Historian Catherine Merridale concludes her chronicle of the tortuous gestation of Vasily Grossman’s novel STALINGRAD to print.
Early 1953. Vasily Grossman’s epic, Tolstoyan, novel of what most Russian’s still call The Great Patriotic War had appeared to general acclaim. At the same time Stalin'se state sponsored anti-Semitic campaign of terror was culminating in the infamous ‘Doctor’s Plot’. Then ‘Comrade Stalin died without Comrade Stalin’s permission’ Millions of Soviet citizens were stunned, distraught.
It was then that the most vicious and terrifying attacks on Grossman’s novel began.
This cheery question leads Drs Rutherford and Fry to embark on an evolutionary thought experiment.
Zoologist Matthew Cobb questions whether humans really are the dominant species. Ecologist Kate Jones explains why some species are more extinction-prone than others. Plus Phil Plait, AKA The Bad Astronomer, busts some myths about why the dinosaurs went extinct.
Send your questions for future series, along with any Curio correspondence for the podcast, to: curiouscases@bbc.co.uk
The latest news headlines. Including the weather and a look at the papers.
“They’re wonderful creatures, wonderful creatures with wings.” Says 11-year-old Callum Brooks, who has just recently started pigeon racing.
We join Callum and other pigeon fanciers from all over the UK as they give us an insight into the highs and lows of pigeon racing and find why a sport that was once a popular pastime of the working classes is now falling out of fashion and is in danger of disappearing altogether.
We discover the art of breeding a winning bird from Clive and Jill in Radstock. Head to the back of the Larkhall Inn as pigeons are marked up ready for a Saturday race. Then spend a morning with the Convoyors as they prepare for the liberation of 5000 birds. And finally join Trevor and his son Simon on race day as they anxiously wait to find out if they have won, or even if their pigeons will return home at all.
Our expert panel interrogate the manifestos from the major political parties and discuss the promises made on rural issues from tree planting to bus services.
News and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
Comedian and YouTube star James Veitch wonders if mindfulness can help him create a new factual podcast format.
Miraculously, BBC Radio 4 have commissioned James to make another three episodes. But, as ever, James lacks focus and application.
Could mindfulness be the answer? James turns to renowned mindfulness expert Sam Harris for help.
Adam Fleming and the BBC's politics team bring you the essential guide to the 2019 UK general election.
When Russian forces took over parts of Ukraine in spring 2014, much of the world held its breath. Would Western countries side with Ukraine, and could the fighting spread further into Eastern Europe? While that kind of escalation did not happen, life in Eastern Ukraine, where Russian-backed rebel forces and Ukraine’s army are still facing off, still looks something like wartime. As Jonah Fisher recently found, in this terrain, politicians, as well as soldiers, have to tread carefully.
This week Democratic members of Congress accelerated their push to impeach Donald Trump. Anthony Zurcher has been watching the hearings. He has had a front-row seat as history is written, but sometimes he wonders what history might make of it.
Since the early Nineties, the United Nations has held an annual conference to bring the world together to tackle the threat of climate change. This year's event in Madrid is meant to persuade the biggest polluters to rein in their emissions. But, as David Shukman reports, progress is as slow as ever.
A Norwegian pensioner convicted of spying in Moscow recently returned home in a spy swap. Frode Berg’s arrest caused controversy in Norway, with criticism of the use of civilians in espionage. Sarah Rainsford met Mr Berg in Oslo, soon after his release.
Prince William has just made his first visit to Kuwait. He will have found it to be a different place to what it was nearly three decades ago, when thousands died during Iraq's invasion and occupation of the country. Sumaya Bakhsh has recently visited Kuwait and discovered that, for some, a sense of loss still lingers.
The latest news from the world of personal finance plus advice for those trying to make the most of their money.
Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis present the week via topical stand-up and sketches. They're joined by Phil Wang, Lee Ridley, Jess Robinson and Gemma Arrowsmith.
Katie Perrior gives us insight into what it's like doing PR for politicians on the campaign trail.
It was written by the cast with additional material by Sarah Morgan, Gabby Hutchinson-Crouch, Aidan Fitzmaurice and Mandy Baker.
Chris Mason presents topical debate from Chesterfield in Derbyshire with a panel including Shadow Justice Secretary Richard Burgon, the Liberal Democrat Spokesperson for the Environment and Climate Change Wera Hobhouse , Conservative politician Sir Patrick McLoughlin and Tommy Sheppard from the Scottish National Party.
The final visit to Middlemarch as we witness the stealthy convergence of human lots, the interweaving and the unravelling of the stories of love, family and friendship set in an English town.
George Eliot ..... Juliet Aubrey
Dorothea ..... Olivia Vinall
Will ..... Joseph Quinn
Mr Bulstrode ..... Adrian Scarborough
Mrs Bulstrode ..... Rose Cavaliero
Dr Lydgate ..... John Heffernan
Rosamond ..... Laura Christy
Rev Farebrother ..... Miles Jupp
Celia ..... Lucy Reynolds
Sir James ..... Hugh Skinner
Mr Brooke/Mr Garth ..... Neil McCaul
Mary Garth ..... Scarlett Courtney
Letty Garth ..... Grace Doherty
Fred Vincy ..... Will Kirk
Mr Vincy ..... Rick Warden
Mrs Vincy ..... Heather Craney
Mrs Plymdale ..... Jessica Turner
Dr Hawley/Clerk ..... Greg Jones
Mrs Abel ..... Sinead MacInnes
Mr Hopkins ..... Ikky Elyas
Benjamin Zephaniah is infertile. This is not something you hear men readily admit. It has been a taboo subject. This has resulted in many men with fertility problems feeling isolated and guilt-ridden whilst also grieving for the child they cannot have by natural methods. Richard Clothier describes his experiences. Benjamin meets Richard’s wife Terri in the next programme. Producer Sarah Blunt
Fertility Network UK offers information, advice and support for anyone suffering from infertility related problems.
The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority is the UK's independent regulator overseeing the use of gametes and embryos in fertility treatment and research. The website offers details of licensed fertility clinics across the UK.
A year ago more than a quarter of a million people took to the streets across France, in what became known as the “gilets jaunes” protests. They began as a reaction to an increase in fuel tax - a tax which was supposed to help the environment, but which the protesters said meant they could no longer afford to drive their cars or get to work.
These were the first high profile demonstrations against policies designed to tackle climate change, but they put a spotlight on a sense of unrest that has spread far beyond France.
So if it is widely accepted that climate change is a real threat, why is there a backlash against climate policies?
M. Night Shyamalan, Amelia Bullmore, Rob Brydon, Ayesha Casely-Hayford, The Tiger Lillies, Jungle Brown
Clive Anderson and Emma Freud are joined by M. Night Shyamalan, Amelia Bullmore, Rob Brydon and Ayesha Casely-Hayford for an eclectic mix of conversation, music and comedy. With music from The Tiger Lillies and Jungle Brown.
An insight into the character of an influential person making the news headlines
Fairview at Young Vic, So Long My Son, Annette Hess, John Walker, A Very Scandi Scandal
Fairview is a Pulitzer Prize-winning play just opened at the Young Vic in London. It starts out like a conventional US African American dramedy and then begins to mess with the audience's expectations. How will our reviewers feel about it?
Chinese film So Long My Son has won awards at international film festivals. It tells the story of a family over 30 years of turbulent Chinese history
Annette Hess' prize-winning novel The German House is the story of a Polish translator at the 1963 Frankfurt Auschwitz trials. Caught between societal and familial expectations and her unique ability to speak truth to power—as she fights to expose the dark truths of her nation’s past. If everything your family told you was a lie, how far would you go to uncover the truth?
A new exhibition of work by British abstract painter John Walker at Ikon in Birmingham includes new paintings
A Very Scandi Scandal has just started in the Walter Presents slot on Channel 4. It's a Swedish comedy heist with two extremely unlikely bank robbers
Shahidha Bari's guests are Dea Birkett, Kit Davis and Robert Hanks. The producer is Oliver Jones
Is it, the essential grease for the wheels of commerce, signifiers to the malaise of the modern age, or indispensable tool to make yourself heard? Hype or hyperbole is many things to many people and in one way or another it can be argued that it deeply affects us all.
It played havoc with presenter Murray Lachlan Young. Once hyped as the million-pound poet, it all got out of control and he ended up seeking refuge in a wood - for three years!
Murray has been interested in hype ever since. Where does it come from? Can it be controlled? Is it always bad, and what does it say about public discourse and ideas when, to be heard, it often seems you are compelled to shout loudest?
In Peak Hype he explores the archive, reaching back to the First World War and the man who evolved the techniques which were used by others to persuade people to do almost anything - from fun things like buying more stuff than you need, to acquiescing in the murder or imprisonment of their friends and neighbours.
Hype was at heart of governments' post-war reconstruction strategies and powered everything from Beatlemania, punk, the celebrity obsession and the sunny uplands of the consumer society, where brands nosily competed for our attention and our money.
It may have been loud but it wasn't 'peak'. It has taken the invention of the smart phone to put a hype superhighway in our pockets. In this programme, Murray speaks to PR stars Lynne Franks, Mark Borkowski and Simon Evans and cultural commentators Richard Wharton and Darla Jane Gilroy and asks have we reached 'peak hype' and what does that mean?
Charles Dickens asks Jack to investigate the death of a young boy at an iron foundry. But the story feels uncomfortably close to home for Dickens and he begins to question his motives. Is he an editor or a novelist? And, of course, he is still completely unaware of just how involved Agnes is with uncovering stories for the paper. Will it stay that way?
Dickens ..... Jamie Glover
Jack ..... Freddy White
Agnes ..... Jasmine Hyde
Mr Fell ..... Jonathan Keeble
Widow ..... Charlie Brooks
Billy ..... Harry Eden
Joseph Paxton ..... .John Dougall
Factory Owner ..... Sam Dale
The post-war novel that summed up middle-class white America and established John Updike as the major American author of his generation. Rabbit, Run is the first in a virtuoso Pullitzer Prize-wining quintet featuring hapless Harry Angstrom, whom we meet as a 26 year old former high school basketball star and suburban paragon in the midst of a personal crisis.
Rabbit returns home to get his things and is waylaid by Jack Eccles, a young Episcopalian minister on a mission to understand and reform him - or at least get a game of golf.
Rabbit, Run established Updike as one of the major American novelists of his generation. In the New York Times he was praised for his "artful and supple" style in his "tender and discerning study of the desperate and the hungering in our midst".
Radio 4 plans to broadcast all five novels in the series over the next few years.
The story of the latest terrorist attack in London is both tragic and extraordinary, starkly contrasting the evil of the assassin and the virtues of his young victims. The red-faced authorities are trying to work out how it came about that a convicted jihadist attending a prisoner rehabilitation conference stabbed to death two of the people who wanted to help him. Meanwhile, and predictably, the event has been politicised. It is being cited as evidence that Islamist terrorists cannot be de-radicalised, and that even if they could, we can never know whether a jihadist who claims to have been de-radicalised is telling the truth. The answer for some? ‘Lock them up and throw away the key.’ Those who believe in second chances, on the other hand, might mention that one of the heroes who confronted and helped to subdue the knife attacker on London Bridge was a convicted murderer on day release. But perhaps before we consider how to punish and rehabilitate Islamists we should think about how to stop young Muslims from being radicalised in the first place. ‘Prevention’ is a catch-all term; for some it is code for cack-handed state interference in the private affairs of religious minorities; for others it is about community-building and a sense of belonging. But is that wishful thinking when communities seem so polarised, even ghettoised? Is it unreasonable of our society to preach “British values” to young Muslims who feel both economically and politically alienated? Or does the blame lie with those on both sides who have fought against integration? Featuring Dr Rakib Ehsan, Dr Usama Hasan, Hadiya Masieh and Dr Rob Faure Walker.
Quote … Unquote, the popular celebrity quotations quiz, returns for its 55th series.
Join Nigel as he quizzes a host of celebrity guests on the origins of sayings and well-known quotes, and gets the famous panel to share their favourite anecdotes.
Across forty years, Nigel Rees has been joined by writers, actors, musicians, scientists and various comedy types. Kenneth Williams, Judi Dench, PD James, Sir Ian KcKellen and Peter Ustinov... have all graced the Quote...Unquote stage.
As poetry events, audiences and online views of performances multiply, poet and performer Yomi Ṣode looks at the cultures around poetry. Talking to poets where they make their work he finds that community inspires and supports new and established writers but that finding a voice can be both thrilling and painful.
Yomi hears from Kareem Parkins-Brown about winning the Roundhouse 2019 poetry slam, but still feeling like an imposter and trying to integrate his world with the poetry world. Bridget Minamore speaks about the costs of code-switching: shifting from one linguistic and cultural register to another. Sola Browne talks about the influence of mentors and performs at BoxedIN an open mic event run by Yomi where the crowd is loud and first timers and circuit stars feed off the audience energy. Malika Booker and Nick Makoha talk about craft, the global and historical community of poets and hard work.
SUNDAY 08 DECEMBER 2019
SUN 00:00 Midnight News (m000c2wg)
National and international news from BBC Radio 4
SUN 00:30 Cyprus Avenue (b075fdrt)
A chance meeting at the airport awaiting an increasingly delayed flight sees a young couple discover they have childhood histories - and family tragedies - in common, growing up on the streets of East Belfast - experiences which have defined every aspect of their lives, not least their relationship to the city they once called home. But as they journey back to Belfast, to their families and to the reminders of the past, they slowly begin to look to the future.
Lucy Caldwell is an award-wining playwright and novelist whose work is no stranger to Radio 4. Her novels ‘The Meeting Point’ and ‘All the Beggars Riding’ were serialised on Book at Bedtime and her drama includes ‘Notes to Future Self’, ‘Avenues of Eternal Peace’, ‘Quicksands’ and the Imison award winning ‘Girl from Mars’.
Writer: Lucy Caldwell
Reader: Laura Pyper
Producer: Heather Larmour
SUN 00:48 Shipping Forecast (m000c2wj)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping.
SUN 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (m000c2wl)
BBC Radio 4 joins the BBC World Service.
SUN 05:20 Shipping Forecast (m000c2wn)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping.
SUN 05:30 News Briefing (m000c2wq)
National and international news from BBC Radio 4.
SUN 05:43 Bells on Sunday (m000c2ws)
The church of St Nicholas, Sandhurst in Kent
Bells on Sunday comes from the medieval church of St Nicholas, Sandhurst in Kent. The tower has a ring of six bells with the tenor weighing over twelve hundredweight and tuned to F sharp. We hear them ringing Grandsire doubles.
SUN 05:45 Profile (m000c2w2)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 on Saturday]
SUN 06:00 News Headlines (m000c3dn)
The latest national and international news headlines.
SUN 06:05 Something Understood (m00029f6)
Faith and Finance
Mark Tully sets out to examine the sometimes uneasy relationship between the management of money and religious beliefs.
In conversation with Jain accountant and teacher Professor Atul Shah, he explores the differences between the Jain ethical system of business practice and the prevailing Western financial theory.
There’s poetry from Philip Larkin and Benjamin Zephaniah, prose by George Eliot and music from Sanjivani Bhelande and Esperanza Spalding.
The readers are Emily Raymond and Matt Addis.
Presenter: Mark Tully
Producer: Frank Stirling
A 7digital production for BBC Radio 4
SUN 06:35 On Your Farm (m000c3dq)
Farming for Laughs
Meet farmer and comedy writer Jim Smith. Ruth Sanderson joins him on his farm in Perthshire, as he feeds his cattle. Jim describes how he's recently taken up writing about the funny side of rural life, and Ruth questions how much of his comedy caricatures are autobiographical.
Produced by Beatrice Fenton
SUN 06:57 Weather (m000c3ds)
The latest weather forecast.
SUN 07:00 News and Papers (m000c3dv)
The latest news headlines. Including a look at the papers.
SUN 07:10 Sunday (m000c3dx)
Sunday morning religious news and current affairs programme.
SUN 07:54 Radio 4 Appeal (m000c3dz)
Bhopal Medical Appeal
Jon Snow makes the Radio 4 Appeal on behalf of Bhopal Medical Appeal.
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 ‘Bhopal Medical Appeal’.
- Cheques should be made payable to ‘Bhopal Medical Appeal’.
SUN 07:57 Weather (m000c3f1)
The latest weather forecast.
SUN 08:00 News and Papers (m000c3f3)
The latest news headlines. Including a look at the papers.
SUN 08:10 Sunday Worship (m000c3f5)
Follow the Star - Looking Deeper
The Archbishop of Canterbury leads a service for the second Sunday of Advent from the Chapel of Lambeth Palace. The preacher is the Chaplain, the Revd Dr Isabelle Hamley. The service takes as its theme the Church of England's Advent materials "Follow the Star." Music is led by St Martin's Voices directed by Gabriella Noble and accompanied by Ben Giddens. Readings: Isaiah 11: 1-10; Mark 3:1-12. Producer: Andrew Earis.
SUN 08:48 A Point of View (m000bs54)
Conversations of a cockroach and an alley cat
John Gray tells the story of Archy and Mehitabel, a newspaper column created in 1916 by the US journalist Don Marquis.
It chronicles the conversations between a cockroach and a cat and was a phenomenal success with a readership who "mistrusted politicians and intellectuals who talked grandly of a radiant future".
John Gray reflects on the lessons for today.
Producer: Adele Armstrong ,
SUN 08:58 Tweet of the Day (b04t0p28)
Brown Skua
Tweet of the Day is the voice of birds and our relationship with them, from around the world.
Liz Bonnin presents brown skua hunting over an Antarctic landscape. These bulky brown birds with their hooked death dealing bills are often cast as villains alongside the apparently helpless and lovable penguins. But skuas are highly efficient predators, their skills honed to find the maximum food they can in a largely barren landscape. They're resourceful pirates, forcing other birds to drop or disgorge their catches. They also scavenge around fishing boats or loiter at seal colonies where carcases are easy meat. But a penguin rookery which may have hundreds of pairs of birds provides a real bounty, where waiting for an opportunity, the keen-eyed skua swoops to seize its next victim which if it is small enough, will even swallow it whole.
SUN 09:00 Broadcasting House (m000c3f7)
The Sunday morning news magazine programme. Presented by Paddy O'Connell
SUN 10:00 The Archers Omnibus (m000c3f9)
Writer, Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti
Director, Kim Greengrass
Editor, Jeremy Howe
Ruth Archer ….. Felicity Finch
Pip Archer ….. Daisy Badger
Josh Archer ….. Angus Imrie
Pat Archer ….. Patricia Gallimore
Helen Archer ….. Louiza Patikas
Tom Archer ….. William Troughton
Brian Aldridge ….. Charles Collingwood
Phoebe Aldridge ….. Lucy Morris
Rex Fairbrother ….. Nick Barber
Toby Fairbrother ….. Rhys Bevan
Clarrie Grundy ….. Heather Bell
Eddie Grundy ….. Trevor Harrison
Will Grundy ….. Philip Molloy
Mia Grundy ….. Molly Pipe
Jim Lloyd ….. John Rowe
Kirsty Miller ….. Annabelle Dowler
Elizabeth Pargetter ….. Alison Dowling
Freddie Pargetter ….. Toby Laurence
Johnny Phillips ….. Tom Gibbons
Lynda Snell ….. Carole Boyd
Robert Snell ….. Graham Blockey
Andrew ….. Tim Dutton
SUN 11:15 Desert Island Discs (m000c3fc)
Professor Russell Foster, professor of circadian neuroscience
Professor Russell Foster is head of the Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute at the University of Oxford, professor of circadian neuroscience and the director of the Nuffield Laboratory of Ophthalmology. An expert in sleep, he describes it as 'the single most important health behaviour we have'.
Born in 1959, as a child he loved his toy microscope and digging up fossils. Despite being labelled “entirely non-academic” by his headmaster and attending remedial classes for some years, he achieved three science A levels which won him a place at the University of Bristol.
There, he developed an early interest in photo-receptors - cells which convert light into signals that can stimulate biological processes. This eventually led to his post-doctoral discovery, in 1991, of a previously unknown type of cell – photosensitive retinal ganglion cells – in the eyes of mice. His proposition that these ganglion cells – which are not used for vision, but to detect brightness – exist in humans too initially met with scepticism from the ophthalmological community.
Russell’s research has made a significant impact, proving that our eyes provide us with both our sense of vision and our sense of time, which has changed the clinical definition of blindness and the treatment of eye disease. He has published several popular science books.
Russell is married to Elizabeth Downes, with whom he has three grown-up children.
Presenter: Lauren Laverne
Producer: Cathy Drysdale
SUN 12:00 News Summary (m000c3ff)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
SUN 12:04 I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue (m000bvxd)
Series 72
New Theatre Royal, Portsmouth
The antidote to panel games pays a return visit to the New Theatre Royal in Portsmouth. Tim Brooke-Taylor and Tony Hawks take on Rachel Parris and Marcus Brigstocke with Jack Dee in the chair. Colin Sell attempts piano accompaniment. Producer - Jon Naismith. It is a BBC Studios production.
SUN 12:32 The Food Programme (m000c3fh)
Cookbooks of 2019
Pinch of Nom, Charred and East are among the titles up for discussion as Sheila Dillon and guests gather in Hay-on-Wye to review 2019's best cookbooks. Featuring Cerys Matthews, Lia Moutselou and The Bookseller's Tom Tivnan.
Presented by Sheila Dillon.
Produced by Clare Salisbury.
SUN 12:57 Weather (m000c3fk)
The latest weather forecast
SUN 13:00 The World This Weekend (m000c3fm)
Global news and analysis, presented by Mark Mardell.
SUN 14:00 Gardeners' Question Time (m000c2hk)
Dudley
Kathy Clugston and the panel are in Dudley. Pippa Greenwood, Matthew Wilson and Matthew Pottage answer the audience's horticultural queries.
This week, the panellists chat about their favourite Christmas plants, establishing a healthy hedge and caring for hedgehogs. They also answer questions on pruning a Smoke Bush, low maintenance Wisteria alternatives, and whether heavy rainfall will have affected spring bulbs.
Away from the questions, Claire Ratinon visits the Wildlife gardeners of Haggerston, East London, to chat with founders, Gideon Corby and Esther Adelman.
Producer: Hannah Newton
Assistant Producer: Rosie Merotra
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4
SUN 14:45 The Listening Project (m000c3fp)
Sunday Omnibus - All about relationships
Fi Glover presents the omnibus edition of the series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen- with three different stories and revealing insights into what makes a relationship tick.
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: Mohini Patel
SUN 15:00 This Is Your Country Now, Too (m000c3fr)
Gustav and Franziska
Stories seen through the eyes of child refugees as they leave home for the unknown. Starring Damian Lewis.
In the days after the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia in March 1939, a Jewish family is faced with a terrible dilemma - save their two children, nine-year-old Gustav and his elder sister Franziska, but maybe never see them again.
When they hear of a scheme to get children to London on trains, their mother determines it's the only way. This Kindertransport scheme, devised by Nicholas Winton, is left in the hands of two young schoolteachers, Trevor Chadwick and Beatrice Wellington his Canadian assistant.
With more than a little naivety and dogged persistence, amid the chaos of a new Nazi administration, this little-known story of Chadwick’s part in the saving of 700 Czechoslovakian children who otherwise would have suffered the fate of their parents, is the first of seven dramas in a series about the experience of child refugees since 1939.
Cast:
Trevor Chadwick ….. Damian Lewis
Mama ….. Susannah Wise
Papa ….. Allan Corduner
Gustav ….. Hector Bateman-Harden
Franziska ….. Sophia Pettit
Nicholas Winton ….. David Michaels
Beatrice Wellington ….. Christy Meyer
Bömelberg ….. Mark Edel-Hunt
Alfred Dubs ..... Tom Hibberd
Other parts played by the company
Written by Jonathan Myerson
Series devised by Nicolas Kent with Jack Bradley
Original Music: Jack Newton
Directors: Jonathan Myerson and Nicolas Kent
Producer: Nicholas Newton
A Promenade production for BBC Radio 4
SUN 15:45 Four Thought (m0007ksd)
Taking Humour Seriously
Harriet Beveridge says we don't take humour seriously enough and thinks it's a "woefully misunderstood and underused tool". She extols its power in managing human relationships, dealing with adversity and overcoming prejudice.
"Cracking a joke is a hugely effective way to hold up a mirror, to challenge fixed ideas, because jokes shatter assumptions."
Recorded in front of a live audience at Womad, the World of Music, Arts and Dance festival in Wiltshire.
Presenter: Mark Coles
Producer: Sheila Cook
SUN 16:00 Open Book (m000c3fv)
Mariella Frostrup rounds up the best books of 2019 with Carrie Plitt and Octavia Bright from the Literary Friction podcast and books reviewer John Self.
André Aciman, author of the bestseller novel turned Oscar-winning film Call Me By Your Name, explores why he's brought back his well loved characters from back again in it's sequel Find Me. And David Bowie’s literary life is explored in Bowie’s Books- The Hundred Literary Heroes Who Shaped His Life- John O'Connell's new collection of essays exploring the singers love affair with reading.
SUN 16:30 Power Lines (m000c3fx)
Class
Poet, playwright and performer Sabrina Mahfouz looks at working class poetics, talking to poets across the UK about their work and how performing poetry shows has been an avenue into theatre and page poetry for many who would have otherwise been excluded due to class.
Poets:
Bridget Minamore
Fran Lock
Toria Garbutt
Anthony Anaxagorou
Wayne Holloway Smith
Jamie Thrasivoulou
A Wire Free production for BBC Radio 4
SUN 17:00 The Boy in the Video (m000bx2k)
The story starts with an everyday event - a WhatsApp message to a group set up by mums at the school gates to discuss missing jumpers and school trips.
But this message contains a video of a little boy being sexually abused. And one of the group members happens to be a BBC radio producer.
So begins an investigation into the dark world of child sexual exploitation as she tries to find out what happened to the boy. Has he been rescued? Is his abuser in jail?
Along the way she meets the police trying to combat the online proliferation of images and videos of children being abused - millions are in circulation, shared on social media platforms as if they are funny cat memes. She asks what we should do about the 450 men arrested every month for viewing and sharing this material. At the moment, end-to-end encryption means WhatsApp is a safe haven for offenders - are the tech firms doing enough?
Producer/presenter: Lucy Proctor
SUN 17:40 Profile (m000c2w2)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 on Saturday]
SUN 17:54 Shipping Forecast (m000c3fz)
The latest shipping forecast.
SUN 17:57 Weather (m000c3g1)
The latest weather forecast.
SUN 18:00 Six O'Clock News (m000c3g3)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
SUN 18:15 Pick of the Week (m000c3g5)
Adrian Chiles
The best of BBC Radio this week.
SUN 19:00 The Archers (m000c3g7)
Helen gets a surprise and Emma saves the day.
SUN 19:15 Fred at The Stand (b09cz4d4)
Series 1
Johns, Storrie, Brister and Graffoe
Fred MacAulay introduces some of the funniest comedians in the UK doing what they do best - pure stand-up comedy. Recorded at The Stand Comedy Club in Edinburgh.
This week, Dave Johns tells tales of coping with stardom following the success of I, Daniel Blake, Glaswegian Ashley Storrie tries to get one over her father at Christmas time, Jen Brister is proud to not to be a biological mother, and Boothby Graffoe is himself and cares not what anyone thinks.
A Dabster production for BBC Radio 4.
SUN 19:45 A Run in the Park (m000c3gb)
Episode 6
A group of strangers in Belfast have formed a running group, determined to go from absolute beginners to completing a 5K Parkrun in just nine weeks. As their shared runs get longer and tougher, friendships are forged and relationships challenged. But will any of them actually make it over the finish line?
Young couple Brendan and Angela are running from their doubts about their rapidly approaching wedding; librarian Cathy is in pursuit of a new life following a health scare; Syrian refugee Yana races from the trauma of her past; and recent retiree Maurice is determined to get fit for his family, step by painful step, even if he’s not actually part of their lives right now…
Author
David Park is one of Northern Ireland's most acclaimed writers. He is the author of nine novels and two collections of short stories. He has been awarded the Authors' Club First Novel Award, the Bass Ireland Arts Award for Literature, the Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize, the American Ireland Fund Literary Award and the University of Ulster's McCrea Literary Award, three times. He has also received a Major Individual Artist Award from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. His most recent novel ‘Travelling in A Strange Land’ won the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Award and was a Radio 4 ‘Book at Bedtime’.
Writer ..... David Park
Reader ..... Julia Dearden
Producer ..... Michael Shannon
SUN 20:00 Feedback (m000c2hp)
Has the BBC overdone its coverage of Prince Andrew’s relationship with a convicted paedophile?
The BBC’s royal correspondent Jonny Dymond discusses this issue and talks about the challenges of reporting the royals.
Also, do you have to be middle class and Oxbridge educated to get in - and get ahead - in the BBC? And two listeners review a late night Radio 3 discussion programme.
Presenter: Roger Bolton
Producer: Kate Dixon
Executive Producer: Samir Shah
A Juniper Connect production for BBC Radio 4
SUN 20:30 Last Word (m000c2hm)
Bob Willis MBE, Gary Rhodes OBE, Dr Shuping Wang, Sir Stephen Cleobury CBE
Pictured: Bob Willis
Matthew Bannister on
Bob Willis, the former England cricket captain, who was seen as one of the finest fast bowlers of his generation.
Gary Rhodes, the spiky-haired TV chef who won Michelin stars for his re-invention of classic British recipes.
Shuping Wang, the Chinese doctor who lost her job and her marriage after blowing the whistle on a trade in blood products that was spreading HIV through Henan province.
Sir Stephen Cleobury, the musical director of King's College Cambridge for thirty-seven years. He commissioned a new carol every year for the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols.
Interviewed guest: Jonathan Agnew MBE
Interviewed guest: Fiona Pitcher
Interviewed guest: Thane Prince
Interviewed guest: Sir Michael Boyd
Interviewed guest: The Reverend Dr Stephen Cherry
Interviewed guest: Peter Lindsay
Producer: Neil George
Archive clips from: Today, Radio 4 05/12/2019; Test Match Special, 5 Live 04/12/2019; Rhodes Around Britain, BBC Two 08/06/1995, 25/05/1995, 05/07/1994, 07/06/1994; Top of the Class, Radio 4 18/08/2008; Great British Food Revival, BBC Two 17/11/2011; Woman’s Hour, Radio 4 19/09/2019; CD Review, Radio 3 25/12/2004.
SUN 21:00 Money Box (m000c2v9)
[Repeat of broadcast at
12:04 on Saturday]
SUN 21:25 Radio 4 Appeal (m000c3dz)
[Repeat of broadcast at
07:54 today]
SUN 21:30 In Business (m000c0cz)
The pub is dead! Long live the micropub!
Since 2001 the UK has lost a quarter of its pubs. They've shut their doors for good. High taxes, high prices, supermarket competition, even the smoking ban have all been blamed. But there are new types of pub, the micropub, and community-owned pubs, which are bucking the trend. While larger, traditional establishments have been under pressure, these have flourished. So why have they been able to succeed where others have not? For In Business, John Murphy visits his local boozer - and others - to see what these new pubs have to offer.
Producer: Ruth Alexander
SUN 22:00 Westminster Hour (m000c3gf)
Radio 4's Sunday night political discussion programme.
SUN 23:00 The Film Programme (m000c0c4)
Honey Boy
With Antonia Quirke
Alma Har'el reveals how she came to direct Honey Boy, which was written by Shia LaBeouf while he was in rehab. And why she persuaded the actor to play his own father.
The Two Popes director Fernando Meirelles reveals why he put more jokes into the screenplay about the famous meeting between Pope Francis and Pope Benedict, how he came to build the largest Sistine Chapel in the world on a film set and why he's one of the few film-makers in the world who's also a farmer.
Christmas has come early as Matthew Sweet reviews 1952 festive curio The Holly And The Ivy
SUN 23:30 Bookclub (m000c0c2)
Ben Lerner - Leaving the Atocha Station
American author Ben Lerner talks about Leaving the Atocha Station, his first novel narrated by a young man living outside his usual experience.
Adam Gordon is a brilliant, if highly unreliable, young American poet on a prestigious fellowship in Madrid, struggling to establish his sense of self and his relationship to art. Instead of following the dictates of his fellowship, Adam's 'research' becomes a meditation on the possibility of the genuine in the arts and beyond: are his relationships with the people he meets in Spain as fraudulent as he fears his poems are? Is poetry an essential art form, or merely a screen for the reader's projections? A witness to the 2004 Madrid train bombings and their aftermath, he needs to decide whether he participates in historic events or merely watch them pass him by.
Presented by James Naughtie and recorded with a group of readers asking the questions.
To take part in future Bookclubs email bookclub@bbc.co.uk
January 2020's Bookclub Choice : The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern (2011)
Presented by James Naughtie
Produced by Dymphna Flynn
MONDAY 09 DECEMBER 2019
MON 00:00 Midnight News (m000c3gh)
National and international news from BBC Radio 4.
MON 00:15 Thinking Allowed (m000bxjq)
The Religious Right in the US
The religious right in the US - Laurie Taylor talks to Anne Nelson, writer and Adjunct Research Scholar in the Faculty of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, about her exploration of the way in which the religious right in the US has risen to political power. Who are the Council for National Policy and why does she consider they represent a 'shadow network'? Also Gregory Smith, associate director of research at Pew Research Center in Washington, provides facts and figures on the white evangelical vote.
Producer: Jayne Egerton
MON 00:45 Bells on Sunday (m000c2ws)
[Repeat of broadcast at
05:43 on Sunday]
MON 00:48 Shipping Forecast (m000c3gk)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping.
MON 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (m000c3gm)
BBC Radio 4 joins the BBC World Service.
MON 05:20 Shipping Forecast (m000c3gp)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping.
MON 05:30 News Briefing (m000c3gr)
National and international news from BBC Radio 4.
MON 05:43 Prayer for the Day (m000c3gt)
A spiritual comment and prayer to start the day with Revd Dr Calvin T Samuel
MON 05:45 Farming Today (m000c3gw)
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
MON 05:56 Weather (m000c3gy)
The latest weather forecast for farmers.
MON 05:58 Tweet of the Day (b03x45lf)
Snow Goose
Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs.
Bill Oddie presents the snow goose. Snow geese breed in the Canadian Arctic and fly south in autumn to feed. Their migrations are eagerly awaited and the arrival of thousands of these white geese with black-wingtips is one of the world’s great wildlife spectacles. Here, on the opposite side of the Atlantic, snow geese are seen every year, often with flocks of other species such as white-fronted geese. Snow geese are commonly kept in captivity in the UK, and escaped birds can and do breed in the wild. So, when a white shape turns up amongst a flock of wild grey geese, its origins are always under scrutiny.
MON 06:00 Today (m000c4tf)
News and current affairs, including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
MON 09:00 Start the Week (m000c4tm)
Living near water
Flooding remains a risk in many parts of the country this winter. Andrew Marr explores the impact of water on communities. The engineer David Lerner argues for the extension of the policy of daylighting – opening up rivers covered over by the Victorians. He says Britain’s towns and cities have a lot to learn from Zurich, which was an early pioneer in recovering streams from underground. The social and environmental benefits in Zurich are evident.
Torrential rain in November forced many people across the country to leave their homes. The writer Edward Platt looks back at the effect of the record-breaking floods of 2013-14 and the toll it took on those caught up in the deluge. He talks to those responsible for trying to keep the water at bay, and asks what can be done to protect the vulnerable.
The artist Tania Kovats’s work is preoccupied with our experience and understanding of water and the landscape. From collecting water from a hundred UK rivers to sculptural forms cast in wetsuits, and to the study of the drawing of water, Kovats places water at the centre of her creativity.
The journalist Leaf Arbuthnot looks at the growing evidence for the benefits of wild swimming, even in the cold winter months. For all the danger of living close to water, she asks whether time spent near coastal and river environments is the secret to a happier, healthier life.
Producer: Katy Hickman
MON 09:45 Three-a-Penny (m000c4tt)
A Man’s World
Diana Quick reads the autobiography of Lucy Malleson, a detective writer of the 1930s and 40s who wrote under the name Anthony Gilbert.
First published in 1940, it’s a book which is valuable now for its sharp social history of working life in the early decades of the 20th century, and particularly for its focus on what it was like for women at work in offices.
When the First World War begins, Lucy’s father loses his job at the Stock Exchange and she is forced to leave school as the family can’t afford for her to stay on. So, at 16, she needs to earn a living. But how? Women don’t even have the vote; middle-class women are still supposed to see marriage as their ultimate goal. Rescued by a financial contribution from her godmother, Lucy goes to secretarial college and trains as a secretary. This is the beginning of her initiation into the world of the office.
“It was a new thing for me to have a Luncheon and Tea fund. At first I went to Lyons Corner House and alternated between a cup of soup and a roll (4 pence) and a glass of milk and an unbuttered scone. I looked forward to the days when I should be independent and have steak and kidney pudding and fried potatoes like the older clerks and typists I met there…”
Lucy’s working life begins in an office of the Red Cross, with the melancholy job of notifying the families of those who are wounded and missing in the War. From here, she progresses to a Government office and casts a sharp eye on the men who run it:
“Men in offices are, for the most part, Deadly Bores. They suffer from indigestion and ask you to buy their pills in your lunch hour. They seldom think of their girl employees as human beings at all. What they would prefer, if they were procurable and didn’t cost too much, would be a series of automatic machines, into which you put the week’s salary and took out the letters at the other end. They would prefer these to young women, because you can kick a machine, if you happen to be put out about something, without being hauled into court for assault.”
Astonishingly modern, though a hundred years old, Lucy Malleson’s sharp and humorous account of working life is vividly brought to life by Diana Quick.
Reader: Diana Quick
Producer: Elizabeth Burke
A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 4
MON 10:00 Woman's Hour (m000c4v0)
The programme that offers a female perspective on the world
MON 10:45 The Country Girls Trilogy (m000c4v4)
Girls in Their Married Bliss
Girls in Their Married Bliss 1/5
The third book in Edna O'Brien's frank, funny and subversive trilogy. It's the 1960's. Kate and Baba are living in London, with enough to eat, married, dissatisfied.
Cast
Baba ..... Aoibhinn McGinnity
Kate ..... Charlie Murphy
Frank ..... Branwell Donaghey
Eugene ..... Jonathan Forbes
Duncan ..... Paul Hickey
Cash ..... Alfie Todd
Written by Edna O'Brien
Adapted by Lin Coghlan
Directed by Sally Avens and Jessica Dromgoole
MON 11:00 The Untold (m000c4v8)
The Drag Queen and the Dictionary
Lacey is a drag queen. Her drag persona is Lacey-Lou, a pink, over the top, ultra fem with lots of feathers, pearls and lace. Lacey is also a woman and although she's been doing drag for seven years, she's been dogged by critics who screen-shot the dictionary definition to prove that drag is for men only. So Lacey approaches the Oxford English Dictionary in an attempt to get the dictionary definition changed, to remove its gender specificity and to give her detractors one less thing to throw at her and the many other female, trans and non-binary queens. But will she succeed?
Producer: Sara Conkey
MON 11:30 Loose Ends (m000c2w0)
[Repeat of broadcast at
18:15 on Saturday]
MON 12:00 News Summary (m000c4vg)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
MON 12:04 Dark Matter (m000c4vl)
Episode One
Michelle Paver's terrifying 1930s ghost story, set in the wilderness of the Arctic Circle.
Episode One
A recording of Jack Miller’s journal written in 1937, which documents his scientific expedition to the Arctic.
Writer: Michelle Paver
Although born in Nyasaland of a Belgian mother and a South African father, by the time she was three Michelle Paver and her family had settled in Wimbledon. She was educated at Wimbledon High School and Oxford, where she got a first in biochemistry. She subsequently became a partner in a London law firm. In 1996, after the death of her father, she resigned from the law firm to become a full-time writer. In 2010, Dark Matter was nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award for best novel. The Shirley Jackson Awards, named after the American author, recognise outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense and horror.
Abridger: Jeremy Osborne
Reader: Lee Ingleby & Rufus Wright
Producer: Karen Rose
A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4
MON 12:18 You and Yours (m000c4vq)
News and discussion of consumer affairs.
MON 12:57 Weather (m000c4vv)
The latest weather forecast
MON 13:00 World at One (m000c4vz)
Mon-Thurs: Analysis of news and current affairs, presented by Sarah Montague. Fri: Analysis of news and current affairs, presented by Mark Mardell.
MON 14:00 The Archers (m000c3g7)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 on Sunday]
MON 14:15 This Is Your Country Now, Too (m000c4w3)
Mira
Mira Hamermesh's real-life story of her escape at fourteen from Nazi-occupied Poland to Palestine, is dramatised by Claudine Toutoungi from Mira's memoir "The River Of Angry Dogs".
In 1939, when she was fourteen, Mira Hamermesh woke up one day to find that her country had been wiped off the map.
The Nazi-Soviet pact saw the opposing armies invade Poland from West and East. Mira's home city of Lodz was soon occupied by the German army, and her Jewish family were placed under restrictions.
Mira begins to dream of joining her sister Genia, who had left the previous year for Palestine. So like thousands of others, Mira risks her life to cross the Soviet border, with her big brother Mietek for protection.
But her extraordinary journey is only just beginning. Mira soon finds herself alone in a maze of shifting borders, lies and danger.
And as she struggles to find a way to Palestine, how could she begin to guess what's happening to her parents, in the Lodz ghetto?
Mira . . . . Pooky Quesnel
Young Mira . . . . Scarlett Courtney
Mietek . . . . Will Kirk
Genia . . . . Laura Christy
Mary . . . . Jessica Turner
Mother . . . . Heather Craney
Kostia . . . . Neil McCaul
Giora . . . . Sinead MacInnes
Mr Silverstein . . . . Clive Hayward
Interpreter . . . . Lucy Reynolds
Jakov . . . . Adam Courting
Pavel . . . . Ian Conningham
Rafael . . . . Greg Jones
Prisoner . . . . Ikky Elyas
Theme music by Jack Newton.
Series idea by Nick Kent with Jack Bradley.
With grateful thanks to Jeremy Coopman.
Produced and directed by Jonquil Panting.
MON 15:00 Quote... Unquote (m000c4w7)
Sir Tim Rice, Robin Stevens, Shazia Mirza
Quote … Unquote, the popular celebrity quotations quiz, returns for its 55th series.
Join Nigel as he quizzes a host of celebrity guests on the origins of sayings and well-known quotes, and gets the famous panel to share their favourite anecdotes.
Across forty years, Nigel Rees has been joined by writers, actors, musicians, scientists and various comedy types. Kenneth Williams, Judi Dench, PD James, Sir Ian KcKellen and Peter Ustinov... have all graced the Quote Unquote stage.
Episode 2
Lyricist and author Sir Tim Rice
Novelist Robin Stevens
Stand-up comedian and writer Shazia Mirza
Quotes read by Charlotte Green
Production Coordinator: Candace Wilson
Producer: Victoria Lloyd
A BBC Studios production for BBC Radio 4
MON 15:30 The Food Programme (m000c3fh)
[Repeat of broadcast at
12:32 on Sunday]
MON 16:00 What If Our Textbooks Were Black? (m000c4wj)
Episode 1
A series celebrating Black cultural figures who should be more central to history.
Naomi Beckwith grew up on Chicago’s South Side. Unusually, her school prioritised the teaching of Black history - when she opened a textbook, she saw people who looked like her. But when she left that school, most black faces from the past disappeared.
Today, Naomi’s an international curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. Her exhibitions rebalance the story of art and culture – focusing on African American cultural figures who could and should be better known.
But she argues that we need to go much further - we must reconsider our models of education. If we change our exhibitions without changing our textbooks, then nothing changes at all.
In this series, Naomi invites artists to imagine a new cultural textbook that reinstates some of those Black cultural figures who’ve been sidelined.
In episode 1, the writer and publisher Dr Haki Madhubuti nominates the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks, while the choreographer Princess Mhoon remembers two of the dancers and anthropologists who influenced her most – Pearl Primus and Katherine Dunham.
Produced by Natalie Moore and Steve Urquhart
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 4
MON 16:30 Beyond Belief (m000c4wq)
Friendship
As we come to the end of an acrimonious General Election campaign, Beyond Belief attempts to soothe the fractious public mood with a discussion on Friendship. The dictionary defines Friendship as “a state of mutual trust between friends but can friendship survive a deep division of opinion? Can we be friends with someone who holds radically different religious and ethical principles to ours? Can we really describe someone whom we have only met online as a Friend? To discuss these questions are the Reverend David Butterworth, a Methodist Minister; Julie Siddiqi, a leading Muslim feminist and activist with a focus on gender equality and inter faith relations; and Laura Janner-Klausner, Senior Rabbi to Reform Judaism.
Producer: Helen Lee
MON 17:00 PM (m000c4wx)
Afternoon news and current affairs programme, reporting on breaking stories and summing up the day's headlines.
MON 18:00 Six O'Clock News (m000c4x3)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
MON 18:30 I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue (m000c4x9)
Series 72
Episode 5
The 72nd series of the multi award-winning comedy panel game chaired by Jack Dee
MON 19:00 The Archers (m000c4q3)
Tracy's card is marked and there's congratulations for Pip.
MON 19:15 Front Row (m000c4xg)
Live magazine programme on the worlds of arts, literature, film, media and music
MON 19:45 The Country Girls Trilogy (m000c4v4)
[Repeat of broadcast at
10:45 today]
MON 20:00 Assisted Loving (m000c4vh)
Sui-Ling Tang goes on a personal journey to discover why relationships can be so difficult for other people with learning disabilities, taking author Kathy Lette with her.
Navigating the world of sex and romantic relationships is a huge part of our development. For many people with learning disabilities, it's a luxury. Society's misconceptions about the wants, needs and desires of people with learning disabilities has, for a long time, sidelined their sexual and romantic lives. And among the on-going conversations about sexual harassment, bodily autonomy, and consent, the voices of people with learning disabilities have often gone unheard.
Sui-Ling Tang is receptionist, living in Milton Keynes with her budgie, Chicco. She's also got a learning disability which means daily support with cooking, finances, and staying safe. Having sexual and romantic relationships hasn't always been straight forward.
In this programme, she sets out to discover why love and lust are still so taboo for people with learning disabilities. The parents and carers responsible for day-to-day support share their worries about abuse, pregnancy, and giving the right amount of assistance while still allowing people to make the mistakes we all learn from.
The legal landscape isn't any easier either. Sui-Ling enrols the help of Kathy Lette, to unpick the laws that can decide whether someone has the capacity to consent to sex. On the way, they talk to a sex worker, a judge, and a professor.
Presenter: Sui-Ling Tang
Co-Presenter: Kathy Lette
Producer: Emma Barnaby
Executive Producer: Will Yates
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4
MON 20:30 Question Time: Under 30s Special (m000cxhm)
Emma Barnett presents a special edition of Question Time from York with a panel of politicians representing all seven parties and an audience of under 30s.
MON 22:00 The World Tonight (m000c4xs)
In depth reporting, intelligent analysis and breaking news from a global perspective
MON 22:45 Dark Matter (m000c4vl)
[Repeat of broadcast at
12:04 today]
MON 23:00 Have You Heard George's Podcast? (m000c5pc)
Chapter 2
14. A Hard Taskmaster
The two competing parts of George’s brain - contentment and ambition - battle it out. George looks at how black creativity shapes trends through music to fashion and beyond.
Written by George The Poet.
Produced by Benbrick & George The Poet.
Original music by Benbrick.
Featured songs: Didn’t Cha Know by Erykah Badu, 1,2,1,2 by George The Poet, Scribble Paper by Little Dragon, Real N****** (feat. Cam’ron, Jimmy Jones & Juelz Santana) by The Diplomats, Ambition (feat. Meek Mill & Rick Ross) by Wale
Featured guests: Ty Logan as Benji, Arnold Jorge as Damario, Young Talented Individuals, Hussain Manawer (presenting the Best Arts & Culture award at The British Podcast Awards 2019), Patrin, Andrew Bell, Tyra Mai, Tasneim Zyada, and Kenny Mpanga.
Thank you to CJ Obi and everybody who attended my meeting to discuss the future of St Raph’s, Matthew Walker and Penguin for allowing us to use elements from the book Why We Sleep, Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson for writing the book Why Nations Fail, and Peter Gregson for his cello performance.
Clips taken from the BBC Archive: BBC News October 28th 2019 Brexit delay agreed as MP’s vote again on an election & EU agrees Brexit extension to 31 January.
Have You Heard George’s Podcast? is a George the Poet production for BBC Sounds.
Commissioning Executive for BBC: Dylan Haskins
Commissioning Editor for BBC: Jason Phipps
MON 23:30 The Untold (b084wmz7)
Every Second Counts
As you drive into Bridgwater, a sign reads "The home of Carnival". The town prides itself on being the oldest and biggest carnival in Europe, and it's the biggest event of the year. For hundreds of years they've held a carnival here. This is an industrial town - a town full of engineers and tradesmen - and this is their creative outlet.
Every November, thousands of people flock to see the show of carts come through the town centre. Enormous moving feats of electrical engineering, which are covered in lights and animatronics.
At the end of it, one cart will be crowned winner of the Ker Cup - the most prestigious prize at the carnival.
Alan Windsor, or Winds, is our guide. Born and bred in Bridgwater, Alan is captain of the Marketeers carnival club. All year round they fundraise and build towards the big night. They're known as the Bridesmaids - the club that always come second.
Across the industrial estate are their arch rivals - if you want to win, you have to beat the Gremlins. They've won 23 of the last 31 carnivals - and for those 31 years, the Marketeers have consistently been on their tails.
This year, the Marketeers are building something special: a 100ft space machine, covered in 250,000 LED lights - "nothing like this has ever been seen on the streets of Bridgwater before."
Could this year be the year that the Marketeers’ luck changes and they beat the Gremlins to the Ker Cup?
This is a story of dedication, loyalty - and never giving up.
Producer: Polly Weston
TUESDAY 10 DECEMBER 2019
TUE 00:00 Midnight News (m000c4xz)
National and international news from BBC Radio 4
TUE 00:30 Three-a-Penny (m000c4tt)
[Repeat of broadcast at
09:45 on Monday]
TUE 00:48 Shipping Forecast (m000c4y6)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping.
TUE 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (m000c4yd)
BBC Radio 4 joins the BBC World Service.
TUE 05:20 Shipping Forecast (m000c4yl)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping.
TUE 05:30 News Briefing (m000c4ys)
National and international news from BBC Radio 4.
TUE 05:43 Prayer for the Day (m000c4yy)
A spiritual comment and prayer to start the day with Revd Dr Calvin T Samuel
TUE 05:45 Farming Today (m000c4z4)
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
TUE 05:58 Tweet of the Day (b08q79q1)
Val Thompson on the pink-footed goose
Val Thompson describes the comfort she derives from seeing pink footed geese in Norfolk, a place she visited with her late husband, and how reconnecting with birds has helped her through bereavement.
Tweet of the Day has captivated the Radio 4 audience with its daily 90 seconds of birdsong. But what of the listener to this avian chorus? In this new series of Tweet of the Day, we bring to the airwaves the conversational voices of those who listen to and are inspired by birds. Building on the previous series, a more informal approach to learning alongside a renewed emphasis on encounter with nature and reflection in our relationship with the natural world.
Producer Maggie Ayre.
TUE 06:00 Today (m000c4p9)
News and current affairs, including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
TUE 09:00 More or Less (m000c4pc)
Election Special (2/2)
Tim Harford explores some of the issues being discussed in the current election campaign.
TUE 09:30 Naturebang (m0006166)
Parasites and Personality
If you think you’re in control, think again.
What invisible forces might be guiding your behaviour, your decisions, your most intimate emotions? Becky Ripley and Emily Knight take a trip into the bizarre nightmare world of the undergrowth, and watch ‘zombie ants’ stumble forward, blindly following the orders of the deadly fungi controlling their brains. Parasites often get the upper hand of their hosts, manipulating their behaviour in sometimes horrifying ways. But is that true of humans too? Could we be unknowingly subservient to creatures that live inside us? Do they wish us well, or might they be plotting our downfall?
Featuring entomologist Dr David Hughes from Penn State University, and neuroscientist John Cryan from University College Cork.
TUE 09:45 Three-a-Penny (m000c4pf)
The Disillusion of Peace
Diana Quick reads the autobiography of Lucy Malleson, a detective writer of the 1930s and 40s who wrote under the name Anthony Gilbert.
First published in 1940, it’s a book which is valuable now for its sharp social history of working life in the early decades of the 20th century, and particularly for its focus on what it was like for women at work in offices.
At the end of the First World War, Lucy becomes a secretary in the newly-created Health Ministry, desperately trying to draft in enough doctors to cope with the flu epidemic.
“The influenza scourge was ravishing the country, and we had to get as many doctors as possible back from France in record time. Conditions in the country were unspeakable; corpses lay for days unburied because there was no doctor to sign the necessary certificates. Doctors themselves contracted the disease and died on their feet.”
Having grown up during the War, peace time comes as a shock, and brings with it a strong sense of disillusion. At the age of 20, Lucy must earn a living in a labour market crowded with men returning from the front. She’s not the only woman now forced to compete for jobs:
“The War had brought women all those privileges that the Suffragettes had fought for so fiercely. The army of women who had flooded into offices during the War could not be shooed back to their homes, like a flock of hens…”
Lucy gets a job, and a good one – earning four pounds a week. But in her new role, she sees, and has to turn away, all the men who come to her office desperately hoping for work.
Astonishingly modern, though a hundred years old, Lucy Malleson’s sharp and humorous account of working life is vividly brought to life by Diana Quick.
Reader: Diana Quick
Producer: Elizabeth Burke
A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 4
TUE 10:00 Woman's Hour (m000c4pj)
The programme that offers a female perspective on the world
TUE 10:45 The Country Girls Trilogy (m000c4pl)
Girls in Their Married Bliss
Girls in Their Married Bliss 2/5
by Edna O'Brien
Dramatised by Lin Coghlan
Baba ..... Aoibhinn McGinnity
Kate ..... Charlie Murphy
Eugene ..... Jonathan Forbes
Frank ..... Branwell Donaghey
Cash ..... Alfie Todd
Directed by Sally Avens and Jessica Dromgoole
The third book in Edna O'Brien's frank, funny and subversive trilogy. Kate arrives on Baba's doorstep when her husband discovers her affair and throws her out.
TUE 11:00 The Poetry Editor (m000bvx2)
The publishing house Faber and Faber, 90 this year is famous for its poetry list - Seamus Heaney, Sylvia Plath, Derek Walcott, Philip Larkin, Marianne Moore, W. H. Auden, Elizabeth Bishop...and T.S. Eliot who, as poetry editor, brought the work of some of these poets into the world. The Poetry Editor, then, has a significant role. Hannah Sullivan, winner of the T. S. Eliot Prize for her collection 'Three Poems', teases out poetry editors actually do.
She talks to leading poetry editors today, Neil Astley of Bloodaxe; Parisa Ebrahimi of Chatto & Windus and Matthew Hollis, who now sits at Eliot's desk at Faber. They discover and nurture new voices, but also have to sustain their lists. Might there be figures so distinguished they are beyond editing? Paul Muldoon, who might fall into this category, argues no - he longs for the exercise of editorial authority. Is the relationship of editor to poet akin to that of doctor and patient? Is the editorial office like the confessional - strictly confidential?
Sullivan speaks to several leading poets - Simon Armitage, Paul Muldoon, Julia Copus, Sarah Howe and Kayo Chingonyi - about being edited, and hears from people at the beginning of their careers such as Phoebe Stuckes.
Sullivan wrote a wrote a book that focuses on 'The Waste Land' before Ezra Pound got at it, arguing, partly, against revision. With Matthew Hollis she looks at what Pound scored out with his red pencil, and his comments. And, in the archive at Faber & Faber, she looks at early correspondence with Seamus Heaney, revealing how the career of the Nobel Prize winner began with a poetry editor spotting a few poems in a magazine, and the handsome advance of £25.
Presenter: Hannah Sullivan
Producer: Julian May
TUE 11:30 Art of Now (m000c4pp)
The Walking Dance
A story, told in dance steps, of people with Parkinson’s finding balance in the movements and rhythms of the Argentine tango.
Four couples living with Parkinson’s disease attend a dance class for people with balance issues. The dance becomes entwined with their stories as they master the basic walking steps of the Argentine tango and work towards a choreographed performance for a group of people newly diagnosed with Parkinson’s.
Along the way, they reflect on how dancing is helping them to confront their diagnosis and what it means to them.
Roy Jones has been living with Parkinson’s for over twenty years. He and his wife Pat are learning Argentina’s ‘walking dance’ as a way to counteract the loss of movement associated with the condition.
“If I freeze, I automatically think of a dance step and it kick-starts my brain,” says Roy. “It’s like having a tooth missing from a cog. Suddenly you jump that missing tooth, and I’m moving again… I’m dancing… and that’s where I want to be.”
Joy Rainbird attends the class every week with her husband John as a way to overcome his rapidly advancing Parkinson’s. “It takes me back to when we were confident and I used to trust John to hold me and sway me and lead me...”
Julie Douglas, who partners her mother, finds dancing an escape from the frustration of trying to do things with Parkinson’s. Norman Moore and his wife Glynis use the tango steps to overcome the physical “stutter” of his condition.
Produced by Cicely Fell
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4
[photo credit: Cicely Fell]
TUE 12:00 News Summary (m000c4pr)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
TUE 12:04 Dark Matter (m000c4pt)
Episode Two
Michelle Paver's terrifying 1930s ghost story, set in the wilderness of the Arctic Circle.
Episode Two
Kill or be killed. Jack learns about the law of the Arctic.
Writer: Michelle Paver
Although born in Nyasaland of a Belgian mother and a South African father, by the time she was three Michelle Paver and her family had settled in Wimbledon. She was educated at Wimbledon High School and Oxford, where she got a first in biochemistry. She subsequently became a partner in a London law firm. In 1996, after the death of her father, she resigned from the law firm to become a full-time writer. In 2010, Dark Matter was nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award for best novel. The Shirley Jackson Awards, named after the American author, recognise outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense and horror.
Abridger: Jeremy Osborne
Reader: Lee Ingleby
Producer: Karen Rose
A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4
TUE 12:18 You and Yours (m000c4px)
Call You and Yours
News and discussion of consumer affairs.
TUE 12:57 Weather (m000c4pz)
The latest weather forecast
TUE 13:00 World at One (m000c4q1)
Mon-Thurs: Analysis of news and current affairs, presented by Sarah Montague. Fri: Analysis of news and current affairs, presented by Mark Mardell.
TUE 14:00 The Archers (m000c4q3)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 on Monday]
TUE 14:15 This Is Your Country Now, Too (m000c4q5)
Chung-yun and So-ling
Stories seen through the eyes of child refugees as they leave home for the unknown.
Chung-yun and So-ling, two children from a village on the mainland, embark on a treacherous journey to escape the famine in Mao Tse Tung’s China by swimming across the South China sea to Hong Kong.
The journey, in their wretched state, is tough and on arrival they find the welcome is not exactly as they had wished. Escaping again from the clutches of a fisherman and his wife, Chung-yun is struck by a lorry and is taken to hospital.
It is at this point their luck begins to change with the support of Officer Wong and his wife, Rita, who make efforts to give the two children the opportunity for another life, rather than being sent back to the mainland.
This is the third of seven dramas in a series about the experience of child refugees fleeing persecution to find a new life in the UK or its dominions since 1939.
Cast:
Chung-yun … Chris Lew Kum Hoi
So-ling … Jade Chan
Fisherman and Foreman… Ozzie Yue
Fisherman’s wife and Carol … Siu-see Hung
Officer Tony Wong … Andrew Leung
Rita Wong … Michelle Yim
Superintendent Letts … Andrew Havill
Written by Ben Ockrent
Series devised by Nicolas Kent with Jack Bradley
Original Music / Musical Supervision: Jack Newton
Director: David Tse
Producer: Nicholas Newton
A Promenade production for BBC Radio 4
TUE 15:00 Short Cuts (m000c4q7)
Series 21
Maps
Navigating emotional terrain, finding joy in another world and mapping a continuum of thinking. Josie Long presents short documentaries about charting the territory.
Pixels and Bits
Featuring Stephen Sexton
Produced by Alia Cassam
Drive Straight Ahead
Written by Jonathan Goldstein and Mira Burt-Wintonick
Produced by Jonathan Goldstein, Mira Burt-Wintonick and Cristal Duhaime
Originally broadcast on CBC's WireTap
Playing in the Dark
Featuring Gail Lewis, Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski and Natasha Mumbi Nkonde
Produced by Tej Adeleye
Production Team: Eleanor McDowall and Alia Cassam
Produced by Andrea Rangecroft
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4
TUE 15:30 Making History (m000c4q9)
The First Draft?
Tom Holland and Iszi Lawrence are back to explore the historical connections behind today's issues.
In this programme - The First Draft? After the most tumultuous parliamentary session many can remember, Tom and Iszi meet top journalists to ask whether they consider they are history's first chroniclers. From Today programme newsgatherers to ancient Greek historian Herodotus, the team discuss who really "makes history".
Producer: Craig Templeton-Smith
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4
TUE 16:00 EXPOSED: Young Female Photographers (m0006sd3)
Emma Dabiri meets three emerging female artists under 30 who are bringing a fresh new perspective to the world of photography.
Part of a wave of young British photographers who have grown up in a world of social media and camera phones, their work is smart and subversive - exploring ideas of female identity, sex, beauty, food, community, and consumerism. Appreciated by a hugely receptive audience, both at exhibitions and art fairs but also online, they've harnessed the power of instagram to showcase their work to a younger generation of art lovers.
Juno Calypso is a fine artist and photographer with a string of awards and has just been acquired by Manchester Art Gallery. Using herself as the model, she seeks out extraordinary, unnerving locations - Honeymoon hotels, futuristic 1960s bunkers - to explore issues surrounding female identity, beauty and consumerism. We meet her in her blood-splattered studio making work for the Women's World Cup.
Maisie Cousins has just published her first book - Rubbish, Dipping Sauce, Grass, Peonie, Bum - based on the titles of her last three exhibitions. Her blown-up images of food and plant-life are sticky, sweaty and unmistakably erotic. For Maisie, it's less problematic to objectify something that's already an object: "Nobody’s going to tell me off for making a sexy plastic or a sexy fruit. They’re inanimate". She likes to create mini fantasy worlds, photographing at a close distance, to tell the most lies she can.
But for Sophie Green, honesty and authenticity are key. A portrait and social documentary photographer who, since winning the Magnum Graduate Award, has been exhibited in the National Portrait Gallery twice as part of the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize, and has published two books. From African churches, to stock car racing and arm wrestlers, her work investigates British identity today and the glue that unites communities and subcultures.
With insights from journalist Charlotte Jansen, collector Nick Sutton, and gallerist Hannah Watson.
Image courtesy of Juno Calypso and TJ Boulting
Produced by Victoria Ferran
A Just Radio production for BBC Radio 4
TUE 16:30 Great Lives (m000c4qc)
Series 50
War photographer and model Lee Miller proposed by Lindsey Hilsum of Channel 4 News
In the early summer of 1945, Lee Miller sent a telegram back to London about what she had seen in the Nazi death camps. “I implore you to believe this is true,” she wrote. Her employers were Vogue magazine. How did a famous beauty like Miller end up covering the war?
Her extraordinary life and the images she left, famously posing in Hitler's bath, are explored here by Lindsey Hilsum of Channel Four News. She is joined by Miller's son, Antony Penrose. Lee Miller was American, born in 1907, but lived in Paris and Cairo and then London during the blitz. Her lovers included Man Ray, she knew Cocteau and Picasso, and was an important surrealist. But it was her work in world war two that leads Lindsey Hilsum to claim her as Marie Colvin's spiritual ancestor.
The producer in Bristol is Miles Warde
TUE 17:00 PM (m000c4qf)
Afternoon news and current affairs programme, reporting on breaking stories and summing up the day's headlines.
TUE 18:00 Six O'Clock News (m000c4qh)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
TUE 18:30 Rhys James (m000c4qk)
Series 2
Rhys James Isn’t… "A"
In an attempt to become more politically engaged, comedian Rhys James tries on opinions like clothes to see how they fit. This week he’s putting his left leg in first.
Dressed as a wishy-washy liberal Rhys asks: why are we not doing more to save the planet… Why is it taking so long to teach LGBT+ issues in schools… Why doesn’t everywhere have gender-neutral toilets… And why are we letting Facebook spy on us?
This is what he thinks this week, but next week he’ll be a week older and more right wing…
Written and performed by – Rhys James
Produced by – Carl Cooper
Production Co-ordinator – Gwyn Rhys Davies
A BBC Studios production
TUE 19:00 The Archers (m000c4qn)
Robert gets a scare and Neil makes a tragic discovery.
TUE 19:15 Front Row (m000c4qq)
Live magazine programme on the worlds of arts, literature, film, media and music
TUE 19:45 The Country Girls Trilogy (m000c4pl)
[Repeat of broadcast at
10:45 today]
TUE 20:00 Grenfell: Flat 142 (m000ccs8)
Kamru Miah, his wife Rabeya Begum and their adult children, Mohammed Hamid, Mohammed Hanif and Husna Begum lived in Flat 142 on the 17th Floor of Grenfell Tower.
On the night of the fire, the family called 999 four times, over the course of two hours, but no firefighter was ever sent to attempt to reach them.
The inquiry says that what happened in Flat 142 shows clear failures in the London Fire Brigade’s response. This programme pieces together detailed evidence from the public inquiry into the fire at Grenfell Tower to understand how the information the family gave 999 operators was lost in a complicated network of communications between the control room and firefighters at the scene.
Presenter and producer Kate Lamble
Editor Jasper Corbett
TUE 20:40 In Touch (m000c4qv)
News, views and information for people who are blind or partially sighted
TUE 21:00 All in the Mind (m000c4qx)
Programme exploring the limits and potential of the human mind.
TUE 21:30 More or Less (m000c4pc)
[Repeat of broadcast at
09:00 today]
TUE 22:00 The World Tonight (m000c4qz)
In depth reporting, intelligent analysis and breaking news from a global perspective
TUE 22:45 Dark Matter (m000c4pt)
[Repeat of broadcast at
12:04 today]
TUE 23:00 Michael Frayn's Pocket Playhouse (b0b5xh1w)
Series 1
15/06/2018
Martin Jarvis directs the masterly comic series written by Michael Frayn, the author of Noises Off and the most comic philosophical writer of our time. The outstanding cast is led by Ian McKellen, Joanna Lumley, Stephen Fry, Alfred Molina, Alex Jennings and Jarvis himself.
It's an astonishing tour de force of comic imagination and satire.
Each of the four episodes reveals Frayn's infectious delight in writing between the lines of theatre, fiction, television and the media, the church, relationships - life in general.
In this third episode, Stephen Fry gives smug thanks to God, Matthew Wolf and Martin Jarvis become mute mime-artists (even on the radio), Nigel Anthony invites sponsorship for doing precisely nothing, Ian McKellen as God conducts his own prayer-answering service and Rosalind Ayres provides a tetchy update to your Pocket Playhouse.
Cast:
Ian McKellen, Stephen Fry, Rosalind Ayres, Matthew Wolf, Martin Jarvis and Nigel Anthony.
Written by Michael Frayn,
Director: Martin Jarvis.
A Jarvis and Ayres production for BBC Radio 4.
TUE 23:30 The Untold (m0001t9c)
Like Riding a Bike
Roni never got to learn to ride a bike as a child. Her dad died when she was nearly six years old, and her Mum was left to bring up five children on her own so there was no-one to teach Roni or help her. As Roni grew older, it just became embarrassing to talk about it, and it made her feel inadequate, so she stopped even mentioning it to anyone. But the longing for the freedom and independence she thought cycling would bring has never left her. So, when her friend Clare bought her a second-hand pink bike, she decided it was time to turn her dream into action.
Producer: Sara Conkey
WEDNESDAY 11 DECEMBER 2019
WED 00:00 Midnight News (m000c4r1)
National and international news from BBC Radio 4
WED 00:30 Three-a-Penny (m000c4pf)
[Repeat of broadcast at
09:45 on Tuesday]
WED 00:48 Shipping Forecast (m000c4r3)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping.
WED 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (m000c4r5)
BBC Radio 4 joins the BBC World Service.
WED 05:20 Shipping Forecast (m000c4r7)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping.
WED 05:30 News Briefing (m000c4r9)
National and international news from BBC Radio 4.
WED 05:43 Prayer for the Day (m000c4rc)
A spiritual comment and prayer to start the day with Revd Dr Calvin T Samuel
WED 05:45 Farming Today (m000c4rf)
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
WED 05:58 Tweet of the Day (b08r1x98)
Debbie Pain on the Marsh Harrier
Debbie Pain of the Slimbridge Wetland Centre explains her joy at the return of the marsh harrier to her local patch.
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 Miles Warde.
WED 06:00 Today (m000c4tb)
News and current affairs, including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
WED 09:00 Soul Music (m000c4th)
Series 28
The Boxer - Simon & Garfunkel
The Boxer - Simon & Garfunkel. People who connect directly with the lyrics and have a deep personal connection to the song discuss what this masterpiece means to them.
Seamus McDonagh is a former boxer. He describes the tumultuous time he had during and after his famous fight with Evander Holyfield in 1990. He also explains why he identifies closely with the lyrics of The Boxer.
Julie Nimoy is the daughter of Leonard Nimoy and co-producer of the film 'Remembering Leonard Nimoy' which tells the life story of this much loved actor, most famous for playing Mr Spock in Star Trek. The Boxer was his favourite song, and Julie describes exactly what it meant to him both throughout his life, and in its closing moments.
Gary Edward Jones is a singer-songwriter who for years rejected comparisons made of him to Paul Simon. Eventually, he embraced the likeness and his life changed after developing a show called 'Something About Simon - The Paul Simon Story'.
Dave Mason is an amateur guitarist who has found deep meaning in The Boxer; meaning that has changed and grown as he has.
Scroll down for photos, and to the 'Related Links' box to find out more about these interviewees.
Producer: Karen Gregor
WED 09:30 Four Thought (m000c4tp)
Life In Transit
Louise Doughty, whose novels include Apple Tree Yard, explains why Peterborough railway station, the setting of her latest novel, has particular significance in her life as a place of transit. As she journeys back into her past, she discovers her own personal history sheds light on the experience of others.
Recorded at Primadonna literature and arts festival in Suffolk.
Presenter: Farrah Jarral
Producer: Sheila Cook
WED 09:45 Three-a-Penny (m000c4tv)
A Triumphant Beard
Diana Quick reads the autobiography of Lucy Malleson, a detective writer of the 1930s and 40s who wrote under the name Anthony Gilbert.
First published in 1940, it’s a book which is valuable now for its sharp social history of working life in the early decades of the 20th century, and particularly for its focus on what it was like for women at work in offices.
Lucy is forced to leave school at 16 and works during the First World War in a variety of office jobs. But early on she has conceived an ambition to be a writer, and has been sending off poems and stories to magazines, typing away secretly on the office machines in her lunch hour. Then, in her early 20s, she develops an eye condition which prevents her from going to work. Suddenly, for a few months, she is able to stay home and to write full-time. Excitedly, she completes her first novel. At the same time, she receives an unexpected fan letter from a strange woman who has read one of her poems in a magazine. Lucy has been signing her work with her initials only, as people don’t take women writers seriously. Her fan, who has invited her to tea, is disappointed:
“I thought you would be a young man of 27 with golden hair,” she said. I apologised. Neither my sex nor the colour of my hair depended on my own choice, I assured her.”
After repeated rejections from publishers, Lucy is inspired. She decides to take on a man’s name: Anthony Gilbert. And signed by a man, her novel is accepted. But the publishers need a photograph.
“I went to the hairdressing department of the Army and Navy Stores, and inquired: ‘Do you stock wigs and beards?’
An enthralling conversation ensued. As to the wig – what shade? Where parting? Covering or not covering ears? When it came to the beard, it seemed there was yet more choice. I decided on a good square beard. So I paid five and sixpence and a full beard and moustache were ordered.”
Astonishingly modern, though a hundred years old, Lucy Malleson’s sharp and humorous account of working life is vividly brought to life by Diana Quick.
Reader: Diana Quick
Producer: Elizabeth Burke
A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 4
WED 10:00 Woman's Hour (m000c4v3)
The programme that offers a female perspective on the world
WED 10:41 The Country Girls Trilogy (m000c4v7)
Girls in Their Married Bliss
Girls in Their Married Bliss 3/5
by Edna O'Brien
Dramatised by Lin Coghlan
Baba ..... Aiobhinn McGinnity
Kate ..... Charlie Murphy
Harvey ..... Luke Norris
Eugene ..... Jonathan Forbes
Frank ..... Branwell Donaghey
Mrs Cooney ..... Ruth Sheen
Cash ..... Alfie Todd
Woman ..... Debbie Korley
Directed by Sally Avens and Jessica Dromgoole
The third book in Edna O'Brien's frank, funny and subversive trilogy. Baba embarks upon a liaison with a drummer, whilst Kate finds being separated from her child unbearable.
WED 10:55 The Listening Project (m000c4vc)
Mimi and Chloe - The most stressful point of your life
School friends talk about how stressful exams are and about growing up in Scarborough. Fi Glover presents another conversation in a series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.
WED 11:00 Assisted Loving (m000c4vh)
[Repeat of broadcast at
20:00 on Monday]
WED 11:30 Lemn Sissay's Social Enterprise (m000c4vm)
Episode 3
Every year since 2013, the poet, broadcaster and author Lemn Sissay has arranged a Christmas dinner for people aged 18-25 who have left the care system and have no one with whom to have Christmas dinner. No one to give presents or receive them. No-one on the other end of the cracker.
This is not a charity. It isn't even an organisation. It's a project Lemn undertook because he understands how it feels - at 18 he was released from a children's home and given an empty flat in Wigan, with no-one in the world who had known him for longer than a year.
Lemn Sissay’s Social Enterprise is a four-part series for BBC Radio 4, considering what these dinners have taught him about charity, social enterprise, and people, through stand-up, interview and poetry.
This week he explores the idea of food - with the help of Nick Cole, the UK project director for Operation Christmas Child, and comedian Jason Cook.
Written and performed by Lemn Sissay
Guest: Nick Cole.
Guest: Jason Cook
Producer: Ed Morrish
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4
WED 12:00 News Summary (m000c4vr)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
WED 12:04 Dark Matter (m000c4vw)
Episode Three
Michelle Paver's terrifying 1930s ghost story, set in the wilderness of the Arctic Circle.
Episode Three
Against all odds the expedition arrives at Gruhuken.
Writer: Michelle Paver
Although born in Nyasaland of a Belgian mother and a South African father, by the time she was three Michelle Paver and her family had settled in Wimbledon. She was educated at Wimbledon High School and Oxford, where she got a first in biochemistry. She subsequently became a partner in a London law firm. In 1996, after the death of her father, she resigned from the law firm to become a full-time writer. In 2010, Dark Matter was nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award for best novel. The Shirley Jackson Awards, named after the American author, recognise outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense and horror.
Abridger: Jeremy Osborne
Reader: Lee Ingleby
Producer: Karen Rose
A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4
WED 12:18 You and Yours (m000c4w0)
News and discussion of consumer affairs.
WED 12:57 Weather (m000c4w4)
The latest weather forecast
WED 13:00 World at One (m000c4w8)
Mon-Thurs: Analysis of news and current affairs, presented by Sarah Montague. Fri: Analysis of news and current affairs, presented by Mark Mardell.
WED 14:00 The Archers (m000c4qn)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 on Tuesday]
WED 14:15 This Is Your Country Now, Too (m000c4wd)
Vijay
Avin Shah's comedy celebrates his East African heritage, for our series of seven dramas about child refugees arriving in the UK since 1939.
Today's story salutes the enterprise and grit of a generation of British Asian citizens, who were forced to remake their lives in the UK in the 1960s.
Fifteen year-old Vijay was born in Kenya, but now the country has won its independence from the British Empire, a new programme of Africanisation means his parents are denied work, and his school has closed down.
But when he arrives at Heathrow with his British passport, he's put on a plane back to Kenya.
Then in Nairobi, Kenyan Immigration say he's not Kenyan either, and put him back on another plane.
So where does Vijay belong? What can he say about who he is, that will get him off a plane and back to school?
Luckily, Vijay's new travelling companion, Mr Ramesh Ramji, is about to help him find the answers.
Ramesh . . . . Tony Jayawardena
Vijay . . . . Sid Sagar
Mrs P . . . Chetna Pandya
Mr Singh . . . Amit Shah
Wendy . . . Safiyya Ingar
The Kenyan Official . . . Ivanno Jeremiah
The Tanzanian Official . . . Nahel Tzegai
The Coffee Seller . . . John Kamau
Young Ramesh . . . Nyla Levy
Mohammed . . . Avin Shah
Mr Filmore . . . Neil McCaul
Mr Henry . . . Clive Hayward
The Boy . . . JP Oppong
with thanks to Wazir Khamsin, Mariam Omar and Zuhura Yunus.
Theme music by Jack Newton
Series idea by Nicolas Kent with Jack Bradley
Produced and directed by Jonquil Panting
WED 15:00 Money Box (m000c4wg)
The latest news from the world of personal finance plus advice for those trying to make the most of their money.
WED 15:30 All in the Mind (m000c4qx)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 on Tuesday]
WED 16:00 Thinking Allowed (b03mg95w)
Love
A Thinking Allowed special on 'love'. What are the origins of our notions of high romantic love? Was the post war period a 'golden age' for lifelong love? Has marriage for love now failed? Laurie Taylor hopes to finds some answers with the help of the social historian, Claire Langhamer, the philosopher, Pascal Bruckner, and the sociologist, Professor Mary Evans.
Producer: Jayne Egerton
WED 16:30 The Media Show (m000c4wm)
Ronan Farrow's Battle to Report
Ronan Farrow is hailed as one of the greatest reporters of his generation. For his ground-breaking New Yorker investigation into Harvey Weinstein, he shared a Pulitzer Prize with Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey of The New York Times. Now Farrow has told the story of how he battled to get the allegations published in a new book, Catch and Kill.
Presenter: Amol Rajan
Producer: Richard Hooper
WED 17:00 PM (m000c4ws)
Afternoon news and current affairs programme, reporting on breaking stories and summing up the day's headlines.
WED 18:00 Six O'Clock News (m000c4wz)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
WED 18:30 Susan Calman Makes Me Happy (m000c4x4)
Episode 4
Taking part in Strictly Come Dancing made Susan Calman happy. Completely, totally happy. And having lived with anxiety for so long, it was something of a surprise to discover something new that gave her feelings of joy. So, in Susan Calman Makes Me Happy, she explores and explains the other things in life that bring her happiness.
This week, aided and abetted by her studio audience and her wife Lee, Susan waxes lyrical about her love for animals. She may have previously mentioned (once or twice) that she’s quite partial to cats, but her affections aren’t limited to the feline world. From the dogs in her local park, via the birds that visit her garden, to grumpy Icelandic Ponies (well, sort of), Susan adores them all.
Produced by Lyndsay Fenner
Written by Susan Calman and Jon Hunter
Production Co-ordinator: Tamara Shilham
A Somethin’ Else production for BBC Radio 4
WED 19:00 The Archers (m000c4xb)
David gets fired up and Neil makes his case.
WED 19:15 Front Row (m000c4xj)
Live magazine programme on the worlds of arts, literature, film, media and music
WED 19:45 The Country Girls Trilogy (m000c4v7)
[Repeat of broadcast at
10:41 today]
WED 20:00 The Spark (m000c4xq)
Emily Oster and evidence-based parenting
Helen Lewis meets the writers and thinkers who are breaking new ground.
From politics to economics, from tech to the study of how we live, things are changing fast. Old certainties have not been under such challenge for decades.
So each week, we give the whole programme over to a single in-depth, close-up interview with someone whose big idea is bidding to change our world.
Helen’s challenge is to make sense of their new idea, to find out more about the person behind it – and to test what it has to offer us against the failures of the past.
This week, Helen talks to American economist Emily Oster, author of Expecting Better and Cribsheet, about how to apply rational, evidence-based decision making to the sleep-deprived fog of myth and misinformation that surrounds parenting.
Questions about what to eat in pregnancy, whether to have an epidural during childbirth, and whether to sleep-train your baby are fraught with controversy and attract a great deal of anxiety and guilt. Yet the actual data on the pros and cons is surprisingly hard to come by. Emily Oster sought to fill that information gap and she tells Helen Lewis why this can have a life-changing impact on babies – and their exhausted parents.
Producer: Eliane Glaser
WED 20:45 Four Thought (m000c4tp)
[Repeat of broadcast at
09:30 today]
WED 21:00 Science Stories (m000c4y0)
Mary Somerville, pioneer of popular science writing
As a teenager in Scotland in the 1790s, Mary Somerville taught herself maths. Naomi Alderman tells the story of how in the 1830s she became the pioneer of popular science writing.
WED 21:30 Soul Music (m000c4th)
[Repeat of broadcast at
09:00 today]
WED 22:00 The World Tonight (m000c4y5)
In depth reporting, intelligent analysis and breaking news from a global perspective
WED 22:45 Dark Matter (m000c4vw)
[Repeat of broadcast at
12:04 today]
WED 23:00 Bunk Bed (b092g8gg)
Series 4
Episode 2
Everyone craves a place where their mind and body are not applied to a particular task. The nearest faraway place. Somewhere for drifting and lighting upon strange thoughts which don't have to be shooed into context, but which can be followed like balloons escaping onto the air. Late at night, in the dark and in a bunk bed, your tired mind can wander...
The acclaimed Bunk Bed written by and featuring Patrick Marber and Peter Curran returns for its fourth series with a dozy vengeance. Up there with Brian Johnson's famous dissolve into helpless laughter while commentating on cricket, this Bunk Bed boasts a similarly hilarious breakdown as the award-winning actor and director Kathy Burke relates her memories of reading saucy novels aloud for an audience of fellow teenagers in the 1970s. Curran and Marber fight over concepts of male sensitivity, only to be severely admonished by their guest, and the unlikely bedfellows discuss how the words of The Sex Pistols' God Save The Queen now mock them in middle-age.
'Bunk Bed is funny, strange, enchanting, and beautifully put together.' - The Observer
'Bunk Bed on Radio 4 is beloved by broadsheet critics, but don't let that put you off.' - Metro
Producer: Peter Curran
A Foghorn production for BBC Radio 4.
WED 23:30 The Untold (b07ctt0x)
The TB Test
Grace Dent follows the story of a fourth generation Herefordshire beef farmer during his most stressful time: the TB Test. Matthew Oliver wants to sell around fifteen cattle at a local market, but to do this they have to be free of TB. It's a nervy time both for Matthew and his 87 year old mother - they have failed the test before. If the TB test is positive, cattle movement is banned for 120 days, the affected animals all culled. The farm, set up by his great grandfather in 1892, is in a high-risk area and Matthew knows local farmers who have never been free of TB; one neighbour was forced to leave farming altogether. So the stakes are high for Matthew, and the future of his family farm.
Producer: Karen Gregor
THURSDAY 12 DECEMBER 2019
THU 00:00 Midnight News (m000c4yc)
National and international news from BBC Radio 4
THU 00:30 Three-a-Penny (m000c4tv)
[Repeat of broadcast at
09:45 on Wednesday]
THU 00:48 Shipping Forecast (m000c4yk)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping.
THU 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (m000c4yr)
BBC Radio 4 joins the BBC World Service.
THU 05:20 Shipping Forecast (m000c4yz)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping.
THU 05:30 News Briefing (m000c4z5)
National and international news from BBC Radio 4.
THU 05:43 Prayer for the Day (m000c4z9)
A spiritual comment and prayer to start the day with Revd Dr Calvin T Samuel
THU 05:45 Farming Today (m000c4zf)
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
THU 05:58 Tweet of the Day (b098h707)
YOLOBirder on the Redwing
Birdwatching's irreverent Tweeter YOLOBirder remembers rescuing redwings when snow hit the North East, standing with a bird in each hand.
Producer: Andrew Dawes
Photograph: John Thistle.
THU 06:00 Today (m000c4wv)
News and current affairs, including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
THU 09:00 In Our Time (m000c4x1)
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of ideas.
THU 09:45 Three-a-Penny (m000c4x8)
East End Lives
Diana Quick reads the autobiography of Lucy Malleson, a detective writer of the 1930s and 40s who wrote under the name Anthony Gilbert.
First published in 1940, it’s a book which is valuable now for its sharp social history of working life in the early decades of the 20th century, and particularly for its focus on what it was like for women at work in offices.
It’s 1930, unemployment is rising and making a living is precarious. In the East End of London, people are forced to work on what we would now call zero-hours contracts.
“Dressmaking, trouser-finishing, millinery, cracker-factory work, above all, casual dock labour – all these are seasonal jobs. In bad times – and 1930 was the beginning of the slump – it was common to find machinists and dressmaking hands who only had an average of two days’ work a week. Beyond Stepney lie the Docks, and no man’s living is more precarious than that of the casual dock labourer. It’s desperately hard to get work and when you have got it you must work like a dog without even knowing whether you will be wanted tomorrow.
“You may get one or even two days’ employment in the week, and on the other days you must go down to the Labour Exchange and 'sign on' in order to draw your unemployment pay at the week’s end. But the men who can accept this with equanimity are few. For the most part they will be driven to desperate straits before they apply for Poor Law Assistance. Elderly women are sometimes practically carried to the Relief Office by the parish doctor, because what they are really suffering from is not indigestion or giddiness, but sheer starvation.”
Working as a kind of social worker, Lucy Malleson begins to visit pensioners in the East End of London. Her sharp and compassionate account of these visits creates an unforgettable picture of working-class London life in the 1930s, vividly brought to life by Diana Quick.
Reader: Diana Quick
Producer: Elizabeth Burke
A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 4
THU 10:00 Woman's Hour (m000c4xh)
The programme that offers a female perspective on the world
THU 10:45 The Country Girls Trilogy (m000c4xn)
Girls in Their Married Bliss
Girls in Their Married Bliss 4/5
The third book in Edna O'Brien's frank, funny and subversive Country Girls trilogy. When Baba is in trouble, Kate’s friendship is tested, and proven.
Cast
Baba ..... Aoibhinn McGinnity
Kate ..... Charlie Murphy
Frank ..... Branwell Donaghey
Written by Edna O’Brien
Dramatised by Lin Coghlan
Directed by Sally Avens & Jessica Dromgoole
THU 11:00 Crossing Continents (m000c4xv)
Insight, and analysis from BBC correspondents around the world
THU 11:30 Sketches: Stories of Art and People (m000c4y1)
On the Road
The writer Anna Freeman presents a showcase of true stories about the meaning of art in people's lives. This week, how it feels to travel, how it feels to return home, and the art that comes out of the journeys we take. First up, a sweaty cycle-touring Shakespeare troop look back on their tour and then to look forward... into the unfamiliar face of "normal life". Then Anna tells a story of how travel feeds her writing - and how writing feeds her travel. And finally we meet Gemma Paintin and James Stenhouse, who toured 28,000 km across Europe recording love songs in their van, which doubles as their home and mobile recording studio. What have they learned about Europe, and about love, from this listening odyssey?
Produced by Mair Bosworth and Becky Ripley
THU 12:00 News Summary (m000c4y7)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
THU 12:04 Dark Matter (m000c4yf)
Episode Four
Michelle Paver's terrifying 1930s ghost story, set in the wilderness of the Arctic Circle.
Episode Four
Has Gruhuken a dark history?
Writer: Michelle Paver
Although born in Nyasaland of a Belgian mother and a South African father, by the time she was three Michelle Paver and her family had settled in Wimbledon. She was educated at Wimbledon High School and Oxford, where she got a first in biochemistry. She subsequently became a partner in a London law firm. In 1996, after the death of her father, she resigned from the law firm to become a full-time writer. In 2010, Dark Matter was nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award for best novel. The Shirley Jackson Awards, named after the American author, recognise outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense and horror.
Abridger: Jeremy Osborne
Reader: Lee Ingleby
Producer: Karen Rose
A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4
THU 12:18 You and Yours (m000c4ym)
News and discussion of consumer affairs.
THU 12:57 Weather (m000c4yt)
The latest weather forecast
THU 13:00 World at One (m000c4z0)
Mon-Thurs: Analysis of news and current affairs, presented by Sarah Montague. Fri: Analysis of news and current affairs, presented by Mark Mardell.
THU 13:45 Witness (m000c7fs)
El Salvador's stolen children
In 1994 investigators in El Salvador located the first of several hundred children who'd disappeared more than a decade earlier during the country's brutal civil war. There had been rumours that the children had been kidnapped by the army. Mike Lanchin has been speaking to Elsy Dubon who was taken from her family as a child, and to the investigator who helped to find her.
THU 14:00 The Archers (m000c4xb)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 on Wednesday]
THU 14:15 This Is Your Country Now, Too (m000c4z6)
Eve
Stories seen through the eyes of child refugees as they leave home for the unknown.
In the divisive years of apartheid South Africa, a young girl, Eve, is smuggled out of the country after her mother was killed. The secret plan to get Eve out, with the help of sympathisers of the ANC cause, is arranged by a white South African couple, now living in London where she will join her father, Joseph - played by Danny Sapani.
Although successful in their mission, they meet resistance from Joseph when Eve arrives in London. But her burgeoning friendship with the couple’s son, thirteen-year-old Jack, helps to win over Joseph until the Immigration Service call at the house to interview Eve throwing her and her father’s future into doubt.
This is the fifth of seven dramas in the series about the experience of child refugees fleeing persecution to find a new life in the UK since 1939.
Cast:
Eve Motsamayi … Nokukhanya Masango
Joseph Motsamayi … Danny Sapani
Anne-Marie Levering … Olivia Darnley
Sean Levering … Paul Herzberg
The Nightingale … Pamela Nomvete
Mr. Junies … Kevin Harvey
Jack Levering … Felix Gillingwater
Other parts played by the company
Written by Chinonyerem Odimba
Series devised by Nicolas Kent with Jack Bradley
Original Music / Music Supervision: Jack Newton
Director: Femi Elufowoju Jr
Producer: Nicholas Newton
A Promenade production for BBC Radio 4
THU 15:00 Open Country (m000c4zb)
Planting Trees to Save the Planet in Cumbria
Helen mark meets teenage environmental campaigner Amy Bray in her native Cumbria as she plants trees to help halt climate change. Amy has inspired her community to take action with a no plastic shop and helped to raise awareness with a mass fell climbing. Helen helps her as she takes on her latest challenge - to plant more trees and help to create natural flood defences as well as absorb carbon.
THU 15:27 Radio 4 Appeal (m000c3dz)
[Repeat of broadcast at
07:54 on Sunday]
THU 15:30 Open Book (m000c3fv)
[Repeat of broadcast at
16:00 on Sunday]
THU 16:00 The Film Programme (m000c4zg)
The latest releases, the hottest stars and the leading directors, plus news and insights from the film world.
THU 16:30 BBC Inside Science (m000c4zj)
Dr Adam Rutherford and guests illuminate the mysteries and challenge the controversies behind the science that's changing our world.
THU 17:00 PM (m000c4zl)
Afternoon news and current affairs programme, reporting on breaking stories and summing up the day's headlines.
THU 18:00 Six O'Clock News (m000c4zn)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
THU 18:30 Tom Allen Is Actually Not Very Nice (m000c4zq)
Episode 2
A new series from Tom Allen, star of Mock The Week, Bake Off Extra Slice, The Apprentice: You're Fired and fresh from a sell out solo performance at The London Palladium.
Tom Allen is Actually Not Very Nice explores what happens when Tom's calm and collected exterior collapses. He used to be such a nice boy but what has happened to turn him naughty?
With help from the assembled studio audience, Tom works out how best to navigate some tricky social situations and how to keep a lid on his fury when confronted with life's small injustices.
Featuring Gabby Best.
Photo credit: Edward Moore @edshots
Producer: Richard Morris
A BBC Studios Production
THU 19:00 The Archers (m000c4ry)
Tony makes a mistake and Helen's feeling loved up.
THU 19:15 Front Row (m000c4zs)
Live magazine programme on the worlds of arts, literature, film, media and music
THU 19:45 The Country Girls Trilogy (m000c4xn)
[Repeat of broadcast at
10:45 today]
THU 20:00 The Briefing Room (m000c4zv)
Combining original insights into major news stories with topical investigations.
THU 20:30 In Business (m000c4zx)
Women's work
Iceland has taken radical measures to reduce the gender pay gap. These aren't just about equalising pay when men and women do the same job but when they do different jobs of equal value as well. That's proved to be quite a sticking point in many countries, including the UK; ensuring that the jobs routinely done by women are paid as well as those that men routinely do. Lesley Curwen meets the people tasked with comparing a production line worker with an office administrator, an HR professional with an accountant and a camera operative with a social media marketer. What has the financial and cultural impact been on companies that have had to adjust their pay rates and what do their employees think about the process? Could other countries follow the Iceland model? That's one of the questions put to female council workers in Glasgow who, after more than a decade of fighting through the courts, have finally won their equal pay case.
Producer: Rosamund Jones
THU 21:00 BBC Inside Science (m000c4zj)
[Repeat of broadcast at
16:30 today]
THU 21:30 Dark Matter (m000c4yf)
[Repeat of broadcast at
12:04 today]
THU 21:45 Election 2019 (m000c4zz)
James Naughtie and Emma Barnett present full coverage and analysis of the results as the polls close in the 2019 General Election. BBC correspondents at count locations across the UK will bring results, tips and the many gripping individual stories which make election nights so exciting. Senior politicians and the best analysts in the business will help Emma and James to digest the results.
Editors: Chris Hunter and Giles Edwards
FRIDAY 13 DECEMBER 2019
FRI 06:00 Today (m000c4rh)
News and current affairs, including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
FRI 09:00 Desert Island Discs (m000c3fc)
[Repeat of broadcast at
11:15 on Sunday]
FRI 09:45 Three-a-Penny (m000c4rk)
The Detection Club
Diana Quick reads the autobiography of Lucy Malleson, a detective writer of the 1930s and 40s who wrote under the name Anthony Gilbert.
As her novels begin to be published, Lucy Malleson’s reputation as a writer grows and she is invited to become a member of “the Detection Club” by the famous Dorothy Sayers.
Becoming a member of this writers’ club involves a highly theatrical ceremony. It stars both Dorothy Sayers and G KChesterton, who is the President of the club, and features a procession with torches, long black robes, and a skull. Lucy gives a humorous description of this peculiar ceremony and looks back wryly at her own somewhat snobbish ambitions as an aspiring writer.
Meanwhile, though, unemployment is growing in the early 1930s.
“By 1933 the Slump had spread like the plague. For the unemployed, the cry of 'Too old at 40' was becoming 'Too old at 30'. One felt most for the men, because as a rule they had families to support, but it was bad for the women too. When nobody wants what you have to offer you begin to doubt your own value as a human being.”
Lucy decides to investigate for herself what it’s like trying to find employment as a secretary, and talks to others who are also looking for work.
“’You see stars at first,’ said one unemployed man to me,’and then you see sense. You realise that there are only a certain number of jobs left, and in every job, like a rabbit in a hole, some other chap is crouched. What you’ve got to do it watch till he’s off his guard and then bounce him out of his hole. The devil of it is everybody’s got the wind up. Everybody’s on guard now.'”
Lucy Malleson’s sharp and astonishingly modern account of working life is vividly brought to life by Diana Quick.
Reader: Diana Quick
Producer: Elizabeth Burke
A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 4
FRI 10:00 Woman's Hour (m000c4rm)
The programme that offers a female perspective on the world
FRI 10:45 The Country Girls Trilogy (m000c4rp)
Girls in Their Married Bliss
Girls in Their Married Bliss 5/5
The final episode of Edna O'Brien's frank, funny and subversive Country Girls trilogy. Baba and Kate are grown women, a long way from their West of Ireland childhood, and as close and as alienated from each other as ever.
Cast
Baba ..... Aoibhinn McGinnity
Kate ..... Charlie Murphy
Psychiatrist ..... Chris Pavlo
Cash ..... Alfie Todd
Maura ..... Katherine Press
Written by Edna O’Brien
Dramatised by Lin Coghlan
Directed by Sally Avens & Jessica Dromgoole
FRI 11:00 Three Pounds in My Pocket (m000c4rr)
Series 3
Episode 2
Kavita Puri hears stories of the pioneering migrants from the Indian subcontinent and their children. She hears how the politics of 1980s Britain was shaping not only the ‘three pound’ generation of early migrants but also their children.
It was a period during which there was the largest intake yet of MPs – all Labour - from ethnic minority backgrounds. Under Margaret Thatcher’s premiership, the Conservatives began to court the South Asian vote. We meet the first female British South Asian to be chosen as a parliamentary candidate for the Tories.
By the mid-1980s, many of the 'three pound generation' had been in Britain for longer than they had lived on the Indian subcontinent. They and their children were becoming ever more ingrained into British life, part of its fabric. And as the decade drew to an end, we see how dramatic events would lead to the South Asian community fragmenting.
Presenter: Kavita Puri
Producer: Ant Adeane
Editor: Hugh Levinson
Historical consultants:
Dr Florian Stadtler, Exeter University
Dr Edward Anderson, Cambridge University
FRI 11:30 In and Out of the Kitchen (b068vymj)
Series 4
The Wedding
Damien recounts the events leading up to his marriage to long term partner Anthony, when not everything went exactly according to plan...
Starring:
Miles Jupp as Damien Trench
Justin Edwards as Anthony
Philip Fox as Ian Frobisher/Damien's Dad
Selina Cadell as Damien's Mum
Brendan Dempsey as Mr Mullaney
Jessica Turner as The Celebrant
and
David Acton as Gavin Fox
Producer was Sam Michell
FRI 12:00 World at One (m000c4rt)
Mon-Thurs: Analysis of news and current affairs, presented by Sarah Montague. Fri: Analysis of news and current affairs, presented by Mark Mardell.
FRI 13:57 Weather (m000c4rw)
The latest weather forecast
FRI 14:00 The Archers (m000c4ry)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 on Thursday]
FRI 14:15 This Is Your Country Now, Too (m000c4s0)
Daughter
Actor and writer Yusra Warsama's family fled war in Somalia, and arrived in the UK when she was a baby.
In Daughter, she reflects on the final part of the refugee child's journey: growing up in a new country as a child of refugees, suspended between two cultures, and not fully part of either.
"How can we not lose ourselves in this place that doesn't let us truly sing our hearts' song?
There has to be more than feeling like an alien in the only place you know as home. The only place that has your heart."
This programme contains strong discriminatory language, reflecting the experiences of the writer.
Written and performed by Yusra Warsama,
with Tanya Moodie as Mother.
Daughter . . . . Yusra Warsama
Mother . . . . Tanya Moodie
Father . . . . Beru Tessema
Jean . . . . Alexander Devrient
Train Manager . . . . Ian Conningham
Employer . . . . Ikky Elias
Student . . . . Will Kirk
Student . . . . Greg Jones
Student . . . . Laura Christy
Theme music by Jack Newton
Series idea by Nicholas Kent with Jack Bradley
Produced and directed by Jonquil Panting
FRI 15:00 Gardeners' Question Time (m000c4s2)
Houseplant Edition
Kathy Clugston looks through the GQT archives for a special house plant edition of the show.
Producer: Hannah Newton
Assistant Producer: Jemima Rathbone
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4
FRI 15:45 Short Works (m000c4s4)
Man-made Miracle
"Some believe in saints, some believe in Santa Claus. Some worship the brute rewards of violence, others the quiet, constant hope for salvation." A modern-day twist on The Christmas Story, by award-winning poet Vanessa Kisuule. Directed by Becky Ripley.
FRI 16:00 Last Word (m000c4s6)
Radio 4's weekly obituary programme, telling the life stories of those who have died recently.
FRI 16:30 Feedback (m000c4s8)
The programme that holds the BBC to account on behalf of the radio audience.
FRI 16:55 The Listening Project (m000c4sb)
Timandra and Janet - Flying the nest
Daughter quizzes mother about why higher education for her children was important to her. Fi Glover presents another conversation in a series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.
FRI 17:00 PM (m000c4sd)
Afternoon news and current affairs programme, reporting on breaking stories and summing up the day's headlines.
FRI 18:00 Six O'Clock News (m000c4sg)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
FRI 18:30 Dead Ringers (m000c4sj)
Christmas Specials 2019
Election Special 2020
With each sketch being written within moments of the results, this promises to be the most up-to-the-minute show in the programme’s history. Recorded at lunchtime and edited in the afternoon, every twist, turn and embarrassing face-saving platitude will be examined.
Staring Jon Culshaw, Jan Ravens, Lewis McLeod, Duncan Wisbey, Deborah Stevenson.
The writing team for the series: Tom Jamieson & Nev Fountain, Laurence Howarth, Sarah Campbell, Ed Amsden & Tom Coles, James Bugg, Max Davis, Sara Gibbs, Simon Alcock, Alex Hardy and others.
FRI 19:00 The Archers (m000c4sm)
Writer, Naylah Ahmed
Director, Marina Caldarone
Editor, Jeremy Howe
Jill Archer ….. Patricia Greene
David Archer ….. Timothy Bentinck
Pip Archer ….. Daisy Badger
Kenton Archer ….. Richard Attlee
Pat Archer ….. Patricia Gallimore
Tony Archer ….. David Troughton
Helen Archer ….. Louiza Patikas
Brian Aldridge ….. Charles Collingwood
Phoebe Aldridge ….. Lucy Morris
Neil Carter ….. Brian Hewlett
Justin Elliott ….. Simon Williams
Rex Fairbrother ….. Nick Barber
Clarrie Grundy ….. Heather Bell
Will Grundy ….. Philip Molloy
Emma Grundy ….. Emerald O'Hanrahan
Ed Grundy ….. Barry Farrimond
Tracy Horrobin ….. Susie Riddell
Jim Lloyd ….. John Rowe
Elizabeth Pargetter ….. Alison Dowling
Hannah Riley ….. Helen Longworth
Lynda Snell ….. Carole Boyd
Robert Snell ….. Graham Blockey
Oliver Sterling ….. Michael Cochrane
Peggy Woolley ….. June Spencer
Joy Horville ….. Jackie Lye
Martyn Gibson ….. Jon Glover
FRI 19:15 Front Row (m000c4sp)
Live magazine programme on the worlds of arts, literature, film, media and music
FRI 19:45 The Country Girls Trilogy (m000c4rp)
[Repeat of broadcast at
10:45 today]
FRI 20:00 Any Questions? (m000c4sr)
Matt Goodwin
Chris Mason presents political debate from Saffron Hall in Essex with a post election panel including Matt Goodwin Professor of Politics and International Relations at Kent University.
Producer: Lisa Jenkinson
FRI 20:50 A Point of View (m000c4st)
A weekly reflection on a topical issue.
FRI 21:00 Archive on 4 (b0bcdd8j)
The Story of EH Gombrich
"There really is no such thing as Art. There are only artists." So begins E.H. Gombrich's 'The Story Of Art', currently in its 16th edition and translated into more than 30 languages. It was the book that opened the door to human creativity for millions across the globe.
But what of the man himself. What of the Austrian émigré, who spent fifteen years in Britain as a 'restricted alien' before becoming one of the UK's most honoured scholars... the man who broke the BBC news story alerting Churchill to the death of Hitler... whose vast network of relationships and correspondence with the likes of Karl Popper, Anna Freud and Antony Blunt was like the internet before the internet... and who, through such books as varied as 'A Little History of the World' and 'Art & Illusion', taught the world how to see.
Radio 4 broadcaster Robert Newman has long been fascinated by Gombrich's intellectual circle which he regularly references in his shows and his writing. He has not only read all of Gombrich's books but has also befriended Leonie Gombrich - who inherited her Grandfather's vast private collection of letters which she keeps along with a cache of personal, and previously unheard private tapes.
In this Archive on 4 Leonie and Rob play excerpts from Gombrich family recordings and from his appearances on Radio 3 and such shows as Desert Island Discs. They also select choice passages from the letters he sent and received, painting a portrait of another time.
Producers: Dixi Stewart & Paul Kobrak.
FRI 22:00 The World Tonight (m000c4sw)
In depth reporting, intelligent analysis and breaking news from a global perspective
FRI 22:45 Dark Matter (m000c4sy)
Episode Five
Michelle Paver's terrifying 1930s ghost story, set in the wilderness of the Arctic Circle.
Episode Five
Is Gruhuken haunted?
Writer: Michelle Paver
Although born in Nyasaland of a Belgian mother and a South African father, by the time she was three Michelle Paver and her family had settled in Wimbledon. She was educated at Wimbledon High School and Oxford, where she got a first in biochemistry. She subsequently became a partner in a London law firm. In 1996, after the death of her father, she resigned from the law firm to become a full-time writer. In 2010, Dark Matter was nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award for best novel. The Shirley Jackson Awards, named after the American author, recognise outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense and horror.
Abridger: Jeremy Osborne
Reader: Lee Ingleby
Producer: Karen Rose
A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4
FRI 23:00 Where's the F in News (m000c4t0)
Series 3
Episode 6
Where's the F in News is a weekly topical show brought to you by Jo Bunting.
FRI 23:30 Great Lives (m000c4qc)
[Repeat of broadcast at
16:30 on Tuesday]
FRI 23:55 The Listening Project (m000c4t3)
David and Tom - I didn't have the confidence to go to school.
Mentor and mentee talk the benefits of a support service for young people. Fi Glover presents another conversation in a series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.