SATURDAY 07 AUGUST 2010

SAT 00:00 Midnight News (b00t7wld)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.


SAT 00:30 Book of the Week (b00t6fcj)
Lynn Schooler - Walking Home

Episode 5

To have any hope of reaching the Wilderness Swift to sail back to Juneau, Lynn must first outrun or outwit the grizzly bear on his trail. But this bear is like no other he has seen. And it is circling him.

With his back to the surf, and armed only with a pepper-spray, Lynn is running quickly out of options.

Lynn Schooler is the critically acclaimed author of The Blue Bear (2003) and The Last Shot (2006). He has lived in Alaska for almost forty years, working as a commercial fisherman, shipwright, wilderness guide, and an award-winning wildlife photographer.

Abridged by Jeremy Osborne
Reader: Colin Stinton.
Producer: Rosalynd Ward

A Sweet Talk Production for BBC Radio 4.


SAT 00:48 Shipping Forecast (b00t7wlg)
The latest shipping forecast.


SAT 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (b00t7wlj)
BBC Radio 4 joins the BBC World Service. BBC Radio 4 resumes at 5.20am.


SAT 05:20 Shipping Forecast (b00t7wll)
The latest shipping forecast.


SAT 05:30 News Briefing (b00t7wln)
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.


SAT 05:43 Prayer for the Day (b00t7wlr)
With Shaykh Michael Mumisa, Research Fellow, Centre for the Study of Muslim-Jewish Relations,
Cambridge.


SAT 05:45 Brother Mine (b00cm7h6)
Blood Isn't Always Thicker Than Water

Famous sibling Julian Lloyd Webber takes a closer look at what it is to be a sibling and why that relationship can be a lifelong source of love, hate, conflict and peace.

Julian explores non-blood siblings and how shared experience can be a greater bond than blood.

He looks at this through the stories of Phillip Frampton - who grew up in care homes - and Eric White, who arrived in Britain as a Jewish refugee during WW2. Growing up in a Christian family, when it came to returning to his Jewish roots and siblings, Eric felt insecure and unsettled. Phillip Frampton (author of "The Golly in the Cupboard") spent his childhood in 1960s children's homes: his care siblings are as real to him as any blood brothers and the bond persists to this day.

Producer: Terry Lewis
A Tinderbox production for BBC Radio 4.


SAT 06:00 News and Papers (b00t7wlt)
The latest news headlines. Including a look at the papers.


SAT 06:04 Weather (b00t7wlw)
The latest weather forecast.


SAT 06:07 Open Country (b00t81my)
Keighley and Worth Valley - The Railway Children at 40

It was back in spring 1970 that Lionel Jeffries and his film crew first descended on the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway in West Yorkshire to begin making the classic British film, The Railway Children. To this day, the film remains a firm family favourite with many people remembering the images of the children sitting on the fence waving to the Old Gentleman or running down the embankment to stop the train after a landslide. The film's closing scene remains a tear-jerker as the steam clears on the platform to reveal Mr Waterbury standing on the platform being greeted by his daughter played by Jenny Agutter. To the people living along the Keighley and Worth Valley though, the real star of the film was their railway. The Keighley and Worth Valley Railway is a standard gauge branch line, joining the national railway network at Keighley and running 5 miles along the Worth Valley to Oxenhope with the stations of Ingrow, Damems, Oakworth and Haworth along the way.

Helen Mark begins her journey along the 5 mile stretch of the Keighley & Worth Valley by catching the train at Oxenhope with Jim Shipley, former Station Master at Oakworth Station. Many of the film's classic scenes were filmed at Oakworth Station and several local people were used as extras. Jumping off the train at Haworth, Helen meets up with Graham Mitchell, who 'starred' as himself opposite Bernard Cribbins' s portrayal of Perks the Porter. Graham reveals more about the history of the railway which was built by local mill owners back in 1867 and eventually bought outright by local people who opposed its closure by British Rail in the early 60s. The line eventually reopened in 1968 and two years later The Railway Children arrived. The railway never looked back.

Helen joins Bill & Betty Black for a picnic lunch overlooking the embankment from which the children would sit on the fence and wave to the Old Gentleman at the back of the train. 40 years ago the couple had a picnic in the same spot with their children while they watched the filming take place and they remember the impact the film had on the local community.

Finally Helen arrives at Oakworth Station where much of the filming took place, in particular the final tear jerking scene as Mr Waterbury emerges from the steam onto the platform to be reunited with his family. Helen hears from David Petyt, current Station Foreman and one of the 350 volunteers who run the railway, and David Pearson who was 15 years old at the time of filming and who played a part in that final moving scene. Generations of families now visit the valley to see where the film was made and travel on the steam trains that still play such an important part in the life of the valley.

Producer: Helen Chetwynd.


SAT 06:30 Farming Today (b00t81n0)
Farming Today This Week

As cloned meat enters the UK food chain, Caz Graham visits a dairy farm in Staffordshire to explore how cattle breeding relies on technology. Professor Andrew Leitch from City University London tells Farming Today the world must embrace cloning technology or mass starvation may result.

The Food Standards Agency has launched an enquiry into how meat and milk from the offspring of cloned cows has entered the food chain. Tim Smith, its Chief Executive, tells Farming Today that despite this, legislation to prevent cloned food arriving in the UK from parts of the world where cloning is commonplace is secure.

But the Soil Association warns that animal welfare and consumer suspicion means that the cloning of food animals shouldn't happen in the UK.

Presented by Caz Graham. Produced by Melvin Rickarby.


SAT 06:57 Weather (b00t81n2)
The latest weather forecast.


SAT 07:00 Today (b00t81n4)
Morning news and current affairs with John Humphrys and James Naughtie including:
08:30 The latest on Pakistan's massive floods.
08:45 Australia's new PM faces a general election fight.
08:50 Is David Cameron a gaffe-prone politician?


SAT 09:00 Saturday Live (b00t833q)
Fi Glover is joined by author and journalist Gary Younge and poet Murray Lachlan Young. Songstress Sandie Shaw shares her Inheritance Tracks, we gain academic insight into the discovery of the UK's largest wasps' nest, and a listener speaks out for Esperanto. And we hear from Yvonne Scholes whose son Joseph hanged himself in a Young Offenders' Institution.

The producer is Simon Clancy.


SAT 10:00 Excess Baggage (b00t833s)
Afghanistan

Sandi Toksvig is joined by mountaineer and adventurer Suzy Madge who has recently returned from a horse, ski and mountaineering odyssey in Afghanistan. With no proper maps or photos to guide her, she travelled along the Silk Route in north east Afghanistan on horse, foot and ski. Mountainous valleys where only a handful of Westerners have been since Marco Polo in 1271, discovering a world of Kyrgyz nomads where no one has climbed or seen skis, far away from the bombs and Burkas of this beautiful country.

Sandi also talks to travel writer Jason Elliot who first visited Afghanistan in the 1980s, aged just nineteen, during the mujahideen's war against the Soviets. His latest book is a thriller set in the months leading up to 9/11.

They'll be joined by BBC foreign news correspondent Jill McGivering who has travelled extensively across Asia and reported from Afghanistan. Her novel is inspired by a real incident she experienced whilst being embedded with British troops in Helmand Province.

Producer: Harry Parker.


SAT 10:30 Reasons to be Cheerful (b00t833v)
Series 2

Katharine Whitehorn

A glass of bubbly at Europe's longest champagne bar before skipping across to Paris for lunch: Katharine Whitehorn shows us how to grow old disgracefully.

It's a common assumption that older people must be miserable about their lot in the modern age.

But Katharine, doyenne of female columnists, loves modern travel, especially the Eurostar; she believes conveniences around the home have revolutionised the lives of women and marvels at advances in medicine that have transformed what it means to be a pensioner.

Katharine is joined in her crusade by cultural and social historian Amanda Vickery, Independent travel editor Simon Calder and Professor Tom Kirkwood from Newcastle's Institute of Aging and Health.

She battles against professional Grumpy, comedian and travel writer Tony Hawks, and tries to convince him that modern life has more ups than downs.

Producer: Martin McNamara

A Loftus production for BBC Radio 4, first broadcast in August 2010.


SAT 11:00 Beyond Westminster (b00t833x)
How can political parties sell themselves to the public? Party membership in Britain is falling and is now one of the lowest in Europe. So how can parties attract more supporters and why do people still become card-carrying members today? Anne McElvoy examines how the internet has affected the way people network - has it made us less tribal and less ideological? And she investigates some of the new techniques being used by parties to bring people into their fold and to re-energise the parties' grassroots.


SAT 11:30 From Our Own Correspondent (b00t833z)
Andrew Harding reports on Rwanda's presidential election, due on Monday. There's no real doubt who'll win. In the last election, President Paul Kagame took more than ninety percent of the vote. And he's faced no major challenge this time round. Rwanda lives in the shadow of the 1994 genocide that swept away eight-hundred-thousand lives.

The Russian republic of Chechnya is now supposed to be at peace. And the war-torn capital, Grozny, is being impressively rebuilt. But killings and disappearances are still common. Over the years, large numbers of Chechens have left their troubled homeland. Many of these exiles chose to leave, but as Lucy Ash has been hearing..others were given no option.

This time two years ago tensions in the Caucasus exploded. Moscow sided with the tiny territory of South Ossetia in a war with Georgian forces. And within days the Russians had won a crushing victory. But the Georgians have forgotten nothing. They see themselves as victims of vast injustice. And as Tom Esslemont explains, they're passing that message on to the next generation....

The Cuban revolution was played out very much in front of the cameras. Photographers made the revolutionary leaders famous around the world. But in Havana, Christine Finn came across a less well-known cache of images. And they shed light on a friendship between Fidel Castro and a remarkable Cuban explorer and adventurer.

On hot summer days the parks and gardens in Europe's cities seem more valuable than ever. The islands of greenery are a refuge in the heat of the concrete sea. And the heart of the German capital, Berlin is blessed with many allotment and garden areas. But now, as Joanna Robertson has been finding out, some of these open spaces are in danger of being lost.


SAT 12:00 Alvin Hall's Generations of Money (b00t8341)
Episode 2

In the second part of this series on inter-generational finance, Alvin Hall meets two twenty-somethings and explores how different the financial challenges facing today's young people are to those that faced their parents at that age.

Alvin joins 26 year old would-be farmer, James Crow, who's struggling to come to terms with not being able to inherit the family farm. After generations of growing wheat on the farm in Cambridge, the business was no longer profitable, forcing James to reassess his future. He seeks advice from the careers advisory service, Next Step.

Alvin then meets 24 year old football fan, Daniel Robinson, whose love of the game means he spends everything he earns on match tickets and merchandise. Daniel tells Alvin of his dream to emigrate to Australia. But his lack of qualifications and skills means he has a long way to go to achieve his goal.

While some observers, like Universities and Science Minister, Conservative MP David Willetts argue that young people will have to shoulder a heavy burden in supporting an ageing population into retirement, Alvin asks whether some young people aren't too reliant on their parents.


SAT 12:30 The Now Show (b00t7kyn)
Series 31

Episode 8

The Now Show

Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis take a satirical look through this week's news. Helping them along the way are Laura Shavin, Mitch Benn, and special guests.


SAT 12:57 Weather (b00t8343)
The latest weather forecast.


SAT 13:00 News (b00t8345)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.


SAT 13:10 Any Questions? (b00t7kyq)
Jonathan Dimbleby chairs the topical discussion from Garland St Baptist Church in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, with questions for the panel including Tom Holland, author and historian; Dominic Lawson, former editor of The Specator and The Sunday Telegraph; Sarah Churchwell, Senior Lecturer in American Literature and Culture at University of East Anglia and columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown.

Producer: Rachel Simpson.


SAT 14:00 Any Answers? (b00t8347)
Jonathan Dimbleby takes listeners' calls and emails in response to this week's edition of Any Questions?


SAT 14:30 Saturday Drama (b00t8349)
Rebus: Strip Jack

Rebus: Strip Jack, part 1

Ian Rankin's Edinburgh detective, Inspector Rebus, investigates the disappearance of an MP's wife. Ron Donachie stars in a two-part dramatisation by Chris Dolan.


SAT 15:30 Robert Winston's Musical Analysis (b00t6zqz)
Series 2

Ludwig van Beethoven

Professor Robert Winston continues his exploration into the relationship between the music and the medical conditions of composers who suffered mental and physical illness.

Beethoven famously lost his hearing while still a young man, becoming profoundly deaf by the time he composed his late masterpieces. However, he was also plagued by a catalogue of other chronic illnesses. Stomach problems, asthma and pancreatitis made his life a misery. Prof. Winston investigates with John Suchet, Stephen Johnson and Dr Francois Mai how these daily torments may have been key to the transcendent spirit of Beethoven's music.

Producer: Chris Taylor.


SAT 16:00 Woman's Hour (b00t834c)
Weekend Woman's Hour

Presented by Bidisha. The intriguing art of taxidermy in the work of Polly Morgan, can calling a woman a dyke ever be anything but abusive, what will happen to the rights of women in Afghanistan when troops leave, equalities minister Lynne Featherstone on women's body image, novelist Jean Kwok describes life as a US sweat-shop worker immigrant, the choices of women now facing bankruptcy in growing numbers, and music by Mahler with Scottish mezzo soprano Karen Cargill.


SAT 17:00 PM (b00t834f)
Saturday PM

Full coverage and analysis of the day's news with Carolyn Quinn, plus the sports headlines.


SAT 17:30 iPM (b00t834h)
Men discuss having breast cancer, stopping domestic abuse and starting World War III. iPM hears from a listener who found a lump in his nipple and was treated for breast cancer on the same day and by the same surgeon as his wife. We also speak to one of the few men in the UK to run a domestic violence unit and ask how his own behaviour towards women has changed. And a bomber pilot explains how he waited for the alarm bell to ring that would signal the start of a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. With Eddie Mair and Jennifer Tracey.


SAT 17:54 Shipping Forecast (b00t834k)
The latest shipping forecast.


SAT 17:57 Weather (b00t834m)
The latest weather forecast.


SAT 18:00 Six O'Clock News (b00t834p)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.


SAT 18:15 Loose Ends (b00t834r)
Peter Curran and guests with an eclectic mix of conversation, music and comedy.

Peter is joined by the historian, presenter and author Simon Schama. He covers everything from bolognese sauce to grape scissors, from Obama to The Osbornes in his latest collection of musings 'Scribble, Scribble, Scribble'.

With a BAFTA winning performance in The Thick of It and acclaimed roles in I'm Alan Partridge and Nighty Night, Rebecca Front is in the new BBC Two sitcom Grandma's House. She plays the mother of Simon Amstell who decides to give up his presenting career in the search of something more meaningful.

Front man of Flaming Stars, journalist and author Max Decharne gives us The Hipster's Guide to Rockabilly with his book new book 'A Rocket in Your Pocket'.

Nikki Bedi is on interview duties this week with her guest, the actor Rafe Spall. He's recently been seen as a Desperate Romantic and now takes the lead as hapless sports journalist Pete in Channel 4's latest sitcom 'Pete versus Life'.

Stand up comes from Ireland's Neil Delamere. He's huge in his native land and making a big impression in the UK. Neil Delamere tops off a run at London's Soho Theatre and performs the comedy honours on Loose Ends.

There's music from indie five-piece Mystery Jets. They've come a long way since their beginnings on Eel Pie Island when the original line up included lead singer Blaine Harrison's dad. They had a brief sojourn in Berlin and return with their third album 'Serotonin'.

And from Sunderland singer-songwriter Lucas Renney. Lucas is the former lead singer and guitarist of John Peel favourites The Golden Virgins but is now concentrating on a solo career and performs 'She Gives Me The Chills' from his debut album 'Strange Glory'.

Producer: Cathie Mahoney.


SAT 19:00 Profile (b00t834t)
Paul Kagame

On Monday Rwanda goes to the polls, amid claims that the Hutu opposition has been brutally quashed, and free speech stifled by President Paul Kagame and the majority Tutsi government. The man who has led this tiny landlocked state since the genocide in 1994, taking it from basket case to emerging African success story, has been seen as a saviour, steering a traumatised country to democracy. He outlawed talk of ethnicity or division, and instilled discipline and ambition in colleagues and citizens alike. Aid money has been spent effectively: 19 out of 20 children are in school, the country has a health system. He changed the official language from French to English, banned plastic bags, and is pushing broadband internet connections. Sleeping little, Kagame reads voraciously about economic successes like Singapore or Korea, and has transformed Kigali into a clean and modern capital city. He uses a PR agency, has a facebook page, and occasionally tweets: but he's also accused of censorship and control of the media. Once praised by Clinton and Blair as a leader, Kagame is now under attack for banning political parties, and the unexplained and brutal murders of opposition politicians and journalists. Almost uniquely among Africa leaders, Kagame faces no personal allegations of corruption or nepotism. Kagame wants another term of office, and will get it. He denies any involvement in the assassinations, but says that the scale of the horror experience in Rwanda means the country needs a strong hand, and that the West doesn't understand. Nigel Thompson profiles the man behind Rwanda's extraordinary story.

Producer, Samantha Fenwick.


SAT 19:15 Saturday Review (b00t834w)
Sarfraz Manzoor and his guests novelist Deborah Moggach, theatre writer David Benedict and comedian Natalie Haynes review the week's cultural highlights including Knight and Day

Earthquakes in London is Mike Bartlett's new play at the National Theatre in London. Directed by Rupert Goold its action takes place between 1968 and 2525 and it address the perils of climate change.

Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz star in the film Knight and Day. Cruise plays a rogue agent doing his best to stop a groundbreaking perpetual energy source falling into the wrong hands

Nigerian author Helon Habila's new novel Oil on Water concerns a journalist trying to track down a kidnapped woman in the oil rich swamps of the Niger Delta

Pete Versus Life is a sitcom on Channel 4 in which Rafe Spall plays a hapless sports reporter whose blundering life is commented on by a pair of sports commentators

I Don't Get......It's A Wonderful Life. David Benedict explains why, for him, Frank Capra's classic 1947 film starring James Stewart is a chilling hymn to anti-individualism rather than a heartwarming tearjerker

Producer: Torquil MacLeod.


SAT 20:00 The Archive Hour (b00t834y)
The People's Republic of Hulme

25 years ago, the Manchester district of Hulme became so difficult for the city council to administer that they left many of the residents to their own devices - with surprising results.

Europe's biggest concentration of deck-access concrete flats, the "crescents" (a nod to the Georgian crescents of Bath), had, after only two years, been declared unfit for families to live in, and within ten years, become unheated, pest-infested slums. The police refused to patrol anywhere above ground level - including the "decks" - and so the Crescents went unpatrolled. Rent was always cheap in Hulme, but as life on the Crescents deteriorated, the council stopped charging rent entirely. The result, to some, was anarchy, with widespread crime and squatting. Other people found the freedom to be incredibly creative. Residents didn't only cover the grey concrete surfaces in graffiti - they converted the flats into recording studios and illegal nightclubs, such as The Kitchen, fashioned from three knocked-through flats, where during the rise of "acid house" in the late 1980s, the music provided a very much wilder alternative to the nearby Hacienda club.

Many Mancunians still value this version of Hulme. Hulme may not have been a good place to raise a young family, but for anyone young and in need of cheap or free accomodation, or work-space, Hulme could provide them. With Manchester's two universities, and the city centre, only ten minutes' walk away, Hulme was also conveniently central. Hulme also had a history of groundbreaking culture - it had its own arts cinema the Aaben, and in the late 1970s Tony Wilson had promoted the first Factory nights at the Russell Club in Hulme, before the Hacienda was ever built. Hulme was also politically radical. Tamil refugee, Viraj Mendis, fighting extradition in 1986, took refuge in the Church of the Ascension, Hulme, for two years, and was defended by a weekly demonstration that marched from Hulme to stop the traffic on Oxford Road. Police eventually entered the church and arrested him. Creative movers including Nico, Alain Delon, Sasha, Mike Pickering, A Guy Called Gerald, the Ruthless Rap Assassins, and Mark Kermode himself, who all lived in, and sometimes performed in, what was otherwise a vast slum. But the crime levels rose after the city's second "summer of love" gave rise to stronger, deadlier drugs and the spread of criminal gangs. Traveller-communities, and veterans of radical environmental protest, arrived in customised buses. The continuous party atmosphere went on, but the writing, for Hulme's low-rise apartment blocks and crescents, was on the wall.

When the Crescents were demolished, in the early 1990s, it was filmed, commemorating the final flattening of what for them had become a bohemian peoples' republic. In fact much of the period this programme looks into - from the 1970s to the mid-90s - coincides with rise of home-video and a strong, local independent film-making mini-industry. This programme will utilise an archive drawn from Manchester's former Film and Video Workshop, which helped in the making of video documentaries like "No Place Like Hulme" (1989) and super-8 films like "No City Fun" (1978) which were made in Hulme at the time.

But as far back as the 1940s, the planning of the concrete crescents had been predicted in a government-funded film, "A City Speaks" - where the former landscape, of Victorian back-to-back terraced houses was juxtaposed with sleek, modernist visions for what eventually became the low-rise concrete Hulme built in the late 1960s and early 70s. On the soundtrack, the Halle Orchestra blasted out Wagner's Ride of the Valkeries. Hulme always seems to have inspired dramatic musical accompaniment.

And like the beginning, the end of Hulme was also well-documented. 1993's Hulme Demolition Sound System and the amazing night-time performance given by theatre group Dogs of Heaven, when cars were pushed off the top of one of the floodlit Crescents, will provide another high-point in a programme tracing the story of this defiant, expressive, chaotic centre for regional popular culture.


SAT 21:00 Classic Serial (b00t67j0)
Henry James - The Wings of the Dove

Episode 1

by Henry James
Dramatised by Linda Marshall Griffiths

Kate and Merton need money. Milly needs love. How far will they go to get what they want?
Kate Croy is in love with Merton Densher; a poor writer. Her rich aunt Maud disapproves. Maud has offered Kate a wealthy existence but if Kate chooses to marry Merton she risks losing it all. When American Heiress Milly Theale steps into her London society, Kate sees a way out.

Kate.....Lyndsey Marshal
Merton.....Blake Ritson
Maud.....Clare Higgins
Lord Mark.....Toby Jones
Milly.....Anna Maxwell Martin
Susie.....Barbara Barnes
Croy.....Jonathan Keeble
Marian.....Deborah McAndrew

Directed by Nadia Molinari.


SAT 22:00 News and Weather (b00t838f)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4, followed by weather.


SAT 22:15 Reality Check (b00t7fjt)
Series 3

Our military future?

Justin Rowlatt is joined by experts on the government's defence policy - and those at the sharp end of it - to discuss whether it is time to radically rethink the British armed forces.

With the government's Strategic Defence Review under way against a background of public spending cuts, is now the time to consider a big reduction in the size and ambition of the British military?

But what would a smaller defence force look like? What would it do? What would it mean for Britain's place on the world stage? And would it be a credible strategy, given present and expected future threats to global peace?

Justin Rowlatt discusses the future of the military with a panel of guests at the military thinktank, RUSI.

He is joined by Professor Mary Kaldor from the London School of Economics; Professor Malcolm Chalmers of RUSI; Commodore Steven Jermy, recently retired from the Navy; Patrick Hennessey, former soldier and author of The Junior Officers' Reading Club; Freshta Raper, who escaped from Saddam Hussein's Iraq; and Sarah Lasenby, a peace activist from Oxford.

Producer: Ruth Alexander
Editor: Hugh Levinson.


SAT 23:00 Round Britain Quiz (b00t6y67)
(1/12) Tom Sutcliffe returns with a new series of the perennial cryptic panel quiz, which has been running on BBC radio since 1947. Six teams from around the UK compete to unravel the programme's trademark convoluted questions.

Literature, history, nostalgia, music, entertainment, etymology and the natural world are among the topics routinely encompassed by Round Britain Quiz questions - often all at once. The teams need to be able to draw on the widest possible range of knowledge and employ all their powers of lateral thinking. As ever, the series title will be awarded to the team who score the most victories from the four contests in which they appear.

Last year's series win for the Welsh was a fitting swan-song for the late Patrick Hannan and his team-mate Peter Stead. This year Wales is represented by former Mastermind champion and 'Who Wants To Be A Millionare' winner, David Edwards, partnering the satirist and playwright Myfanwy Alexander.

In the first programme the South of England team, regulars Fred Housego and Marcel Berlins, play the Midlands team of writer Rosalind Miles and Stephen Maddock, Chief Executive of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. Northern Ireland field the writer Polly Devlin and the respected journalist and historian Brian Feeney. The North of England team pairs writer and publisher Michael Schmidt with the novelist Adele Geras, and the regular team members for Scotland are writer and critic Michael Alexander and journalist Alan Taylor.

As ever, many of the questions in the series have been suggested by listeners. Each programme closes with a 'cliffhanger' question, also available on the show's webpages, to which Tom will reveal the answer the following week.

Producer Paul Bajoria.


SAT 23:30 Morpurgo's Islands of Inspiration (b00mwl6s)
Children's writer Michael Morpurgo travels back to his favourite place, the Isles of Scilly, to explore the stories and legends that are part of the islands' history, where he believes "every rock and wreck has a story to tell" - stories that have inspired his own work.

He first visited the isles over 30 years ago. He went there reluctantly, unconvinced as to what so small a group of islands could offer him. He describes it as "the best decision I never made". What he found there was a place full of beauty, isolation and a unique community. The Isles of Scilly are an archipelago of over two hundred small islands, only five of them inhabited. It was on the smallest of these populated isles, Bryher, that Michael stayed that first time, and which he visits many times a year and upon which many of the stories are based.

He unpicks why the islands have been such a source of magic and inspiration for him. He speaks to Scillonians to hear firsthand old stories and to uncover new ones he's never heard before, revealing how historical fact and handed-down fiction can often be blurred.

Throughout the programme there are readings from Michael's books inspired by these islands.

Producer: Susie Matthews
A Unique production for BBC Radio 4.