pavey has proved it's never too late to realise your dreams. The veteran mother of two shocked everyone, herself included, to become the oldest female European champion in history aged 40 years and 325 days. Jo has competed in four Olympics and won bronze in the 10,000m at the 2014 Glasgow Commonwealth Games, and then gold in the European Championships. She is currently focusing on getting to Rio for her fifth Olympics.
Jon Frost is an experienced customs officer. In his time as a uniformed officer Jon seized many weird and wonderful things: presidential aircraft, a working tank, cars, lorries, boats and coffins; and uncovered wild animals, killer snakes, bush meat, poisonous vodka, dodgy medicine, bootleg prescriptions, pirated pills, toxic alcohol, firearms, side-arms, swords, explosives, stolen gold, dirty money. Jon's book Anything to Declare is out now
Carrie Hope Fletcher is currently playing the role of Eponine in Les Misérables at the Queen's Theatre in the West End and received the 2014 WhatsOnStage Award for Best Takeover in a Role in recognition of her performance.Through her phenomenally popular YouTube channel, ItsWayPastMyBedtime, Carrie has created a safe and positive space for young people to discuss their hopes and concerns online and now she will share her most personal thoughts and experiences in her first book. Part memoir, part advice guide, All I Know Now includes Carrie's thoughts on some of the topics she's asked about regularly: bullying, body image, relationships and perhaps the scariest question of all: what does the future hold for me?
This week the Inheritance Tracks comes from the creator of the The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, Scottish author Alexander McCall Smith. He has chosen to inherit We'll Meet Again sung by Vera Lynn and handing on Terzettino 'Soave sia il vento' from Cosi Fan Tutte'
The First World War was the great military and political event of its time; but it was also an imaginative event, an occasion when writers and painters were pulled from their homelands to fight on the front line.
In 1915 we start to see how artists, like poet Guillaume Apollinaire and Rudyard Kipling, are responding to war, and explore an unlikely alliance of the avant-garde and the military.
World War One altered the ways in which men and women thought about the world, and about culture and its expressions.
During the bloody battle at Gallipoli, Australia's sense of identity started to take shape. But national bonds were also beginning to weaken as war shattered allegiances and fractured borders.
We look at the ways in which new perspectives entered the public consciousness as France and Britain drew on soldier from Empire and colony.
The poetry of Rabindranath Tagore was read by people around the globe. American ragtime has reached British shores with popular African-American musicians like Dan Kildare and Joe Jordan.
In episode 2 of The Cultural Front, Francine Stock explores a fragmented world through the prism of the art it created.
With contributions from James Taylor, Nicholas Rankin, Susan Harrow, Santanu Das, Peter Stanley and Christian Liebl.
The fog of politics, the meaning of Austerity, and the secret language of politicians. Plus how do those apps which advise people which party is closest to their views work? And how to spend a last minute donation of a million pounds in a way which actually attracts votes.... a quirky, irreverent take on the twists and turns of the election campaign, presented by Hugo Rifkind.
The human stories behind the news headlines: dodging bullets while trying to reach Yemen's port of Aden, where the hospital is overwhelmed with casualties. The Africans who moved to South Africa for a better life, and ended up having to seek refuge from violence in a squalid camp. In Turkey's south-east, a hundred years after the Armenian minority was massacred, the Kurdish minority has hopes for a stronger presence in national politics. China and Russia are best buddies at the moment, but it hasn't always been thus, as one woman whose life mirrors the relationship between these two countries knows all too well. And what are the chances of getting pneumonia each time you stay in the same, foreign country? That's if you count Russia and the Soviet Union as the same country.
UKIP's Personal Finance Plans, The Death of Cashback and Rewards?, Radical Housing Ideas.
If UKIP has MPs and any influence over the next Government it promises to "hold the next Chancellor's feet to the fire" over cutting the deficit. UKIP's finance spokesman Mark Hughes explains how his party would aim to reduce that deficit. He also outlines their tax, benefits and State Pension proposals. This is the latest in the Money Box series of pre-Election interviews.
Two major credit card providers are ending their cashback and rewards deals on cards and both blame a change in European law. Most Capital One customers will find the cashback paid on their cards is ended or cut in half from 1 June. And RBS Natwest customers with rewards cards will get no more rewards from 1 July. These giveaways were funded partly from a charge which the retailer pays every time you use your card. But later this year the European Commission will impose a cap on this charge, forcing card issuers to charge retailers no more than 0.3% of the transaction value. That is around a third of the current charge estimated to be 0.8%. Liz Oakes of KPMG and Dan Plant from Money Supermarket join the programme.
Money Box has been looking at tax polices of the parties standing in the Election. The Green Party would impose a wealth tax on people owning more than £3 million and a new top rate of income tax of 60%. Plaid Cymru would have a 50% top rate and take many low earners out of paying National Insurance. But in both cases it is their housing policy which is the most radical. Both want to give tenants greater security and impose some controls on rent. And the Greens would make buying to let more expensive for investors. Bob Howard reports.
The topical impressions show returns just in time to reflect the build up to one of the most important and incisive votes for decades. Will Austria win again or does Britain's Electro Velvet stand a chance? Satire meets silliness in the flagship comedy for hard working families up and down the country.
Starring Jon Culshaw, Jan Ravens, Duncan Wisbey, Lewis MacLeod and Debra Stephenson.
Jonathan Dimbleby chairs political debate from Logie Coldstone in Aberdeenshire with the former Lord Chancellor, Lord Falconer, former Defence Secretary, Dr Liam Fox, Deputy Leader of the Scottish National Party, Stewart Hosie MSP, and the Liberal Democrat Equalities Minister Jo Swinson.
Your say on some the issues discussed on Any Questions; Ed Miliband's criticism of Cameron over Libya; the DPP's decision not to prosecute Lord Janner for historic child abuse; and the question of Trident.
Myra Savage conducts séances for a dwindling number of clients. If only there were some way of persuading the wider public of her paranormal abilities – then she'd enjoy the fame and wealth she deserves. She and her husband Bill plan a publicity stunt. They will kidnap the daughter of a prominent businessman. At the critical moment Myra will tap into her psychic powers, contact the distressed parents and provide the police with the vital clues they need to find the girl. What could go wrong?
Mark McShane's novel was made into a 1964 film directed by Bryan Forbes. This new version for radio is dramatised by Adrian Bean.
D.S. Payne.....................Carl Prekopp
Supt. Watts....................Gerard McDermott
Other parts are played by the cast.
Bach's Cello Suite No I in G major is one of the most frequently performed and recognisable solo compositions ever written for cello. Yet it was virtually unknown for almost two hundred years until the Catalan cellist, Pablo Casals discovered an edition in a thrift shop in Barcelona. Casals became the first to record it and the suites are now cherished by musicians across the globe.
The world renowned cellist, Steven Isserlis describes his relationship with the piece and why it still surprises and excites him. Fellow cellists Richard Jenkinson and Jane Salmon talk about the challenge of playing it and we hear from the Dominic Martens, a member of the National Youth Orchestra and his teacher, Nick Jones as they explore the piece together.
Garden designer Julie Moir Messervy, describes how Yo-Yo Ma's recording inspired her to design The Toronto Music Garden and doctor Heidi Kimberly explains why she chose the piece for her wedding and why she believes the suite to have healing powers.
While historian and author, Eric Siblin, reveals the extraordinary history of the suites and why some still argue that they was written by Bach's second wife Anna Magdalena.
Could relationship counselling help boost couples chances of staying together, manage conflict and communicate better? Listeners tell us how they have dealt with a relationship crisis.
One year on from the abduction of 219 Nigerian Girls by the militant group Boko Haram, Dr Fatima Akilu tells us about the counter terrorism programme she has helped to design.
Caitlin Dean of Pregnancy Sickness Support explains why severe and debilitating pregnancy sickness needs to be taken more seriously in the medical profession.
Professor Dame Carol Robinson has just been awarded the European Laureate award making her the fifth British Scientist to have won the award in the last 17 years. She tells us about gas phase structural biology, leaving school at 16 and inspiring women to become scientists.
Author and journalist, Robin Rinaldi, describes what it was like to spend a year living in an open marriage.
Plus saxophonist, Barbara Thompson, tells us what it's like living with Parkinson's disease.
Catherine Tate, Arthur Smith, David Nicholls, Matthew Bourne, Lindsey Davies, Dan Mangan and Blacksmith, Veronica Valerio
Clive Anderson is joined by Catherine Tate, Matthew Bourne, David Nicholls, Arthur Smith and Lindsey Davies for an eclectic mix of conversation, music and comedy. With music from Dan Mangan and Blacksmith and from Veronica Valerio
Mark Coles profiles Aidan Turner, the Irish actor who stars in Poldark, the BBC's most successful drama for a decade. Turner has won legions of fans as the brooding, scythe-wielding Cornish hero in the classic costume drama remake.
Toni Morrison, Ah Wilderness!, Indigenous Australians, A Pigeon Sat on a Branch, Storyville: Himmler
Toni Morrison's new novel, God Help The Child explores issues including skin colour prejudice, child abuse and justice.
Eugene O'Neill's 1933 play Ah Wilderness! is one of his less-performed works. He described it as a folk comedy, is it still funny today?
The British Museum exhibition, Indigenous Australians: Enduring Civilisation, looks at 60 millennia of Aboriginal life and art
A Pigeon Sat On A Branch Reflecting On Existence is the peculiar Lion d'Or winning film from Sweden - is it funny? unnerving? odd? magnificent?
BBC 4's Storyville series - bringing the best foreign documentaries to a British TV audience - has been going for 10 years. We review the latest: "Himmler, The Decent One", which looks at the life of Hitler's deputy through his private correspondence.
Matthew Sweet explores the dawning of the age of Black Aquarius - the weirdly great wave of occultism that swept through British popular culture in the 1960s-70s. From journals like the Aquarian Arrow to the diabolical novels of Dennis Wheatley, lurid accounts of satanic cults in the Sunday papers and the glut of illustrated books, part-magazines, documentary film and TV drama, it was a wildly exuberant seam of British pop culture.
Flowering from the more arcane parts of the hippy movement but mutating into something quite different, why was there such a huge crossover appeal for the British public? Was this a continuation of the Sixties cultural battleground of restrictive morality being secretly titillated, or was it something else - something darker? These questions certainly puzzled factual television at the time.
The age of Black Aquarius matched the late Victorian craze for the occult in its intensity and popularity, and certainly drew from some of that era's obsessions - dark dimensions, secret rites, unearthly energy - but filtered through 'the permissive society', through a hugely eclectic counterculture, swinging sexual liberation and new kinds of consumption and lifestyle. And while dark forces were summoned in the grooviest of Chelsea flats they were being unearthed in the countryside too, a fantasy of pagan ritual and wicker men, of tight-lipped locals and blood sacrifice at harvest time.
Contributors include Mark Gatiss, Katy Manning, Caroline Munro, Kim Newman, Highgate Vampire hunter David Farrant and Piers Haggard, director of 'The Blood on Satan's Claw'.
In the middle of an Ice Age on an alien world, two friends flee across endless snow plains on a journey that will take them to the edge of their physical and emotional endurance. The stakes are high – to save a world from war, and save their own lives.
The first radio dramatisation of Ursula Le Guin’s novel which is as groundbreaking in its approach to gender as when it was first published in 1969.
Genly Ai has arrived from Earth onto the planet Gethen, a world in which humans are ambigendered - everyone can be a mother and everyone can be a father. In coming to terms with their otherness - and also their sameness - Genly must let go of everything he understood about his own identity.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4, followed by weather.
Fi Glover hosts a unique experiment as two groups of people share their contrasting experiences, and voice their inner concerns about the way society is developing, as Britain faces arguably the most unpredictable election of modern times.
In the second programme, the groups explore whether they feel the UK is providing opportunity for its citizens through access to education and personal development for all.
The 2015 season of the most durable general knowledge quiz of them all reaches its climax, with the Final from the Radio Theatre in London. Russell Davies welcomes the four competitors who have come unscathed through heats and semi-finals, and could now be just half an hour away from becoming the 62nd BBC Brain of Britain.
Will they be able to name the Galilean moons of Jupiter, the first female US Secretary of State, or the town where Dylan Thomas is buried?
Every point could be crucial - and the gleaming 2015 Brain of Britain trophy awaits the winner.
Gwendolyn Brooks was an African American poet whose imagination, conscience and passion for words made her the first black poet to win the Pulitzer Prize, in 1950. Narrated by her daughter Nora Brooks Blakely, this is a portrait of her life through the voices of friends and fellow poets - including Sonia Sanchez, Haki Madhubuti and Sharon Olds.
Gwendolyn Brooks published her first poem at thirteen and by the time she was sixteen she was publishing in local newspapers serving Chicago's black population. Early critics welcomed Brooks as a new voice, 'a real poet writing poignant social documents.'
Her poems are portraits of the ordinary people she observed from day to day. She moulded them into memorable characters like Annie Allen, Rudolph Reed and Satin Legs Smith. Her deepest compassion though was for young people, particularly struggling youth. Her most famous poem, We Real Cool, is about children skipping school. It's still spoken aloud today by school children who learn it by heart.
Brooks believed she had a social and political role as a poet and became one of the most visible articulators of the "black aesthetic" as the Black Arts Movement took off in the late 1960s. Her commitment to nurturing black literature led her to leave major publisher Harper & Row in favour of a fledgling black company. When she was appointed to the post of poet laureate of Illinois in 1968, she used her role to visit schools, prisons, and rehabilitation centres to help people 'see the poetry in their lives.' She always claimed her greatest achievement was teaching people that poetry isn't a formal activity but an art form within the reach of everybody.
SUNDAY 26 APRIL 2015
SUN 00:00 Midnight News (b05rkptv)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
SUN 00:30 Go West (b01r0c5w)
A Story to Be Told
Five new stories produced from Bristol
1. A Story to be Told
by Gillian Tindall
Read by Wendy Brierley
Swimming up through layers of post-operative anaesthetic, Jennifer judges it time to tell an important secret about her past life before it vanishes with her.
Produced by Christine Hall.
SUN 00:48 Shipping Forecast (b05rkptx)
The latest shipping forecast.
SUN 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (b05rkptz)
BBC Radio 4 joins the BBC World Service. BBC Radio 4 resumes at
5.20am.
SUN 05:20 Shipping Forecast (b05rkpv1)
The latest shipping forecast.
SUN 05:30 News Briefing (b05rkpv3)
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
SUN 05:43 Bells on Sunday (b05rktyw)
The bells of St Lawrence's Church in Towcester.
SUN 05:45 Profile (b05rk6m4)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 on Saturday]
SUN 06:00 News Headlines (b05rkpv5)
The latest national and international news.
SUN 06:05 Something Understood (b05rktyy)
The Fabric of Each Other
"The friendships of women have been not merely unsung but mocked, belittled and falsely interpreted." (Vera Brittain in Testament of Friendship, 1940)
Helen Goalen and Abbi Greenland, who form the theatre company RashDash, reflect on the nature of their strong friendship. They've been the best of friends and close artistic collaborators since meeting at university and explore how their experience relates to that of other women, including 19th Century social reformers and feminists Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Stanton.
They also draw on the writings of Vera Brittain, Winifred Holtby and Tina Fey, as well as music from Alison Goldfrapp, Kate Bush and Amy Winehouse.
Presented by Helen Goalen and Abbi Greenland
Readers: Heather Long and Jacqueline King
Produced by Hana Walker-Brown
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4.
SUN 06:35 Living World (b05rktz0)
Polecats
Chris Packham relives programmes from The Living World archives.
Victorian Britain saw animals like the polecat persecuted almost to extinction surviving only in a few isolated upland areas of Wales. By the time in 1996 that Lionel Kelleway joined Johnny Messenger on a farm in mid-Wales farm, polecat numbers had begun to recover. It's a fact of life when studying shy mammals that most of the time is spent grubbing around for the signs of activity rather than seeing the animal itself. But for this Living World Johnny has brought Lionel to possibly the best place to see a polecat in Britain.
SUN 06:57 Weather (b05rkpv7)
The latest weather forecast.
SUN 07:00 News and Papers (b05rkpv9)
The latest news headlines. Including a look at the papers.
SUN 07:10 Sunday (b05rktz2)
Nepal Earthquake, Mediterranean Boat Crisis, National Civil War Centre
After the earthquake in Nepal we hear from people on the ground about the damage and aid that is required.
What is our moral responsibility towards people who try to escape to Europe on boats and how can we best address the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean as a result? Michel Roy, Secretary General of Caritas Internationalis and retired Major General Jim Molan from the Australian Army debate. Plus the Bishop of Manchester, Rt Rev David Walker.
Bob Walker previews the opening of the country's first National Civil War Centre in Nottinghamshire and explores the impact of the conflict on the religious landscape of Britain.
After enduring vitriolic protests, criminal harassment and fears of violence, Dawn Purvis the Director of the Marie Stopes Clinic in Belfast is leaving one of the most divisive jobs in the country. She tells us about her time in the post.
BBC Generation 2015: We hear from another four young voters about their faith and how it has influenced their decision in the forthcoming general election.
The US Supreme Court is to begin hearing arguments over whether same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry. Popular opinion has shifted dramatically in America over gay marriage, with a clear majority now in favour. Matt Wells reports from Tennessee where passionately-held views based on scriptural authority, are being challenged from within.
Contributors:
Alastair Seaman
Rt Rev David Walker
International Nepal Fellowship
Kushal Neogy, Catholic Relief Service
David Bainbridge, International Director - Tearfund
Michel Roy, Secretary General, Caritas
Retired Major General Jim Molan
Dawn Purvis, Marie Stopes
Series Producer: Amanda Hancox
Producers:
David Cook
Dan Tierney.
SUN 07:54 Radio 4 Appeal (b05rl3dd)
Suzy Lamplugh Trust
Tricia Bernal presents The Radio 4 Appeal for the Suzy Lamplugh Trust
Registered Charity No 802567
To Give:
- Freephone 0800 404 8144
- Freepost BBC Radio 4 Appeal, mark the back of the envelope 'Suzy Lamplugh Trust'.
- Cheques should be payable to 'Suzy Lamplugh Trust'.
SUN 07:57 Weather (b05rkpvc)
The latest weather forecast.
SUN 08:00 News and Papers (b05rkpvf)
The latest news headlines. Including a look at the papers.
SUN 08:10 Sunday Worship (b05rl3dg)
A Love without Ending
William Booth and Catherine Mumford were two fervent young Christians, and when they met in 1852 so started a love story not only for each other, but also for the disadvantaged and downtrodden which would overflow across the world. Live from Sunderland Millfield Salvation Army and Celebrating 150 years since William and Catherine Booth founded this worldwide movement. Preacher: General André Cox. The International Staff Songsters are directed by Dorothy Nancekievill. Within days of their first meeting William and Catherine were writing love letters to each other. William was determined to be a Christian preacher and evangelist and Catherine was not only wholeheartedly behind him, she effectively helped to mould the man he became. They were people of their time - Victorians - but their letters show that under the surface they were passionate individuals who loved deeply, felt strongly about their spiritual and other convictions, and were determined to follow what they believed was God's leading for their lives. Initially the Booths did not plan to create a church but a 'movement' of people who, once converted to Christian faith, would go back to their own congregations, or join an established church. Very quickly, though, it became clear that this 'movement' was developing its own personality and distinctiveness. The Salvation Army today is still officially a 'movement' although now it is also an established Protestant evangelical denomination with deep roots in both big conurbations and smaller towns right across the world. Producer: Andrew Earis.
SUN 08:48 A Point of View (b05r71xm)
Commemorative Style
David Cannadine compares the enthusiasm for national commemorations in Britain with the more understated syle in the United States. "It's easier for Britain, which is a relatively small and unified nation, with a strong central government, to stage nationally inclusive displays of commemoration than it is for the United States, which is a country with a relatively weak federal government, that many people dislike and distrust, and which oversees a vast transcontinental empire extending from one ocean to another and beyond."
Producer: Sheila Cook.
SUN 08:58 Tweet of the Day (b03zrcgb)
Capercaillie
Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs.
Kate Humble presents the capercaillie. The bizarre knife-grinding, cork-popping display of the male capercaillie is one of the strangest sounds produced by any bird. The name 'Capercaillie' is derived from the Gaelic for 'horse of the woods', owing to the cantering sound, which is the start of their extraordinary mating display. These are the largest grouse in the world and in the UK they live only in ancient Caledonian pine forests.
SUN 09:00 Broadcasting House (b05rl3dy)
Sunday morning magazine programme with news and conversation about the big stories of the week. Presented by Paddy O'Connell.
SUN 10:00 The Archers Omnibus (b05rl3j6)
Shula meets a friend, and Pip drops a bombshell.
SUN 11:16 The Reunion (b05rl3j8)
Far East Prisoners of War
Sue MacGregor's guests remember their time as Far East POWs during the Second World War.
Early in the Second World War, the Imperial Japanese made major military advances throughout the Far East. The fall of Singapore in February 1942 resulted in the single largest surrender of British-led military personnel. Winton Churchill called it "the worst disaster and largest capitulation in British history". In total, the Japanese took 140,000 Allied prisoners, including 67,000 British.
The prisoners were sent to forced labour camps throughout South-East Asia. The Thailand-Burma Railway is perhaps the best known project, but many more POWs were shipped via "hell ships" to islands like Java and Ambon. The Japanese captors treated the prisoners horrifically, subjecting them to brutal beatings, intense work, starvation, disease and searing heat. Over a quarter of POWs died in the camps.
Sue MacGregor's guests include: Bob Morrell, who remembers his "coffin duty" on the island of Ambon; centenarian Bill Frankland, who was a medical officer treating prisoners near Singapore.; William Mumby who was shipped throughout the region, and Tony Lucas, who was sent to the Thailand-Burma Railway and helped carve "Hellfire Pass". Sue is also joined by historian Sibylla Jane Flower who made a special study of Allied prisoners held by the Japanese.
After the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and V-J Day, the POWs undertook the arduous journey back to Britain. Many were reunited with their families who were unaware of their survival. In the following decades, many former prisoners of war kept quiet about their experiences.
Producer: Colin McNulty
Series Producer: David Prest
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4
SUN 12:00 News Summary (b05rkpvh)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
SUN 12:04 Dilemma (b05r3ssw)
Series 4
Episode 3
Sue Perkins presents another edition of the show that puts the big moral and ethical questions to a mixed panel, finding the tipping point of their personal morality. This week, it's the turn of comedians Jo Brand and Michael Legge, musician and Radio 3 presenter Mara Carlyle, and journalist Matthew Parris. They discuss, among other things, unfortunate children's names and bad birthday presents, and help the audience with their real life dilemmas - although with "help" like this...
Dilemma is presented by Sue Perkins, and was devised by Danielle Ward.
Devised by ... Danielle Ward
Producer ... Ed Morrish.
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in April 2015.
SUN 12:32 The Food Programme (b05rl3jb)
Diet and Diabetes
In the UK, there are 3.2 million people who are living with Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes and a further 600,000 who have Type 2 but just don't know it yet. And those numbers continue to rise.
In the first few months of this year, the charity Diabetes UK received over 300 calls from newly diagnosed diabetics asking what they can and can't eat. It seems there's plenty of confusion about what foods need to be eaten to maintain healthy blood sugar levels and a misconception that a diabetes diagnosis means never eating sugar again.
This week, Felicity Evans is discussing some of the issues surrounding diet and diabetes. Her guests in the studio are; G.P, author and broadcaster, Dr Hilary Jones, dietician, Azmina Govindji, Simon O'Neill from Diabetes UK and Saturday Live's J.P Devlin, a Type 1 diabetic for more than 30 years.
They will offer practical tips on some of the best food choices, debunk a few myths and look at how it can change someone's life. Plus what does the latest research say about the type of diet diabetics should be eating.
Presented by Felicity Evans and produced in Bristol by Julia Hayball.
SUN 12:57 Weather (b05rkpvk)
The latest weather forecast.
SUN 13:00 The World This Weekend (b05rl3jd)
Global news and analysis, presented by Mark Mardell.
SUN 14:00 Gardeners' Question Time (b05r6zy1)
Postbag Edition
Eric Robson chairs a correspondence edition of the programme from Matthew Wilson's garden in Rutland. Matthew is joined by Bob Flowerdew, Pippa Greenwood and Christine Walkden to answer questions sent in by post, online and through social media.
Produced by Dan Cocker
Assistant Producer: Hannah Newton
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4.
SUN 14:45 The Listening Project (b05rl3w2)
Sunday Omnibus
Fi Glover with conversations about coming to terms with not having grandchildren, not living where you want to, and negotiating a relationship, from Devon, Derry and Shap, in the Omnibus edition of the series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.
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 learn more about The Listening Project by visiting bbc.co.uk/listeningproject
Producer: Marya Burgess.
SUN 15:00 Drama (b05rl3w4)
Evelyn Waugh - Decline and Fall
Episode 1
Paul Pennyfeather, a quiet, earnest,scholarly young student at Oxford knows nothing of 1920's high-life until one night he encounters The Bollinger Club ...
Evelyn's Waugh's fast paced roller-coaster is set in the early jazz age, peopled by larger than life characters and a few grotesques
A real gem in the canon of British comic fiction dramatised by Jeremy Front.
Paul Pennyfeather ..... Kieran Hodgson
Dr Fagan ..... Geoffrey Whitehead
Grimes ..... John Sessions
Prendergast ..... James Fleet
Philbrick ..... Ben Crowe
Margot Beste-Chetwynde ..... Emilia Fox
Peter Beste-Chetwynde ..... Alex Lawther
Flossie ..... Tilly Vosburgh
Lady Circumference/Dingy ..... Felicity Montagu
Tangent ..... Richard Linnell
Clutterbuck ..... Mark Edel-Hunt
Cholmondley ..... Jude Akuwudike
Mr Davies/Paul's Guardian ..... Stephen Critchlow
Trumpington ..... Sam Valentine
Sniggs ..... Sam Dale
Postlethwaite ..... David Acton
Levy ..... Ian Conningham
Jeremy Front won the Best Dramatisation in the BBC 2014 Drama Audio Awards for Evelyn Waugh's Sword of Honour.
Producer: Marion Nancarrow
Director: Tracey Neale
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2015.
SUN 16:00 Open Book (b05rl3w6)
Caryl Phillips on The Lost Child
Mariella Frostrup talks to award winning novelist Caryl Phillips whose latest book is influenced by Wuthering Heights. Set largely in Yorkshire in the sixties and seventies, it also flashes back to the eighteenth century to imagine Heathcliff's origins. Caryl Phillips talks to Mariella about his own childhood in Leeds, the all pervading influence of the English class system and how seventies music remains his guilty pleasure.
Also on the programme, playwright Mark Ravenhill and author Richard T Kelly discuss the life and work of Franz Kafka, 100 years after the publication of one of his most famous works, The Metamorphosis; Professor John Mullan takes a look at fictional elections and Alexandra Fuller explains how Graham Greene inspires her.
SUN 16:30 The Poet and the Murderer (b05rl3w8)
In 1997, a newly discovered and previously unpublished poem by the much-loved American poet Emily Dickinson was auctioned in New York. There was great excitement at the idea that a new work by this iconic artist had come to light - as if a new Shakespeare Sonnet had been found locked in a trunk in a Stratford attic, or an unknown Picasso had been stumbled upon at a car boot sale.
After the poem was sold at auction and brought home to Emily Dickinson's home town of Amherst, with much fanfare, it was revealed to be a brilliant fake. It had been created by a man named Mark Hofmann, a convicted double murderer once dubbed the 'greatest forger of the 20th century'. He had not only matched the paper, handwriting and pencil with astounding historical accuracy, he had produced a new Dickinson work that passed off as authentic.
How was a convicted double murderer able to craft a poem so perfect that it fooled leading Emily Dickinson scholars and experts in historical documents? Dickinson famously lived much of her life as a recluse, producing her works of concentrated brilliance from the bedroom of her father's house in Amherst, Massachusetts. She chose not to publish during her lifetime and hand-sewn booklets containing some 1,800 poems were discovered in a locked box in her room after her death. Why does Dickinson continue to fascinate, and what might Hofmann's fake poem tell us about the true poet's work and life?
The writer and journalist Simon Worrall unfolds a gripping true story of poetry, murder and the art of forgery.
SUN 17:00 Does the House Always Win? (b05r3w43)
Betting on the outcome of sporting fixtures is so last century. Now you can take a punt on practically anything that happens within a game - from who will win the first set in tennis to who will score the first goal in a football match.
Welcome to the world of in-game betting where gamblers test their skill and luck almost as the action happens. It's growing fast as the lucrative new frontier for the betting world, and is particularly popular in the huge Asian market.
With events unfolding so quickly, time is everything. But because the television pictures are always a few seconds behind the real-time action, punters at live events will have an advantage over those watching at home or in a betting shop.
In this documentary Simon Cox looks at how some exploit the TV delay either by betting online directly from the event or by sending in scouts with hidden devices to feed the information about what's happening ahead of the official television pictures. He speaks to the first person to be arrested whilst court-siding in Australia and accused of trying to corrupt a betting outcome.
So what lengths are people prepared to go to gain those crucial seconds that give them an advantage? And what evidence is there that in-game betting poses a threat to the integrity of some our most popular sports?
Reporter: Simon Cox Producer: Anna Meisel.
SUN 17:40 Profile (b05rk6m4)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 on Saturday]
SUN 17:54 Shipping Forecast (b05rkpvn)
The latest shipping forecast.
SUN 17:57 Weather (b05rkpvq)
The latest weather forecast.
SUN 18:00 Six O'Clock News (b05rkpvs)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
SUN 18:15 Pick of the Week (b05rl414)
Pauline Black
Pauline Black chooses her BBC Radio highlights from the past week.
SUN 19:00 The Archers (b05rl416)
Eddie's sad that Will isn't in the frame to be Ed's best man. Meanwhile, Jill and Clarrie are taking the cake design seriously.
Pip's busy researching and prepping for her Technical Manager job interview.
Ed checks that David is happy for him and Jazzer to do the sheep shearing at Brookfield next week.
Meanwhile, Lynda has lost her May pole!
Ed tells David about what he has found whilst clearing ditches for the Estate. One of the concrete drains up near Berrow Farm was blocked up by all sorts of debris.
Rex Fairbrother introduces himself to Joe and Eddie. Joe puts his foot in it by talking about Robin Fairbrother, and what a cad he was. Rex explains that Robin's his father.
Eddie worries about potential competition from the Fairbrother boys, Rex and Toby. They're looking for about fifty acres of reasonably level land to start up in geese farming. Rex thinks they've found a gap in the market. Eddie wonders whether they should help the Fairbrother boys along. That depends, says Joe, on whether Eddie thinks a Grundy turkey can cope with a bit of competition.
SUN 19:16 The Vote Now Show (b05r3zc4)
Series 2
Episode 2
A series of election specials from the Now Show team. Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis are joined by special guests to give their own unique take on the week's election shenanigans.
Episode two features Pippa Evans, Mitch Benn, Andy Zaltzman, Julia Hartley-Brewer and Lolly Adefope.
Producers; Alexandra Smith, Joe Nunnery and Rachel Wheeley.
Executive Producer Alison Vernon-Smith.
SUN 19:45 Above Ground (b05rl4fy)
Licence to Kill
Stephanie Cole reads a short story by Penelope Lively.
The 86-year-old Pauline requires a little help with daily tasks. Her teenaged care assistant, Cally, is employed to take her shopping. Their easy routine stutters when, out of the blue, Pauline reveals a secret about her past.
First in a series of stories in which writers consider the theme of age and ageing. The series title, Above Ground, is inspired by a quote from Carol Shields novel The Stone Diaries: "Here's to another year and let's hope it's above ground."
Read by Stephanie Cole
Written by Penelope Lively
Produced by Kirsteen Cameron
SUN 20:00 Feedback (b05r6zy7)
Has the BBC's impartiality been compromised in the lead up to the General Election? With less than two weeks to polling day, political leaders are near ever-present on the airwaves as they try to secure votes. BBC networks - including Radio 1, 5Live and Radio 4 - have been connecting party leaders directly to the public in a series of live debates. Listeners flocked to social media to comment as the programmes were broadcast - and some of their comments complained about biased presenters and audiences. Ric Bailey, the BBC's Chief Political Adviser, discusses how impartiality should be achieved during the intensity of the campaign season.
Nearly 40 years ago, Radio 3 created the 'Pied Piper' programme to appeal to younger listeners and develop their love of classical music from an early age. Current Radio 3 Controller Alan Davey discusses the station's role in bringing culture to a younger generation.
An alien world, a landscape of frozen ice and characters with no gender are not perhaps the typical elements of a drama on Radio 4. But in celebration of cult science fiction writer Ursula Le Guin's 85th birthday, Radio 4 and 4Extra have dedicated this month to her fantasy literature. Judith Adams worked alongside director Allegra McIllroy to adapt the 300 page novel into a two hour radio play. But how did they voice characters that were neither male nor female?
And how has the Shipping Forecast impacted and inspired our lives over the years? Author Charlie Connelly recounts his fondest anecdotes - from his own life and the lives of listeners around the British Isles.
Producer: Karen Pirie
A Whistlkedown production for BBC Radio 4.
SUN 20:30 Last Word (b05r6zy5)
Margaret Rule, Lord Mason, Dell Williams, Buddy Elias, Brian Couzens
Matthew Bannister on
The archaeologist Margaret Rule who directed the raising of Henry VIII's flagship the Mary Rose from the sea bed.
Lord Mason - who as Labour MP Roy Mason was a tough Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.
Dell Williams who founded America's first sex boutique for women
Buddy Elias, Anne Frank's cousin and the president of the trust which managed her literary legacy.
And Brian Couzens who started the Chandos classical music record label and championed British composers.
SUN 21:00 Money Box (b05rk5tn)
[Repeat of broadcast at
12:04 on Saturday]
SUN 21:26 Radio 4 Appeal (b05rl3dd)
[Repeat of broadcast at
07:54 today]
SUN 21:30 In Business (b05r40r7)
Circular Economy
As Dame Ellen MacArthur circumnavigated the globe she got first-hand knowledge of the finite nature of the world's resources. When she retired from sailing she created a foundation to promote the concept of a 'Circular Economy' - where resources are re-used and waste reduced to zero. Many companies around the world - including some of the biggest, like Unilever - are responding to her ideas.
Peter Day talks to the record-breaking sailor, to Unilever, and to the creators of an innovative urban farm in New Jersey about why these concepts are so important and how businesses can take them on board.
Producer: Sandra Kanthal.
SUN 22:00 Westminster Hour (b05rl4qr)
Weekly political discussion and analysis with MPs, experts and commentators.
SUN 22:45 What the Papers Say (b05rl4qt)
Iain Martin of The Telegraph analyses how the newspapers are covering the biggest stories.
SUN 23:00 The Film Programme (b05r40dj)
Joss Whedon on Avengers; Roy Andersson; Foley; The Falling
With Francine Stock.
Avengers' director Joss Whedon discusses the challenges of writing a film with not one, not two, but eight super-heroes.
Swedish auteur Roy Andersson on A Pigeon Sat On A Branch Reflecting On Existence and why the Swedes are really glum.
As part of the BBC's Get Creative campaign, Francine tries her hand at making sound effects with household objects, ably assisted by Foley artist Barnaby Smyth.
In the week that The Falling is released, Kier-La Janisse and Sandra Hebron consider the depiction of mass hysteria in cinema history, from The Devils to Picnic At Hanging Rock.
SUN 23:30 Something Understood (b05rktyy)
[Repeat of broadcast at
06:05 today]
MONDAY 27 APRIL 2015
MON 00:00 Midnight News (b05rkpwt)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
MON 00:15 Thinking Allowed (b05r3z43)
Stories Behind Immigration - Winner of the Ethnography Award
This year, the BBC's Thinking Allowed, in association with the British Sociological Association, launched the second year of its award for a study that has made a significant contribution to ethnography, the in-depth analysis of the everyday life of a culture or sub-culture. Laurie Taylor presents a special edition of Thinking Allowed to mark the announcement of the winner of the 2015 award.
Laurie and a team of leading academics - Professor Beverley Skeggs, Professor Adam Kuper, Dr Coretta Phillips and Dr Louise Westmarland - were tasked with judging the study that has made the most significant contribution to ethnography over the past year. Ethnographic studies in the past have often illuminated lives which were little understood or stigmatised such as the urban poor in 1930s Chicago and the mods and rockers of 50s Britain.
This year the judges combed through an extraordinary diversity of entries to arrive at a shortlist of 7:
Flip-Flop: A Journey Through Globalisation's Backroads by Caroline Knowles.
The Social Order of the Underworld: How Prison Gangs Govern the American Penal System by David Skarbek
Lesbian Lives in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia by Francesca Stella.
Illegality Inc: Clandestine Migration and the Business of Bordering Europe by Ruben Andersson.
Songs of the Factory: Pop Music, Culture and Resistance by Marek Korczynski
Human Rights as War by Other Means: Peace Politics in Northern Ireland by Jennifer Curtis.
Educational Binds of Poverty: The Lives of School Children by Ceri Brown.
After much passionate and lively debate, the winner can be announced.
Producer: Jayne Egerton.
MON 00:45 Bells on Sunday (b05rktyw)
[Repeat of broadcast at
05:43 on Sunday]
MON 00:48 Shipping Forecast (b05rkpww)
The latest shipping forecast.
MON 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (b05rkpwy)
BBC Radio 4 joins the BBC World Service.
MON 05:20 Shipping Forecast (b05rkpx0)
The latest shipping forecast.
MON 05:30 News Briefing (b05rkpx2)
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
MON 05:43 Prayer for the Day (b05rnh8s)
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with the Rev'd Dr Craig Gardiner.
MON 05:45 Farming Today (b05rnhzb)
Potash Mine, Fishing Row
Plans for what could be the world's largest potash mine have cleared their first planning hurdle. The mineral produced there will be used to make fertilizer. But the huge site will be on the North York Moors. The plans have been approved by the local council, but will now go before the Moors authority. If approved the mine will create up to a thousand jobs in an economically deprived area. But many say it will ruin an area of outstanding beauty.
Presented by Charlotte Smith and produced by Sally Challoner.
MON 05:56 Weather (b05rkpx4)
The latest weather forecast for farmers.
MON 05:58 Tweet of the Day (b0423j3r)
Pied Flycatcher
Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about British birds inspired by their calls and songs.
David Attenborough presents the story of the pied flycatcher. The pied flycatcher is the voice of western woods, as much a part of the scenery as lichen-covered branches, mossy boulders and tumbling streams. When they arrive here in spring from Africa the black and white males, which are slightly smaller than a house sparrow, take up territories in the woodland and sing their lilting arpeggios from the tree canopy.
MON 06:00 Today (b05rnx7c)
Morning news and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
MON 09:00 Start the Week (b05rnx7f)
Violence
On Start the Week Anne McElvoy discusses our obsession with violence. The historian Richard Bessel explores its past ubiquity, but argues that our modern attitudes towards it have changed. There's little change in the attitudes towards women in the armed forces, according to a play by the academic Helen Benedict. Diana Preston sees history repeating itself as weapons of mass destruction continue to be used in much the same way as a century ago. For June Oscar, an Indigenous leader from North Western Australia, the history of her people has been dominated by the violent struggle with settlers from the 1770s.
Producer: Katy Hickman.
MON 09:45 Philip Glass - Words without Music (b05rnx7h)
Episode 1
Memoir by the world-renowned composer of symphonies, operas and film scores, Philip Glass.
'If you go to New York City to study music, you'll end up like your uncle Henry,' Glass's mother warned her incautious and curious nineteen-year-old son. It was the early summer of 1956, and Ida Glass was concerned that her precocious Philip, already a graduate of the University of Chicago, would end up an itinerant musician, playing in vaudeville houses and dance halls all over the country, just like his cigar-smoking, bantamweight uncle. One could hardly blame Mrs. Glass for worrying that her teenage son would end up as a musical vagabond after initially failing to get into Juilliard. Yet, the transformation of a young man from budding musical prodigy to world-renowned composer is the story of this memoir.
From his childhood in post-Second World War Baltimore to his student days in Chicago, at Juilliard, and his time in Paris, where he studied under the formidable Nadia Boulanger, Glass movingly recalls his early mentors while reconstructing the places that helped shape his artistic consciousness. Then, to the gritty streets of New York in the 1970s, where the composer worked as a cabbie, leading the life of a Parisian bohemian artist transported to late-twentieth-century America.
Yet even after Glass's talent was first widely recognized with the sensational premiere of Einstein on the Beach in 1976, even after he stopped renewing his hack license and gained international recognition for his operatic works, the son of a Baltimore record store owner never abandoned his earliest universal ideals, all of the highest artistic order.
Read by Kerry Shale.
Abridger: Laurence Wareing
Producer: Kirsteen Cameron
Music details:
Track: "Opening"
CD: Glassworks
Label: CBS
Track: "Bebop"
CD: Charlie Parker, The Original Bird: The Best Of Charlie Parker 1944-1949
Label: Savoy
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in April 2015.
MON 10:00 Woman's Hour (b05rnx7k)
Theodora Hawksley, Laura Lippman, Dementia and Daughters, Reinterpreting the Qur'an
Dementia UK's new research reveals who is more likely to ask for family support? 29 year old Theodora Hawksley reveals why she has chosen to become a nun. Multi-award winning American Crime writer, Laura Lippman, talks about her new Tess Monaghan novel, looking at post-partnum psychosis. Reinterpreting the Qu'ran:could there be a feminist reading?
PresenterJenni Murray
Producer:Kirsty Starkey.
MON 10:45 15 Minute Drama (b05rnx7m)
Elizabeth von Arnim - The Enchanted April
Episode 1
By Elizabeth von Arnim
Dramatised by Vivienne Allen
While at their Shaftesbury Avenue club on a rainy February day, Rosie and Lottie discover they have been reading the same advertisement in The Times:-
To Those who Appreciate Wisteria and Sunshine. Small mediaeval Italian Castle on the shores of the Mediterranean to be let Furnished for the month of April.
Can they seize this opportunity and escape to the sunny Italian Riviera or is it just an impossible dream?
Produced and Directed by Tracey Neale
An advertisement in The Times, addressed to 'Those who Appreciate Wisteria and Sunshine' is the impetus for a revelatory month for four very different women. High above the bay on the Italian Riviera stands San Salvatore, a mediaeval castle. Beckoned to this haven are Lotty, Rose, Mrs Fisher and Lady Caroline Dester, each craving escape. Lulled by the Mediterranean spirit, they gradually shed their skins and discover a harmony each of them has longed for.
As soon as we arrive in Italy from rainy London the warmth, colour and smells of this enchanting place take over. The descriptions are intoxicating. The four women blossom in the sunshine but there are a few surprises in store for them.
Although these women live in the 1920s, their worries and concerns are as relevant today as they have always been. Times change, fashions change, but people do not change so much. Who wouldn't say no when given the chance to escape from the dismal gloomy rain to the sunshine of the Italian Riviera and have a welcome break from their day to day lives.
MON 11:00 Vive l'Empereur! (b05rnx7p)
As thousands of men and horses gear up to recreate the Battle of Waterloo for its bicentenary in June, Max Cotton goes inside the world of Napoleonic re-enactment.
The real fighting may have stopped two hundred years ago, but the skirmishing over the battle's authentic recreation and its political meaning intensifies. Max meets the re-enactors as they prepare for their biggest "battle" in the fields and villages south of Waterloo.
It is a tale of genuine passions and obsessions. Max explores the difference between "stitch-counters" and "FARBs", discusses the rival merits of those who seek to play Bonaparte (and meets the real version), and discovers the subtle diplomacy surrounding the bicentenary, as ambassadors across Europe work hard to make sure the British aren't offended, the French turn-up and no-one is humiliated.
Producer: Adam Bowen.
MON 11:30 Deborah Frances-White Rolls the Dice (b05rnx7r)
Series 1
Episode 3
Comedian Deborah Frances-White was born in Australia but now lives in London. Continuing her series of true life tales, she recalls her struggles to get back into England and stay here.
In the company of Thom Tuck, Alex Lowe and Cariad Lloyd, she recalls how pretending to marry a gay man, and pay him for it, seemed the only way to satisfy the authorities.
Then, when she accidentally meets the true love of her life and gets married for her visa, Deborah had not anticipated worse troubles looming with both his parents and the Home Office.
Producer: Alan Nixon
A So Television production for BBC Radio 4.
MON 12:00 News Summary (b05rkpx8)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
MON 12:04 The Listeners' Election (b05s2x2m)
Litter and Smoking
BBC Radio 4's Listeners' Election project culminates with a week-long series of programmes. Chris Mason brings together contributions from listeners across the country on particular themes that concern them.
In this first edition, some listeners explain why they think litter is becoming a serious political issue. This raises the question of who is responsible for clearing cans and crisp packets from our streets and verges: the state, society acting together, or the individual?
And, as he explores this wider question of where responsibility lies, Chris also hears from those who think state efforts to stop individuals smoking are completely inappropriate.
In the other editions in the series, Chris explores such issues as Housing and Population Distribution, Farmland vs. the Countryside, Disengagement and Young Adults, and Caring for Children and the Elderly.
PRODUCERS: PHIL TINLINE AND SARAH KEATING.
MON 12:15 You and Yours (b05rnx7w)
Sucker Lists, Supplements, Sleeping Under Steeples, Soccer Sites
How the police are working hard to make sure you aren't a sucker
We meet the woman who took on the vitamin supplement challenge
How successful is the redress scheme - to help resolve disputes between landlords and tenants - one year on?
How a church could be the best hostel you've ever visited
How come adverts for big businesses end up on illegal streaming sites?
We hear from the mum of a 12 year old boy with cerebral palsy, who's been awarded one of the biggest injury pay-outs from the NHS
PRESENTER WINIFRED ROBINSON
PRODUCER PETE WILSON.
MON 12:57 Weather (b05rkpxb)
The latest weather forecast.
MON 13:00 World at One (b05rnx7y)
Analysis of current affairs reports, presented by Martha Kearney.
MON 14:00 The Archers (b05rl416)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 on Sunday]
MON 14:15 Tommies (b03thc6p)
27 April 1915
by Nick Warburton
Series created by Jonathan Ruffle.
Meticulously based on unit war diaries and eye-witness accounts, each episode of TOMMIES traces one real day at war, exactly 100 years ago.
Through it all, we follow the fortunes of Mickey Bliss and his fellow signallers, from the Lahore Division of the British Indian Army. They are the cogs in an immense machine, one which connects situations across the whole theatre of the war, over four long years.
Under the constant threat of gas attack in the village of La Brique just north of Ypres, Mickey Bliss and his signals colleagues are trying to work out why the enemy are always one step ahead.
Producers: David Hunter, Jonquil Panting, Jonathan Ruffle
Director: David Hunter.
MON 15:00 The 3rd Degree (b05rnx80)
Series 5
Cardiff University/Prifysgol Caerdydd
A quiz show hosted by Steve Punt where a team of three University students take on a team of three of their professors.
Coming this week from Cardiff University, The 3rd Degree is a funny, lively and dynamic quiz show aimed at cultivating the next generation of Radio 4 listeners while delighting the current ones.
The Specialist Subjects in this episode are Biology, Journalism and Astrophysics and the questions range from the intricacies of relativistic length contraction to the idiocies of homeopathy via Grexit, webinars and a man called Walter Plinge.
The show is recorded on location at a different University each week, and it pits three Undergraduates against three of their Professors in a genuinely original and fresh take on an academic quiz. Being a Radio 4 programme, it of course meets the most stringent standards of academic rigour - but with lots of facts and jokes thrown in for good measure.
The rounds vary between Specialist Subjects and General Knowledge, quick-fire bell-and-buzzer rounds and the 'Highbrow & Lowbrow' round cunningly devised to test not only the students' knowledge of current affairs, history, languages and science, but also their Professors' awareness of television, film, and One Direction.
The host, Steve Punt, although best known as a satirist on The Now Show also delights in all facets of knowledge, not just in the Humanities (his educational background) but in the sciences as well. He has made a number of documentaries for Radio 4, including The Poet Unwound - The History Of The Spleen, as well as a half-hour comedy for Radio 4's Big Bang Day set in the Large Hadron Collider, called The Genuine Particle.
Producer: David Tyler
A Pozzitive production for BBC Radio 4.
MON 15:30 The Food Programme (b05rl3jb)
[Repeat of broadcast at
12:32 on Sunday]
MON 16:00 Twenty Years of Hate (b05rnyz0)
'La Haine' ('Hate') was one of the most shocking films to come out of France in decades when it was released in 1995. Not only was it a brilliant work of fiction - the story of three young men who come across a police gun in the day following a riot- the film's portrayal of violent tensions between police and residents of the troubled banlieue outside of Paris, and the tension between the city and the suburbs, caused a political storm; French ministers were made to watch it at a special screening in the Elysee Palace to get an insight into the tough social conditions affecting so many people, and such was the hostility felt by the police at their depiction, officers present at the Cannes Festival when brash young director Mathieu Kassovitz picked up his best director award literally turned their back on him in disgust. In 'Twenty Years of Hate', Andrew Hussey sets out to find out what the film has to say to us today about the state of contemporary France, meeting members of the original cast and visiting the cité where it was filmed - Chanteloup les Vignes. Now that Kassovitz has announced his plans to make 'La Haine 2' in response to the Charlie Hebdo attacks, Hussey also asks how different the follow up might need to be in order to reflect changes in French society, and in particular the rise of radical Islam.
La Haine
1995
Director: Mathieu Kassovitz
Produced By: Christophe Rossignon
Production Companies:
Canal+
Cofinergie 6
Egg Pictures
Kasso Inc. Productions
La Sept Cinéma
Les Productions Lazennec
Polygram Filmed Entertainment
Studio Image.
MON 16:30 The Digital Human (b05rnyz2)
Series 7
Breathe
Aleks Krotoski explores the overlap between technology and the natural world and how the two co-exist.
MON 17:00 PM (b05rnyz4)
Eddie Mair with interviews, context and analysis.
MON 18:00 Six O'Clock News (b05rkpxd)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
MON 18:30 Dilemma (b05rnz1n)
Series 4
Episode 4
Sue Perkins presents another edition of the show that puts the big moral and ethical questions to a mixed panel to see the direction in their moral compasses point. This week, it's the turn of comedians Iain Stirling and Shappi Khorsandi, journalist Suzanne Moore, and writer and actor Dan Tetsell. Collectively they rate the merits of getting the money or the credit for something's success, as well as quickly resolving issues such as inheritance, racism, childhood dreams and Beyoncé. Episode four of six.
Dilemma is presented by Sue Perkins.
Devised by ... Danielle Ward
Producer ... Ed Morrish.
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in April 2015.
MON 19:00 The Archers (b05rnzct)
Kenton and Jolene have money worries and bills due. Kenton nervously phones the bank asking for an overdraft extension. They'll only authorise it if they can show extra income coming in - but business at the Bull is poor. Jolene suggests they use their credit cards carefully to keep all the debt in one place. Concerned Fallon asks Jolene whether Kenton is okay.
David has found Ed a catcher for the sheep shearing - Barney, a sheep farmer and friend of Pip's.
Ed tells David he went back to Berrow Farm but noticed that the blocked culvert is now completely clear - someone has done him a favour. Ed now has a free afternoon to sort out his wedding suit. David encourages him about his groom's speech.
Eddie tells Ed about meeting Rex Fairbrother yesterday. Rex is looking for a few acres - perhaps Ed could pass on his tenancy at the Estate to Rex?
Lynda's looking for her maypole, keen to press ahead with May Day in Ambridge and make it a success. Kenton will contact the Morris Men that he stood down, expecting May Day to be cancelled. Fallon agrees to supply a tea tent. She has a helper at the ready - Lynda's intrigued by who it might be.
MON 19:15 Front Row (b05rnzl3)
Jonathan Pryce, Far from the Madding Crowd, Ronnie Wood, Frances Bacon
With John Wilson.
Jonathan Pryce - whose roles have ranged from King Lear to The Engineer in Miss Saigon - discusses playing Shylock in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, a Globe Theatre production in which Jessica is played by Pryce's own daughter. He also tells John why, despite his dislike of fantasy series, he took on the role of the High Sparrow in Game of Thrones.
The new film adaptation of Thomas Hardy's classic novel Far From the Madding Crowd, starring Carey Mulligan, is reviewed by Hardy's biographer Claire Tomalin.
With the news today that two self-portraits by Francis Bacon are going on public display for the first time after being rediscovered in a private collection prior to their auction, we ask Oliver Barker, Sotheby's Senior International Specialist in Contemporary Art, what we should bid for a bit of Bacon.
Plus guitarist Ronnie Wood on the recently discovered diary he wrote when he was 17 and playing with The Birds, 10 years before he joined the Rolling Stones. A limited edition facsimile of the diary is about to be published (£495), called How Can It Be? A Rock & Roll Diary. Ronnie Wood looks back over the events of 50 years ago and the characters he mixed with including Eric Clapton, Keith Moon and Pete Townshend.
Producer: Ella-mai Robey.
MON 19:45 15 Minute Drama (b05rnx7m)
[Repeat of broadcast at
10:45 today]
MON 20:00 Lore's Story (b05s2pbf)
A moving story of love and the struggle to find meaning when faced with a terrible illness.
Paul Wolfson was bright, funny, sparky, unconventional - a psychiatrist living in South London with his second wife and two young children. Family life was rich and busy. But he'd begun to have to search for words. Finally, at the age of only 60, he was diagnosed with a rare form of early onset dementia.
He knew the prognosis - he would lose the ability to speak and then to understand words, his character would change and eventually he would no longer be able to recognise his children. His wife Lore entered a strange new world - a world of hospital appointments and carer-support groups as she slowly began to realise what Paul's illness was going to mean for their marriage and their family.
With clear-sightedness and wit, Lore and Paul talked together over his last six months - and recorded those conversations. The recordings are unexpectedly upbeat and life-affirming. Paul embarked on a series of trips around the country to see old friends and talks about the value of friendship, and family. Movingly, we hear Paul's voice become slower as he searches for words and loses language.
They discuss his illness, and what to do. He is reluctant to go into a home: his first wife was living with Huntingdon's, a neurodegenerative disease. She had already spent almost twenty years in a home immobilised but conscious, kept alive by a feeding tube. Paul feared a similar fate.
This programme is Lore's story, and she introduces the recordings they made together. How do you find meaning in such tragedy? That is the question Lore tries to answer.
Some of the issues raised by Lore's Story will be discussed further in Woman's Hour, tomorrow morning (Tuesday 28th April) from
10am - available here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05s2x2c.
Producer: Elizabeth Burke
An Above The Title production for BBC Radio 4.
MON 20:30 Crossing Continents (b05r401f)
'Police State' Portugal
Does Portugal have a problem with police brutality and racism? In February a group of young black men from the Lisbon suburb of Cova da Moura allege they were beaten and racially abused at a police station. Police claim the men tried to invade the station. Residents of Cova da Moura are mostly from immigrant backgrounds, and they say this is just the latest of a number of serious incidents in the past few years, and claim that the neighbourhood has become a 'police state'. James Fletcher travels to Cova da Moura to investigate whether police are too heavy handed towards black and immigrant communities, and whether those communities are bearing the brunt of Portugal's austerity driven spending cuts.
(Warning: Contains strong language).
MON 21:00 Forensics in Crisis (b05r3tf1)
Crisis in Research
There is a growing sense of crisis inside the world of forensic science. Recent high profile cases such as Jill Dando and Amanda Knox have highlighted serious problems with the way testing is carried out.
Techniques from fingerprint analysis to DNA identification have been found wanting, as cases collapse and are overturned. Plummeting forensic spending by police forces has left a newly privatised industry in England and Wales on the brink of failure.
In this series, science journalist Linda Geddes investigates why forensic science has fallen into crisis, and what can be done to restore confidence in the field.
Programme 1:
The UK was once a world leader in forensic research, with DNA fingerprinting invented at the University of Leicester in 1984, a technique which revolutionised the investigation of crime.
Now forensic scientists claim we are falling dangerously behind the rest of the world in terms of research and development, relying on outdated equipment and unvalidated techniques.
Linda Geddes hears from leading researchers who are speaking out to try and prevent more miscarriages of justice.
Producer: Michelle Martin.
MON 21:30 Start the Week (b05rnx7f)
[Repeat of broadcast at
09:00 today]
MON 21:58 Weather (b05rkpxj)
The latest weather forecast.
MON 22:00 The World Tonight (b05s2pbk)
Nepal welcomes aid workers in the aftermath of the 7.9 magnitude earthquake.
8 million people now said to have been affected by devastation of Saturday's quake
MON 22:45 The History of the Peloponnesian War (b065ssqt)
War Begins
'My work is not a piece of writing designed to meet the taste of an immediate public, but was done to last for ever,' Thucydides
Ancient Greek historian Thucydides' spellbinding first-hand account chronicles the devastating 27-year-long war between Athens and Sparta during the 5th century BC. It was a life-and-death struggle that reshaped the face of ancient Greece and pitted Athenian democracy against brutal Spartan militarism.
Thucydides himself was an Athenian aristocrat and general who went on to record what he saw as the greatest war of all time, applying a passion for accuracy and a contempt for myth admired by historians today. Looking at why nations go to war, what makes a great leader, and whether might can be better than right, he became the father of modern Realpolitik. His influence fed into the works of Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbs and the politics of the Cold War and beyond.
Thucydides' masterful account of the end of Greece's Golden Age, depicts an age of revolution, sea battles, military alliances, plague and massacre, but also great bravery and some of the greatest political orations of all time.
Today: With Spartan distrust of the rising power of Athens, is war inevitable?
Abridger: Tom Holland is an award-winning novelist and historian, specialising in the classical and medieval periods. He is the author of 'Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic', which was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize, as well as 'Persian Fire', 'Millennium: The End of the World and the Forging of Christendom', 'In the Shadow of the Sword', as well as several novels. His latest non-fiction book, 'Dynasty', chronicling the Roman Emperors, will be published in 2015.
He has adapted Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides and Virgil for the BBC. His translation of Herodotus was published in 2013. In 2007, he was the winner of the Classical Association prize, awarded to 'the individual who has done most to promote the study of the language, literature and civilisation of Ancient Greece and Rome'."
Reader: David Horovitch
Producer: Justine Willett.
MON 23:00 The Vote Now Show (b05s2pbq)
Series 2
Episode 3
A series of election specials from the Now Show team. Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis host a series of six shows spread across four weeks in the lead up to the General Election. With the help of Jon Holmes, Laura Shavin, Mitch Benn, Liam Williams and special guest Danny Finklestein, they'll give their own unique take on the election news and shenanigans.
Producers; Alexandra Smith, Joe Nunnery and Rachel Wheeley.
Executive Producer Alison Vernon-Smith.
MON 23:30 Word of Mouth (b05r3w3q)
A Language Without Words
Michael Rosen & Laura Wright ask Julian Barratt of The Mighty Boosh and director Steve Oram about inventing a language for their new film, which has no dialogue but instead uses a kind of ape language.. How do you communicate without words, and how have other films and TV programmes tackled the challenge? And what does this tell us about how language works?
Producer Beth O'Dea.
TUESDAY 28 APRIL 2015
TUE 00:00 Midnight News (b05rkpys)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
TUE 00:30 Philip Glass - Words without Music (b05rnx7h)
[Repeat of broadcast at
09:45 on Monday]
TUE 00:48 Shipping Forecast (b05rkpyw)
The latest shipping forecast.
TUE 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (b05rkpyy)
BBC Radio 4 joins the BBC World Service.
TUE 05:20 Shipping Forecast (b05rkpz0)
The latest shipping forecast.
TUE 05:30 News Briefing (b05rkpz2)
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
TUE 05:43 Prayer for the Day (b05s2prl)
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with the Rev'd Dr Craig Gardiner.
TUE 05:45 Farming Today (b05s2prn)
Horsemeat, Farm Safety, Community Pubs, Dartmoor Ponies
Horsemeat is back in the news again, as police across Europe join forces to crack an illegal meat trading ring. The gang had been selling horsemeat which wasn't fit for human consumption. Twenty-six people have been arrested in the operation, which took place across seven EU countries, including Britain. Thirty-seven thousand Euros in cash was seized, along with more than eight hundred horse passports.
One in five work-related deaths take place on farmland. As Farming Today continues its week-long look at farm safety, we hear from Warwickshire farmer James Chapman, who was 23 when he lost an arm while using farm machinery. Since then, he's been awarded an MBE for his work promoting farm safety.
In the last few years, thousands of pubs have closed down in rural areas. Some villages have battled against the closures and taken on the responsibility of running their own. Anna Hill visits one village in Norfolk, where local people used new legislation to help them raise the funds to buy their pub.
Presented by Anna Hill and produced by Emma Campbell.
TUE 05:58 Tweet of the Day (b041ybhz)
Woodland Dawn Chorus
Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about British birds inspired by their calls and songs.
David Attenborough presents a dawn chorus recorded in Rutland Water. The outpouring of song is so dense that it is almost impossible to single out individual species but includes blackbirds, song thrushes, robins and newly-arrived migrants like garden warblers.
TUE 06:00 Today (b05s2x26)
Morning news and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
TUE 08:57 DEC Nepal Earthquake Appeal (b05vcdc3)
Kate Adie presents a Nepal Earthquake Appeal on behalf of the Disasters Emergency Committee.
Registered Charity No 1062638
To Give:
- Phone: 0370 60 60 900
- Post: DEC Nepal Earthquake Appeal, PO Box 999, London EC3A 3AA.
- Cheques should be made payable to 'DEC Nepal Earthquake Appeal'.
- online: www.dec.org.uk.
TUE 09:00 The Great War of Words: Peace before Annihilation? (b05s2x28)
Michael Portillo explores the possibilities for peace & protest during the Great War. The war that engulfed the world in the summer of 1914 laid bare the failure of European politicians to negotiate their way out of crisis. They weren't the only ones who failed. Pacifism & peace making had been a passionate liberal cause at the dawn of the new century. The growing power of the international labour movement had contained the threat to refuse to bear arms for a capitalist war. But the war had swept all before it. Who now would try and seek any way out of this conflict and at what cost?
Producer Mark Burman.
TUE 09:45 Philip Glass - Words without Music (b05t7k4c)
Episode 2
Funding himself by working in a Baltimore steel mill, the young Glass secures a place at Juilliard and begins his music studies in earnest. New York City in the late 1950s was a heady place, offering a range of creative opportunities. He soon found himself immersed in the city's vibrant contemporary art scene.
In this memoir, Philip Glass recalls his early mentors while reconstructing the places that helped shape his artistic consciousness.
Read by Kerry Shale
Abridger: Laurence Wareing
Producer: Kirsteen Cameron
Music details:
Track: "Metamorphosis One"
CD: Philip Glass: Solo Piano Music
Label: Sony
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in April 2015.
TUE 10:00 Woman's Hour (b05s2x2c)
The Leader of the Conservative Party - David Cameron
David Cameron talks to Jane Garvey in our final Leader interview of the Election Campaign.
Fresh from success at the 6Music Festival and her UK Tour Marika Hackman plays her new single Ophelia from her debut album "We Slept at Last"
Plus Lore Wolfson explores some of the issues raised in Monday night's Radio 4 Documentary Lore's Story. At the age of 60 her husband was diagnosed with a rare form of early onset dementia. As a doctor, he knew the prognosis: She recorded her conversations with him over his last six months. Jenni McCartney, Samaritans' Chair of Trustees, joins them to talk about what happens to those left behind and how you find meaning in such tragedy.
Presenter Jane Garvey
Producer Beverley Purcell.
TUE 10:45 15 Minute Drama (b05s2x2f)
Elizabeth von Arnim - The Enchanted April
Episode 2
By Elizabeth von Arnim
Dramatised by Vivienne Allen
Having arrived at their mediaeval castle in darkness,
Lotty and Rose wake up to the radiance of April in Italy.
Directed by Tracey Neale
An advertisement in The Times, addressed to 'Those who Appreciate Wisteria and Sunshine' is the impetus for a revelatory month for four very different women. High above the bay on the Italian Riviera stands San Salvatore, a mediaeval castle. Beckoned to this haven are Lotty, Rose, Mrs Fisher and Lady Caroline Dester, each craving escape. Lulled by the Mediterranean spirit, they gradually shed their skins and discover a harmony each of them has longed for.
TUE 11:00 Forensics in Crisis (b05s2x2h)
Crisis in the Lab
There is a growing sense of crisis inside the world of forensic science. Recent high profile cases such as Jill Dando and Amanda Knox have highlighted serious problems with the way testing is carried out.
In this series, science journalist Linda Geddes investigates why forensic science has fallen into crisis, and what can be done to restore confidence in the field.
Programme 2:
This week, Linda looks at the crisis in the laboratory. Leading experts fear that severe budget cuts, together with an increased reliance on police laboratories, could throw our criminal justice system into jeopardy.
She hears from a former police laboratory worker who says that vital tests are being missed, and visits a forensic fibre laboratory to find out why specialist techniques used to catch killers, paedophiles and rapists, are in danger of dying out.
Producer: Michelle Martin.
TUE 11:30 Soul Music (b05s2x2k)
Series 20
First Cut Is the Deepest
Long before it was a worldwide hit for Rod Stewart, the Cat Stevens song 'First Cut is the Deepest' made a name for the former Ike and Tina Turner backing singer, PP Arnold. In an interview for Soul Music she describes the emotional connection she felt to the lyrics, having emerged from an abusive marriage shortly before recording it.
Also contributing to the programme is the song's original producer, Mike Hurst. He describes how he achieved the huge 'wall of sound' production using double drums, a huge string section, and a harp instead of a guitar to play the signature riff at the the start of the track.
There are many personal stories associated with the track: Carsten Knauff recalls a childhood sweetheart - his first true love - and explains why the Cat Stevens' version brings back bitter-sweet memories for him.
Rosemarie Purdy saw PP Arnold give an extraordinary live rendition at a club in Portsmouth in 1967. Never before had she seen such a heartfelt, emotionally charged performance. It's something she's never forgotten.
The Sheryl Crow version reminds Rachel Batson of a very difficult phase in her life; it's a song she says reflects her own faith journey.
And former Radio Caroline DJ, Keith Hampshire, describes the circumstances that led to him having a No.1 hit with the song in Canada. It was the first time 'First Cut' reached No.1 anywhere in the world.
Producer: Karen Gregor.
TUE 12:00 News Summary (b05rkpz5)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
TUE 12:04 The Listeners' Election (b05rnx7t)
Housing and Population
BBC Radio 4's Listeners' Election project culminates with a week-long series of programmes. Chris Mason brings together contributions from listeners across the country on particular themes that concern them.
In this edition, some listeners explain why they think overpopulation is an issue we are foolish to ignore - it is a problem, they argue, that underpins others, from house prices through pollution to hospital waiting times.
And Chris also hears from other listeners for whom the opposite issue - underpopulation - is a more pressing question.
PRODUCERS: PHIL TINLINE AND SARAH KEATING.
TUE 12:15 You and Yours (b05s2x2p)
Call You and Yours: Did you struggle with your weight as a teenager?
We know that one in four teenagers will be clinically obese by the age of fifteen. Now new research suggests that obesity in teenagers has different causes to that in younger children. It doesn't look to be connected to the weight of their parents for example and the implication is that it needs to be tackled in new and different ways.
Did you struggle with your weight as a teenager? How did it make you feel and what might have helped at the time? Or maybe you have adolescent children who have a problem with obesity. What do you think caused it and what's it like to live with?
We want to hear your stories. Email youandyours@bbc.co.uk.
TUE 12:57 Weather (b05rkpz9)
The latest weather forecast.
TUE 13:00 World at One (b05s2x2r)
Analysis of current affairs reports, presented by Martha Kearney.
TUE 14:00 The Archers (b05rnzct)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 on Monday]
TUE 14:15 Drama (b01ljylg)
The Third Eye and the Private Eye
by David Lemon and Mark Eccleston.
Based on real events, this is the story of one of literature's greatest and most long-lived hoaxes, featuring yetis, owls and talking cats.
Directed by Marc Beeby
This is the remarkable story of one of literature's greatest hoaxes; a tale of auras and astral projection; of jealous rivals and embarrassed publishers.
According to his bestselling 1956 autobiography 'The Third Eye', Tuesday Lobsang Rampa was born into Tibetan aristocracy and chosen as a boy to become a Lama. According to others, including the private detective employed to delve into his background, he was somebody else entirely... Lobsang Rampa's books are still in print and have sold millions of copies.
TUE 15:00 Short Cuts (b05s3075)
Series 7
The Conversation
Josie Long presents stories of intimate conversations. A thirty year long conversation comes to an end, an undercover agent reveals how to flatter someone into prison and we discover the secrets of the 'dual form'.
Series Producer: Eleanor McDowall
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4
The items featured in the programme are:
With the Caterpillar
Feat. Bostjan Dvorak
Produced by Phil Smith
Colleagues
Feat. Dr Irene Pepperberg
Produced by Andrea Rangecroft
He Was So Happy to See Me
Feat. Ed Follis
Produced by Leo Hornak
99 Words
http://99words.co.uk/
Feat. Sally Potter
Beverly Eckert
Produced by Vanara Taing with interviews recorded by StoryCorps, a nonprofit dedicated to recording and collecting stories of everyday people.
www.storycorps.org.
TUE 15:30 Costing the Earth (b05s3077)
China's Water Revolution
China has powered its development with water. When it needed energy for industry it built the largest hydro-electric dams in the world. When the farmland and factories of northern China were threatened with drought an enormous canal was built to pipe supplies from the south. China has the engineering skill, the capital and the will to challenge the limits that nature sets on development. But the exploitation of China's water resources has come at a great cost, forcing millions from their homes, polluting natural lakes and rivers and pushing rare animal species to the brink of extinction.
Isabel Hilton, editor of the China Dialogue website, assesses the progress of China's water revolution and asks where its water will come from in the future. Can large-scale engineering continue to provide the answers or must government teach industry and the public to live within their means?
Producer: Alasdair Cross.
TUE 16:00 Word of Mouth (b05s3079)
Naming Family Relationships - Step, Half or 'Blended'?
Michael Rosen & Dr Laura Wright consider the names we give to our family relationships: stepmother, half-brother or "blended" family. Author and social critic Dr Wednesday Martin has strong opinions on the effects of these linguistic choices. Where do the words we use for our relatives come from and what do the choices we make say about us?
Producer Beth O'Dea.
TUE 16:30 Great Lives (b05s307c)
Series 36
Dame Helen Ghosh on James Lees-Milne
Matthew Parris's guest is Dame Helen Ghosh, Director General of the National Trust, who chooses as her Great Life James Lees-Milne who worked for the Trust between 1936 and 1966. He was responsible for acquiring many of the Trust's most iconic properties and his particular talent was his ability to persuade the aristocratic owners of the houses into handing them over to the Trust for protection. His other talent was in writing, and it is his deliciously indiscreet diaries for which many people know him.
Merlin Waterson, who was a friend of Lees-Milne's, is the expert witness.
Producer Christine Hall.
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2015.
TUE 17:00 PM (b05s307f)
With the latest news interviews, context and analysis.
TUE 18:00 Six O'Clock News (b05rkpzf)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
TUE 18:27 DEC Nepal Earthquake Appeal (b05vcdc3)
[Repeat of broadcast at
08:57 today]
TUE 18:30 The Casebook of Max and Ivan (b05s307h)
Series 1
Case #32 - Haunted Bookshop
Max and Ivan are private detectives for whom no case is too small....Sorry, for whom no fee is too small. Reece Shearsmith joins them as they investigate ghoulish goings-on in a condemned bookshop.
Driven by their love of truth, justice (and the need to pay off their terrifying landlord, Malcolm McMichaelmas), they take on crimes that no-one else would consider. In this case, they investigate a ghostly apparition that might save a condemned bookshop.
Max and Ivan - comedians and actors Max Olesker and Ivan Gonzalez - are a critically acclaimed, award-winning double act who have quickly established themselves as one of the most exciting comedy duos on the circuit. Over the course of the series they are dropped into new worlds, and have to use their skills to penetrate deep into each community. If that means Ivan dressing up as a 14 year old German girl, so be it!
Cast:
Max................Max Olesker
Ivan...............Ivan Gonzalez
Elliott..............Reece Shearsmith
Malcolm..........Lewis MacLeod
Pat Cooper....David Reed
Luna..............Jessica Ransom
Produced by Victoria Lloyd
A John Stanley production for BBC Radio 4.
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 2015.
TUE 19:00 The Archers (b05s307k)
Despite being sad to leave Brian and Jennifer's, Kate feels it's time she had her own space - and Phoebe agrees. Jennifer advises Kate to use her money for her course fees, rather than items like the hideous and expensive lamp she has bought.
Jennifer mentions that she'll be helping Kenton publicize May Day. Adam surprises Brian with his plan to try herbal leys for 15 hectares of land that have been damaged by the flood. Kate's interested and Jennifer says it will look stunning. Kate plans picnics with her Uni friends, as Brian worries about what it means for their crops and costs.
Fallon and Lynda paint the maypole as Lynda laments the state of the Village hall. Lynda shares the latest on the Ambridge Hall refurbishment - it's still drying out.
Meanwhile, Robert is busy drawing up a route for International Dawn Chorus Day next Sunday.
Fallon, Kate and Phoebe arrive at Susan's to go through wedding catering and plans - Kate reminds Fallon to ensure there are vegan and vegetarian options.
Fallon's pleased that Jennifer's making a special appearance for May Day. Lynda wishes that people would bear in mind that SAVE is a community campaign. Jennifer's main concern, however, is to get SAVE's message out to as many people as possible. Lynda couldn't agree more.
TUE 19:15 Front Row (b05s307m)
Alan Parker, The Game, Eleanor Rees
Alan Parker made his name with the much loved film Bugsy Malone, which is rarely seen in professional theatre as he has been reluctant to grant permission, until now. Bugsy Malone opens tonight at the newly developed Lyric Hammersmith, and Alan and artistic director Sean Holmes discuss the new production.
The Game is a new spy thriller series on BBC Two, set in 1970s London, when a defecting KGB agent reveals a Soviet plot named Operation Glass. Espionage writer Chris Morgan Jones gives his verdict.
Poet Eleanor Rees talks about her latest collection, Blood Child. Filled with mysterious transformations and supernatural elements, including ghosts, mermaids and women turning into birds, the poetry has the tone of folk ballads or fairy tales.
Presenter : Kirsty Lang
Producer : Dymphna Flynn.
TUE 19:45 15 Minute Drama (b05s2x2f)
[Repeat of broadcast at
10:45 today]
TUE 20:00 The Rape of Berlin (b05sfg37)
As Europe was being liberated from Fascism at the end of World War II, one of the most infamous incidents of mass rape in history was underway. Lucy Ash investigates a story that slipped under the official radar.
Winston Churchill spoke for many when he saluted the Soviet army as heroes. Yet the widespread sexual violence - in part, revenge for the devastating Nazi invasion of the USSR - went unacknowledged. Some estimate there were 100,000 rapes in Berlin alone but, although no secret, social stigma, political repression, guilt and fear of revisionism ensured that for decades the subject was untouchable in Germany. Today it's still an explosive topic - virtually taboo in Putin's Russia. Renewed East-West divisions over the conflict in Ukraine are exposing to what extent the 'Great Patriotic War', as Russians call it, is unfinished business.
Lucy travels first to Moscow and then to Berlin to meet a veteran and a rape survivor. She discovers letters, abortion records and two remarkably candid diaries from spring 1945: one by a young Red Army officer, and the other by a female German journalist, which caused outrage when it was first published in German in 1959, but rocketed to the bestseller lists in 2003. We confront multiple aspects to the story: that as well as German rape victims there were also the Soviet, Polish and Jewish women who had just been freed from Nazi camps; that sexual violence was committed in different ways on all sides, by the Wehrmacht, the Red Army and the Western Allies; and that sexual encounters ranged from the most brutal gang rape to prostitution to romances across enemy lines.
Producer: Dorothy Feaver
Image credit: German-Russian Museum Berlin-Karlshorst, photo correspondent Timofey Melnik.
TUE 20:40 In Touch (b05s310k)
Election Special
An election special in which Peter White talks to Ian Macrae from Disability Now, who gives an overview of what the major parties' manifestos are offering blind people. Andrew Scallan from the Electoral Commission explains what visually-impaired people can expect by way of access to polling stations and ballot papers. Chris Danielsen from the National Federation of the Blind talks about e-voting which is available to blind people like himself, in America.
Producer: Cheryl Gabriel.
TUE 21:00 All in the Mind (b05s310m)
As the general election approaches, Claudia Hammond finds out who is saying what about mental health. She talks to BBC health care and social affairs analyst, Emily Craig, who has been through the parties' manifestos. Claudia meets Matt Haig to discuss his new book, a surprise bestseller about his recovery from depression; and psychopharmacologist, Val Curran talks about her drug trial to tackle cannabis addiction using an ingredient found in the older versions of the drug, cannabidiol. And psychologists from Ohio have been trying to find out why paracetamol can blunt both positive and negative emotions. Do physical and emotional pain share the same brain systems?
TUE 21:30 The Great War of Words: Peace before Annihilation? (b05s2x28)
[Repeat of broadcast at
09:00 today]
TUE 21:58 Weather (b05rkpzj)
The latest weather forecast.
TUE 22:00 The World Tonight (b05s310p)
UK economic growth slows ahead of general election.
Official figures show economy grew 0.3 per cent, half the rate of previous 3 months.
TUE 22:45 The History of the Peloponnesian War (b05s310r)
From Funerals to Plague
'My work is not a piece of writing designed to meet the taste of an immediate public, but was done to last for ever,' Thucydides
Ancient Greek historian Thucydides' masterful first-hand account of the three decades of war between Athens and Sparta during the 5th century BC. It was a life-and-death struggle that reshaped the face of ancient Greece and pitted Athenian democracy against brutal Spartan militarism.
Thucydides himself was an Athenian aristocrat and general who went on to chronicle what he saw as the greatest and most devastating war of all time, applying a passion for accuracy and a contempt for myth admired by historians and journalists today. As the father of modern Realpolitik, his influence fed into the works of Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbs and the politics of the Cold War and beyond.
Thucydides' masterful account of the end of Greece's Golden Age, depicts an age of revolution, sea battles, military alliances, plague and massacre, but also great bravery and some of the greatest political oratory of all time.
Today: from the glorification to the devastation of Athens - Pericles' great funeral speech and the plague that followed.
Abridger: Tom Holland is an award-winning novelist and historian, specialising in the classical and medieval periods, who has adapted Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides and Virgil for the BBC.
Reader: David Horovitch
Producer: Justine Willett.
TUE 23:00 Tom Wrigglesworth: Utterly at Odds with the Universe (b04g8rhd)
Adapted from his sell-out Edinburgh show Tom Wrigglesworth takes an emotional journey exploring his profound relationship with his granddad, and comes to fully understand the influence he has had on his life.
TUE 23:30 Recycled Radio (b02m7fzh)
Series 1
Money
What connects Ken Clarke, Chris Moyles, and Sue MacGregor, along with Brenda Blethyn, Milton Friedman and The Goons?
The answer is money - courtesy of Recycled Radio.
We've chopped, looped and teased tales as diverse as Aesop's fable about the goose that lay the golden egg to Ian Duncan Smith being asked to live on £53 a week.
There's music from Buddy Ella and the Johnsons, Phoenix, and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. John Major claims that lottery fever will make Britain a better place to live; Melvyn Bragg asks if money is the root of all evil; and the American economist Milton Friedman asks what is greed.
"Of course none of us are greedy," he says, "it's only the other fellow who is greedy."
Producer: Miles Warde
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2013.
WEDNESDAY 29 APRIL 2015
WED 00:00 Midnight News (b05rkq0s)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
WED 00:30 Philip Glass - Words without Music (b05t7k4c)
[Repeat of broadcast at
09:45 on Tuesday]
WED 00:48 Shipping Forecast (b05rkq0w)
The latest shipping forecast.
WED 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (b05rkq0y)
BBC Radio 4 joins the BBC World Service.
WED 05:20 Shipping Forecast (b05rkq10)
The latest shipping forecast.
WED 05:30 News Briefing (b05rkq13)
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
WED 05:43 Prayer for the Day (b05s3375)
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with the Rev'd Dr Craig Gardiner.
WED 05:45 Farming Today (b05s3377)
Surviving a Cow Attack, Solar Farm Theft, Asparagus Picking
We hear from a farmer who sustained devastating injuries when attacked by a cow. There's been a spike in the number of thefts from solar farms in the first quarter of this year. Sybil Ruscoe goes asparagus picking.
Presented by Sybil Ruscoe and produced by Beatrice Fenton.
WED 05:58 Tweet of the Day (b041yd42)
Heather Moorland Dawn Chorus
Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about British birds inspired by their calls and songs.
David Attenborough presents the second of four recordings marking the dawn chorus, this time the heather moors of Allendale in Northumberland. Songs featured are that of the curlew, skylark, golden plover and redshank.
WED 06:00 Today (b05s3379)
Morning news and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
WED 09:00 Woman's Hour (b05s33xg)
The Woman's Hour Election Debate
Jenni Murray and Jane Garvey present a specially extended, live edition of Woman's Hour. Leading women from Great Britain's seven major political parties debate some of the key issues ahead of next week's General Election.
Theresa May, Conservative Party; Harriet Harman, Labour Party; Baroness Sal Brinton, Liberal Democrats; Diane James, UKIP; Eilidh Whiteford, SNP; Leanne Wood, Plaid Cymru; and, Caroline Lucas, Green Party
Call with your questions on 03700 100 444.
Presenters: Jenni Murray and Jane Garvey
Producer: Ruth Watts.
WED 10:45 15 Minute Drama (b05s33xj)
Elizabeth von Arnim - The Enchanted April
Episode 3
By Elizabeth Von Arnim
Dramatised by Vivienne Allen
Lotty and Rose begin to bask in the delicate warmth and beautiful fragrance of San Salvatore but Mrs Fisher is still finding things to try her patience and Scrap still wants to hide herself away.
Directed by Tracey Neale
An advertisement in The Times, addressed to 'Those who Appreciate Wisteria and Sunshine' is the impetus for a revelatory month for four very different women. High above the bay on the Italian Riviera stands San Salvatore, a mediaeval castle. Beckoned to this haven are Lotty, Rose, Mrs Fisher and Lady Caroline Dester, each craving escape. Lulled by the Mediterranean spirit, they gradually.
WED 11:00 Lives in a Landscape (b05s35wr)
Series 19
Herd under the Hammer
Alan Dein meets farmer Steve Graham as he sells his herd of 1000 dairy cows - the largest UK sale this year. Having woken at dawn for 35 years to milk the cows, he has decided to sell - but how will he adjust to life without them?
Steve's life has been governed by the relentless pattern of milking twice a day, and the pressures of rearing the cows from birth and caring for them throughout their lives. On his farm in Devon, he says "There are a lot easier ways of making money than milking cows. But if you don't look after them, they won't look after you."
Alan joins Steve on the farm on the final days with his herd and travels with him to the market. When the cows hit the ring, it is not just them being judged, but Steve's reputation on the line.
At auction, Alan hears from fellow farmers about the state of the dairy industry and the pressures put upon them by a falling milk price. But Steve reveals that his reasons for leaving the industry are more personal.
Producer: Clare Walker.
WED 11:30 Thanks a Lot, Milton Jones! (b03y152p)
Series 1
Big Farmer
Mention Milton Jones to most people and the first thing they think is 'Help!'.
King of the one-liners, Milton Jones returns BBC to Radio 4 for an amazing 10th series in a new format where he has decided to set himself up as a man who can help anyone anywhere - whether they need it or not. Because, in his own words, "No problem too problemy".
But each week, Milton and his trusty assistant Anton set out to help people and soon find they're embroiled in a new adventure. So when you're close to the edge, then Milton can give you a push.
This week, Milton Jones is asked for help because there are ugly rumours about the local farm going too far with its GM crops. At least, that's what the vegetables are saying.
Written by Milton with James Cary ("Bluestone 42", "Miranda") and Dan Evans (who co-wrote Milton's Channel 4 show "House Of Rooms") the man they call "Britain's funniest Milton," returns to the radio with a fully-working cast and a shipload of new jokes.
The cast includes regulars Tom Goodman-Hill ("Spamalot", "Mr. Selfridge") as the ever-faithful Anton, and Dan Tetsell ("Newsjack"), and features the one and only Josie Lawrence working with Milton for the first time.
Producer David Tyler's radio credits include Armando Iannucci's Charm Offensive, Cabin Pressure, Bigipedia, Another Case Of Milton Jones, Jeremy Hardy Speaks To The Nation, The Brig Society, Giles Wemmbley Hogg Goes Off, The 99p Challenge, The Castle, The 3rd Degree and even, going back a bit, Radio Active.
Produced and Directed by David Tyler
A Pozzitive production for BBC Radio 4.
WED 12:00 News Summary (b05rkq1b)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
WED 12:04 The Listeners' Election (b05sjs33)
Countryside and Farmland
BBC Radio 4's Listeners' Election project culminates with a week-long series of programmes. Chris Mason brings together contributions from listeners across the country on particular themes that concern them.
In this edition, some listeners explain why they think climate change is an under-rated political issue.
But this leads Chris on to contributions from other listeners which raise a more close-up question about the environment: which is more valuable - farmland or the countryside?
PRODUCERS: PHIL TINLINE AND SARAH KEATING.
WED 12:15 You and Yours (b05s35wt)
Visiting Hours, Hot Water Charges, Fake Tan, 3D TV
The hospitals scrapping visiting hours to allow families in whenever they want. How does it work in practice and what does it mean for patient care?
We're used to paying for tea and coffee on board trains but one operator is charging more than £2 for a simple cup of hot water. How do they justify the price?
And we explore the reasons behind a significant drop in sales of fake tanning products.
Presenter: Winifred Robinson
Producer: Jon Douglas.
WED 12:57 Weather (b05rkq1g)
The latest weather forecast.
WED 13:00 World at One (b05s35ww)
Rigorous analysis of current affairs with Martha Kearney, plus Election Call with Plaid Cymru leader, Leanne Wood.
Editor: Nick Sutton.
WED 14:00 The Archers (b05s307k)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 on Tuesday]
WED 14:15 Drama (b05s35wy)
13A, 13B
When Jess turns up in the seat next to Phil on a flight to Rome, it soon becomes clear that it's not a coincidence. But even the best-laid plans can be derailed by mysterious strangers and a fear of flying. Romcom by award-winning playwright Peter Souter.
Director Alison Hindell
Peter Souter's best-known radio play is Goldfish Girl which won both the Sony Gold and the Tinniswood Award. He has written extensively for Radio 4 and for ITV wrote Married, Single, Other. His debut stageplay Hello/Goodbye was produced at the Hampstead Theatre and was a development of a radio play called That's Mine, This is Yours.
Ruth Jones became a household name starring in Gavin and Stacey which she co-wrote with James Corden. Previously she had appeared in many radio and stage plays and featured in Fat Friends on ITV for which she subsequently also wrote. She is currently filming the fourth series of Stella which she created, stars in and produces for Sky.
Stephen Tompkinson began his acting career on radio and rapidly became a well-known tv star in Ballykissangel. He has rarely been absent from television since, most recently starring in DCI Banks on ITV, as well as making frequent radio and stage appearances including Spamalot and A Book by Lester Tricklebank.
BBC Cymru Wales production.
WED 15:00 Money Box Live (b05s36cd)
Wills and Inheritance Tax
Planning a will or puzzled by inheritance tax? To talk to Paul Lewis and guests, call 03700 100 444 from
1pm to
3.30pm on Wednesday or e-mail moneybox@bbc.co.uk now.
Around 26 million UK adults do not have a will and without one you will have no say in who benefits from your money and property after your death.
If you are living as a couple but are unmarried and not in a civil partnership, your partner may receive nothing.
Writing a will allows you to decide what will happen to your home and possessions and who will be responsible for carrying out your wishes.
Planning now can also mean that your beneficiaries do not pay too much inheritance tax.
Tax rules allow you to give away some of your assets tax-free, but how much, who to and when?
If you have a question about how to leave your assets to your nearest and dearest Paul Lewis and guests will be ready to help on Wednesday.
Waiting to answer your questions will be:
Alan Barr, Partner, Brodies in Edinburgh
Jenny Bird, Solicitor, Russell-Cooke
Gary Rycroft, Solicitor, Joseph A Jones & Co
Call 03700 100 444 from
1pm to
3.30pm on Wednesday or e-mail your question to moneybox@bbc.co.uk now. Standard geographic call charges apply.
WED 15:30 All in the Mind (b05s310m)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 on Tuesday]
WED 16:00 Thinking Allowed (b05s36cg)
Post Traumatic Stress; Managing Beds in the NHS
Post traumatic stress in male combat veterans: Laurie Taylor talks to Nick Caddick, Research Assistant at Loughborough University, and co-author of a study exploring the relationship between masculinity, militarism and mental health. Do conventional notions of male bravery and resilience impede soldiers' ability to access to support? They're joined by Anthony King, Professor in Sociology at the University of Exeter.
Also, managing beds in the NHS. Pressure on beds is an acute challenge to the health service.
Davina Allen, Professor of Healthcare Organisation at Cardiff University, discusses her study into bed utilisation from the point of view of UK hospital nurses. How is access to beds granted or denied and who decides?
Producer: Natalia Fernandez.
WED 16:30 The Media Show (b05s36cj)
Top Gear's future, The Sun's 'Whistleblower Charter', Headline-Writing
Kim Shillinglaw, Controller of BBC 2 and BBC 4, is the BBC executive tasked with securing the future of Top Gear. In her first interview for The Media Show, Steve Hewlett asks her how she will save the network's 'baby', now that Jeremy Clarkson and executive producer Andy Wilman have left, and whether Hammond and May will be appearing next season. He also asks her about the remit of the channel, and how to capture a younger audience.
Under the banner of 'A Whistleblower's Charter,' The Sun has created a safe space online to allow whistleblowers to share stories with journalists without fear of retribution. Using encryption software Tor, Sun Secure Drop is aimed at those who might otherwise be reluctant to leak information. Dominic Ponsford, Editor of Press Gazette, joins Steve to discuss what the charter might mean for newsgathering, at a time when powers like RIPA are being used to access journalists' phone records.
In the golden age of headline writing, the purpose of a title writ large was to get a paper noticed on a newsstand, rather than in a newsfeed. For those in the business of reporting and selling news, that platform has been replaced several times over by desktops, laptops, smartphones, tablets and now wearable technology. Steve talks to John Perry of The Sun about what works on the front page, and considers the ever evolving digital consumption of news with Emily Bell, director of Tow Centre for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, and Buzz Feed UK editor Luke Lewis.
Producer: Katy Takatsuki.
WED 17:00 PM (b05s36cl)
Eddie Mair with interviews, context and analysis.
WED 18:00 Six O'Clock News (b05rkq1p)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
WED 18:30 Clare in the Community (b03nt9vm)
Series 9
Stand By Your Man
Clare has mysteriously abandoned her honeymoon and come back to work at Sparrowhawk Family Centre. The rest of the social workers have an unfortunate experience on a community project, and Brian struggles to enjoy a holiday on his own.
Sally Phillips is Clare Barker the social worker who has all the right jargon but never a practical solution.
A control freak, Clare likes nothing better than interfering in other people's lives on both a professional and personal basis. Clare is in her 30s, white, middle class and heterosexual, all of which are occasional causes of discomfort to her.
Clare continually struggles to control both her professional and private life.
In today's Big Society there are plenty of challenges out there for an involved, caring social worker. Or even Clare.
Written by Harry Venning and David Ramsden.
Clare ...... Sally Phillips
Brian ...... Alex Lowe
Jill ...... Nina Conti
Petra ...... Nina Conti
Ray ...... Richard Lumsden
Helen ...... Liza Tarbuck
Libby ...... Sarah Kendall
Joan ...... Sarah Thom
Queenie ...... Hannah Gordon
Hazel ...... Hannah Gordon
Ben ...... John Norton
Producer: Alexandra Smith.
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in January 2014.
WED 19:00 The Archers (b05s385g)
Jennifer heads to her SAVE meeting and drops Tony at the Lodge for a good catch up with Peggy. Peggy's pleased to see Tom active again in village life, after the trauma of his wedding day. Peggy wants to give Ed and Emma present as well. They discuss Peggy's will. Tony agrees to be executor. Peggy then surprises Tony with a gift - a vintage model car, which he so craved as a child. Helen later admires it with him, as Henry plays football with his Grandad.
Rob taunts Jess now that it's proved he's not her baby's father. Jess tries to get Rob to say that he loved her once. Maybe, he says coldly - but he really can't remember. Jess should speak to his mother who will by now have become a doting grandmother to the boy. Bitter but vulnerable Jess threatens to tell Helen about their one night stand together. However, she has tried that before and Helen didn't believe her. That night was a one-off, says Rob - Jess can't prove anything. She should expect a call from Rob's solicitor about their divorce and should never call Rob again.
Triumphant Rob tells Helen to get dressed up. They're going out to celebrate finally being free of Jess. Now they can press ahead with wedding plans.
WED 19:15 Front Row (b05s385j)
Election play The Vote, Anthony Doerr, WWII drama Home Fires, Samba reviewed
Playwright James Graham and director Josie Rourke discuss their play The Vote, which takes place during the final 90 minutes of the election at a fictional polling station. The play is going to broadcast live on TV on election night. James and Josie tell Kirsty about the logistical challenges this involves.
Home Fires is a new ITV drama about a group of women in a Cheshire village on the brink of World War II. Following the role the Women's Institute played in war time, it stars Samantha Bond and Francesca Annis. Dr Lara Feigel reviews.
Anthony Doerr talks about his novel, All the Light We Cannot See, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction last week. The book tells the story of two children caught up in the Second World War and the unlikely events that bring them together.
Kate Muir reviews Samba, the latest film from the French team behind the hit comedy The Intouchables. Starring Omar Sy and Charlotte Gainsbourg the film explores the journey of a Senegalese migrant in Paris who falls foul of the authorities and struggles to remain in the country with the help of his immigration officer.
Presenter: Kirsty Lang
Producer: Olivia Skinner.
WED 19:45 15 Minute Drama (b05s33xj)
[Repeat of broadcast at
10:45 today]
WED 20:00 Two Rooms (b05s385x)
Fi Glover hosts a unique experiment as two groups of people share their contrasting experiences, and voice their inner concerns about the way society is developing, as Britain faces arguably the most unpredictable election of modern times.
In the third programme, the groups consider whether they feel the current levels of immigration bring benefits or hindrance to themselves and to Britain.
Producer: Emma Jarvis
Series Producer: David Prest
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4.
WED 20:45 Four Thought (b05s3c5l)
Agata Pyzik
Agata Pyzik, Polish cultural critic and author of "Poor But Sexy", reflects on divisions between Eastern Europe and the West and the prejudice she sees against Eastern European migrants. "I don't want to feel I have to conceal my history in order to pass for somebody worthwhile in English conversation, or to be ashamed that my country was historically poorer or was a part of the Eastern bloc," she says.
Producer: Sheila Cook.
WED 21:00 Costing the Earth (b05s3077)
[Repeat of broadcast at
15:30 on Tuesday]
WED 21:30 Midweek (b05vc0hb)
Bruce Fogle, Mary Black, Gillian Potts
Gillian Potts is a former army officer and civil servant turned amateur garden designer. She is taking part in BBC television's The Great Chelsea Garden Challenge which offers one amateur designer the chance to design and build a garden on the Main Avenue at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. The Great Chelsea Garden Challenge is broadcast on BBC Two.
Bruce Fogle is an author and clinical veterinarian who co-founded Hearing Dogs for Deaf People. Born and raised in Toronto, he spent holidays by Lake Chemong, Ontario. In his memoir, Barefoot at the Lake, he recalls the summer of 1954 when he discovered the beauty and complexity of the natural world. Barefoot at the Lake is published by September Publishing.
Mary Black is a singer who has specialised in performing and recording Irish music for the last 30 years. She has just embarked on the Last Call Tour, her final tour outside of Ireland although she will continue to record and perform in her home country. Born in Dublin into a musical family, Mary has performed with Emmylou Harris; Joan Baez and Van Morrison as well as her siblings in The Black Family. Mary Black is on the Last Call Tour.
Producer: Paula McGinley.
WED 22:00 The World Tonight (b05s3c5n)
Election - Scotland Special
Ritula Shah hosts a special election programme from Glasgow.
She journeys down the Clyde to find out why the SNP seem so wildly popular, what's gone wrong for Labour - and what it means for the Union.
WED 22:45 The History of the Peloponnesian War (b05s3c5q)
Spartan Surrender at Pylos
'My work is not a piece of writing designed to meet the taste of an immediate public, but was done to last for ever,' Thucydides
Ancient Greek historian Thucydides' masterful first-hand account chronicles the devastating wars between Athens and Sparta during the 5th century BC. It was a life-and-death struggle that reshaped the face of ancient Greece and pitted Athenian democracy against Spartan militarism.
Thucydides himself was an Athenian aristocrat and general who went on to record what he saw as the greatest war of all time, applying a passion for accuracy and a contempt for myth admired by historians today. And as father of modern Realpolitik, his influence fed into the works of Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbs and the politics of the Cold War and beyond.
Today: the shocking defeat of the Spartans on the island of Pylos.
Abridger: Tom Holland
Reader: David Horovitch
Producer: Justine Willett.
WED 23:00 Jigsaw (b01r5pxx)
Series 1
Episode 4
Dan Antopolski, Nat Luurtsema and Tom Craine piece together a selection of silly, clever, dark sketches. Produced by Colin Anderson.
WED 23:15 The Music Teacher (b03bfkcx)
Series 3
Episode 4
Richie Webb returns as multi-instrumentalist music teacher Nigel Penny.
Nigel is somewhat distracted from his teaching duties by his temporary homelessness, his illegally parked rented transit van and Arts Centre Manager Belinda's increased security measures.
Directed by Nick Walker
Audio production by Matt Katz
Written and produced by Richie Webb
A Top Dog production for BBC Radio 4.
WED 23:30 Recycled Radio (b05413rw)
Series 3
Recycled: Bohemia
Welcome to the chopped up, looped up, sped up world of Recycled Radio, introduced by cartoonist Gerald Scarfe. Follow him down down the rabbit hole as we delve into the archives in search of bohemia, with a small "b".
Way back when, in the darkest depths of November 2014, David Hockney said something on Radio 4's Today programme: "That's what's gone now, bohemia's gone..."
Expect profound reflections on the nature of Jeremy Paxman's beard, hear Jeffrey Bernard exploring the nature of the advertising executive, picture Ed Balls playing the piano, and is that Andrew Marr contemplating the size of Virginia Woolf's bed?
What has any of this got to do with bohemia? What has bohemia got to do with anything else?
Recycled Radio might explain.
Producer: Polly Weston
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2015.
THURSDAY 30 APRIL 2015
THU 00:00 Midnight News (b05rkq2v)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
THU 00:30 Philip Glass - Words without Music (b05t7kbz)
Episode 3
Philip Glass recalls his early mentors while reconstructing the places that helped shape his artistic consciousness.
In the mid-1960s, and keen to expand his musical knowledge further, Glass went to Paris to study with the acclaimed teacher of musical composition Nadia Boulanger. While there, and working with the likes of Samuel Beckett, he developed his life-long interest in composing music for theatre.
Memoir read by Kerry Shale.
Abridger: Laurence Wareing
Producer: Kirsteen Cameron
Music details:
Track: "Facades"
CD: Glassworks
Label: CBS
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in April 2015.
THU 00:48 Shipping Forecast (b05rkq2y)
The latest shipping forecast.
THU 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (b05rkq30)
BBC Radio 4 joins the BBC World Service.
THU 05:20 Shipping Forecast (b05rkq32)
The latest shipping forecast.
THU 05:30 News Briefing (b05rkq34)
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
THU 05:43 Prayer for the Day (b05s3d2c)
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with the Rev'd Dr Craig Gardiner.
THU 05:45 Farming Today (b05s3gyq)
Fracking and National Parks, The Moo Shoe, Teaching Farm Safety
Most of Britain's National Parks are unsuitable for fracking for shale gas, according to a report published today. Geologists at Durham University have studied the rock beneath all 15 parks, and found that only four have the right conditions - the North York Moors, Peak District, South Downs and Yorkshire Dales.
Although farming remains one of the Uk's most dangerous occupations any mention of a farm safety course is likely to inspire groans rather than enthusiasm. All this week we're looking at the agricultural industry's safety record, and ways of improving it. The NFU Mutual's Farm Safety Foundation has decided to turn what was once a dry lecture with occasional diagrams into an immersive experience for agricultural students . It's devised a day training event specially for colleges.... The first one was held at Moreton Morrell College in Warwickshire.
And the Moo Shoe - a simple idea that could save farmers thousands of pounds. And it is pretty much what it sounds - a shoe for cattle. It's been designed by students in Ireland, and has won an innovation competition. The idea is that putting rubber shoes on cows will keep out bacteria and the wet and so help reduce lameness.
Presented by Charlotte Smith and produced by Mark Smalley.
THU 05:58 Tweet of the Day (b042300k)
Wetland Dawn Chorus
Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about British birds inspired by their calls and songs.
David Attenborough presents the third of four recordings marking Dawn Chorus Day: a dawn chorus from the marshes of North Warren in Suffolk. On clear moonlit nights the chorus can be an almost continuous chatter and includes reed and sedge warblers, reed bunting and even a bittern, with its booming, foghorn-like call.
THU 06:00 Today (b05s3gys)
Morning news and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
THU 09:00 In Our Time (b05s3gyv)
The Earth's Core
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Earth's Core. The inner core is an extremely dense, solid ball of iron and nickel, the size of the Moon, while the outer core is a flowing liquid, the size of Mars. Thanks to the magnetic fields produced within the core, life on Earth is possible. The magnetosphere protects the Earth from much of the Sun's radiation and the flow of particles which would otherwise strip away the atmosphere. The precise structure of the core and its properties have been fascinating scientists from the Renaissance. Recent seismographs show the picture is even more complex than we might have imagined, with suggestions that the core is spinning at a different speed and on a different axis from the surface.
With
Stephen Blundell
Professor of Physics and Fellow of Mansfield College at the University of Oxford
Arwen Deuss
Associate Professor in Seismology at Utrecht University
and
Simon Redfern
Professor of Mineral Physics at the University of Cambridge
Producer: Simon Tillotson.
THU 09:45 Philip Glass - Words without Music (b05t7kdv)
Episode 4
After decades working day jobs to fund his music, Philip Glass finally broke through with the opera "Einstein on the Beach".
Collaborating with director Robert Wilson, the five-hour production sold out each night during its 1976 European and American tour and made the pair's careers.
American composer, Philip Glass's memoir read by Kerry Shale.
Abridger: Laurence Wareing
Producer: Kirsteen Cameron
Music details:
Track: “Knee Play 1”
CD: Glass: Einstein on the Beach
Label: Sony Classical
Track: “Knee Play 3”
CD: Glass: Einstein on the Beach
Label: Sony Classical
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in April 2015.
THU 10:00 Woman's Hour (b05s3gyy)
Sandi Toksvig, Midwife Training, Sexism in the City
After nine years presenting the News Quiz on Radio 4 Sandi Toksvig has decided to step down. Jenni talks to her about why she's made the decision now and what she hopes to go on and do in the future. Childhood sexual abuse affects approximately 20% of women but is often hidden in society and shrouded in silence. Dr Elsa Montgomery has talked to female survivors about their experiences of ante-natal care and childbirth, and is working on a way to help maternity care more sensitive to their needs.
Ahead of an edition of The Report; Sexism in the City which follows the case of Svetlana Lokhova, a former banker who won a massive £3.2 million at an employment tribunal - the programme asks why such cases still happen? Plus, over 80% of women in the UK worry about getting breast cancer yet less than 20% check themselves once a week and even if they do, many admit not knowing what they're looking for. What can women do to improve the statistics? And reporter Sarah Swadling catches up with Jane Howorth from the British Hen Welfare Trust - which has 30 centres across the country, run by 300 volunteers - as she prepares for some new arrivals.
THU 10:45 15 Minute Drama (b05s3gz0)
Elizabeth von Arnim - The Enchanted April
Episode 4
By Elizabeth von Arnim
Dramatised by Vivienne Allen
San Salvatore is working its magic on Mellersh too and he in turn has managed to charm both Scrap and Mrs Fisher as the beautiful golden days drop gently one by one.
Directed by Tracey Neale
An advertisement in The Times, addressed to 'Those who Appreciate Wisteria and Sunshine' is the impetus for a revelatory month for four very different women. High above the bay on the Italian Riviera stands San Salvatore, a mediaeval castle. Beckoned to this haven are Lotty, Rose, Mrs Fisher and Lady Caroline Dester, each craving escape. Lulled by the Mediterranean spirit, they gradually.
THU 11:00 Crossing Continents (b05s3gz2)
Wrestling out of Poverty
In rural India, wrestling often attracts larger crowds than cricket. And for poor, farming communities in Maharashtra, a wrestler in the family can also mean a ticket out of poverty. For Crossing Continents, Rupa Jha meets the young fighters and their families, and explores how this ancient sport is breaking down caste barriers. Linda Pressly producing.
THU 11:30 My Mother's Sari (b05s3gz4)
Every morning, Dr. Shahidha Bari dresses for work and travels into London on a packed tube looking much like the people around her. But, as the child of immigrants growing up in a Bengali Muslim household in southeast England, she has also been accustomed to wearing entirely different sorts of clothes, reflective of her particular ancestry and cultural traditions.
These days, stacks of elaborate silk saris, embroidered shawls and ornate bangles languish in a remote part of her wardrobe, now only rarely worn at weddings and religious ceremonies. But, in many ways, these are the most precious items of clothing she owns, profoundly bound up with memory and meaning, and connecting her to a life from which she has inevitably grown apart. Shahidha's most vivid recollections of her childhood are those of her mother bringing up 6 boisterous young children, always immaculately dressed in pressed and pleated saris of varied colours, textures and designs.
In this programme, Shahidha traces the story of the sari, explores how it feels to wear one and asks what it meant for women like her mother. She talks with a range of women, including broadcaster Mishal Husain and writer Monica Ali about their experiences. And she explores the powerful, painful, sometimes complicated relationships between mother and daughters, and discovers the unexpected ways in which clothing can be imprinted with feelings of nostalgia, love and loss, whichever background we come from.
Producer Mark Rickards.
THU 12:00 News Summary (b05rkq37)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
THU 12:04 The Listeners' Election (b05sjrvs)
Disengagement and Young Adults
BBC Radio 4's Listeners' Election project culminates with a week-long series of programmes. Chris Mason brings together contributions from listeners across the country on particular themes that concern them.
In this edition, one older listener explain she thinks politics in Britain is biased against the young.
And this prompts Chris to talk to some of those young people the BBC is following as part of 'Generation 2015'. Why are some so engaged in politics, but many so disconnected? What really lies at the root of this? Who is at fault? And how can it be tackled?
PRODUCERS: PHIL TINLINE AND SARAH KEATING.
THU 12:15 You and Yours (b05s3gz6)
Self-Checkout, Borrowing from Relatives, Home Adaptations
The backlash against the self-service till is starting. The supermarket, Morrisons, says it is to bring back staffed express tills, because its research has found some of its customers prefer not to use them. Their research found two-thirds of shoppers worry they will hold up queues in store, as they wait for staff to override machines.
Borrowing from friends and family is on the rise. We now owe around a quarter of a billion pounds to loved ones. We hear the perks and pitfalls of borrowing from those you know.
And the families who have moved into newly-built homes - but have been waiting more than seven months for a phone and internet connection.
Presented by Winifred Robinson
Produced by Natalie Donovan.
THU 12:57 Weather (b05rkq39)
The latest weather forecast.
THU 13:00 World at One (b05s3gz8)
Rigorous analysis of current affairs with Martha Kearney, plus Election Call with The Labour Party's Yvette Cooper.
Editor: Nick Sutton.
THU 14:00 The Archers (b05s385g)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 on Wednesday]
THU 14:15 Drama (b05s3gzb)
Credit Card Baby
Sally sometimes wonders if she has inadvertently put a spell on Sean, the kind, diligent man who has made her life so suddenly and unexpectedly great. But she's five years older than his forty, and he wants to be a father. It took them so long to find each other, and now she's worried she's going to let him down over something so significant: a baby.
The only option, according to their pompous, God-like gynaecologist, is to try using a donor egg from a Spanish clinic, where donors and eggs are plentiful.
The Spanish egg belongs to Ines, who understands the need for children. She and her husband Rai are suffering from Spain's economic troubles and selling her DNA seems like a solution. But she also has a generous spirit.
Annie Caulfield's drama parallels these two women's thoughts and experiences: they never meet but are closely bound together.
Funny, poignant and true.
THU 15:00 Open Country (b05s3gzd)
Bristol Green City
In 1985, Bristol's Brandon Hill became the UK's first ever urban nature reserve. 30 years on, Helen Mark discovers how Avon Wildlife Trust is continuing this tradition of environmental trend setting by creating 'wildlife corridors' throughout the city, supporting communal growing at 'Feed Bristol' and developing a brand new reserve - Bennett's Patch and White's Paddock - out of a disused sports site to coincide the city's status as The 2015 European Green Capital.
THU 15:27 Radio 4 Appeal (b05rl3dd)
[Repeat of broadcast at
07:54 on Sunday]
THU 15:30 Open Book (b05rl3w6)
[Repeat of broadcast at
16:00 on Sunday]
THU 16:00 The Film Programme (b05s3gzg)
Far from the Madding Crowd; Christopher Doyle; Polish Cinema; DVD Review
With Francine Stock
Festen director Thomas Vinterberg discusses his latest adaptation of Far From The Madding Crowd and why he hasn't seen all of John Schlesinger's 1967 version with Terence Stamp and Julie Christie.
Cinematographer Christopher Doyle reveals some tricks of his trade and tells Francine what's the colour of love.
Director Krzysztof Zanussi talks about what it was like working under state censorship in communist-era Poland.
Critic Sophie Monks-Kaufman makes her pick of the best DVDs of the month.
THU 16:30 BBC Inside Science (b05s3gzj)
Nepalese Earthquake, Monkey Hands, Maritime Light Pollution, Light in Bacteria
Nepalese Earthquake
The earthquake that struck central Nepal last weekend measured 7.8 in magnitude and has affected up to 1.4 million people. Inside Science reporter Roland Pease joins Adam to discuss the topography of Nepal, and its vulnerability to earthquakes. We hear from Roger Bilham, a seismologist at University of Colorado, and Alex Densmore from Earthquakes without Frontiers on seismic activity in the Himalayas and the difficulty in measuring the scale of the disaster.
Monkey Nuts
Capuchin monkeys use stone tools to crack open nuts they want to eat. New research by Madhur Mangalam and Dorothy Fragaszy has shown that they moderate the force they use to open these nuts based on whether the nut shows any cracks from previous strikes. This motor skill demonstrates their dexterity as they are picking the optimal way to complete their task. Scientists hope these findings could help to explain the differences in cognitive processes between non-human primates and hominids who learnt to shape stone tools.
Maritime light pollution
Around a fifth of the world's coasts are illuminated at night by lights and as LEDs grow in popularity we can expect to see these areas get brighter. But until recently the effects of this light on the marine ecology was a relatively unknown and understudied phenomenon. Adam talks to Thomas Davies whose research published this week has highlighted how light is affecting marine organisms; attracting organisms like keel worms whilst repelling others.
Wellcome Collection & Bacteria Light
Artists, microbiologists, doctors and geneticists will gather at the Wellcome Collection in London this weekend for the Bacteria Light Lab, an event exploring how light is providing the tools for discovering more about bacteria and infections, part of the 'On Light' weekend at Wellcome Collection. Inside Science went along to meet artist Anna Dumitriu and Dr Nicola Fawcett and view- what appear at first glance - somewhat esoteric looking pieces of art which are actually shedding light on the hidden kingdom of microbiology.
Producer: Adrian Washbourne.
THU 17:00 PM (b05s3gzl)
With the latest news interviews, context and analysis.
THU 18:00 Six O'Clock News (b05rkq3c)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
THU 18:30 Ed Reardon's Week (b03lnzxk)
Series 9
The Bride of Auntie
Ed Reardon leads us through the ups and down of his week, complete with his trusty companion, Elgar, and his never-ending capacity for scrimping and scraping at whatever scraps his agent, Ping, can offer him to keep body, mind and cat together.
Ed discovers that he can put his extensive general knowledge to good use when he finally finds his niche and becomes a contestant on the Radio 4 seminal quiz 'What Do You Know'. Not only is his general knowledge excellent, but he's also being paid a fee to the grand sum of £43. Is his luck turning at last?
Written by Andrew Nickolds and Christopher Douglas
Produced by Dawn Ellis.
THU 19:00 The Archers (b05s3kds)
Adam asks Brian to trust him with his little experiment - the herbal leys - as he goes out to drill in the field. It's only 15 hectares and Debbie's on board with the idea. David's interested to see how the soil improves.
David and Adam discuss strawberry picking - the pickers will start to arrive soon. They also discuss cricket -Adam fancies his chances in the Single Wicket this year.
Rex is excited about some possible land for him and his brother Toby to farm on. Despite Eddie's words of caution, Rex feels that he and Toby may be beginners but will work hard and learn fast. Rex also mentions that his grandfather used to own part of the Estate.
Ed offers to see whether the Estate would be willing to transfer his tenancy to the Fairbrothers, Rex will talk to Toby - they could build some housing on one side for their geese.
Eddie and Ed spot a piece in the Echo about May Day. 'Unstoppable' Emma has been flat out with that and the wedding. Ed feels he could have been a better son at times. No use crying over spilt milk, says Eddie. Ed asks Eddie to be his best man. Eddie would be happy to.
THU 19:15 Front Row (b05s3kdv)
Everyman, Paul Abbott, Idris Khan, Beyond the Marches
Chiwetel Ejiofor stars in the first play Rufus Norris directs as Artistic Director of the National Theatre: Carol Ann Duffy's present-day take on the fifteenth century morality play Everyman, choreographed by Javier De Frutos. Susannah Clapp reviews.
Paul Abbott, the creator of Clocking Off, State of Play and Shameless, speaks to Samira Ahmed about his new 8 part TV series No Offence - a new police drama for Channel 4.
Idris Khan creates layered art often involving repetitions of text or images drawn from a wide range of sources from media images of conflict to tourist postcards of Big Ben. He tells Samira about his work and his new exhibition, Conflicting Lines.
And Beyond the Marches: 6 young folk musicians from England and Wales are spending this week exploring their heritage, culminating in performances this weekend. Front Row joins them as they breathe new life into traditional songs unearthed from the countries' national archives.
Presenter: Samira Ahmed
Producer: Sarah Johnson.
THU 19:45 15 Minute Drama (b05s3gz0)
[Repeat of broadcast at
10:45 today]
THU 20:00 The Report (b05s3kdx)
Sexism in the City
City banker, Svetlana Lokhova, is awarded a £3 million payout for sexual harassment at work. Her former employer, Sberbank CIB (UK), is appealing the amount it has to pay. An employment tribunal ordered the compensation after finding that Svetlana's line manager at the bank spread vicious lies to colleagues and clients that she was a Class A drug user, ruining her career in finance and causing her extreme mental illness. The bank says the incidents against Svetlana were isolated and unrepresentative of its working environment. It insists they are an equal opportunities employer and have taken steps to ensure it doesn't happen again. In her first interview since the judgment, Svetlana tells Simon Cox how she discovered the extent of her line manager's campaign against her, her efforts to resolve the problem and explains why, despite the huge compensation, there are no winners in this case. Talking to others whose claims have reached an employment tribunal, Simon investigates how common such cases are and why they continue to happen, despite laws and policies designed to prevent it.
Producer: Sally Abrahams
Researcher: James Melley
THU 20:30 In Business (b05s3kdz)
Immigration - The Business View
Immigration is one of the key issues of the General Election campaign. Peter Day asks businesses, big and small, what they think about immigration. How dependent is Britain on workers from other countries in Europe, and beyond? What impact have tighter visa restrictions for migrants from outside Europe had on British business?
Producer: Caroline Bayley.
THU 21:00 BBC Inside Science (b05s3gzj)
[Repeat of broadcast at
16:30 today]
THU 21:30 In Our Time (b05s3gyv)
[Repeat of broadcast at
09:00 today]
THU 22:00 The World Tonight (b05s3ltd)
Party leaders face the Question Time audience.
Cameron, Clegg, Miliband put on the spot over their economic plans
THU 22:45 The History of the Peloponnesian War (b05s3ltg)
An Athenian Atrocity
'My work is not a piece of writing designed to meet the taste of an immediate public, but was done to last for ever,' Thucydides
Ancient Greek historian Thucydides' masterful first-hand account charts the devastating wars between Athens and Sparta during the 5th century BC. It was a life-and-death struggle that reshaped the face of ancient Greece and pitted Athenian democracy against Spartan militarism.
Thucydides himself was an Athenian aristocrat and general who went on to record what he saw as the greatest war of all time, applying a passion for accuracy and a contempt for myth admired by historians today. And as father of modern Realpolitik, his influence fed into the works of Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbs and the politics of the Cold War and beyond.
Today: after an Athenian atrocity in Melos, both sides prepare for war in Sicily.
Abridger: Tom Holland
Reader: David Horovitch
Producer: Justine Willett.
THU 23:00 Two Episodes of Mash (b01mdl9r)
Series 2
Episode 1
Diane Morgan and Joe Wilkinson discover they don't actually have a radio series at all.
A mix of silly, surreal sketches and banter.
The series features an absurd narrative, making fun of its new home at BBC Radio 4, after starting life on BBC Radio 2.
With:
David O'Doherty
Paul Harry Allen
Peter Donaldson
Ken Bruce
Bobbie Pryor
Gary Newman
You can also see an animation of one sketch via the BBC Radio 4 Extra website - it's a fishy tale.
Animation: Tom Rourke.
Producer: Clair Wordsworth
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in September 2012.
THU 23:30 Recycled Radio (b04d1kvd)
Series 2
Hell
Welcome to the chopped up, looped up, sped up world of Recycled Radio, old BBC broadcasts turned into something new.
Cartoonist Scarfe scavenges round his studio for depictions of the fiery realms of Satan, Hades and Mephistopheles, otherwise known as Recycled Hell.
This is the archive hour at breakneck speed, and our journey to the underworld makes surprising visits to both Glastonbury and Heathrow Terminal 5. Expect to hear from Dante, Milton and Eddie Mair, along with Tony Blair, Melvyn Bragg and Germaine Greer.
Fun, silly, thoughtful radio about a place that exerts an enormous grip on the imagination of people everywhere.
Producer: Miles Warde.
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in August 2014.
FRIDAY 01 MAY 2015
FRI 00:00 Midnight News (b05rkq4v)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
FRI 00:30 Philip Glass - Words without Music (b05t7kdv)
[Repeat of broadcast at
09:45 on Thursday]
FRI 00:48 Shipping Forecast (b05rkq4y)
The latest shipping forecast.
FRI 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (b05rkq50)
BBC Radio 4 joins the BBC World Service.
FRI 05:20 Shipping Forecast (b05rkq52)
The latest shipping forecast.
FRI 05:30 News Briefing (b05rkq54)
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
FRI 05:43 Prayer for the Day (b05s48pc)
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with the Rev'd Dr Craig Gardiner.
FRI 05:45 Farming Today (b05s48pf)
Food and Farming Awards, Offshore Wind Power, Aphid Repellents, Farm Safety
Farming Today comes from the BBC Food and Farming Awards in Bristol. Charlotte Smith has been one of the judges in the Countryfile Farming Hero category, which received more than 800 nominations. She announces the winner, and gets a first reaction from the recipient of the award.
Also in today's programme: scientists use smell as a way of keeping aphids off crops; a new offshore wind farm has just been completed off the East Yorkshire coast; and Farming Today continues its week-long look at farm safety, hearing from the widow of a farm worker who died in a slurry accident.
Presented by Charlotte Smith and produced by Emma Campbell.
FRI 05:58 Tweet of the Day (b042326r)
Urban Dawn Chorus
Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about British birds inspired by their calls and songs.
David Attenborough introduces the final recording marking International Dawn Chorus day. The urban dawn chorus was recorded by Chris Watson in Whitechapel, London as part of a project to enable the children of the Royal London Children's Hospital to hear the wildlife sounds on their doorstep. Birds featured include the robin, blackbird, great tit and house sparrow.
FRI 06:00 Today (b05s48ph)
Morning news and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
FRI 09:00 The Reunion (b05rl3j8)
[Repeat of broadcast at
11:16 on Sunday]
FRI 09:45 Philip Glass - Words without Music (b05t7kpz)
Episode 5
Asked to write the score for visionary 1982 documentary Koyaanisqatsi, Glass discovered a new avenue for his musical composition.
He later worked with Martin Scorsese, writing the soundtrack for Kundun (1997).
Conclusion of the memoir by Philip Glass, the world-renowned composer of symphonies, operas and film scores.
Read by Kerry Shale.
Abridger: Laurence Wareing
Producer: Kirsteen Cameron
Music details:
Track: "Evening Song" (from Satygraha)
CD: The Essential Philip Glass
Label: Sony
Track: "The Grid"
CD: Koyaanisqatsi
Label: Island
Track: "Closing"
CD: Glassworks
Label: CBS
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in May 2015.
FRI 10:00 Woman's Hour (b05s3nmr)
Cue Sheffield
Jane Garvey presents the programme from Sheffield's Winter Garden as part of the BBC's Cue Sheffield. Player, Reanne Evans and referee, Michaela Tabb talk about their careers in snooker. Olympic gold medallist Joanna Rowsell on the Women's Tour de Yorkshire and her preparations for Rio 2016. Sheffield's women of steel who are being honoured with a statue to mark their wartime service. Women only cycling. And Fay Hield and Martin Simpson perform The Bad Girl's Lament and tell us about The Full English.
Presented by Jane Garvey
Produced by Jane Thurlow.
FRI 10:41 15 Minute Drama (b05s3nmt)
Elizabeth von Arnim - The Enchanted April
Episode 5
By Elizabeth von Arnim
Dramatised by Vivienne Allen
The arrival of Mr Briggs, the owner of the castle, charms everyone but Scrap. Then another visitor threatens to bring disharmony too. Can the enchantment of San Salvatore win through?
Directed by Tracey Neale.
FRI 10:56 The Listening Project (b05s345w)
Mandy and John - No Longer the Man I Met
Fi Glover introduces an uncompromising conversation about how dementia changes a person, and the pressures that puts on a relationship, in the series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.
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 learn more about The Listening Project by visiting bbc.co.uk/listeningproject
Producer: Marya Burgess.
FRI 11:00 Britain's Hidden Talent: Women Engineers (b05s3nmw)
Susan Marling asks why the UK has the lowest proportion of female engineers in Europe. In 2014, only 6% of the UK's engineers were women.
Over the last century, the Woman's Engineering Society has promoted and supported female engineers - but the Society's current president Dawn Bonfield cites a myriad of barriers preventing women from entering and staying in the sector. She says not enough girls are studying STEM subjects at school, universities lack female engineering faculty members, and outdated recruitment processes can alienate female job applicants. For those women who do enter the field upon graduation, she argues that a poor working culture, including lackadaisical or even hostile attitudes towards maternity leave, can hamper career progression.
While a shortage of women in engineering isn't specific to the UK, we're faring particularly badly when compared with the rest of Europe. In Sweden, women account for 25% of the engineering workforce. Women there can successfully combine professional and family life and engineering is viewed as one of society's most desirable and respected jobs.
Susan meets some of the UK's accomplished female engineers. Jane Wernick runs her own practice and played a pivotal role in the construction of the Millennium Wheel. Professor Dame Ann Dowling is the President of the Royal Academy of Engineering, where her work involves giving lectures across the country where she explains the diversity of engineering, from food manufacturing to cyber security and from developing renewable energy to designing medical equipment.
Producer: Paul Smith
A Just Radio production for BBC Radio 4.
FRI 11:30 Paul Temple (b03847yb)
Paul Temple and the Gregory Affair
A Woman's Intuition
Part 7 of a new production of a vintage serial from 1946.
From 1938 to 1968, Francis Durbridge's incomparably suave amateur detective Paul Temple and his glamorous wife Steve solved case after baffling case in one of BBC radio's most popular series. Sadly, only half of Temple's adventures survive in the archives.
In 2006 BBC Radio 4 brought one of the lost serials back to life with Crawford Logan and Gerda Stevenson as Paul and Steve. Using the original scripts and incidental music, and recorded using vintage microphones and sound effects, the production of Paul Temple and the Sullivan Mystery aimed to sound as much as possible like the 1947 original might have done if its recording had survived. The serial proved so popular that it was soon followed by three more revivals, Paul Temple and the Madison Mystery, Paul Temple and Steve, and A Case for Paul Temple.
Now, from 1946, it's the turn of Paul Temple and the Gregory Affair, in which Paul and Steve go on the trail of the mysterious and murderous Mr Gregory.
Episode 7: A Woman's Intuition
Gunfire at the Madrid nightclub - and a dying man's confession.
Producer Patrick Rayner
Francis Durbridge, the creator of Paul Temple, was born in Hull in 1912 and died in 1998. He was one of the most successful novelists, playwrights and scriptwriters of his day.
FRI 12:00 News Summary (b05rkq59)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
FRI 12:04 The Listeners' Election (b05sjsm2)
Caring for Children and the Elderly
BBC Radio 4's Listeners' Election project culminates with a week-long series of programmes. Chris Mason brings together contributions from listeners across the country on particular themes that concern them.
In this edition, some listeners explain the issues they face caring for children and the elderly, from the lack of childcare in school holidays, and its impact on parents' work prospects, to the difficulties of coping with a parent's dementia.
PRODUCERS: PHIL TINLINE AND SARAH KEATING.
FRI 12:15 You and Yours (b05sxvwl)
Carcraft, Cinema, Coeliac Disease, Transatlantic Free Trade
Car supermarket Carcraft goes out of business
The transatlantic trade agreement TTIP is inching toward agreement but why do so many people and organisation in the EU oppose it?
Has the silver screen lost its sparkle; As visits to the cinema decline has it become just another screen?
Call for the construction industry to do more to prevent death and injury to cyclists
The community supermarket that's carried off the top prize at the BBC's Food and Farming Awards.
The search for the missing half million; an online campaign to find people who are suffering in ignorance form the Coeliac Disease , an auto immune condition triggered by the gluten protein.
FRI 12:57 Weather (b05rkq5c)
The latest weather forecast.
FRI 13:00 World at One (b05s48s3)
Rigorous analysis of current affairs with Martha Kearney, plus Election Call with SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon.
Are schools in England facing a financial crisis? One headteacher calls on parents to challenge General Election candidates about what he calls 'deep and damaging cuts.
Jonny Benjamin talks about being reunited with the stranger who stopped him taking his own life and his difficulties with mental illness.
Plus Crossbench peer Digby Jones sees what could be done to improve Dudley high street.
Editor: Nick Sutton.
FRI 14:00 The Archers (b05s3kds)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 on Thursday]
FRI 14:15 Drama (b05s3pcg)
Mayday Mayday
A true, life-affirming story charting one man's journey from paralysis to recovery.
During the dying minutes of April 2004, as the Cornish town of Padstow celebrated the coming of summer, actor Tristan Sturrock broke his neck falling off a wall. Paralysed in hospital and about to become a father for the first time, he was told he may never walk again. This incredible true story charts his journey from the first of May to his first step, starring the real voices of all those who helped him to walk again. It is based on the stage play by Tristan Sturrock and Katy Carmichael, and adapted for radio by Becky Ripley.
Since its original transmission on 1st May 2015, Mayday Mayday has been awarded an international Third Coast Award.
Composer: Aaron May
Producer/Director: Becky Ripley.
FRI 15:00 Gardeners' Question Time (b05s3pcj)
South Devon
Peter Gibbs is in Devon to chair the horticultural panel programme. Bunny Guinness, Anne Swithinbank and Matthew Wilson join him to answer an array of gardening conundrums.
Produced by Dan Cocker
Assistant Producer: Hannah Newton
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4.
FRI 15:45 Blood, Sweat and Tears (b05s3pcl)
Like A Glass Jaw
Mark Billingham writes the second episode in a new series of specially commissioned short stories by three of Britain's top crime writers. ‘Like A Glass Jaw’ is the story of an ex-boxer who finds himself caught up in an emotional situation that leads to him realise old habits die hard.
Mark is best known for his series of novels featuring Detective Tom Thorne, as well as being an accomplished actor and stand up comedian.
These stories were recorded in front of an audience in the MCT theatre, Alleyn's School, Dulwich.
Read by Robert Glenister
Producer: Celia de Wolff
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4
FRI 16:00 Last Word (b05s49k3)
Sir Philip Carter, Andrew Lesnie, Margaret Harrison, Tom McCabe MSP, Claire Gordon
Matthew Bannister on:-
Sir Philip Carter the chairman of Everton football club who presided over a successful period in the club's fortunes.
Andrew Lesnie the cinematographer who won an Oscar for his work on the Lord of the Rings.
Anti-nuclear campaigner Margaret Harrison who helped to start the protest camp at Faslane.
Tom McCabe, the Labour MSP who brought in the smoking ban in Scotland.
Claire Gordon, the actress known as Britain's answer to Brigitte Bardot who married the author of the Henry Root letters.
And Ben E King, the singer best known for his hit single Stand By Me.
FRI 16:30 More or Less (b05sfd0r)
Polls, Nuns, Life Partners
Is the number of Catholic nuns on the up? It was recently reported in the news that the number of Catholic nuns has trebled in the past five years, reaching its highest level since 1990. The number of women training to become Catholic nuns in Great Britain has reached a 25-year high. Are we witnessing the so-called 'Pope Francis effect'? What's the long-term trend - are more women becoming nuns? Tim Harford looks at figures from the UK and across the world.
On the eve of the UK's general election, Tim Harford takes a look at what polling data can tell us about predicting elections.
Plus, Matt Parker the stand-up mathematician is invited back to the programme to respond to a listener's query about his theory on the best way to find a life partner.
FRI 16:56 The Listening Project (b05s3r6h)
Elaine and Megan-Rose – Ceramics in the Blood
Fi Glover with a mother and daughter who took the same course in ceramics, but not in the expected order, on how they coped when the daughter was in the year above the mother - another conversation in the series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.
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 learn more about The Listening Project by visiting bbc.co.uk/listeningproject
Producer: Marya Burgess
FRI 17:00 PM (b05s4bqf)
Eddie Mair with interviews, context and analysis.
FRI 18:00 Six O'Clock News (b05rkq5j)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
FRI 18:30 Dead Ringers (b05s3r6m)
Series 14
Episode 4
The topical impressions show returns just in time to reflect the build up to one of the most important and incisive votes for decades. Will Austria win again or does Britain's Electro Velvet stand a chance? Satire meets silliness in the flagship comedy for hard working families up and down the country.
Starring Jon Culshaw, Jan Ravens, Duncan Wisbey, Lewis MacLeod, Debra Stephenson.
Producer: Bill Dare.
FRI 19:00 The Archers (b05s3r6q)
Fallon enjoys sitting outside at Ambridge View with Susan - both feeling lucky to have a roof over their head. Susan's sister Tracy is managing ok though. They also talk about Clarrie, who Fallon decides needs a bit of TLC. All her nice clothes were destroyed in the flood and she could use a nice dress for Ed and Emma's wedding's. Clarrie shall go to the ball!
Pip gets Ruth to check over her job application - she's certainly done her research. Ruth didn't realise how many countries the company is in. Pip senses something's wrong - Ruth admits she didn't imagine Pip would be working away from Brookfield so soon. Pip takes this the wrong way and goes off to do her revision.
Pip looks at election leaflets. She may not be voting, but is taking an interest. Meanwhile, David needs to get up to speed for the Flood Action Group event on Sunday.
David tells Ruth that Ed never found out who shifted all the debris from the blocked culvert. Why didn't the flood detritus block up both? David will be interested to hear what the Environment Agency woman has to say about it.
FRI 19:15 Front Row (b05s4bqh)
Kristin Scott Thomas, The Enfield Haunting and The C Word, Greens' Caroline Lucas
Kristin Scott Thomas discusses taking over from Helen Mirren as the Queen in Peter Morgan's play The Audience, and how the Queen responded when she told her the news.
TV dramas The Enfield Haunting starring Timothy Spall, and The C Word starring Sheridan Smith, are reviewed by Julia Raeside.
As the successor to Dominic Dromgoole, Artistic Director of Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London, is announced, theatre critic Sarah Hemming assesses Kneehigh Theatre's Emma Rice, who is due to start in April next year.
And the Greens' Caroline Lucas discusses her party's arts policy.
Presented by John Wilson
Produced by Jerome Weatherald.
FRI 19:45 15 Minute Drama (b05s3nmt)
[Repeat of broadcast at
10:41 today]
FRI 20:00 Any Questions? (b05s3r6t)
Yvette Cooper, Ed Davey, Paul Nuttall, Priti Patel
Jonathan Dimbleby chairs debate from Wisbech Grammar School in Cambridgeshire with Yvette Cooper, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Ed Davey, Deputy Leader of UKIP, Paul Nuttall MEP, and Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, Priti Patel.
FRI 20:50 A Point of View (b05s3r6x)
Leaders Old and Young
David Cannadine reflects on the merits of youth and age in our political leaders and finds the current set taking their parties into next week's election strikingly young.
"It's a curious and unexplained paradox that in earlier times, when life expectancy was much lower than it is today, politicians were generally much older; whereas nowadays, when life expectancy is much greater, it's widely believed, at least in some quarters, that politicians ought to be younger".
Producer: Sheila Cook.
FRI 21:00 Drama (b05s3rs2)
Fight Club
First there was the insomnia.
Then there were the support groups that helped him sleep.
Then Marla Singer turned up, muscled in on ascending bowel cancer and ruined everything.
Then he met Tyler Durden.
Then came Fight Club.
Mild mannered product-recall-specialist by day, tortured insomniac by night, Fight Club is the psychological story of one man’s descent into an underground world of violence. Together with Tyler Durden - part-time projectionist, banquet waiter, soap-maker and anarchic genius - he creates Fight Club. In Fight Club our narrator, and men like him, can escape the monotony of their daily work-dominated, consumer-driven, image-obsessed lives. In Fight Club you can escape who the world thinks you ought to be.
Soon there are fight clubs in basement bars in towns and cities across the country; men with cuts, bruises, stitches, missing teeth wherever you look, and Tyler Durden has become an urban legend. But when Tyler invents Project Mayhem and things begin to escalate, there’s only one thing to do: shut down Fight Club.
But have they created a monster they can’t control?
Chuck Palahniuk’s visceral and unflinching cult novel is dramatized by Tracey Malone and Ed Whitmore and stars Patrick Kennedy, Sam Hazeldine and Elaine Cassidy.
The Narrator ..... Patrick Kennedy
Tyler Durden ..... Sam Hazeldine
Marla Singer ..... Elaine Cassidy
Big Bob ..... Martin T Sherman
Doctor/Boss ..... Nigel Whitmey
Recruit One ..... Danny Mahoney
Mechanic ..... John Schwab
Ted ..... Sam Dale
Glenda ..... Jane Slavin
Chloe ..... Ayesha Antoine
Producer .... Heather Larmour
FRI 21:58 Weather (b05rkq5l)
The latest weather forecast.
FRI 22:00 The World Tonight (b05s3stc)
Miliband - no deal with SNP to get into Downing Street
Ed Miliband tells Labour rally in Glasgow that he won't do a deal with the SNP after the election
FRI 22:45 The History of the Peloponnesian War (b05s3stf)
The Beginning of the End
'My work is not a piece of writing designed to meet the taste of an immediate public, but was done to last for ever,' Thucydides
Ancient Greek historian Thucydides' masterful first-hand account chronicles the devastating wars between Athens and Sparta during the 5th century BC. It was a life-and-death struggle that reshaped the face of ancient Greece and pitted Athenian democracy against Spartan militarism.
Thucydides himself was an Athenian aristocrat and general who went on to record what he saw as the greatest war of all time, applying a passion for accuracy and a contempt for myth admired by historians today. And as father of modern Realpolitik, his influence fed into the works of Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbs and the politics of the Cold War and beyond.
Today: an expedition to conquer Sicily spells the beginning of the end of Athenian power.
Abridger: Tom Holland
Reader: David Horowitch
Producer: Justine Willett.
FRI 23:00 The Vote Now Show (b05s3sth)
Series 2
Episode 4
A series of election specials from the Now Show team. Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis are joined by special guests to give their own unique take on the week's election shenanigans.
Episode four features Laura Shavin, John Robins, Ben Partridge, Deborah Orr and Adam Kay.
Producers; Alexandra Smith, Joe Nunnery and Rachel Wheeley.
Executive Producer Alison Vernon-Smith.
FRI 23:30 Great Lives (b05s307c)
[Repeat of broadcast at
16:30 on Tuesday]
FRI 23:55 The Listening Project (b05s3stm)
Chris and Suzanne - Life is Full of Patterns
Fi Glover introduces a conversation between a couple who could never paint their walls magnolia. For them pattern is essential and life-affirming, proving once again that it's surprising what you hear when you listen.
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 learn more about The Listening Project by visiting bbc.co.uk/listeningproject
Producer: Marya Burgess.