SATURDAY 29 DECEMBER 2018

SAT 00:00 Midnight News (m0001s14)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.


SAT 00:15 Dr John Cooper Clarke at the BBC (b081qztt)
Series 1

Textiles

The Bard of Salford performs a mixture of classic and previously unheard poems, recorded at the BBC’s Radio Theatre in London.

Ep 2 - Textiles

Set List:

To a Tikki Shirt
Smooth Operetta
George
Who Stole Bongo’s Trousers?
21 Gun Salute Suit

Written and performed by Dr John Cooper Clarke
Introduction by Johnny Green
Produced by Joe Nunnery
A BBC Studios Production


SAT 00:30 Book of the Week (m0001s16)
Blowing the Bloody Doors Off

Episode 5

Hollywood legend and British national treasure Sir Michael Caine, now 85, shares some of the lessons that life has taught him in his remarkable career.

One of our best-loved actors, Michael Caine has starred in a huge range of films, including some all-time favourites, from the classic British movies Alfie, Zulu and The Italian Job to the Hollywood blockbusting Dark Knight trilogy, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Hannah and Her Sisters and Cider House Rules.

In episode 5, Michael Caine reflects on how fame can affect the behaviour of those in the limelight. He looks back on some starstruck encounters and ahead to his continuing role as a granddad.

Written and read by Michael Caine
Abridged by Jill Waters and Isobel Creed
Produced by Jill Waters
The Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4


SAT 00:48 Shipping Forecast (m0001s18)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping


SAT 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (m0001s1b)
BBC Radio 4 joins the BBC World Service.


SAT 05:20 Shipping Forecast (m0001s1d)
The latest shipping forecast


SAT 05:30 News Briefing (m0001s1g)
National and international news from BBC Radio 4


SAT 05:43 Prayer for the Day (m0001s1j)
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Dr Jo Bailey Wells, Bishop of Dorking


SAT 05:45 iPM (m0001s1l)
Ring out the old

iPM listeners take the programme around the country - in 2018 we’ve been wild swimming in Cumbria, up tower blocks in Manchester, in to outer space, and over the seas to remote islands. We’ve also delved into divorce proceedings, surrogate pregnancies, online dating and into all manner of family secrets, surprises and upsets.

Here are just a handful of some of the best from the year.

And Stephen Fry returns to read our Your News bulletin. Email your sentence of news to iPM@bbc.co.uk

Presented by Luke Jones. Produced by Cat Farnsworth.


SAT 06:00 News and Papers (m0001szy)
The latest news headlines. Including the weather and a look at the papers.


SAT 06:07 Open Country (m0001rmv)
Reservoirs and lost villages

In this programme Helen Mark is in Derbyshire to hear the stories of the reservoirs of the Derwent valley. Under one of them, Ladybower, lie the remains of two villages which were demolished and flooded to make way for a new reservoir in the 1940s. After an exceptionally dry year, water levels have dropped so low that the stones of the past can once again been seen emerging from the mud. Helen meets the people who have travelled to the area to catch a glimpse of a long-gone community, and learns about the fascination the story of the lost villages holds. Meanwhile, further up the valley, are the remains of another village - largely ignored by the tourists. Birchinlee, or "tin town" as it was known, was built to house the navvies working on the construction of the other two reservoirs of the valley - Dewent and Howden. Helen meets an archaeologist who shows her how traces of this once-bustling settlement can still be seen in the landscape today.

Produced by Emma Campbell


SAT 06:30 Farming Today (m0001t00)
Review of the Year

Anna Hill presents a Review of the Year - looking back at the biggest food and farming stories of 2018.

Topics include the Agriculture Bill, the badger cull, seasonal labour shortages, future trade opportunities, the Fisheries Bill and of course...the weather!

Produced by Lucy Taylor


SAT 06:57 Weather (m0001t02)
The latest weather forecast.


SAT 07:00 Today (m0001t04)
News headlines and sport.


SAT 09:00 Saturday Live (m0001t06)
Gabrielle and the inheritance tracks of Brian Conley

Aasmah Mir and Richard Coles are joined by Gabrielle, she was THE pop star of the 90s – inspiring lyrics, cool image, intriguing eye patch, hit after hit, and then she went quiet. After time out as a mum of two she has just released her first album for 11 years, and she is back.
Will Farmer’s life seems only to exist on a summer’s day surrounded by beautiful objects in the garden of an English stately home, for he is an expert on Antiques Roadshow. But he’s joining us in the midst of winter to talk about his role as an auctioneer and his passion for the past.
Emma Rosen spent a year trying 25 careers before turning 25 doing archaeology in Transylvania, being an extra in a major movie, alpaca farming in Cornwall and assisting a crisis team during the terror attack on Parliament in March 2017. Emma now works as a writer and speaker, focusing on millennials in the workforce.
Saturday Live listener Gary Horrocks joins us to talk about being a fan of Judy Garland – he heads the international fan club.
JP meets Philip Pittack and Martin White who run the last surviving Spitalfields cloth merchants.
and Brian Conley tells us his inheritance tracks. He chooses Elvis Presley performing Jailhouse Rock and Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons performing Who Loves You.

Producer: Corinna Jones
Editor: Eleanor Garland


SAT 10:30 The Kitchen Cabinet (m0001t08)
Series 23

Melton Mowbray

Jay Rayner and the panel are in Melton Mowbray. Dr Zoe Laughlin, Sophie Wright, Jordan Bourke and Tim Hayward answer the audience questions.

As befitting their location, the panellists discuss delicious pork pies, pastry and blue cheese. They answer audience questions on warming drawers, leftover gammon and how best to blow off a diet.

As usual, Zoe Laughlin has brought along a bizarre invention to help her play with her food.

Produced by Darby Dorras
Assistant Producer: Hester Cant

A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4


SAT 11:00 The Forum (m0001syc)
Who Was the Real Cleopatra?

The myths that have grown up around Cleopatra since her eventful reign in the first century BCE are so vivid and alluring that they seem to have taken on a life of their own. The Egyptian queen has been portrayed in art and literature as a wily temptress whose devastating beauty seduced two of Rome’s most powerful men; or as a ruthless killer who murdered her own relatives to get ahead; or as a tragic lover who took her own life using the bite from a poisonous snake. But how much of this is actually based on historical fact? There is evidence that Queen Cleopatra was in fact a clever stateswoman and scholar, who spoke multiple languages and successfully governed Egypt for over 20 years, becoming one of the most powerful female rulers in the ancient world.

Bridget Kendall unpicks Cleopatra fact from fiction with Joyce Tyldesley, Reader in Egyptology at the University of Manchester; Maria Wyke, professor of Latin at University College, London; and Christian Greco, Director of the Museo Egizio (Egyptian Museum) in Turin, Italy.

Image: Cleopatra on Papyrus (DeAgostini/Getty Images)


SAT 11:30 From Our Own Correspondent (m0001t0c)
Fairytales and Memorable Meetings

Winter’s majestic carpet may transform Karabash, in the Russian rust belt, into a fairytale world that seems sprinkled with icing sugar, says Steve Rosenberg, but the reality is far from magical. There he meets a man who might just be a spy.

Kate Adie introduces some of the many memorable meetings our correspondents have shared in 2018.

Mathew Charles spends a twitchy night out in the company of a drug dealer and cartel hitman who explains how Colombia’s narco trade is changing.

Helen Nianias has coffee with a man who left Kosovo to fight jihad in Syria, but who was back less than two weeks later before his mum even realised he'd gone.

Aisha Gani stumbles across a rave in a refugee camp in Bangladesh – home to some of the hundreds of thousands of Rohingya who’ve fled violence in neighboring Myanmar.

And Gabriel Gatehouse has a mysterious encounter with a troll in Sweden.

Producer: Joe Kent.


SAT 12:00 News Summary (m0001t0f)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.


SAT 12:04 Money Box (m0001syf)
Perfect Pensions Storm

More than 2000 steel workers - many of them in the Welsh steel town of Port Talbot - were persuaded to transfer out of their final salary pension scheme. Many now deeply regret their decision, and believe they were mis-advised by"sharks" who descended on the town to take advantage of a period of confusion. Tony Bonsignore hears how the men's lives have been affected, what lessons have been learnt, and whether enough has been done to stop something similar happening again.

Presenter: Tony Bonsignore
Producer: Alex Lewis
Editor: Richard Vadon


SAT 12:30 The News Quiz (m0001s0h)
Series 98

Best of 2018

In this special programme, Miles Jupp looks back at the best bits of News Quizzing from 2018. Featuring news stories big and small from international diplomatic wranglings to the pomp of a royal wedding via some less familiar "and finally" whimsy. Also features the pick of listener cuttings sent in across the year - well, the broadcastable ones at least.

Writer: Mike Shephard
Producer: Richard Morris
A BBC Studios Production


SAT 12:57 Weather (m0001t0h)
The latest weather forecast.


SAT 13:00 News (m0001t0k)
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.


SAT 13:10 Correspondents Look Ahead (m0001s0q)
Correspondents Look Ahead 2018

How do you look ahead in a world which constantly takes us by surprise, sometimes shocks us and often makes us ask 'what happens next?'

Who would have predicted that President Trump would, to use his words, fall in love with the North Korean leader Kim Jung Un, whose country he had threatened to totally destroy? Who could have imagined that a prominent Saudi journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, would be murdered and dismembered in a Saudi Consulate? And, on a happier note, we’re relieved that, as the year ends a climate change conference in Poland did manage to save the Paris pact, and maybe our world.

The BBC's chief international correspondent, Lyse Doucet talks to correspondents from around the globe about what might happen in the world in 2019.

Guests:

Katya Adler, Europe editor
Yolande Knell, Middle East correspondent
James Robbins, Diplomatic correspondent
Steve Rosenberg, Moscow correspondent
Jon Sopel, North America editor

Producer: Ben Carter
Editor: Penny Murphy


SAT 14:00 Art in Miniature (b0952zlc)
Tiny bathers relax in a puddle of oily water on a pavement; a galleon sails on the head of a pin, a dancer twirls next to a mote of dust under a microscope - Dr Lance Dann, lover of miniature worlds, crouches down on hands and knees to better observe the world of tiny art.

Prompted by advances in technology, and the enduring wonder of things created on a really, really tiny scale, Lance Dann follows his own obsession with the miracle of miniature art.
Knocking on the tiny doors of creators from street artist Slinkachu, whose mesmerising cityscapes are created, photographed and abandoned in the street, to the collection of antique miniature portraits in Sotheby’s where expert Mark Griffith Jones delicately reveals the hidden treasures that span from over 500 years of art history.

The 21st century has experienced a revival of the small in art Desiree De Leon has attracted hundreds of thousands of followers for her Instagram account of small doodles, whilst the ‘the chewing gum man’ Ben Wilson, has gathered a loyal following for his hidden gems scattered about the London streets.
Every morning Ben gets up and starts creating tiny tiles on which his innermost feelings are expressed - and then he leaves them on the Underground for people to find.

Then there is the barely visible - Willard Wigan MBE - the poster-boy of microscopic art, a dyslexia sufferer who has found relief in the creation of tiny art works. Recognised globally, his sculptures, which are small enough to fit on the head of a pin, sell for six-figure sums.
"I work between my heartbeats. I have one-and-a-half seconds to actually move. And at the same time I have to watch I don't inhale my own work."

Then there is the nearly invisible – Jonty Hurwitz - who sculpts with Nano-technology, and sometimes loses sight of it in the process.
“When I found the sculpture it was one of the most moving moments of my life, you see all these grotesque pieces of dust as the microscope is moving around and suddenly there’s a woman, dancing”

What is the enduring appeal of the miniature in art, and where has this revival come from?
To discover where it hides, why it appeals, and how the artists’ work on such delicate objects, Dann plays with scale, sound and voices to bring a closer, more microscopic focus on the art world.

Presenter: Lance Dann is an associate member and former sound designer of The Wooster Group, a writer and director of a range of radio dramas including podcast “Blood Culture”, commissioned by The Welcome Trust, and won a Prix Marulic for his production of Moby Dick for BBC Radio 4.

Producer: Sara Jane Hall

Photo credit: Slinkachu
Music sourced by Danny Webb


SAT 14:30 Drama (m0001t0m)
The Canterbury Tales

Part 1

1/2 Queen of Ambridge amateur theatricals, Lynda Snell, takes charge of this barnstorming new adaptation of Chaucer’s classic tales. Join the cast of The Archers to enjoy stories of courtly love, deadly rivalry and boisterous sex - with a little bit of magic thrown in for good measure.

“A festive feast of spellbinding stories and bawdy banter … Another Lynda Snell triumph!” – The Borchester Echo

Written by Geoffrey Chaucer
Dramatised by Nick Warburton

Director …. Kim Greengrass
Producer …. Alison Hindell

Tellers of the Tales:
Ruth Archer & Chaucer .... Felicity Finch
David Archer & the Host .... Timothy Bentinck
Kirsty Miller .... Annabelle Dowler
Eddie Grundy .... Trevor Harrison
Lilian Bellamy .... Sunny Ormonde
Jazzer McCreary .... Ryan Kelly

The Knight’s Tale:
Theseus .... Nick Barber
Woman of Thebes .... Sunny Ormonde
Jailer .... Trevor Harrison
Palamon .... Barry Farrimond
Arcite .... James Cartwright
Emily .... Emerald O’Hanrahan
Soldier & Jolly Theban .... Ryan Kelly
Gatekeeper .... Timothy Bentinck
Diana .... Felicity Finch

The Miller’s Tale:
John .... Timothy Bentinck
Alison .... Annabelle Dowler
Nicholas .... James Cartwright
Absolon .... Nick Barber

The Wife of Bath’s Tale:
Knight .... Barry Farrimond
King Arthur .... Trevor Harrison
Queen .... Annabelle Dowler
Crone .... Carole Boyd

The Sailor’s Tale:
Merchant .... James Cartwright
Monk .... Nick Barber
Wife .... Emerald O’Hanrahan

Other roles played by members of the company.

Studio Managers .... Andy Partington & Vanessa Nuttall
Production Co-ordinators .... Sally Lloyd & Mel Ward


SAT 15:30 How to Play... Beethoven's Symphony No 7 (m0001rmc)
We eavesdrop on rehearsals as world famous conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy and the Southbank Sinfonia prepare for a performance Beethoven’s beloved Symphony No. 7. They give us their insiders' perspective on this celebrated music and show how they work together to make this 200-year-old masterpiece come alive in the concert hall. Sir Roger Norrington shares his experiences of conducting orchestras in Beethoven over the last 50 years, and Erica Buurman looks at what inspired the famously grumpy composer to produce his most joyful symphony yet.

Produced by Chris Taylor for BBC Wales

Photo credit: Sam Olivier


SAT 16:00 Woman's Hour (m0001t0q)
Turning 18 in 2018 One Year On, Lily Collins, Sexuality and Power in the Music Industry

We hear from four women who turned 18 in 2018. Rachel, Amika, Jayde and Cerys tell us how their year has been and what their hopes and aspirations are for the future.

We discuss sexuality and power in the music industry with the singer Becky Hill, the music journalist and academic Jacqueline Springer and the singer songwriter Victoria Hesketh also known as Little Boots.

We hear from you about the efforts you make for others at Christmas with Sue, Kasha, Anna and Tony.

Lily Collins tells us about playing Fantine in the new BBC adaptation of Victor Hugo’s 19th century classic novel Les Miserables.

The chef Prue Leith, the comedian Bridget Christie, the actor Kelechi Okafor and the Deputy Editor of the New Statesman Helen Lewis tell us how they have triumphed over life pitfalls.

The singer Becky Hill performs her latest single Sunrise in the East.

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds was started by a group of women with a singular purpose to stamp out the fashion for feathers in hats. We hear about Etta Lemon who led campaign and why she was a staunch anti feminist.

Presented by Tina Daheley
Producer:Rabeka Nurmahomed
Editor: Beverley Purcell


SAT 17:00 PM (m0001t0s)
Full coverage of the day's news.


SAT 17:30 iPM (m0001s1l)
[Repeat of broadcast at 05:45 today]


SAT 17:54 Shipping Forecast (m0001t0w)
The latest shipping forecast.


SAT 17:57 Weather (m0001t0y)
The latest weather forecast.


SAT 18:00 Six O'Clock News (m0001t10)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.


SAT 18:15 Loose Ends (m0001t12)
Hugh Grant, Catherine Tate, Janis Ian, David Sedaris and many more

Clive Anderson and Nikki Bedi pick their Loose Ends highlights from 2018. Conversation, comedy and music comes courtesy of an eclectic line up: Hugh Grant, Catherine Tate, Janis Ian, David Sedaris and many more.

Producer: Sukey Firth


SAT 19:00 Profile (m0001sxw)
Melania Trump

Melania Trump is the second foreign-born First Lady and Donald Trump’s third wife; an ex-model, 24 years his junior, who once posed pregnant in a gold bikini on the steps of her husband’s jet. It was modelling that took Melania from small-town Slovenia to New York and her fateful encounter with the future President. But despite being one of the most recognisable woman in the world she remains something an enigma. So who is Melania Trump? What does she believe? And what might she do on the global stage which – however improbably, given her origins in far away Slovenia – she now shares with the President of the United States?

Presenter: Becky Milligan
Producer: Ben Crighton

Photo by Stane Jerko


SAT 19:15 Saturday Review (m0001t14)
Listeners' suggestions for the best of 2018

Find out what Saturday Review listeners chose as their cultural highlights of 2018. We'll discuss all the regular genres: films, theatre, exhibitions, books and television. And lots of items which we didn't get a chance to review from the past 12 months. Tom Sutcliffe is joined by Tiffany Jenkins and Ekow Eshun and lots of listeners on the phone from around the country, who tell us what particularly impressed them last year.
The producer is Oliver Jones
Podcast extra recommendations:
Ekow: Strange days exhibition
Tiffany: pre-sale auction houses
Tom; Bill Viola


SAT 20:00 Doorstep Daughter (m0001t16)
Doorstep Daughter - Omnibus

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.

Producer: Sally Chesworth
Sound: Richard Hannaford
Editor: Gail Champion
Exec Editor: Richard Knight


SAT 21:00 Drama (m0001q5y)
Born to Be Wilde: An Ideal Husband

Oscar Wilde's classic comic melodrama is given a sparkling and surprising new production, featuring the music of The Troggs, Adele and Daft Punk.

Robert Chiltern has been blackmailed by the devilishly witty Mrs Cheveley. Unless he supports her financial scheme, she'll reveal to the word that, in his youth, he sold a cabinet secret for money. The walls have already begun to close on Robert; his wife Gertrude has learned of the crime and the two face almost certain estrangement. Cue Lord Goring, the idlest man in London. Does he have it in him to face down Mrs Cheveley? Well, he was engaged to her once.

Robert Chiltern . . . John Heffernan
Laura Cheveley . . . Miranda Raison
Arthur Goring . . . Ryan Whittle
Gertrude Chiltern . . . Lucy Doyle
Mabel Chiltern . . . Saffron Coomber
Lord Caversham . . . Michael Bertenshaw
Lady Markby . . . Elizabeth Counsell
Phipps . . . Tony Turner
Mason . . . Sean Murray

Musical direction and arrangement by Colin Sell

Directed by Sasha Yevtushenko

An Ideal Husband is part of a celebration of Oscar Wilde's life and Work, Born to be Wilde, offering a 21st century perspective on the making of a modern celebrity. Featuring energetic adaptations of his best-loved plays, and an imaginative approach to the less familiar aspects of his biography - this is Wilde's life before the fall.

We encounter Wilde on the make, Wilde in his pomp, Wilde on the edge of the abyss.

We see the young Wilde create his own celebrity and fame, before he'd produced any work to be famous for. We see Wilde the devoted family man, having to confront his growing estrangement from his wife. We see a hubristic Wilde, flirting with danger by publically hinting at his own sexuality.

These biographical elements are given greater poignancy by our knowledge of what happened next. And the successes of An Ideal Husband and The Importance of Being Earnest in 1895 marked the climax of his theatrical career, but also the point of his downfall.

Each of the plays is introduced by Oscar Wilde himself (played by Max Bennett).


SAT 22:00 Archive on 4 (b09p2kfc)
Back to Vietnam

Julian Pettifer, the BBC's 'man in Saigon' during the Vietnam War, reflects on the Tet Offensive of 1968 as a turning point in world history.

On the evening of 30th January 1968, Julian dined with his cameraman Ernie Christie in a hotel in Saigon, while reporting the Vietnam War. There were few journalists there at the time because the Communists had agreed to a truce during Tet, the Vietnamese festival of New Year, and many of the international press corps had left the city.

It was Ernie's telephone call, in the darkness of the early hours of the 31st January, which alerted Julian to the Tet Offensive. Ernie was staying in a hotel close to the Presidential Palace and he called Julian to tell him there was heavy fighting in the streets nearby. As Julian says, "In Saigon we were used to the lullaby of distant gunfire, but this was something much more immediate - the unmistakable thump of a heavy machine gun, far too close for comfort."

Julian and Ernie took up a position in the driveway of an elegant house and shot close-up footage which at the time would only be seen in the movies. For several hours they remained in this position, trapped in the driveway by gunfire, with the mutilated body of a red-headed, bespectacled American military policemen hanging out of a Jeep beside them. Julian says that the face of that man still haunts him to this day.

It was not until that evening that they begin to learn the scale of the Tet Offensive - thousands of Communist troops had infiltrated Saigon, attacking dozens of targets including the American Embassy. Almost every provincial town and major US base in South Vietnam had also been assaulted.

Julian's reporting of Tet got to the heart of the conflict. He interviewed American GIs and Vietnamese civilians caught up in the war, bringing a human side to the tragedy that was unfolding. His style was serious, yet honest and down-to-earth and ground-breaking, the "soldier's-eye view" reportage he produced of the Tet Offensive won him a BAFTA and later an OBE for his services to broadcasting.

Tet turned out to be the turning point in the Vietnam conflict, coming completely out of the blue, it caught the American military and the world at large off-guard. Against the armed might of the USA and its allies, the Communists suffered a tactical defeat, but in the long term they won an extraordinary strategic and propaganda victory. It was those images, nightly on television, that finally turned the US public against the war and convinced them that it could not be won.

Fifty years on, Julian returns to his archive to recount his personal experiences, drawn from the heart of the Vietnam war. He recounts how during his time reporting in Vietnam, the Joint US Public Affairs Office threatened to take away his accreditation because they believed his reports to be 'Anti-American' and unbalanced.

Julian explores how Tet was the spark which ignited a series of explosive events that made it a turning point, not only in the Vietnam war, but in modern history. The anti-Vietnam war movement, which spread worldwide, gave powerful moral support to other causes that challenged the establishment. The Civil Rights Movement in the US, and women's rights and student rights movements almost everywhere, took inspiration and courage from the growing opposition to the war.

Contributors include: Martin Bell; Don North, formerly of ABC News; Lien-Hang Nguyen, Professor of History at Columbia University; Andrew Preston, Professor of American History at Cambridge University; Tariq Ali; Sheila Rowbotham.

Produced by Melissa FitzGerald.
A Blakeway production for BBC Radio 4.


SAT 23:00 The Symbols of Bliss (b08y26qf)
Charles Bliss was a remarkable utopian visionary, whose experiences as a young witness to the pogroms and then Dachau and Buchenwald made him determined to put all his effort into finding a means of bringing about peace between nations. His big inspiration was his belief that conflict arose when people misunderstood each other, or misinterpreted the other’s language.

A new visual language based on ideograms would, he felt, prevent such misunderstanding - and he spent years both perfecting and then trying to sell his new system, which he named Semantography and which has become commonly known as Blissymbolics. 

As Michael Symmons Roberts will explain, Bliss and his wife Claire sent thousands of letters to academics and librarians across the world without success, but then decades later his language was taken up in an entirely unexpected way - as a means of communicating with children with cerebral palsy. Sadly this apparent turn of good fortune did not lead to a happy ending, and Bliss died an apparently frustrated and lonely man.

Nonetheless, as Michael will explain, he was a great utopian visionary whose determined effort to change the world single-handedly might not have finally paid off, but he left a great legacy behind in his linguistic achievement and in the thousands whom he helped to communicate with the world. Michael meets one of those people, Peter Zein, as well as Shirley McNaughton, the nurse who was one of the key figures in applying Blissymbolics to special needs education, and Brian Stride, a personal friend and admirer of Bliss. 

Presenter: Michael Symmons Roberts
Producer: Geoff Bird
Exec Producer: Jo Meek
A Sparklab production for BBC Radio 4


SAT 23:30 The Digital Human (b05tkvkj)
Series 7

Seduction

Aleks talks to Tinder users Harriet Southgate and Kira Cheers who speak not only about the seductive nature of the app, but how they promote the gamification of dating. Biological anthropologist, Helen Fisher argues that dating apps like Tinder and Grindr can cause cognitive overload because humans are just not used to having so much choice when it comes to picking a date. Aleks also speaks with Paul Ross, known as the Father of Seduction, about a rather chilling and systemised approach to seduction and explores whether dating apps are in fact missing out the slow play of the seduction process.

Produced by Kate Bissell
Researched by Elizabeth Ann Duffy