The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
Martin Amis is one of the most celebrated authors of modern times. A new collection rounds up his non-fiction pieces from 1986 to 2016, and this week five compelling topics are aired.
TENNIS.. the author has always been drawn to the game: as a player and it also appears in his fiction and journalism. In two accounts he first speculates on the 'tennis monster' - a body and mind made up of the greatest competitors. Then comes the moment he has to give up 'the beautiful game'.
Reader Bill Nighy
Producer Duncan Minshull.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Canon Steve Williams, Bishop of Manchester's interfaith adviser.
Listeners Roy and Goretti on living and voting in Catalonia during the recent independence referendum.
iPM is the news programme that starts with its listeners. Email ipm@bbc.co.uk. Twitter: @BBCiPM. Presented by Luke Jones and Eddie Mair.
The latest news headlines. Including the weather and a look at the papers.
Clare Balding's long-held wish, to sample the walking delights of the Isle of Man, is finally satisfied as she heads to the north of the Island to explore Glen Dhoo and Ravensdale. She walks in the company of local artist, Michael Starkey and guide Chris Callow, two proud Manxmen.
The walk can be found on 0S Landranger 95.
Producer Lucy Lunt.
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
The latest weather forecast.
News and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
Aasmah Mir and Shaun Keaveny are joined by the broadcaster Gloria Hunniford - who started out as a singer at the age of seven and went on to become the first woman to have a daily radio programme on BBC Radio 2. She describes how she has interviewed everyone from Salman Rushdie to Doris Day and even managed to stay on air during a bombing. Arctic explorer Erling Kagge discusses the enemy of all radio broadcasters - SILENCE.
Head Concierge, Nigel Bowen, explains how he keeps guests happy at one of London's 5 star hotels. From having to arrange for frozen breast milk to be flown across the Atlantic to tracking down an obscure perfume with no name.
The comedian, writer and agony aunt, Viv Groskop, shares life lessons gleaned from Russian literature and explains why she is such a Strictly superfan, and The Rev. Richard Coles updates us on his preparations for Strictly Come Dancing.
Johnny Ball reveals his Inheritance Tracks - Sing Sing Sing (With a Swing) performed by Benny Goodman and the title track of Guys and Dolls.
My Life, by Gloria Hunniford is published on 19 October.
Silence in the Age of Noise by Erling Kagge.
The Anna Karenina Fix is by Viv Groskop.
Wonders beyond numbers: A brief history of all things mathematical, by Johnny Ball.
Producer: Louise Corley
Editor: Eleanor Garland.
Jay Rayner is in Derby with his panel of food experts, including Professor Barry Smith, Rachel McCormack, Tim Anderson and Sophie Wright.
On the show this week the panel discuss the local delicacy of the Derby Pyclet as well as offering non-cheese savoury toppings for them.
Barry Smith hoodwinks the panel's tastebuds with a sensory experiment involving colour in food and the panel interrogate the development chef behind the vast majority of the UK's Christmas Puddings.
Producer: Miranda Hinkley
Assistant Producer: Laurence Bassett
Food Consultant: Anna Colquhoun
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4.
Pablo Picasso is commonly regarded as one of the most influential artists of the 20th Century, changing our way of seeing with his radical innovation and revolutionary approach. As the pioneer of Cubism, godfather to the Surrealists, and creator of the enduring anti-war painting Guernica, he produced thousands of paintings in his lifetime, not to mention his sculptures, ceramics, stage designs, poetry and plays.
Rajan Datar discusses his life and work with curators Ann Temkin and Katharina Beisiegel, and art historian Charlie Miller.
Reports from writers and journalists around the world. Presented by Kate Adie.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
The disappointing reality of retirement complex living experienced by some residents, once the deal is done and the glossy sales brochure is a distant memory.
Households being switched onto Universal Credit can now get a same-day advance on their benefits. Will this mean an end to delays in receiving their income?
And Open Banking - we're promised it will revolutionise the way we organise our finances. But what exactly is it and how secure will your data be?
Presenter: Paul Lewis
Producer: Alex Lewis
Editor: Andrew Smith.
Miles Jupp is joined by Jeremy Hardy, Suzi Ruffell, Lloyd Langford & Katy Brand to hash out the week's headlines.
This week the panel discuss Theresa May's Conservative Party Conference speech, the collapse of Monarch Airlines and the potential discovery of Santa Claus' grave.
The News is read by Zeb Soanes
The Chair's script is written by Jon Hunter, James Kettle and Danielle Ward with additional material by Jenny Laville and Laura Sleep.
The producer is Joe Nunnery and it's a BBC Studios Production.
The latest weather forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
Jonathan Dimbleby presents political debate and discussion from Southam College in Warwickshire with a panel including the Shadow Health Secretary Jon Ashworth, former head of the Metropolitan Police Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, the Leader of the House of Commons Andrea Leadsom MP and the co-leader of the Green Party of England and Wales Caroline Lucas MP.
Listeners have their say on the issues discussed on Any Questions?
1 / 2. In Ian Rankin's crime thriller, the teenage sister of a rape victim goes missing, two skeletons are found in the cellar of a pub in Edinburgh's Old Town, and an illegal immigrant is murdered on a city housing estate. Rebus and Clarke investigate. Dramatised by Chris Dolan.
Other parts played by the cast
Producer/director: Bruce Young
BBC Scotland.
As the Belfast International Arts Festival kicks off, Marie-Louise Muir takes us behind the scenes of Northern Ireland's only full-time producing theatre, The Lyric, to get a taste of acclaimed local playwright Owen McCafferty's new production, Fire Below (A War of Worlds). Exploring contemporary life in a post-conflict society, Marie-Louise meets McCafferty and Director Jimmy Fay as they work with their cast in rehearsal.
From there, Marie-Louise takes us off the beaten track to discover the Belfast theatre groups working outside the mainstream and taking on stereotypes through radical new work. Writer and director Martin Lynch tells us about the new project which finds him working with members of the LGBTQ community, refugees, and those involved in women's rights.
And, in the company of critic Alan Meban, writer and producer Conor Mitchell, and Niamh Flanagan of Theatre NI, Marie-Louise considers whether it's possible for a smaller city outside of London to establish a good working relationship between critics and practitioners.
Producer: Steven Rainey.
The British Indian Composer Anoushka Shankar talks about her latest score for the silent film Shiraz, a love story about the 17th century princess who inspired the
building of the Taj Mahal.
The stand up comedian Sarah Millican discusses her autobiography 'How to be Champion'.
As part of our series on the Best Place to Be a Woman we look at why Stockton-On-Tees was one of the worst places for accessing culture with Annabel Turpin who
runs ARC Stockton Arts Centre and Charlotte Hall a local mum who started her own choir.
We talk about what to do if you child doesn't want to go to school, whether they are tearful, reluctant or actually refusing to go? Mum of three Rebecca and psychologist Vivian Hill discuss.
Cardi B is currently number one on the Billboard Charts, the second only solo female hip hop artist to achieve the number one spot. Helen Thomas writer for NME Magazine and Buzzfeed tells us about Cardi B's rise to the top.
The Independent Custody Visiting Association drop in unannounced to check that people in police custody are getting decent treatment. But how are vulnerable women in custody treated when they have a period? Katie Kempen Chief Executive of ICVA and Superintendent Katy Barrow-Grint of Thames Valley Police discuss.
2017 marks the centenary of the Medical Women's Federation. To celebrate, we hear from leading female clinician's on who has inspired them. Dame Fiona Caldicott
who was President of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, talks about Dr Helen Boyle and her work in revolutionising mental healthcare.
Presented by Jane Garvey
Producer: Rabeka Nurmahomed
Editor: Jane Thurlow.
Full coverage of the day's news.
Is battery technology the key to decarbonising energy and reinventing transport? If so, can the current technology, Lithium-Ion batteries, evolve quickly enough to meet growing demand. If capacity is the problem, is Lithium-ion the answer and what are the alternatives? Can we expect to fly in battery powered aeroplanes in the near future?
Join Evan Davis and his guests as they discuss the future of the power of batteries.
GUESTS
Huw Hampson-Jones, CEO Oxis Energy
Cyrille Brisson, Vice-President, Eaton
Chris Morrison, Head of Peaking Plant, Centrica.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest weather forecast.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Nikki Bedi and Arthur Smith are joined by Tim Minchin, David Bryan, A.L. Kennedy and Joseph Barnes-Phillips for an eclectic mix of conversation, music and comedy. With music from Benjamin Zephaniah & The Revolutionary Minds and Susanne Sundfor.
It's Barcelona versus Madrid...and we're not talking football.
Spain is facing its biggest political crisis for years....the autonomous region of Catalonia considering breaking away from the rest of the country.
Mark Coles profiles Spain's right wing Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, as he goes head to head with the Catalan President to try to stop it happening.
The programme examines his Galician roots and his grandfather's role in wresting power from the Spanish state back in the 1930s.
We follow Rajoy's rise to power, hear about the setbacks - two accidents that nearly that nearly claimed his life - and why the 2004 Madrid terror attacks came close to
ending his political career.
Producer Smita Patel.
Researcher Beth Sagar-Fenton
Editor Penny Murphy.
Blade Runner 2049; 35 years after the original cult film, Denis Villeneuve directs the sequel starring Ryan Gosling. How can anyone follow up such a classic?
James Graham's comic play Labour of Love tells the story of The Labour Party over several elections in the same fictional constituency somewhere in the north Midlands. starring Martin Freeman and Tamsin Greig
Halloween may be a few weeks away but Saturday Review is getting in early with two books - Eight Ghosts, commissioned by English Heritage (8 short stories by a range of exciting authors set in their properties) AND Ghosts :A Cultural History by Susan Owens
Timewasters is a comedy series beginning on ITV in which a bunch of young present day black Britons find a time machine and head back to 1920s London.
The British Library has a new exhibition celebrating 140 years of recorded sound
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Charlotte Mendelson, Tracy Chevalier and Christopher Frayling. The producer is Oliver Jones.
Once upon a time, total surveillance was the province of George Orwell and totalitarian states, but we now live in a world where oceans of data are gathered from us every day by the wondrous digital devices we have admitted to our homes and that we carry with us everywhere. At the same time, our governments want us to let them follow everything we do to root out evil before it can strike. If you have nothing to hide, do you really have nothing to fear?
In Who's Looking At You , novelist and occasional futurist Nick Harkaway argues surveillance has reached a new pitch of penetration and sophistication and we need to talk about it before it's too late.
This is our brave new world: data from pacemakers are used in criminal prosecutions as evidence, the former head of the CIA admits 'we kill people based on meta-data,' and scientists celebrate pulling a clear image of a face directly from a monkey's brain.
Where does it end, and what does it mean? Surveillance used to end at our front door, now not even the brain is beyond the prying eyes of an information-hungry world. The application of big data brings many benefits and has the potential to make us wealthier, keep us healthier and ensure we are safer - but only if we the citizens are in control.
The programme uses rich archive to illustrate how the 'watchers' have adapted to technology that has super-charged the opportunity to snoop. It examines the arguments of those who claim the right to keep their secrets while demanding that we the people give up more and more of ours. Transparency for the masses? Or simple necessity in a chaotic technological future? What happens to us, to our choices under the all-seeing eye? One thing is certain: if we don't make choices about surveillance, they will be made for us.
Elena Ferrante's story of a life long friendship between Lila and Lena comes to an end in this sad and surprising final chapter.
Lena, now a famous writer, returns to Naples with her two children to find Lila has also managed to turned her life around, despite remaining in the claws of violent and mafia run Naples. Finding themselves both pregnant, the complications of their friendship grows ever deeper and the tensions deepen. As the city attempts to rebuild itself, post war Naples continues to struggle to accept or change the inevitabilities of life.
Broken marriages, violent relationships, and the yearning for something more - something better is never far away. The violent past of these two extraordinary friends will always be there and, for one, there seems to be only one way out.
Written by Elena Ferrante
Translated by Ann Goldstein
Dramatised for radio by Timberlake Wertenbaker
Directed by Celia de Wolff
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4, followed by weather.
Following a record rise in the number of sentences being increased after being found to have been unduly lenient, Clive Anderson and guests discuss whether sentencing law is fit for purpose. Such is the complexity of sentencing law that it is creating costly delays and causing errors. A recent Law Commission study found that 30% of sentences given were unlawful..
Worldwide, crime is falling but our prison population is close to an all-time high, proportionately higher than almost every other comparable country. Is this despite or because of interventions in recent decades from politicians of all persuasions?
Should judges have more freedom to reflect a defendant's mitigating circumstances, even if that means wildly different sentences for the same crime? Or should rigid guidelines ensure consistency across the country? Should a shoplifter in Penrith be treated the same as in Peterborough?
The chairman of the Sentencing Council Lord Justice Treacy says longer sentences are the result of calls from politicians to be increasingly tough. But Laura Janes from the Howard League for Penal Reform, believes that this sentence inflation is a direct result of sentencing guidelines themselves. People convicted of GBH received 17 per cent longer sentences following the introduction of guidelines.
The Attorney General Jeremy Wright QC MP believes that the system is working. His scheme to correct unduly lenient sentences, increased only 190 of around 5500 cases heard in the Court of Appeal in 2016.
Barrister Michelle Nelson is alarmed by David Lammy's review of the criminal justice system. It found that BAME offenders face bias and even overt discrimination in the way they are handled.
Producer: Matt Willis
A 7digital production.
The popular and evergreen quotations programme 'Quote ... Unquote' returns. Nigel Rees quizzes Simon Brett, Vanessa Feltz, Michele Hanson and Henry Normal.
Quote ... Unquote, the popular quotations quiz, returns for a new series.
For over forty years, Nigel Rees has been joined by writers, actors, musicians, scientists and various comedy types. Kenneth Williams, Judi Dench, PD James, Larry Adler, Ian KcKellen, Peter Cook, Kingsley Amis, Peter Ustinov... have all graced the Quote ... Unquote stage.
Join Nigel as he quizzes a host of guests on the origins of sayings and well-known quotes, and gets the panel to share their favourite anecdotes.
Episode 1
Detective Fiction Author Simon Brett
Guardian Columnist Michele Hanson
Broadcaster Vanessa Feltz
Poet and writer Henry Normal
Presenter ... Nigel Rees
Reader ... Charlotte Green
Producer ... Katie Tyrrell
Production co-ordinator ... Beverly Tagg
This is a BBC Studios Production.
Michael Rosen visits the seminary where Gerard Manley Hopkins revolutionised the rhythm and sound of poetry.
In 1875, stirred by the tragic drowning of five exiled German nuns off the Kent coast, Hopkins - studying in the Jesuit seminary of St Beunos in North Wales - brought together the rhythms of song, Welsh poetry and the chiming sounds of Old English alliteration to produce the extraordinary The Wreck of the Deutschland. This moment kick-started his poetry writing after a self-imposed abstinence of some seven years.
Michael Rosen visits St Beunos to feel the daily atmosphere of the seminary and the glorious landscape of the Vale of Clwyd which Hopkins invokes so powerfully in his sequence of poems written in the space of one year. Poet Michael Symmons Roberts joins him there.
Like many other students of English Literature, Michael was stunned by Hopkins' experimental breaking and re-making of the English language and heard similarities with the jazz of musicians like Miles Davies in these new rhythms. How was it that Hopkins could reject the long established pattern of poetry, with its metrical feet, and instead use the principal of the beat of music? How could he have been so inventive with poetry, fifty years ahead of his time, before 20th Century Modernist poets discovered how they could take these risks too? It's hard to hear Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood without hearing the presence of Hopkins behind it. For Seamus Heaney, Hopkins was "the main man"!
Michael Rosen and Michael Symmons Roberts walk through field and woods, look out over the Vale of Clwyd to see the view that Hopkins saw, discovering the distinctive elements of this amazing creative moment - the religious devotion of the seminary and the beauty of the landscape and the natural life within it.
The journals, letters and poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins are read by Samuel West.
Readings in copyright are by kind permission of Oxford University Press on behalf of The British Province of the Society of Jesus.
Producer: Emma-Louise Williams
A Loftus production for BBC Radio 4.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
Fiery flash fiction by Marietta Kirkbride about magic bars, mojitos and house fires.
Kieran's whole life is card magic; showmanship, mathematics, slight-of-hand. Until a newcomer at the bar where he work disrupts the order of things, and his tricks take a turn for the worse.
Writer: Marietta Kirkbride
Reader: Oliver Bardell
Producer: Becky Ripley.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
This week's Bells on Sunday comes from the Church of St Thomas the Apostle in Lymington, Hampshire. The tower contains eight bells. Five were cast by Robert Wells in 1785 and the other three by John Taylor & Company in 1901. The tenor weighs just over the ton and is tuned to E.
We hear them now ringing Spliced Rutland and Superlative Surprise Major.
The latest national and international news.
Mark Tully explores what we mean by saintliness, asking where the idea of the saint comes from and whether saintliness is a state to which anyone should aspire.
In conversation with Diarmaid Macculloch, Professor of Church History at the University of Oxford, he debates the diverse reputations of saints down the ages and questions their role in secular and religious societies.
There are readings from tthe works of the poet Deborah Paredez and the 20th century Trappist monk, Thomas Merton - and music from Wojciech Kilar, Pierre Eliane and Youssou N'Dour.
The readers are Adjoa Andoh, Francis Cadder and David Holt.
Presenter: Mark Tully
Producer: Frank Stirling
A 7digital production for BBC Radio 4.
Brett Westwood relives programmes from the Living World archives, this week an episode from 2008.
More familiar in our gardens and parks, the red admiral butterfly is found throughout the British Isles and is one of the highlights of the butterfly season. It is an unmistakable butterfly with its black wings, and striking red bands. But how do they get here?
Well for this Living World, Lionel Kelleway travels to Lulworth Cove in Dorset where, standing on the cliffs and fully expecting to be looking out for autumnal bird migration, instead he witnesses the small bands of Red Admiral butterflies flying in from the sea as they migrate from mainland Europe. With Lionel is Richard Fox from Butterfly Conservation, who explains what's happening.
Producer Andrew Dawes.
The latest weather forecast.
The latest news headlines. Including a look at the papers.
More than 700 students and families displaced by Hurricane Irma have relocated to Preston to continue their studies at the University of Central Lancashire. Kevin Bocquet looks at how the university providing spiritual and emotional support.
After the mass shooting in Las Vegas, Patrick Carolan, Executive Director of the Franciscan Action Network says "Gun safety is not a political issue. It is a pro-life issue, a moral issue, and an ethical issue. We need to stop just offering prayers and start acting" he debates with Pastor Vance Pitman of Hope Church, Las Vegas.
Alex Strangwayes-Booth has been on a "Bring Your Own Religion" pilgrimage with the British Pilgrimage Trust, reviving the tradition of making journeys on foot to holy
places.
The Scottish Episcopal Church will face sanctions after breaking with Anglican teaching on same-sex marriage. Primus, Bishop Mark Strange talks to William on what this means.
Zoe Clark-Coates has lost five pre-term babies. She tells William why she and her husband, Andy, set up a charity the Mariposa Trust
Melvyn Bragg on why it is a disgrace that society has deemed the Bible too complicated, describing the King James version as one of the greatest pieces of art ever
produced.
The Nobel Peace Prize 2017 has been awarded to International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. Russell Whiting from Christian CND talks to us about faith
based promotion of the campaign.
Producers
Carmel Lonergan
Peter Everett
Editor
Amanda Hancox
Photo Credit: University of Central Lancashire.
Prue Leith makes the Radio 4 Appeal on behalf of Bone Cancer Research Trust.
Registered Charity Number: 1159590
To Give:
- Freephone 0800 404 8144
- Freepost BBC Radio 4 Appeal. (That's the whole address. Please do not write anything else on the front of the envelope). Mark the back of the envelope 'Bone Cancer Research Trust'.
- Cheques should be made payable to 'Bone Cancer Research Trust'.
The latest weather forecast.
The latest news headlines. Including a look at the papers.
A service live from Trinity Church in Nottingham, which is housed in a former auction house in the city. It's one of the growing number of churches in the area which have been set up in order to reach out to new people as part of the 'wider, younger, deeper' vision in the diocese of Southwell. The preacher is the Bishop of Southwell, the Right Reverend Paul Williams, and the service is led by Frances Finn. Music Leader: Joanne Arton. Producer: Ben Collingwood.
Andrew Sullivan says Donald Trump is teaching a generation that the key to advancement in society is to bully, lie, slander and cheat.
He examines the long-term effects of the Trump Presidency.
"It may be that in the future", Andrew writes, "his appalling conduct will mark a cautionary tale - and future candidates and presidents will learn not to follow in his
steps".
Producer: Adele Armstrong.
In the first of five recollections about his encounters with birds, writer and wildlife programme-maker Stephen Moss explains why the sound of the Song Thrush evokes such powerful memories of his grandfather.
Tweet of the Day has captivated the Radio 4 audience with its daily 90 seconds of birdsong. But what of the listener to this avian chorus? In this new series of Tweet of the Day, we bring to the airwaves the conversational voices of those who listen to and are inspired by birds. Building on the previous series, a more informal approach to learning alongside a renewed emphasis on encounter with nature and reflection in our relationship with the natural world.
Producer: Sarah Blunt
Photograph: Full Moon Images.
Sunday morning magazine programme with news and conversation about the big stories of the week. Presented by Paddy O'Connell.
Adam tries not to seem ungrateful, and Alistair and Anisha need to work together.
Sir James MacMillan is a Scottish composer and conductor. He's one of Britain's most successful living classical composers, with his percussion concerto, Veni Veni Emmanuel, receiving more than 600 performances since its premiere in 1992. He draws inspiration from both the spiritual and the secular: many of his works draw on his Roman Catholic faith, while his passion for Celtic football club provided the initial spark for a piano concerto.
James MacMillan grew up in Cumnock, East Ayrshire, traditionally a mining centre. His father was a carpenter, and his grandfather a coal miner. He learned the trumpet and played in brass bands, whilst realising at a very young age that he wanted to make music his life. When he first picked up a recorder at school, and realised that he could change the pitch by putting different fingers over the holes, he says a light went on and he knew that he wanted to write music as well as play it.
Presenter: Kirsty Young
Producer: Sarah Taylor.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
David Mitchell hosts the panel game in which four comedians are encouraged to tell lies and compete against one another to see how many items of truth they're able to smuggle past their opponents.
Richard Osman, Arthur Smith, Lou Sanders and Phil Wang are the panellists obliged to talk with deliberate inaccuracy on subjects as varied as dolphins, cows, Arnold Schwarzenegger and students.
Produced by Jon Naismith
A Random Entertainment production for BBC Radio 4.
What happens when you share a meal with strangers? What chemistry fizzes around the table, what bonds are formed, what happens next? In this programme Sheila Dillon talks to people who believe that eating with strangers is the greatest pleasure in life, and to people whose lives have been transformed by those meals.
She visits the largest Sikh temple in Europe, where hundreds are fed every day for free, and hospitality to strangers is a sacred religious duty. She meets the woman who started the supper club movement in Britain when she began inviting people into her small flat for dinner. She talks to an unlikely couple - with a 60 year age gap - who formed a firm friendship thanks to the charity the Casserole Club. And she visits the Glasgow couple who met as strangers at a supper club for singles - and knew after that first dinner that they were destined to share the rest of their lives together. It was his table manners that did it.
The latest weather forecast.
Global news and analysis.
Katie Haywood is not your stereotypical beekeeper. "Blonde and bubbly" (by her own admission), she had a high powered managerial job that took her all around the country. But disaster struck when she suffered a stroke at an unusually young age and she took up beekeeping as part of her recovery process. It had such a transformative effect on her that she ended up selling her prized Mercedes to start a company called Felin Honeybees on the island of Anglesey. She is now a master beekeeper with nearly 1000 hives and she teaches beekeeping to all ages, and especially to people who have suffered trauma in their lives. Hardeep puts on a beekeeping suit and meets some of Katie's bees after which he makes lunch with honey from some of her hives and learns about her beekeeping journey. The two of them are joined by two of Katie's beekeeping pupils (Meg Giesler and Christine Lawrence) whose lives have also changed through the comfort they have found through this absorbing pastime.
Producer: Helen Lee.
Peter Gibbs chairs a very special edition of GQT, continuing the programme's 70th Anniversary Celebrations with a visit to Frogmore House and Gardens in Windsor Great Park - an historic royal retreat rarely open to the public, where The Queen takes a keen interest in the gardens.
The highlight of the programme is a recorded message from Her Majesty herself, on the occasion of the programme's 70th anniversary, while Peter Gibbs takes the opportunity to meet up with The Keeper of the Gardens, John Anderson, to hear how The Royal Family have long influenced the landscape at Frogmore, right up to the present day.
We also hear from Rufus Bird, Deputy Surveyor of The Queen's Works of Art, on how a theme of gardening and botanics can be found running throughout the house.
Regular panellists Matthew Wilson, Anne Swithinbank and Matt Biggs join Peter in The Duchess of Kent Sitting Room to take questions from a local gardening audience.
Produced by Darby Dorras
Assistant Producer: Laurence Bassett
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4.
Fi Glover introduces conversations between mothers and daughters who find they have more in common than not 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.
Elena Ferrante's story of a life long friendship between Lila and Lena comes to an end in this sad and surprising final chapter.
Accepting the fact that her lover Nino will not leave his wife, Lena decides to move back to Naples with her two children and accept his offer to rent them a flat in the nice part of town. They continue to have an affair and she finds herself pregnant.
Strangely, Lila also finds herself also pregnant and this unites their friendship once more. Lila however seems to suffer during her pregnancy - not helped by the chaos caused by the earthquake that hit Naples in 1980. Gradually she seems to lose touch with her world once again.
Written by Elena Ferrante
Translated by Ann Goldstein
Dramatised for radio by Timberlake Wertenbaker
Directed by Celia de Wolff
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.
Mariella Frostrup talks to Alan Hollinghurst about his much anticipated new novel The Sparsholt Affair. It opens at Oxford University during World War 2 and follows a group of friends through the social and sexual revolutions of the twentieth century, right up to the dating apps of the present day. He talks to Mariella about why he
chose to leave some major events 'offstage' and why he believes this to be his most romantic, and optimistic book yet.
Also on the programme writers Dame Denise Mina and Max Porter discuss their two new ghost stories inspired by place and critically acclaimed novelist Jami Attenberg
reveals it's a form that eludes her.
The relationship between fathers and daughters has been the subject of countless cultural explorations down the centuries, from Elektra's distress to Bonjour Tristesse. Some of them are idealised ('To Kill A Mockingbird', 'All the Lights We Cannot See'); some highly damaging and dysfunctional ('This is England', 'The Beggar's Opera'); some, as any A'Level pupil who's studied 'King Lear' can attest, are both. What is clear in all these cases is just how particular and powerful the relationship can be, and in this highly personal programme Lauren Laverne heads home to team up with her own dad, Les, to talk about their relationship and how it matches up with some of these cultural imaginings. Among anecdotes about growing up in Sunderland and later on Les playing roadie to Lauren's gigs with the likes of the Ramones, we also hear from artists who in one way or another are engaging with the dad/daughter relationship now, including Helen MacDonald, Glyn Maxwell and The Unthanks.
Manveen Rana uncovers hate speech, sectarianism and even support for Jihad in some of Britain's Urdu language newspapers, radio stations and TV channels.
While we are often told the internet and social media have accelerated the fermentation of extremist ideas, File on 4 reveals how widely-available 'old media' is also disseminating sectarian and anti-Semitic messages, as well as support for Pakistani militant groups, through newspapers and TV channels accessible in Muslim communities across the UK.
A common theme is content about the Ahmadiyyah community, who are considered by some Muslims to be heretics. A persecuted community in Pakistan, such violence came to the UK in 2016 when shop keeper Asad Shah was fatally stabbed by a man accusing him of blasphemy. Despite this shocking sectarian murder, British Urdu media continues to publish insulting material targeting the Ahmadiyyah community - included campaigns calling on readers to boycott Ahmadi-made goods.
But at what point do these media outlets cross the line from bad taste to criminal behaviour? And are media regulators doing enough to prevent and punish the offenders?
Producers: Richard Fenton-Smith & Sajid Iqbal
Editor: Gail Champion
Sound Engineer: Neil Churchill.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest weather forecast.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
On the programme this week making sense of the teenage diaries of Ian Rankin...and Adrian Mole, and making sense of language when you're on the autism spectrum. Could a new CBeebies cartoon help?
We feature a history of state surveillance and a Kafkaesque drama about mistaken identity in Sweden. Edward Moloney the stressed cat is back at the vet, Jeremy Vine meets Digby the miniature horse, whilst brother Tim has a magpie doing something with a banana...in Welsh.
Plus Gardener's Question Time in its 70th year gets the royal seal of approval.
Presenter: Sheila McClennon
Producer: Stephen Garner
With production support from Kay Bishton and Tim Fernley.
Justin is in the dog house, and the Grundys hatch a scheme.
Incompetent private detectives Max and Ivan are contacted by the very dull white goods instruction manual writer Robert R. Roberts (guest star Jason Watkins), who wants them to investigate a series of copycat crimes based on the erotic crime fiction novels he writes under the pseudonym Scarlett Melange.
Their investigation takes them to the Peckam Flower and Vegetable show, where they fear the life of head judge Joaquin Zamorano is in considerable danger. Along the way, they meet the one person on earth who might be more boring than Robert R. Roberts - his wife Roberta.
Cast:
Max..............................................Max Olesker
Ivan...........................................Ivan Gonzalez
Robert R. Roberts
aka Scarlett Melange...................Jason Watkins
Roberta Roberts/
Voice of the Audiobook.................Lolly Adefope
Narrator /
Malcolm McMichaelmas...............Lewis MacLeod
Joaquin Zamarano /
Impish Nutter..................................David Reed
Written by and Max Olesker and Ivan Gonzalez
Developed by John Stanley Productions
Produced by Ben Walker
A Retort production for BBC Radio 4.
The story of a disappearance - told backwards.
Sian Brooke continues Jon McGregor's new series of interlinked stories set in the Peak District. A thirteen-year-old girl, Becky Shaw, has gone missing on a family walk
on the moors. Now, as the hunt for Becky begins, a young woman on the search party struggles with her own demons.
The fifteen stories of The Reservoir Tapes each stand alone but together build a compelling portrait of a community rocked by tragedy, as they explore events that precede and follow the disappearance the teenage girl. A prequel to Jon McGregor's critically acclaimed Man Booker long-listed novel Reservoir 13, these stories and their different perspectives offer tantalizing glimpses as to what might have happened to Becky.
Writer: Jon McGregor is an acclaimed British novelist who has been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize three times. His third novel, Even the Dogs, won the International Dublin Literary Award
Reader: Sian Brooke is an acclaimed British actor. She has recently starred in Sherlock and The Moorside.
Producer: Justine Willett.
The new Editor of Today defends her programme against listeners' accusations that coverage is no longer focused on the news. Sarah Sands addresses concerns that 'softer' features have taken priority, discusses the future of the presenting team and sets out her vision for the future of Today.
When the programme ran several items on Fashion Week, a long interview with actress Judi Dench and on-location reporting from Silicon Valley on the launch of a new Apple smartphone, listeners wrote in to express their dissatisfaction with the coverage. Many stated that the emphasis for Today should be on news rather than features, with more analysis from BBC correspondents. Sarah Sands explains why this coverage was of relevance to the Today audience and discusses her plans to attract new audiences.
Also, we hear mixed reviews from listeners in response to the five-part series, 'Whodunnit: The Calendar Conspiracy'' examining the theory that when you are born has a direct impact on educational and professional success.
And the BBC responds to listeners' claims that there is a geographical bias in coverage favouring natural disasters that occur in the United States rather than the developing world.
Presenter: Roger Bolton
Producer: Kate Dixon
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4.
Matthew Bannister on
The actor Tony Booth, best known for playing Alf Garnett's left wing son-in-law in the TV comedy Till Death Us Do Part - and notorious for his womanising and heavy drinking. His daughter Cherie Blair shares her memories.
Lillian Bettencourt who was the richest woman in the world - as heiress to the L'Oreal cosmetics group. She was also
embroiled in a bitter court battle over how her fortune should be divided.
William G. Stewart, best known as the host of the long running TV quiz "Fifteen to One", He was also a respected producer and director.
And the rock star Tom Petty - best known for hits like "Free Fallin'" and "I Won't Back Down".
Will technology radically reshape the highly profitable world of finance? Technology can revolutionise industries, making goods and services cheaper and more accessible. Television is going the same way with online services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime providing thousands of movies and boxsets. From the point of view of the consumer the picture is the same - we tend to have more choice and pay less money. Profits get squeezed. Yet there's one service we buy that seems to be a glaring exception - finance. Philip Coggan of The Economist asks whether the rapidly growing financial technology sector is about to change all that, creating a future that's much less comfortable for City fat cats, but better for everyone else.
Producer: Ben Carter
(Photo: Tech Globe on hand. Credit: Shutterstock).
Weekly political discussion and analysis with MPs, experts and commentators.
Francine Stock asks director Denis Villeneuve why he took on the sequel to the much loved classic Blade Runner. He reveals exactly what Ridley Scott said to him before he started filming.
"Get a life!" Writer Paul Rose replies to the critics who slated Pudsey The Dog - The Movie and made it one of the worst reviewed films in recent history.
The Snowman director Tomas Alfredson tells Francine about the key difference between Swedes and Norwegians, and about the piece of music he listened to on repeat during the two years of production.
Caitlin Benedict and Gavia Baker-Whitelaw visit the Nine Worlds convention where delegates dress up as their favourite movie characters while discussing academic subjects such as Queer Coding In Disney.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
Robots & AI: Laurie Taylor takes a cool, non dystopian look at future possibilities. He's joined by Toby Walsh, Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of New South Wales, Judy Wajcman, Anthony Giddens Professor of Sociology at the LSE and Kathleen Richardson, Professor of Ethics and Culture of Robots and AI Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility at De Montfort University.
Does automation herald the death of work or even pose an existential threat? How significant are the differences between humans and machines? What should be the ethical limits to the development of killer and sex robots? How can we create a society in which technology is a force for collective good given that future imaginaries are shaped by such a narrow, Silicone Valley elite?
Producer: Jayne Egerton.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Canon Steve Williams, Bishop of Manchester's interfaith adviser.
Britain's farmers are increasingly missing out when it comes to buying agricultural land. Data from the property company Strutt and Parker covering sales since 1996, has shown a steady increase in private investors purchasing such sites - suggesting they're on the verge of overtaking farmers as the primary buyers of agricultural land.
Charlotte Smith finds out why this is happening from the firm's Estates and Farm Agency Department Michael Fiddes - and asks the National Farmers Union's Land Management Adviser Eleanor Griggs whether it could be a good thing for the next generation of farmers.
The onset of autumn is often seen as the ideal time for those in woodland management to take stock of tree diseases: as the leaves fall, it's easier to assess the trunk and boughs underneath. It's also when the Forestry Commission carries out its annual fly-over, to photograph from the air how diseases are affecting the UK as a whole. Howard Shannon has been to Northamptonshire to meet Matthew Willetts, senior forestry consultant for Lockhart Garratt, and Nicola Spence, Chief Plant Health Officer from Defra.
It's Deer Week on Farming Today: the British Deer Society estimates there are 2 million wild deer across six species in the UK and about 50 dedicated deer farms. With sales of venison on the up, there's optimism in the sector - but also concern, particularly about managing the wild population and disease - as the society's Charles Smith-Jones explains.
The latest weather forecast for farmers.
BirdLife International's chief scientist Dr Stuart Butchart reveals the bronze-winged jacana. He shares what he found out whilst spending three years studying them at Vembanur Lake in India, surrounded by water lilies and patiently watching on a canoe.
Producer: Eliza Lomas
Photograph: Prerna Jane.
News and current affairs. Includes Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
The Russian Revolution a hundred years on. To mark the centenary Tom Sutcliffe is in Moscow to discuss the forces that led to the Revolution, and to find out how far Russians today embrace or reject such a pivotal moment in their country's history. He talks to a senior member of President Putin's political party, Konstantin Kosachev. And he is joined by the journalists Mikhail Zygar and Arkady Ostrovsky and the Director of the Tretyakov Gallery, Zelfira Tregulova.
Producer: Katy Hickman.
John Reed's classic eye-witness account of the Russian Revolution in October 1917.
Dramatised by Robin Brooks
Episode 1: The Coming Storm
Autumn 1917 and Petrograd under the Provisional Government is in chaos. American journalists John Reed and Louise Bryant arrive to find the tension between factions is palpable and it's only a matter of time before the situation explodes. But in which direction?
Director Alison Hindell
BBC Cymru Wales production
John Reed's vivid eye-witness account of his time in Petrograd was written in early 1918 and published in the USA the following year. It was an instant best-seller, so much so that in Russia it was some years before Stalin - who is only mentioned twice in the book - felt he could ban it for its portrayal of Trotsky. Possibly naïve, definitely politically one-sided, nevertheless the veracity and impact of Reed's enthusiastic snapshot-style reportage has become a classic memoir and inspired films including Eisenstein's classic 'October' and 'Reds' which won an Oscar for its director and star, Warren Beatty.
Dawn French is best-known as a comedian. But she's also a writer and actor. She's been nominated for seven British Academy Television Awards and won a
BAFTA Fellowship with her comedy partner Jennifer Saunders. She talks to to Jane about her career, her life and her new book,
a biographical diary.
Carole Anne Duffy published her anthology of The World's Wife in 1999. Since then many of the poems featured have gone on to be exam set texts and
even inspired a play. Now some are being developed into an Opera. Amanda Forbes, the soprano taking the lead role, explains why the work has such
wide appeal.
In 2015 Valeria Luiselli, an award-winning Mexican author, began working as a volunteer interpreter in New York City's federal immigration court. Her job was to ask unaccompanied children who had crossed the border from Mexico a standardized series of questions. She would then translate their answers from
Spanish into English. Jane asks Luiselli about her career and how her experiences of talking to these immigrant children influenced her latest work,
Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions.
Presenter Jane Garvey
Producer Beverley Purcell.
Sylvia Plath's renown as one of the twentieth century's most influential poets is beyond dispute, but she was also one of its most captivating correspondents. This radio selection, is abridged by Caitlin Crawford from the remarkable, collected edition of Plath's letters published last week. Edited by Peter K Steinberg and Karen Kukil , it is a work of immense scholarship and care, presenting a comprehensive and historically accurate text of the known and extant letters that she wrote to over one hundred and twenty correspondents, including her husband the poet Ted Hughes, to whom previously unseen letters are now revealed. The programmes offer us a generous insight into the life of one of our most significant poets. Known primarily for her poetry, Plath also wrote a semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas. The book's protagonist, Esther Greenwood, is a bright, ambitious student at Smith College who begins to experience a mental breakdown while interning for a fashion magazine in New York. The plot parallels Plath's experience interning at Mademoiselle magazine and subsequent mental breakdown and suicide attempt.
Despite her remarkable artistic, academic, and social success at Smith, Plath suffered from severe depression and underwent a period of psychiatric hospitalization. She graduated from Smith with highest honours in 1955 and went on to Newnham College, Cambridge, in England, on a Fulbright fellowship. Here she met and married the English poet Ted Hughes in 1956. For the following two years she was an instructor in English at Smith College.
1. 1943 to 1951 - Adolescence to Smith College .
Read by Lydia Wilson
Abridged by Caitlin Crawford
Produced by Susan Roberts.
How are men affected by abortion? There are around 200,000 legal abortions carried out in England, Scotland and Wales every year and it's estimated that 1 in 3 women will have a termination at some point in their lifetime. Women are offered support and counselling through the process - but do we do enough to help the many men affected by the experience?
Aasmah Mir talks to men who have gone through the experience and to women about how they feel men cope with abortion. She hears from abortion service providers about the current process, academics about the limited research conducted into the impact abortion has on men, and experts working in the field of relationship counselling.
Fifty years after abortion was decriminalised in most of the UK, Aasmah discovers there's still a lot of stigma around it and the experience of men is often a closed topic. One man, who has supported three partners through terminations, tells Aasmah, "'I've not spoken to anybody about this ever. I did bring it up once recently but people just seem to want to sweep it under the carpet with me. They were embarrassed that I brought it up. It's a taboo. You can't really talk about it."
US psychologist Michael Simon says, for some men, the experience can have a serious long term impact on how they deal in particular with sex and relationships.
But others don't feel men should be offered any extra support at all. UK newspaper columnist Sarah Ditum says, "The more you involve men, the more you take the focus away from women. You're suddenly allowing this other person in, who in a physical sense is very much the junior partner in the whole baby making process."
A Made in Manchester production for BBC Radio 4.
Susan Calman is the least relaxed person she knows. She has no down time, no hobbies (unless you count dressing up your cats in silly outfits) and her idea of relaxation is to play Grand Theft Auto, an hour into which she is in a murderous rage with sky high blood pressure. Her wife had to threaten to divorce her to make her go on holiday last year. Her first for four years. But she's been told by the same long-suffering wife, that unless she finds a way to switch off, and soon, she's going to be unbearable.
So Susan is going to look at her options and try to immerse herself in the pursuits that her friends find relaxing, to find her inner zen and outer tranquillity. Each week she will ditch the old Susan Calman and attempt to find the new Susan Calm, in a typically British leisure pursuit; this week she goes to a cricket match with Andy Zaltzman, and in other episodes goes hillwalking with Muriel Gray, has a spontaneous holiday with John Finnemore and enjoys an art gallery with Phill Jupitus.
Keep Calman Carry On is an audience stand up show in which Susan reports on how successful she's been - both at relaxing and at the pursuit itself - as well as playing in and discussing a handful of illustrative clips from her efforts. It's an attempt to find out how people find solace or sanctuary in these worlds and how Susan can negotiate her own place in them.
Produced by Lyndsay Fenner.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
A couple of decades after Leo Baekeland invented the first fully synthetic plastic - Bakelite - plastics were pouring out of labs around the world. There was polystyrene, often used for packaging; nylon, popularised by stockings; polyethylene, the stuff of plastic bags. As the Second World War stretched natural resources, production of plastics ramped up to fill the gap. And when the war ended, exciting new products like Tupperware hit the consumer market. These days, plastics are everywhere. We make so much plastic, it takes about eight percent of oil production - half for raw material, half for energy. And despite its image problem, and growing evidence of environmental problems, plastic production is set to double in the next 20 years.
Presenter: Tim Harford
Producer: Ben Crighton.
We investigate a fraud so convincing that accountants, police and even financial regulators didn't spot it. We hear from small business owners who thought they were receiving business grants from the government but lost thousands of pounds to criminals instead.
Should the sale of dogs through pet shops be banned? Animal welfare charities recommend that you should only buy a dog from registered breeders or rehoming centres, and earlier this year a group of MPs recommended a complete ban on the sale of dogs through third parties. But some animal charities argue that a ban would only drive unscrupulous breeders underground. We hear from a customer whose puppy died within 2 days of getting him home from the pet shop.
The Charity Commission says there's a significant under-reporting of problems by charities - many of them serious, like insider fraud and safeguarding issues. But charities say the real problem lies with the Commission itself.
Colouring books for adults were a big trend a couple of years ago with many successful titles. We hear from a woman who explains how they can help even with serious mental health problems. She writes a blog for other people who find colouring books an effective way of helping them deal with their anxiety and other conditions.
Housing associations and councils have joined calls for the new Universal Credit benefits system to be halted. Many new users have waited weeks for their payments, leaving them in debt. Social landlords tell us that many tenants have been unable to pay their rent as a result.
The latest weather forecast.
Analysis of news and current affairs.
The Russian doll, that iconic, and rather kitsch, piece of classic folk art, expresses a profound vision of Russian life. The political ones, offering a sly joke about the continuity of a country that also prides itself on revolutionary change, are almost all men, yet women have played their part in Russian history too.
Vanora Bennett chooses five influential women in Russia's history, starting with one of the greatest and longest-lasting rulers of the European Enlightenment who is remembered as reigning Russia in its golden age: Catherine the Great.
Producer Mark Rickards.
by William Shakespeare
Part One
As part of Character Invasion, a new production of the play in 5 episodes broadcast each afternoon this week.
The Castle of Elsinore in Denmark. The court is uneasy. The king of Denmark has recently died and the throne has been claimed by the king's brother, Claudius. Prince Hamlet, still in mourning for his father, distrusts Claudius and believes that what has happened at the court 'cannot come to good'
Original music composed and realised by Roger Goula
The director is Marc Beeby.
The popular quotations programme 'Quote ... Unquote' returns. Nigel Rees quizzes Kate Fox, Olly Mann, Julian Mitchell and Joanna Scanlon.
Quote ... Unquote, the popular quotations quiz, returns for a new series.
For over forty years, Nigel Rees has been joined by writers, actors, musicians, scientists and various comedy types. Kenneth Williams, Judi Dench, PD James, Larry Adler, Ian KcKellen, Peter Cook, Kingsley Amis, Peter Ustinov... have all graced the Quote ... Unquote stage.
Join Nigel as he quizzes a host of guests on the origins of sayings and well-known quotes, and gets the panel to share their favourite anecdotes.
Episode 2
Playwright and Screenwriter Julian Mitchell
Award Winning Podcaster and Gadget Guru Olly Mann
Actor and Screenwriter Joanna Scanlan
Stand Up Poet Kate Fox
Presenter ... Nigel Rees
Reader ... Charlotte Green
Producer ... Katie Tyrrell
Production co-ordinator ... Beverly Tagg
This is a BBC Studios Production.
From Mussorgsky to Rimsky-Korsakov, Rachmaninov, Stravinsky, the unmistakable sound of bells rings through the greatest pieces of Russian music. Composer Llywelyn ap Myrddin takes us on a musical journey to discover the 'voice of the Russian sky' amid the throng at the Rostov-the-Great Bell Festival.
With the aid of pianist Yaroslav Timofeev and musicologist Gerard McBurney, Llywelyn sheds light on the unique complexity of the Russian bell's sound, its chaotic overtones and harmonics, and why its wild untuned state must have enraptured The Mighty Five composers in their quest for a truly national school of Russian music during the 19th century.
Woven into the very fabric of everyday Russian life for centuries, bell chimes sounded warnings, weddings and death knells. At different points they have been emblematic of both a deep patriotic conservatism and dangerous subversion. With the help of historians and expert campanologists, Llywelyn delves into the medieval origins of Russian bells, including colourful anecdotes which encapsulate the literal and symbolic power of the bell. Exclusive archival evidence sheds light on the layman reaction to the shocking abolition of bells during the Soviet era.
But what of the future of this age-old Russian tradition? Speaking with Oleg Gritsaenko at his thriving Litex bell foundry in Zhukovsky, Llywelyn gets to grips with the intricate playing style of the zvonar' (bell-ringer) and feels the heat of the fiery furnace with the next generation of bell-casters who are painstakingly rediscovering a lost art.
Recorded on location in Russia.
A Cast Iron Radio production for BBC Radio 4.
By creating a web of meaning, rituals help control the uncontrollable and explain the inexplicable. Aleks Krotoski explores whether we use rituals enough in the digital world?
Eddie Mair with interviews, context and analysis.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
David Mitchell hosts the panel game in which four comedians are encouraged to tell lies and compete against one another to see how many items of truth they're able to smuggle past their opponents.
Richard Osman, Arthur Smith, Lou Sanders and Phil Wang are the panellists obliged to talk with deliberate inaccuracy on subjects as varied as Kanye West, sugar, chickens and aeroplanes.
Produced by Jon Naismith
A Random Entertainment production for BBC Radio 4.
Emma has help from an unexpected source, and there is bad news for Alistair.
Arts news, interviews and reviews.
The Russian Revolution of 1917 was not only a political revolution - the overthrowing of the Tsarist regime by Lenin's Bolshevik party - it was an unprecedented thought experiment, a revolution in ideas.
From women's emancipation to early thinking about the biosphere and the role of art and music joined with work. From rethinking the potential of human nature and the basis of the family to racial equality, laws forbidding anti-Semitism and experiments in collective living. From the immediate decriminalization of homosexuality and a new understanding of ecology, to behavioural psychology and early work in systems theory - the intellectual firmament generated by 1917 precipitated a second revolution in Western thought, both in support and powerfully against it.
British writers, thinkers and radicals including HG Wells, Bertrand Russell and Arthur Ransom either visited the Soviet Union or wrote passionately in support of the young regime. Sylvia Pankhurst corresponded with Lenin directly from London, while Bertrand Russell, on returning from Moscow, compared what he saw to the vision of Plato's republic. Decades before the civil rights movement, a generation of African American thinkers including Paul Robeson and the philosopher W E B Du Bois, visited Moscow and were inspired by the Soviet example - the African Blood Brotherhood movement was directly influenced by Bolshevik ideas and iconography.
The Russian Revolution also gave a huge boost to the new and radical social sciences as they were beginning to grow - the idea that social institutions could be subject to critical scrutiny in a clear, scientific manner was thrilling to Western intellectuals.
Intellectual opposition to 1917 was just as fierce. While energising the field of left-leaning thought, the Russian Revolution also politicised the purpose of more traditional philosophy and it came out fighting.
The historian Justin Champion explores the early years of the Russian Revolution of 1917 as an intellectually explosive and genuinely creative moment - bringing in new ideas, vocabularies and concepts, challenging and transforming Western thinking in the process.
Contributors include Francis Fukuyama, China Mieville, Slavoj Zizek, Sheila Fitzpatrick, Gabriel Prokofiev, Roger Scruton and Hakim Adi.
Producer: Simon Hollis
A Brook Lapping production for BBC Radio 4.
What could spark a major conflict on the world's most sensitive front line, and just how devastating would it be? Alarm about North Korea has spiked. It claims to have successfully test-launched an intercontinental ballistic missile that could hit Alaska. Some experts estimate that North Korea is now 18 to 36 months away from launching a missile able to reach Los Angeles. President Trump has threatened to "totally destroy" the country, in an exchange of increasingly belligerent messages from both sides. Neal Razzell takes a look at the two sides' war plans and asks: what would war with North Korea look like?
Producer: Sarah Shebbeare.
One swallow doesn't make a summer but it comes close: Brett Westwood explores a much loved and inspirational bird whose own definition of happiness is a field of cow dung. Mark Cocker is in one such field in Derbyshire; Anders Pape Moller catches breeding swallows in a cow byre in Jutland; Angela Turner tells stories of how we've adored and exploited swallows, Anthony Roberts and Ellie Ness lead a swallow ringing on the Isle of Wight and we hear from Katrina Bradley as she watches swallows in the Nigerian village of Ibaken. Producer: Tom Bonnett.
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.
Culminating on Friday 13th, Owen Teale (Game Of Thrones) reads David Seltzer's novelisation of his academy award-winning horror. Released in June 1976 by 20th Century Fox, and starring Gregory Peck and Lee Remick, the movie had a vast and lasting impact - reviving Peck's career, spawning several sequels and remakes, and launching a wave of Antichrist-themed movies.
Episode 1:
Kathy, wife of American diplomat Robert Thorn gives birth to a boy. They name him Damien.
Writer: David Seltzer
Abridger: Jeremy Osborne
Reader: Owen Teale
Producer: Karen Rose
A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4.
Michael Rosen finds out what the rest of society can learn about communication from people on the autism spectrum, by getting an insight into a different worldview. He meets Alis Rowe and Helen Eaton from the Curly Hair project. Producer Sally Heaven.
Sean Curran reports from Westminster.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Canon Steve Williams, Bishop of Manchester's interfaith adviser.
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
Bruce Winney from BirdLife International remembers seeing red kites overhead whilst driving in Harrogate, after years of absence from the skies.
Tweet of the Day has captivated the Radio 4 audience with its daily 90 seconds of birdsong. In this latest series of Tweet of the Day, we bring to the airwaves the conversational voices of those who listen to and are inspired by birds. Building on the previous series, a more informal approach to learning alongside a renewed emphasis on encounter with nature and reflection in our relationship with the natural world.
Producer: Eliza Lomas
Photograph: PLFoto.
News and current affairs. Including Yesterday in Parliament, Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
Steve Cowley has said that "fusion is arguably the perfect way to power the world". But he's had to add that "it is hard to make fusion work. Indeed, after more than 60 years of fusion research, no device has yet made more energy than it consumes".
But Steve Cowley isn't giving up. He's spent over 30 years working towards making nuclear fusion a viable way of generating energy. Steve Cowley has done theoretical research on how to contain the incredibly hot material you need to get fusion going. As the Director of the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy he guided the British contribution to research. And he has led the UK's participation in ITER, an international experimental reactor being built in France that is planned to be the next step towards making nuclear fusion commercially viable.
Jim al-Khalili discusses with Steve Cowley, now Master of Corpus Christi College in Oxford, why nuclear fusion, which has such promise as a clean form of energy with no dangerous waste, has proved so hard to achieve.
Trevor Nelson, DJ and radio presenter, grew up in London knowing he had half siblings on St Lucia in the Caribbean. Growing up in London with his parents and full brothers and sisters, it was never something that impacted much on his life.
But he's always been fascinated about the complexities and dynamics of family life with half siblings. And for this series of One to One, he meets different people with different stories to tell about their own half siblings.
Here he meets 'Janet' (not her real name) who has fallen out with her half siblings and now has no contact with them.
The producer is Perminder Khatkar.
John Reed's classic eye-witness account of the Russian Revolution in October 1917.
Dramatised by Robin Brooks
Episode 2: On the Eve
The confusion in Petrograd continues as the new delegates to the Congress of Soviets stream into the city. Reed gets a brief interview with Trotsky and overhears Lenin calling for a Bolshevik insurrection. But isn't Lenin meant to be in hiding to avoid arrest?
Director Alison Hindell
BBC Cymru Wales production
John Reed's vivid eye-witness account of his time in Petrograd was written in early 1918 and published in the USA the following year. It was an instant best-seller, so much so that in Russia it was some years before Stalin - who is only mentioned twice in the book - felt he could ban it for its portrayal of Trotsky. Possibly naïve, definitely politically one-sided, nevertheless the veracity and impact of Reed's enthusiastic snapshot-style reportage has become a classic memoir and inspired films including Eisenstein's classic 'October' and 'Reds' which won an Oscar for its director and star, Warren Beatty.
Programme that offers a female perspective on the world.
Sylvia Plath's renown as one of the twentieth century's most influential poets is beyond dispute, but she was also one of its most captivating correspondents. This radio selection, is abridged by Caitlin Crawford from the remarkable, collected edition of Plath's letters published last week. Edited by Peter K Steinberg and Karen Kukil , it is a work of immense scholarship and care, presenting a comprehensive and historically accurate text of the known and extant letters that she wrote to over one hundred and twenty correspondents, including her husband the poet Ted Hughes, to whom previously unseen letters are now revealed. The programmes offer us a generous insight into the life of one of our most significant poets. Known primarily for her poetry, Plath also wrote a semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas. The book's protagonist, Esther Greenwood, is a bright, ambitious student at Smith College who begins to experience a mental breakdown while interning for a fashion magazine in New York. The plot parallels Plath's experience interning at Mademoiselle magazine and subsequent mental breakdown and suicide attempt.
Despite her remarkable artistic, academic, and social success at Smith, Plath suffered from severe depression and underwent a period of psychiatric hospitalization. She graduated from Smith with highest honours in 1955 and went on to Newnham College, Cambridge, in England, on a Fulbright fellowship. Here she met and married the English poet Ted Hughes in 1956. For the following two years she was an instructor in English at Smith College.
2. November 1951 to December 1953 - The Smith College years .
Read by Lydia Wilson
Abridged by Caitlin Crawford
Produced by Susan Roberts.
Brett Westwood follows gulls away from the sea and explores how they thrive in cities and at the landfill sites where birders gather to watch and ring them. Featuring Dominic Mitchell who found Europe's first slaty-backed gull, Viola Ross Smith of the British Trust for Ornithology, Peter Rock on the Bristol urban gull study and more.
Producer: Tim Dee.
The Russian Revolution unleashed a brand of humour that continues to this day. In this two-part series, comedian and Russophile Viv Groskop explores a century of revolutionary comedy and asks how it continues to shape the national psyche.
The series will rediscover comedy of the Revolution: Bolshevik satire, early Communist cartoons and jokes about Lenin, as writers, satirists and comedians recall the jokes and cartoons shared by their parents and grandparents.
Producer: Georgia Catt.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
In the early years of the 20th century, US car makers had it good. As quickly as they could manufacture cars, people bought them. By 1914, that was changing. In higher price brackets, especially, purchasers and dealerships were becoming choosier. One commentator warned that the retailers could no longer sell what their own judgement dictated - they must sell what the consumer wanted. That commentator was Charles Coolidge Parlin, widely recognised as the man who invented the very idea of market research. The invention of market research marks an early step in a broader shift from a "producer-led" to "consumer-led" approach to business - from making something then trying to persuade people to buy it, to trying to find out what people might buy and then making it. One century later, the market research profession is huge: in the United States alone, it employs around half a million people.
Presenter: Tim Harford
Producer: Ben Crighton.
Consumer phone-in.
The latest weather forecast.
Analysis of news and current affairs.
The Russian doll, that iconic, and rather kitsch, piece of classic folk art, expresses a profound vision of Russian life. The political ones, offering a sly joke about the continuity of a country that also prides itself on revolutionary change, are almost all men, yet women have played their part in Russian history too.
In the second in the series, Vanora Bennett profiles the life of Stalin's wife Nadezhda Alliluyeva, born in 1901 to provincial revolutionaries in the Tsarist Russian south.
Producer Mark Rickards.
by William Shakespeare
Part Two
A part of Character Invasion. The ghost of Hamlet's father has told Hamlet that he was murdered by Claudius. Hamlet wants revenge but is what the ghost has told him true?
Original music composed and realised by Roger Goula
The director is Marc Beeby.
It may seem odd when an industry that relies on seasonal trends and consumption talks about 'going green'. But Lucy Siegle has had a keen eye to the fashion industry and has been charting efforts to improve things. She heads to La Scala in Milan for the very first Green Carpet Fashion Awards, rubbing shoulders with Gisele, Anna Wintour and Giorgio Armani, where the big names in the industry are gathering to respond to calls for greener fashion. Is this the sign of new era starting from the top? Lucy heads back to the UK, where the 18-35 year olds are leading the charge in wanting more sustainable fashion. She reveals how we shop and looks at which fabrics could potentially challenge cotton and polyester and what it would take for them to be a mainstay in our wardrobes. For the fashion loving consumer who's not ready for a lecture, we reveal the new developments from retail and 'change disruptors' and ask if the 'lucky pants' theory could change our behaviour.
Presenter: Lucy Siegle
Producer: Anne-Marie Bullock.
The writer Robert Macfarlane (author of Landmarks, The Old Ways, The Wild Places and Mountains of the Mind) believes that the language we use to talk about nature is itself at risk of becoming an endangered species. A 2016 research paper by Cambridge University conservationists found that eight-to 11-year-old schoolchildren were 'substantially better' at identifying common Pokemon characters than common species of British wildlife.
Over the past 10 years, Macfarlane has been gathering a 'word-hoard' of thousands of terms for nature, landscape and weather, in the hope of preserving, enriching and diversifying our language for the living world. He shares some of his favourites with Michael Rosen and Dr Laura Wright and talks about why its so important to celebrate the language we use to talk about the natural world.
Produced by Mair Bosworth.
Actress Sally Lindsay and playwright Jonathan Harvey talk about the books they love with Harriett Gilbert: The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole by Sue Townsend, Wise Children by Angela Carter and a wickedly funny spoof actor's memoir, I, An Actor, by Nicholas Craig (in fact Christopher Douglas and Nigel Planer).
Sally is best known for her role as Shelley Unwin in Coronation Street - which Jonathan writes for. He also wrote the influential film Beautiful Thing and the TV series Gimme Gimme Gimme.
Producer Beth O'Dea.
Eddie Mair with interviews, context and analysis.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Tim Vine has been travelling the length and breadth of this fair land to not only uncover the best stories of the Great British public but also to take every possible opportunity to tell a ridiculous joke and sing a preposterous song along the way.
This week Tim visits Scotland and the St Andrew Blackadder church in North Berwick. A pie-seller and a man undergoing some unusual physiotherapy provide the entertainment and Tim leads a maritime sing-a-long.
Producer: Richard Morris
A BBC Studios Production.
Lilian finds herself tempted, while David and Ruth worry about Pip.
Arts news, interviews and reviews.
How well do NHS hospitals look after their elderly patients? Allan Urry investigates concerns about a lack of basic care. Is it proving fatal for some? Why are bedsores, repeated falls, malnutrition and dehydration still featuring among the complaints of families who've lost loved ones? The programme also assesses how well the NHS responds when mistakes are made.
Reporter: Allan Urry
Producer: Nicola Dowling.
News, views and information for people who are blind or partially sighted.
Dr Mark Porter presents a series on health issues.
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.
Culminating on Friday 13th, Owen Teale (Game Of Thrones) reads David Seltzer's novelisation of his academy award-winning horror. Released in June 1976 by 20th Century Fox, and starring Gregory Peck and Lee Remick, the movie had a vast and lasting impact - reviving Peck's career, spawning several sequels and remakes, and launching a wave of Antichrist-themed movies.
Episode 2:
Tragedy strikes at Damien's birthday party.
Writer: David Seltzer
Abridger: Jeremy Osborne
Reader: Owen Teale
Producer: Karen Rose
A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4.
We all like to think we know about the news and yet, whilst jokes about Donald Trump's tiny hands are all well and good, do you still have that nagging suspicion there's important things going on beneath the headlines you'd like to know about? Well, help is at hand! Nish Kumar is here to cast his spotlight on the week's most talked about news items, taking an in-depth look at the biggest stories from the past seven days as well as scrutinising the bigger issues of the moment.
Starring Nish Kumar with Sarah Campbell.
Written by Sarah Campbell, Max Davis, Gabby Hutchinson-Crouch, Nish Kumar, and Tom Neenan.
It was produced by Matt Stronge and was a BBC Studios Production.
Susan Hulme reports from Westminster.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Canon Steve Williams, Bishop of Manchester's interfaith adviser.
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
Rosa Gleaves from BirdLife International, reveals how she recognises the song of the goldcrest and why that has inspired a change in her life.
Tweet of the Day has captivated the Radio 4 audience with its daily 90 seconds of birdsong. In this latest series of Tweet of the Day, we bring to the airwaves the conversational voices of those who listen to and are inspired by birds. Building on the previous series, a more informal approach to learning alongside a renewed emphasis on encounter with nature and reflection in our relationship with the natural world.
Producer: Eliza Lomas.
Morning news and current affairs. Including Yesterday in Parliament, Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
Roderick Williams explores whether Britain has lost its singing culture and, if so, how it can be recovered.
Have we lost our memories for the words and tunes that enabled us to sing together? Roderick Williams is worried that the future of Britain's great choral tradition might be under threat. Father Kevin Scully and his organist Dr Christopher Maxim mourn the loss of full-throated congregational hymn. Roderick hears from Marek Korczynski how the rich singing culture of Britain was silenced by the clamour of industrialisation and how hundreds of thousands of people believe they cannot sing. He meets Frankie Armstrong, a singing pioneer who has made it her life's work to reunite the British people with their voices; the artistic director of BVG the Indian choir of England with a love of harmony and the English choral sound and rehearses with the London Bulgarian Choir. He meets singers from the Stroke Odysseys project and hears from Stephen Clift on why singing might promote good health. He consults the composer, William Byrd's "reasons to sing" set out in the preface to the first English songbook, published in 1588 and finds resonances with the singing for health movement today.
Since singing is so good a thing
I wish all men would learn to sing
Produced by Natalie Steed for BBC Wales.
Designer Wayne Hemingway looks at five colours that have been at the centre of ownership and trademark battles, revealing the complex status of colours in our society - their artistic, commercial and cultural impact.
He explores our response to colour - whether it's the red soles of designer shoes, the blue strip of a football team or the purple of a chocolate bar wrapper - interviewing those involved in branding, advertising and IP, as well as the psychologists, scientists , colour gurus, artists and those creating the colours of tomorrow using Nanotechnology.
Programme 5 - Black
Whether black is a colour is debatable. Unlike colours which are created from the reflection of different wavelengths of light, black is created from the absorption of light. Wayne tells the story of Vantablack - the blackest black created which, unlike other blacks, absorbs all but a tiny (less than 0.04%) of light. Anish Kapoor has bought exclusive rights to the black. Wayne concludes the series by questioning the rights of colour ownership.
Producer: Sara Parker
A Juniper production for BBC Radio 4.
John Reed's classic eye-witness account of the Russian Revolution in October 1917.
Dramatised by Robin Brooks
Episode 3: The Winter Palace
Reed and Bryant blag their way in to the Winter Palace and meet the frightened government troops defending the building. As gunfire starts in the street, the Palace falls surprisingly easily to the victorious revolutionaries but the journalists are caught in a dangerous encounter.
Director Alison Hindell
BBC Cymru Wales production
John Reed's vivid eye-witness account of his time in Petrograd was written in early 1918 and published in the USA the following year. It was an instant best-seller, so much so that in Russia it was some years before Stalin - who is only mentioned twice in the book - felt he could ban it for its portrayal of Trotsky. Possibly naïve, definitely politically one-sided, nevertheless the veracity and impact of Reed's enthusiastic snapshot-style reportage has become a classic memoir and inspired films including Eisenstein's classic 'October' and 'Reds' which won an Oscar for its director and star, Warren Beatty.
Programme that offers a female perspective on the world.
Sylvia Plath's renown as one of the twentieth century's most influential poets is beyond dispute, but she was also one of its most captivating correspondents. This radio selection is abridged by Caitlin Crawford from the remarkable, collected edition of Plath's letters published last week. Edited by Peter K Steinberg and Karen Kukil , it is a work of immense scholarship and care, presenting a comprehensive and historically accurate text of the known and extant letters that she wrote to over one hundred and twenty correspondents, including her husband the poet Ted Hughes, to whom previously unseen letters are now revealed. The programmes offer us a generous insight into the life of one of our most significant poets. Known primarily for her poetry, Plath also wrote a semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas. The book's protagonist, Esther Greenwood, is a bright, ambitious student at Smith College who begins to experience a mental breakdown while interning for a fashion magazine in New York. The plot parallels Plath's experience interning at Mademoiselle magazine and subsequent mental breakdown and suicide attempt.
Despite her remarkable artistic, academic, and social success at Smith, Plath suffered from severe depression and underwent a period of psychiatric hospitalization. She graduated from Smith with highest honours in 1955 and went on to Newnham College, Cambridge, in England, on a Fulbright fellowship. Here she met and married the English poet Ted Hughes in 1956. For the following two years she was an instructor in English at Smith College.
3. January 1954 - February 1955 Convalescence to Cambridge University .
Read by Lydia Wilson
Abridged by Caitlin Crawford
Produced by Susan Roberts.
A father who suffered abuse as a wartime evacuee brought up his own son very differently. Fi Glover presents another conversation in the series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.
Producer: Marya Burgess.
Starring Meera Syal as the catering sleuth from Slough on the trail of a missing bridesmaid - with Justin Edwards and Vincent Ebrahim.
After Mrs Sidhu's evidence gives Inspector Burton a panic attack, she is soon on the trail of Josh Lucas, the playboy heir to the Lucas title and fortune. Josh though has turned over a new leaf.
Meanwhile Inspector Burton, ever eager to impress the rich and famous, jumps at the chance when Lady Lucas offers her help in the search of the property. Mrs Sidhu is furious and suspects manipultion of both the evidence and the Inspector.
Writer Suk Pannu
Studio Engineers Phil Horne, Leon Chambers
Editor Leon Chambers
Director Marilyn Imrie
Producer Gordon Kennedy
Executive Producer Chris Pye
An Absolutely production for BBC Radio 4.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Join our search for the 51st Thing! Exclusive podcast content - find out all about it after hearing how high-tech 'death ray' led to the invention of radar. The story begins in the 1930s, when British Air Ministry officials were worried about falling behind Nazi Germany in the technological arms race. They correctly predicted that the next war would be dominated by air power. To address the problem, Britain launched a number of projects in hopes of mitigating the threat - including a prize for developing a high-tech 'death ray' that could zap a sheep at a hundred paces. But even though the project failed to develop such a weapon, it did result in something potentially far more useful that was able to detect planes and submaries - radar. And it was an invention that was crucial in the development of the commercial aviation industry.
Presenter: Tim Harford
Producer: Ben Crighton.
Consumer affairs programme.
The latest weather forecast.
Analysis of news and current affairs.
The Russian doll, that iconic, and rather kitsch, piece of classic folk art, expresses a profound vision of Russian life. The political ones, offering a sly joke about the continuity of a country that also prides itself on revolutionary change, are almost all men, yet women have played their part in Russian history too.
Revealing the third Babushka doll in the series, Vanora Bennett looks at the life and work of a writer born in Russia but whose influence is most evident in her adopted home of the USA, Ayn Rand.
Producer Mark Rickards.
by William Shakespeare
Part Three
In an attempt to discover whether Claudius murdered his father, Hamlet has arranged for a play featuring a similar murder to be performed before the court.
Original music composed and realised by Roger Goula
The director is Marc Beeby.
Financial phone-in.
Sociological discussion programme, presented by Laurie Taylor.
Topical programme about the fast-changing media world.
Eddie Mair with interviews, context and analysis.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
John Shuttleworth invites celebrated pop stars to his Sheffield home to perform one of their own songs and also, more importantly, one of his.
This week, John's guest is Mari Wilson.
Joan Chitty gets very excited about Mari's visit as she used to have a wonderful beehive and Joan would like Mari to give her the same look. John is not convinced this is a good idea as Joan has very short spiky hair and far too much hair lacquer would be required.
Anyway, there are more important things to be done. Mari needs to sing one of John's songs and John has to prepare for a medley of Mari's songs and get Top Tips on the Telephone from Tony Burrows who famously appeared on Top of The Pops three times in one show!
Written and Performed by Graham Fellows with special guests Mari Wilson and Toni Burrows
Produced by Dawn Ellis
A Chic Ken production for BBC Radio 4.
Pip makes an embarrassing mistake, and Lily is left speechless.
Arts news, interviews and reviews.
Combative, provocative and engaging debate chaired by Michael Buerk.
David Baddiel tries to understand TV broadcasting.
In the last episode of the current series, David helps broadcaster Danny Baker understand TV broadcasting. Both of them have spent decades in and around TV, but neither quite understands how it works. Danny wonders if there is a 'magic room' where all the programmes get lined up and broadcast out, and David sets off to find it.
Producer: Giles Edwards.
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.
Culminating on Friday 13th, Owen Teale (Game Of Thrones) reads David Seltzer's novelisation of his academy award-winning horror. Released in June 1976 by 20th Century Fox, and starring Gregory Peck and Lee Remick, the movie had a vast and lasting impact - reviving Peck's career, spawning several sequels and remakes, and launching a wave of Antichrist-themed movies.
Episode 3:
Father Tassone has a warning.
Writer: David Seltzer
Abridger: Jeremy Osborne
Reader: Owen Teale
Producer: Karen Rose
A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4.
In the throes of splitting up from her boyfriend, 29-year-old Charlotte (Helen Monks) is determined to prove she's not as self-centred as he says she is. She signs up as a volunteer to visit the elderly, expecting to be paired with a frail and needy old lady who's full of gratitude and appreciation for such a selfless act. Instead she meets 82-year-old Lillian (Miriam Margolyes), a belligerent and feisty old bat who sees through her in an instant.
Needless to say, they don't get on.
With the split from her boyfriend seemingly final, Charlotte has moved back in with her parents. In a desperate attempt to revamp her life, she's decided she wants to become a journalist, and announces to Lillian that she wants to jump start her new career with a poignant profile of her that will warm the hearts of everyone who reads it. Lillian is initially flattered by Charlotte's interest in her previous career as an actress - until she realises footage of her greatest ever role can be found at the touch of a button on Charlotte's mobile.
This four-part, two-actress comedy, written by Holly Walsh and Kat Sommers, was recorded on location and features the fantastic combination of Miriam Margolyes and Helen Monks, working together for the first time.
A Giddy Goat production for BBC Radio 4.
Travel through the bad gateway in this modern ghost story as writer and performer Tom Neenan discovers what horrors may lurk in our apps and gadgets.
Modern technology is terrifying. The average smartphone carries out 3.36 billion instructions per second. The average person can only carry out one instruction in that time. Stop and think about that for a second. Sorry, that's two instructions - you won't be able to do that.
But what if modern technology was literally terrifying? What if there really was a ghost in the machine?
Cast:
Tom...................Tom Neenan
Heidi..................Jenny Bede
The Cabbie.........Roger Morlidge
Jane...................Kath Hunter
and Frances Barber as the voice of the app.
Written by Tom Neenan
Produced by David Tyler
A Pozzitive production for BBC Radio 4.
Sean Curran reports from Westminster.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Canon Steve Williams, Bishop of Manchester's interfaith adviser.
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
Sue Patterson from BirdLife International has a story of introducing the Great Spotted Woodpecker to the next generation of birders, revealing the key to determining the bird's sex.
Tweet of the Day has captivated the Radio 4 audience with its daily 90 seconds of birdsong. In this latest series of Tweet of the Day, we bring to the airwaves the conversational voices of those who listen to and are inspired by birds. Building on the previous series, a more informal approach to learning alongside a renewed emphasis on encounter with nature and reflection in our relationship with the natural world.
Producer: Eliza Lomas
Photograph: Gareth Hardwick.
Morning news and current affairs. Including Yesterday in Parliament, Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aphra Behn (1640-1689), who made her name and her living as a playwright, poet and writer of fiction under the Restoration. Virginia Woolf wrote of her: ' All women together, ought to let flowers fall upon the grave of Aphra Behn... for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds'. Behn may well have spent some of her early life in Surinam, the setting for her novel Oroonoko, and there are records of her working in the Netherlands as a spy for Charles II. She was loyal to the Stuart kings, and refused to write a poem on the coronation of William of Orange. She was regarded as an important writer in her lifetime and inspired others to write, but fell out of favour for two centuries after her death when her work was seen as too bawdy, the product of a disreputable age.
The image above is from the Yale Center for British Art and is titled 'Aphra Behn, by Sir Peter Lely, 1618-1680'
With
Janet Todd
Ros Ballaster
and
Claire Bowditch
Producer: Simon Tillotson.
John Reed's classic eye-witness account of the Russian Revolution in October 1917.
Dramatised by Robin Brooks
Episode 4: Plunging Ahead
The Bolsheviks have taken the Winter Palace and seized control. Amidst a whirl of excitement, dread and rumour, Lenin abolishes all private ownership of land.
Director Alison Hindell
BBC Cymru Wales production
John Reed's vivid eye-witness account of his time in Petrograd was written in early 1918 and published in the USA the following year. It was an instant best-seller, so much so that in Russia it was some years before Stalin - who is only mentioned twice in the book - felt he could ban it for its portrayal of Trotsky. Possibly naïve, definitely politically one-sided, nevertheless the veracity and impact of Reed's enthusiastic snapshot-style reportage has become a classic memoir and inspired films including Eisenstein's classic 'October' and 'Reds' which won an Oscar for its director and star, Warren Beatty.
Programme that offers a female perspective on the world.
Sylvia Plath's renown as one of the twentieth century's most influential poets is beyond dispute, but she was also one of its most captivating correspondents. This radio selection, is abridged by Caitlin Crawford from the remarkable, collected edition of Plath's letters published last week. Edited by Peter K Steinberg and Karen Kukil , it is a work of immense scholarship and care, presenting a comprehensive and historically accurate text of the known and extant letters that she wrote to over one hundred and twenty correspondents, including her husband the poet Ted Hughes, to whom previously unseen letters are now revealed. The programmes offer us a generous insight into the life of one of our most significant poets. Known primarily for her poetry, Plath also wrote a semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas. The book's protagonist, Esther Greenwood, is a bright, ambitious student at Smith College who begins to experience a mental breakdown while interning for a fashion magazine in New York. The plot parallels Plath's experience interning at Mademoiselle magazine and subsequent mental breakdown and suicide attempt.
Despite her remarkable artistic, academic, and social success at Smith, Plath suffered from severe depression and underwent a period of psychiatric hospitalization. She graduated from Smith with highest honours in 1955 and went on to Newnham College, Cambridge, in England, on a Fulbright fellowship. Here she met and married the English poet Ted Hughes in 1956. For the following two years she was an instructor in English at Smith College.
4. September 1955 to March 1956 - Cambridge University to Richard Sassoon.
Read by Lydia Wilson
Abridged by Caitlin Crawford
Produced by Susan Roberts.
Reports from writers and journalists around the world. Presented by Kate Adie.
Hull 17: Contains Strong Language - A City of Poets in its Own Words.
PART 2. Recorded live in Hull, Lindsey Chapman explores how Hull has proved so inspiring to poets past and present. Jeremy Irons and Julie Hesmondhalgh perform poetry by Andrew Marvell, Philip Larkin, Grace Nichols and Douglas Dunn.
Part of Contains Strong Language, the BBC's season of Poetry and Performance from Hull.
Directed by Charlotte Riches
Produced by Susan Roberts.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
If you live in a city with modern sanitation, it's hard to imagine daily life being permeated with the suffocating stench of human excrement. For that, we have a number of people to thank - not least a London watchmaker called Alexander Cumming. Cumming's world-changing invention owed nothing to precision engineering. In 1775, he patented the S-bend. It was a bit of pipe with a curve in it and it became the missing ingredient to create the flushing toilet - and, with it, public sanitation as we know it. Roll-out was slow, but it was a vision of how public sanitation could be - clean, and smell-free - if only government would fund it. More than two centuries later, two and a half billion people still remain without improved sanitation, and improved sanitation itself is a low bar. We still haven't reliably managed to solve the problem of collective action - of getting those who exercise power or have responsibility to organise themselves.
Presenter: Tim Harford
Producer: Ben Crighton.
Consumer affairs programme.
The latest weather forecast.
Analysis of news and current affairs.
The Russian doll, that iconic, and rather kitsch, piece of classic folk art, expresses a profound vision of Russian life. The political ones, offering a sly joke about the continuity of a country that also prides itself on revolutionary change, are almost all men, yet women have played their part in Russian history too.
As she finds her fourth doll, Vanora Bennett looks at the achievements of Valentina Tereshkova, who in 1963 became the first woman in space.
Producer Mark Rickards.
by William Shakespeare
Part Four
Following Hamlet's accidental murder of Polonius, Laertes returns to Elsinore bent on revenge.
Original music composed and realised by Roger Goula
The director is Marc Beeby.
Clare Balding continues her exploration of The Isle of Man by travelling south to walk the coastal path from Kallow Point to the Sound. She's joined by locals Jane and Peter Gunn and archaeologist, Andrew Foxon. Despite the wind and rain setting in, there are still wonderful views to be had of the Calf of Man and Jane explains the many vagaries of living on the island, she appears to know everyone or at least all those they meet en route.
Producer: Lucy Lunt.
Francine Stock talks to the director of Let The Right One In, Tomas Alfredson, about his Jo Nesbo adaptation The Snowman.
Adam Rutherford investigates the news in science and science in the news.
Eddie Mair with interviews, context and analysis.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Batman was an orphan; Lisbeth Salander, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, was an orphan; Superman was an orphan and a foundling. Cinderella was a foster child. Darth Vader - well, they can't all be winners. Lemn Sissay returns to BBC Radio 4 with a comic and poetic look at the treatment of children raised in care, orphans and foster children in popular culture, comparing them with reality. Because it surely says something about how we view them that we create so many for fiction.
Lemn will explore the gap between fiction and reality, based on his own experiences of growing up in care as well as those of some special guests.
1. THE BED UNDER THE STAIRS
In this first episode, Lemn discusses his experiences as a foster child, comparing them to the life of Harry Potter. Like Harry, Lemn was never told the truth about what happened to his parents. Like Harry, he found his foster parents harsh and unforgiving. But, like Harry, he came through those problems, avoided the dementors, and grew up.
As well as storytelling, comedy and poetry, Lemn imagines an interview with Vernon and Petunia Dursley - Harry's foster parents. Finally, they get to tell their side of the story.
Written and performed by ... Lemn Sissay
Producer ... Ed Morrish
Lemn Sissay is the author of six collections of poetry. He has also written plays for stage and BBC radio. His radio documentary Child of the State was nominated for the 2010 Sony Awards, and last year's two-part series for Radio 4, Lemn Sissay's Homecoming was described by The Spectator as "a poignant, mind-stretching half-hour ... This was truly innovative radio", and caused The Observer to remark, "What a thing to hear in Radio 4's 6.30pm slot - the sound of genuine happiness; also regret, anger, wonder, bursting from the radio with the unexpected exuberance of a child dancing at a chamber concert ... terrific radio".
Lemn was the first poet to write for the Olympics 2012 and received an MBE for Services to Literature. He is associate artist at the Southbank Centre, an (hon) Doctor of Letters, and currently the Chancellor of the University of Manchester. If you should Google "Lemn Sissay" all the returning hits will be about him. There is only one person named Lemn Sissay in the world.
LEMN SISSAY'S ORIGIN STORIES IS A BBC STUDIOS PRODUCTION.
Helen puts her foot down, and Adam makes a friend.
Arts news, interviews and reviews.
Series looking at important issues in the news. Presented by David Aaronovitch.
Evan Davis presents the business magazine.
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.
Culminating on Friday 13th, Owen Teale (Game Of Thrones) reads David Seltzer's novelisation of his academy award-winning horror. Released in June 1976 by 20th Century Fox, and starring Gregory Peck and Lee Remick, the movie had a vast and lasting impact - reviving Peck's career, spawning several sequels and remakes, and launching a wave of Antichrist-themed movies.
Episode 4:
Kathy is in danger.
Writer: David Seltzer
Abridger: Jeremy Osborne
Reader: Owen Teale
Producer: Karen Rose
A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4.
Comedian Liam Williams recounts his youthful misadventures in this autobiographical sitcom. Episode two finds Liam searching for hedonism, while torn between the laddish drinking societies and the artsy intelligentsia of Cambridge University.
Ladhood is written and performed by Liam Williams and starred:
Al Roberts
Emma Sidi
Freya Parker
Kieran Hodgson
Paul G Raymond
The Producer is Joe Nunnery
It is a BBC Studios Production.
Susan Hulme reports from Westminster.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Canon Steve Williams, Bishop of Manchester's interfaith adviser.
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
Rob Martin of BirdLife International shares an encounter in Indonesia with one of the rarest birds in the world: the cerulean paradise flycatcher, which he feared was extinct.
Tweet of the Day has captivated the Radio 4 audience with its daily 90 seconds of birdsong. In this latest series of Tweet of the Day, we bring to the airwaves the conversational voices of those who listen to and are inspired by birds. Building on the previous series, a more informal approach to learning alongside a renewed emphasis on encounter with nature and reflection in our relationship with the natural world.
Producer: Eliza Lomas.
Morning news and current affairs. Including Yesterday in Parliament, Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
John Reed's classic eye-witness account of the Russian Revolution in October 1917.
Dramatised by Robin Brooks
Episode 5: Chill Winds
Ex-Prime Minster Kerensky has joined forces with the Cossacks and is advancing on Petrograd, and there is fighting in the streets in Moscow: rumour is rife that the Revolution cannot survive.
Director Alison Hindell
BBC Cymru Wales production
John Reed's vivid eye-witness account of his time in Petrograd was written in early 1918 and published in the USA the following year. It was an instant best-seller, so much so that in Russia it was some years before Stalin - who is only mentioned twice in the book - felt he could ban it for its portrayal of Trotsky. Possibly naïve, definitely politically one-sided, nevertheless the veracity and impact of Reed's enthusiastic snapshot-style reportage has become a classic memoir and inspired films including Eisenstein's classic 'October' and 'Reds' which won an Oscar for its director and star, Warren Beatty.
Programme that offers a female perspective on the world.
Sylvia Plath's renown as one of the twentieth century's most influential poets is beyond dispute, but she was also one of its most captivating correspondents. This radio selection, is abridged by Caitlin Crawford from the remarkable, collected edition of Plath's letters published last week. Edited by Peter K Steinberg and Karen Kukil , it is a work of immense scholarship and care, presenting a comprehensive and historically accurate text of the known and extant letters that she wrote to over one hundred and twenty correspondents, including her husband the poet Ted Hughes, to whom previously unseen letters are now revealed. The programmes offer us a generous insight into the life of one of our most significant poets. Known primarily for her poetry, Plath also wrote a semi-autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar, under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas. The book's protagonist, Esther Greenwood, is a bright, ambitious student at Smith College who begins to experience a mental breakdown while interning for a fashion magazine in New York. The plot parallels Plath's experience interning at Mademoiselle magazine and subsequent mental breakdown and suicide attempt.
Despite her remarkable artistic, academic, and social success at Smith, Plath suffered from severe depression and underwent a period of psychiatric hospitalization. She graduated from Smith with highest honours in 1955 and went on to Newnham College, Cambridge, in England, on a Fulbright fellowship. Here she met and married the English poet Ted Hughes in 1956. For the following two years she was an instructor in English at Smith College.
5. April 1956 to October 1956 - from meeting to marriage . Sylvia and Ted Hughes
Read by Lydia Wilson
Abridged by Caitlin Crawford
Produced by Susan Roberts.
A lyrical improvisation captures the music and the stories of those who stop to play the street pianos at St Pancras Station in London, exploring the communities the music creates in this transient urban setting.
Around 45 million people pass through the station each year, travelling not only to the North of England or Kent, but also to Paris, Brussels and Lille. Visitors who stop unexpectedly - and regulars who come frequently - play the station's unusual street pianos with a wide range of musical styles and ability. Their personal stories reinforce ideas about the universal language of music and its ability to cut across class, nationality, creed and colour.
Over the years, top performers from Sir Elton John to Laura Mvula, Jamie Cullum to John Legend, have all played here - with Sir Elton signing and donating a piano.
But this programme tells the story of the ordinary people and the tunes they play. It provides intimate access into strangers' lives and to this London station at both its busiest and its quietest moments.
Producer: Sophie Sparham
An Overtone production for BBC Radio 4.
Based on a short story by R. Austin Freeman
Dramatised by Chris Harrald
Inspector Lestrade was made to look a fool in the Sherlock Holmes stories. Now he is writing his memoirs and has a chance to get his own back, with tales of Holmes' rivals. He continues with Dr James Thorndike as they try to protect Pastor Wayne Kaplan after he receives death threats, despite Lestrade's and James' aversions to Kaplan's charismatic preaching and healing.
Directed by Liz Webb
Episode by Chris Harrald inspired by the short story 'The Moabite Cipher' by R. Austin Freeman: http://www.online-literature.com/r-freeman/john-thorndykes-cases/6/.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Luca Pacioli was a renaissance man - he was a conjuror, a master of chess, a lover of puzzles, a Franciscan Friar, and a professor of mathematics. But today he's celebrated as the most famous accountant who ever lived, the father of double-entry bookkeeping. Before the Venetian style of bookkeeping caught on, accounts were rather basic. An early medieval merchant was little more than a travelling salesman. He had no need to keep accounts - he could simply check whether his purse was full or empty. But as the commercial enterprises of the Italian city states grew larger, more complex and more dependent on financial instruments such as loans and currency trades, the need for a more careful reckoning became painfully clear. In 1494 Pacioli wrote the definitive book on double-entry bookkeeping. It's regarded by many as the most influential work in the history of capitalism. And as the industrial revolution unfolded, the ideas that Pacioli had set out came to be viewed as an essential part of business life; the system used across the world today is essentially the one that Pacioli described.
Presenter: Tim Harford
Producer: Ben Crighton.
Consumer news and issues.
The latest weather forecast.
Analysis of news and current affairs.
The Russian doll, that iconic, and rather kitsch, piece of classic folk art, expresses a profound vision of Russian life. The political ones, offering a sly joke about the continuity of a country that also prides itself on revolutionary change, are almost all men, yet women have played their part in Russian history too.
Vanora Bennett's final Babushka doll is revealed to be a member of the activist group known as Pussy Riot.
Producer Mark Rickards.
by William Shakespeare
Part Five
Hamlet has returned unexpectedly to Elsinore where Claudius and Laertes have laid plans to murder him at a fencing match.
Original music composed and realised by Roger Goula
The director is Marc Beeby.
Peter Gibbs and the panel are at Wakehurst Place in West Sussex, coinciding with the 30th anniversary of damage The Great Storm did there. Pippa Greenwood, Christine Walkden and Bob Flowerdew answer horticultural questions from the audience.
Produced by Dan Cocker
Assistant Producer: Laurence Bassett
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4.
Maxine Beneba Clarke's specially written short story is about the fall out from a devastating hurricane which compels Nico and his son Elias to rebuild their lives in a new land. Read by Damian Lynch.
Maxine Beneba Clarke is an Australian writer and slam poetry champion of Afro-Caribbean descent. She is the author of the poetry collections Gil Scott Heron is on Parole and Nothing Here Needs Fixing. Her award winning debut short story collection, Foreign Soil was published in 2014, and The Hate Race, her powerful memoir about growing up black in white middle-class Australia was published in 2017.
Produced by Elizabeth Allard.
Obituary series, analysing and celebrating the life stories of people who have recently died.
Radio 4's forum for audience comment.
Brothers who grew up in Termonbaca children's home, run by the Sisters of Nazareth, in Derry, recall the abuse they suffered. Fi Glover presents another conversation in the series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.
Producer: Marya Burgess.
Eddie Mair with interviews, context and analysis.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Satirical review of the week's news, chaired by Miles Jupp.
Matt stirs the pot, and Philip proves a knight in shining armour.
News, reviews and interviews from the worlds of art, literature, film and music.
Jonathan Dimbleby presents political debate from Wellington Church in Glasgow.
A reflection on a topical issue.
The Grenfell Tower disaster is a defining event in the history of social housing in Britain. Grenfell has brought to light some of the failures and attitudes that underpin our relationship to class, poverty, race and inequality. In this first episode of a ten part series, Lynsey Hanley will examine what Grenfell means for both social housing and for us as a society.
Lynsey argues Grenfell represents the culmination of the long story of how we have sought to meet the needs of the most disadvantaged in society through housing.
She talks to the Labour MP David Lammy about his upbringing. He tells her how social housing was once desirable, something people aspired to. But was the original dream of good quality housing for the poorer members of our society flawed from the beginning? Lynsey asks why we don't have decent housing for all, avoiding the stigma of paternalism and segregation by income and status. Did an original flawed plan create a marginalised class of people set away in isolated estates?
Presenter: Lynsey Hanley
Producer: Sara Parker and Joe Sykes
Executive Producer: Samir Shah
A Juniper production for BBC Radio 4.
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.
Culminating on Friday 13th, Owen Teale (Game Of Thrones) reads David Seltzer's novelisation of his academy award-winning horror. Released in June 1976 by 20th Century Fox, and starring Gregory Peck and Lee Remick, the movie had a vast and lasting impact - reviving Peck's career, spawning several sequels and remakes, and launching a wave of Antichrist-themed movies.
Episode 5:
Thorn has confirmed the shocking truth about Damien.
Writer: David Seltzer
Abridger: Jeremy Osborne
Reader: Owen Teale
Producer: Karen Rose
A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4.
Mark D'Arcy reports from Westminster.
Coming to terms with childhood abuse and the failure of those who should have protected you. Fi Glover presents another conversation in the series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.
Producer: Marya Burgess.