The BBC has announced that it has a sustainable plan for the future of the BBC Singers, in association with The VOCES8 Foundation.
The threat to reduce the staff of the three English orchestras by 20% has not been lifted, but it is being reconsidered.
See the BBC press release here.
RADIO-LISTS: BBC RADIO 4
Unofficial Weekly Listings for BBC Radio 4 — supported by bbc.co.uk/programmes/
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
The alliance between man and horse lasted 6,000 years, shaping life in town and country. Ulrich Raulff's engaging, brilliantly written and moving discussion of what horses once meant to human civilisation.
The relationship between horses and humans is a profound and complex one. For millennia, horses provided the strength and speed that humans lacked. How we travelled, farmed and fought was dictated by the needs of this extraordinary animal. And then suddenly, in the 20th century, the links were broken and the millions of horses that shared our existence almost vanished, eking out a marginal existence on race-tracks and pony clubs.
Cities, farmland and entire industries were once shaped as much by the needs of horses as humans. The intervention of horses was fundamental in countless historical events. They were sculpted, painted, cherished, admired. They were thrashed, abused and exposed to terrible danger.
From the Roman Empire to the Napoleonic Empire, every world-conqueror needed to be shown on a horse. Tolstoy once reckoned that he had cumulatively spent some nine years of his life on horseback.
Ulrich Raulff's book, a bestseller in Germany, is a superb monument to the endlessly various creature who has so often shared and shaped our fate.
Written by Ulrich Raulff
Translated by Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp
Read by Iain Glen
Abridged and Produced by Jill Waters
A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
A reading and a reflection to start the day with the Rev'd Dr Stephen Wigley, Chair of the Wales Synod of the Methodist Church.
iPM is the news programme that starts with its listeners. Email ipm@bbc.co.uk. Twitter: @BBCiPM. Presented by Luke Jones and Eddie Mair.
The latest news headlines. Including a look at the papers.
The latest weather forecast.
Clare Balding is walking the whole of The Nidderdale Way, a circular fifty three mile walking route in North Yorkshire. In this edition she walks from Heathfield to Bewerley in the company of Robin Hermes and Simon Dunn, two self-styled, grumpy old men. They have been walking together, along with their friend Richard, every month for over thirty-five years and this is the first time they've actually invited anyone to join them. The Ramblings team don't make the most auspicious start by being several minutes late, a sin Robin holds against them right until the end when the joys of the afternoon allow him to forgive and forget!
This section of the walk takes in the site of the disused lead mines at Ashfold Side Beck. Robin and Simon discuss their walking history with Clare, their favourite and least favourite routes and how they score the perfect walk.
The route can be found on OS Explorer 298
Producer Lucy Lunt.
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
The latest weather forecast.
News and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
Presenter and barrister Robert 'Judge' Rinder; actor Daragh O'Malley; Clare Brant, professor of 18th century literature and culture and ship's captain Amelia Dalton join Aasmah Mir and the Revd Richard Coles.
Robert 'Judge' Rinder is a criminal law barrister and television court judge who is best known for his role on the reality courtroom series Judge Rinder - the British version of the American show Judge Judy. He came to widespread attention performing on Strictly come Dancing in 2016. He presents Judge Rinder's Crime Stories on ITV.
Daragh O'Malley is an actor who stars in Maxim Gorky's the Last Ones at the Jermyn Street Theatre. He is best known for his role as Patrick Harper opposite Sean Bean in the television series Sharpe from 1992 to 2008. His film and television roles range from Withnail and I to The Long Good Friday and Waking The Dead to Silent Witness while his theatre work includes Dancing at Lughnasa and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The Last Ones is at the Jermyn Street Theatre, London.
Clare Brant is professor of 18th century literature and culture at King's College London. She has curated Dear Diary: A Celebration of Diaries and their Digital Descendants. The exhibition explores what motivates diarists and charts the ways in which paper diaries have been joined by phones and tablets as our means of keeping track of daily life. Dear Diary is at King's College London in Somerset House.
After the death of her son, Amelia Dalton took a step that would change her life forever. She transformed a neglected Arctic fishing boat into a chic expedition ship to run cruises to the Western Isles. Along the way, she had to navigate bloody-minded fisherman, red tape, bank loans and shareholders - and gained the respect of the tough, hard-working island community. She's written about her adventure in her book, Mistress and Commander, published by Sandstone Press.
Also in the programme, writer Anthony Horowitz shares his Inheritance Tracks.
Producer: Paula McGinley.
In the heyday of Hollywood, there was only one place to be if you were an aspiring British actor - the Hollywood Cricket Club. Jim Carter tells the story of the club's glory days when Errol Flynn and David Niven flashed the willow, Nigel Bruce and Basil Rathbone waited for a tickle at slip, Boris Karloff kept wicket, and Elizabeth Taylor and Olivia De Havilland were in the pavilion preparing the cream teas.
The club was presided over by C. Aubrey Smith who played for - and captained - England in a test match against South Africa in 1899, before moving to Hollywood to pursue a career in the burgeoning film industry. His bushy eyebrows, beady eyes, handlebar moustache and towering presence made him instantly recognisable, and he featured in 113 films during a 30 year year career.
Smith commanded any visiting British actors to play for the team. Famously, when Laurence Olivier arrived in Hollywood to start filming Wuthering Heights, he found a pair of flannels in his hotel suite, and a handwritten note from Smith saying "Net practice - tomorrow at 4".
Actor Jim Carter - a proud ex-Chairman of Hampstead Cricket Club - explores the links between the Hollywood Club and cricket's controlling elite (it was rumoured that MCC bastion Gubby Allen once dated Joan Crawford after meeting at a match), talks to director Sam Mendes about how cricket glued the community together, meets the man who took Boris Karloff to The Oval test match of 1953, and uncovers the connection between the Hollywood Cricket Club and the foundation of the Screen Actors Guild, the union which protected the rights of those working in the film industry.
Producers: David Prest and Oliver Morris.
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4.
Nick Robinson assesses developments in the election campaign.
Reports from writers and journalists around the world. Presented by Kate Adie.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Around 75,000 travellers were left facing long delays and cancellations after a British Airways computer system failed over the Bank Holiday weekend. Helen Dewdney, founder of the Complaining Cow consumer advice blog outlines how affected passengers should approach the compensation process.
Ahead of next week's general election Chris Philp from the Conservative Party and SNP spokesperson for work and pensions Ian Blackford set out their personal finance manifestos. What might the policies mean for your money?
Jeremy Hardy, Desiree Burch, Simon Evans and Helen Lewis are Miles' guests for another round of News Quizzing.
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The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
Jonathan Dimbleby presents political debate from Ormiston Bolingbroke Academy in Runcorn with a panel including the Work and Pensions Secretary Damian Green, UKIP Leader Paul Nuttall MEP, the Shadow Brexit Secretary Keir Starmer and the former Business Minister and Minister for Women and Equalities in the Coalition Government Jo Swinson.
Any Answers after the Saturday broadcast of Any Questions? Email any.answers@bbc.co.uk. Tweet,#BBCAQ. Follow us @bbcanyquestions.
Phone Lines open at 1230 on Saturday 03700 100 444
Presenter Anita Anand
ProducerBeverley Purcell
Editor Eleanor Garland.
Michael Palin stars with Penelope Wilton in his dark comedy of family meltdown.
The Weekend concerns a middle aged Englishman whose life is suddenly and utterly changed when a family gathering of sad daughter, dreary husband, and awkward teenager has him reaching for double whiskies laced with heavy sarcasm.
It's Michael Palin's only stage play and contains much of his self effacing humour, but there's sharp observation and truth too. It's as dryly comic and acutely observed as Ayckbourn, as wry as Wodehouse and as acerbic as Coward. This first adaptation for radio is by Richard Stoneman - writer on TV's hit series Doc Martin - and stars Michael Palin in the central role.
In his diaries for 1988-98, Palin writes about the out of town previews for the stage show and records the press saying it was, "A good play. Funny and moving...the audiences laughed and laughed," and he had to remind himself, "It is a comedy. It's a comedy about someone who has made a mess of his life." He also noted how much he enjoyed creating so much amusement for so many people.
The stellar supporting cast comprises Patrick Barlow, Hugh Dennis, Bryony Hannah, Cathy Sara, Sophie Thompson and Bill Paterson.
Directed by Marilyn Imrie
A Big Fish production for BBC Radio 4.
Three years ago the Scottish singer songwriter KT Tunstall disappeared from the music scene. She tells us why she's making her return to music now and performs her latest single for us.
How does air quality affect children's health? And what can parents do to help? We hear from Dr Ben Barratt a lecturer in Environmental research from King's College London, and Dr Abigail Whitehouse Clinical research fellow at Queen Mary's Blizzard Institute.
How one woman used craft to help her through two devastating events in her life. Listener Lisa Slinn is now a professional ceramicist, but says the creative process saved her life.
The Australian novelist Julia Leigh discusses her memoir Avalanche documenting her fraught and failed journey through six rounds of IVF alone.
The journalist and writer Reni Eddo-Lodge talks about her new book 'Why I'm no longer Talking to White People About Race'.
Sally Rooney has just published her first novel. It's called Conversations with Friends. Sally tells us how she feels about it being snapped up by the publishers who described it as 'Salinger for the Snap Chat Generation.'
Two young women celebrate the crafts of knitting and embroidery. Hannah Hill is an embroiderer and calls her work art, and Louise Walker knits animal heads as part of her work as a taxidermy knitter.
Presented by Emma Barnett
Producer: Rabeka Nurmahomed
Editor: Jane Thurlow.
Full coverage of the day's news.
Business and its place in society is a prominent issue at the moment. Zero hours contracts, executive pay, tax avoidance are all issues where opinion has shifted dramatically. Has Shareholder driven capitalism finally gone too far?
In a special programme recorded at the Royal Academy of Engineering in front of a live audience, Evan Davis talks to the former BP CEO, Lord John Browne on his thoughts about big business as it relates to society. And asks whether it's now time to trust big business?
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The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Clive Anderson and Sara Cox are joined by Tony Adams, Jane Horrocks, Steve Earle, Emily Barker and Reggie Watts for an eclectic mix of conversation, music and comedy.
Producer: Sukey Firth.
Mark Coles profiles sculptor and installation artist Cornelia Parker, this year's official election artist. Parker's work has involved spectacular acts of destruction, from flattening brass band instruments, to dismantling old barns and blowing up sheds. As Parker roams the country observing the election campaign, Coles speaks to her friends and peers about how she went from a childhood spent in rural Cheshire where she struggled to fit in, to Turner Prize-nominated artist.
The long- awaited Wonder Woman blockbuster movie has arrived amongst us mere mortals - prepare to be overwhelmed, puny mortals.
A stage adaptation of Jane Austen's Persuasion has opened at The Manchester Royal Exchange. It's taken an unconventional approach and includes silver swimwear and a foam party - is this a step too far for a classic text or a bold new interpretation?
The work of designers Lucienne Day and Barbara Brown can be seen at The Whitworth Gallery in Manchester. Their fabrics seems fresh, familiar and distinctive six decades after they were created
Adam Thorpe's latest novel Missing Fay deals with a familiar trope in novels; the missing child. How does he mine something new from a seam which has been worked so often before?
Channel 4 has a new drama based around a fictional school in Yorkshire. Ackley Bridge is being promoted and scheduled to get a lot of attention, but how well does it deal with modern education?
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Paul Farley, Bidisha and Susan Jeffreys. The producer is Oliver Jones.
Ever wondered how to make an Archive on 4? Here's your chance to find out!
Alan Dein enters the strange world of instructional records where you can teach yourself just about anything - from yodelling to training your budgie to talk.
It all started in 1901 when Polish émigré Jacques Roston harnessed the new technology of sound recording to teach foreign languages, signing up such luminaries as George Bernard Shaw and JRR Tolkien to lend their support.
By the 50s and 60s you could buy LPs on how to do just about anything - from keep fit to playing a musical instrument, relaxation and passing your driving test.
Perhaps the most surprising are those which help you to train your pet budgerigar to talk - with help from Sparkie, Britain's favourite budgie, who supposedly had a vocabulary of over 500 words.
With help from Sparkie, Alan Dein tells the story of instructional records and, along the way, reveals a few of the secrets of how to make an Archive on 4.
Producer: Laurence Grissell.
Alistair McGowan, Morgana Robinson, Sian Phillips and Al Murray star in George Bernard Shaw's classic tale of Eliza Doolittle, the Cockney flower girl who is trained by professor of phonetics, Henry Higgins, to pass as a duchess.
Directed by Emma Harding.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4, followed by weather.
Discover how small things will significantly shape the future. From sub-atomic particles to small data and small politics, the small will affect the future in a big way. Presenters Leo Johnson and Timandra Harkness explore the world of the tiniest things, and learn about the power they hold to transform manufacturing, computers and the chances of artificial intelligence emerging in the next few decades. The programme explores how human society might be changed by the growing influence of small politics and the application of small data, and unlocks the secrets of the quantum universe.
Producer: Jonathan Brunert.
A funny and dynamic quiz show hosted by Steve Punt - this week from Queen's University Belfast with specialist subjects including History, Medicine and English and questions ranging from Emperor Vespasian to Ed Sheeran via handbags and haematoxylin.
The programme is recorded on location at a different University each week, and it pits three Undergraduates against three of their Professors in an original and fresh take on an academic quiz.
The rounds vary between Specialist Subjects and General Knowledge, quickfire bell-and-buzzer rounds and the Highbrow and Lowbrow round cunningly devised to test not only the students' knowledge of current affairs, history, languages and science, but also their Professors' awareness of television, sport, and quite possibly Justin Bieber. In addition, the Head-to-Head rounds see students take on their Professors in their own subjects, offering plenty of scope for mild embarrassment on both sides.
Other Universities featured in this series include Roehampton, Hull, Derby, Liverpool and St John's College Cambridge.
Produced by David Tyler
A Pozzitive production for BBC Radio 4.
Roger McGough presents a selection of listeners' requests for poems on the theme of work; praising meaningful days, night shifts and tool boxes. Today's programme features poets Liz Berry, William Letford and Caleb Parkin reading their own works, and others from Carolyn Wells, Phillip Levine and U. A Fanthorpe.
Producer: Eliza Lomas.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
There's a story about an island off the coast of Ireland. A story about how the old gods tipped the monks living there into the drink. And there's a second story about love and calligraphy, starring a monk and an immortal, a princess no less. And it doesn't end well either. As read by Tadhg Murphy (Guerrilla, Black Sails, Vikings)
Jess Kidd was brought up in London as part of a large family from Mayo. Her debut novel 'Himself' was published in last year to rave reviews and she was recently awarded The 2016 Costa Short Story Award.
Writer ..... Jess Kidd
Reader ..... Tadhg Murphy
Producer ..... Michael Shannon.
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The latest shipping forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
This week's Bells on Sunday comes from The Cathedral Church of St. Peter, St. Paul and St. Andrew, Peterborough. The tower holds a peal of 12 bells with the Tenor - which is tuned to E - weighing twenty one and a quarter hundredweight.
We hear now the eight heavier bells, cast by John Taylor of Loughborough in 1902, ringing part of a quarter peal of Julie McDonnell Bob Major.
The latest national and international news.
The poet Michael Symmons Roberts looks in to the mirror for insight and revelation, reckoning and resolution and discovers the beguiling world through the looking glass.
Central to his thoughts are the famous words of St Paul from 1 Corinthians 13 - "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known," - which tantalisingly suggest that what we see now is only a partial vision of reality. In this world, a glimpse is all we get.
"Many parents will remember the time," Michael says, "usually around 18 months old, when a child first recognises that the baby in the mirror is not a sudden visitor. It's you!" This moment of self recognition (only shared with four kinds of ape, Asian elephants, bottlenose dolphins and, perhaps surprisingly, magpies) allows us all into the unsettling mixture of bare fact and mystery that confronts us in the mirror. Michael explains that, "The truth offered by such surfaces is fugitive, deceptive, elusive."
Through the music of Icelandic singer Bjork, Michael Jackson, Roxanna Panufnik and Philip Glass, and the poetry of George Herbert, Denise Levertov, John Ashbery and Carolyn Kizer, Michael takes us through the looking glass to a wonderland of paradox and possibilities. He says, "The reflective surfaces of glass or water offer visions of a different world, potentially treacherous or unknown, but a world you can enter physically if you dive into the lake, or visually if you allow your gaze to pass through it."
Presenter: Michael Symmons Roberts
Producer: Michael Wakelin
A TBI Media production for BBC Radio 4.
Jamaica has long provided the UK and Europe with sugar, bananas, coffee and cocoa. Despite its climate and fertile soil though the country has become steadily more reliant on food imports. Getting Jamaicans interested in growing their own food again has become a government priority and at Source Farm in the East of the island they are using organic methods to grow all sorts of crops which can then be sold for a high price.
Such is the demand for organic produce in Jamaica and abroad that Source Farm also teach other farmers how to grow organically and to negotiate direct sales. Their intention is simply to get Jamaica farming again and their hope is not just for better diets but for more jobs and higher prospects for rural Jamaica. Nick Davis visits to discover the Source Farm recipe for success and asks if hard work can bring you a little bit of paradise after all.
The latest weather forecast.
The latest news headlines. Including a look at the papers.
Following President Trump's announcement that the United States is to pull out of the 2015 Paris climate agreement, Emily Buchanan hears from the journalist Sarah Posner, on the religious reaction in the US; and from the former Bishop of Liverpool James Jones, who spent a decade trying to persuade US evangelicals to take climate change seriously.
Dr Ibrar Majid, the lead Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgeon at Royal Manchester Children's Hospital speaks to the BBC's religious affairs correspondent Martin Bashir about his role in treating the victims of the Manchester attack, and its impact on his Muslim faith.
Known locally as Paddy's Wigwam and the Mersey Funnel, Liverpool's Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King marks its Golden Jubilee. Bob Walker explores what the anniversary means for Catholics in the city.
The Church of England will discuss a proposal to offer a service to celebrate the renaming of people who have had a sex-change. The General Synod motion was put forward by the Rev Chris Newlands, who debates the need for this baptism-style service with the theologian, the Rev Dr Ian Paul.
The exiled Congolese opposition politician, Christian Malanga explains his religious motivation to return to the Democratic Republic of Congo and initiate a "peaceful uprising" in a country beset by corruption, sexual violence and instability.
Admissions open this week for the first fully-accredited diploma course, teaching the health benefits of spirituality. Course leader Dr William Bloom explains how it will train "spiritually competent" people for pastoral and chaplaincy roles.
Producers: Dan Tierney and Louise Clarke-Rowbotham
Series producer: Amanda Hancox.
Joely Richardson makes the Radio 4 Appeal on behalf of The Children's Trust.
Registered Charity Number 288018
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 'The Children's Trust'.
- Cheques should be made payable to 'The Children's Trust'.
The latest weather forecast.
The latest news headlines. Including a look at the papers.
Rosie Wright visits the Big Church Day Out festival held last weekend at Wiston House in West Sussex. As the church celebrates Pentecost the Archbishop of Canterbury has asked for a global wave of prayer for more people to come to know Jesus Christ. Preacher: Pete Greig. Producer: Andrew Earis.
"It's late in the year to be making a resolution I'm probably going to break, but the words have to be spoken" writes Howard Jacobson. "I hereby renounce Middlemarch".
Howard reveals what lies behind his obsession for George Eliot's greatest novel and why he can't stop hymning its praises and quoting chunks of it from memory.
Producer: Adele Armstrong.
David Salmon of the Slimbridge Wetland Centre on the song of the woodlark.
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.
Sunday morning magazine programme with news and conversation about the big stories of the week. Presented by Paddy O'Connell.
Tony will not be easily won over, and Lily gets her way.
Kirsty Young's castaway is the theatre producer, Sonia Friedman.
Acclaimed as the most influential producer in British theatre today, she has produced over 160 new shows. They include Funny Girl with Sheridan Smith, Jerusalem starring Mark Rylance, Benedict Cumberbatch's Hamlet, the record-breaking Book of Mormon and the musicals Legally Blonde, and Dreamgirls. Her productions both here and on Broadway have won numerous awards, including a record-breaking 14 Olivier Awards in 2014, and nine this year for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.
Brought up in a creative, if unconventional, household, she left school at 16. After a stage management course at Central School of Speech and Drama, she cut her teeth at the National Theatre, worked with Harold Pinter, Richard Eyre and Tom Stoppard and then co-founded Out of Joint, a leading touring theatre company, with Max Stafford-Clark. She was named Producer of the Year for the third year in a row at The Stage Awards, and this year she also claimed number one spot in The Stage 100, a chart of the most influential people in British theatre, overtaking Andrew Lloyd Webber and Cameron Mackintosh.
Producer: Cathy Drysdale.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Just A Minute is 50 years old this year! Nicholas Parsons has been hosting since day one and presides over an all-star panel: Paul Merton, Ross Noble, Fern Britton and Gyles Brandreth.
The panel have to talk on a given subject for sixty seconds without repetition, hesitation or deviation. Can Paul tell us much about sardines? What is Fern's ideal bike ride? How much does Gyles know about Marie Antoinette and how does Ross feel being a fly on the wall?
PLUS one of our panellists talks for a full minute - which one? You'll have to tune in to find out...
Hayley Sterling blows the whistle and it was produced by Matt Stronge.
Just A Minute is a BBC Studios production.
From Confederacy of Dunces to Absolute Beginners, Dan Saladino looks at food in cult fiction.
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Global news and analysis.
Eric Robson and the panel visit Suffolk. James Wong, Bob Flowerdew and Bunny Guinness answer the horticultural questions from the audience of local gardeners.
Produced by Dan Cocker
Assistant Producer: Laurence Bassett
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4.
Fi Glover introduces conversations about working backstage, the responsibilities faced by doctors, and the journey to renewable energy made by two female engineers. in the Omnibus edition of the series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.
The Listening Project is a Radio 4 initiative that offers a snapshot of contemporary Britain in which people across the UK volunteer to have a conversation with someone close to them about a subject they've never discussed intimately before. The conversations are being gathered across the UK by teams of producers from local and national radio stations who facilitate each encounter. Every conversation - they're not BBC interviews, and that's an important difference - lasts up to an hour, and is then edited to extract the key moment of connection between the participants. Most of the unedited conversations are being archived by the British Library and used to build up a collection of voices capturing a unique portrait of the UK in the second decade of the millennium. You can learn more about The Listening Project by visiting bbc.co.uk/listeningproject
Producer: Marya Burgess.
Alistair McGowan, Morgana Robinson, Sian Phillips and Al Murray star in George Bernard Shaw's classic tale of Eliza Doolittle, the Cockney flower girl who is trained to talk 'like a lady' by irascible professor of phonetics, Henry Higgins. Eliza faces the day of reckoning: can she pass as a lady at the Ambassador's Ball?
Directed by Emma Harding.
What could a UFO hippy cult, a British rock star, a Spanish Franciscan priest, the son of a Sikh, and his autistic son have in common? The Mojave Desert, in Hari Kunzru's novel Gods Without Men.
Listed in Granta's 2003 selection of young British novelists, Hari Kunzru is one of our most socially observant and skilful novelists. Jumping around in time with episodes and characters from 1947 to 2008 to 1778 to 1958, Gods Without Men is about the power of a god-like force emanating from a rock formation called The Pinnacles. The novel's pivotal story is about an autistic child who vanishes in the Californian desert.
Gods Without Men was widely regarded as one of the best novels of 2011.
Presented by James Naughtie and including contributions and questions from a group of invited readers. Recorded at the Hay Festival 2017.
Presenter : James Naughtie
Interviewed guest : Hari Kunzru
Producer : Dymphna Flynn
July's Bookclub choice : Swimming Home by Deborah Levy (2011).
Roger McGough presents a selection of listeners' requests for poems which celebrate the body in all its forms whether stretched, flabby, swollen or svelte.
Inspired by Walt Whitman's 'I Sing The Body Electric', the programme features poems from Sylvia Plath, Stevie Smith, Sharon Olds and P J Harvey as well as an interview and reading from Andrew McMillan whose first ever poetry collection, 'Physical' won The Guardian First Book Award in 2015.
Readers are Rosie Cavaliero and John Mackay.
Producer: Sarah Addezio.
Painkillers in sport: a form of legal doping or an excessive reliance on medication that puts the long-term health of athletes in jeopardy?
With evidence of widespread use of over the counter anti-inflammatories to support performance or recovery at amateur level, File on 4 looks asks if there is enough regulation of painkilling drugs in sport across the ranks.
About half of players competing at the past three World Cups routinely took non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen, according to research carried out by FIFA's former chief medical officer, Prof Jiri Dvorak.
For him, this clearly constitutes the abuse of drugs in football, one which risks player's health and could "potentially" have life-threatening implications.
But is the sports community taking these warnings seriously enough? Professor Dvorak first warned about the long-term implications of players misusing painkillers in 2012 - has anything changed?
Industry insiders their concerns about pain killer use in professional sport - including one former rugby international who says he developed serious long-term health problems as a result.
And with evidence that even paracetamol can have a performance enhancing effect, how can sports regulators control substances that can give a competitive advantage but are widely available over the counter?
With tales of athletes receiving pain relief in order to compete with broken toes or even a fractured bone in their back, we explore the lengths some may go to in order to stay in the game and ask if some sports are risking long-term harm by chasing short-term goals.
Producer: Alys Harte
Reporter: Beth McLeod.
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The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Ernie Rae chooses his BBC Radio highlights.
Pip has her nose to the grindstone, and Lilian sounds a warning.
Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis present a satirical round-up of election news and comment from comedians, journalists and commentators...
Recorded mere hours before transmission, the Now Show team look across the political spectrum, giving their own unique take on the election news and shenanigans.
Counting on your vote this week - Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis are joined by Geoff Norcott, Andy White, Pippa Evans and Luke Kempner.
Written by the cast, with additional material from Jon Hunter, Gabby Hutchinson Crouch, Robin Morgan, Jack Chisnall and Will Hislop.
Produced by Adnan Ahmed
BBC Studios Production.
Lynne Truss observes the inhabitants of Meridian Cliffs, a small wind-battered town on the south coast of England.
Former daytime TV celebrity Darren Fox now lives in a bungalow in Passchendale Road, where he spends his days trying to come up with new game show format starring himself. Then he gets a call from a old presenter colleague. Could this be the opportunity to reignite his career that he's been looking for?
Directed by Kate McAll
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.
On this final programme of the series we try to give some context to some of the issues that are being discussed during the current election campaign.
Who pays tax?
What proportion of adults are paying income tax? How much are they paying? Where does the highest burden lay? We take a look. Also, we look at the different political parties' tax policies. This includes corporation tax, but what about National Insurance?
How do you cut migration?
The Conservative manifesto again includes the aim to lower net migration to tens of thousands. How has this aim fared in the last six years? And what could the Conservatives do in future years to achieve their goal? We also take a look at what impact that might have on the economy.
Taking the nations' temperature
Summer has arrived - but we cast our minds to the chilly months ahead and think about the Winter Fuel Payment. The Conservatives are proposing to change this to a means-tested system - everywhere except Scotland. Is this because Scotland is colder than the rest of the UK? BBC Weather Man Phil Avery has the answer.
Free School Meals
It's been a popular topic in party manifestos - free school meals. Jamie Oliver thinks school dinners are essential for fighting obesity - but is there really a case to be made for the health benefits of a school lunch? Emily Tanner from the National Centre for Social Research puts the case for and against Universal Free School Meals - while munching a pie and a packed lunch.
Julian Worricker on:
The broadcaster, John Noakes, who was famous for his daredevil exploits on Blue Peter for thirteen years....
Manuel Noriega, who flirted with the Americans as leader of Panama, and ended up being jailed by them....
The dancer for whom one photograph of her on railings on Blackpool promenade shot her to fame, Pat Stewart....
Wing Commander Rex Sanders, lead navigator on a series of top secret missions over the Soviet Union...
And the American rock musician, Gregg Allman, whose band created the sound known as Southern Rock.
Producer: Neil George.
Why is the UK such a generous global aid donor and should it be? The coalition government legislated to ensure Britain spent 0.7% of its national income on international development and it is now one of the very few countries to meet this United Nations target for such spending. With financial pressures on public services at home remaining acute, Jo Coburn asks why most politicians still support the idea, despite public criticism and press campaigns about wasted money. In her quest, she investigates the history of the UK's support for overseas aid and examines what makes so many politicians willing to risk voters' displeasure on the issue.
Producer: Simon Coates.
Weekly political discussion and analysis with MPs, experts and commentators.
Antonia Quirke talks to director Patty Jenkins about warrior princess Wonder Woman and why it took her so long to arrive on the big screen.
Clive James confesses to his fifty year love affair with actor Steve McQueen.
Director John Landis waxes lyrical about Elmer Bernstein, composer of classic themes The Great Escape and The Magnificent Seven.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
The meaning of the face: How critical is it to our sense of identity, and relationship with others?
Sharrona Pearl, Assistant Professor in Communications at the University of Pennsylvania, discusses her study of face transplant surgery. She's joined by Anne-Marie Martindale, Post-Doctoral Research Associate at the University of Manchester, who has studied the impact of facial disfigurement; as well as Professor Jonathan Cole, consultant in clinical neurophysiology, and author of two books examining the relationship between facial expressions, communication and the self.
Producer: Jayne Egerton.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
A reading and a reflection to start the day with the Rev'd Dr Stephen Wigley, Chair of the Wales Synod of the Methodist Church.
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
The latest weather forecast for farmers.
David Lindo is known as the Urban Birder. His love of all things feathered began when he was tiny, but it was seeing a kestrel while he was at school in north London one day that set him on the road to birdwatching in the city.
Tweet of the Day has captivated the Radio 4 audience with its daily 90 seconds of birdsong. But what of the listener to this avian chorus? In this new series of Tweet of the Day, we bring to the airwaves the conversational voices of those who listen to and are inspired by birds. Building on the previous series, a more informal approach to learning alongside a renewed emphasis on encounter with nature and reflection in our relationship with the natural world.
Producer Maggie Ayre.
News and current affairs. Includes Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
On Start the Week, Andrew Marr explores where truth ends and invention begins in the story of the self. The theatre director Robert Lepage has spent decades creating other worlds on stage; now his one-man show recreates his childhood home in 1960s Quebec, with truth at the mercy of memory. Rebecca Stott has written the story of her family that her father left unfinished, including the Christian cult that inspired their devotion, until doubt led them astray. Miranda Doyle casts doubt on the veracity of memoir itself, by writing a series of lies to get at the truth of her family story. Andrew O'Hagan has examined three lives existing more fully online than offline: the Wikileaks founder Julian Assange; the fabled inventor of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto and 'Ronald Pinn'- an experiment in identity theft that disrupts the very notion of the self.
Producer: Katy Hickman
Image: Robert Lepage on stage in 887 by Ex Machina/ Robert Lepage Photographer: Eric Labbé.
Leonora Carrington, born in 1917, was the last surviving member of the Surrealist movement of the 1930s. A prodigious painter and writer, she was caught up in some of the most exciting - and most terrible - events of the 20th century. Joanna Moorhead tells the remarkable life story of her father's cousin.
At the age of 17, Leonora Carrington rejected her upper class English upbringing and her family, in favour of the bohemian life of an artist, first in London and then Paris. She became the lover and muse of Max Ernst, and friend of Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali and many other creative geniuses. Soon after the outbreak of the war however, she suffered a mental breakdown and ended up in an asylum in Madrid. She eventually escaped war-torn Europe by marrying a Mexican, which enabled her passage to New York, and from there she journeyed to Mexico where she lived out the rest of her life.
Mexico is where Joanna Moorhead went to find Leonora in 2006. During Joanna's childhood, all she knew was that her father's cousin had been a wild child who had caused the family no end of trouble and "simply flounced off into the sunset". But this first visit of many was the start of a life-changing friendship. During days of talking and reading, of drinking tea and tequila, of going for walks and eating in local restaurants Leonora told Joanna her amazing life story.
This book is the story of Leonora Carrington's life, and of the relationship between two women. And it's about Surrealism as Leonora lived it - a way of approaching the world in a spirit of constant curiosity, with the desire to work out, if not the answers, then at least some of the questions.
Read by Juliet Stevenson
Written and introduced by Joanna Moorhead
Abridged by Sara Davies
Directed by Alexa Moore
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.
Women in Glasgow tell us what's on their mind when it comes to casting their vote in the General Election. As the trial into sexual assault claims made against the comedian Bill Cosby finally gets underway in the US, we look at why the investigation has taken so long and whether there are any comparisons that can be made to historical sexual abuse cases involving celebrities in this country. And final interview with Party Leaders. Today it's the turn of the SNP's Nicola Sturgeon.
Presenter Jane Garvey
Producer Beverley Purcell.
Jonathan Myerson's tense drama stars Rosie Cavaliero (best known as DS Susan Reinhardt in Prey, and Marion in Unforgotten), as an inner city vicar who logs her secrets on her phone.
When a convicted murderer is released on appeal twenty years later, his supporters claim a victory for justice.
But for the murdered man's friends, life implodes. Old lies re-surface, and new questions haunt them. Questions about what really happened then. And how life has changed them since.
Anna finds her old student films of them all in the loft - and watches them with new eyes.
Produced and directed by Jonquil Panting.
A local radio journalist is celebrating her silver wedding anniversary when she picks up her microphone and starts to record. The police have decided they have enough evidence to take the entertainer Rolf Harris to court and they want her to testify. Can she do it, should she do it, would she be believed?
As a child, she was a huge Rolf Harris fan. And at 16, she volunteers to help look after him during the recording of an ITV show, Star Games. It is then that she says he assaulted her.
But if this goes to trial how will she prove it? Assault cases are often very difficult to prove and hang on one person's word against another. Although this journalist has experience with the court process she is totally unprepared for the year ahead. Friends don't want to talk about it, it is difficult at work, and then family say they don't believe her.
This is not a re-examination of the evidence, but one woman's story as she heads towards the court. The programme culminates in the trial of May 2017 when Rolf Harris is cleared of all the four sex assault charges.
Narrated by Grace Dent and produced by Sarah Bowen.
Radio 4's word-obsessed comedy panel game - with stars from across the world of wordplay coming together to score points off each other, under the well-read eye of chairman Gyles Brandreth
Today's panellists are Irish comedian Ed Byrne, Tasmanian stand up and art expert Hannah Gadsby, punmaster general Milton Jones and classics boffin Natalie Haynes.
Today's Letter of the week is 'N'. Ed Byrne explains what the phrase 'nuking the fridge' means and Hannah Gadsby deduces what the Sicilian phrase 'go to Naples' means.
In a round about derogatory terms Natalie Haynes is asked what a 'fishbagger' was in the late nineteenth century and Milton Jones is asked what the American term 'ballclankers' from the 1960s might have meant.
The panellists also attempt to ban their least favourite words including 'blog', 'Christmas', 'fablet' and 'simples'.
And finally they try to unearth the meaning of some words found in a dictionary of thieves' slang from 1673.
Writers: Jon Hunter and James Kettle.
Producer: Claire Jones.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
On this day in 1917, the second daylight Gotha air raid targeted Sheerness, while in Folkestone, the police station is still dealing with the fallout of the first.
Written by Katie Hims
Directed by Jessica Dromgoole.
Winifred Robinson asks how has fundraising changed your life? Close to 10 billion pounds was given to charity in the UK last year.
Tell us what inspired YOU to be a fundraiser. Or perhaps you work for a project that's benefited from charity funding over the years.
You can email us right now-- you and yours@bbc.co.uk . Please include your phone number so we can call you back.
The phone number to call during the programme is 03 700 100 444.
The latest weather forecast.
Analysis of news and current affairs.
by Sarah Wooley
1961. Tennessee Williams had just turned 50. In spite of a string of successful plays (Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, A Streetcar Named Desire), the Broadway critics had been scathing about his most recent work.
As always with a work by Williams his next play, The Night of the Iguana had star parts for women. Initially he had his heart set on Katherine Hepburn but she wouldn't sign up for a long run so the play's producer got creative and the supporting role of Maxine Faulk was beefed up and offered to Bette Davis.
Davis had been a huge Hollywood star but by 1961 was financially in trouble and looking for a comeback. She hadn't been on stage since 1929 but was still box office gold as far as the theatre was concerned. Williams had his reservations from the start but was persuaded to put them aside and rehearsals began in the Autumn of 1961 with Davis in the role. But casting Davis would prove to be the biggest mistake of Williams' career.
Directed by Gaynor Macfarlane.
A funny and dynamic quiz show hosted by Steve Punt - this week from the University of Derby with specialist subjects including Education Studies, Forensics and Theatre Studies and questions ranging from cannibalistic beetles to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern with a passing nod to Olivia Newton-John and orbital mechanics.
The programme is recorded on location at a different University each week, and it pits three Undergraduates against three of their Professors in an original and fresh take on an academic quiz.
The rounds vary between Specialist Subjects and General Knowledge, quickfire bell-and-buzzer rounds and the Highbrow and Lowbrow round cunningly devised to test not only the students' knowledge of current affairs, history, languages and science, but also their Professors' awareness of television, sport, and quite possibly Justin Bieber. In addition, the Head-to-Head rounds see students take on their Professors in their own subjects, offering plenty of scope for mild embarrassment on both sides.
Other Universities featured in this series include Roehampton, Hull, Liverpool, Queen's University Belfast and St John's College Cambridge.
Produced by David Tyler
A Pozzitive production for BBC Radio 4.
Dr Cathy FitzGerald presents a second series of lessons in creative writing made from archive recordings of great novelists, poets and playwrights talking about their craft.
In this episode:
Lesson Seven - Dealing with Critics
If you're going to put your work out in the world, sooner or later someone's going to tell you what's wrong with it. In this lesson, we hear tips on dealing with critics from the author of The French Lieutenant's Woman, John Fowles, and poets Edith Sitwell, Philip Larkin and John Betjeman.
Lesson Eight - What I Learned from James Baldwin
Contemporary writer Caryl Phillips analyses a passage written by his friend and literary mentor, the American novelist James Baldwin. How does Jimmy handle back-story and perspective? Featuring rare archive recording of James Baldwin reading from his 1962 novel, Another Country.
Lesson Nine - Block
A lesson on that trickiest of ailments - writer's block. With tips from the author of Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov, and sci-fi writer Ray Bradbury, along with an extraordinary recording of Truman Capote reading from his novel Breakfast at Tiffany's.
Presenter and Producer: Cathy FitzGerald
A White Stiletto production for BBC Radio 4.
In the 200th anniversary year of the death of one of Britain's finest novelists, Ernie Rea considers the religious world of Jane Austen and how it is reflected in her novels.
Ernie is joined by novelist and priest Marie-Elsa Bragg, the social and architectural historian William Whyte, Oxford University lecturer Freya Johnston and Rev Paula Hollingsworth, author of "The Spirituality of Jane Austen."
Producer Rosie Dawson.
Eddie Mair with interviews, context and analysis.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Just A Minute is 50 years old this year! Nicholas Parsons has been hosting since day one, and presides over the following all-star panel: Paul Merton, Josie Lawrence, Graham Norton and Stephen Fry.
The panel have to talk on a given subject for sixty seconds without repetition, hesitation or deviation. How much does Paul know about the Norfolk Broads? What happens when Josie's gloves come off? If Graham could change a law, which one would it be and we hear about Stephen's favourite dance.
PLUS one of our panellists talks for a full minute - which one? You'll have to tune in to find out...
Hayley Sterling blows the whistle and it was produced by Matt Stronge.
Just A Minute is a BBC Studios production.
Justin hears it straight from the horses mouth, and Freddie is fed up with his lot.
Arts news, interviews and reviews.
Journalist Tim Samuels examines the industry of death as it faces up to change. He invites a disruptor and a disruptee to breakfast - but who will pick up the cheque?
It was in the late 1990's that a Harvard academic Clay Christensen introduced a buzzword that has now become pervasive. He wanted to capture why established companies get driven out of their industries by young upstarts. It became known as disruptive innovation and has dramatically reshaped our business landscape.
Two-thirds of the companies on the Fortune 500 list in 1980 have disappeared. The balance has shifted from the incumbents to the challengers, from the old economy to the new. For some start-ups, the belief in disruption has taken on a near-religious edge. Forget rules, obligations and regulations - all that disrupts is good, all that stands in the way deserves to fail.
Journalist Tim Samuels investigates three industries facing change - property, finance and death - meeting both disruptors and a disruptees.
In the final programme, we look at the business of death. Like it or not, we're living in a hyper-tech-driven era where nothing is sacrosanct. The messianic mantra of disruption - move fast and break things - has already changed our high streets, how we move around town, how we read, the way we listen to music. Naturally, disruption has no respect for death.
We meet Elizabeth Parrish who flew to Colombia to receive an experimental treatment that she hopes will help her live for longer. Spotting a business opportunity to innovate in a deeply staid sector, we hear from a company looking to bring down the price of will writing. How will solicitors and lawyers react to this challenge? We bring them together to find out.
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 4.
Do we unconsciously harbour racist and sexist attitudes? Far fewer people are explicitly racist than a couple of decades ago. They won't express or admit to racist sentiments. But what happens beneath the conscious level? In recent years there has been an explosion in research into what's called implicit bias. David Edmonds discovers that big business is taking the idea very seriously. He asks: does it stand up to scrutiny?
Producer: Ben Carter.
Most parts of our bodies - lungs, hearts, knees, faces - can all be replaced by transplant. The world's first full head transplant is mooted for 2018. Or is it a body transplant?
Jolyon Jenkins decides to explore how it's now possible to replace most of his body, by bioprinting, transplant or use of synthetic parts. He works methodically through his own body and interviews scientists at the cutting-edge in each area; and explores our emotional reactions to the idea of replacing different parts of our bodies.
In 2011, the world's first synthetic organ, a windpipe, was grown in a lab and transplanted. Now scientists at UCL's Department of Nanotechnology have come up with another 'world first' - the growth of a nose. There's a lab there known as the "human body parts store", using the patient's own stem cells and synthetic materials to create all many different body parts.
And now comes bioprinting - the process of using 3D printers to form human tissue. It's already been used to print everything from replacement skulls to vaginas, as well as prosthetic arms and legs.
Transplanting, and printing: an entire replacement body may only be a decade away.
There is no doubt that people feel a mixture of horror and hope at the idea that nearly all parts of us can be replaced. But what will that mean for us?
Producer and Presenter: Jolyon Jenkins.
The latest weather forecast.
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.
In Arundhati Roy's hotly anticipated new novel Aftab finds a place to belong in the House of Dreams. The reader is Indira Varma
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is Arundhati Roy's first novel since her celebrated debut The God of Small Things which won the Booker Prize in 1997. Her hotly anticipated new novel takes us on a mesmerising journey from Old Delhi to Kashmir and back. The lives of a cast of vivid characters are intimately interwoven. Anjum unrolls a threadbare Persian carpet in a city graveyard that she calls home, and where she meets an incorrigible young man who goes by the moniker of Saddam Hussain. Then there is the unforgettable Tilo and the three men who loved her especially, Musa whose fate is heartbreakingly entwined with hers. And also the two Miss Jebeens: the first born in Srinagar and buried, aged four, in its overcrowded Martyrs' Graveyard; the second found at midnight, in a crib of litter, on the concrete pavement of New Delhi. The corrupting nature of power is brought into stark relief as Arundhati Roy's characters endure through the darkest of times and still manage to find hope and most of all love.
For more on the acclaimed writer and to download all fifteen episodes visit the Radio 4 website.
Indira Varma is well know to television, radio and theatre audiences. She has appeared in a number of television series including, Game of Thrones (as Ellaria Sand), and Paranoid, as DS Nina Suresh. She narrates Radio 4's landmark series, Tommies. Her many theatre appearances include Treatment at the Almeida Theatre, London.
Emilio Doorgasingh reads later episodes. He has most recently been on stage in The Kite Runner, and also Dara.
Abridged by Richard Hamilton
Produced by Elizabeth Allard.
What is slang, where does it come from, and which subjects attract the most slang words? Michael Rosen and Dr Laura Wright thrash it out with lexicographer of slang and swearing Jonathon Green. Producer Beth O'Dea
Jonathon Green is the author of Slang: A Very Short Introduction.
In a major new three part series, academic Corin Throsby returns to her native Australia to explore the rich cultural life of this vast nation we think we know so well, but which in fact belies many of our misconceptions. She describes how the dominant stereotypes of the country formed by soaps like Neighbours and Home and Away, as well as movies like Crocodile Dundee, bear little resemblance to the real life of Australia and the culture being created there. This is a country that's highly multi-cultural and increasingly keen to dwell on its own stories rather than forever hark back to its colonial parent, and home to a great swathe of major figures in the international arts scene; it is also, though, a place wrestling with issues around race and sexuality, where ingrained prejudice against immigrants and indigenous communities still acts both as a brake and an inspiration for many of its most powerful cultural voices, and where the mainstream domestic media continues to present a very white, mono-cultural face.
In the first episode, Corin hears from the likes of Baz Luhrmann, Geoffrey Rush, Courtney Barnett, Christos Tsiolkas and Richard Flanagan, as well as Maya Newell, the director of the documentary'Gayby Baby' that was banned in schools for supposedly promoting same-sex families.
PRODUCER: Geoff Bird.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
A reading and a reflection to start the day with the Rev'd Dr Stephen Wigley, Chair of the Wales Synod of the Methodist Church.
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
David Lindo is the Urban Birder who has loved birds since he was a tiny boy. Here he extols the virtues of Britain's national bird, the robin.
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.
News and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
Callers put questions to leading women from five political parties ahead of June 8.
Phone lines will open at 0800 on Tuesday morning.
Presenter: Jane Garvey
Producer: Anne Peacock.
Jonathan Myerson's tense drama stars Rosie Cavaliero (best known as DS Susan Reinhardt in Prey, and Marion in Unforgotten), as an inner city vicar who logs her secrets on her phone.
When a convicted murderer is released on appeal twenty years later, his supporters claim a victory for justice.
But for the murdered man's friends, life implodes. Old lies re-surface, and new questions haunt them. Questions about what really happened then. And how life has changed them since.
Why would Anna start secretly recording her own husband?
Produced and directed by Jonquil Panting.
Every Autumn vast numbers of continental starlings migrate here to take advantage of our milder winters. Huge flocks of a million birds or more swirl over their roost sites before settling down for the night. These impressive gatherings, called murmurations, are both remarkable and inspiring as Brett Westwood discovers as he visits a reed bed in Somerset. He also gets to grips with the physics of how the birds avoid each other in flight and hears from a sound artist who uses the patterns of starlings on a wire as musical staves. Plus a man whose starlings accompany him on the piano.
The Norwegian singer Ane Brun talks about her life in music.
Ane Brun has lived and worked in Stockholm for most of her professional life. Much of her music is sung in English - collaborating with British and American artists such as Peter Gabriel and Ron Sexsmith, or re-imagining songs by Beyonce and the music of Monteverdi and Purcell. It's as if she spends her life in a kind of musical translation, between artists and languages, cultures and history.
But her solo albums - including A Temporary Dive and It All Starts With One - reveal an artist rooted in her own sense of musical expression, alternately melancholy and playful. As she muses in Changing of the Seasons, "I guess I'm too Scandinavian."
Alan Hall visits Ane Brun at her studio in Stockholm and shares a walk through the old city, discussing Shakespeare, her family at home in Norway and the particular qualities of her distinctive voice.
Produced by Alan Hall
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
On this day in 1917, a "tropical rainstorm" descended on a damaged Folkestone, where Gabriel Graham's tempestuous journey leads to a flash of inspiration.
Written by Katie Hims
Directed by Ciaran Bermingham
Editor: Jessica Dromgoole.
Consumer affairs programme.
The latest weather forecast.
Analysis of news and current affairs.
Manel (Aiysha Hart) and Heaven (Tanya Ravljen) have escaped the city and go to the swamps in search of Manel's enslaved father, General Qulan (Christopher Fulford). Back in Tumanbay, there's someone new in charge and the puppet Sultan Madu (Danny Ashok) has a secret rendezvous with his old love, Daniel (Gareth Kennerley).
Tumanbay is created by John Dryden and Mike Walker and inspired by the Mamluk slave rulers of Egypt.
Original Music by Sacha Puttnam
Sound Design by Steve Bond
Additional Music by Jon Ouin
Sound Edited by James Morgan and Andreina Gomez
Script Edited by Abigail Youngman
Produced by Emma Hearn, Nadir Khan and John Dryden
Written by Mike Walker
Directed by John Dryden
A Goldhawk production for BBC Radio 4.
Defiantly staring down neo-Nazis, unwanted family portraits and a photographer searching for his subject years later - Josie Long presents new short documentaries inspired by images.
Series Producer: Eleanor McDowall
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4.
Tom Holland returns with the history magazine that showcases the latest research and demonstrates the relevance of the past in the present day.
The Dutch Are Coming!
350 years on from a daring Dutch mission up the Thames estuary, in which the flagship of the English fleet was taken and Sheerness captured, we ask whether this was the pinnacle of power for the Netherlands navy and how the international ambitions of both countries in the 17th century may also have helped shaped their response to globalisation today.
Domesday Uncovered.
Helen Castor is deep in the archives at Exeter Cathedral to find out how new research is unravelling some of the mysteries of one of the most famous documents in English and Welsh history, the Domesday Survey of 1086. Remarkably, this priceless historic gem was discovered by historian Stephen Baxter in a dreadful condition a few years ago. Now, splendidly restored, its able to shed some light on how William's great survey was actually achieved and why he did it.
The History of Political Constituencies.
As voters across the United Kingdom prepare to go to the polls, Iszi Lawrence asks Dr Paul Seaward and the team at the History of Parliament to explain the history of our political constituencies, how and why they have changed, and some of the shenanigans that went on in them throughout our electoral past.
Producer: Nick Patrick
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.
Joshua Rozenberg returns with the first edition in a new series of Radio 4's legal magazine programme. This week, he casts his eye across the continents to explore legal controversies that are generating debate and disagreement in the United States, India and Latin America.
Comedians Ed Byrne and Hardeep Singh Kohli talk to Harriett Gilbert about favourite books. It's a bit of a Scotfest: Ed's is Quite Ugly One Morning by Christopher Brookmyre, Hardeep's The Prime of Miss Brodie by Muriel Spark and then Harriett introduces them to The Seven Good Years by little-known Israeli writer Etgar Keret - with mixed results..
Producer Beth O'Dea.
Eddie Mair with interviews, context and analysis.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
The Godfather of Alternative Comedy delivers a mixture of stand-up, memoir and philosophy from behind the counter of his Imaginary Sandwich Bar.
Episode 1 - Pretending & Sandwiches
Alexei explores his impulse to pretend and love of sandwiches. Along the way he reveals the little known origin of the prawn cocktail, debunks the myth that the Earl of Sandwich was the first person to put a bit of meat between two slices of bread and discusses the hidden depths of Taylor Swift.
Written and performed by Alexei Sayle
Original music and lyrics by Tim Sutton
Produced by Joe Nunnery
A BBC Studios Production.
Lynda strikes a deal, and Kirsty makes amends.
Arts news, interviews and reviews.
Around 1.5 million people die from tuberculosis each year. The Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccine was introduced nearly a hundred years ago, but is only partially effective against the bacterium that causes TB.
With so many infected and the BCG vaccine only 60% effective, a race is on to develop a better way of preventing TB. Hundreds of millions of public and philanthropic money has been poured into this quest. For researchers, the competition for this pot of money is fierce.
A new vaccine called MVA85A developed by scientists in Oxford as a booster to BCG was heralded as a possible solution. But when it was trialed on nearly 3000 infants in South Africa it didn't offer any further significant protection.
File on 4 investigates the outcome of tests carried out on monkeys and asks to what extent animal trials are used to help decide whether to go on to test in humans.
How do regulators and ethics committees decide to give their approval and who is looking out for the people who volunteer to take part?
Reporter: Deborah Cohen
Producer: Paul Grant.
News, views and information for people who are blind or partially sighted.
Claudia Hammond explores the latest developments in the worlds of psychology, neuroscience and mental health.
There is, in many countries, a popular and ancient belief in little people. Or at least there is, in many countries, a popular and ancient belief that there was once a popular and ancient belief in little people.
Leprechauns, sprites, imps and elves...from Ireland to Iceland, Ian Sansom is seeking an encounter with the fabled, mysterious and diminutive other.
Irish Leprechauns are protected by European law. The Cooley Mountains in County Louth may be a 'Designated Area of Protection for Flora, Fauna, Wild Animals and Leprechauns' but Kevin Woods - aka Ireland's last leprechaun whisperer - is concerned there aren't many of them left. He's doing all he can to keep the traditional beliefs alive from his underground cavern on the Irish border.
Iceland may be best known for bubbling blue thermal pools and world-class part-time footballers. But it's also a magical kingdom where everyone believes in elves and even roads in Iceland are specially designed to avoid the cliffs and rock formations where they live. Ian enrols in Elf School on the outskirts of Reykjavik, where he learns how 13 different species of elves continue to peacefully co-exist with the local population.
A belief in little people may represent the folkloric survival of a belief in ancient deities, it may represent an attempt to understand that which is inside us, or it may simply be a sign of human gullibility...but as Ian discovers - if you don't believe in them, they'll never visit you.
Producer: Conor Garrett.
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.
In Arundhati Roy's mesmerising new novel, Anjum makes a discovery and finds love, but then she undertakes a journey to Gujarat that turns her world upside down. The reader is Indira Varma.
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is Arundhati Roy's first novel since her award winning debut The God of Small Things which was published in 1997. In her hotly anticipated new novel listeners will encounter a cast of colourful and unforgettable characters who take us to Old Delhi then to Kashmir and back again.
Visit the Radio 4 website to find out how to listen to all fifteen episodes following the broadcast of episode 1 and to catch up with her Desert Island Discs and more.
Abridged by Richard Hamilton
Produced by Elizabeth Allard.
Liam Williams - Ladhood.
From Liam Williams, a two-time Edinburgh Festival Award Nominated comedian, comes a rich new storytelling Radio 4 series entitled "Ladhood", about Liam's teenage misadventures in the Yorkshire suburbs. With evocative monologues by "Adult Liam" being interjected with flashback scenes from his teenage years, the series was recorded in Leeds and stars teens from Yorkshire, with each episode delving into Liam's memories of his first fight, virginity loss, the best house party ever organised, and his marvelous outwitting of an entire teaching staff. This is the New Labour, post-mining, aspirational heartland, meeting 50 Cent and Generation Y ennui, represented in a bourgeois radio format - by one of Britain's most exciting comedians.
Written By: Liam Williams
Produced By: Arnab Chanda
It is a BBC Radio Comedy Production.
In part two of this three part series, Corin Throsby explores the influence of Aboriginal voices as well as those from recent immigrant populations within Australian culture. She hears from Christos Tsiolkas, who suggests that the UK has a distorted vision of Australia, as many of the influential voices who've been telling us the story of the Australian nation are actually ex-pats who often left before large numbers of immigrants, particularly from Asia, but also more recently the Middle East, started to make Australia their home. Corin hears how racism has played a significant part in Australian culture and society, and how it is only recently that mainstream media has begun to represent the true nature of the population more accurately. Corin hears from indigenous artists including the rapper Briggs, artist Jonathan Jones and poet Ellen Van Neerven about the particular struggles and responsibilities they feel - as well as their belief in the power of culture to empower groups who for so long have been subject to discrimination. Corin also hears how Australia's position next to Asia has the potential to position it at the heart of a global cultural life as the 21st century develops.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
Leonora Carrington, born in 1917, was the last surviving member of the Surrealist movement of the 1930s. A prodigious painter and writer, she was caught up in some of the most exciting - and most terrible - events of the 20th century. Joanna Moorhead tells the remarkable life story of her father's cousin.
At the age of 17, Leonora Carrington rejected her upper class English upbringing and her family, in favour of the bohemian life of an artist, first in London and then Paris. She became the lover and muse of Max Ernst, and friend of Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali and many other creative geniuses. Soon after the outbreak of the war however, she suffered a mental breakdown and ended up in an asylum in Madrid. She eventually escaped war-torn Europe by marrying a Mexican, which enabled her passage to New York, and from there she journeyed to Mexico where she lived out the rest of her life.
Mexico is where Joanna Moorhead went to find Leonora in 2006. During Joanna's childhood, all she knew was that her father's cousin had been a wild child who had caused the family no end of trouble and "simply flounced off into the sunset". But this first visit of many was the start of a life-changing friendship. During days of talking and reading, of drinking tea and tequila, of going for walks and eating in local restaurants Leonora told Joanna her amazing life story.
This book is the story of Leonora Carrington's life, and of the relationship between two women. And it's about Surrealism as Leonora lived it - a way of approaching the world in a spirit of constant curiosity, with the desire to work out, if not the answers, then at least some of the questions.
Read by Juliet Stevenson
Written and introduced by Joanna Moorhead
Abridged by Sara Davies
Directed by Alexa Moore
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
A reading and a reflection to start the day with the Rev'd Dr Stephen Wigley, Chair of the Wales Synod of the Methodist Church.
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
David Lindo the Urban Birder tells the story of one magical early morning in central London, spotting a honey buzzard flying over the face of Big Ben. He urges people in cities to 'always look up' as there is an amazing variety of birds to be spotted even in the most concrete of jungles.
Tweet of the Day has captivated the Radio 4 audience with its daily 90 seconds of birdsong. But what of the listener to this avian chorus? In this new series of Tweet of the Day, we bring to the airwaves the conversational voices of those who listen to and are inspired by birds. Building on the previous series, a more informal approach to learning alongside a renewed emphasis on encounter with nature and reflection in our relationship with the natural world.
Producer Maggie Ayre.
Morning news and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
You Are My Sunshine was written in or around 1939 and was adopted by the then Governor of Louisiana, Jimmy Davies who recorded and used it as his campaign theme song. It has since been recorded by more than four hundred artists from Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash to Aretha Franklin and Bryan Ferry. A mother and daughter tell their story of how the song helped the daughter's recovery after a catastrophic car crash, and how it has come to symbolise her struggle to rebuild her life after being in a coma for several months. A resident of "Tornado Alley" and author of The Mercy of The Sky tells the story of a devastating tornado that hit a town in Oklahoma in 2013 killing several schoolchildren, but how all the toddlers in a nearby daycare centre survived. The staff comforted them by singing You Are My Sunshine as the storm destroyed the building. And pensioner Alice Kennedy fondly recalls a friend from the Irish Pensioners Choir in London who used to sing the song and add his own cheeky lyrics.
Producer: Maggie Ayre
Music historian: Paul Kingsbury.
Young voters reflect on the economic model, manifesto pledges, Scotland's influence on Westminster, and contrast their voting experience with their parents'. Fi Glover presents.
The Listening Project is a Radio 4 initiative that offers a snapshot of contemporary Britain in which people across the UK volunteer to have a conversation with someone close to them about a subject they've never discussed intimately before. The conversations are being gathered across the UK by teams of producers from local and national radio stations who facilitate each encounter. Every conversation - they're not BBC interviews, and that's an important difference - lasts up to an hour, and is then edited to extract the key moment of connection between the participants. Most of the unedited conversations are being archived by the British Library and used to build up a collection of voices capturing a unique portrait of the UK in the second decade of the millennium. You can learn more about The Listening Project by visiting bbc.co.uk/listeningproject
Producer: Marya Burgess.
Leonora Carrington, born in 1917, was the last surviving member of the Surrealist movement of the 1930s. A prodigious painter and writer, she was caught up in some of the most exciting - and most terrible - events of the 20th century. Joanna Moorhead tells the remarkable life story of her father's cousin.
At the age of 17, Leonora Carrington rejected her upper class English upbringing and her family, in favour of the bohemian life of an artist, first in London and then Paris. She became the lover and muse of Max Ernst, and friend of Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali and many other creative geniuses. Soon after the outbreak of the war however, she suffered a mental breakdown and ended up in an asylum in Madrid. She eventually escaped war-torn Europe by marrying a Mexican, which enabled her passage to New York, and from there she journeyed to Mexico where she lived out the rest of her life.
Mexico is where Joanna Moorhead went to find Leonora in 2006. During Joanna's childhood, all she knew was that her father's cousin had been a wild child who had caused the family no end of trouble and "simply flounced off into the sunset". But this first visit of many was the start of a life-changing friendship. During days of talking and reading, of drinking tea and tequila, of going for walks and eating in local restaurants Leonora told Joanna her amazing life story.
This book is the story of Leonora Carrington's life, and of the relationship between two women. And it's about Surrealism as Leonora lived it - a way of approaching the world in a spirit of constant curiosity, with the desire to work out, if not the answers, then at least some of the questions.
Read by Juliet Stevenson
Written and introduced by Joanna Moorhead
Abridged by Sara Davies
Directed by Alexa Moore
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.
Programme that offers a female perspective on the world.
Jonathan Myerson's tense drama stars Rosie Cavaliero (best known as DS Susan Reinhardt in Prey, and Marion in Unforgotten), as an inner city vicar who logs her secrets on her phone.
When a convicted murderer is released on appeal twenty years later, his supporters claim a victory for justice.
But for the murdered man's friends, life implodes. Old lies re-surface, and new questions haunt them. Questions about what really happened then. And how life has changed them since.
Just when she's getting somewhere, Anna's publicly vlogged.
Produced and directed by Jonquil Panting.
A Head Teacher and his Head of Food debate the perils of the proximity of fast food outlets to their London comprehensive school. Fi Glover presents another conversation in the series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.
Producer: Marya Burgess.
Serving police officer and stand-up comic Alfie Moore returns with a new series of this hugely popular series in which he asks his audience what decisions they'd have made in a real life case that he has dealt with. After swearing in his audience as police officers for one day only, he takes them through one case as it unfolded and asks them what they'd have done in his shoes. Along the way he spills the beans on what it's really like to be one of Britain's finest, tells us some great anecdotes about law breakers and makers that he's come across and gets his studio audience to divulge secrets about their own, sometimes less than strictly law-abiding lives.
In this second episode, Punching Judy, Alfie gets involved in an Enter the Dragon situation. If Bruce Lee came from Scunthorpe and had been hammering the kebabs for twenty years.
Presenter Alfie Moore.
Script Editor Will Ing
Producer Alison Vernon-Smith
A BBC Studios Production.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
On this day in 1917, in the early hours of the morning, people as far away as Dublin were woken by the detonation of Messines Ridge, the biggest man-made explosion in history. In Folkestone, it's deafening.
Singers ..... Nancy Cole, Ksynia Loeffler, Stephen Jeffes, Tom Raskin, Charles Gibbs
Organ - David Smith
Written by Katie Hims
Singers conducted by Sam Evans
Directed by Jessica Dromgoole.
Consumer affairs programme.
The latest weather forecast.
Analysis of news and current affairs.
By Avin Shah.
East Africa. Having almost caught up with the marauding German troops can ill-matched signallers Pavan Jodha and South African Bill Bloomfield successfully negotiate the safety of those besieged in Mkalama Fort?
Meticulously based on unit war diaries and eye-witness accounts, each episode of TOMMIES traces one real day at war, exactly 100 years ago.
Swahili translation: Raju Jobanputra
Series created by Jonathan Ruffle
Producers: Jonquil Panting, David Hunter, Jonathan Ruffle
Director: David Hunter.
Financial phone-in.
Sociological discussion programme, presented by Laurie Taylor.
Topical programme about the fast-changing media world.
Eddie Mair with interviews, context and analysis.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Malcolm needs some help. Sue has a spot of time on her hands. Winchester beckons...
Julia McKenzie and Gus Brown star in the second of six two-handers written by Cabin Pressure's John Finnemore.
Written by John Finnemore
Produced by David Tyler
A Pozzitive production for BBC Radio 4.
For Tom, there is no time like the present, while things go from bad to worse for Rex.
Arts news, interviews and reviews.
Series that explores the big ideas that are set to shape our future.
Simon Jack and Kamal Ahmed present the inside track on key economic and business issues behind the 2017 general election.
Say Pavlov and most people think of bells ringing and dogs salivating. Ivan Pavlov is firmly associated in many people's minds with the idea that animals and, to some extent humans, automatically respond to certain stimuli. Internal thought processes are over-rated. But, as Naomi Alderman's story of selectively drooling dogs reveals, our Pavlovian response to Pavlov himself,is often wrong. For starters, he never used bells. Using metronomes and harmoniums, he noticed that dogs could distinguish between beats played at different speeds and identify individual notes from an A minor chord. He trained dogs to recognize precise time intervals: to expect food in precisely half an hour, for example. He wanted to understand how dogs learn and treated the brain as a black box because he had no way of getting inside it. He analysed what he could, principally the arrival of saliva; but he never thought free will was an illusion. In fact, he said "it would be stupid to reject the subjective world".
Producer: Anna Buckley.
The latest weather forecast.
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.
In Arundhati Roy's mesmerising new novel, Anjum makes a discovery and finds love, but then she undertakes a journey that turns her world upside down. The reader is Indira Varma.
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is Arundhati Roy's first novel since her award winning debut The God of Small Things which was published in 1997. Her hotly anticipated new novel takes us on a mesmerising journey from Old Delhi to Kashmir and back. To find out how to listen to all fifteen episodes from the 5th June; to hear Front Row's interview with the acclaimed author on writing this latest novel, and to catch up with her Desert Island Discs and more visit the Radio 4 website.
Abridged by Richard Hamilton
Produced by Elizabeth Allard.
In Arundhati Roy's captivating new novel there's a new arrival at the Jannat Guest House who shares a story that leaves Anjum with a sense of desolation. The reader is Indira Varma.
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is Arundhati Roy's first novel since her award winning debut The God of Small Things which was published in 1997. It takes listeners to a graveyard in Old Delhi like no other where those on society's margins find a place to be heard and to heal old wounds. Later on the story moves on to Kashmir before returning once more to Delhi.
Visit the Radio 4 website to find links to new features and archive programmes about Arundhati Roy's life and work. While you're there, if you've missed an episode or you would like to listen ahead you can also find out how to download all fifteen episodes.
Abridged by Richard Hamilton
Produced by Elizabeth Allard.
Richly comic autobiographical meanderings from the pen of Chris Neill - joined on stage by Martin Hyder and Alison Steadman. Suddenly faced with life on his own, Chris is forced to make a decision - will his new companion have two legs, or four?
Producer: Steve Doherty
A Giddy Goat production for BBC Radio 4.
In the final part of this three part series, Corin Throsby speaks to author Richard Flanagan - author of the prize-winning 'Narrow Road to the Deep North' - about the place of literature in Australian culture, which, he says, differs significantly to its place in European culture. Corin then goes on to explore the extent to which the grandeur and scale of the Australian landscape have an effect upon the work that's being done by the country's artists, writers and musicians - hearing from Baz Luhrmann that even those Australians who've never been near the outback are indelibly marked by its proximity. Corin visits the mining town of Coober Pedy, five hundred kilometres in any direction from the nearest town, to see for herself why so many film makers have been drawn to the landscape as a location and inspiration. She also talks with author Charlotte Wood about why the outback has so long featured as a dystopian setting in so much Australian culture.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
A reading and a reflection to start the day with the Rev'd Dr Stephen Wigley, Chair of the Wales Synod of the Methodist Church.
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
Osprey and Wormwood Scrubs are not usually words you expect to read in the same sentence, but Urban Birder David Lindo has seen one on his birdwatching patch next to the prison. His mantra is to look up and around in the city as there are more varieties of bird to be seen than you might imagine.
Tweet of the Day has captivated the Radio 4 audience with its daily 90 seconds of birdsong. But what of the listener to this avian chorus? In this new series of Tweet of the Day, we bring to the airwaves the conversational voices of those who listen to and are inspired by birds. Building on the previous series, a more informal approach to learning alongside a renewed emphasis on encounter with nature and reflection in our relationship with the natural world.
Producer Maggie Ayre.
Morning news and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and works of Christine de Pizan, who wrote at the French Court in the late Middle Ages and was celebrated by Simone de Beauvoir as the first woman to 'take up her pen in defence of her sex.' She wrote across a broad range, and was particularly noted for challenging the depiction of women by famous writers such as Jean de Meun, author of the Romance of the Rose. She has been characterised as an early feminist who argued that women could play a much more important role in society than the one they were allotted, reflected in arguably her most important work, The Book of the City of Ladies, a response to the seemingly endless denigration of women in popular texts of the time.
The image above, of Christine de Pizan lecturing, is (c)The British Library Board. Harley 4431, f.259v.
With
Helen Swift
Miranda Griffin
and
Marilynn Desmond
Producer: Simon Tillotson.
Leonora Carrington, born in 1917, was the last surviving member of the Surrealist movement of the 1930s. A prodigious painter and writer, she was caught up in some of the most exciting - and most terrible - events of the 20th century. Joanna Moorhead tells the remarkable life story of her father's cousin.
At the age of 17, Leonora Carrington rejected her upper class English upbringing and her family, in favour of the bohemian life of an artist, first in London and then Paris. She became the lover and muse of Max Ernst, and friend of Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali and many other creative geniuses. Soon after the outbreak of the war however, she suffered a mental breakdown and ended up in an asylum in Madrid. She eventually escaped war-torn Europe by marrying a Mexican, which enabled her passage to New York, and from there she journeyed to Mexico where she lived out the rest of her life.
Mexico is where Joanna Moorhead went to find Leonora in 2006. During Joanna's childhood, all she knew was that her father's cousin had been a wild child who had caused the family no end of trouble and "simply flounced off into the sunset". But this first visit of many was the start of a life-changing friendship. During days of talking and reading, of drinking tea and tequila, of going for walks and eating in local restaurants Leonora told Joanna her amazing life story.
This book is the story of Leonora Carrington's life, and of the relationship between two women. And it's about Surrealism as Leonora lived it - a way of approaching the world in a spirit of constant curiosity, with the desire to work out, if not the answers, then at least some of the questions.
Read by Juliet Stevenson
Written and introduced by Joanna Moorhead
Abridged by Sara Davies
Directed by Alexa Moore
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.
Programme that offers a female perspective on the world.
Jonathan Myerson's tense drama stars Rosie Cavaliero (best known as DS Susan Reinhardt in Prey, and Marion in Unforgotten), as an inner city vicar who logs her secrets on her phone.
When a convicted murderer is released on appeal twenty years later, his supporters claim a victory for justice.
But for the murdered man's friends, life implodes. Old lies re-surface, and new questions haunt them. Questions about what really happened then. And how life has changed them since.
Anna takes Stuart to Nottingham looking for answers, but doesn't like the one she finds.
Produced and directed by Jonquil Panting.
Reports from writers and journalists around the world. Presented by Kate Adie.
Andrew McGibbon talks to Manuel Cuevas, the man who created and made the suits that defined "the Man in Black" - country singer, Johnny Cash.
At 75, he is the "King of Cowboy Bling". He has been designing clothes since he was a boy - barely 7 years old - in his native Mexico. His Nashville store is where all the stars get their threads. But from 1969 Manuel was hired to design Johnny Cash's legendary black suits and formed an extraordinary relationship with the iconic star.
In I Was... Johnny Cash's Tailor, Manuel Cuevas tells the story of his tailoring relationship with the country singer and how he saw the metaphysical black in Johnny's character and couldn't resist making him black suits. This is a charming story about the spiritual relationship between a tailor and the most inscrutable and enduring country music star ever.
Written and presented by Andrew McGibbon
A Curtains for Radio production for BBC Radio 4.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
On this day in 1917, the Tenth Battle of Isonzo ended, with heavy losses on both sides, while in Folkestone, Kitty only has eyes for baby May.
Written by Katie Hims
Directed by Jessica Dromgoole.
Consumer affairs programme.
The latest weather forecast.
Analysis of news and current affairs.
Unexpected stories of education: Datshiane Navanayagam speaks to the musician and broadcaster Soweto Kinch about his experience as an inner-city child of going to a private school.
The journalist Datshiane Navanayagam had a challenging childhood which involved periods of homelessness. But her parents always had high expectations of her and what she could achieve educationally. She was awarded a bursary to a private school, and went onto Cambridge University. As a result she's fascinated by the transformative role of education and for three editions of One to One is speaking to people who went on unexpected educational journeys.
Today she meets the musician and broadcaster Soweto Kinch. Soweto was brought up in inner city Birmingham, but from the age of nine was educated in private schools. On a daily basis he found himself crossing cultural boundaries and confounding expectations. He discusses this experience with Datshiane in terms of the confidence it gave him, and in the context of his West Indian heritage.
Producer: Karen Gregor.
The debut for radio by the critically acclaimed British filmmaker Peter Strickland, writer and director of films Berberian Sound Studio and The Duke of Burgundy.
Sometime in the early eighties, struggling actor Len is increasingly overshadowed by his wife Alice's successful career in local radio. As his bitterness grows, he comes by a chance to finally prove himself.
Surreal soundscapes and black humour with Toby Jones and Belinda Stewart-Wilson.
Sound engineer: Eloise Whitmore
Written and Directed by Peter Strickland
Produced by Russell Finch and Polly Thomas
A Somethin' Else production for Radio 4.
Clare Balding is walking The Nidderdale Way in North Yorkshire for this series and here she completes the fourth leg of the route from Bewerley to Dacre Banks. She's accompanied by three members of the Tordoff family. Keith, came to the town of Pateley Bridge, that lies in the centre of the dale, twenty five years ago with his wife, Gloria. He gave up the stress of being a police officer in Leeds and took to running the local sweetshop, the oldest in the country. He is now a spokesman for the town and the area and does all he can to promote it, concerned as he is, that small rural towns like this, can die without the whole community pulling together. His son Alex is a local fireman and his partner Kirsty also works in the family business. Kirsty and Alex explain to Clare that their love of walking has taken them traveling all over the world, while Keith explains his love of Pateley Bridge means he no longer wishes to go anywhere else.
Their walk starts at Bewerley Grange Chapel where Keith's parents are buried and ends in the village of Dacre Banks, right on the banks of the river Nidd.
Producer Lucy Lunt.
With Francine Stock
Roger Michell, the writer/director of My Cousin Rachel, discusses the work of Daphne Du Maurier on film, from Rebecca to The Birds to Don't Look Now.
Adam Rutherford explores the science that is changing our world.
Eddie Mair with interviews, context and analysis.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
For the first show in the new series stand-up Alex Horne and his band explore the theme of miscellaneous mysterious things with live music and comedy, with songs about aliens, de ja vu and life from a fly's perspective. They're joined by guest comedian Terry Alderton.
Johnny's plans fall apart, and are Pat and Tom overheard?
Arts news, interviews and reviews.
Evan Davis presents the business magazine.
The latest weather forecast.
Comprehensive coverage of the results of the general election, with expert analysis, studio guests and live results from around the country.
Morning news and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
Leonora Carrington, born in 1917, was the last surviving member of the Surrealist movement of the 1930s. A prodigious painter and writer, she was caught up in some of the most exciting - and most terrible - events of the 20th century. Joanna Moorhead tells the remarkable life story of her father's cousin.
At the age of 17, Leonora Carrington rejected her upper class English upbringing and her family, in favour of the bohemian life of an artist, first in London and then Paris. She became the lover and muse of Max Ernst, and friend of Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali and many other creative geniuses. Soon after the outbreak of the war however, she suffered a mental breakdown and ended up in an asylum in Madrid. She eventually escaped war-torn Europe by marrying a Mexican, which enabled her passage to New York, and from there she journeyed to Mexico where she lived out the rest of her life.
Mexico is where Joanna Moorhead went to find Leonora in 2006. During Joanna's childhood, all she knew was that her father's cousin had been a wild child who had caused the family no end of trouble and "simply flounced off into the sunset". But this first visit of many was the start of a life-changing friendship. During days of talking and reading, of drinking tea and tequila, of going for walks and eating in local restaurants Leonora told Joanna her amazing life story.
This book is the story of Leonora Carrington's life, and of the relationship between two women. And it's about Surrealism as Leonora lived it - a way of approaching the world in a spirit of constant curiosity, with the desire to work out, if not the answers, then at least some of the questions.
Read by Juliet Stevenson
Written and introduced by Joanna Moorhead
Abridged by Sara Davies
Directed by Alexa Moore
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.
Programme that offers a female perspective on the world.
Jonathan Myerson's tense drama stars Rosie Cavaliero (best known as DS Susan Reinhardt in Prey, and Marion in Unforgotten), as an inner city vicar who logs her secrets on her phone.
When a convicted murderer is released on appeal twenty years later, his supporters claim a victory for justice.
But for the murdered man's friends, life implodes. Old lies re-surface, and new questions haunt them. Questions about what really happened then. And how life has changed them since.
Now home's not a safe place any more.
Produced and directed by Jonquil Panting.
Laura Barton explores the little known story of a pioneering group of women who unknowingly challenged conventional notions of femininity and their working roles. The Pit Brow Lasses worked within the collieries of 19th century Wigan, Lancashire. Their unique re-appropriation of men's 'breeches' worn underneath hitched up skirts was originally adopted as a functional response to working within mines. These early adopters of trousers reached a similar degrees of notoriety that street-style stars do today.
When Women Wore the Trousers explores the history of trousers in the workplace and in fashion and discusses the impact that this every day garment had on society. Women were liberated by their work in the munitions factories and on the land during both World Wars but there was a fear that these 'new men' would continue donning trousers and become too independent. Coco Chanel famously appropriated sailors tops and trousers to create work-wear in its most elevated form and the fashion for utilitarian clothing continues to thrive today as discussed by fashion designers Faye and Erica Toogood. What do modern working women wear in the work place in the 21st Century? Chef Angela Harnett wears a uniform of a white shift and baggy trousers in her restaurant kitchen but it is a look that could be seen as fashionable in a different context.
With readings from the actor Maxine Peak, a discussion with Pit Brow Lass, Rita Culshaw about her choice of clothing in the pits and interviews with fashion curators Amy de la Haye and Fiona McKay and Wigan historian Alan Davies, we discover how women have worn trousers as a means of empowerment and the enduring appeal of work-wear in contemporary fashion.
Producer: Belinda Naylor.
Max and Ivan are private detectives for whom no case is too small....Sorry, for whom no fee is too small. Reece Shearsmith joins them as they investigate ghoulish goings on in a condemned bookshop.
Driven by their love of truth, justice (and the need to pay off their terrifying landlord, Malcolm McMichaelmas), they take on crimes that no-one else would consider. In this case, they investigate a ghostly apparition that might save a condemned bookshop.
Max and Ivan - comedians and actors Max Olesker and Ivan Gonzalez - are a critically acclaimed, award-winning double act who have quickly established themselves as one of the most exciting comedy duos on the circuit. Over the course of the series they are dropped into new worlds, and have to use their skills to penetrate deep into each community. If that means Ivan dressing up as a 14 year old German girl, so be it!
Cast:
Max................Max Olesker
Ivan...............Ivan Gonzalez
Elliott..............Reece Shearsmith
Malcolm..........Lewis MacLeod
Pat Cooper....David Reed
Luna..............Jessica Ransom
Produced by Victoria Lloyd
A John Stanley production for BBC Radio 4.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
On this day in 1917, the Folkestone Herald reported that shell fragments were being hunted as mementoes, and Ralph has a very early morning visitor.
Written by Katie Hims
Directed by Jessica Dromgoole
Notes:
Season 11 - focusing on Madness and Trauma, and set in Folkestone, will begin on 31 July.
Consumer news and issues.
The latest weather forecast.
Analysis of news and current affairs.
Surreal soundscapes and black comedy from acclaimed British film director Peter Strickland, and starring Toby Jones and Belinda Stewart-Wilson.
Sometime in the early 1980s, struggling actor Len gets his first big break - a part in a public information film. But, as his insecurities take over, the part has unforeseen consequences.
A follow up to The Len Continuum, the first audio drama by film maker Peter Strickland, writer and director of Berberian Sound Studio and The Duke of Burgundy.
Sound engineer: Steve Bond
Written and Directed by Peter Strickland
Produced by Russell Finch
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4.
Eric Robson and his panel of experts are in Lyme Regis. Anne Swithinbank, Bunny Guinness and Bob Flowerdew answer the horticultural questions.
Produced by Hannah Newton
Assistant Producer: Laurence Bassett
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4.
Companions by Adam Marek. Specially-commissioned for Radio 4.
A young man confides in his grandmother about problems in his relationship. Unfortunately, she knows nothing at all about problems with robots.
Adam Marek is the award-winning writer of two short story collections - Instruction Manual For Swallowing and The Stone Thrower - which featured on Radio 4 Extra as The Stories Of Adam Marek in 2014. A specially-commissioned story, The Bullet Racers, was broadcast later that year on Radio 4 as part of the series Short Rides In Fast Machines. He was shortlisted for the inaugural Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award. His story The 40-Litre Monkey was included in The Penguin Book Of The British Short Story in 2015.
Writer: Adam Marek
Reader: Lee Ingleby
Producer: Jeremy Osborne
A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4.
Obituary series, analysing and celebrating the life stories of people who have recently died.
Radio 4's forum for audience comment.
A mother and daughter who are both teachers on work-life balance. Fi Glover presents another conversation in the series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.
Producer: Marya Burgess.
Eddie Mair with interviews, context and analysis.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Satirical review of the week's news, chaired by Miles Jupp.
Writer ..... Simon Frith
Director .... Kim Greengrass
Editor ..... Huw Kennair-Jones
Jill Archer ..... Patricia Greene
David Archer ..... Timothy Bentinck
Ruth Archer ..... Felicity Finch
Pip Archer ..... Daisy Badger
Tony Archer ..... David Troughton
Pat Archer ..... Patricia Gallimore
Helen Archer ..... Louiza Patikas
Tom Archer ..... William Troughton
Brian Aldridge ..... Charles Collingwood
Jennifer Aldridge ..... Angela Piper
Lilian Bellamy ..... Sunny Ormonde
Neil Carter ..... Brian Hewlett
Susan Carter ..... Charlotte Martin
Matt Crawford ..... Kim Durham
Justin Elliott ..... Simon Williams
Rex Fairbrother ..... Nick Barber
Anisha Jayakody ..... Anneika Rose
Kirsty Miller ..... Annabelle Dowler
Elizabeth Pargetter ..... Alison Dowling
Freddie Pargetter ..... Toby Laurence
Lily Pargetter ..... Katie Redford
Johnny Phillips ..... Tom Gibbons
Lynda Snell ..... Carole Boyd.
News, reviews and interviews from the worlds of art, literature, film and music.
Jonathan Dimbleby presents political debate from Broadcasting House Radio Theatre in London with a panel including the Europe Minister Alan Duncan.
A reflection on a topical issue.
The final omnibus of Season 10, Our Daily Bread, set in Folkestone, in the week, in 1917, when biggest man-made explosion in history removed Messines Ridge.
Cast
Eric Morton ..... Paul Rainbow
Gabriel Graham ..... Michael Bertenshaw
Isabel Graham ..... Keely Beresford
Florrie Wilson ..... Claire Rushbrook
Ralph Winwood ..... Nick Murchie
Mrs Grimes ..... Amelda Brown
Anna White ..... Amelia Lowdell
Kitty Wilson ..... Ami Metcalf
Maisie Harris ..... Cassie Layton
Alice Macknade ..... Claire Louise Cordwell
Hilary Pearce ..... Craige Els
Adeline Lumley ..... Helen Schlesinger
Albert Wilson ..... Jamie Foreman
Sylvia Graham ..... Joanna David
Reporter ..... John Bowler
Walter Hamilton ..... Joseph Kloska
Juliet Cavendish ..... Lizzie Bourne
Esme Macknade ..... Katie Angelou
Gabriel Graham ..... Michael Bertenshaw
Oscar Hendrickx ..... Pierre Elliot
Joan Edkins ..... Rachel Davis
Dorothea Winwood ..... Rachel Shelley
Alfred Norris ..... Richard Curnow
Eleanor Tanney ..... Sarah Ridgeway
Norman Harris ..... Sean Baker
Wampach ..... Simon Treves
Jane Underdown ..... Susan Porrett
Alec Poole ..... Tom Stuart
Peter Lumley ..... Bea White
Written by Katie Hims
Directed by Ciaran Bermingham & Jessica Dromgoole
Story-led by Sarah Daniels
Sound: Martha Littlehailes
Composer: Matthew Strachan
Consultant Historian: Maggie Andrews
NOTES:
Season 11 - focusing on Madness and Trauma, and set in Folkestone, will begin on 31 July.
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In the celebrated writer Arundhati Roy's entrancing new novel Anjum makes a precious discovery among the political activists at the Jantar Mantar. It isn't long, though, before fate intervenes and once again snatches her joy away. The reader is Indira Varma.
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is Arundhati Roy's first novel since her celebrated debut The God of Small Things which won the Booker Prize in 1997. The inhabitants of an old graveyard in Delhi are among a host of vivid characters whose lives become inextricably linked in the quest for hope, and most of all love, despite the hardest of circumstances. Later the story takes listeners to Kashmir before returning once more to Delhi in the search for happiness.
To hear Front Row's interview with Arundhati Roy about writing The Ministry of Utmost Happiness and for new features and archive programmes about her life and work visit the Radio 4 website. While you're there, if you've missed an episode or you would like to listen ahead you can also find out how to download all fifteen episodes.
Abridged by Richard Hamilton
Produced by Elizabeth Allard.
Beekeeper and classicist Martha Kearney travels to Greece to explore how honey, the sweetest thing known to humans for thousands of years, shaped our world mythically, socially and politically.
Martha visits the legendary birthplace of Zeus, a cave in Crete where the baby God was said to have been raised by bees, and the Archaeological Museums of Heraklion and Eleftherna to look at bee artefacts from the Bronze Age with Professors Katerina Kopaka and Nikos Stampolides.
She goes to the Ancient Agora in Athens to see where the fabled honey of Attica was sold and journeys to Mount Hymettus on the trail of beehives at an ancient farmhouse. She visits Cretan beekeepers Dimosthenis Issaakidis and Mihalis Tsigenis to compare modern beekeeping methods with those from antiquity, and discusses the impact of honey on society and politics with archaeologist Lucia Nixon over sacred honey drinks.
Producer Dixi Stewart.
Remembering the days when a sunny day meant a school nature ramble, or Music and Movement in the playground. Fi Glover presents another conversation in the series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.
Producer: Marya Burgess.