The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
"In simple affairs of life we're often pretty good at judging what's true. We have designed, tested and trusted instruments to help detect whether an electrical circuit is live, whether there is petrol in the car or pressure in the tyres. Given this background of success, it is perhaps surprising to find how often scepticism about truth and about our capacities has reared its head in the history of human thought..." Simon Blackburn is the author of the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy and was until his retirement Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge University. In this final contribution to Radio 4's week-long consideration of the nature of Truth in the contemporary world, Simon offers a longer, philosophical perspective on the way Truth has played out across history.
Producer: Simon Elmes.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with student mission leader Miriam Swaffield.
iPM is the news programme that starts with its listeners. Email ipm@bbc.co.uk. Twitter: @BBCiPM. Presented by Luke Jones.
The latest news headlines. Including the weather and a look at the papers.
Clare Balding is walking in someone else's shoes for this edition of Ramblings.
She's joined, on the Hoo Peninsula in Kent, by the artist, Clare Patey and the author, Roman Krznaric. They are - respectively - the Director and Founder of The Empathy Museum. On their walk from Gravesend Station to the Cliffe Pools Nature Reserve, Clare and Roman describe one of the Empathy Museum's projects: "A Mile in My Shoes".
Inspired by the saying: "Never judge a man until you have walked a mile in his moccasins" the project travels the UK, and the world, in a shipping container which is decorated as a gigantic shoe-box. Inside are rows of other people's shoes, and audio-recordings of their own personal stories. The idea is that visitors wear a pair of shoes, and go for a walk, while listening to the shoe owner's story.
The stories range from a Herefordshire farmer discussing his search for love (you wear a pair of his old work boots to walk and listen) to a former sex worker (red high heels). For part of this walk, Clare Balding will wear a pair of fluffy pink slippers and hear a powerful tale.
The idea behind the project is to expose listeners to the stories of people they wouldn't otherwise meet, in order to promote empathy.
The project has a podcast - the link is further down on this web-page.
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.
Coming live from Stirling, Coast presenter and archaeologist Neil Oliver talks about his love of the British Isles; writer, musician and journalist Doug Johnstone takes time out from Stirling's Bloody Scotland International Crime Writing Festival. Comedian and You-Tuber Bachala Mbunzama, better known as Bash the Entertainer, talks about his journey from the Congo to Glasgow. Orkney folk musicians Fara will be performing. Ken Bruce shares his Inheritance Tracks. He has chosen I’ve Got You Under My Skin sung by Frank Sinatra and I’ll See You In My Dreams sung by Joe Brown. Singer Amy Macdonald shares her career highlights and love of tattoos and dogs.
Presented by Aasmah Mir and the Rev. Richard Coles
Producer: Claire Bartleet
Editor: Eleanor Garland
Francine Stock concludes her 4 year exploration of how artists responded to World War One. As the war enters its final deadly year Marc Chagall becomes Cultural Commissar of Vitebsk, Isaac Babel sends fevered dispatches from revolutionary Petrograd & everyone asks Elgar what music he will write for the Armstice. Meanwhile young novelist Rebecca West makes her literary debut with the Return of the soldier whilst a desperate Stanley Spencer longs for his return to his beloved Cookham amongst the killing fields of Salonika.
Producer: Mark Burman.
An accomplished young horsewoman who loved fencing and male attire, the 17th century Swedish Queen Christina was anything but a conventional princess. And she kept springing surprises on her court and country: after just a decade on the throne she abdicated, converted to Catholicism and moved to Rome. Once there, she put herself forward as a candidate for the post of Queen of Naples, opened a public theatre and scandalised the Holy See by a liaison with a cardinal. Bridget Kendall follows Christina's adventures with biographer Veronica Buckley, and historians Stefano Fogelberg Rota and Therese Sjovoll.
Photo: Christina of Sweden by Jacob Heinrich Elbfas, 1640s
Reports from writers and journalists around the world. Presented by Kate Adie.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
People over 60 are offered concessions regardless of their ability to pay and even when they are below the state pension age. That's according to the Intergenerational Foundation (IF), a charity that researched 35 of the UK’s leading attractions’ ticketing policies. They say that Britain has failed to adjust to growing pensioner incomes and wealth. With millions of pensioners boasting incomes above the average wage, the charging policies developed in previous decades are now out of date. Ros Altmann the former Pensions Minister and champion for older people joins Paul Lewis to discuss.
As from 1st October thousands of additional landlords will have to buy a license if they let a property to 5 or more people from 2 or more separate households, after the government broadened the definition of what constitutes a House of Multiple Occupancy. The change is designed to protect tenants from poor living conditions but will cost landlords collectively £79m. As well as more properties requiring a licence, new minimum room size requirements will be introduced. Landlords who don't comply run the risk of being fined up to £20k.
And, in the second of our three part series looking at fraud, we take a closer look at how criminals get access to legitimate bank accounts to receive stolen money.
Presenter: Paul Lewis
Reporter: Dan Whitworth
Producer: Alex Lewis
Editor: Richard Vadon
A satirical review of the week's news, chaired by guest host Fred MacAulay.
On the panel this week are Andy Hamilton, London Hughes, Andrew Maxwell and former Director of Communications at Number 10, Katie Perrior.
Producer: Richard Morris
A BBC Studios Production
The latest weather forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
Jonathan Dimbleby presents political debate from the Stoller Hall in Manchester with a panel including the historian and journalist Simon Heffer, the Chair of the Conservative Policy Forum George Freeman, the President of the National Union of Students Shakira Martin and the Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry.
Producer: Lisa Jenkinson
Listeners have their say on the issues discussed on Any Questions?
The world premiere of Angela Carter's unmade screenplay, based on the real life murder that took place in Christchurch, New Zealand in 1954.
Two teenage girls, Lena Ball and Nerissa Locke become passionate friends after meeting at the local Girls' Grammar school. Enchanted with each other and disillusioned with their lives, they plan to run away to Hollywood. Only their parents stand in the way of their happiness.
An impressive, lost masterpiece from 1988 offering an opportunity to experience the author's vision in an unsettling, visceral radio drama.
Cast:
Angela Carter - Fiona Shaw
Mary Locke - Nancy Carroll
Colin Locke - James Wilby
Douggie Quinn - Adrian Lukis
Nerissa Locke - Dolores Carbonari
Lena Ball - Erin Wallace
Mrs Ball - Julia Deakin
Mr Ball - Gerard McDermott
Jean Ball - Acushla-Tara Kupe
Bobbs Ball - Thomas Meeson
Ollie / Man - Rex Duis
Mrs Graham - Kirsty Gillmore
Miss Johnson - Sara Lynam
Miss Ferguson / Nurse - Dianne Weller
Detective / Doctor - Eddie Mann
Grammar School Girls - Niamh Blackman, Julie Gilby, Lucy Mangan, Rosina Fielder
Written by Angela Carter
Adapted for radio by Robin Brooks
Sound Design - Lucinda Mason Brown
Director / Producer - Fiona McAlpine
An Allegra production for BBC Radio 4.
Highlights from the Woman's Hour week. Presented by Jane Garvey
Producer: Rabeka Nurmahomed
Editor:Jane Thurlow.
Coverage and analysis of the day's news.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest weather forecast.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Clive Anderson and Sara Cox are joined by Lucy Worsley, Steve White, Jon Plowman and Adam Kashmiry for an eclectic mix of conversation, music and comedy. With music from Anthony Joseph and Jimmy Galvin.
Producer: Debbie Kilbride.
An insight into the character of an influential person making the news headlines.
Lenny Abrahamson's The Little Stranger, based on the novel by Sarah Waters, is set in the austerity-era Britain of 1948. Domhnall Gleeson is Dr Faraday who is called out to a patient at Hundreds Hall, a country manor where his mother once worked as a housemaid. The Little Stranger also stars Ruth Wilson, Charlotte Rampling and Will Poulter.
Giacomo Puccini's Tosca in a new production by Opera North opens at the Grand Theatre in Leeds, directed by Edward Dick, conducted by Antony Hermus and starring Giselle Allen, Rafael Rojas and Robert Hayward. Dick‘s new production relocates Puccini’s political thriller from Rome during the Napoleonic wars to an unnamed present-day country in which church and state collude as forces of reaction.
Lake Success is American writer Gary Shteyngart's fourth novel and tells the story of hedge fund manager Barry Cohen, who oversees 2.4 billion dollars in assets. Stressed by a fraud investigation and by his son's diagnosis of autism, he flees New York on a Greyhound bus in search of a simpler life with his old college sweetheart.
Making a New World season continues at the Imperial War Museum in London with four new exhibitions. John Akomfrah's Mimesis: African Soldier, Renewal: Life after the First World War in Photographs, Moments of Silence - two immersive installations from 59 Productions - and I Was There: Room of Voices, bringing together personal voices reflecting on the Armistice from the IWM's own sound archive.
The Cry is a new 4-part psychological drama set in Scotland and Australia on BBC1. The drama chronicles the collapse of a marriage in the aftermath of the abduction of a baby from a small coastal town in Australia. Written by Jacquelin Perske, adapted from the novel by Helen Fitzgerald and starring Jenna Coleman as Joanna and Ewen Leslie as her husband Alistair.
Could teaching virtues such as honesty, self-control, fairness, resilience and respect actually solve the challenges facing society today?
The benefits of having a strong character and solid moral compass have always been a particularly British obsession. Brits were the sort of people who knew both how to survive the blitz and queue politely.
We may have been confident in our moral fibre in the days of British Imperialism and the stiff upper lip required for two world wars. But in the post-war shift towards a less constrained and judgemental society 'character talk' dropped out of public discourse, except when considering someone's suitability for office.
The Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues has been conducting the most extensive research ever undertaken into moral virtues among UK schoolchildren. It would appear they are scoring lower on some traditional values when faced with a series of moral dilemmas. But it also seems that young people are increasingly concerned about how they are viewed.
We hear from Professor James Arthur a leading expert on character education who has studied how best to teach character and has advised Governments about policies to do so.
It would appear Character is back...
Drawing from the riches of the BBC archive we find out if this apparent decline is responsible for many of the recent societal ills, and it would appear that parents have a share in the blame!
Toby Young during his time on Vanity Fair in New York succeeded in rubbing everyone up the wrong way with his abrasive character. It resulted in his book and then the film 'how to lose Friends and Alienate People'. Recently he's also had to deal with his own character coming under public scrutiny.
Of course adults think that standards and moral values are worse in the younger generation. This has been the thinking since the dawn of time. But are we right to be pessimistic?
Toby also delves into the nature v nurture debate and asks Behaviour Geneticist Professor Robert Plomin how much of our character is down to our genes
A school in Birmingham has joined up with a leading research university to demonstrate how character education can be taught as well caught.
In new recordings, Toby visits the University of Birmingham School, where competition is fierce with around 1900 applications for 150 places.
A lively and provocative journey into character cut through with historic insight.
Who appears at your bedside, when you're a serviceman who's expected to die?
Who appears in your head?
After two and a half years at war, the answers for Mickey Bliss hold plenty of surprises. And in this story by Nick Warburton, set in the officers-only Duchess of Westminster's No. 1 British Red Cross Society Hospital in Le Touquet, those surprises include a very unorthodox medical procedure.
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.
Series created by Jonathan Ruffle
Producers: David Hunter, Jonquil Panting, Jonathan Ruffle
Director: Jonquil Panting.
Wine has been made by most civilisations throughout history, and in every part of the world. It has inspired artists, thinkers, writers, theologians and poets through the ages, and is deeply connected with the story of recorded human history. In this series, five wine critics offer personal reflections on the personal, political, and historical stories of bygone bottles.
In today's episode, the world's best-selling wine writer Hugh Johnson profiles a 1540 Steinwein. Hugh was one of a tiny group of people who gathered in 1961 to share the oldest bottle of wine to have ever been drunk. The wine itself was produced while Michelangelo was still at work in Rome, King Henry VIII had just married his fifth wife, and before Shakespeare had even been born.
Hugh will discover that there are several reasons why the world's oldest bottle of wine is German - the main one being that the early 16th centuries saw a brief interlude in a mini ice age that would cool European climates until the mid 19th century.
Alongside the bottle's natural and social history, he delves into the taste of the wine, saying, "Nothing has ever demonstrated to me so clearly that wine is indeed a living organism, and that this brown, Madeira-liked fluid still held the active principles of the life that had been conceived in it by the sun of that distant summer."
An SPG production for BBC Radio 4.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4, followed by weather.
Ten years ago, in autumn 2008, the world watched as the biggest financial meltdown in history unfolded. The crash plunged the world into recession, lost millions of families their homes and its shadow still hangs over our politics today.
And when the Queen went to the London School of Economics, she asked the question everyone wanted the answer to: why did no one see it coming?
In this programme Aditya Chakrabortty, senior economics commentator at the Guardian newspaper, chairs a discussion between four economists who can claim they did: Raghuram Rajan, former governor of the Reserve Bank of India; Steve Keen, professor of economics at Kingston University in London; Ann Pettifor, director of PRIME, Policy Research in Macroeconomics and council member of the Progressive Economy Forum; and Peter Schiff, American stockbroker and investor. They warned financial crisis was imminent, they wrote books and papers, they even told the powerful to their faces - and they got nowhere. They showed intellectual bravery of a kind that isn't often celebrated, and it cost some of them dearly.
Call them four "Cassandras" - cursed, as Greek myth has it, to utter prophesies that were true but never believed.
Had they been heeded we may have averted what the then chief US central banker, Ben Bernanke, calls "the worst financial crisis in global history, including the Great Depression".
How did they see it when no one else did? Why didn't others listen? And what happens next?
Producer: Eve Streeter
A Greenpoint Production for Radio 4.
Paul Gambaccini is in the chair for another contest of musical knowledge.
American poet, essayist and playwright Claudia Rankine explores the nature and meaning of whiteness, considering the ubiquity of dyed blonde hair.
Walking around New York, she talks to people about why they dye their hair and asks whether our elevation of blonde hair has any connection to the power and, ultimately, the supremacy of whiteness.
Honey blonde, platinum blonde, gold baby lights, sandy blonde, platinum blonde, white blonde. Although only around 5% of white Americans are naturally blonde, around 3 out of 4 women here colour their hair blonde. But do blonde's really have more fun?
Producer: Jo Wheeler
A Just Radio production for BBC Radio 4.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
Tom Courtenay reads this story in which a young woman falls to her death in the Alps. Sixty years later, the man who accompanied her receives a letter. A body has been discovered. But what was the relationship of these two naïve teenagers? And how will memories of their flight from Nazi Germany affect this man's relationship with his long suffering wife?
David Constantine's masterful story of unearthed memories, In Another Country was the inspiration behind the recent Oscar-nominated film 45 Years starring Tom Courtenay and Charlotte Rampling.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
Bells on Sunday comes from the Parish Church of St Leonard, Bledington in Gloucestershire. The tower has a ring of six bells, with the tenor weighing nine and a half hundredweight. We hear them ringing Cambridge Surprise Minor.
The latest national and international news.
Rabbi Shoshana Boyd Gelfand argues that we are all fragile beings and explores the lessons we can learn from that fragility.
Shoshana explains that, for Jews like her, Autumn brings the festival of Sukkot which acts as a reminder of the fragility of the harvest and of the Jews' ancestors wandering in the desert. During Sukkot, Jews construct a small hut outdoors with a roof of leaves in which they are meant to dwell for the entire week of the festival. These rickety structures are a reminder that safety and security are fragile constructs.
Shoshana draws upon the wisdom of Leonard Cohen, whose Anthem is a celebration of fragility and imperfection. The song's central line "there is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in" appears to channel the Jewish mysticism of Kabbalah that asserts that fragility is built into the fabric of the universe.
In the west, we tend to have a fairly disdainful attitude towards the fragile and the broken. Shoshana argues that we have much to learn from the Japanese art of kintsugi pottery. Kintsugi potters smash their delicate creations before painstakingly gluing them back together with gold running along every crack. These once broken pots are powerful symbols of the beauty in our imperfections.
Describing her own brokenness following the sudden death of her younger sister, Shoshana explains that, like the kintsugi potters, she has chosen not to hide the cracks, but rather to embrace the fact that they will always be present. Whilst the death of a loved one can leave us feeling more fragile than ever, Shoshana concludes with the words of Rabbi Menachem Mendel who states "there is nothing more whole than a broken heart".
Presenter: Shoshana Boyd Gelfand
Producer: Max O'Brien
A TBI production for BBC Radio 4.
Ghosts of the Moor are how the pale grey male hen harrier is sometimes referred to as it glides seemingly without effort across an upland landscape. To find out more and to revel in actually seeing a hen harrier on the wing, in this episode Brett Westwood & lolo Williams are on the Berwyn Moors in Wales in search of this enigmatic bird of prey. lolo has brought Brett to this particular spot as since seeing his first hen harrier here as a young boy, lolo has returned every year to study their ecology and biology. As the duo watch harriers on the moor, lolo expands his understanding of how harriers utilise this unique man made habitat, especially in early spring when the males perform their spectacular "sky dances" to attract the female. Not everyone is as pleased to have hen harriers on their moorland so discussion falls to how rare in England & Scotland they are due to loss of habitat to conifer plantations or sheep, as well as conflict on grouse moors.
Lindsey Chapman revisits this revised Living World from 2001 bringing the story up to date for today's listener.
Producer Andrew Dawes.
The latest weather forecast.
The latest news headlines. Including a look at the papers.
Sunday morning religious news and current affairs programme, presented by Edward Stourton
Felicity Kendal makes the Radio 4 Appeal on behalf of TB Alert
Registered Charity Number: 1071886,
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 'TB Alert'.
- Cheques should be made payable to 'TB Alert'.
The latest weather forecast.
The latest news headlines, including a look at the papers.
The Rev. Dr. Peter Stevenson reflects on the experience of following Jesus 'on the way' by drawing attention to the hopeful message which the church is called to communicate. He recalls an occasion recorded in Mark 9:30-37 when Jesus tried to teach his argumentative friends that true discipleship is costly because it involves forgetting self in order to serve God and others.
Members of South Wales Baptist College are joined by Cambrensis Choir, accompanied and directed by Jeffrey Howard and Anne Brown in a live service from Albany Road Baptist Church, Cardiff.
Producer: Karen Walker.
Val McDermid argues that crime fiction isn't really about murder at all.
"We shift people out of their comfort zones and make them squirm", she writes. "But not because we kill people".
"It might be murder that sets the wheels in motion, but it's the time and place that lead us through the labyrinth to answers that are not always comfortable".
Producer: Adele Armstrong
Singer songwriter Kitty MacFarlane has a strong connection to a Sense of Place in her work, especially the Somerset Levels and the birds which flock there providing inspiration.
A previous semi-finalist in the BBC Young Folk awards, Kitty begins her first week selecting from the Tweet of the Day back catalogue. You can hear all five episodes chosen this week, and further thoughts from Kitty on how the landscape influences her work via the the Tweet of the Week omnibus edition, which is available to download via the Radio 4 Website.
Producer Andrew Dawes.
News with Paddy O'Connell. Including how to run the railways and what next for Brexit? Reviewing the news coverage - foreign correspondent Kate Adie, Political Editor Robert Peston and artist and broadcaster Anneka Rice.
Freddie contemplates his future, and Brian's plotting continues.
Henry Marsh is a neurosurgeon, who pioneered a technique of operating on the brain while the patient is under local anaesthetic. The procedure is now standard practice. He is also an acclaimed writer.
He was born in 1950 in Oxford, where his father was an academic. His mother came to England as a political refugee from Nazi Germany in the late 1930s. Henry did not initially pursue a career in medicine: after dropping out of university, he found work as a hospital porter, and only then decided to train as a doctor.
He was appointed a consultant at St George’s Hospital, London, in 1987. He has spent his career in the NHS, and has also frequently worked abroad, in Ukraine, Nepal, Albania and elsewhere. He retired in 2015, but continues to teach one day a week and to work overseas to help less experienced surgeons.
In 2014, he published a memoir, Do No Harm, which was widely praised for its honesty about mistakes in the operating theatre.
Presenter: Kirsty Young
Producer: Sarah Taylor
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Nicholas Parsons asks Paul Merton, Gyles Brandreth, Zoe Lyons and Tony Hawks to professionally prattle and prevaricate.
Hayley Sterling blows the whistle.
Producer: Richard Morris
A BBC Studios Production.
Stories of harvest from around the UK to celebrate the autumn equinox and the passing of the summer.
The latest weather forecast.
Global news and analysis.
In the latest programme of the monthly series, Mishal Husain introduces dispatches from journalists and writers around the United Kingdom that reflect the range of contemporary life in the country.
Gabriel Gatehouse offers a personal reflection on the strong feelings of antipathy recently directed at the BBC - and him - by supporters of Tommy Robinson - for many years associated with the far-right organisation, the English Defence League - and what this says about the changing media landscape. Martin Gurdon introduces us to Slasher, the star of his flock of chickens, and explains how her quirks and distinctive character reveal much about the dramas witnessed by Britain's army of amateur hen keepers. Rebecca Ford in the Potteries celebrates the founder of modern circus and reveals how locals there are planning to use his legacy to promote the area as a centre of excellence for this ever-evolving form of entertainment. In the wake of the tense summer Test series between England and India, Mihir Bose regrets the way both teams - and their supporters - behaved and wonders if cricket can retain its status as a 'special' team sport. And Travis Elborough, long puzzled by a road notice in his native Worthing, finally unravels the mystery and finds it's a sign of the times.
Producer Simon Coates
Chairman Peter Gibbs and his horticultural panel are in Brockenhurst. Chris Beardshaw, Christine Walkden and Pippa Greenwood answer this week's questions.
The panellists offer advice for local residents with an abundance of manure, help identify a seemingly non-flowering plant, and advise on pruning olive trees. They also discuss hungry lily beetle larvae, planting a Philadelphus in a pot, and an ailing Agapanthus.
Matt Biggs tentatively ventures into the fascinating world of carnivorous plants
Produced by Dan Cocker
Assistant Producer: Laurence Bassett
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4
Fi Glover introduces three conversations between loved ones about losing sons, brothers or boyfriends to sudden death or suicide, 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
By Angela Carter
Adapted by Lucy Catherine
The fantastical story of Sophie Fevvers - aerialist extraordinaire and star of the music hall. Hatched from an egg, Fevvers is part woman, part bird - if you believe her. American journalist, Jack Walser, is determined to discover the truth.
This new adaptation of Angela Carter's penultimate novel tells the story of the extraordinary, raucous life of Sophie Fevvers, a winged circus performer. The 1984 novel not only won the James Tait Black memorial prize (Britain's oldest literary prize) when it was first published, but also won the Best of the James Tait Black prize in 2012.
Award-winning screenwriter and playwright Lucy Catherine has adapted the novel for audio. Previous work for BBC Radio include The Master and Margarita, Roald Dahl's Boy and Going Solo, Frankenstein and long-running serial Gudrun. London-born comedian, actor and writer Roisin Conaty plays the Cockney Venus, Sophie Fevvers.
Nights at the Circus forms part of a season of dramas on BBC Radio 4 and Radio 3 that celebrates the writing of Angela Carter. The season includes The Bloody Chamber; Carter's unmade screenplay The Christchurch Murder; and An Evening With Angela Carter on BBC Radio 3 - two new productions of Carter's radio plays, Vampirella and Come Unto These Yellow Sands.
Directed by Sasha Yevtushenko.
Australian author Gail Jones discusses her new book The Death of Noah Glass, a meditation on grief, fatherhood and the transformational power of art.
Lawrence Osborne and HB Lyle explain how they've breathed new life into the stories of fictional detectives Philip Marlowe and Sherlock Holmes.
Jennifer Croll, Editorial Director at Greystone Books, recommends The Ravenmaster, a memoir of caring for the ravens at the Tower of London.
And MP Rachel Reeves explains how she bought back to life a novel by one of her parliamentary predecessor's - The Division Bell Mystery by Ellen Wilkinson.
A celebration of the autumn equinox from the Barley Wood Cider Barn at The Ethicurean in Somerset.
A gathering of live music and poetry to mark the changing seasons and this time of transformation, abundance and decay. Joining us to sing in the season are Paul Henry and Brian Briggs who, together, are The Glass Aisle, poet and forager, Richard Osmond, poet-in-residence at National Trust's Tyntesfield, Holly Corfield Carr and National Poet of Wales from 2008 - 2016, Gillian Clarke.
Producer: Sarah Addezio.
Last year, File on 4 investigated whether some athletes and coaches game the paralympic classification system in order to win medals. We heard allegations that some competitors had gone to astonishing lengths such as taping up their arms to make their disability appear worse. The investigation led to a parliamentary select committee hearing into the way British paralympic athletes are classified and questions over whether the system was fit for purpose.
In this programme, we examine further claims of athletes exaggerating or even faking a disability to get ahead in para sports. We look at the case of an athlete where concerns have been raised after they competed in several different disability classifications.
A paralympic gold medallist tells File on 4 of his concerns that young athletes are being manipulated by coaches to think they are more disabled than they actually are in order to get them classified into a more favourable category.
The programme also hears claims that UK athletes cheered a competitor from a rival country because they believed one of their teammates was cheating. Such suspicions have grown in recent years, the programme is told.
Reporter Simon Cox speaks to a former international classifier - the people responsible for ensuring athletes are placed in the right category - who reveals how it is possible for classifiers to be fooled and the pressure placed on them to put athletes in the most disabled categories.
The concerns raised by the programme come as a report by the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee into sports governance which has examined classification in para sports is due to be published.
Reporter: Simon Cox
Producer: Paul Grant
Editor: Gail Champion.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest weather forecast.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Highlights of the last seven days of BBC Radio.
Shula attempts to bring the family together, and Jolene has a plan.
by Jeremy Front
based on the novel by Simon Brett
Directed by Sally Avens
Charles, bit part actor and amateur sleuth, returns to the stage as the Ghost in Hamlet, but rehearsals are fraught as both Ophelia and Hamlet are being played by reality TV stars and soon it's not only Shakespeare's lines that are being murdered. As the body count rises so do Charles suspicions.
Whilst at home Frances fears she may have come to the end of allowing her semi-detached husband to remain as her lodger.
Jeremy Front (Magnificent Women, Sword of Honour) continues his successful adaptations of Simon Brett's novels starring
Bill Nighy (Marigold Hotel, Dad's Army)as Charles Paris
Suzanne Burden (Fresh Meat, Tis Pity she's A Whore) as Frances - Charles ex-wife from whom he's never been able to detach himself
Amelia Bullmore (Scott and Bailey, Down The Line) as Geraldine - an actress that Charles finds very attractive and who moves in to Frances' house.
Jon Glover (Episodes, Hitchhikers) as Maurice - Charles' long suffering agent.
Eight new cases to challenge the detective wit of Annika Strandhed, queen of the Oslo Police boat patrol.
Since we last met her, Annika has been promoted to Chief Inspector. Her first act was - apart from choosing a new speedboat - to co-opt Mikel, her forensic photographer of choice, to accompany her. Her son Tor is about to start school.
Being Chief Inspector means a bigger case-load. What follows will test her physically and emotionally as never before.
Episode 6: The Behaviour of Sharks
Investigating a murder on a cruiser, Annika finds herself adrift at sea.
Nick Walker is the author of two critically-acclaimed novels, Blackbox and Helloland. His plays and short stories have often featured on BBC Radio 4, including the First King of Mars stories (2007 - 2010) and the plays Life Coach (2010) and Stormchasers (2012). The previous series of Annika Stranded were broadcast in 2013, 2014 and 2016.
Writer: Nick Walker
Reader: Nicola Walker
Sound Design: Jon Calver
Producer: Jeremy Osborne
A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4.
A BBC questionnaire has found 1 in 5 children surveyed were caring for a family member with an illness or disability. The suggestion is that this could mean that 800,000 secondary-school age children are carrying out some level of care. Loyal listeners have doubted there can be so many young carers. Tim Harford and Ruth Alexander look into the numbers.
On the 20 September 2017, Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico, where residents are United States citizens. George Washington University has published a report – commissioned by the Puerto Rican government – claiming that the hurricane accounted for nearly 3,000 deaths in Puerto Rico. President Trump disputed these official figures, tweeting that the Democrats were inflating the death toll to "make me look as bad as possible". So, who is right, and how do you determine who died as a result of a natural disaster? Tim Harford speaks to the lead investigator of the George Washington University report, Dr Carlos Santos-Burgoa.
The shadow chancellor John McDonnell recently claimed 'for the first time shareholders now take a greater share of national income than workers'. But is it true? Tim Harford speaks to The Financial Times’ economics editor Chris Giles.
Loyal listener David from Sheffield has been in touch to query a claim he heard on BBC Radio 4’s Start the Week that more people visit museums than attend football matches. Ruth Alexander finds out if we really do favour culture over the nation’s game.
Plus, what is the most dangerous sport? Tim Harford thinks he has the definitive answer.
Producer: Ruth Alexander
Pictured: Denis Norden
Andrea Catherwood on Denis Norden, the television presenter and comedy writer who made Britain laugh for half a century.
Diane Leather, the first woman in the world to break the 5-minute mile, just 23 days after Roger Bannister broke the 4-minute barrier, but achieved much less acclaim.
Johnny Kingdom, the poacher turned filmmaker who enthralled TV audiences with his love and knowledge of wildlife in his native Exmoor and beyond, and became an unlikely celebrity in the process.
And Fenella Fielding, the femme fatale with a throaty drawl and come-hither stare best known for her roles in the Carry On and Doctor comedy capers.
Interviewed guest: Russell Davies
Interviewed guest: Anna Kessel
Interviewed guest: Richard Taylor Jones
Interviewed guest: Robert Chalmers
Archive clips from: Gabby Logan, Radio 5 Live 12/10/2008; The Original Godfathers, Radio 4 27/03/2007; The Robert Peston Interview Show, Radio 4 07/09/2015; Midlands Today 06/05/2004; Midweek, Radio 4 14/05/2008; Loose Ends, Radio 4 31/05/2008; This Land: Johnny's Kingdom, BBC Two 14/04/2000; Johnny Kingdom: A Year on Exmoor, BBC Two 13/10/2006; Valmouth, Radio 4 28/04/1975; Desert Island Discs, Radio 4 05/06/1965; Front Row, Radio 4 17/11/2017.
As international trade tensions escalate, the US state of Wisconsin is a fascinating place to discover the consequences. Specialist producers like Wisconsin's ginseng growers are directly affected by the new trade war between the US and China. Traditional cheese makers meanwhile see all this as the latest round in an endless battle for freer trade in global food. And in the south of the state , a new kind of manufacturing economy is taking shape with a vast new investment by the Taiwanese tech manufacturer Foxconn. Jonty Bloom travels around the state to gain rich insights into where today's trade wars could eventually lead.
Producer: Chris Bowlby
Editor: Penny Murphy.
Preview of the week's politics with politicians, pundits and experts.
With Antonia Quirke.
Glenn Close reveals that she would like to see a re-make of Fatal Attraction in which her character Alex is more misunderstood than monster.
Agnes Varda looks back at the faces and places that have fascinated her over a 60 year career as one of France's leading film-makers. Her co-director on Faces, Places, the artist known as JR, talks about their friendship that bridges a 55 year age gap and reveals why he has a crush on her.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
Post-Truth – Laurie Taylor explores a very modern phenomenon, or is it? He’s joined by Steve Fuller, Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick, Helen Pluckrose, Editor of Areo, a digital magazine focused on Enlightenment liberalism and Andrew Chadwick, Professor of Political Communication at Loughborough University.
Producer: Jayne Egerton
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with student mission leader Miriam Swaffield.
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
The latest weather forecast for farmers.
Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs.
David Attenborough presents the starling. Throughout autumn parties of starlings have been crossing the North Sea to join our resident birds and as winter's grip tightens they create one of Nature's best spectacles. These huge gatherings, sometimes a million or more strong, are called murmurations and they offer the birds safety in numbers.
News and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
The prize-winning novelist William Boyd has set his latest novel, Love Is Blind, at the turn of the 20th century. He tells Amol Rajan how his young Scottish protagonist travels across Europe in a tale of obsession, passion and music.
Lust and violence combine in Strauss's opera Salome in which a young princess performs the Dance of the Seven Veils for the head of John the Baptist on a platter. Director Adena Jacobs has put a bold new spin on the story for English National Opera in her psychologically challenging interpretation.
Nietzsche may have written the famous phrase 'God is dead' but he also wrote movingly about love, guilt and hate. Biographer Sue Prideaux argues that Nietzsche is one of the most misunderstood philosophers. She explodes prevailing myths that he was a Nazi-sympathising, humourless misogynist.
And popular culture is under the spotlight in the film critic Peter Biskind's latest book, The Sky is Falling. He argues that zombies, androids and superheroes heralded the age of political extremism.
Producer: Katy Hickman.
Ben Macintyre's thrilling new book tells the story of a KGB double agent and plunges us into the Cold War's underworld of espionage, duplicity and intrigue. Today, disaffection sets in for one of the KGB's newest recruits. Tim McInnerny reads
Ben Macintyre's thrilling new history tells the breath taking story of a KGB double agent operating at the height of the Cold War. Passing countless secrets to his British spymasters at M16 over the course of a decade he undermined the Soviet Union's intelligence gathering machine from deep within. Eventually, he was betrayed and what followed was a sequence of events involving ingenuity, duplicity, and fearlessness.
Abridged by Richard Hamilton
Produced by Elizabeth Allard.
The programme that offers a female perspective on the world.
Five stories to gobble you up. From Angela Carter's iconic collection of fairy stories and dramatised for radio by Olivia Hetreed.
Episode 1: The Bloody Chamber
Angela Carter's re-telling of the story of Bluebeard. A young pianist marries a wealthy aristocrat, a Marquis, much older than herself and with three previous wives, all mysteriously deceased. Finding herself alone in the empty castle, with nothing to do but play the piano, she cannot resist entering the one room the Marquis has forbidden to her.
At the time of writing The Bloody Chamber in the late 1970s, Carter was disaffected by both sides of the feminist debate. She re-worked traditional fairy tales from her own unique, literary outsider's point of view, putting women at the centre of the stories.
With their feisty heroines and orgiastic mash-up of beasts, shape-shifters and ghouls, her extraordinary tales are the most perfect example of her style, not just for her incomparable prose, but also in the dizzying twists and turns of perception, fantasy and myth.
Controversially influenced by De Sade, she embraced the erotic, explored our deepest and darkest urges, and subverted the roles of hunter and prey, master and mistress so that, instead of male sexuality, it is the female that becomes transgressive and powerful.
Dramatist Olivia Hetreed is a noted screen-writer, whose work includes the multi-award winning, BAFTA and Oscar nominated Girl with a Pearl Earring, starring Colin Firth and Scarlett Johansson and the award-winning, critically-acclaimed radical adaptation of Wuthering Heights directed by Andrea Arnold.
Sound Design: Lucinda Mason Brown
Director / Producer: Fiona McAlpine
An Allegra production for BBC Radio 4.
We convert Radio 4 into a data stream on a single day and turn it into art.
"Carefully Everywhere Descending" is how poet E.E. Cummings described the falling of snow; it is a phrase which also, rather beautifully, captures the silent accretion of data in the information saturated world around us. But though the data rich world is largely invisible to us it can be made visible. We can take the intangible and ephemeral stream of data pluming off Radio 4 and turn it into something else; something you can see, touch, make permanent.
In this innovative project we convert the audio of Radio 4 on the summer equinox into data which in turn will become three distinct artworks. Artist and designer Brendan Dawes will digitize the emotions expressed throughout that day and re-imagine them as 3D printed sculptures, composers and data scientists Domenica Vicinanza and Genevieve Williams will take the station's twitter traffic and combine it with the position of the sun to create a piece for a classical quartet. A final team from Edinburgh's College of Art will take the poems that were read 'on air' to celebrate the equinox and see how a computer might describe them to another machine.
The result will demonstrate the power of the digital world as a creative tool enabling us to understand and appreciate the world in astonishing, insightful new ways.
Producer: Peter McManus.
A fourth series of Richard Wilson's Radiography in which writer Jon Canter delves into the true and not so true nooks and crannies of Richard's life and works.
Richard decides to invite his friends to the meal of a lifetime. But who will he choose? And will it be worth it
Produced and Directed by Clive Brill
A Brill production for BBC Radio 4.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
On this day in 1918, Allied forces launched a new attack on the Hindenburg line, and in Folkestone Adam is steaming towards the harbour.
Written by Sarah Daniels
Directed by Ciaran Bermingham
Editor: Jessica Dromgoole
Notes
Home Front returns to a bruised, but optimistic Folkestone for its fifteenth and final season. Amongst hushed rumours of peace, our characters dream about a brighter, democratic future, whilst struggling to maintain morale after four years of a seemingly endless war which has seeped into every aspect of civilian life and drawn in everyone.
Subtitled "Onward", Season 15 of Home Front is story-led by Katie Hims, with Sarah Daniels, Shaun McKenna and Sebastian Baczkiewicz completing the writing team. Onward is the troopship which goes up in flames on the first day, momentarily stopping soldiers from departing from Folkestone to the Western Front. It is also the Allies' movement towards a retreating German front; it is the tentative hopes of progress in a post-war Britain; it is the drive for a wounded community to find some kind of peace, however fragile.
Radio 4's consumer affairs programme.
The latest weather forecast.
Mon-Thurs: Analysis of news and current affairs, presented by Sarah Montague. Fri: Analysis of news and current affairs, presented by Mark Mardell.
Two families from very different backgrounds, one street and a baby on a doorstep. This series charts the story of how a young Christian couple came to entrust the care of their little daughter to a Muslim family that lived nearby in 1990s Watford. They were strangers but the couple - Peris Mbuthia and Martin Gitonga - needed help, as immigrants from Kenya working in low paid jobs with a child to support and no family to step in. They were struggling and their relationship was under strain. Early one morning, Martin left his flat with six month old Sandra zipped inside his jacket and handed her over to the Zafars across the road while he went to work at a warehouse. This arrival at the door was an event that changed the course of all their lives - that day the baby girl became the Zafars' Doorstep Daughter. And a special, enduring bond developed between Sandra and the Zafar's daughter Saiqa. It is a story of faith, trust and love - a modern day telling of how it takes a village to raise a child.
In this first episode, Peris and Martin meet as they begin their new lives in London and Saiqa is on a gap year, deciding what will be in store for her. Then along comes a baby.
Producer: Sally Chesworth
Sound: Richard Hannaford
Editor: Gail Champion
Exec Editor: Richard Knight.
Written by Jennifer Schlueter & conceived by Christina Ritter
When her husband asks her to meet the author of "The Little Prince", celebrated aviator Anne Morrow Lindbergh is terrified. But the two form a connection which will affect the rest of their lives.
Anne Morrow Lindbergh ..... Christina Ritter
Antoine de Saint Exupery ..... Samuel West
Charles Lindbergh ..... Ian Conningham
Director: Marion Nancarrow
Constructed entirely from the writings of "The Little Prince" author, Antoine de Saint Exupery and the celebrated aviators Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, this off-Broadway hit is the story of their meeting and its consequences and has been re-imagined for radio. It stars its original cast member, Christina Ritter, in her radio debut with actor Samuel West, who saw the production off-Broadway. Delicate and touching, it tells the behind-the-scenes story of one the most celebrated couples in America, the famous and shocking kidnap of their baby and the conflicts which flying, family and writing brought to their lives. This was further complicated by their meeting with one of France's most iconic writers.
(8/13)
The long-established music quiz comes from the BBC's Maida Vale studios this week, with the contestants facing Paul Gambaccini's questions on everything from Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky to Michael Jackson and prog-rock. A semi-final place awaits the winner, and a chance to compete in the Final at the BBC Proms for the 32nd Counterpoint title.
Taking part are:
Ralph Barnes, a civil servant from Cheltenham
Gordon Ridout, an actor from London
Michael Rixon, a technology consultant from Hampton Wick in London.
Producer: Paul Bajoria.
Artist and broadcaster Bob and Roberta Smith, famed for his hand-painted slogans, goes on a personal journey to explore how text and language are used in art.
From monks in Cistercian Abbeys and medieval bureaucrats, to conceptual art subversives challenging who could be considered artists, Bob and Roberta Smith draws on a wide range of traditions. He also re-examines his own formative experiences with the interplay of words, colour and form to bring listeners into the present.
Over the course of the programme, we're led on an emotional trip through a world of cut up Victorian novellas - and we encounter pop-art printing making nuns working at the coal face of the civil rights.
Bob and Roberta Smith meets political cartoonists creating new languages, artists fusing text and images to give voices to the marginalised, and a group of women democratising art through text, images and a Risograph printing machine.
This programme reveals that - away from plays, novels or song lyrics - text and language have been adopted by artists in contrasting and ever-evolving ways, but these all reveal that text is an art form in itself.
Featuring Steve Bell, Janette Parris, Tom Phillips, Donna Steele and Sofia Niazi.
Presenter: Bob and Roberta Smith
Producer: David Waters
A TBI production for BBC Radio 4.
Even if you are the most careful person in the world when it comes to your data, little pieces of your personal information are constantly being uploaded into the digital world without you being aware of it. How? Because of your connections to everyone around you.
The idea of personal privacy might not even apply any more. Your family, friends, even a random guy you bought a couch from a decade ago all have information about you that is incredibly valuable to technology companies - from phone numbers and emails in a contact list, to new baby photos and even the code of your DNA - all of it is being harvested, sold and used without you having any way to know about it, let alone have any control.
And Aleks Krotoski discovers that when those little pieces of the digital jigsaw are put together, they can have unexpected and sometimes shocking consequences in our real lives.
Interviews, context and analysis.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
In this final episode of the current series Nicholas Parsons introduces the expert flannelling skills of Paul Merton, Sheila Hancock, Jan Ravens and Rufus Hound.
What exactly constitutes a hard hat is one of the many subjects up for fierce debate.
Hayley Sterling blows the whistle.
Producer: Richard Morris
A BBC Studios Production.
Elizabeth fears the worst, and Peggy offers a solution.
Arts news, interviews and reviews.
Presenter Professor Laura Empson, of London’s Cass Business School, hears from current and former leaders in elite professional firms and financial institutions who pull back the curtain on a secretive world which tens of thousands of bright, eager graduates apply to join every year in the hope of developing a glittering career.
The programme highlights the fact that many of the professionals in this world are ‘insecure overachievers’: exceptionally capable and fiercely ambitious, but driven by a profound belief in their own inadequacy. Their ability and relentless drive to excel make them likely to succeed in the competitive environment of elite professional and financial firms, but the work culture is also taking advantage of their vulnerabilities.
Although successful City careers are associated with high salaries and eye-watering bonuses, the work culture can place excessive demands on many workers, and lead to break-downs, health problems and serious social damage for a significant number every year.
The chairman of two massive financial institutions shares his feelings of insecurity, and how he deals with them, together with senior partners from magic circle law firms and world-leading consulting firms.
But, as Empson’s research reveals, this culture has not been ‘designed’ or enforced from above: it is largely unconscious and self-reinforcing.
Over the past 25 years, leaders have often spoken to Laura Empson about their insecurities – but only ever in confidence for her academic research. Now they talk openly for this BBC Radio 4 documentary, to reveal the secrets of a working culture that can attract and intimidate in equal measure.
Presenter - Professor Laura Empson, Cass Business School.
Producer - Jonathan Brunert
Simon Cox is in Austria where the authorities have launched an unprecedented operation against a new far right youth organisation, Generation Identity. They prosecuted members of the group including its leader, Martin Sellner, for being an alleged criminal organisation. They are currently appealing the judge's not guilty verdict. The Austrian group is at the heart of a new pan European movement that is vehemently opposed to Muslims and immigration. GI says it is not racist or violent. In Germany more than 100 offences have been committed by its members in just over a year. And the group's co leader in Britain stepped down after he was revealed to have a Neo Nazi past.
Simon Cox reporting. Anna Meisel producing.
Its arguable that a certain dinner-suited bird has captured our hearts and minds more than any other creature over the centuries. As Brett Westwood discovers, Penguins remind us of ourselves - Like us they stand upright, they travel in groups, they communicate all the time and they walk (or waddle) on land. They have both entertained us and taught us life lessons. Our earliest encounters with Penguins very often resulted in the slaughter of these flightless birds for food and oil and they may well have gone the same way as the Great Auk had public campaigns to put an end to their slaughter not been successful. Since then, they have been adopted as a brand name for books and biscuits inspired music, animations, films, tv shows, children's stories and there is even a Penguin Post Office, surrounded by Penguins, on a tiny island in Antarctica where you can post a card with a Penguin stamp. Producer Sarah Bunt
Contributors
Henry Eliot - Editor of Penguin Classics
Arthur Jeffes - Composer, Musician and frontman of the musical group, Penguin Café
Stephen Martin - writer and Antarctic Historian
Camilla Nichol - Chief Executive of the UK Antarctic Heritage Trust
Ruth Peacey - Film-maker and Ornithologist
Douglas Russell - Senior Curator of Birds, Nests and Eggs at the Natural History Museum in Tring
Cleopatra Veloutsou - Professor of Brand Management at the University of Glasgow
Adrian Walls - Assistant Zoo Manager. ZSL London Zoo
and Reader - Elizabeth Counsell.
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.
Pat Barker, the Booker Prize-winning author of the Regeneration trilogy and one of our greatest contemporary writers on war, reimagines the most famous conflict in literature - the legendary Trojan War as chronicled by Homer in The Iliad.
When her city falls to the Greeks, Briseis is transformed from a nineteen year old queen to a bed-gir', from a free woman to a slave, a thing. She is awarded to the god-like warrior Achilles as a prize of war. And she's not alone. On the same day, and on many others in the course of a long and bitter war, innumerable women have been seized from the wreckage of their homes and flung to the fighters.
Pat Barker was prompted to write this story by the words of a professor in Philip Roth's novel, The Human Stain. The lines act as an epigraph:
"'You know how European literature begins?' he'd ask, after having taken the roll at the first class meeting. 'With a quarrel. All of European literature springs from a fight.' And then he picked up his copy of The Iliad and read to the class the opening lines. 'Divine Muse, sing of the ruinous wrath of Achilles . . . Begin where they first quarrelled, Agamemnon the King of men, and great Achilles.' And what are they quarrelling about, these two violent, mighty souls? It's as basic as a barroom brawl. They are quarrelling over a woman. A girl, really. A girl stolen from her father. A girl abducted in a war."
Years later, Briseis looks back on her time in the Greek camp at Troy and attempts to tell her own story.
Written by Pat Barker
Abridged by Jill Waters and Isobel Creed
Read by Nadine Marshall and Colin Salmon
Produced by Jill Waters
A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4.
Michael Rosen and Laura Wright talk to maths writer Rob Eastaway about imperial and metric measurements. How and why do they co-exist in the United Kingdom? Why are teenagers still talking in feet and inches when at school they are taught in centimetres? And where do the words 'gallon', 'tonne' 'acre' and "yard" come from? Producer Sally Heaven.
Tom Holland is joined by Dr Lucy Robinson from the University of Sussex to consider jazz in the trenches, woad and the women behind the Notting Hill Carnival.
Helen Castor meets Dr Michael Hammond, Associate Professor at the University of Southampton, to hear about Blues in the Trenches. Dr Hammond argues that 'the blues' as a musical tradition was brought to the trenches of the Great War by African-American soldiers from all parts of the US and they shared different performance styles and traditions - creating cross-pollinations that foreshadow the country blues recordings of the 1920s and 30s by Charley Patton, Furry Lewis, Bukka White, Geechie Wiley, Ma Rainey, Elvey Thomas, Blind Willie Johnson and notable others.
Closer to home, on the banks of the River Thames, Iszi Lawrence traces the origins of today's craze for tattoos and body art back to the Celts, when she learns to make woad.
On the eve of the Notting Hill Carnival, comic Ava Vidal nominates the activist, feminist, socialist and founder of the Carnival Claudia Jones for the Making History plinth.
Producer: Nick Patrick
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with student mission leader Miriam Swaffield
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
In his final tale for Halloween, writer Paul Evans encounters a pair of ravens and reflects on their dark associations and their playful and ominous voices.
Tweet of the Day has captivated the Radio 4 audience with its daily 90 seconds of birdsong. But what of the listener to this avian chorus? In this new series of Tweet of the Day, we bring to the airwaves the conversational voices of those who listen to and are inspired by birds. Building on the previous series, a more informal approach to learning alongside a renewed emphasis on encounter with nature and reflection in our relationship with the natural world.
Producer: Sarah Blunt
Photo: Michael Davey.
News and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Yesterday in Parliament, Weather and Thought for the Day.
Susanne Sundfør on Oslo, a city she's returned to for solitude and solace.
"Oslo to me is like a big city in a small town... it's why I love it... when I'm on tour and I think about it, I really miss it and the beautiful golden light of the winter," says Susanne,, who moved to the capital to make a career as a singer songwriter.
Four number one albums later and she is one of Norway's most prolific musicians, with a growing international reputation. Oslo has become the place she retreats to after touring and travelling, but her profile means she has to negotiate the city carefully if she wants to maintain her privacy.
In Living for the City, musicians take the listener on a personal tour of a city they love - exploring how buildings and street corners, train lines and park views hold stories of heartache and inspiration as they project their inner worlds onto the canvas of the city.
Oslo for Susanne is a city that echoes and resonates with the voices and legacy of past Norwegian artists and creatives. She takes us to the mausoleum built by Norwegian artist Emanuel Vigeland. The dark, vast space is a place she's recorded in before. She returns to it as a place that allows her to talk about how the cold winter can be a quietly inspirational force for her.
She left Oslo for London after a breakdown a few years ago, but she's recently returned to live there and now has a studio right in the centre of the city.
"I've been back for about nine months and think I've been through some kind of transformation. London allowed me to get a different perspective on Oslo...I came back here to see friends and one of them said to me, 'You have to take Oslo back' and I understand what he says now...but I'm still working on that....it's like we found each other again."
(Photo credit: Raphael Chatelain)
Produced by Rachel Hooper
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4.
Ben Macintyre's gripping new book is the breath taking story of a double agent who passed priceless secrets to his M16 spymasters from deep within the KGB, altering the course of the Cold War. Tim McInnerny reads
Abridged by Richard Hamilton
Produced by Elizabeth Allard.
Programme that offers a female perspective on the world.
Five stories to gobble you up. From Angela Carter's iconic collection of fairy stories and dramatised for radio by Olivia Hetreed.
Episode 2: The Erl-KIng
A hapless maid wandering deeper into the woods encounters the bewitching presence of the Erl-King, the presiding spirit of the forest. She willingly enters his woodland lair and lies with him. But when she discovers that he plans to turn her into a bird and imprison her with the rest of his aviary, she must somehow break the spell.
At the time of writing The Bloody Chamber in the late 1970s, Angela Carter was disaffected by both sides of the feminist debate. She re-worked traditional fairy tales from her own unique, literary outsider's point of view, putting women at the centre of the stories.
With their feisty heroines and orgiastic mash-up of beasts, shape-shifters and ghouls, her extraordinary tales are the most perfect example of her style, not just for her incomparable prose, but also in the dizzying twists and turns of perception, fantasy and myth.
Controversially influenced by De Sade, she embraced the erotic, explored our deepest and darkest urges, and subverted the roles of hunter and prey, master and mistress so that, instead of male sexuality, it is the female that becomes transgressive and powerful.
Dramatist Olivia Hetreed is a noted screen-writer, whose work includes the multi-award winning, BAFTA and Oscar nominated Girl with a Pearl Earring, starring Colin Firth and Scarlett Johansson and the award-winning, critically-acclaimed radical adaptation of Wuthering Heights directed by Andrea Arnold.
Sound Design: Lucinda Mason Brown
Director / Producer: Fiona McAlpine
An Allegra production for BBC Radio 4.
Series celebrating the infinite variety of the natural world and its depiction in culture. In the final episode of the series we present our swan song.
Music broadcaster Verity Sharp listens to the world in a different way. We eavesdrop with her along latitudinal lines, hearing local stories that are having a direct impact on music and musicians. Could there be echoes along these sound lines? Might different music that's created thousands of miles apart, but on the same latitude, share common ground? And could listening in this way allow us to glimpse the effect of the vast and often immeasurable forces that are sweeping change across our planet?
This third episode circumnavigates the globe along the 33rd parallel. Halfway between the Equator and the Arctic Circle, this latitude falls within a narrow, densely populated band in which a quarter of the world's humans live. It's here that the Fertile Crescent, a region between the Nile, Euphrates and Tigris rivers, gave rise to some of the earth's earliest civilisations - and the latitude runs close to several of the planet's major cities, including Atlanta, Casablanca, Beirut, Baghdad and Shanghai.
Around the circle, we hear three stories.
Journalist and sometime musician Zeina Shahla shares her experiences living through the Syrian conflict in Damascus, and its effect on music-making there. We also meet Bernar who, amid the shelling, has resolutely continued to put on live music in his cafe in the old part of the city.
Sound artist Kate Carr listens to the sounds of the US-Mexican border fence in Tijuana. And she meets electronic musician Haydée Jiménez, aka Hidhawk, who aims to use sound as a way of healing the effects of the "cut or bruise" that is the division between the two nations.
Even in the relatively remote Ladakh region of northern India, which singer and song collector Morup Namgyal describes as "a broken moon, rooftop of the world", an explosion of tourist numbers in recent years is having an impact on the health of traditional culture.
Producer: Chris Elcombe
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 4.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
On this day in 1918, railway workers around Britain ended their strike after the Government brought in military assistance, and returning to Folkestone, Isabel is in a defiant mood.
Written by Sarah Daniels
Directed by Ciaran Bermingham
Editor: Jessica Dromgoole.
Consumer phone-in.
The latest weather forecast.
Mon-Thurs: Analysis of news and current affairs, presented by Sarah Montague. Fri: Analysis of news and current affairs, presented by Mark Mardell.
Two families from very different backgrounds, one street and a baby on a doorstep. This series charts the story of a young Christian couple entrusting the care of their little daughter to a Muslim family that lived across the way in 1990s Watford. They were strangers but the couple - Peris Mbuthia and Martin Gitonga - needed help, as immigrants from Kenya working in low paid jobs with a child to support and no family to step in. They were struggling and their relationship was under strain.
Through a friend, the Zafars offered to help. It was a generous offer although Peris wasn't sure at first that this family from another country and another culture was the answer because the two households seemed to have nothing in common. But on the brink of losing their jobs, the couple simply had to give it a go. No money was involved, no checks or references. The Zafars weren't child minders, just willing neighbours meaning everything was done on trust.
It was an unusual arrangement. So how would this unlikely scenario change the lives of those involved?
A special, enduring bond developed between Sandra and the Zafar's daughter Saiqa. It is a story of faith, love and tolerance - a modern day telling of how it takes a village to raise a child.
In Episode Two, the arrangement takes shape. How will baby Sandra adjust to life on the other side of the street?
Producer: Sally Chesworth
Sound: Richard Hannaford
Editor: Gail Champion
Exec Editor: Richard Knight.
Based on the true story of the 1968 I'm Backing Britain campaign, dramatised by David Morley. Starring Duncan Wisbey of Dead Ringers as Harold Wilson and Geoffrey McGivern of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy as beleaguered shop steward Harry Tyler.
Britain's economy is teetering on the brink. Strikes, devaluation and rejection from the Common Market are making Prime Minister Harold Wilson's life a misery. The Labour government has been fighting budget deficits with austerity measures, while struggling with a small Commons majority and attempting to change Britain's relationship with Europe. A cloud of doom and gloom seems to be descending over the country after the heady days of the Swinging Sixties.
What the country needs is some Dunkirk Spirit - to wave the Union Jack from the White Cliffs and fight back.
When the typists of Colt Ventilation decide to work half an hour a day for free to help the country fight economic hard times, they are championed by the great and good. But they have unwittingly put their local shop steward on a collision course with the union big boys. Initially encouraged by Wilson, the idea of working for free is loved by the right and quickly hated by the left. Labour is put under pressure by the TUC to quash this "economic illiteracy".
This satirical play takes us back to the doom and gloom of Great Britain in the late 1960s, and shines a light on the industrial strife of the 70s.
Writer: David Morley
Director: Sean Grundy
Producer: Richard Clemmow
A Perfectly Normal production for BBC Radio 4.
Louise Morris explores the growing interest in ephemeral art - art to be witnessed in a moment rather than preserved. Traditionally, art is created to endure - so what compels artists who deliberately do otherwise by creating work with a limited lifespan?
Ephemeral art can be anything from works made with materials that decompose, to art eroded by nature or even deliberately destroyed. It could last months, weeks or even mere minutes, but ultimately it will disappear without a trace. While ephemeral art is not a new concept, more artists seem to be experimenting with the variety of materials that can be used to create it and galleries are embracing transience.
Drawing on Water speaks to some of the artists making ephemeral works to find out what compels them to make art that will disappear. From Australian artist Joseph Marr whose sugar sculptures melt and evolve over the course of months, to British arts collective Red Earth who make transitory installations and performance pieces in the natural landscape.
Transient art speaks perceptively to many contemporary concerns. Temporary art events tap into our quest for unique experiences and the desire to be there at the right time, yet they also force us to reflect on our own limited existence and mortality. Artist Nelson Santos believes that, as art is created by us, it should die as we do. He made Transmogrification, a dress of bubble wrap over a wire frame with a heat lamp inside. Each bubble is injected with coloured paint, and they slowly burst over the course of a 48 hour art event, dripping on to a canvas below - all that is left at the end.
Produced by Louise Morris and Andrew McGibbon
A Curtains For Radio production for BBC Radio 4.
Environmental investigation series.
Lane Greene talks to Michael Rosen and Dr Laura Wright about the joys of editing and how it can improve writing. Lane Greene is The Economist's Johnson language columnist and deputy editor of books & arts. He's also a lover of a literal literally and of a well-placed colon.
Producer Beth O'Dea
Benazir Bhutto made history when, aged 35, she became the first democratically elected female Prime Minister of a Muslim majority country. Her family are one of world’s most famous political dynasties, but also one blighted by tragedy – murder, feud and assassinations.
Bhutto has been nominated by Christina Lamb, author and chief foreign correspondent with the Sunday Times. Bhutto was her friend and a huge influence on her life. She also expelled Christina Lamb from Pakistan.
Christina has a picture of Benazir Bhutto on her desk attending the rally in Pakistan before she was killed by a suicide bomber on the 27th December 2007. Christina was on a bus with her during a previous assassination attempt, and she recounts the horror of that day.
Also joining her in the studio is Huma Yusuf, a journalist and columnist with Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper and a Global Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson Centre.
The presenter is Matthew Parris and the producer in Bristol is Perminder Khatkar.
Interviews, context and analysis.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Start/Stop is a sitcom by Jack Docherty about three marriages in various states of disrepair.
Barney and Cathy have been married for ages and it shows, Evan and Fiona's marriage is one big, noisy argument and David is old enough to be Alice's father.
Start/Stop follows the story of these three couples as they try to make the best of their marriages and friendships, and the characters are able to stop the action, explain themselves to the audience and start it all up again.
This week: 'BnB'.
Barney and Cathy's finances are in a bad state. So Barney decides to become an Uber driver to boost his income (and to 'bump into' Alice more often). And Cathy decides to rent their spare bedroom out on Air BnB. Meanwhile Evan and Fiona are arguing. And David writes a raunchy bestseller based, to her horror, around Alice.
Written by: Jack Docherty
Producer: Claire Jones
A BBC Studio Production.
Freddie considers his options, and Fallon puts her foot in it.
Arts news, interviews and reviews.
Last year, Nigel Hurst killed himself. In a letter he left for his daughters he revealed that he had been made bankrupt and his home repossessed. His local authority had started bankruptcy proceedings over unpaid council tax of around £9,332. Within three years, he owed more than £72,000 as insolvency fees and charges were added.
File on 4 investigates Nigel Hurst’s death and what it reveals about the way some councils go about recovering unpaid council tax.
The programme also hears from a building worker who was made bankrupt for £6,500 by his local authority and has now been told he has to pay £17,500 to stop his case being passed to insolvency experts. If that happens, further costs and fees will be added. With councils subject to fewer debt collection rules than the consumer credit industry, some local authorities say it is time for a rethink on the way unpaid council tax debt is recovered.
Presenter:Helen Grady
Producer:David Lewis
Editor: Andrew Smith
News, views and information for people who are blind or partially sighted.
Dr Mark Porter goes on a weekly quest to demystify the health issues that perplex us.
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.
Pat Barker, the Booker Prize-winning author of the Regeneration trilogy and one of our greatest contemporary writers on war, reimagines the most famous conflict in literature - the legendary Trojan War as chronicled by Homer in The Illiad.
When her city falls to the Greeks, Briseis is transformed from a nineteen year old queen to a bed-gir', from a free woman to a slave, a thing. She is awarded to the god-like warrior Achilles as a prize of war. And she's not alone. On the same day, and on many others in the course of a long and bitter war, innumerable women have been seized from the wreckage of their homes and flung to the fighters.
Pat Barker was prompted to write this story by the words of a professor in Philip Roth's novel, The Human Stain. The lines act as an epigraph:
"'You know how European literature begins?' he'd ask, after having taken the roll at the first class meeting. 'With a quarrel. All of European literature springs from a fight.' And then he picked up his copy of The Iliad and read to the class the opening lines. 'Divine Muse, sing of the ruinous wrath of Achilles . . . Begin where they first quarrelled, Agamemnon the King of men, and great Achilles.' And what are they quarrelling about, these two violent, mighty souls? It's as basic as a barroom brawl. They are quarrelling over a woman. A girl, really. A girl stolen from her father. A girl abducted in a war."
Years later, Briseis looks back on her time in the Greek camp at Troy and attempts to tell her own story.
In Episode 2, Briseis recalls the morning after her first night as Achilles' slave.
Written by Pat Barker
Abridged by Jill Waters and Isobel Creed
Read by Nadine Marshall and Colin Salmon
Produced by Jill Waters
A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4.
India is the second most populous nation in the world (1.2 billion people), and British-Indian is the largest ethnic minority in the United Kingdom (1.4 million people). So after Radio 4 broadcast A Beginner's Guide To Pakistan last year, it feels only right to broadcast A Beginner's Guide To India as without India there wouldn't even be a Pakistan.
Our guide will be Aditi Mittal, a Mumbai-based comic who has already appeared on The Now Show and on The Asian Network's Big Comedy Night. The Times of India listed her as one of the top ten comedians in India; Forbes Magazine India put her in their 30 Under 30, ranging across every sphere of life from science to law to sport to theatre to comedy - and she's written articles for everyone from The Financial Times to Grazia. Radio 4 has brought her to the UK to perform A Beginner's Guide To India because she, like all Indians, loves the British - the last time they got some, they kept them for 200 years.
Aditi is young in a country with more history than most; she's a woman in a country that sees street harassment as 'Eve teasing'; she's an Anglophone because of the legacy of the British Empire, but India was independent before her parents were born; she's an atheist in a country that has given the world four major religions and also one actual God (Sachin Tendulkar).
Episode 2: Youth.
Speaking as someone who lives in one of the oldest cultures on the planet, Aditi looks at the challenges facing India's youth - of whom India has more (350m) than any other country in the world, from education to jobs to body image - including the booming industry of skin-lightening cream.
A Beginner's Guide To India will look at an undoubtedly significant and increasingly important country from a point of view that is rarely heard, performed by the most exciting stand-up comedian India has generated. As with A Beginner's Guide To Pakistan ("Stylishly cynical, brutally newsy, bitingly funny, this is political stand-up done with gusto", The Sunday Telegraph) it is informative, educational and entertaining, broadening the range of voices in Radio 4 comedy.
Written and performed by ... Aditi Mittal
The Voice of the Guide ... Ritula Shah
Production Coordinator ... Tamara Shilham
Produced by ... Ed Morrish
A BBC Studios Production.
Tom Holland is joined by Dr Alice Taylor from King's College in London and the historian of pop culture, Travis Elborough.
Helen Castor charts the course of the Prague Spring, that period of liberalisation in Czechoslovakia brought in when Alexander Dubcek became leader in January 1968. She hears from those who were there and those who study that period now and asks whether people had any inkling what an extraordinary year it would be.
Alice Taylor introduces a new project which will celebrate the 700th anniversary of the Declaration of Arbroath in 2020. She explains how fact and fiction were brought together to create the notion of a Scottish nation and a document that would heavily influence the Constitution of the United States.
French Journalist Agnes Poirier leafs through the pages of Our Island Story, the 1905 children's book that some argue not only re-imagined English history but then shaped the world-view of some of our political leaders.
Fresh from the publication of his book of twentieth century diary extracts, Travis Elborough discusses if the diary is dead in the digital post-truth age.
And Iszi Lawrence enlists the help of the world wide web in her search for the origins of the expression "hair of the dog".
Producer: Nick Patrick
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with student mission leader Miriam Swaffield
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
Wildlife cameraman Nigel Bean relives the moment he discovered a water rail nest deep among a reedbed in west Wales, a nest that became the star of a BBC Springwatch series
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 Tom Bonnett.
Morning news and current affairs. Including Yesterday in Parliament, Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
The Sound Odyssey is a new series in which Gemma Cairney takes British artists for musical collaborations in different countries around the world, hearing the musicians in a new light, and exposing their artistic process as they create something new in different and unfamiliar surroundings with an artist they have never met before.
For this programme, MOBO-nominated musician Kojey Radical, travels to Ghana, a country that he hasn't been too since he was 12 years old.
Born and raised in East London 25-year-old Radical is a spoken word-poet and rapper, a dancer, model, illustrator and video artist. The son of Ghanaian parents, he grew up channelling his energy into writing poetry, and went on to study illustration at London College of Fashion before turning to music. His sound is a unique blend of soul, jazz and gospel, grime, rap and electronica.
Ghana has a proud and long history as one of Africa's richest musical hotbeds, thanks in part to its inception of 'highlife', the genre that originated there.
Kojey will be collaborating in Accra with Kyekyeku, part of a new generation of young lively Ghanaian musicians combining the musical traditions of highlife and afrobeat , who also sees himself as a social chronicler of contemporary Africa.
In Accra, Kojey begins to discover and understand more about his own diaspora, visiting Independence Square and the mausoleum of Kwame Nkrumah, who he first learnt about through conversations with his dad who was in Accra in 1957 when Ghana became independent.
He also visits YFM the number one Urban Youth radio station in Ghana, before heading to a local rehearsal studio, the challenge, to create a new track with Kyekyeku and a group of local musicians.
Presented by Gemma Cairney
Produced by Jax Coombes
A BBC 6 Music Production for BBC Radio 4.
Alan Dein asks several generations of five families from across the UK revealing questions about politics and social class.
From Fleetwood in Lancashire to Tonbridge in Kent, every family faces the same searching questions. Today, Alan explores views on politics and class across the generations. Among those in the hot seat, child care providers Steven and Christine Beckwith from Bedlington in Northumbria, lifelong Labour voters who've recently turned their backs on the party.
Producers: Laurence Grissell & Paul Kobrak.
Ben Macintyre's breath taking new history takes us to into the underworld of Cold War espionage where duplicity, intrigue and raw courage are the trademarks of a Russian double agent who passed priceless secrets to his M16 spymasters from deep within the KGB. Today, London calls. Tim McInnerny reads.
Abridged by Richard Hamilton
Produced by Elizabeth Allard.
Programme that offers a female perspective on the world.
Five stories to gobble you up. From Angela Carter's iconic collection of fairy stories and dramatised for radio by Olivia Hetreed.
Episode 3: Wolf-Alice
Wolf-Alice is more wolf than girl. Brought up by wolves and taken in by nuns, she is sent to work for the Duke in his ancient castle. But he has no reflection, and a nasty habit of robbing graves.
At the time of writing The Bloody Chamber in the late 1970s, Angela Carter was disaffected by both sides of the feminist debate. She re-worked traditional fairy tales from her own unique, literary outsider's point of view, putting women at the centre of the stories.
With their feisty heroines and orgiastic mash-up of beasts, shape-shifters and ghouls, her extraordinary tales are the most perfect example of her style, not just for her incomparable prose, but also in the dizzying twists and turns of perception, fantasy and myth.
Controversially influenced by De Sade, she embraced the erotic, explored our deepest and darkest urges, and subverted the roles of hunter and prey, master and mistress so that, instead of male sexuality, it is the female that becomes transgressive and powerful.
Dramatist Olivia Hetreed is a noted screen-writer, whose work includes the multi-award winning, BAFTA and Oscar nominated Girl with a Pearl Earring, starring Colin Firth and Scarlett Johansson and the award-winning, critically-acclaimed radical adaptation of Wuthering Heights directed by Andrea Arnold.
Sound Design: Lucinda Mason Brown
Director / Producer: Fiona McAlpine
An Allegra production for BBC Radio 4.
Friends and work colleagues, one of whom was born with a cleft palate, reflect on the impact it's had on her confidence and engagement with others. Fi Glover presents another conversation in the series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.
Producer: Marya Burgess.
Amid Brexit, comedian Zoe Lyons grabs her shiny, newly issued Irish passport and returns to her roots. In these tumultuous times, what does it mean to belong somewhere, and will the Motherland welcome her back into the fold with open arms?
In this episode, Zoe returns to Ireland in an effort to reconnect with the country where she spent the first few years of her life. Travelling for the first time as a legitimate Irish citizen, she speaks to her beloved Dad about their life there, visits the tiny fishing village of Dunmore East where her favourite past time was to frisbee dried cow pats with her cousins, and then onto Clonmel where it's back to school. Will her treasured memories of being taught by Nuns via an intercom match up with the present schooling system?
An Impatient production for BBC Radio 4.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
On this day in 1918, the Allies launched a concluding offensive on Meuse-Argonne, the US Army's largest and deadliest ever battle. Somewhere in the North Downs, meanwhile, Phyllis and Johnnie are still quite far from Folkestone.
Written by Sarah Daniels
Directed by Ciaran Bermingham
Editor: Jessica Dromgoole.
Consumer affairs programme.
The latest weather forecast.
Mon-Thurs: Analysis of news and current affairs, presented by Sarah Montague. Fri: Analysis of news and current affairs, presented by Mark Mardell.
Two families from very different backgrounds, one street and a baby on a doorstep.
This series charts the story of how a young Christian couple came to entrust the care of their little daughter to a Muslim family that lived nearby in 1990s Watford. They were strangers but the couple - Peris Mbuthia and Martin Gitonga - needed help, as immigrants from Kenya working in low paid jobs with a child to support and no family to step in. They were struggling and their relationship was under strain. Early one morning, Martin left his flat with six month old Sandra zipped inside his jacket and handed her over to the Zafars across the road while he went to work at a warehouse. This arrival at the door was an event that changed the course of all their lives - that day the baby girl became the Zafars' Doorstep Daughter. And a special, enduring bond developed between Sandra and the Zafar's daughter Saiqa. It is a story of faith, trust and love - a modern day telling of how it takes a village to raise a child.
Episode 3 finds little Sandra now living at the heart of the Zafar household, heading home only for alternate weekends. It seems to suit everyone. But then doubts creep in and critics of this unusual arrangement start to snipe from the sidelines. Is this the perfect situation after all?
Producer: Sally Chesworth
Sound: Richard Hannaford
Editor: Gail Champion
Exec Editor: Richard Knight.
Brief Lives by Tom Fry and Sharon Kelly
Episode 1
Return of the popular series about the Manchester legal representatives. Frank is roped in to help what he thinks is a community of retired people. But what exactly have they retired from?
Director/Producer Gary Brown.
Paul Lewis and a panel of guests answer calls on personal finance.
Laurie Taylor explores the latest research into how society works.
Topical programme about the fast-changing media world.
Interviews, context and analysis.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
One of Britain's finest comedians Rob Newman sets his sights on the world of philosophy, unpicking 3000 years of good and bad ideas to discover how we got into this mess. In a world gone mad can philosophy provide the answer?
In episode three, Rob navigates the wonders and pitfalls of genetics and internationalism.
Written and performed by Rob Newman
Edited by John Whitehall
Produced by Jon Harvey
Executive Producer: Richard Wilson
A Hat Trick production for BBC Radio 4
It's all change for Tom, and Emma is on a mission.
Live daily magazine programme on the worlds of arts, literature, film, media and music.
One decade on since the great crash, Nick Robinson asks whether we can handle a crisis in our financial system of a similar magnitude. Have politicians and officials, central bankers and the leaders of our major financial institutions learned the lessons of 2008?
Producer: Peter Snowdon.
Julia Unwin asks whether we've lost the human touch in a world of automation and technology.
Touch screens, contactless cards and e-tickets are supposed to make our lives so much easier and more convenient. Julia Unwin, former chief executive of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, asks whether technology and automation and the loss of those everyday human connections are harming the way we interact with each other.
Producer: Peter Snowdon.
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.
Pat Barker, the Booker Prize-winning author of the Regeneration trilogy and one of our greatest contemporary writers on war, reimagines the most famous conflict in literature - the legendary Trojan War as chronicled by Homer in The Illiad.
When her city falls to the Greeks, Briseis is transformed from a nineteen year old queen to a bed-gir', from a free woman to a slave, a thing. She is awarded to the god-like warrior Achilles as a prize of war. And she's not alone. On the same day, and on many others in the course of a long and bitter war, innumerable women have been seized from the wreckage of their homes and flung to the fighters.
Pat Barker was prompted to write this story by the words of a professor in Philip Roth's novel, The Human Stain. The lines act as an epigraph:
"'You know how European literature begins?' he'd ask, after having taken the roll at the first class meeting. 'With a quarrel. All of European literature springs from a fight.' And then he picked up his copy of The Iliad and read to the class the opening lines. 'Divine Muse, sing of the ruinous wrath of Achilles . . . Begin where they first quarrelled, Agamemnon the King of men, and great Achilles.' And what are they quarrelling about, these two violent, mighty souls? It's as basic as a barroom brawl. They are quarrelling over a woman. A girl, really. A girl stolen from her father. A girl abducted in a war."
Years later, Briseis looks back on her time in the Greek camp at Troy and attempts to tell her own story.
In episode 3, an old man arrives in the camp bringing with him a sizeable ransom and a powerful plea. The Greeks gather to hear what he has to say.
Written by Pat Barker
Abridged by Jill Waters and Isobel Creed
Read by Nadine Marshall and Colin Salmon
Produced by Jill Waters
A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4.
Bittersweet comic real life stories written & performed by Chris Neill with Martin Hyder and Isy Suttie. This week - myopia and its advantages and ... is that an architect I see before me?
Starring: Chris Neill, Isy Suttie and Martin Hyder
Written by Chris Neill
Producer: Steve Doherty
A Giddy Goat production for BBC Radio 4
Music featured:
Track: Dance Away
Perf: The Bryan Ferry Orchestra
Track: Those Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer
Perf: Johnny Maddox
Track: September Song
Perf: Dion and The Belmonts
Track: Ladyfingers
Perf: Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass
Track: Lo Sceicco Bianco
Perf: Katyna Ranieri & orchestra
Track: I Don't Feel Like Dancin'
Perf: Scissor Sisters.
Richard Schiff is best known for the role of Toby Ziegler in The West Wing, the modern-classic American drama series about life in the White House. His own life has been even more eventful.
Here, he recounts his childhood in New York when his mother married Clarence Jones, Martin Luther King's close friend and lawyer. Schiff brought warm laughter to an early meeting of the Black Panthers when, as a 13-year old, he volunteered to hand out leaflets at his school. He offers a very moving account of the assassination of Robert Kennedy and its profound effect on his family and beliefs.
In a real-life echo of the classic Scorsese film, Schiff worked as a New York taxi driver for fours years in the late 1970s, only doing night shifts and encountering both fascinating and dangerous characters as a result of his 'pick up anyone' rule.
He offers a brilliant take on the symphonic nature of Aaron Sorkin's writing for The West Wing and tells, with a laugh, how he imagined Toby's instrument being a bassoon - and so played him accordingly.
In the recent American election, Schiff actively campaigned first for Bernie Sanders, then Hilary Clinton. He reflects on what the Trump Presidency will mean for America in the long-term, and on the future form of the Opposition.
Warm, angry and humorous throughout this personal tour, Schiff is an erudite alternative correspondent.
Producer: Peter Curran
A Foghorn Company production for BBC Radio 4.
Helen Castor and her guests take us back to moments in the past when social and economic change conspired to produce the historical forerunners of two of today's most pressing issues - technological change and housing.
Tom Holland visits a fruit-packing factory in Kent where, today, much of the work is done by robots. Their introduction hasn't threatened any jobs yet but, half an hour away, are the villages where, in 1830, rural farmworkers raged against new threshing machines they feared would take away much-needed work in the winter months. Professor Carl Griffin from the University of Sussex explains how the mythical Captain Swing shook the government of the day and terrified landowners in a series of machine-wrecking riots that swept South East England, Wiltshire and East Anglia.
Britain's housing issues have kick-started a boom in a type of home that came to the rescue in the dark days after World War Two, when prefabs offered accommodation for those who were bombed or living in slums. Thanks to a certain Swedish company, we all know about flat-packed furniture but, back in the late 1940s, it was Swedish flat-packed houses that were causing a stir. Architectural writer Jonathan Glancey gives us the low-down on a house that changed lives and is, in some places, still standing.
Producer: Nick Patrick
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with student mission leader Miriam Swaffield.
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.
Martin Hughes-Games presents the Golden Plover. If, among a flock of lapwings circling over a ploughed field, you see smaller birds with wings like knife-blades and bell-like calls ... these are golden plovers.
Morning news and current affairs. Including Yesterday in Parliament, Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and life of the German theologian, born in Breslau/Wroclaw in 1906 and killed in the Flossenbürg concentration camp on 9th April 1945. Bonhoeffer developed ideas about the role of the Church in the secular world, in particular Germany after the Nazis took power in 1933 and demanded the Churches' support. He strongly opposed anti-Semitism and, with a role in the Military Intelligence Department, took part in the resistance, plotting to kill Hitler and meeting with contacts in the Allies. Bonhoeffer's ideas on Christian ethics and the relationship between Christianity and humanism spread more widely from the 1960s with the discovery of unpublished works, including those written in prison as he awaited execution.
With
Stephen Plant
Eleanor McLaughlin
and
Tom Greggs
Producer: Simon Tillotson
Ben Macintyre's compelling new book is about a double agent who passed countless secrets to his M16 spymasters from deep within the KGB at the height of the Cold War. Today, Moscow wants a meeting. Tim McInnerny reads.
Abridged by Richard Hamilton
Produced by Elizabeth Allard.
Programme that offers a female perspective on the world.
Five stories to gobble you up. From Angela Carter's iconic collection of fairy stories and dramatised for radio by Olivia Hetreed.
Episode 4: The Tiger's Bride
A father loses his daughter to the Beast in a game of cards. In his ruined palazzo, her new master asks her to disrobe. When she refuses, he reveals his own true nature - the beast beneath the mask. But she discovers he is far more frightened of her than she is of him.
At the time of writing The Bloody Chamber in the late 1970s, Angela Carter was disaffected by both sides of the feminist debate. She re-worked traditional fairy tales from her own unique, literary outsider's point of view, putting women at the centre of the stories.
With their feisty heroines and orgiastic mash-up of beasts, shape-shifters and ghouls, her extraordinary tales are the most perfect example of her style, not just for her incomparable prose, but also in the dizzying twists and turns of perception, fantasy and myth.
Controversially influenced by De Sade, she embraced the erotic, explored our deepest and darkest urges, and subverted the roles of hunter and prey, master and mistress so that, instead of male sexuality, it is the female that becomes transgressive and powerful.
Dramatist Olivia Hetreed is a noted screen-writer, whose work includes the multi-award winning, BAFTA and Oscar nominated Girl with a Pearl Earring, starring Colin Firth and Scarlett Johansson and the award-winning, critically-acclaimed radical adaptation of Wuthering Heights directed by Andrea Arnold.
Sound Design: Lucinda Mason Brown
Director / Producer: Fiona McAlpine
An Allegra production for BBC Radio 4.
Correspondents around the world tell their stories and examine news developments in their region.
Nye Thompson's new installation finds unsecured video streams and interprets them with AI. Inspired by this, she explores the role of the artist in our world of mass surveillance.
Named The Seeker, Nye's latest piece is an autonomous machine that identifies video streams across the globe and describes what it sees. Recently Nye has been using the world's unsecured footage from as material for her art. In doing so she has questioned what it means to have the tools of surveillance in our homes and our pockets.
Today surveillance extends far beyond CCTV. Image recognition enables machines to identify what they see and an even more accurate portrait is available through our data; browsing history, social media posts, message logs and countless other areas. The Edward Snowden leaks brought such techniques into the public eye five years ago. Since then these methods have continued apace with technological advancement, often on the grounds of making our lives simpler and safer.
Alongside the unveiling of her new work, Nye seeks out others across the art world occupied by what surveillance means today and what art can tell us about its practices, its ethical boundaries and its future.
Produced by Sam Peach.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
On this day in 1918, it was revealed that Despised and Rejected, an apparently "pernicious book" at the centre of a censorship trial, had been written by a woman, Rose Allatini, using an androgynous pseudonym. Meanwhile at the Wilson household, Jack has something controversial to tell Florrie and Adam.
Written by Sarah Daniels
Directed by Ciaran Bermingham
Editor: Jessica Dromgoole.
Consumer affairs programme.
The latest weather forecast.
Mon-Thurs: Analysis of news and current affairs, presented by Sarah Montague. Fri: Analysis of news and current affairs, presented by Mark Mardell.
Two families from very different backgrounds, one street and a baby on a doorstep. This series charts the story of how a young Christian couple came to entrust the care of their little daughter to a Muslim family that lived nearby in 1990s Watford. They were strangers but the couple - Peris Mbuthia and Martin Gitonga - needed help, as immigrants from Kenya working in low paid jobs with a child to support and no family to step in. They were struggling and their relationship was under strain. Early one morning, Martin left his flat with six month old Sandra zipped inside his jacket and handed her over to the Zafars across the road while he went to work at a warehouse. This arrival at the door was an event that changed the course of all their lives - that day the baby girl became the Zafars' Doorstep Daughter. And a special, enduring bond develops between Sandra and the Zafar's daughter Saiqa. It is a story of faith, trust and love - a modern day telling of how it takes a village to raise a child. Doubts arise though when Sandra's first words are in Urdu and critics in the community start unkind rumours about why the families are so close.
In Episode Four, an unwelcome letter arrives which will again alter the course of these families' lives. Will the ties still bind them together?
Producer: Sally Chesworth
Sound: Richard Hannaford
Editor: Gail Champion
Exec Editor: Richard Knight.
By Simon Crowther.
It’s the hottest day of the year, and the day that Loretta and Leighton, neighbours since childhood, finally grow up. When the peace of their shared Cardiff yard is disturbed by new neighbours from the Welsh-Welsh North of Wales, two families must come to terms with their own attitudes. In the heat, tempers fray and a stray hound takes on a legendary significance.
Loretta … Gwenllian Higginson
Leighton … Gareth Pierce
Judy … Nicola Reynolds
Deborah … Melanie Walters
Terry ... Richard Elfyn
Geraint ... Sion Pritchard
Begw … Lisa Jên Brown
Showcasing some of the best new Welsh music, from artists Sweet Baboo, H Hawkline and 9Bach, with original music composed by Lisa Jên Brown and performed by Huw Evans
Sound by Nigel Lewis
Directed by Janine H. Jones
A BBC Cymru Wales Production
Clare Balding hears the uplifting story of how walking helped a young man recover from a brain injury.
At the age of 23, Matt Masson fell off a roof during a night out. He was in a coma for six weeks and, when he awoke, couldn't walk, talk or sit-up. When his voice returned, so did a determination to return to his previously active life. Walking formed a central part of his rehab; his first goal was to walk just 300 metres but by 2014 Matt had walked the Amsterdam Marathon which took 9 hours and 37 minutes.
In this edition of Ramblings, Matt and his mother, Anne, walk a stretch of the Centurion Way in Chichester and recall his many endeavours. The Centurion Way is a route between Chichester and West Dean which follows the line of part of the disused Chichester to Midhurst Railway.
Producer: Karen Gregor.
In a special edition of The Film Programme, Francine Stock talks to a film-maker about a movie that continues to inspire them. This month, director Paul King reveals the influence of Powell and Pressburger's The Life And Death Of Colonel Blimp on his two Paddington adaptations.
Adam Rutherford investigates the news in science and science in the news.
Interviews, context and analysis.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Comedy about the inept staff at a historic house, starring Simon Callow, Miles Jupp and Jane Horrocks.
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 it's eccentric curator Peter Knight (Simon Callow).
Can anyone save Plum House from irreversible decline?
In this episode, the team at the museum are startled to hear that Peter has agreed to Plum House being used as a location in a period drama. And not just any period drama, but Buttermere Hall - the Cumbrian Poldark, the Lake District Downton Abbey - which just happens to be Maureen and Emma's favourite Sunday night series. It could be a massive publicity coup for Plum House, but with Peter dreaming of a starring role, Maureen insisting on catering for the crew, Alan fretting about his broken spade and Emma desperate to meet leading man Christopher Tennyson, will the team end up blowing it?
Written by Ben Cottam and Paul McKenna
Script Edited by Sarah Cartwright
Directed and Produced by Paul Schlesinger
A Hat Trick production for BBC Radio 4.
Tony reaches a decision and Emma is impressed by a former acquaintance.
Live daily magazine programme on the worlds of arts, literature, film, media and music.
David Aaronovitch and a panel of experts and insiders explore big issues in the news.
Will artificial intelligence change how we shop and decide which retailers succeed? Senior retail executive, Jeremy Schwartz, meets chat bots, robots and the humans behind them, to find out. He explores the impact that the AI revolution may have on jobs - not just the number of them but their nature too. As algorithms take over certain tasks, he asks how humans - and the companies that employ them - will need to respond. And he looks at the growing digital divide between retailers and asks what role AI is playing in the struggle for survival on our high streets.
Producer : Rosamund Jones.
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.
Pat Barker, the Booker Prize-winning author of the Regeneration trilogy and one of our greatest contemporary writers on war, reimagines the most famous conflict in literature - the legendary Trojan War as chronicled by Homer in The Illiad.
When her city falls to the Greeks, Briseis is transformed from a nineteen year old queen to a bed-gir', from a free woman to a slave, a thing. She is awarded to the god-like warrior Achilles as a prize of war. And she's not alone. On the same day, and on many others in the course of a long and bitter war, innumerable women have been seized from the wreckage of their homes and flung to the fighters.
Pat Barker was prompted to write this story by the words of a professor in Philip Roth's novel, The Human Stain. The lines act as an epigraph:
"'You know how European literature begins?' he'd ask, after having taken the roll at the first class meeting. 'With a quarrel. All of European literature springs from a fight.' And then he picked up his copy of The Iliad and read to the class the opening lines. 'Divine Muse, sing of the ruinous wrath of Achilles . . . Begin where they first quarrelled, Agamemnon the King of men, and great Achilles.' And what are they quarrelling about, these two violent, mighty souls? It's as basic as a barroom brawl. They are quarrelling over a woman. A girl, really. A girl stolen from her father. A girl abducted in a war."
Years later, Briseis looks back on her time in the Greek camp at Troy and attempts to tell her own story.
In Episode 4, the Greek army and it's most senior leaders assemble and Achilles demands action to pacify Apollo.
Written by Pat Barker
Abridged by Jill Waters and Isobel Creed
Read by Nadine Marshall and Colin Salmon
Produced by Jill Waters
A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4.
A series of contemporary comic tales that could almost be true. Anything can happen when this master storyteller combines comedy with magical realism - and it probably will.
This week we learn that cats injected with nanobots which consequently form a neural lace, will almost certainly get up to no good.
Written and performed by Nick Revell
Producer: Steve Doherty
A Giddy Goat production for BBC Radio 4.
Helen Castor is joined by Flora Samuel, Professor of Architecture in the Built Environment at the University of Reading.
Tom Holland and Dr Matthew Green take a trip down the Thames to Thamesmead, an overspill "new town" that received its first inhabitants fifty years ago this month, but which is better known as the location used by Stanley Kubrick in his dystopian classic A Clockwork Orange. But was this brutalist solution to London's slum housing doomed from the start, or were some of the ideas of Le Corbusier and those who influenced the design of this place fairly similar to the better accepted work of Ebeneezer Howard and the Garden City movement?
Iszi Lawrence is in Fitzrovia with writer, broadcaster and Victorian historian Kathryn Hughes to find out why the lack of public toilets meant women were so inconvenienced in the Victorian and Edwardian period. What lay behind the then-accepted notion that women shouldn't "go" in public?
Monks in Leicestershire are brewing up a storm, the first batch of a new Trappist ale. But what's the historic connection between abbeys and brewing?
Producer: Nick Patrick
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with student mission leader Miriam Swaffield.
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 avocet. With its black and white plumage, blue-grey legs and delicate upturned bill, the avocet is one of our easiest birds to identify. They are a conservation success and are now breeding in Norfolk, Lincolnshire, Kent and elsewhere.
News and current affairs, including Yesterday in Parliament, Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
Ben Macintyre's thrilling account of a KGB double agent operating at the height of the Cold War concludes with a breath taking sequence of events that entail ingenuity, duplicity and fearlessness. Tim McInnerny reads.
Abridged by Richard Hamilton
Produced by Elizabeth Allard.
We announce the Woman’s Hour Power List 2018 – a top 40 of women with the greatest influence on the music we listen to today – as decided by judges Kate Nash, Catherine Marks, Jasmine Dotiwala and Jessica Duchen.
The judges have been debating the power held by singers, songwriters, musicians, composers, record company executives, the women running events and venues, journalists and broadcasters. They’ve been looking for women demonstrating power in the industry: innovators and ground-breakers supporting and championing the work of other women or changing the industry from within – making it more equal, diverse and creative.
Jenni will be joined by some the women on the list to celebrate their achievements, and by some of the judges.
Presented by Jenni Murray
Produced by Jane Thurlow
Five stories to gobble you up. From Angela Carter's iconic collection of fairy stories and dramatised for radio by Olivia Hetreed.
Episode 5: The Company of Wolves
It's Christmas Eve, and a young girl is on her way to visit her granny in the forest. She has been warned not to stray from the path but, on her way, she meets a charming huntsman who has other ideas.
At the time of writing The Bloody Chamber in the late 1970s, Angela Carter was disaffected by both sides of the feminist debate. She re-worked traditional fairy tales from her own unique, literary outsider's point of view, putting women at the centre of the stories.
With their feisty heroines and orgiastic mash-up of beasts, shape-shifters and ghouls, her extraordinary tales are the most perfect example of her style, not just for her incomparable prose, but also in the dizzying twists and turns of perception, fantasy and myth.
Controversially influenced by De Sade, she embraced the erotic, explored our deepest and darkest urges, and subverted the roles of hunter and prey, master and mistress so that, instead of male sexuality, it is the female that becomes transgressive and powerful.
Dramatist Olivia Hetreed is a noted screen-writer, whose work includes the multi-award winning, BAFTA and Oscar nominated Girl with a Pearl Earring, starring Colin Firth and Scarlett Johansson and the award-winning, critically-acclaimed radical adaptation of Wuthering Heights directed by Andrea Arnold.
Sound Design: Lucinda Mason Brown
Director / Producer: Fiona McAlpine
An Allegra production for BBC Radio 4.
How instant noodles, now 60 years old, went from a shed in Japan to global success.
What is the most traded legal item in US prisons? Instant Noodles.
According to the World Instant Noodles Association, 270 million servings of instant noodles are eaten around the world every day. Annually, that's 16 to 17 portions for every man, woman and child.
At the turn of the millennium, a Japanese poll found that "The Japanese believe that their best invention of the twentieth century was instant noodles."
The Taiwanese-Japanese man who invented them (Momofuku Ando) was convinced that real peace would only come when people have enough to eat. In the bleak wreckage of post-war Japan, he spent a year in a backyard hut, creating the world's most successful industrial food. Crucially, he wanted the noodles to be ready to eat in less than three minutes. That convenience has since become a selling point for noodles that are consumed by students, travellers and, yes, prisoners the world over. Instant noodles first went on sale in 1958, and they've changed little since.
Sixty years on, Celia Hatton explores the story behind instant noodles. It's a journey that starts in Japan, at the nation's instant noodle museum, and then takes her to China, still the world's number one market for "convenient noodles" as they're known there. Chinese sales of instant noodles are falling, though, as the country becomes wealthier. But noodles are still on sale in every food store in the country. The story ends with Celia being shown how to make a "prison burrito" by an ex-prisoner from Riker's Island prison in New Jersey, in the US. We hear why instant noodles have emerged as the prisoners' currency of choice. Momofuku Ando's invention lives on.
Producer: John Murphy.
Experienced police officer and comedian Alfie Moore with the fourth episode in the current series. 'Pass the Person' deals with the very sensitive issue of how the police deals with people with mental health problems and what they can do if there's a possibility they may harm themselves. When does 'protection' become 'intrusion'. Few could manage to handle this very serious and troubling subject with humour, but Alfie's compassion and genuine concern for those involved means that he can.
As usual Alfie asks his audience what they would have done in his shoes and hears some of their own true stories.
Presenter and writer ….. Alfie Moore
Script Editor ….. Will Ing
Producer ….. Alison Vernon-Smith
A BBC Studios Production
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
On this day in 1918, defeat at Vardar left Bulgaria seeking peace with the Allies, whilst at St Jude's Church, Kitty and Victor attend a christening which is anything but harmonious.
Written by Sarah Daniels
Directed by Ciaran Bermingham
Editor: Jessica Dromgoole.
Consumer news and issues.
The latest weather forecast.
Mon-Thurs: Analysis of news and current affairs, presented by Sarah Montague. Fri: Analysis of news and current affairs, presented by Mark Mardell.
Two families from very different backgrounds, one street and a baby on a doorstep. This series charts the story of how a young Christian couple came to entrust the care of their little daughter to a Muslim family that lived nearby in 1990s Watford. They were strangers but the couple - Peris Mbuthia and Martin Gitonga - needed help, as immigrants from Kenya working in low paid jobs with a child to support and no family to step in. They were struggling and their relationship was under strain. Early one morning, Martin left his flat with six month old Sandra zipped inside his jacket and handed her over to the Zafars across the road while he went to work at a warehouse. This arrival at the door was an event that changed the course of all their lives - that day the baby girl became the Zafars' Doorstep Daughter. And a special, enduring bond develops between Sandra and the Zafar's daughter Saiqa. It is a story of faith, trust and love - a modern day telling of how it takes a village to raise a child.
In many ways it was an ideal arrangement. Sandra's parents built their careers and stabilised their relationship while little Sandra stayed with the Zafars. In turn the Zafars had all the rewards of watching Sandra grow through the baby and toddler years, filling a gap in their lives that reconnected them as a family too.
When Peris and Martin had immigration issues and decided to return to Kenya the relationship had to end and no one felt that more harshly than Saiqa. had cared for little Sandra, her Doorstep Daughter, like a mum through her formative late teen years.
In this final episode, those involved explore the lasting consequences of what was a very unusual arrangement and the sacrifices that made it work.
Producer: Sally Chesworth
Sound: Richard Hannaford
Editor: Gail Champion
Exec Editor: Richard Knight.
The Gift by Vickie Donoghue
Carol is good at looking after vulnerable young mothers but she is knocked off balance when Hayley turns up on her doorstep.
Director . . . David Hunter.
Peter Gibbs and his panel make a return visit to the John Innes Centre in Norwich. Answering the audience's questions are Bob Flowerdew, Christine Walkden, and Matthew Wilson.
Produced by Darby Dorras
Assistant producer: Hester Cant
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4.
Writers choose poems as inspiration for new stories.
He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
A woman weaves a patchwork quilt for her mother.
An enchanting story inspired by Thomas Hardy's poem about how we express love. By PK Lynch.
Credits
Writer ..... PK Lynch
Reader ..... Lucianne McEvoy
Producer ..... Kirsty Williams
A BBC Scotland Production for BBC Radio 4.
Matthew Bannister tells the life stories of people who have recently died.
Series devoted to the world of numbers.
Friends who were unable to breastfeed because of a physical condition consider how better understanding could have improved their shared experience. Fi Glover presents another conversation in the series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.
Producer: Marya Burgess.
Interviews, context and analysis.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
A satirical review of the week's news, chaired by guest host Bridget Christie.
It's judgement day for Freddie, and Brian has been rumbled.
News, reviews and interviews from the worlds of art, literature, film and music.
Jonathan Dimbleby presents political debate from Brooklands College in Weybridge, Surrey with a panel including the new co leader of the Green Party for England & Wales Sian Berry and the commentator and radio presenter Iain Dale
Producer: Lisa Jenkinson.
Weekly reflections on topical issues from a range of contributors.
The first omnibus of Season 15, Onward, set in Folkestone, in the week, in 1918, when the Allies launched their final, and decisive campaign on the Western Front. Adam, meanwhile, is on a mission to the harbour.
Cast
Adam ..... Billy Kennedy
Isabel ..... Keely Beresford
Phyllis ..... Christine Absalom
Florrie ..... Claire Rushbrook
Victor ..... Joel MacCormack
Sophie ..... Abbie Andrews
Esme ..... Katie Angelou
Norman ..... Sean Baker
Gabriel ..... Michael Bertenshaw
Juliet ..... Lizzie Bourne
Crew 1 ..... Lewis Bray
Howard ..... Gunnar Cauthery
Otto ..... Ian Conningham
Mrs Edkins ..... Rachel Davies
Sylvia ..... Joanna David
Don ..... Christopher Harper
Ted ..... Jonny Holden
Jessie ..... Lucy Hutchinson
Jack ..... Ashley Kumar
Crew 2 ..... Liam Lau Fernadez
Elizabeth ..... Kika Markham
Kitty ..... Ami Metcalf
Ralph ..... Nicholas Murchie
Fisherman ..... Cameron Percival
Valuer ..... Chris Porter
Eric ..... Paul Rainbow
Johnnie ..... Paul Ready
Adeline ..... Helen Schlesinger
Nell ..... Alice St Clair
Lilian ..... Alex Tregear
Ivy ..... Lizzy Watts
Arthur ..... Ryan Whittle
Charles ..... Rufus Wright
Peter ..... Bea White
May ..... Jonah Collingwood Harrold
Isaac ..... Scout Ready/Rex Wood
Written by Sarah Daniels
Story-led by Katie Hims
Directed by Ciaran Bermingham
Editor: Jessica Dromgoole
Sound: Martha Littlehailes
Composer: Matthew Strachan
Consultant Historian: Maggie Andrews.
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.
Pat Barker, the Booker Prize-winning author of the Regeneration trilogy and one of our greatest contemporary writers on war, reimagines the most famous conflict in literature - the legendary Trojan War as chronicled by Homer in The Illiad.
When her city falls to the Greeks, Briseis is transformed from a nineteen year old queen to a bed-gir', from a free woman to a slave, a thing. She is awarded to the god-like warrior Achilles as a prize of war. And she's not alone. On the same day, and on many others in the course of a long and bitter war, innumerable women have been seized from the wreckage of their homes and flung to the fighters.
Pat Barker was prompted to write this story by the words of a professor in Philip Roth's novel, The Human Stain. The lines act as an epigraph:
"'You know how European literature begins?' he'd ask, after having taken the roll at the first class meeting. 'With a quarrel. All of European literature springs from a fight.' And then he picked up his copy of The Iliad and read to the class the opening lines. 'Divine Muse, sing of the ruinous wrath of Achilles . . . Begin where they first quarrelled, Agamemnon the King of men, and great Achilles.' And what are they quarrelling about, these two violent, mighty souls? It's as basic as a barroom brawl. They are quarrelling over a woman. A girl, really. A girl stolen from her father. A girl abducted in a war."
Years later, Briseis looks back on her time in the Greek camp at Troy and attempts to tell her own story.
In Episode 5, Briseis has become slave to the famously brutal Agamemnon.
Written by Pat Barker
Abridged by Jill Waters and Isobel Creed
Read by Nadine Marshall and Colin Salmon
Produced by Jill Waters
A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4.
Intimate late-night conversation with Lauren Laverne and guests.
Tom Holland is joined by the history podcaster and stand-up comedian Iszi Lawrence.
In Britain's recent past, a long hot summer has often coincided with racial unrest on our streets - 1981 is perhaps the most notable example. But while we remember events in Brixton, Toxteth and Tottenham, have we forgotten the tensions in Southall during the 1960s and 70s which, some argue, paved the way for better race relations in the UK? Lovejit Dhaliwal visits a Heritge Lottery project in Southall re-examining the importance of the town's Youth Movement.
King Edmund of East Anglia lost his life in a period of our history when the country we now know as England was still being defined. He was our patron saint until the 14th century but now he's largely forgotten - and so his is resting place. Historian Dr Francis Young has a hunch that he's still in Bury St Edmunds, not in a church but under a tennis court.
Fifty years ago, a programme that some know as 'dieselisation' reached its climax on Britain's railways and saw the end of steam in public service. Many mourn the passing of steam trains but, as Helen Castor found out on a trip to Swindon, keeping these beasts going was dirty, dangerous and laborious.
Producer: Nick Patrick
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.
A mother and daughter share the everyday difficulties associated with dyslexia. Fi Glover presents another conversation in the series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.
Producer: Marya Burgess.