The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
Zadie Smith reads from her latest essay collection where she offers sharp, and sometimes funny, insights and observations on high culture, pop culture, social change, political debate and the personal. Today, some thoughts on the Alte Frau, an enigmatic painting of a woman by the German painter Balthasar Denner.
Abridged and produced by Elizabeth Allard.
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The latest shipping forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
A reading and a reflection to start the day, with George Craig, a retired senior civil servant and a Methodist local preacher in Cardiff.
The week the inquiry into the Grenfell Tower fire starts, iPM talks again to a listener and former firefighter, who investigated his own high-rise tower block in Manchester.
Plus Susan Rae reads our Your News bulletin.
Presented by Luke Jones and Eddie Mair. Produced by Cat Farnsworth.
Email: ipm@bbc.co.uk. Twitter: @BBCiPM.
The latest news headlines. Including the weather and a look at the papers.
Clare Balding is off to Little Switzerland in this week's programme, but she's not travelling far: Church Stretton, in Shropshire, earned its nick-name in Victorian times because of the area's Alpine feel. Her companions are Mark and Debbie, who met after both lost their spouses to cancer. Together with Ted, the wire haired Dachshund, they are attempting to complete every route listed in the book "50 walks in Shropshire". They have just passed the 20 mark. Today's walk takes them to the trig point of the Long Mynd, from there they retrace their steps back to the top of Town Brook Hollow and return over the top of Yearlet Hill and Ashlet Hill and back into Church Stretton.
Producer: Karen Gregor.
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.
With Rev. Richard Coles and Aasmah Mir,
David Coulthard talks about his Formula 1 career and life after racing. Listener Kate got in touch to tell us how writing helped her on the way to recovery from anorexia. JP Devlin meets song and dance man Movin' Melvin Brown; Whitney Brown explains how she went from being an academic in America to dry stone walling in Wales. Opera star Willard White shares his Inheritance Tracks: Smile by Nat King Cole and Bach's Prelude No. 1. Adnan Sarwar is a former British soldier who has just returned to Iraq to explore how the country has changed.
David Coulthard's The Winning Formula: Leadership, Strategy and Motivation the F1 Way is out now.
Movin' Melvin Brown is performing his show Chuck Berry Lives and running the workshop Dancing with the Star - Movin with Melvin at the Brighton Fringe till the 3rd June.
Whitney Brown's Between Stone and Sky: Memoirs of a Walker is out now.
Part one of Adnan Sarwar's documentary Journey in the Danger Zone: Iraq goes out on BBC Two on Sunday, 3rd June, at 8pm.
Willard White is performing in Don Giovanni at the Royal Opera House in London from 29th June until 17th July.
Producer: Claire Bartleet
Editor: Eleanor Garland.
How do the rich and the poor live together, side-by-side every day?
Journalist Cole Moreton walks across the London Borough of Kensington in a revealing series of real-life encounters that build and tell a story like a drama. From a food hall to a food bank, he goes into the homes, shelters and multi-million pound apartments of the men and women who are surviving - or thriving - as inequality grows.
Life expectancy drops dramatically, wages are slashed and property prices fall through the floor in just a few miles, but the encounters with rich and poor along the way are unexpected, moving, heart-breaking and at times inspirational. This surprising, spell-binding programme asks the question so many are asking - how can we live like this?
This documentary was recorded using binaural microphones placed inside the sound recordist's ears. Binaural recording accurately recreates the sound of being in the location itself, with sounds appearing to move in three dimensions around the listener. To experience The Walk in this aural "3D", please listen in headphones.
Presenter: Cole Moreton
Producer: Jonathan Mayo
A TBI production for BBC Radio 4.
Reports from writers and journalists around the world. Presented by Kate Adie.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Will the regulator crack down on high-cost credit? Christopher Woolard from the Financial Conduct Authority discusses their newly-released review and consultation papers on overdrafts and expensive borrowing. Debt advisor Sara Williams, who runs the Debt Camel website, shares her views on the findings.
Reporter Tony Bonsignore has uncovered new developments following the collapse of the estate planning firm Universal Wealth Preservation. He hears from a former employee who says he has a moral duty to help affected clients. It follows concern from an industry professional body that other firms appear to be approaching former Universal Wealth clients to offer help - for a fee.
Ofgem has published an open letter to energy suppliers covering the smart meter rollout. The government expects every home to have been offered one by 2020 -but it's not compulsory to accept it. Is is possible for the industry to meet the deadline? Paul talks to Rob Salter-Church from Ofgem.
Presenter: Paul Lewis
Producer: Charmaine Cozier
Editor: Hugh Levinson.
Miles is joined by Jeremy Hardy, Angela Barnes, Helen Lewis and Susan Calman for the final episode of this series. The teams tackle all the big stories of the week and Mamadou Gassama gets what we assume is his first mention in the history of the programme.
Writers: Gabby Hutchinson-Crouch, James Kettle, Ian Smith with additional material by Laura Major and Chris Stokes
Producer: Richard Morris
A BBC Studios Production.
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The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
Jonathan Dimbleby presents political debate Ventnor's Winter Gardens on the Isle of Wight with a panel including the Shadow Health Secretary Jon Ashworth, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer Lord Lamont, the Liberal Democrat Education Spokesperson Layla Moran MP and the businessman Jon Platt who went to the supreme court last year over the right to take his child out of school in term time.
Listeners have their say on the issues discussed on Any Questions?
Caryl Churchill's critically acclaimed play was first premiered at The Royal Court theatre, London in 2016. Contains strong language.
"I'm walking down the street and there's a door in the fence open and inside there are three women I've seen before." Three old friends and a neighbour. A summer of afternoons in the back yard. Tea and catastrophe.
Apocalypse is in the air . Bright sunlight and birdsong flood a back garden where four septuagenarian women chat - and even sing - over afternoon tea. Mrs Jarrett occasionally steps into another world , a dark place, describe a contemporary world ravaged by biblical plagues. She's part prophet of a disturbing future , part refugee stepping out of a distorted, troubling present.
Cast
Sally - Deborah Findlay
Vi - June Watson
Lena - Kika Markham
Mrs Jarrett - Linda Bassett
Directed for radio by the original stage director, James Macdonald
Produced for radio by Susan Roberts.
Comedy writer Sian Harries and columnist and broadcaster Grace Dent discuss that strange taboo for women - ambivalence towards motherhood. Should Sian make the decision to have a baby or not to? And she wonders will she regret somewhere down the line not having them. She and Grace talk about how other people can make you feel when you haven't got children.
As the successful writer of programmes like ' Man Down', 'The Now Show' and 'Dilemma', Sian Harries explores how a fear for her career might be affecting her decision to have children. Women certainly have more choice now about whether to become a mother, but does society really accept and respect that choice or is it generally assumed that all women want a baby and that she - and any women who feel ambivalent - will at some point change their minds?
Producer: Toby Field.
In this edition of Opening Night Lindsay Chapman goes to Leeds to explores the role of women, both on and off stage. She takes us behind the scenes of the West Yorkshire Playhouse's world premiere adaptation of the bestselling novel The Girl on the Train, meets a team of young women theatre makers who're putting unsung women front and centre stage, and examines how feminist politics is being played out in conventional and unconventional theatrical spaces.
The Woman's Hour Power List this year is all about Women in Music - not just performers, but technicians and producers. We hear from Mabel one of the artists at the BBC's Biggest Weekend in Swansea and from this year's judges record producer Catherine Marks, the producer and director Jasmin Dotiwala and music journalist Jessica Duchen
Chelsea Clinton talks about her new children's picture book - She Persisted Around The World: 13 Women Who Changed History,
Three young women now in their 20's share their stories about being in abusive relationships in their teens and we get advice about what you can do to support young people from Amna Abdulattif, Children and Young People's officer for Women's Aid.
Ovarian Cancer rates in the UK are amongst the highest in Europe. Now a new drug, Niraparib is becoming available in England and in Wales within the next few weeks, aiming to give patients more time chemo-free. We hear from Professor of Medical Oncology Dr Jonathan Ledermann and ovarian cancer patient Vanessa Hillary
Plus the composer Alexandra Harwood - who wrote the score for the movie The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - will be talking about her latest commission a series called Alexandra and the Russians inspired by Russian folklore and her own heritage
And Meg Wolitzer talks about her book The Female Persuasion which been described as a feminist blockbuster and optioned for a film by Nicole Kidman
Presenter Tina Daheley
Producer: Dianne McGregor
Editor: Beverley Purcell.
Luke Jones with the day's news.
The next generation of mobile technology - 5G - will be rolled out from 2019. It will enable faster streaming on our mobile phones and tablets and speed up the 'internet of things', allowing thousands of computers to 'talk' to each other. The fifth generation mobile network also has applications that could be used in public safety and healthcare. But will the UK build the infrastructure - installing more fibre and small communications masts - to benefit from this new technology? Joining Evan Davis for the debate will be:
Derek McManus, Chief Operating Officer at Telefonica UK, which owns O2.
Professor Dimitra Simeonidu, Director of the Smart Lab at Bristol University
and Kyle Brown, Head of Technology at Samsung Electronics.
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The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Clive Anderson and Tom Allen are joined by Kenney Jones, Colm Toibin, Debbie Wiseman and Jon Sopel for an eclectic mix of conversation, music and comedy. With music from Etienne Charles and Tuuletar.
Producer: Tim Bano.
The leader of Sinn Féin, Mary Lou McDonald has been a face of the campaign to scrap a ban on abortions.
In a referendum, voters in the Republic of Ireland voted overwhelmingly to overturn the abortion ban.
The campaign also increased the profile of Ms McDonald who took over as the leader of Sinn Féin in February.
Her personal story is very different from other leading Sinn Féin politicians.
Growing up in a middle class suburb of Dublin - a world away from the tough areas of Northern Ireland most Sinn Féin leaders knew during the years of the Troubles - insiders asked whether her untypical background would work for or against her.
Presenter: Ed Stourton
Producers: Estelle Doyle, Clare Spencer.
A bilingual production of Moliere's Tartuffe at Theatre Royal Haymarket, written by Christopher Hampton and updated to a setting in contemporary Los Angeles sounds like a winning formula. It has had some damning reviews elsewhere in the press; what will our reviewers make of it?
Francois Ozon's newest film L'amant Double deals with a Hitchcockian plot line involving twin psychiatrists both treating the same beautiful young woman who is having emotional and relationship problems. They also both happen to be sleeping with her too. It's very slick, stylish and French but is it any good?
A final collection of short stories by acclaimed Irish writer William Trevor, who died in 2016, has just been published. We discuss "Last Stories"
Animals and Us is the latest exhibition at Turner Contemporary in Margate; it reflects on the relationship between humans and other animals. How well does it deal with such a gargantuan subject?
Elmore Leonard's book Get Shorty was made into a successful film in 1995 and is now a TV series starring Chris O'dowd.
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Christopher Frayling, Rebecca Stott and Tiffany Jenkins. The producer is Oliver Jones.
A unique insight into the vibrant art scene of mid-1960s America from an archive of recordings made then and broadcast now for the very first time.
In 1965, the painter and teacher John Jones headed to the United States for a year, intending to record the most important and most influential artists he could find. His wife Gaby and their two young daughters went with him. One of those daughters, Nicolette Jones is now a writer and critic and she tells the story of how the family lodged in New York, while her father grabbed interviews with Yoko Ono, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg and many more.
This was the moment of Happenings, Pop Art and Abstract Expressionism, while the long shadow of Dada and Surrealism, represented on the tapes by Marcel Duchamp and Man Ray, reached forward to Louise Bourgeois.
Later, with nothing planned at all, the family set off on a three month road-trip in their old Ford station wagon, travelling across America from East to West Coast, turning up in little towns on the off chance of getting an interview with artists like Jasper Johns in Florida or a young Ed Ruscha in California.
The unique archive of over 100 recordings, gathered by John Jones, lay in boxes in the family home for decades, waiting for him to write a book based on the tapes. He wasn't able to do this and so the family offered the whole set of recordings to the Tate Archive, which acquired them in 2015.
In this programme, we hear a tantalising sample of this extraordinary material, airing a pivotal moment in 20th century art and revealing John Jones to be on a par with some of the great audio collectors like Alan Lomax and Studs Terkel.
The programme evokes the mood of the time by interweaving the artists' reflections with a soundscape of mid-60s American music, TV and location sound. Art historian and Artistic Director of the Royal Academy, Tim Marlow gives a powerful sense of the artists' achievement, as Nicolette Jones conjures up the feeling of a great American road trip through the eyes of the child she was.
Extracts by kind permission of:
The Easton Foundation/DACS, London/VAGA, NY 2018
Estate of Roy Lichtenstein/DACS 2018
May Ray Trust/ADAGP, Paris and DACS, London 2018
Produced by Emma-Louise Williams
A Loftus production for BBC Radio 4.
by Michael Chaplin.
Series created by Jonathan Ruffle.
Meticulously based on unit war diaries and eye-witness accounts, each episode of TOMMIES traces one real day at war, exactly 100 years ago.
And through it all, we'll follow the fortunes of Mickey Bliss and his fellow signallers, from the Lahore Division of the British Indian Army. They are the cogs in an immense machine, one which connects situations across the whole theatre of the war, over four long years.
Indira Varma, Lee Ross and Alex Wyndham star in this story, based on events in the valley of the Aisne, on October 7th, 1914. The German advance is just being held 60 miles north-east of Paris, on the day Mickey Bliss arrives at war.
Producers: David Hunter, Jonquil Panting, Jonathan Ruffle
Director: David Hunter.
The most shared conversation in our British Library archive features when Professor Tim Luckhurst illustrates the value of this non-journospeak collection to Fi Glover. Part of a celebration of the delivery of the thousandth conversation to the British Library and examination of the value of this unique archive from the series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen, now and in the future.
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.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4, followed by weather.
Following the landslide vote to overturn strict abortion laws in the Irish Republic, attention has shifted to Northern Ireland - the last corner of the British Isles to resist both legal abortion and gay marriage. The Prime Minister Theresa May is facing growing calls to bring the laws in line with the rest of the UK. It's a complicated political picture, but it raises a number of important moral questions. The first is about the extent to which a nation's religious and cultural traditions should be enshrined in its laws. Is it morally acceptable that Northern Ireland should have laws on abortion and same-sex marriage that are different from those in the rest of the UK? Can - or should - a government ever be neutral, or merely procedural, on substantive moral issues? Yet, the Irish referendum also highlighted a wider moral point about the concept of shame, and its complex relationship with respectability and institutional religion. Speaking about the scandal of Ireland's mother and baby homes, the former Taoiseach, Enda Kenny said: "No nuns broke into our homes to take our children. We gave them up because of our morbid and perverse pursuit for respectability." After the abortion vote, the current Prime Minister Leo Varadkar declared: "The burden of shame is gone". At what point does shame stop being corrective and start to become corrosive? Does it still have a useful role to play in society? From #MeToo to the public pillorying of greedy bankers and carbon-emitters, don't we still need the sanction of shame? Witnesses are Susie Boniface, Ed Condon, Martin Pollecoff and Prof Julian Savulescu.
Producer: Dan Tierney.
(14/17)
The second of this year's semi-finals will determine who takes another of the places in the 2018 Brain of Britain Final. Russell Davies asks the questions, which include the name of the current President of South Africa, the final film of Sir Ralph Richardson, and the Shakespeare play that inspired a Tchaikovsky overture.
The contenders today are
Colin Daffern, a data analyst from Salford
Amit De, a financial services adviser from Sutton in South London
Tim Footman, a freelance editor from South London
Brian Thompson, a retired teacher from Liverpool.
The Brains will also be invited to collaborate in answering a brace of questions set by a Brain of Britain listener, who stands to win a prize if they are defeated.
Producer: Paul Bajoria.
In the final episode of this three part series, children's author Kirsty Mckay offers a snapshot of dialect poetry in Northumberland today.
When Kirsty returned home recently she was struck by how dialect and culture was being eroded by the encroachment of urbanisation and the influx of people moving into the area.
Here Kirsty rediscovers the dialect poetry by listening to old tapes recorded by her late father. She says: 'I found recording after recording of dialect poetry, often accompanied by local musicians, some recorded in late night lock-ins at local pubs or by the fire in the tiny cottage I'd known as a child.'
Kirsty sets out on an exploration of identity and the future of the Northumbrian language in the poetry of the Cheviot hills.
Among the people she meets along the way are poet, musician and composer James Tait, retired shepherd Allan Wood and poet and historian Katrina Porteous. Kirsty also hears poetry from the children of Harbottle School and the entrants of The Morpeth Gathering.
Meanwhile the case is made for Northumbrian as a language, not a dialect. It represents the remainder of Old English and is the grandmother of the Scottish language.
Tongue and Talk: The Dialect Poets is produced by Made in Manchester for BBC Radio 4.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
Writers choose poems as inspiration for new stories.
Grey Evening
An achromatic artist is exposed in Beatrice Colin's witty story inspired by D H Lawrence's poem.
Writer ..... Beatrice Colin
Reader .... Cal MacAninch
Producer ..... Gaynor Macfarlane
A BBC Scotland production for BBC Radio 4.
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The latest shipping forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
Bells on Sunday comes from the Church of St Mary, Andover.
The latest national and international news.
Mark Tully takes the floor to challenge the traditional role of male and female dance partners. He finds out what happens when the woman leads and the man follows, how such role reversal can have wider benefits, and what dance can tell us about gender, masculinity, femininity and relations between men and women.
Dance teacher and anthropologist Dr Barbara Prentiss demonstrates with her partner Sam Hutton how both parties can flourish as they swap from leading to following while dancing the salsa. She discusses how initial reluctance soon disappears as preconceptions are danced away.
Gene Kelly, Irving Berlin, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald and Salsa Celtica all make musical contributions to the discussion, while the words of dancers and writers celebrate the pure joy of taking a partner by the hand and leading - or being led.
Producer: Adam Fowler
A 7digital production for BBC Radio 4.
Provenance is an app that allows farmers and food producers to share the full story of their product's origins with the consumer.
Using block-chain technology of the kind pioneered for online financial transactions, the app tracks data about a product and its back-story - from origin, to processing, to the supermarket shelf. Shoppers can then scan a QR code on the packaging with their mobile phone, and find out exactly where and how their food has been made. This allows producers to share and promote their stories and practices, whilst giving consumers the option to make more informed choices.
Lucy Taylor finds out more from Provenance founder and CEO Jessi Baker - as well as learning how the app is working for farmers, on a visit to Eversfield Organic Farm in Devon.
This is the final programme showcasing the three finalists in the 'Farming Today Future Food Award' category of the 2018 BBC Food and Farming Awards.
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The latest news headlines. Including a look at the papers.
On Monday religious think tank 'Theos' will publish a report, on how faith based organisations responded to the fire in Grenfell Tower. Report author Amy Plender, Muslim Aid's Jehangir Malick, and the Rev Mike Long from Notting Hill Methodist Church talk to Edward about what lessons can be learned.
There's scant reference to Phoebe in the New Testament. A former slave who became a wealthy deacon in the 1st Century Christian church she was entrusted by Paul to take an epistle to Rome. She is the subject of a new story by the scholar and theologian Paula Gooder.
To mark National Volunteers week David Cook explores a scheme run by Manchester Cathedral that has helped over 900 long term unemployed people improve their chances of finding work.
Later today church goers across the country will be given access to an app specially designed to help them notice tell-tale signs of exploitation of workers with the increasing number of hand car washes. The data they gather will then be shared with the National Crime Agency who can investigate further. Trevor Barnes reports.
A long-running conflict between cattle herders and farmers in central Nigeria is increasingly assuming a religious dimension, and as numbers of Christians and Muslims are killed our reporter from Nigeria, Stephanie Hegarty explains the history and current situation.
Friends and relatives of people killed in the London Bridge terror attack are being invited to come together and remember their loved ones during a service at Southwark Cathedral this Sunday, Bishop Christopher Chessun will talk about the importance of marking the anniversary.
Producers
Carmel Lonergan
Louise Clarke-Rowbotham
Editor
Amanda Hancox
Photo: Grenfell Prayer Wall courtesy of Latymer Community Church.
Joanna Lumley makes the Radio 4 Appeal on behalf of HALO Trust.
Registered Charity Numbers: 1001813 and SC037870
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 'HALO Trust'.
- Cheques should be made payable to 'HALO Trust'.
The latest weather forecast.
The latest news headlines. Including a look at the papers.
'Lord, let me not live to be useless' - heartfelt words from the journal of John Wesley. As the founder of Methodism, he clearly didn't live to be useless, and as well as travelling nearly a quarter of a million miles, preaching thousands of sermons, Wesley encouraged other members of his new movement to explore how they, too, could live vital and purposeful lives. In a live service from Whitchurch Methodist Church in Cardiff, the Rev'd Dr. Stephen Wigley, Chair of the Wales Synod of the Methodist Church, continues that encouragement when he reflects on the theme of 'A Ministry for Everyone'. The service, led by the Rev'd Cathy Gale, features music by the Cardiff Polyphonic Choir with their Music Director David Young and organist David Geoffrey Thomas. Hymns include 'Christ whose glory fills the skies'; and 'Forth in thy name, O Lord, I go;' together with 'God be in my head' (Walford Davies) and 'Beati quorum via' (Stanford). Producer: Karen Walker.
On 5th June 1968, Bobby Kennedy was assassinated.
In one of the most famous editions of Radio 4's "Letter from America" - Alistair Cooke's gave an eye witness account of the assassination.
This is an edited version of the original talk - broadcast on Sunday 9th June 1968.
In the second week of wildlife photographer, naturalist and presenter of the Wild Voices Project podcast, Matt Williams continues his quest to unearth the best and most uplifting episodes from the Tweet of the Day back catalogue.
Producer Andrew Dawes.
Sunday morning magazine programme with news and conversation about the big stories of the week. Presented by Paddy O'Connell.
Will makes a surprising decision, and there's a shock for the Aldridges.
Gillian Reynolds spent 42 years as the radio critic of the Daily Telegraph before she was headhunted by the Sunday Times at the age of 82. Born into a working class family in Liverpool, her mother ran a market stall and her father was a seaman, but also a gambler. Her mother was determined to ensure that Gillian had a good education, and she was the first in her family to go to a grammar school. She went on to study English at Oxford.
She took up an internship in America, where she met her husband, and they returned to Liverpool when she became pregnant with the first of her three sons. She first worked as a radio critic for the Guardian in 1967. She became the first female controller of a commercial radio station when she joined Radio City, Liverpool, in 1974. She moved to London in 1975 when she left her troubled marriage, and secured the job of radio critic for the Telegraph, as well as working as a journalist in television and radio, at one point even co-presenting the Today programme.
She chaired the Sony Radio Awards for four years, the only woman to have done so, and the Radio Academy Festival for a decade. She lives alone, but with around two dozen radios, in Notting Hill.
Presenter: Kirsty Young
Producer: Cathy Drysdale.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Nicholas Parsons is joined by Paul Merton, Sheila Hancock, Fern Britton and Graham Norton, in this instalment of the iconic panel show.
The panel have to talk on a given subject for sixty seconds without repetition, hesitation or deviation. What car did Fern drive during the 70s? How does Graham like to break the ice? Why does Paul think Jesus had a brother called Kevin and what does Sheila really know about the Tower of London? All of this is revealed and more!
Hayley Sterling blows the whistle and it was produced by Matt Stronge.
Just A Minute is a BBC Studios production.
Dan Saladino and drinks writer Pete Brown find out why Belgium beer is so influential.
The latest weather forecast.
Global news and analysis.
Akram Khan is one of the UK's leading dancer-choreographers. As he prepares his final full-length solo show, Xenos, about Indian soldiers in World War One , Beaty Rubens follows the creative process.
Akram Khan's first professional engagement was aged 7, and at 10 he was cast by the legendary director Peter Brook in his production of the Indian epic, the Mahabharata. Now, at 43, he's announced that Xenos will be his final, full-length solo show. Xenos explores a subject close to Akram's heart - the largely unacknowledged experience of the 1.4 million Indian soldiers who fought for the British in the First World War. Telling the story of an Indian court dancer who becomes a communications engineer, laying down wires in the mud of the trenches, Xenos enables Akram to showcase both his Kathak and Contemporary repertoire.
In the months leading up to its world premiere in Athens, Beaty Rubens has been behind the scenes to observe the creative process, speaking extensively with Akram and his talented international team. Xenos integrates live Indian and Western music and original voice archive to create a hugely powerful narrative in which the mass horrors of the trenches are brought back to life by by one sensational solo dancer.
Featuring the music and sound design of Vincenzo Lamagna and rehearsal performances by Nina Harries, Aditya Prakash, Tamar Osbone, B.C.Manjunath and Andrew Maddick.
Akram Khan has collaborated in the past with the French ballet sensation, Sylive Guillem, the actor Juliet Binoche and the sculptor Anthony Gormley, and performed at the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics to live music from Emilie Sande.
Presented and produced by Beaty Rubens.
Peter Gibbs and the panel are in Bristol. Bob Flowerdew, Anne Swithinbank and Pippa Greenwood answer this week's questions.
The panellists assist a fire performer with an ailing aloe vera, encourage a struggling chilli grower, and advise on getting the best out of a young pineapple. They also offer up ideas for improving air circulation in a cramped garden and have fun with their most amusing plant names.
Anne Swithinbank visits Nick Ray from Seeds of Change to unearth the fascinating story of Bristol's ballast plants.
Produced by Dan Cocker
Assistant Producer: Hester Cant
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4.
Fi Glover introduces conversations about the political and social value of art and its capacity to promote joy and resolution, 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.
Charles Dickens' iconic story of love, revolution and redemption, updated and set in contemporary Aleppo and London.
Dickens' original novel is a powerful portrayal of personal sacrifice set against the turbulent backdrop of political change. As resonant today as it was then, the redemption of flawed humanity is at the heart of award winning writer Ayeesha Menon's bold reworking of A Tale of Two Cities.
The story of a chance resemblance between a feckless lawyer and a troubled exile, both in love with the same woman, is updated to modern-day London and war-torn Syria. However, in this modern version, the driving forces are two women - British Syrian journalist Lina Mahmoud and her nemesis, Taghreed Daffar.
It's a classic tale reimagined as a provocative and moving drama for today.
Episode 3: 2016
East Aleppo is devestated by years of siege. Lina has not returned since having her young daughter, Serena - while Shwan has disappeared in Syria, not knowing he is a father. When a kidnap video arrives on Jarvis' desk, threatening Shwan's execution, Lina embarks on a desperate mission to save him, followed closely by Sid, determined to make good on his promise. Meanwhile, Taghreed's obsessive need for revenge has pushed her over the edge.
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, adapted for radio by Ayeesha Menon
Development concept written by Silas Parry
Sound design by Eloise Whitmore
Broadcast Assistant: Jan Shepherd
Produced by Gill Parry
Directed by Polly Thomas
Producer for Goldhawk Productions: Emma Hearn
Executive Producer: John Dryden
A Goldhawk production for BBC Radio 4.
Margaret Atwood discusses her dystopian masterpiece The Handmaid's Tale with James Naughtie and a group of readers. This edition celebrates Bookclub's 20th anniversary and includes contributions from former alumni of Bookclub such as Ali Smith, Eimear McBride and Evie Wyld; as well as the reading group made up of Radio 4 listeners.
Thirty three years ago, Margaret Atwood published The Handmaid's Tale, a novel about a futuristic America, which following a major ecological disaster, is ruled by a brutal, misogynistic Christian theocracy called Gilead. In 2017 The Handmaid's Tale became a television series, going on to win eight Emmies. It followed the book closely, telling the tale of a society in which women are subjugated and not allowed to work or read, and valued only for their fecundity. The book has now found a new readership amongst a younger generation.
The Handmaids - most prominently a woman called Offred, the narrator of the novel, are the few fertile women, who are assigned to the homes of married male rulers, and compelled to endure rape at their hands in the name of procreation.
Margaret Atwood, who is one of the most celebrated novelists writing in English today, meets an invited audience of Radio 4 listeners, including sixth-formers and university students, to discuss the Handmaid's Tale.
Presenter : James Naughtie
Interviewed guest : Margaret Atwood
Producer : Dymphna Flynn
July's Bookclub Choice : Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín (2009).
Two choreographers talk about how they were inspired to create a dance based closely on a poem.
Ben Duke, nominated this year for an Olivier Award, grew to love Milton's epic poem Paradise Lost while at university and set about creating his one-man show in contemporary dance called Paradise Lost - lies unopened beside me.
Julie Cunningham, a dancer/choreographer who now runs her own company, went to the Glastonbury Festival, saw the poet Kate Tempest perform, and immediately wanted to set some of her poems to dance.
Ben Duke springs off Paradise Lost and, in a mix of dance and conversation, with just a little of the text, leads his audience through God's creation of the universe, to the battle with Lucifer, and the final expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise. Dance critic Judith Mackrell and poet and dance producer Karthika Nair describe Ben's approach as a kind of riff on the poem, moving between his own domestic challenges and the challenges face by God as they both struggle to complete their act of creation.
Julie Cunningham's piece is based on a selection of poems from Kate Tempest's prizewinning collection Hold Your Own, through which runs the story of Tiresias - boy, then woman, then prophet, blinded by the gods for his knowledge of both genders. Set for four dancers, she sees her work called To Be Me as a search for the individual person, with the Tiresias story as the background. Judith Mackrell feels that the passion and strength of Kate Tempest's poetry are contrasted to great effect by the beauty and power of Julie's choreography.
Producer: Richard Bannerman
A Far Shoreline production for BBC Radio 4.
Knife crime in England and Wales rose by a fifth last year, with stabbings in London at their highest level for a decade. So far this year, there have been more than 30 fatal stabbings in the capital - with knife injuries amongst young people also on the rise.
What lies behind the rise in violence is complex with cuts in police numbers, use of stop and search, rise in mental health issues and a lack of youth services being cited as contributing factors.
But Britain's most senior police officer, Cressida Dick, also says that social media is also partly to blame, with sites like You Tube, Snapchat and Instagram "allowing young people to go from 'slightly angry with each other' to 'fight' very quickly"
Relatives of victims - and judges in murder trials - also claim a form of hip hop, where rappers make threats to other gangs - and keep scores of killings - is helping fuel the bloodshed. It's called Drill.
When announcing a new strategy to tackle serious violence, the former Home Secretary Amber Rudd asked musicians to have a "positive influence" on young people, and to move away from lyrics which glamorise violence.
File on Four investigates this world of violence playing out online - and on our streets.
Reporter: Paul Connolly
Producers: Emma Forde and Mick Tucker
Development Producer: Oliver Newlan
Editor: Gail Champion.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest weather forecast.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
This week we have something for everyone with excellent rock yodelling, a charming story about the trials and tribulations of teenage fatherhood and an insightful look at the role of women at weddings.
There's a brilliant production of Juno and The Paycock and Zadie Smith reads from her collection of essays.
We hear a live recording from The Last Poets and a remarkable story about a made up band from Preston and let's not forget about the Nigerian Scrabble champion.
Pick of the Week presented by Hardeep Singh Kohli
Produced by Kay Whyld.
Brian prepares for the fallout, and Will is worried.
Ashley Blaker, Britain's only ultra-Orthodox stand up comedian, presents an insider's view of his religion, specially created for BBC Radio 4. It's a whistle-stop tour of Jewish life and, in particular, a very rare glimpse into the normally inaccessible world of strict Orthodox Judaism.
Ashley is already a well-known name in the Jewish community, having undertaken two critically acclaimed UK tours as well as performing sell-out shows in Israel, South Africa, Canada and Off-Broadway in New York. The Jewish press has described him as "the haredi Michael McIntyre".
As well as being a popular and experienced live performer, Ashley is also a comedy writer and producer for radio and TV. He was responsible for first unleashing Little Britain on an unsuspecting nation on Radio 4. But, being a strict orthodox Jew, he is surely the only person who works in TV without actually owning one.
The Jerusalem Post recently described Ashley as "a walking contradiction".
The Times of Israel pointed out the astonishment his appearance can provoke: "The astonishment, of course, is that with Blaker, what you see is what you get: a skinny bearded man wearing a black suit and kippah, and sporting peyot and tzitzit of the strictly Orthodox community to which he now belongs. But this is not a uniform which he dons only for his interfaces with Jewish audiences. No, he wears this in his day job too."
Written and Presented by Ashley Blaker
Producer: Steve Doherty
A Giddy Goat production for BBC Radio 4.
Lynne Truss observes the inhabitants of Meridian Cliffs, a small wind-battered town on the south coast of England, where harmony is temporarily shattered when a long cherished belief proves false.
But the community comes together again, in this final story of the series, as everyone gathers to pay their respects to the great man of carpets.
Directed by Kate McAll
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.
How do we know how WH Smiths fares on the high street?
Over the Bank Holiday weekend a news story from the consumer advice website Which caught a lot of attention. It was claimed that WH Smiths is the least liked shop on the high street. But exactly how did researchers work that out? We take a look at the survey they conducted.
Counting the homeless
We often hear numbers in the news about how many people are sleeping rough on the streets of the UK
According to the latest official figures around 4700 people were sleeping in the streets in the autumn of 2017.
And that got us thinking. These statistics aren't just downloaded from some big database in the sky. They need - like any statistic - to be collected and calculated. So we ask a simple question: how do you count the number of people sleeping rough?
How safe are home births?
Is giving birth at home as safe as giving birth in hospital? How many women have the choice to do so, and does it make a difference if you've already had a child? We try to cut through the noise and find out what the statistics say.
Harry Potter: how many wizards?
Fans of Harry Potter have been asking - just how many wizards live among us? We follow a trail of clues in J K Rowling's best-selling books to provide the definitive estimate of the wizarding population.
Presenter: Tim Harford
Producer: Charlotte McDonald
Editor: Andy Smith.
Photo: Anne Coates OBE
Matthew Bannister on the prolific film editor Anne Coates, who worked on Laurence of Arabia, The Elephant Man and Fifty Shades of Grey.
John Ashdown-Hill, the historian who helped to discover the bones of Richard III under a Leicester car park.
Dr Davida Coady who travelled the world from Biafra to Honduras helping the sick and starving.
Ted Dabney - one half of the partnership that started the successful computer games company Atari
Brendan Ingle, the Sheffield based boxing trainer who developed the careers of Herol "Bomber" Graham and "Prince" Naseem Hamed.
Archive clips from: Back Row, Radio 4 15/12/00; Front Row, Radio 4 07/12/16; Woman's Hour, Radio 4 13/02/07; BBC News 24, 04/02/13; People's Century 1954: Living Longer, WGBH and BBC Worldwide 05/01/97; Newsnight, BBC Two 27/10/81; Sport on 4, Radio 4 04/03/95; World Championship Snooker, BBC Two 03/05/09.
Do French women really think differently about sexual harassment - and if so, does feminism have national borders?
Catherine Deneuve was one of 100 prominent women who signed an open letter to Le Monde critiquing the #metoo movement.
"We believe that the freedom to say yes to a sexual proposition cannot exist without the freedom to pester," they wrote.
Have the French mastered a more sophisticated approach to relations between men and women, based around seduction - or is this a myth that sustains male power?
Parisian journalist Catherine Guilyardi investigates.
Producer: Estelle Doyle
Contributors:
Claude Habib - historian and author of "Galanterie francaise"
Elaine Sciolino - ex New York Times Paris bureau chief and author of "La Seduction" and "Rue des Martyrs"
Eric Fassin - professor of sociology, Paris-8 University
Sylvie Kauffman - editorial director and columnist at Le Monde
Sandra Muller - journalist and founder of #balancetonporc
Cécile Fara and Julie Marangé - feminist activists, organisers of the Street Art and Feminism tour in Paris
Fatima El Ouasdi - feminist activist and founder of Politiqu'elles
Peggy Sastre - philosopher of science and author of "Male Domination Doesn't Exist".
Weekly political discussion and analysis with MPs, experts and commentators.
Cult director J.A. Bayona tells Francine Stock why he took on the dinosaurs in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and why it's really a haunted house movie.
Composer Neil Brand takes us on a tour with Taxi Driver, Bernard Herrmann's game-changing score for Martin Scorsese's masterpiece.
Anna Smith looks back at Big on its thirtieth anniversary and reveals how the Tom Hanks comedy relates to the weird trend for body-swap movies in the late 80s.
In another edition of Pitch Battle, listener Gerald Corvin pitches a bio-pic centred around the world of bare knuckle boxing in the 18th century, once the most popular sport in England, despite being illegal
On the podcast: the first edition of a new series, How Do You Solve a Problem Like... Grease, in which musical fans Caitlin Benedict and Melody Bridges ponder the universal question - can you love a musical that's politically incorrect, specially when you know all the songs and can quote all the lyrics ?
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
Laurie Taylor examines the role of business schools in the UK and abroad.
Martin Parker joins him in the studio to discuss the arguments in his book Shut Down the Business School - What's Wrong with Management Education. Laurie is joined on the line from New York by the author of The Golden Passport - Harvard Business School, the Limits of Capitalism, and the Moral Failure of the MBA Elite, Duff McDonald. Are there similarities between the American business school model and its British counterpart?
With some MBAs costing in excess of £75,000 in the UK, what is the lure for prospective students and is the qualification worth the money? Or should we be thinking beyond the monetary value of MBAs and focus instead on what MBA graduates could be giving back to society and the importance of corporate responsibility? Maeve Cohen is the Director of Rethinking Economics, an organisation which argues for a change in the way that economics is taught and calls for more diversity and historical context in the economics curriculum, and she also joins the discussion.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
A reading and a reflection to start the day, with George Craig, a retired senior civil servant and a Methodist local preacher in Cardiff.
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
The latest weather forecast for farmers.
Tweet of the Day is the voice of birds and our relationship with them, from around the world.
Miranda Krestovnikoff presents the African Southern Ground hornbill. Ground hornbills live in south and south-east Africa. They're glossy black birds, as big as turkeys with huge downward-curving bills. The bird produces a deep booming sound that reverberates over long distances, sometimes as much as 5 kilometres, across its grassy habitat. Preferring to walk rather than fly, they strut about in the long grass, searching for prey. Snakes are a favourite: even deadly puff adders are no match for the birds' bludgeoning beaks.
News and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
Booker Prize-winning novelist Arundhati Roy's latest book weaves together the lives of the misfits and outcasts from India's bustling streets. Roy is famous as an advocate for the most vulnerable and dehumanised in Indian society. She tells Andrew Marr how her main character Anjum builds a small paradise for the dispossessed in a graveyard in Delhi.
Ivan Mishukov walked out of his Moscow flat aged four and spent two years living on the city streets, where he found a home among a pack of wild dogs. Playwright Hattie Naylor used this true and extraordinary story as the basis for a play and now a film, Lek and the Dogs. She explores how the human world failed to look after the child, but how his kindness won the trust and protection of street dogs.
Damian Le Bas grew up surrounded by Gypsy history from his great grandmother. He sets out on the road to discover Travellers' stopping places and to understand how the romanticised stories of the past were replaced by the critical, outcast image of present-day Gypsies.
The columnist and Conservative Peer Daniel Finkelstein appears to be the ultimate establishment insider. But his parents were refugees who were forced to move across Europe because of antisemitism. He believes their desire for rootedness and belonging underlines his own politics.
Producer: Katy Hickman
Picture: Arundhati Roy (credit Mayank Austen Soofi).
Damian Le Bas inhabits an awkward middle ground between the non-gypsy world and his own traveller / gypsy heritage. He grew up in West Sussex in a house built by his grandfather on land the family owned, surrounded by a field that was half car-breaking business, half farmyard. Scattered bits of engines lay alongside bales of hay, brand new trucks were surrounded by geese and terriers. But twice a week they drove an hour each way to their family pitch in the market square of Petersfield where they sold flowers.
Along the way, his elders would nod towards lay-bys and verges, naming them as they passed. These were the 'atchin tans' or stopping places. His great grandmother, Nan, explained to him that they were the places where she and her family used to live in the days of wagons and bender tents. Sometimes they would stop for a few days, other times for a few years.
Damian's parents both had faith in education and, when they saw that he was bright, he applied for for a full scholarship at the nearby boarding school - Christ's Hospital - which led to ten grade A O-Levels, A Levels and theology at Oxford.
Damian was now firmly an outsider in both worlds. But having plundered the Bodleian Library for histories of gypsies, he felt the need to get out into the world and discover the topography of his ancestors. So he with his Nan's blessing he set out to visit the stopping places, sometimes alone and sometimes accompanied by his wife Candis. As we follow his journey, we also learn about the history of the gypsies and their marginalised place in society today.
Written and read by Damian Le Bas
Abridged by Isobel Creed and Jill Waters
Produced by Jill Waters
A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4.
This week, the highest court in the land, will rule on abortion in Northern Ireland. The Supreme Court in London will decide whether or not the law as it stands breaches human rights. At the moment, Northern Ireland is the only region in the UK where women cannot get an abortion, unless their life is in danger. Last week's abortion referendum result across the border, in the Republic, has shone a spotlight on the situation in Northern Ireland and pro-choice demonstrators have been demanding change.
An exhibition currently running at the Leeds Industrial Museum celebrates the stories of the Queens of Industry. Inspired by the tradition of May Queens, these women represented some of Britain's greatest industries, from coal to cotton and railways to wool. The tradition began in the 1920s and continued into the 1980s. It took young women out of their day to day lives to become Queens who would promote their industry and represent their fellow workers. Louise Adamson has been to Leeds to have a tour of the exhibition with the curator, John McGoldrick, and to hear from some of the Queens themselves.
The Instagram poet Yrsa Daley-Ward joins Jane to talk about her new memoir 'The Terrible', which mixes poetry and prose, and details her religious upbringing, sexuality and her struggle with depression. The Terrible is published by Penguin Random House on Tuesday 5th June.
The Woman's Hour Power List 2018 is celebrating women in music, but what are things like for women in the classical sphere? Composer Cheryl Frances-Hoad, conductor, Karin Henrickson, and pianist, Ivana Gavric are premiering Cheryl's new piano concerto as part of Southbank Sinfonia's Rush Hour series, and join us to discuss the creative process and their respective careers.
Presenter: Jane Garvey
Producer: Kirsty Starkey
Reporter: Louise Adamson.
Lucy Catherine's Viking epic of love, revenge and faith inspired by the Icelandic sagas.
Gudrun and Marlas finally arrive in Constantinople and meet Marlas' influential friends. Gudrun allows herself to hope once more that a return to Iceland to rescue her daughter will become a reality. Marlas shows her round the city he loves. She's impressed by its ordered grandeur but there's talk of religious unrest on the streets.
Gudrun ..... Kate Phillips
Freija ..... Samantha Dakin
Marlas ..... Amir El-Masry
Demetrious ..... Ryan Whittle
Bishop Arascius ..... Sean Murray
Alexandra ..... Lauren Cornelius
Nonna ..... Kerry Gooderson
Produced and directed by Gemma Jenkins.
After meeting in prison, two men want to make a fresh start as barbers in a Welsh village. Grace Dent follows them as they strive to make life outside a success in a small community.
Tom and Leon met on a prison barbering course in the middle of their prison sentences. They had always shared 'jail talk' of opening a shop together but after being released they decided to make it a reality. Together they invested their money in a barber shop nestled in the Welsh Valleys, new arrivals in small village.
Can they convince potential customers to give them a chance - and make a return on their investment?
Produced by Sam Peach.
Andy helps Jeff track down a vital document. Thanks to a rapacious seagull, the quest ends in a literal cliffhanger. Philip Jackson, Tom Palmer and Shobna Gulati star.
An Absolutely production for BBC Radio 4.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Over the last year Radio 4 has followed families whose lives have been affected by the Grenfell fire, including those caught in the blaze and people working alongside them to provide support and help. This series focuses on the key areas to emerge as families struggle to come to terms with what has happened; some are also dealing with moving into temporary accommodation and not knowing when and where they will be rehoused.
The Grenfell memorial wall was hastily erected by church workers on the evening after the fire and within hours hundreds of messages of remembrance had been left and more white boards were placed along the railings, providing a walkway where some families left candles, soft toys and photos. There were also missing posters and pleas for information about those thought to have been trapped. Many came to stand and pray as the community tried to cope with the enormity of what had happened.
Maryam Adam was on the fourth floor of the block when her husband woke her - the fire had started in her neighbours flat and she was one of the first to leave the building. In the immediate aftermath she was worried that smoke inhalation could have harmed her baby and she was desperate for news of friends on the floors above hers. In the months following she has struggled to get back to any sense of normality and is still living in temporary accommodation - now with her son, who was born in November.
Maryam feels overlooked by housing officials, who she says have left her, her husband, her brother and his wife in a one bedroom apartment. She struggles to cope with the emotional trauma of what has happened and her health is not good. For weeks after the fire she waited for news, eventually tracing one woman she feared had died but finding that others had not made it out alive. She is grateful to the volunteers and church leaders who keep her supplied with clothes and essentials that were destroyed in the blaze.
Mario and Andreia Gomes lost their unborn baby, Logan, when they escaped from their 21st floor flat with daughters, Megan and Luana. He was seven months old and was delivered less than 24 hours after Mario led his family out of the burning building. His heart had stopped beating and Andreia was in a medically induced coma after inhaling thick toxic smoke. Over the last year the family has struggled with bereavement and with the physical impact of exposure, coupled with losing their home and all of their belongings.
During the recordings Mario talks about the emotional support he gets from his close friend, Miguel Alves, who also escaped from the tower with wife, Fatima and children Tiago and Ines, who went to sit her GCSE chemistry paper the day after the blaze. Miguel made frantic phone calls to Mario after their escape, urging him to come down, but on the first two attempts the thick smoke beat them back. When fire entered their apartment they were left with no choice, but the escape was tortuous and the horror lives on today. Playing football allows both men to switch off from what is happening and they share memories and stories as the year unfolds.
News and discussion of consumer affairs.
The latest weather forecast.
Analysis of news and current affairs.
Nick Robinson talks to Labour's shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, about his political development, from his youthful attacks on 'reformist passivity' to why he respects Theresa May's work at the Home Office.
This is an edited version of a conversation recorded earlier this year for the Radio 4 podcast, Political Thinking with Nick Robinson. Episodes of the podcast can be downloaded from the BBC website or any podcast provider - see https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04z203l/episodes/player.
The detective duo are back for a new series. Today they interview a young prisoner about an attack on a fellow inmate, but there's something else they want help with...
Director ..... Mary Peate
Writer ..... Roy Williams
The 6th series of this much-loved Radio 4 crime drama in which Kenneth Cranham as DCI Max Matthews and Alex Lanipekun as DS Sean Armitage expertly extract the truth from their suspects during the course of one interview. Their relationship has developed into friendship since the first series when Armitage was a rookie constable, but as ever the focus is on the interrogations and Roy Williams' brilliant ear for dialogue and his virtuosic, real-time scenes never disappoint.
(15/17)
Russell Davies chairs the third of the 2018 semi-finals, featuring another four heat winners or exceptional scorers from the earlier stages of the tournament. A place in the Final awaits the winner. This week's semi-finalists are:
Clive Dunning, a teacher from Stockton-On-Tees
Garry Holland, a writer from Didcot
Julia Lemagnen, a retired company director from Whaddon in Buckinghamshire
Tom Williams, a personal assistant from London.
The competitors will also be asked to collaborate in answering a pair of questions supplied by a Brain of Britain listener hoping to outwit them - who will win a prize if he or she succeeds.
Producer: Paul Bajoria.
Ruth Rogers of iconic Italian restaurant The River Cafe shares some of her favourite pieces of writing, including F Scott Fitzgerald, Norman Mailer, Hanan al-Shaykh, Sigrid Rausing, Craig Raine and Lord Richard Rogers. With readings by the authors and by Ralph Fiennes.
Producer: Mair Bosworth.
It does not interject, it has endless patience and you gain empathy from shared experience. Aleks Krotoski explores how the online space has become our greatest confidante...
Eddie Mair with interviews, context and analysis.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Gyles Brandreth temporarily takes over from Nicholas Parsons as the chairman of this iconic panel game. He is joined by Paul Merton, Josie Lawrence, Sara Pascoe and Tony Hawks.
The panel have to talk on a given subject for sixty seconds without repetition, hesitation or deviation. What does Paul daydream about? Can Josie tell us much about the Wild West? How much does Sara know about the Theory of Evolution and does Tony really enjoy bungee jumping? All this will be revealed and more!
Hayley Sterling blows the whistle and it was produced by Matt Stronge.
Just A Minute is a BBC Studios production.
Elizabeth grows suspicious, and alarm bells ring for Harrison.
Arts news, interviews and reviews.
Misha Glenny ends his Netherlandish travels in Brussels, and asks why does Belgium exist. With details on the brief Kingdom of the Netherlands - a union with the Dutch in the north - and the reason why the British went to war with Germany in 1914. There is a faultline in Europe, running from the North Sea to the Alps, and this is one reason Belgium exists.
With contributions from Gita Deneckere of Ghent University; Simon Winder, who's at work on a new book called Lotharingia; and Paul Arlblaster, author of A History of the Low Countries.
The producer is Miles Warde.
How can we be sure that the technology we are creating is going to do the right thing? Machines are merging into our lives in ever more intimate ways. They interact with our children and assist with medical decisions. Cars are learning to drive themselves; data on our likes and dislikes roam through the internet. Sandra Kanthal asks if we already in danger of being governed by algorithmic overlords.
The solutions to the problem of plastic pollution and plastic waste lie in many directions. A global plan to stop littering will go a long way. But human behaviour change often needs some economic intervention. One idea by the UK government and many others around the world, is to give a little financial incentive in the form of deposits on plastic bottles, or taxation on single use plastic like coffee cups, food wrapping and plastic bags. Mark Miodownik investigates some of the scientific solutions such as alternatives to petrochemical plastic using microbes or plant materials, clever waste sorting technologies to help make the process easier, even using less plastic. And he hopefully untangles some of the confusing messages about plastic and comes up with ways to be plastic smart.
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.
By Louise Erdrich. The world is in crisis. Evolution has gone into reverse, affecting all creatures great and small, including the next generation of humans. Fewer babies - or their mothers - are surviving to full term and, of those babies born, many have been identified as belonging to a more primitive species of human. As governments take drastic action to limit the catastrophe, there has never been a more dangerous time to be having a baby.
Cedar Songmaker is pregnant. She is the adopted daughter of Minneapolis liberals. Determined to find out as much about her baby's make up as possible, she makes contact with her birth family on the Ojibwe reservation.
Episode 1
Despite increasing levels of panic across the country, Cedar sets out to meet her birth mother for the first time.
The author, Louise Erdrich, lives in Minnesota. Her novel The Round House won the National Book Award for Fiction. She has also received the Library of Congress Prize in American Fiction, the prestigious PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.
Writer: Louise Erdrich
Abridger: Jeremy Osborne
Reader: Cherrelle Skeete
Producer: Lisa Osborne
A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4.
Steve Punt returns as Radio 4's very own private detective.
In this tenth anniversary edition, Steve's called in to investigate the unlikely disappearance of American and Russian nuclear weapons - with assistance from best-selling thriller writer Frederick Forsyth.
At first, Steve's sceptical - surely no nuclear power could actually lose possession of weapons capable of causing Armageddon. But as his investigation gathers pace, the story starts to becomes rather disturbing.
From an H-bomb lost over Savannah, Georgia to a cache of so-called 'suitcase nukes' which rumours suggest could still be stashed in modern day Moldova, Punt weighs up the evidence - with a little detour via Dorking...
Producer: Laurence Grissell.
News 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 reading and a reflection to start the day, with George Craig, a retired senior civil servant and a Methodist local preacher in Cardiff.
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs.
Chris Packham presents the Mute Swan. Mute Swans are deeply embedded in our culture. They are unique among British birds because the Crown retains the rights of ownership of all unmarked mute swans in open water. Since the 15th century, an annual census of mute swans has been held annually on the River Thames.
News and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Yesterday in Parliament, Weather and Thought for the Day.
Traditional descriptions of the human immune system bristle with military analogies. There are "lines of defence" against "enemy invaders"; "border guards" at "strategic points. And when barriers are breached, there's "a call to arms". That's before you mention Natural Killer Cells.
But Professor of Immunology and Public Engagement at the University of Manchester, Sheena Cruickshank, tells Jim that as well as the war-like descriptions, our immune system is now being understood in terms of its capacity for diplomacy too. Jaw-jaw as well as War-war.
There are trillions of microbes that live in us and on us and our immune system has to know when to tolerate beneficial microbes, to hold fire but also to know when full-scale immune activation is required.
For Sheena, what's behind the switch from "watch and wait" to "attack mode" at key barrier sites in our bodies is central to her research.
Her aim is to find tools that will help diagnose and manage chronic inflammatory diseases and beyond that, to identify ways to strengthen peoples' own immunity and ultimately make them better.
But she's always wanted science to have a strong presence outside of the laboratory and she believes strongly that researchers have a duty to reach out beyond their institution to the community about their work. If they do that, she tells Jim, everybody benefits and the science too, will be enriched.
Producer: Fiona Hill.
Michael Jenkins became a Dad unexpectedly aged 18. In this series he's been talking to other men who were also teenage fathers. They talk frankly and openly about the challenges of parenthood at such a young age.
Adam James admits to having very little focus in his life and was half heartedly going to college when he discovered aged 18 that his partner was pregnant. Becoming a Dad has meant learning responsibility, discipline and patience and he's now 24 and has two children. He talks to Michael about the pressures and pleasures of being a father so young.
Producer: Maggie Ayre.
Damian Le Bas inhabits an awkward middle ground between the non-gypsy world and his own traveller / gypsy heritage. He grew up in West Sussex in a house built by his grandfather on land the family owned, surrounded by a field that was half car-breaking business, half farmyard. Scattered bits of engines lay alongside bales of hay, brand new trucks were surrounded by geese and terriers. But twice a week they drove an hour each way to their family pitch in the market square of Petersfield where they sold flowers.
Along the way, his elders would nod towards lay-bys and verges, naming them as they passed. These were the 'atchin tans' or stopping places. His great grandmother, Nan, explained to him that they were the places where she and her family used to live in the days of wagons and bender tents. Sometimes they would stop for a few days, other times for a few years.
Damian's parents both had faith in education and, when they saw that he was bright, he applied for for a full scholarship at the nearby boarding school - Christ's Hospital - which led to ten grade A O-Levels, A Levels and theology at Oxford.
Damian was now firmly an outsider in both worlds. But having plundered the Bodleian Library for histories of gypsies, he felt the need to get out into the world and discover the topography of his ancestors. So he with his Nan's blessing he set out to visit the stopping places, sometimes alone and sometimes accompanied by his wife Candis. As we follow his journey, we also learn about the history of the gypsies and their marginalised place in society today.
Written and read by Damian Le Bas
Abridged by Isobel Creed and Jill Waters
Produced by Jill Waters
A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4.
Programme that offers a female perspective on the world.
Lucy Catherine's Viking epic of love, revenge and faith inspired by the Icelandic sagas.
Marlas gets sucked back into the intrigues of his former life leaving Gudrun to explore Constantinople alone. She befriends a fellow Icelander who is a member of the elite Varangian Guard.
Produced and directed by Gemma Jenkins.
Mark van Dongen, 29, was left paralysed from the neck down and lost his left leg, ear and eye following an acid attack carried out by his ex-girlfriend, Berlinah Wallace in September 2015. He ended his life in a Belgian euthanasia clinic 15 months later, having decided he could not face a life of pain.
Early in the morning of 23rd September 2015, BBC reporter Charlotte Callen was woken by the terrifying screams of her neighbour from outside her bedroom window. The events of that night in a quiet Bristol neighbourhood would eventually result in a court case in which Wallace would be charged not just with throwing the acid, but with murder. Wallace was eventualy found guilty of throwing a corrosive substance with intent but cleared of both murder and manslaughter.
Having been one of the first on the scene the BBC's Home Affairs Correspondent for the West of England, Charlotte Callen has been reporting on the case since the attack, getting to know Mark's family and following their journey through the British legal system.
Zakia Sewell returns to the home of her grandparents, Carriacou, a small island off the coast of Grenada, to discover the Big Drum tradition - a dance ritual with its origins in West Africa and passed on through generations since the slavery era.
Zakia's great grandfather, Williamson Lambert, and his two brothers were a legendary Big Drum group on the island. She tracks down family members to hear the story of his life and his music, talking to local drummers, dancers and historians and finding out how this tiny island in the Eastern Caribbean has maintained its connection to Africa for over 300 years.
Carriacou is tiny, just 12 square miles, but, because of its size and relative isolation during the slavery era, the songs, dances and rhythms of West Africa - carried to the island by enslaved Africans - were played out with little restriction and continued to survive. They were inscribed with the sounds and songs of older tribes to which they belong - Ibo, Congo, Temne, Mandinka, Chamba and Kromanti.
The Big Drum tradition weaves past with present - music and memory with spirituality. The stories in the songs provide an alternative history to the colonial records, and for islanders and their descendants, including Zakia, a vital connection to a deeper past.
A Cast Iron Radio production for BBC Radio 4.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Over the last year Radio 4 has followed families whose lives have been affected by the Grenfell fire, including those caught in the blaze and people working alongside them to provide support and help. This series focuses on the key areas to emerge as families struggle to come to terms with what has happened; some are also dealing with moving into temporary accommodation and not knowing when and where they will be rehoused.
The Grenfell memorial wall was hastily erected by church workers on the evening after the fire and within hours hundreds of messages of remembrance had been left and more white boards were placed along the railings, providing a walkway where some families left candles, soft toys and photos. There were also missing posters and pleas for information about those thought to have been trapped. Many came to stand and pray as the community tried to cope with the enormity of what had happened.
Maryam Adam was on the fourth floor of the block when her husband woke her - the fire had started in her neighbours flat and she was one of the first to leave the building. In the immediate aftermath she was worried that smoke inhalation could have harmed her baby and she was desperate for news of friends on the floors above hers. In the months following she has struggled to get back to any sense of normality and is still living in temporary accommodation - now with her son, who was born in November.
Maryam feels overlooked by housing officials, who she says have left her, her husband, her brother and his wife in a one bedroom apartment. She struggles to cope with the emotional trauma of what has happened and her health is not good. For weeks after the fire she waited for news, eventually tracing one woman she feared had died but finding that others had not made it out alive. She is grateful to the volunteers and church leaders who keep her supplied with clothes and essentials that were destroyed in the blaze.
Mario and Andreia Gomes lost their unborn baby, Logan, when they escaped from their 21st floor flat with daughters, Megan and Luana. He was seven months old and was delivered less than 24 hours after Mario led his family out of the burning building. His heart had stopped beating and Andreia was in a medically induced coma after inhaling thick toxic smoke. Over the last year the family has struggled with bereavement and with the physical impact of exposure, coupled with losing their home and all of their belongings.
During the recordings Mario talks about the emotional support he gets from his close friend, Miguel Alves, who also escaped from the tower with wife, Fatima and children Tiago and Ines, who went to sit her GCSE chemistry paper the day after the blaze. Miguel made frantic phone calls to Mario after their escape, urging him to come down, but on the first two attempts the thick smoke beat them back. When fire entered their apartment they were left with no choice, but the escape was tortuous and the horror lives on today. Playing football allows both men to switch off from what is happening and they share memories and stories as the year unfolds.
Consumer phone-in.
The latest weather forecast.
Analysis of news and current affairs.
Nick Robinson talks to the Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg about being different, understanding others, moral values and pinstripe suits.
This is an edited version of a conversation recorded earlier this year for the Radio 4 podcast, Political Thinking with Nick Robinson. Episodes of the podcast can be downloaded from the BBC website or any podcast provider - see https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04z203l/episodes/player.
While DCI Matthews and DI Armitage interview respectable writer Jack - who insists he's innocent of shoplifting - they discover something more serious.
Director ..... Mary Peate
Writer ..... Roy Williams.
A porcine presidential campaign, the feeling of freedom in a communal action and a Danish poet who helps you re-imagine the world - Josie Long hears stories of small radical acts.
Comedian and activist Mark Thomas talks about the feeling of liberty on a city street flooded with bicycles, we explore how Inger Christensen's words have fed into the imaginations of Danish activists, and we hear about Pigasus's curtailed political campaign.
Pigasus the Immortal
Featuring Abe Peck, Jim Lato and Judy Gumbo
Interviews by Sarah Geis
Inger Christensen
Produced by Maria Dønvang
Critical Mass
Featuring Mark Thomas
Produced by Sarah Cuddon
Series Producer: Eleanor McDowall
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4.
Helen Castor presents the first in a new series of the popular history magazine. She's joined today by Dr Jane Hammett from Royal Holloway University of London.
It's 140 years since the UK prison system was nationalised, and Iszi Lawrence visits Shrewsbury with Professor Alyson Brown from Edge Hill University to discover why a change in organisation was needed then. Today, paying customers are experiencing life here at Her Majesty's pleasure - and all over the world people seem to want to visit places which have a grim and troubling past. So what's the appeal and the purpose of so-called "dark tourism"? Tom Holland talks to Dr Philip Stone from the University of Central Lancashire.
It's another World Cup year. The tournament in Russia comes at a time when President Putin's stock is high at home, but on the floor abroad. Not for the first time, football might offer a political leader a global platform. We go back to France '38 which was held against a backdrop of a growing global diplomatic crisis. Sports writer Julie Welch is joined by Professor Simon Martin and football journalist Jonathan Wilson to explain how, with: civil war in Spain, the merging of the Austrian and German teams after the Nazi Anschluss and Mussolini promoting his brand of fascism through football, this really was a tournament with all to play for.
Council budget cuts, E-readers and on-line delivery are all presenting challenges to Britain's library service, and mobile libraries in particular have been badly affected. But when did the library van first start doing its rounds? Author of Mobile Library, David Whitehouse, heads back home to Nuneaton and the mobile library his mother used to clean.
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.
Should it be easier to end a marriage? The Supreme Court is currently considering a rare defended divorce. Campaigners hope the case will prompt a change in the law in England and Wales - but others fear this will lead to divorce on demand. Joshua Rozenberg investigates.
Producer: Neil Koenig
Researcher: Diane Richardson.
Comic actor and writer Robert Webb and award-winning journalist Hugo Rifkind talk about favourite books with presenter Harriett Gilbert.
Robert's choice is East Anglican based fictional tale Waterland by Graham Swift. Hugo picks the Douglas Adams classic Life, The Universe and Everything, and Harriett brings Sam Miller's Fathers to the table.
Producer Beth O'Dea.
Eddie Mair with interviews, context and analysis.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
When a famous baker comes to the gym, Milton decides it's time to show off his nice buns.
Mention Milton Jones to most people and the first thing they think is "Help!". Each week, Milton and his trusty assistant Anton set out to help people and soon find they're embroiled in a new adventure. Because when you're close to the edge, then Milton can give you a push.
"Milton Jones is one of Britain's best gagsmiths with a flair for creating daft yet perfect one-liners" - The Guardian.
"King of the surreal one-liners" - The Times
"If you haven't caught up with Jones yet - do so!" - The Daily Mail
Written by Milton with James Cary (Bluestone 42, Miranda), and Dan Evans (who co-wrote Milton's Channel 4 show House Of Rooms), the man they call "Britain's funniest Milton," returns to the radio with a fully-working cast and a shipload of new jokes.
The cast includes regulars Tom Goodman-Hill (Spamalot, Mr. Selfridge) as the ever-faithful Anton, Josie Lawrence and Ben Willbond (The Thick Of It).
With music by Guy Jackson
Produced and directed by David Tyler
A Pozzitive production for BBC Radio 4.
Emma is at her wits end, and Tom's frustrations increase.
Arts news, interviews and reviews.
Selling passports. It may sound illicit but 'citizenship-by-investment' is a global industry worth billions - and it's completely legal.
The idea is simple - invest huge sums of money and in return acquire residency rights or citizenship, even visa-free access to all European member states.
The UK offers residency in exchange for an investment of £2 million - or for £10 million, the possibility of British citizenship within two years.
And across the world, countries are vying to attract the super-rich through these schemes. But they are attracting attention for the wrong reasons.
European MEPs have launched an investigation into a 'Golden Passports' programmes across Europe - including the UK - amid concerns that they pose a corruption risk. In the US, government financial investigators say individuals are buying citizenship to hide their true identity, in an attempt to flout economic sanctions against Iran.
Tonight, File on 4 examines the trade in passports and visas for the wealthy and asks whether they deliver any real value for the countries that sell them, and assesses the evidence that they are being used by criminals.
Reporter: Alys Harte
Producer: David Lewis
Editor: Gail Champion.
News, views and information for people who are blind or partially sighted.
Claudia Hammond presents a series that explores the limits and potential of the human mind.
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.
By Louise Erdrich. The world is in crisis. Evolution has gone into reverse, affecting all creatures great and small, including the next generation of humans. Fewer babies - or their mothers - are surviving to full term and, of those babies born, many have been identified as belonging to a more primitive species of human. As governments take drastic action to limit the catastrophe, there has never been a more dangerous time to be having a baby.
Cedar Songmaker is pregnant. She is the adopted daughter of Minneapolis liberals. Determined to find out as much about her baby's make up as possible, she makes contact with her birth family on the Ojibwe reservation.
Episode 2
Cedar learns more about her birth family and their life on the Ojibwe reservation.
The author, Louise Erdrich, lives in Minnesota. Her novel The Round House won the National Book Award for Fiction. She has also received the Library of Congress Prize in American Fiction, the prestigious PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.
Writer: Louise Erdrich
Abridger: Jeremy Osborne
Reader: Cherrelle Skeete
Producer: Lisa Osborne
A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4.
It's rent day and once again Phil is behind on the payments to his landlord Johnny, who owns the celebrity memorabilia shop below. And this time, Johnny isn't budging: Phil has got to come up with the money or he's out. Luckily, Phil's assistant Lolly has found one more kids' party for Phil to entertain, and if he can get that right, he'll have the rent, no problem. What is more, Phi's finally got a date with Ellie Evans, the florist next door. Maybe he'll finally be able to put the spectre of his recent (three years ago) divorce behind him? All he has to do is get the rent and make the date, and then things might start to look up for Phil. But that's easier said than done. Especially when Phil's involved.
A new sitcom for BBC Radio 4 created and written by Phil Ellis (Edinburgh Award Panel Prize winner 2014) and Fraser Steel (I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue, 8 Out Of Ten Cats, A League Of Their Own).
Produced by Sam Michell
A BBC Studios Production.
News 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 reading and a reflection to start the day, with George Craig, a retired senior civil servant and a Methodist local preacher in Cardiff.
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
David Lindo is known as the Urban Birder. His love of all things feathered began when he was tiny, but it was seeing a kestrel while he was at school in north London one day that set him on the road to birdwatching in the city.
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 Maggie Ayre.
Morning news and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Yesterday in Parliament, Weather and Thought for the Day.
Natalie Dormer, who has reached a global audience through her roles in The Tudors, Game of Thrones and The Hunger Games, meets the singer and songwriter Tori Amos, backstage at the Royal Albert Hall.
Producer Clare Walker.
James Naughtie explores history through front page small ads. The Dundee Courier of 16th November 1922, the morning after the General Election that saw Winston Churchill displaced by the UK's only ever Prohibitionist MP Edwin Scrimgeour, and the classified ads announce a victory rally. Also, the Colonial Department is recruiting clerks and engineers for Ceylon, Nigeria and South Africa, and the city's fashion shops are competing for the custom of the wives and children of the jute mill owners.
Front page news is a relatively late addition to the newspaper business. For most of their first couple of centuries, British newspapers carried classified ads rather than news on their front page. They transformed the hustle and bustle of the marketplace into newsprint, so you could take it home or to the inn to pore over at your leisure.
James Naughtie travels the country discovering how these front page ads give us a snapshot of time and place, exploring how they weave national and local life together - the heartbeat of history rolling daily or weekly off the presses.
The ads tell us what people were eating, drinking and wearing, what was on stage and what people were playing at home. They mark the mood of the time through notices for public meetings held to stoke up or damp down public fears of crime and political unrest. They are a record of the notices placed for houses and public buildings to be built, licenses applied for and subscriptions raised for publications and commemorations. They show the latest labour saving gadgets "trending" as technology arrived, and they track jobs and trades on the way up and down as the British Empire waxed and waned. The ever present ads for patent medicines record our most popular ailments.
Produced by John Forsyth
A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 4.
Damian Le Bas inhabits an awkward middle ground between the non-gypsy world and his own traveller / gypsy heritage. He grew up in West Sussex in a house built by his grandfather on land the family owned, surrounded by a field that was half car-breaking business, half farmyard. Scattered bits of engines lay alongside bales of hay, brand new trucks were surrounded by geese and terriers. But twice a week they drove an hour each way to their family pitch in the market square of Petersfield where they sold flowers.
Along the way, his elders would nod towards lay-bys and verges, naming them as they passed. These were the 'atchin tans' or stopping places. His great grandmother, Nan, explained to him that they were the places where she and her family used to live in the days of wagons and bender tents. Sometimes they would stop for a few days, other times for a few years.
Damian's parents both had faith in education and, when they saw that he was bright, he applied for for a full scholarship at the nearby boarding school - Christ's Hospital - which led to ten grade A O-Levels, A Levels and theology at Oxford.
Damian was now firmly an outsider in both worlds. But having plundered the Bodleian Library for histories of gypsies, he felt the need to get out into the world and discover the topography of his ancestors. So he with his Nan's blessing he set out to visit the stopping places, sometimes alone and sometimes accompanied by his wife Candis. As we follow his journey, we also learn about the history of the gypsies and their marginalised place in society today.
Written and read by Damian Le Bas
Abridged by Isobel Creed and Jill Waters
Produced by Jill Waters
A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4.
Programme that offers a female perspective on the world.
Lucy Catherine's Viking epic of love, revenge and faith inspired by the Icelandic sagas.
Marlas gets sucked back into the intrigues of his former life leaving Gudrun to explore Constantinople alone. She befriends a fellow Icelander who is a member of the elite Varangian Guard.
Produced and directed by Gemma Jenkins.
Two senior coxswains at the RNLI station at Spurn Point ponder the fact that of one of them is about to leave. Fi Glover presents another conversation in the series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.
Producer: Marya Burgess.
Comedy about the inept staff at a historic house. Starring Simon Callow, Jane Horrocks and Miles Jupp.
Every year, thousands of tourists flock to the Lake District. But one place they never go to is Plum House - the former country home of terrible poet George Pudding (1779-1848). Now a crumbling museum, losing money hand over fist, it struggles to stay open under its eccentric curator Peter Knight (Simon Callow). Tom Collyer (Tom Bell) tries and fails to get the museum back on track, alongside the hopelessly out of touch deputy Julian (Miles Jupp), corner-cutting gift shop manager Maureen (Jane Horrocks), put-upon education officer Emma (Louise Ford), and enthusiastic but dim-witted caretaker Alan (Pearce Quigley).
Peter and Julian are determined to retrieve a valuable pudding artefact and they've enlisted the help of a crooked connection to do so. Emma and Tom try to keep everyone on the straight and narrow - but Maureen finds herself mysteriously drawn to the shady visitor.
Written by Ben Cottam and Paul McKenna
Produced by Sarah Cartwright
Directed by Paul Schlesinger
A Hat Trick production for BBC Radio 4.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Over the last year Radio 4 has followed families whose lives have been affected by the Grenfell fire, including those caught in the blaze and people working alongside them to provide support and help. This series focuses on the key areas to emerge as families struggle to come to terms with what has happened; some are also dealing with moving into temporary accommodation and not knowing when and where they will be rehoused.
The Grenfell memorial wall was hastily erected by church workers on the evening after the fire and within hours hundreds of messages of remembrance had been left and more white boards were placed along the railings, providing a walkway where some families left candles, soft toys and photos. There were also missing posters and pleas for information about those thought to have been trapped. Many came to stand and pray as the community tried to cope with the enormity of what had happened.
Maryam Adam was on the fourth floor of the block when her husband woke her - the fire had started in her neighbours flat and she was one of the first to leave the building. In the immediate aftermath she was worried that smoke inhalation could have harmed her baby and she was desperate for news of friends on the floors above hers. In the months following she has struggled to get back to any sense of normality and is still living in temporary accommodation - now with her son, who was born in November.
Maryam feels overlooked by housing officials, who she says have left her, her husband, her brother and his wife in a one bedroom apartment. She struggles to cope with the emotional trauma of what has happened and her health is not good. For weeks after the fire she waited for news, eventually tracing one woman she feared had died but finding that others had not made it out alive. She is grateful to the volunteers and church leaders who keep her supplied with clothes and essentials that were destroyed in the blaze.
Mario and Andreia Gomes lost their unborn baby, Logan, when they escaped from their 21st floor flat with daughters, Megan and Luana. He was seven months old and was delivered less than 24 hours after Mario led his family out of the burning building. His heart had stopped beating and Andreia was in a medically induced coma after inhaling thick toxic smoke. Over the last year the family has struggled with bereavement and with the physical impact of exposure, coupled with losing their home and all of their belongings.
During the recordings Mario talks about the emotional support he gets from his close friend, Miguel Alves, who also escaped from the tower with wife, Fatima and children Tiago and Ines, who went to sit her GCSE chemistry paper the day after the blaze. Miguel made frantic phone calls to Mario after their escape, urging him to come down, but on the first two attempts the thick smoke beat them back. When fire entered their apartment they were left with no choice, but the escape was tortuous and the horror lives on today. Playing football allows both men to switch off from what is happening and they share memories and stories as the year unfolds.
Consumer affairs programme.
The latest weather forecast.
Analysis of news and current affairs.
Nick Robinson talks to the transgender rights campaigner, Paris Lees (and she explains why she doesn't like his line of questioning).
This is an edited version of a conversation recorded earlier this year for the Radio 4 podcast, Political Thinking with Nick Robinson. Episodes of the podcast can be downloaded from the BBC website or any podcast provider - see https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04z203l/episodes/player.
A man is brutally attacked in his own home, but the detective duo are at a loss to find anyone with a motive. Eventually, years of pent-up anger burst out.
Director ..... Mary Peate
Writer ..... Roy Williams.
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.
The hit series returns for a sixth series with more shop based shenanigans and over the counter philosophy, courtesy of Ramesh Mahju and his trusty sidekick Dave. Written by and starring Donald Mcleary and Sanjeev Kohli.
Set in a Scots-Asian corner shop, the award winning Fags, Mags & Bags sees a return of all the shop regular characters, and some guest appearances along the way, from the likes of Julia Deakin and Mina Anwar.
In this episode, tempers are frayed as Lovely Sue and Mrs Birkett set up competing choirs for The West of Scotland community choir-off, and Sanjay and his mate Grebo make Mrs Begg an internet star.
Join the staff of Fags, Mags and Bags in their tireless quest to bring nice-price custard creams and cans of coke with Arabic writing on them to an ungrateful nation. Ramesh Mahju has built it up over the course of over 30 years and is a firmly entrenched, friendly presence in the local area. He is joined by his shop sidekick, Dave.
Then of course there are Ramesh's sons Sanjay and Alok, both surly and not particularly keen on the old school approach to shopkeeping, but natural successors to the business. Ramesh is keen to pass all his worldly wisdom onto them - whether they like it or not!
Written by Donald Mcleary and Sanjeev Kohli
Producer: Gus Beattie
A Comedy Unit production for BBC Radio 4.
Shula puts her foot in it, and Adam predicts disaster.
Arts news, interviews and reviews.
Combative, provocative and engaging debate chaired by Michael Buerk. With Giles Fraser, Claire Fox, Melanie Phillips and Tim Stanley.
Talks with a personal dimension.
A convent of Mexican nuns is helping to save the world's one of the most endangered and most remarkable amphibians: the axolotl, a truly bizarre creature of serious scientific interest worldwide and an animal of deep-rooted cultural significance in Mexico.
The Sisters of Immaculate Health rarely venture out of their monastery in the central Mexican town of Patzcuaro. Yet they have become the most adept and successful breeders of their local species of this aquatic salamander. Scientists marvel at their axolotl-breeding talents and are now working with them to save the animal from extinction. BBC News science correspondent Victoria Gill is allowed into the convent to discover at least some of the nun's secrets and explores why the axolotl is a variety of salamander so important to protect from evolutionary oblivion.
Axolotls are able to regrow lost limbs and other body parts. As a result, the aquatic salamanders are of great interest to researchers worldwide who study them in the hope of imitating the trick: to grow tissues and organs for medicine. The nuns also began to breed and rear their axolotls for medical reasons. They use the salamander as the key ingredient in an ancient Mexican remedy for coughs and other respiratory illnesses. The Sisters of Immaculate Health sell the medicinal syrup to the public. As well as being the basis for a popular folk remedy all over Mexico, the axolotl is also the manifestation of one of the ancient Aztecs' most important gods. It is an animal of deep-rooted cultural significance for Mexicans.
The big problem is that all species of axolotl are critically endangered. The nun's species only lives in nearby Lake Patzcuaro and it has been pushed to the edge of extinction because of pollution and introduced fish species. This is why the sisters began to breed the animals in the convent about 20 years ago - fishermen had stopped bring them to the convent from the lake. In the 1980s, 20 tonnes of axolotls were fished from the lake every year. Today they are very few left in the wild.
Biologists from the nearby Michoacan University discovered that the nuns are expert breeders of species and have started to collaborate with them in a conservation programme to make the Lake Patzcuaro an axolotl-friendly habitat once more and (if necessary) to introduce convent-bred animals to restore the lake's tiny population. The project is being supported and funded by the UK's Chester Zoo. The zoo's curator of amphibians Dr Gerardo Garcia visits the convent with Victoria, and demonstrates some of the technical help being offered to the nun. For example, he micro-chips and takes DNA samples from the nun's breeding salamanders so the sisters can refine their breeding success even further.
Producer: Andrew Luck-Baker.
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.
By Louise Erdrich. The world is in crisis. Evolution has gone into reverse, affecting all creatures great and small, including the next generation of humans. Fewer babies - or their mothers - are surviving to full term and, of those babies born, many have been identified as belonging to a more primitive species of human. As governments take drastic action to limit the catastrophe, there has never been a more dangerous time to be having a baby.
Cedar Songmaker is pregnant. She is the adopted daughter of Minneapolis liberals. Determined to find out as much about her baby's make up as possible, she makes contact with her birth family on the Ojibwe reservation.
Episode 3
With rumours of martial law afoot, Cedar prepares for the emergency and goes for an ultrasound.
The author, Louise Erdrich, lives in Minnesota. Her novel The Round House won the National Book Award for Fiction. She has also received the Library of Congress Prize in American Fiction, the prestigious PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.
Writer: Louise Erdrich
Abridger: Jeremy Osborne
Reader: Cherrelle Skeete
Producer: Lisa Osborne
A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4.
The Godfather of British stand-up comedy returns to the live stage with his trials of modern life and his thoughts on the supernatural.
Being a good catholic boy, John was brought up respecting the infallibility of the CEO of the Universe. Yet as a modern man of the world, with a curious demeanour, he has spent a good amount of time debating the nature of deities and the apparent contradictions that God's existence has held with science since the enlightenment.
Thankfully, John Moloney will go down in history as the man who finally answered one of life's biggest mysteries, putting centuries of debate to rest, allowing the clergy and scientists to have a nice sit down and a cuppa without that nagging doubt in their minds.
God exists, and John can prove it - with gravy.
A Dabster production for BBC Radio 4.
The second series of Elvis McGonagall's daft comic world of poems, mad sketches, satire and facetious remarks, broadcast from his home in the Graceland Caravan Park just outside Dundee.
Stand-up poet, armchair revolutionary, comedian and broadcaster Elvis McGonagall (aka poet and performer Richard Smith) continues his frenzied and largely ineffectual search for the bright side. He is unenthusiastically convinced that there is a positive side to life. He's heard talk of it. He
may even have caught a glimpse of it somewhere. So, from his caravan in the Graceland Caravan Park near Dundee, the Scottish punk poet goes in search of it.
With the hindrance of his dog Trouble and his friend Susan Morrison, Elvis does his very best to accentuate the positive - but the negative has a nasty habit of coming back to roost with the grim regularity of an unimaginative pigeon.
Recorded entirely on location, in a caravan on a truly glamorous industrial estate somewhere in Scotland.
Episode 1: Full Tartan Jacket
Elvis is being photographed for an interview in a style magazine, but will his tartan dinner jacket cut the mustard? And does that shade of mustard really suit him? Can it be that his career as a fashion icon is dead in the water?
Written by Elvis McGonagall with Helen Braunholtz-Smith and Frank Stirling.
Director: Frank Stirling
A Unique Broadcasting production for BBC Radio 4.
News 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 reading and a reflection to start the day, with George Craig, a retired senior civil servant and a Methodist local preacher in Cardiff.
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs.
Michaela Strachan presents the house sparrow. These birds are more commonly found living alongside us than any other British bird. Perhaps the most enterprising birds were the House Sparrows which bred below ground in a working mine at Frickley Colliery in Yorkshire.
Morning news and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Yesterday in Parliament, Weather and Thought for the Day.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the role of the great 'City of the Persians' founded by Darius I as the ceremonial capital of the Achaemenid Empire that stretched from the Indus Valley to Egypt and the coast of the Black Sea. It was known as the richest city under the sun and was a centre at which the Empire's subject peoples paid tribute to a succession of Achaemenid leaders, until the arriavel of Alexander III of Macedon who destroyed it by fire supposedly in revenge for the burning of the Acropolis in Athens.
The image above is a detail from a relief at the Apadana, the huge audience hall, and shows a lion attacking a bull.
With
Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones
Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis
and
Lindsay Allen
Producer: Simon Tillotson.
Damian Le Bas inhabits an awkward middle ground between the non-gypsy world and his own traveller / gypsy heritage. He grew up in West Sussex in a house built by his grandfather on land the family owned, surrounded by a field that was half car-breaking business, half farmyard. Scattered bits of engines lay alongside bales of hay, brand new trucks were surrounded by geese and terriers. But twice a week they drove an hour each way to their family pitch in the market square of Petersfield where they sold flowers.
Along the way, his elders would nod towards lay-bys and verges, naming them as they passed. These were the 'atchin tans' or stopping places. His great grandmother, Nan, explained to him that they were the places where she and her family used to live in the days of wagons and bender tents. Sometimes they would stop for a few days, other times for a few years.
Damian's parents both had faith in education and, when they saw that he was bright, he applied for for a full scholarship at the nearby boarding school - Christ's Hospital - which led to ten grade A O-Levels, A Levels and theology at Oxford.
Damian was now firmly an outsider in both worlds. But having plundered the Bodleian Library for histories of gypsies, he felt the need to get out into the world and discover the topography of his ancestors. So he with his Nan's blessing he set out to visit the stopping places, sometimes alone and sometimes accompanied by his wife Candis. As we follow his journey, we also learn about the history of the gypsies and their marginalised place in society today.
Written and read by Damian Le Bas
Abridged by Isobel Creed and Jill Waters
Produced by Jill Waters
A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4.
Programme that offers a female perspective on the world.
Lucy Catherine's Viking epic of love, revenge and faith inspired by the Icelandic sagas.
Recalling her own violent first marriage, Gudrun is determined to stop a political alliance that will see Alexandra married to a brute.
Produced and directed by Gemma Jenkins.
Reports from writers and journalists around the world. Presented by Kate Adie.
Twenty-two ash trees, shaped and scuplted as they grow for 40 years; an extinct volcano filled with subterranean light passages; music for a 1000 years; a mile of writing, and a 5 and a half hour composition for a string quartet, played as slowly and quietly as possible...
As the 21st century continues at break-neck speed Lindsey Chapman brings you a moment of calm, as she meets some extraordinary musicians and artists, to find out the motivation behind creating slow art.
So - how slow are we talking about, when it comes to art?
In 'Slow Art', Lindsey Chapman - Radio 4 and BBC TV 'Spring watch' presenter - explores what added value the length of time of creation gives to an artistic idea. Does it make time shrink? Or does it distract us from our awareness of our own finite existence?
The biggest art project in progress in the world today is the Roden Crater. You may not have heard of it yet, but Leonardo DiCaprio has been booked to open it, although no one knows when that will be.
It's the work of artist James Turrell who dreamed, in the 1960's, of sculpting an extinct volcano as a celestial viewing post. and he's spent 40 years on it so far - Tim Marlow has been watching its progress.
Also in progress for 40 years, the Ash Dome - created by wood sculpture David Nash. Lindsey is given the coordinates to find the secret circle, and comes across it on a bluebell strewn forest floor at dawn, a magical moment of pure beauty - but one which leads her to consider where she might be in 40, or 400 years from now.
Slow art has that effect - eeing into the future, and sometime fearfully into infinity.
Jem Finer, musician and ex-Pogue bassist, has created a piece of music, called 'Longplayer', which has already been playing for 18 years and which has another 982 to go - and of course he knows he won't be there to hear it end.
Tanya Shadrick knelt beside an open air swimming pool, day after day, month after month, writing a diary, line by line, a mile long. What inspired her to create "Wild Patience?" and what did she learn?
Composer Morton Feldman is well known for his long slow quiet pieces of music - but what is it like to actually hold and play the violin on stage for five hours? Darragh Morgan recounts the intensity, and how he never gets bored.
We also meet French anarchist vegetarian artists Elizabeth Saint-Jalmes & Cyril Leclerc who rescue snails bound for the cooking pot, and display them as a sound and light installation - Slow Pixel - before setting them free.
To watch illuminated snails crawl across a concert hall for 6 hours is one way of bringing your heart beat right down!
Producer: Sara Jane Hall.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Over the last year Radio 4 has followed families whose lives have been affected by the Grenfell fire, including those caught in the blaze and people working alongside them to provide support and help. This series focuses on the key areas to emerge as families struggle to come to terms with what has happened; some are also dealing with moving into temporary accommodation and not knowing when and where they will be rehoused.
The Grenfell memorial wall was hastily erected by church workers on the evening after the fire and within hours hundreds of messages of remembrance had been left and more white boards were placed along the railings, providing a walkway where some families left candles, soft toys and photos. There were also missing posters and pleas for information about those thought to have been trapped. Many came to stand and pray as the community tried to cope with the enormity of what had happened.
Maryam Adam was on the fourth floor of the block when her husband woke her - the fire had started in her neighbours flat and she was one of the first to leave the building. In the immediate aftermath she was worried that smoke inhalation could have harmed her baby and she was desperate for news of friends on the floors above hers. In the months following she has struggled to get back to any sense of normality and is still living in temporary accommodation - now with her son, who was born in November.
Maryam feels overlooked by housing officials, who she says have left her, her husband, her brother and his wife in a one bedroom apartment. She struggles to cope with the emotional trauma of what has happened and her health is not good. For weeks after the fire she waited for news, eventually tracing one woman she feared had died but finding that others had not made it out alive. She is grateful to the volunteers and church leaders who keep her supplied with clothes and essentials that were destroyed in the blaze.
Mario and Andreia Gomes lost their unborn baby, Logan, when they escaped from their 21st floor flat with daughters, Megan and Luana. He was seven months old and was delivered less than 24 hours after Mario led his family out of the burning building. His heart had stopped beating and Andreia was in a medically induced coma after inhaling thick toxic smoke. Over the last year the family has struggled with bereavement and with the physical impact of exposure, coupled with losing their home and all of their belongings.
During the recordings Mario talks about the emotional support he gets from his close friend, Miguel Alves, who also escaped from the tower with wife, Fatima and children Tiago and Ines, who went to sit her GCSE chemistry paper the day after the blaze. Miguel made frantic phone calls to Mario after their escape, urging him to come down, but on the first two attempts the thick smoke beat them back. When fire entered their apartment they were left with no choice, but the escape was tortuous and the horror lives on today. Playing football allows both men to switch off from what is happening and they share memories and stories as the year unfolds.
Consumer affairs programme.
The latest weather forecast.
Analysis of news and current affairs.
Nick Robinson talks to Labour's shadow education secretary, Angela Rayner, about class politics, how her upbringing forged her character and whether it constrains her leadership ambitions.
This is an edited version of a conversation recorded earlier this year for the Radio 4 podcast, Political Thinking with Nick Robinson. Episodes of the podcast can be downloaded from the BBC website or any podcast provider - see https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04z203l/episodes/player.
Hilda is French-Senegalese novelist Marie Ndiaye's first drama, dramatised for radio by Sarah Woods . It examines modern domestic day slavery through a wealthy woman, Mrs Lemarchaud who becomes obsessed with the new nanny she employs. There's a creepy , almost unlikely edge to this piece, reminiscent of the films of David Lynch, but with absurdity, ideas of control and class are brought into greater relief.
Mrs. Lemarchand the mistress of the house , develops a relationship with Hilda's husband, first to glean more information about Hilda and her life, and , then to exert her increasingly irrational power over both of them Mrs. Lemarchand's control over Frank is constant, even when he starts to fight back . Money and class power through.
It's unsettling highlighting the ramifications of class, power and control. Hilda is a stripped-down 3 hander, but it is full of ideas. It may be chilling and on the edge of the absurd, but there in lies its power.
Produced in Salford by Susan Roberts.
Clare Balding walks to the extraordinary Dashwood Mausoleum, near High Wycombe, with Julia and Lee Clements and their daughter, Cerys. Cerys is nearly six years old and has cerebral palsy, so joins the walk in her off-road buggy. Together Julia and Lee discuss how they have adapted to life with a profoundly disabled child; Julia says she has become a 'fighter', especially for the right to give her daughter blended 'real' food, through the tube in her stomach, and not just formula milk which is the accepted norm. Lee says he once defined himself by his achievements at work, or in running marathons, or going for very long walks whereas, now, he values even the shortest of outings with Cerys - navigating kissing-gates, or pushing her weighty buggy uphill is a joy and a challenge in itself.
Producer: Karen Gregor.
Francine Stock presents the story of Ida Lupino, the actress from Herne Hill who became a Hollywood star and a ground-breaking director, the only female film-maker working in the industry for a while in the 40s and 50s.
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.
Frank Skinner loves history, but just doesn't know much of it. So he's devised a comedy discussion show in order to find out more about it.
Along with his historian in residence, Professor Kate Williams, Frank is joined by a selection of celebrity guests who help him navigate his way through the annals of time, picking out and chewing over the funniest, oddest, and most interesting moments in history.
The guests are Katy Brand and Pierre Novellie, who discuss Hodge - the cat belonging to Doctor Samuel Pepys, Nelson and Lady Hamilton, and the Lyme Missal.
Produced by Mark Augustyn and Justin Pollard
An Avalon production for BBC Radio 4.
Lily finds herself trapped, and Peggy is forced to back down.
Arts news, interviews and reviews.
Evan Davis hosts the business conversation show.
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.
By Louise Erdrich. The world is in crisis. Evolution has gone into reverse, affecting all creatures great and small, including the next generation of humans. Fewer babies - or their mothers - are surviving to full term and, of those babies born, many have been identified as belonging to a more primitive species of human. As governments take drastic action to limit the catastrophe, there has never been a more dangerous time to be having a baby.
Cedar Songmaker is pregnant. She is the adopted daughter of Minneapolis liberals. Determined to find out as much about her baby's make up as possible, she makes contact with her birth family on the Ojibwe reservation.
Episode 4
With pregnant women being rounded up, Phil helps Cedar to go into hiding.
The author, Louise Erdrich, lives in Minnesota. Her novel The Round House won the National Book Award for Fiction. She has also received the Library of Congress Prize in American Fiction, the prestigious PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.
Writer: Louise Erdrich
Abridger: Jeremy Osborne
Reader: Cherrelle Skeete
Producer: Lisa Osborne
A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4.
It's summer in Westminster and the halls are alive with the sound of gossip, but young political editor Sam Peakes is struggling to stay afloat. Having drawn the short straw at work, she's being tailed around by Lawrence the office intern, and she needs a story - fast.
Starring Ophelia Lovibond as Sam. With Charlie Higson, Cariad Lloyd, Ryan Sampson and Lewis Macleod.
A Hat Trick production for BBC Radio 4.
News 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 reading and a reflection to start the day, with George Craig, a retired senior civil servant and a Methodist local preacher in Cardiff.
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
Orcadian author and conservationist Amy Liptrot laments of the disappearance of breeding Arctic terns from her family farm for Tweet of the Day.
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 Mark Ward.
Morning news and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Yesterday in Parliament, Weather and Thought for the Day.
Damian Le Bas combines a family memoir with broader historical context as he tells a story of the British traveller community, a people who have been on the margins since their presence and language was first noted down in the mid-16th century, in a pub in Sussex.
Damian inhabits an awkward middle ground between the non-gypsy world and his own heritage. He grew up in West Sussex in a house built by his
grandfather on land the family owned, surrounded by a field that was half car-breaking business, half farmyard. Scattered bits of engines lay alongside bales of hay, brand new trucks were surrounded by geese and terriers. But twice a week they drove an hour each way to their family pitch in the market square of Petersfield where they sold flowers.
Along the way, his elders would nod towards lay-bys and verges, naming them as they passed. These were the 'atchin tans' or stopping places. His great grandmother, Nan, explained to him that they were diverse places where she and her family used to live in the days of wagons and bender tents. Sometimes they would stop for a few days, other times for a few years.
Damian's parents both had faith in education and, when they saw that he was bright, he applied for for a scholarship at the nearby boarding school, leading to ten grade A O-Levels, A Levels and theology at Oxford.
Damian was now firmly an outsider in both worlds. But having plundered the Bodleian Library for histories of gypsies, he felt the need to get out into the world and discover the topography of his ancestors. So he got himself a van and set out to visit the stopping places - from Devon to Northumbria via London and Wales. As we
follow his journey, we also learn about the history of antagonism that has followed gypsies and the movement to reclaim their identity with pride.
Written and read by Damian Le Bas
Abridged and produced by Jill Waters
A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4.
Programme that offers a female perspective on the world.
Lucy Catherine's Viking epic of love, revenge and faith inspired by the Icelandic sagas.
Gudrun waits anxiously for Marlas to return. Will he be able to stop the wedding in time?
Produced and directed by Gemma Jenkins
And there's a new series of Gudrun in November when she returns to Iceland to rescue her daughter.
In the first of a two part series, journalist Hugh Muir examines Carib-British identity through the descendants of Windrush.
Seventy years ago, 492 men and women disembarked at Tilbury dock from the Empire Windrush. We have seen the photos and the newsreels. But what happened next? What do we know about the families they built here, the children and grandchildren? Did the Caribbean culture they brought with them endure, or are their children and grandchildren in all ways British?
Hugh Muir explores the lives and identities of British Caribbeans in the UK.
There are almost 1 million people in the UK who identify as having Caribbean or mixed Caribbean heritage. Through the stories and memories of Hugh's family and others, he tries to understand how a British Caribbean presence and identity was formed over three generations.
This first episode is set between two homes - that of Hugh's dad, William Edward in rural Aberdeen, south west Jamaica, and the traditional Caribbean front room of the 1960s and 70s. It was in this symbolic space that many West-Indian parents, including Hugh's now ageing and frail father, paraded the beliefs and values they sought to pass down to subsequent generations - religious values, work ethic and aspiration. It was where children absorbed their parents' culture via the radiogram, blues parties, prayer gatherings and stories of "back home".
But passing the torch from conservative parents with a sense of Empire and notions of the Motherland to children forced to navigate Britain as it was, while forming their own identities, was not an easy process. There was conflict inside and outside the home and a struggle with the authorities, which continues to this day with the Windrush immigration scandal.
And yet there emerged from that process an explosion of vital and distinct British Caribbean culture - lovers rock, the soundsystem, a look, and a vocabulary that helped the Windrush children stamp their imprint on British society and pave the way for the next generation.
A Cast Iron Radio production for BBC Radio 4.
Martin Jarvis directs the masterly comic series written by Michael Frayn, the author of Noises Off and the most comic philosophical writer of our time. The outstanding cast is led by Ian McKellen, Joanna Lumley, Stephen Fry, Alfred Molina, Alex Jennings and Jarvis himself.
It's an astonishing tour de force of comic imagination and satire.
Each of the four episodes reveals Frayn's infectious delight in writing between the lines of theatre, fiction, television and the media, the church, relationships - life in general.
In this second episode, Darren Richardson conducts a misguided sight-seeing tour, Ian McKellen has Helpline difficulties, Nigel Anthony and Joanna Lumley revisit Listen With Mother and Martin Jarvis attempts to broadcast from The Royal Opera House. Meanwhile, Alex Jennings and Janie Dee are a confused married couple, George Blagden is an unusually literate weatherman and Ian McKellen, as Richard III, is interrupted by footnote scholars.
Cast:
Ian McKellen, Nigel Anthony, Lisa Dillon, Edward Bennett, Janie Dee, Martin Jarvis, Alex Jennings, Rosalind Ayres, George Blagden, Darren Richardson and Joanna Lumley.
Written by Michael Frayn,
Director: Martin Jarvis.
A Jarvis and Ayres production for BBC Radio 4.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Over the last year Radio 4 has followed families whose lives have been affected by the Grenfell fire, including those caught in the blaze and people working alongside them to provide support and help. This series focuses on the key areas to emerge as families struggle to come to terms with what has happened; some are also dealing with moving into temporary accommodation and not knowing when and where they will be rehoused.
The Grenfell memorial wall was hastily erected by church workers on the evening after the fire and within hours hundreds of messages of remembrance had been left and more white boards were placed along the railings, providing a walkway where some families left candles, soft toys and photos. There were also missing posters and pleas for information about those thought to have been trapped. Many came to stand and pray as the community tried to cope with the enormity of what had happened.
Maryam Adam was on the fourth floor of the block when her husband woke her - the fire had started in her neighbours flat and she was one of the first to leave the building. In the immediate aftermath she was worried that smoke inhalation could have harmed her baby and she was desperate for news of friends on the floors above hers. In the months following she has struggled to get back to any sense of normality and is still living in temporary accommodation - now with her son, who was born in November.
Maryam feels overlooked by housing officials, who she says have left her, her husband, her brother and his wife in a one bedroom apartment. She struggles to cope with the emotional trauma of what has happened and her health is not good. For weeks after the fire she waited for news, eventually tracing one woman she feared had died but finding that others had not made it out alive. She is grateful to the volunteers and church leaders who keep her supplied with clothes and essentials that were destroyed in the blaze.
Mario and Andreia Gomes lost their unborn baby, Logan, when they escaped from their 21st floor flat with daughters, Megan and Luana. He was seven months old and was delivered less than 24 hours after Mario led his family out of the burning building. His heart had stopped beating and Andreia was in a medically induced coma after inhaling thick toxic smoke. Over the last year the family has struggled with bereavement and with the physical impact of exposure, coupled with losing their home and all of their belongings.
During the recordings Mario talks about the emotional support he gets from his close friend, Miguel Alves, who also escaped from the tower with wife, Fatima and children Tiago and Ines, who went to sit her GCSE chemistry paper the day after the blaze. Miguel made frantic phone calls to Mario after their escape, urging him to come down, but on the first two attempts the thick smoke beat them back. When fire entered their apartment they were left with no choice, but the escape was tortuous and the horror lives on today. Playing football allows both men to switch off from what is happening and they share memories and stories as the year unfolds.
Consumer news and issues.
The latest weather forecast.
Analysis of news and current affairs.
Nick Robinson talks to a leading political figure about the roots of their beliefs.
A psychological thriller by the BAFTA-winning writer Trevor Preston who died in April. Ruth was a successful investigative journalist until a terrible accident in France. Her physical recovery now takes second place to her desperate need to remember what really happened that night. Only recovering that memory can allay the fears that fill her every thought.
Ruth ..... Raquel Cassidy
Dr. Quinn ..... Caroline Catz
Elsa ..... Jasmine Hyde
Bernard ..... Stephane Cornicard
Jean ..... Chris Pavlo
Farid ..... Maximilien Seweryn
Rushmer ..... Ewan Bailey
Professor ..... Sean Baker
Directed by Toby Swift
Trevor Preston trained at the Royal College of Art before embarking on a career in television. He wrote for many of the best dramas of the 1970s and 80s, including Ace of Wands, Callan, The Sweeney, Minder, Out and Fox, for which Trevor received a BAFTA in 1981. His film work includes Billy the Kid and the Green Baize Vampire and the Mike Hodges directed I'll Sleep When I'm Dead starring Clive Owen. Trevor wrote several radio dramas, the first of which, Flaw in the Motor, Dust in the Blood, was shortlisted for the Imison Award and a Mental Health in the Media Award in 2009.
Eric Robson and the panel are at the RHS Chatsworth Flower Show. Matthew Wilson, Pippa Greenwood and Matt Biggs answer the horticultural questions.
Produced by Dan Cocker
Assistant Producer: Hester Cant
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4.
A Figure of Speech is a new short story written and narrated by Will Self.
Sitting at a bar, dabbling with a digital map on his phone, the man is approached by another. He ignores him but later discovers the stranger is connected to this phone map. Connected in a disturbing way..
Producer Duncan Minshull.
Obituary series, analysing and celebrating the life stories of people who have recently died.
Investigating the numbers in the news.
Long-standing RNLI volunteers consider the teamwork essential for an effective lifeboat station at Spurn Point. 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.
Topical satirical impressions. The show that holds a wobbly mirror up to the news.
Kate discovers the truth, and Philip has a request.
News, reviews and interviews from the worlds of art, literature, film and music.
Jonathan Dimbleby presents political debate from the Potteries Museum in Hanley, Stoke on Trent, with a panel including the cermamics manufacturer Emma Bridgewater, Shadow Justice Secretary Richard Burgon MP and the author and political commentator Edwina Currie.
A weekly reflection on a topical issue.
Jack Rosenthal's comedy drama
adapted for radio by Amy Rosenthal
1996 Two sets of parents plot to keep their children apart whilst they're studying to get into University. But it isn't the children they should be worrying about.....
Written by Jack Rosenthal
Adapted by Amy Rosenthal
Produced and directed by Marion Nancarrow
This is the second drama written by Jack Rosenthal and adapted for radio by his playwright daughter, Amy ("Eskimo Day" was broadcast last Friday night). Both dramas had a huge impact at the time they were originally broadcast on TV. The last drama saw Pippa and Neil arrive from Cheltenham and Blackburn respectively for their interviews at Cambridge. Now, they're working towards their A levels. And as their future looks uncertain, both sets of parents realise quite what a turning point this is in their own lives.
Amy Rosenthal's drama, "Thin Ice", inspired by what really happened when she went to University, was broadcast at 2.15 on Thursday 31 May.
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.
By Louise Erdrich. The world is in crisis. Evolution has gone into reverse, affecting all creatures great and small, including the next generation of humans. Fewer babies - or their mothers - are surviving to full term and, of those babies born, many have been identified as belonging to a more primitive species of human. As governments take drastic action to limit the catastrophe, there has never been a more dangerous time to be having a baby.
Cedar Songmaker is pregnant. She is the adopted daughter of Minneapolis liberals. Determined to find out as much about her baby's make up as possible, she makes contact with her birth family on the Ojibwe reservation.
Episode 5
Eddy visits the house to make plans for Cedar's escape across the border into Canada.
The author, Louise Erdrich, lives in Minnesota. Her novel The Round House won the National Book Award for Fiction. She has also received the Library of Congress Prize in American Fiction, the prestigious PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize.
Writer: Louise Erdrich
Abridger: Jeremy Osborne
Reader: Cherrelle Skeete
Producer: Lisa Osborne
A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4.
News from Westminster.
Relative newcomers to the RNLI station at Spurn, but not to lifeboats, share the difficulties faced in becoming part of a close-knit team. Fi Glover presents another conversation in the series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.
Producer: Marya Burgess.