The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.

This culinary journey through history examines how the growing Empire allowed Britain to harness the globe's edible resources; from cod fish and salt beef to sugar, spices and opium. Historian Lizzie Collingham brings a fresh perspective to the making of the realm, uncovering its decisive role in the shaping of the modern diet and revealing how almost every meal we eat still contains a taste of empire.

Wartime strictures reveal the brutal reality behind feeding an Empire, beginning in North Africa in 1941.

Written by Lizzie Collingham
Read by Melody Grove
Abridged by Siân Preece
Producer: Eilidh McCreadie.

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The latest shipping forecast.

The latest news from BBC Radio 4.

A reading and a reflection to start the day with Canon Edwin Counsell, Rector of Llantwit Major.

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 the weather and a look at the papers.

The International Balloon Fiesta in Bristol has been running for nearly 40 years, drawing pilots and tourists form around the world. Helen Mark has been invited to Ashton Court to help launch one of the crafts and take flight in the direction determined by the wind. During the journey she'll find out how so many navigate around one another, and why those involved are so passionate about this way of travelling. Drifting through the skies with her will be 'The Flying Archaeologist' Ben Robinson who can reveal hidden histories in the landscape below that often go unnoticed. But all her plans are at the mercy of the weather.

Presented by Helen Mark
Produced by Anne-Marie Bullock.

Farming Today This Week's summer series, shining a light on food and farming practices in different regions of the UK, finishes up in Scotland - more specifically, at the bustling Lairg lamb sale.
Nancy Nicolson soaks up the atmosphere and chats to auctioneer David Leggat, who's sold lambs at the site for decades, about the current market for sheep farmers and buyers; John Fyall, chair of the National Sheep Association in Scotland about industry's dependence on European markets and recent calls for lynx to be released in several sites across Scotland; Joyce Campbell, a farmer and entrepreneur based in North Sutherland, who also sits on the new government task-force focusing on women in agriculture; and buyer John Roberts, who's travelled to the sale all the way from North Wales.
Nancy also finds out more about the ingredients that go into Scotch whisky - not all of which are sourced from Scotland - with farmer Gordon Rennie, discusses the world of crofting with Crofting Federation chairman Russell Smith, and hears from reporter Richard Baynes on government plans to give the country's wild beavers protected status.

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News and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.

Actor Simon Williams; singer Heather Small; writer John Higgs and angler Marina Gibson join Aasmah Mir and the Reverend Richard Coles.

The actor Simon Williams got his big break playing James Bellamy in the period drama Upstairs, Downstairs. He is currently starring as Justin Elliott in the BBC Radio 4 series the Archers and a mysterious property developer - known as "the chairman" - in East Enders on BBC One. He is performing in Posting Letters to the Moon with his wife, the actress Lucy Fleming in which the couple read the wartime letters between Lucy's parents Celia Johnson and her husband Peter Fleming. Posting Letters to the Moon is at the Jermyn Street Theatre on November 19th.

Heather Small is a singer and songwriter, best known for her work with the soul band M People who came to attention with hits including Moving on Up, One Night in Heaven and Search for the Hero. Now a solo performer, Heather is a former contestant on the BBC One series Strictly Come Dancing. Heather Small is on tour in 2018.

Marina Gibson is a passionate angler and fishing instructor who started trout fishing at the age of 5. Her fishing trips have taken her around the world - she has cast her line for trout in Norway and for milkfish, bonefish and triggerfish on Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean.

John Higgs is a writer. In his new book Watling Street he takes a journey along Watling Street, from Dover to Anglesey - a road of witches and ghosts, of queens and highwaymen, of history and myth and Chaucer and Dickens. Watling Street - Travels through Britain and its Ever-Present Past is published by Weidenfeld & Nicholson.

Also on the programme DJ and filmmaker Don Letts reveals his Inheritance Tracks.

Producer: Paula McGinley
Editor: Eleanor Garland.

In this week's Cultural Front, Francine Stock explores how artists reacted to the bitter reality of conflict.

First she learns from the meeting of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen at Craiglockhart hospital in Edinburgh, an event that directly lead to Owen becoming one of the greatest War Poets in the British Canon. To commemorate their meeting, fiddle maker Steve Burnett has been commissioned to make an instrument for both men, and we get to hear them played together for the very first time.

Next we travel beyond the Eastern Front to the Russian Revolution. In time theatre and film will create an enduring myth, but we delve into the poetry that acts like snapshots of history, preserving the truth of the messy, divisive revolution and showing what it was really like to watch the entire social order crumble and reform into a new world.

Of course, not all artists tackled war head on in their art. 1917 was the year that saw Pablo Picasso begin his collaboration with The Ballet Russe and the creation of his biggest ever piece of work - The Parade Curtain. How would the public react to a piece that was all about youth, joy and defiance of war, when the people they loved were still fighting at the front?

Back home, sculptor Francis Derwent Wood was volunteering in a London hospital when he saw first hand what happened to the men who had been injured in the line of duty. Seeing the profound psychological impact on patients suffering facial injuries Wood decided to set up a studio within the hospital, with the goal of sculpting tin masks that would make the patient look as close as possible to how he had been before he was wounded. A century later, we're left puzzling about what these masks really are - a well intentioned but flawed medical tool, or a kind of anti-portraiture that shows the realities of war in a way that still feels visceral even today.

The Polish physicist and chemist Marie Curie was the first woman to receive a Nobel Prize, and the first person to be awarded twice in two different fields. Her discoveries in the field of radioactivity - adding polonium and radium to the table of elements - changed the course of scientific history and led to huge advances in the treatment of cancer.

This year marks 150 years after her birth to a poor family in occupied Poland. Quentin Cooper traces Marie Curie's extraordinary life story with Patricia Fara, president of the British Society for the History of Science; Maciej Dunajski, mathematician and theoretical physicist at Cambridge University; and Susan Quinn, author of Marie Curie: A Life.

Photo: Marie Curie (Hulton Archive/ Getty Images).

Reports from writers and journalists around the world. Presented by Kate Adie.

The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.

Governments are struggling to raise the taxes to pay for a generous State Pension while employers are less and less willing to fund generous pension schemes. Can we invest our own savings to fill the gap?

The pension industry has come in for a lot of criticism for high fees, poor performance, and a lack of transparency. But there are signs that the industry and the government are determined that things will change for the better so can we rely on the pensions industry to help us attain the comfortable retirement many of us aspire to. One proposal is a "pensions dashboard" which will help us keep track of our pension savings and what kind of retirement income they should deliver.

Presenter: Louise Cooper
Producer: Ben Carter.

This week, the Professor of Ignorance John Lloyd and his curator, the brilliant Romesh Ranganathan welcome:

The Austentatiously funny improvisor, comedian and writer Cariad Lloyd.

The Huddersfield girl who escaped modelling and headed for the Yorkshire hills, Amanda Owen.

and

The broadcaster, reporter, after-dinner speaker, former MP and Lord Commissioner of the Treasury, panellist, performer, Dictionary Corner occupant, Chancellor of the University of Chester, President of the Association of British Scrabble Players and prodigiously prolific author Gyles Brandreth.

This week, the Museum's Guest Committee offer as exhibits a bleak but cuddly Finnish troll, a tiny device that commands attention and a button with a dramatic past.

The show was researched by Anne Miller of QI and Mike Turner.

The production coordinator was Tamara Shilham.

The producers were Richard Turner and James Harkin.

It was a BBC Studios Production.

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Shaun Ley presents political debate from the Radio Theatre at Broadcasting House in London, with the co-editor of 'The Conservative Woman' Laura Perrins, Labour MP Jess Phillips, Conservative MP Chris Philp, and the former Corbyn aide Matt Zarb-Cousin.

Listeners have their say on the issues discussed on Any Questions?

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien and Edith Mary Bratt first met in 1908. They were both orphans living in a boarding house in Birmingham. Despite the difference in their ages and religions - she was 19 and Protestant, he was 16 and Catholic - they fell in love.

When Ronald's guardian, Father Francis Xavier Morgan, found out, he forbade him to see Edith again until he came of age at 21. Ronald reluctantly obeyed and later left the city after winning an exhibition to Oxford. Edith went to live in Cheltenham. At midnight on the night he turned 21, Ronald wrote to Edith declaring his undying feelings. Unfortunately, in the intervening years, she had got engaged to someone else. He raced to her in Cheltenham, they walked through the countryside and Ronald had one chance to win Edith's heart.

Their love was the inspiration for the Beren and Luthien story at the heart of Tolkien's novel The Silmarillion.

Starring Will Merrick (Skins, The Rack Pack) as Ronald and Claudia Jessie (Line Of Duty, Their Finest) as Edith. Tolkien In Love is based on real events and written by Sean Grundy, whose previous work for Radio 4 has been Sony and Tinniswood Award nominated.

Writer: Sean Grundy
Producer: Liz Anstee

A CPL production for BBC Radio 4.

The Doppler effect not only proved that the universe was expanding, it also helped John Lennon sound like the Dalai Lama on a mountaintop - or so he hoped.
Just what is the story behind the Doppler Effect and what does it have to do with music?

BBC Radio 4 turns the volume up to 11, as conductor Charles Hazlewood recreates an ambitious experiment which first proved the Doppler Effect in 1845, while Dr Brian May, guitarist with rock band Queen gives him the low-down on the Doppler Shift in astrophysics.

A steam train, a brass band and an internationally famous conductor recreate one of the most unusual experiments - to prove the existence of the Doppler Effect - what could possibly go wrong?

So what is the Doppler Effect? Everyone today is aware of it, even if they can't name it. The pitch of the siren on a passing police car appears to change as it zooms past - the note appearing to rise and fall as the source of the sound approaches and fades away.

Austrian physicist Christian Doppler, who first proposed his theory in 1842, was interested in the behaviour of light waves, but because sound waves are similar - if longer - the way the theory was tested was using a steam train loaded up with trumpet players holding a single note, travelling at speed past a station.
What a sight - and a sound - it must have been. And now you need imagine it no longer, as conductor Charles Hazlewood attempts to re-create this extraordinary experiment for BBC Radio 4.

With the help of the locomotive steam power of the Great Central Railway and the wind power of the Hathern Brass Band, Charles fills a railway carriage with brass players and sends them from Loughborough, through Quorn Station, blasting out a single note, to recreate that moment.

Gavin Pretor-Pinney, author of "The Wave Watcher's Companion" helps Hazelwood get to grips with the physics and pit falls behind the original experiment.
Dr Brian May talks of his own close understanding of the Doppler Shift in his study of astrophysics, and how the theory helps us understand the universe.
And, from the Beatles to Booker T and the MG's, composer and creator of musical instruments Sarah Angliss, demonstrates the beauty of the Leslie Speaker and Hammond Organ, which make the most of the phenomenon.

Producer: Sara Jane Hall
Technical presentation: Giles Aspen

Choir: Siona Stockel, Naomi MacLeod-Jones, Stephen Harvey, Tim Wilson, Iain MacLeod-Jones, Oscar Golden-Lee, Craig Bissex, William Drakett.

Music in the programme:
The Smiths - How Soon Is Now
Kraftwerk - Autobahn
The Hathern Band - Death or Glory
Queen - White Queen
Jimmy McGriff - Discotheque
Jimi Hendrix - Little Wing
The Beatles - Tomorrow Never Knows.

What is life like living with a disfigurement other people can't see? Sylvia Mac has deep painful scar tissues on her back, stomach and leg after an accident when she was three. She tells us what life is like for her.

How do a group of seven year olds see themselves based on their gender? A new programme No More Boys and Girls is trying to see the effects of children going gender free. We hear from the Executive Producer Helen Veale and from Dr Javid Abdelmoneim.

Katherine Welby-Roberts, the daughter of Justin Welby the Archbishop of Canterbury, talks about her book 'I Thought There Would be Cake!' about her struggles with depression, anxiety and chronic fatigue.

Theresa Breslin discusses her historical novel 'The Rasputin Dagger' charting the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Chineke! Is Europe's first professional orchestra made up of black and minority ethnic musicians. We hear from it's founder double bassist Chi-chi Nwanoku and young British composer Hannah Kendall.

Why do some middle class women feel guilty about having a cleaner? Columnist Angela Epstein explains why she feels guilt about hiring a cleaner and social historian Helen McCarthy tells us why women have struggled with this in different ways throughout the last century.

Dr Helen Sharman, Britain's first astronaut, and Dr Barbara Brownie discuss zero gravity fashion.

Presented by Jenni Murray
Producer: Rabeka Nurmahomed.

Full coverage of the day's news.

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The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.

Clive Anderson and Tom Allen are joined by Isla Fisher, Selina Thompson and Dave Johns for an eclectic mix of conversation, music and comedy. With music from Sage Francis & B. Dolan and Dorec-a-belle.

Producer: Sukey Firth.

Becky Milligan profiles the pop superstar, Taylor Swift who has recently won a case against an ex-DJ over her claim that she was sexually assaulted when he groped her during a pre-concert photo opportunity in 2013.
Taylor Swift is a multi award winning, platinum selling American singer-songwriter. Born and raised in Pennsylvania, before moving to Nashville, Tennessee at age 14 to pursue a career in country music. There, she was signed by an independent record label. Her second album released in 2008 when she was just 19 years of age, became the best-selling album of 2009 in the United States. The album won four Grammy Awards, cementing Taylor Swift's success which continues to go from strength to strength.
Produced by Nina Robinson and Beth Sagar-Fenton.

A review of the week's cultural highlights.

After scandals or disasters like Grenfell Tower, the call is always for a public inquiry. But what do these inquiries achieve, and why are they often so controversial? Which ones have been admired and led to change, which seen as expensive cover-ups? Chris Bowlby reveals a rich history of inquiries into everything from rail crashes and murders to corruption and treachery. How have they changed as deference and backroom deals gave way to political theatre and angry public opinion? Archive from key moments and insights from insiders will shed light on some of Britain's greatest failures - and the painful attempt to learn the lessons.

Producer Smita Patel
Editor Emma Rippon

The programme contains Archive from Pathe News & BBC.

Henry James' masterpiece about desire and freedom, dramatised by Linda Marshall Griffiths.

We meet Isabel four years on and she is totally transformed by her marriage to Osmond. What had seemed to be a path to freedom is now a narrowing tunnel closing in around her and it is clear to those who love her that Isabel is in trouble. Isabel must find a way out if she is to save herself.

Directed by Nadia Molinari

The Portrait of a Lady is part of Love Henry James: a series of dramatisations and features celebrating Henry James and his unique insights on love. Love Henry James takes a thrilling, passionate, heart-breaking journey through his novels and his life. Henry James is an extraordinary storyteller. His characters and their inner lives are vividly portrayed. The stories are compelling and the stakes are high. He writes about transformation through travel where innocence opens up to experience.
Henry James unlocks the secrets of the human heart.

The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4, followed by weather.

In the first of a new series, twelve of the country's brightest young minds gather to solve difficult social problems. This week - how do we improve access to affordable housing?
Using policy planning techniques used by governments around the world, three teams are given free reign to think the unthinkable. They then present their ideas to two judges, who'll interrogate them and pick the best. Presented by Matthew Taylor and facilitated by Cat Drew of Uscreates

Team One:

Oliver Sweet - runs an ethnographic research department at Ipsos MORI.

Margot Lombaert - creative director of Margot Lombaert Studio, an independent graphic design practice.

Ethan Howard - RSA award winner.

Jack Minchella - research and design associate at the Innovation Unit and the founder of the urban research collective In-Between Economies based in Denmark.

Team Two:

Solveiga Pakštaitė - industrial designer specialising in user-centred design.

Gemma Hitchens - Account Director at Signal Noise, which specialises in data visualisation and analysis.

Jag Singh - tech entrepreneur and former political strategist.

Hashi Mohamed - barrister at No5 Chambers.

Team Three:

Helen Steer - educator and maker who runs Do It Kits, a start-up that helps teachers use technology.

Zahra Davidson - designer with a background spanning service design, social innovation and visual communication.

Piero Zagami - information designer and consultant in graphic design and data visualization.

Tobias Revell - artist and lecturer in Critical and Digital Design.

Producer: Wesley Stephenson.

(7/13)
Could you distinguish Grieg's piano concerto from Tchaikovsky's? And do you know your Coldplay from your Elbow? The contestants in today's Counterpoint heat will be very much hoping they can avoid such confusions, as they face Paul Gambaccini's questions on every aspect and era of music.

As well as proving the breadth of their general musical knowledge, they'll be asked to pick a topic on which to answer specialist questions, from a list of categories for which they've had no chance to prepare.

The winner will take another of the places in the series semi-finals coming up in September.

Producer: Paul Bajoria.

Bill Drummond is many things. As well as an artist, a writer and former pop-star - he's the owner of an old curfew tower in Northern Ireland which he runs as an artists' residency. Last year some poets from Belfast's Seamus Heaney Centre for Poetry stayed there and Bill published their collected work in a little black book called The Curfew Tower is Many Things.

Except for a poem the award-winning Belfast poet Stephen Sexton wrote. Apparently that one went missing. So Bill has left two pages blank in the book for Stephen to fill in with poetry as they drive through all of Ireland's 32 counties in 5 days in a white Ford Transit hire-van, giving out copies as they go.

But what exactly is driving Bill Drummond?

Producer Conor Garrett is there to find out. As they cross the Irish border and over each county boundary, Conor is becoming increasingly concerned he may not have a good enough story for his radio programme. It's a problem further complicated by the fact Bill won't talk about his chart-topping '90s pop band who once famously set fire to a very large pile of their own cash. Then, when a narrative arc does eventually develop, Conor can't be sure how authentic it is. And what's all this stuff about eels?

Producer: Conor Garrett.

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A short story by Anya Lipska, the author of the Kiszka and Kershaw crime novels.

Cassie Raven is a young mortuary attendant. She's used to having students shadowing her work - but there's something unusual about this one.

Anya Lipska's crime thrillers, set in East London, follow the adventures and investigations of Janusz Kiszka, tough guy and fixer to the Polish community, and sharp-elbowed young police detective Natalie Kershaw. The third novel in the series, A Devil Under the Skin, was published in June 2015. Anya is married to a Pole and lives in East London. Originally trained as a journalist, she now works as a TV producer. Her first story for radio, Another Kind Of Man, was part of the Angielski series in 2015.

Writer: Anya Lipska
Reader: Ellie Kendrick
Producer: Jeremy Osborne

A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4.

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This week's Bells on Sunday, comes from Loughborough Parish Church. There are ten bells - cast between 1897 and 1899 - and the tenor is tuned to D flat. The back four bells are lost wax castings decorated with intricate designs.

We hear them ringing 'Stedman Caters'.

The latest national and international news.

Remona Aly considers the multi-faceted power contained in the idea of the divine feminine.

From the shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham in Norfolk to the Kaaba in Mecca, Remona journeys through some of the religious and spiritual traditions which have venerated the feminine and she reveals the obscured influence of women in major religions.

Remona explains how her first encounter with the Quranic Maryam (the Christian Mary) - and how Maryam's status as a prophet of Islam - offered her a revelatory new perspective on her own religion and a radical new way of looking at religious traditions across cultures and throughout history.

Taking in the Native American creation story of Grandmother Spider, the mystical Jewish concept of Shekhinah, Beyonce's channelling of Oshun, a Nigerian Yoruba deity and the fierce spirituality of the Suffragettes, Remona demonstrates that the feminine divine has had many apparently contradictory faces - some soft and nurturing, others imperious, warlike and cruel.

She argues that it is vital for all of us, women and men, to recognise the legacy of the divine feminine, a legacy which transcends simplistic assumptions about gender and offers a return to a more balanced and humane relationship with the world.

The readers are Kate Lock, Milli Proust and Max O'Brien.

Thanks to Ranjana Ghatak for her performance of a poem by Meera Bai (composed by Ustad Ali Akbar Khan).

Presenter: Remona Aly
Producer: Michael Umney
A TBI Media production for BBC Radio 4.

Nancy Nicolson joins the summer gathering of sheep amid the spectacular and dangerous beauty of Glencoe.

Paying farmers to provide environmental benefits is being presented as the latest political thinking, but it's already happening in some of the highest, wildest terrain in Scotland.

Paulo Berardelli and his family run 1200 Blackface ewes on 5500 acres of almost vertical organic land in the mountains of Glencoe, the location of the infamous massacre of the MacDonalds more than 300 years ago.

Nancy Nicolson joins Paulo, his shepherd, three of his teenage children and a couple of students as they set off into the hills to gather in a flock for shearing.

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Sunday morning religious news and current affairs programme.

Rachel de Thame makes the Radio 4 Appeal on behalf of the charity Plantlife.

Registered Charity Numbers: 1059559 (England & Wales) SC038951 (Scotland)
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 'Plantlife'.
- Cheques should be made payable to 'Plantlife'.

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From St Andrew's and St George's West Church, Edinburgh with the Rev Ian Gilmour.
The Central Council of Church Bell Ringers visits the Church with Scotland's oldest peal of bells.
Introit: Blessed is he (Andrew Carvel)
Praise to the Lord, the Almighty (Lobe den Herren)
Let us with a gladsome mind (Monkland)
Anthem: Psalm 150 (Carvel)
Unchanging God, who livest (Belfry Praise)
Let all the world (Luckington)
Choir directed by Brigitte Harris. Organist: Peter Backhouse.
Producer: Mo McCullough.

Roger Scruton asks: "What does the Tory Party really stand for?"

He says the Conservative party at present is muddling along without a philosophy.

But he argues that, far from being the 'nasty party', the most fundamental belief underpinning Conservative policies historically is the idea of responsibility towards others.

Producer: Adele Armstrong.

In the first of a week of Tweet of the Day's by British zoologist professor Tim Birkhead, he recalls a guillemot chicks first, and ultimately last flight on Skomer.

Tweet of the Day has captivated the Radio 4 audience with its daily 90 seconds of birdsong. But what of the listener to this avian chorus? In this new series of Tweet of the Day, we bring to the airwaves the conversational voices of those who listen to and are inspired by birds. Building on the previous series, a more informal approach to learning alongside a renewed emphasis on encounter with nature and reflection in our relationship with the natural world.

Producer: Tom Bonnett
Photograph: Harry McBride.

Sunday morning magazine programme with news and conversation about the big stories of the week. Presented by Paddy O'Connell.

Anisha will not back down, and Emma makes herself heard.

Sue MacGregor brings together trades unionists and editors from opposing sides of one of the most bitter strikes in British industrial history - the Wapping Dispute.

In the early 1980s, working on newspaper presses was noisy, dirty and dangerous. Machine minders suffered lung and hearing problems. But their wages and the camaraderie went a long way to compensate.

Rupert Murdoch owned The Sun, The News of the World, The Times and the Sunday Times and planned to move them all out of Fleet Street to Wapping in London's Docklands. The move was predicated on thousands of jobs losses and stringent new conditions for those remaining in post. Negotiations stalled, leading to the sacking of 5,500 workers and a 13 month dispute.

Discussing the events are Charlie Wilson, editor of The Times, who was dubbed "Scabbie Jock" by union members. He says they created a miserable and unhelpful atmosphere at his paper. Kelvin MacKenzie was the notorious editor of The Sun but bowed to union demands when they refused to print stories that offended their politics.

Baroness Brenda Dean was the General Secretary of the SOGAT union. She witnessed violence between police and demonstrators and had £10,000 of union funds sequestrated by News International. Marie Alvarado was a clerical worker for The Times and, like most of her colleagues, had no idea about Wapping almost until she went on strike. Paul King was a machine minder at The Sun. He was charged with assaulting a police officer, which he denied. He says the dispute led to the deaths of several colleagues.

With thanks to Linda Melvern's Wapping Archive.

Producer: Karen Pirie
Series Producer: David Prest
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4.

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How hard can it be to talk for 60 seconds with no hesitation, repetition & deviation? Nicholas Parsons challenges Tony Hawks, Phill Jupitus, Sheila Hancock and Jenny Eclair to do just that.

Hayley Sterling blows the whistle.
Produced by Victoria Lloyd.
A BBC Studios Production.

Dan Saladino investigates current pressures on chefs and the darker side of the restaurant kitchen. From breakdowns to addictions, is it a profession with more problems than most?

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News with Ross Hawkins.

In the latest programme of a new series, Mishal Husain introduces dispatches from journalists and writers around the United Kingdom that reflect the range of contemporary life in the country. Among the pieces this month, we hear about a remarkable group of pilgrims and their spiritual walk and how an ingenious dairy farmer has been able to turn the difficulties of managing his herd in tricky financial conditions to his advantage.

Eric Robson and his panel of experts visit Romney Marsh in South Kent. Pippa Greenwood, Matthew Biggs and Bob Flowerdew offer the advice this week.

The panellists answer questions on keeping trees in pots and which plants are best to grow in wall crevices, and offer suggestions for greenery in floral arrangements.

They also suggest planting options for a prairie garden and advise a reverend on how best to make his church garden more eco-friendly.

Matt Biggs visits Derek Jarman's garden at Dungeness.

Produced by Dan Cocker
Assistant Producer: Phil Barratt

A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4.

Fi Glover introduces conversations between young people with valuable insights into recognising others' needs, listening to their opinions, and seeing beyond first impressions 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.

An ambitious new dramatization of Salman Rushdie's dazzling novel of love, history and magic. Dramatised by Ayeesha Menon.

Part 1: Dr Aadam Aziz falls in love with a woman hidden behind a perforated sheet. Starring Nikesh Patel, Abhin Galeya, Maya Sondhi and Meera Syal.

Sound design by Peter Ringrose
Produced and directed by Tracey Neale and Emma Harding

All other parts were played by Sheetal Kapoor, Philip Fox, Emilio Doorgasingh, Chetna Pandya, Shiven Shankar, Shreya Shah, Renu Brindle, Ronny Jhutti and members of the company.

70 years after Partition, Open Book considers some of the best contemporary literature emerging from Pakistan and India. And Swiss novelist Peter Stamm discusses his new novel, To The Back of Beyond in which a man suddenly and dramatically walks out on his family.

Boston in Lincolnshire is home to many settlers from Eastern Europe and has a long history associated with immigration and migration. It's where the pilgrim fathers who conquered America came from and it has a long cultural history associated with other parts of the world, including the Netherlands.

But the UK media focus in recent years has been on how the people of the Boston of the 21st Century struggle to live side by side. This was also the Brexit hot spot of Britain during the EU referendum.

Poet Benjamin Zephaniah, himself a son of immigrants who grew up in the West Midlands visits Boston to hear, via poetry and interviews with the different people who live there, what Boston means to them.

He meets a variety of people - Romanians, Estonians, Lithuanians and Poles as well as members of the indigenous population - as they put pen to paper to convey their feelings about life in Boston and Britain more generally.

Broken English and foreign languages are mixed with the sound of the traditional Lincolnshire burr as he also hears from people who've lived in Boston all their lives.

Far from finding a town at war, as so often depicted in the media, he discovers a vibrant community who - despite their differences - seem eager to muddle along together and shape a common future.

A Made in Manchester production for BBC Radio 4.

Historian Dr Zareer Masani's father, pictured above, began as a close confidante of India's first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, but ended up leading opposition to him in the 1950s and '60s. Now, as India turns 70, Zareer asks why present-day Hindu nationalists are so keen to eradicate the legacies of the country's founding father and even to airbrush his name from school textbooks.

Nehru was the most charismatic leader of India's nationalist movement against the Raj and the founder of a political dynasty that survives to this day. But there are huge changes sweeping India, and they're also sweeping away Nehru's socialist and secularist legacies. Zareer asks: was the Nehru era a half-century of wasted economic opportunities and false starts, or did he lay lasting foundations for Indian democracy, science and technology? Are his critics throwing out the baby with the bathwater?

Zareer wrote a biography of Nehru's daughter Indira. His analysis of the Nehru legacy is laced with personal anecdote and insight and interviews with prominent Indian cultural and political figures. He talks to senior politicians and pundits, as well as to academics and students at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, about the shifting reputation of a man whose name still dominates the Indian skyline. He finds that attitudes to Nehru and his legacy are key to understanding the direction of Indian politics and culture today.

Producer: Tom Alban.

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Catherine Bott chooses her BBC Radio highlights.

Oliver needs to ask a favour, and Susan gets creative in the kitchen.

Everyone remembers where they were when they heard the news that Dave Podmore had been elected MP for the hotly-contested marginal seat of Leicester Forest Services (East). Except Dave Podmore who, to be fair, had had a few.

Pod's had a lot on his mind. His attractive wife Jacqui is playing away with an Aussie ex-cricketer even more overweight than Pod; his dogs get turned away from a bed-and-breakfast by a seaside landlady who has no qualms about letting gays in to reorganize her table settings; and he urgently needs money to pay for the dogs' sumptuous new living quarters.

His faithful sidekick Andy points out that there's still money to be made as an MP, so Pod embarks on the long road to Westminster - starting by parking illegally on it outside the Town Hall.

Pod develops a political philosophy - he wants to see a world where no dogs have to be licensed, no patio heater is deemed environmentally unsound and where it's possible for the fly-tipper to walk without fear throughout this green and pleasant landfill.

All of this appeals to Hard Shoulder Man, Pod's core voters, and he's elected in a landslide. So how come he has to resign his seat three days later? And will Jacqui return? And could reality TV possibly come to the rescue and give us a dramatically satisfying ending?

Written by Christopher Douglas, Nick Newman and Andrew Nickolds.

Producer: Richard Wilson
A Hat Trick production for BBC Radio 4.

As part of their final Media Degree assessment at NUC in Northern Ireland, three final year university students - Natalie Driver, JJ Collins and Vic Grant - decide to make a podcast about a cold case which happened in Colecastle fourteen years ago. On Saturday April 26th 2003, Toby Ellis was minding his four month old nephew, Derek Ellis. He nipped into his local newsagents and left the pram outside on the street. He claimed he left the child for no longer than two minutes. During this time, the baby was abducted and six days later the infant's body was discovered buried in a nearby wooded area, Mountfort. Cause of death, a blow to the head. No one was ever charged with the murder and the case has remained on-going.

The first episode of Hiding Out is a podcast hosted by one of the students, Natalie; she reveals she is currently in hiding fearing for her safety. Having published their first podcast on The Murder at Colecastle, her fellow student Vic had received a call from someone who had heard the podcast claiming they had new evidence about the day the child was abducted. Vic and JJ met with the source. That was 3 days ago and no one has seen or heard from either Vic or JJ since... The only contact Natalie has received is a text sent from her classmate JJ's phone which reads "We're watching you. Stop this now." Natalie knows their disappearance is clearly linked to digging into the murder of Derek Ellis. If she finds them, she may finally find the truth of what happened in Colecastle. Natalie's nightly podcasts of 'Hiding Out' are attracting more and more interest - #whereisnatalie and #findvicandjj are rife with speculation. Are these three students actually in danger? Or - as their media lecturer believes - is this all an elaborate media hoax?

Gerard Stembridge ..... Writer
Gemma McMullan ..... Series Producer & Director.

In the last programme of the current series, Roger Bolton digs in to controversy about climate change, hears listener response to the BBC's Gay Britannia season and discusses Jim Al-Khalili's broadcasting career.

Well known climate sceptic and former Chancellor Lord Nigel Lawson was invited onto Radio 4's Today programme to discuss the economics of climate change recently, following up an earlier interview with climate campaigner Al Gore. But Lord Lawson also took the opportunity to question some of the established science of climate change. The controversy quickly filled up the Feedback inbox - many were deeply angry that a non-scientist had been brought on to discuss the topic and complained that Today's Justin Webb had not done enough to challenge his position. Professor Steve Jones, who wrote an independent report on impartiality and accuracy in science broadcasting for the BBC in 2011, joins Roger to discuss the interview.

To commemorate 50 years since the passing of the Sexual Offences act, the BBC has been running an extensive season of programmes under the umbrella Gay Britannia. Listeners respond to the series. Was it diverse enough in its portrayal of LGBT people? Was there too much of it altogether? And some people take issue with the BBC's use of the word "queer".

Producer: Kate Taylor
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4.

Kate Silverton on the "Broadway Diva" Barbara Cook, the American singer and actress who first came to prominence in the 1950s as the lead in the original Broadway musicals Plain and Fancy and Candide; Sister Ruth Pfau 'Mother Teresa' of Pakistan for her work in combating the spread of leprosy; Richard Gordon the anesthetist,whose medical work inspired him to write Dr in The House novels which were made into films and a TV series; Prof. U.R. Rao, Pioneer of India's Space Programme, who brought knowledge to millions of people through digital communications via the many satellites he launched into space.

From sick man of Europe to world's richest exporter - how did Germany do it?

At the turn of the century, Germany's economy was weak and its unemployment high. Fast forward to today and the country has overtaken China as the world's richest exporter. To find out how, Caroline Bayley travels to rural South Germany, home to many so called "hidden champions", little-known world market leading companies. But she also hears how for all its economic success, Germany has yet to come up with the next Google. Though plans are afoot to catch up with Silicon Valley.

Producer: Estelle Doyle.

Weekly political discussion and analysis with MPs, experts and commentators.

With Antonia Quirke

Stanley Tucci talks about his latest film as writer/director, Final Portrait, the result of a life-long obsession with the artist Giacometti, which was inspired by his artist father.

Woman in Black director James Watkins waxes lyrical about the work of Jean-Pierre Melville, the French film-maker who was so obsessed with American culture that he changed his name in honour of the author of Moby Dick.

Listener Paul Kleiman talks about his mother Shirley Finn, who kept a record of almost every day of her adult life, including the years she spent in the British film industry as a "script girl".

The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.

Sir Trevor McDonald, formerly of ITV News at Ten, and Jon Snow, of Channel 4 News, discuss favourite books with Harriett Gilbert. Together in studio for the first time, they share thoughts and reminiscences on working together as they discuss a much-loved look at the British, Notes From A Small Island: Journey Through Britain by Bill Bryson; a new novel: Mothering Sunday by Graham Swift and a timely study of a crucial time in American politics: Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson (Volume 3) by Robert A Caro.
Producer Beth O'Dea.

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 Canon Edwin Counsell, Rector of Llantwit Major.

The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.

The latest weather forecast for farmers.

Clare Jones recalls the inspiration of seeing a little egret and how a small event can change an entire outlook on life in this Tweet of the Day.

Tweet of the Day has captivated the Radio 4 audience with its daily 90 seconds of birdsong. But what of the listener to this avian chorus? In this new series of Tweet of the Day, we bring to the airwaves the conversational voices of those who listen to and are inspired by birds. Building on the previous series, a more informal approach to learning alongside a renewed emphasis on encounter with nature and reflection in our relationship with the natural world.

Producer Tom Bonnett.

News and current affairs. Includes Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.

Fi Glover hosts friends and residents of Bransholme in The Listening Project Booth, parked in the heart of the Estate, to reveal its vigorous role in Hull UK City of Culture 2017. Guests include Anita Harrison, Councillor for Bransholme East, and Chris Smith of Bransholme Community Arts Enterprise.

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.

There's a ritual of the modern workplace - one you've heard and most likely indulged in yourself. It's the call and response we go through when you ask a workmate how they're doing: "Busy!" "So busy." "mentally busy." It is pretty obviously a boast disguised as a complaint. And our simultaneously grim and half chuckled reply comes as a kind of congratulation: "Ha, better than the opposite." When did we start doing that?

As if he didn't have enough to do Oliver Burkeman explores this epidemic of busyness to reveal that it may not be what it at first seems.

Producer: Peter McManus.

A memoir with a difference, subtitled: "Seventeen Brushes With Death", in which the award-winning novelist Maggie O'Farrell tells her life through a series of vignettes of her near-death experiences -- including a childhood illness she was not expected to survive; a terrifying encounter on a remote mountain path; a mismanaged labour in an understaffed hospital.

The book started out as a private project, a way for O'Farrell to help her young daughter who suffers from a serious immunology disorder, including severe eczema and allergies that can cause anaphylactic shock: "I've asked myself, when she has been very ill, how do you carry on when death is a daily possibility?"

Maggie O'Farrell is the author of seven novels, "After You'd Gone", "My Lover's Lover", "The Distance Between Us", which won a Somerset Maugham Award, "The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox", "The Hand That First Held Mine", which won the 2010 Costa Novel Award, "Instructions for the Heatwave", which was shortlisted for the 2013 Costa Novel Award, and "This Must Be The Place".

Read by Hattie Morahan

Written by Maggie O'Farrell

Abridged and produced by Kirsteen Cameron.

We want to hear your experiences of the 'drip drip' effect of gender-stereotyping when it comes to bringing up boys or girls. Girls being assigned princessy clothes, and toys that mimic pampering or homemaking, and boys being encouraged to be active, with construction sets and superheroes. Does it matter? What impact does it have on the way children see themselves and on how they grow up?

Jane is joined by parents Ros Ball and James Millar who spent two years documenting the ways that their daughter and son were treated differently, sharing their experience in The Gender Agenda, a collection of examples of gendering they came across.

Lines open on Monday at eight o'clock. Call 03700 100 444.

Presenter: Jane Garvey
Producer: Anne Peacock.

by Gregory Evans

Megan Evans is looking to expand her dairy business but dark forces are beginning to gather and her life is further complicated by the unexpected arrival of her troubled sister.

Directed by Marc Beeby

In 1900 over half London's milk came from Welsh dairies. One of those dairies, on the Commercial Road, was owned and run by the writer's family.

17-year-old Maya is struggling with anorexia. Her life at home is volatile and her A levels are looming. It will mean the world to her if she can do well in these exams, but she can't concentrate to revise.

Anorexia has been explosive within the family and Maya captures, with a raw honesty, the agonising rows they have. Combining extremely candid audio diaries with behind-the-scenes confrontation, Maya gives us an extraordinary insight into the life of a family living with an eating disorder. No one shies away from explaining the deceptive, manipulative and painful nature of this illness.

Maya was a loving, fun and happy teenager, surrounded by friends and with a world of opportunity ahead of her. But at 16 her life changed and when admitted to hospital, she was so unwell, she was told she was lucky to be alive.

Now doing well in the A levels this summer has become crucial, "The exams are the key to going to university, proving to myself that I can beat this illness. I just get so scared because, if I fail the exams how am I going to get better, how am I going to succeed in life?"

She needs to get to AAB to read Zoology at Bristol University, but the disease is all consuming: "I think it's more than just starving yourself of food, it's starving yourself of everything because everything becomes about using as much energy as possible. So I starve myself of friends, I starve myself of family, I starve myself of education because I can't dedicate any time to sit down and work because the thought of sitting down and not constantly moving and constantly using energy is too stressful."

With 6 weeks to go, will Maya be well enough to sit the exams and get the grades she needs?

Narrated by Grace Dent and produced by Sarah Bowen.

Journalist and comedy writer David Quantick has met and interviewed hundreds of people. What were his first impressions, how have they changed and does it all matter?

In this final programme of the series, there are stories about Grace Jones, N F Simpson and his friends Andy and Fiona, among others.

Producer: Steve Doherty
A Giddy Goat production for BBC Radio 4.

The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.

On this day in 1917, British naval forces brought a zeppelin down off the coast of Jutland, while near Folkestone Dr Pilchard scours the shoreline.

Written by Mike Walker
Directed by Ciaran Bermingham
Editor: Jessica Dromgoole.

News and discussion of consumer affairs.

The latest weather forecast.

Analysis of news and current affairs.

Martin Rowson is a political cartoonist, author and renowned cynic, who sees his work as "visual journalism". His pen has made mincemeat of politics and politicians for many years. Through this series of ink-splattered interviews, he now has the chance to sit down to draw and question the people who have shaped his work and wider life.

First up: ex-chancellor George Osborne, who Martin has lampooned mercilessly for the past decade. But did his pictures ever land any punches? And, did Osborne ever care?

In this five part series, Martin also puts pen to paper with political journalist Julia Langdon, illustrator Ralph Steadman, zoologist Sarah Christie and punk poet John Cooper Clarke.

Photographer: Sam Finney.
Producer: Becky Ripley.

By Jennifer Howarth and based on a true story. In the spring of 1945, as the war in Europe was ending, Frank Howarth, a Major in the Royal Artillery and a lawyer in civilian life, was taken out of the frontline of the invading Allied army in Holland and sent with two other soldiers to Flensburg in Northern Germany. Their task was to set up a civilian administration - but what they found there was truly surprising.

Starring Paul Popplewell and Sam Troughton, this is a moving account of an experience both different and unexpected for a Major at the end of the second world war.

Directed by Celia de Wolff
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.

(8/13)
Can you name the spectacular new concert hall in Hamburg, and the British tenor who performed at its inaugural concert? If not, what about the only musician ever to be co-credited on a hit record by the Beatles?

Paul Gambaccini will be trying these out on the Counterpoint competitors in today's heat, along with many other questions drawn from every musical genre. There'll be no shortage of musical extracts, some of which will jog your memory, and others you'll be hearing for the first time. The competitors will also each have to specialise in a musical topic which they've had no chance to prepare.

The winner will take another of the places in the semi-finals which begin soon.

Producer: Paul Bajoria.

Fiona Lindsay and a panel of play-makers join in the table talk with the actors and director as they begin work bringing the York Mystery Plays from page to stage.

Fiona has spent much of her career working at the RSC with actors, writers and directors as they gather round the table to begin work getting a classic text to its feet and looking for new insights and connections in classic texts for contemporary audiences.

Though they have been performed regularly since the 1300s, it's only the second time in their near-700 year history that the York Mystery Plays have been staged in the Minster itself. It's an epic production, with many hundreds involved, including a large community cast of non-professional actors, joining the professional lead actor, Phillip McGinley playing Jesus Christ.

Joining Fiona Lindsay as they focus their work on the staging of The Crucifixion are the writer and adaptor Mike Poulton, who recently wrote the acclaimed stage version of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies for the RSC, actor Philip McGinley whose credits include Game of Thrones and seasons at the National Theatre, and Director Phillip Breen. They read the text out loud for each other and try out exercises to try and find surprising new insights into the greatest story ever told.

In what new ways can this play compel a modern audience?

A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4.

Is the sermon dead? In a digital age when the ten second soundbite is the favoured means of communication, it is too much to expect people to sit through a ten or twenty minute talk with no means of interaction?
Joining me to discuss The Sermon are the Rev Dr Joe Aldred, Bishop in the Church of God of Prophecy: Reform Rabbi Barbara Borts,Newcastle; and Dr Bex Lewis, Senior Lecturer in Digital Marketing at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Producer. Rosie Dawson.

Carolyn Quinn with interviews, context and analysis.

The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.

Nicholas Parsons challenges Paul Merton, Josie Lawrence, Fred Macaulay and James Acaster in a special edition of the popular panel show - recorded at the Edinburgh Festival.

Hayley Sterling blows the whistle.
Produced by Victoria Lloyd.
A BBC Studios Production.

Shula spots and opportunity, and Anisha has made up her mind.

Arts news, interviews and reviews.

It's a state that most of the world says doesn't exist. But remote Abkhazia, on the far north-east shore of the Black Sea, has had the trappings of independence for a generation, since it broke away from Georgia in a short but brutal war. Foreign reporters rarely visit Abkhazia - but Tim Whewell gets there by horse-drawn wagon, as it's hard to cross the frontier by car. He finds a stunningly beautiful country still recovering physically and psychologically from the war, that's determined to preserve its independence and ancient culture - including a pagan religion built around animal sacrifices. But the price of statehood is deep isolation - and a future for many young people without opportunities. How long can this "frozen conflict" - and others around the Black Sea - continue?

Producer, Monica Whitlock.

In the last series of University Challenge, Eric Monkman and Bobby Seagull became social media celebrities as entertaining captains of rival teams. They're also close friends. Both are curious about many subjects, but feel intense pressure to specialize. In this programme they ask whether it's possible to be a useful polymath. Along the way, they meet fellow polymath, Stephen Fry, and find out who was The Last Man Who Knew Everything.

Brett Westwood meets an octopus: perhaps the closest thing to an alien life form on earth. Three hearts, copper blood, autonomous arms, a parrot's beak - and a formidable intelligence to match. The sea monster of historical myth is now emerging as an animal worthy of respect and understanding.
Contributors: (in tentacle only) Luna, Giant Pacific Octopus; Rachel Farquar, Aquarist at Bristol Aquarium; Russell Arnott, educational presenter and consultant for Incredible Oceans; Sy Montgomery, author of The Soul of an Octopus and Peter Godfrey-Smith, philosopher and author of Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life. The reader is Jack Klaff.
Producer Beth O'Dea
Photo of Luna the Giant Pacific Octopus courtesy of Bristol Aquarium.

In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.

Frances Tomelty reads the new novel by Bernard MacLaverty, his first in sixteen years.

A retired Northern Irish couple, Stella and Gerry, are in Amsterdam for a long weekend. Although their relationship appears safe, easy, familiar it's increasingly clear that their growing differences may be too much for their forty-year marriage to withstand. Gerry, once an architect, is a heavy drinker who is set in his ways. Stella, a retired teacher, is tired of his lifestyle and angry at his constant undermining of her religious faith.

As the tension grows between them, Stella becomes increasingly distant, while Gerry wrestles with long-buried memories of a distressing experience from early in their marriage.

Reader: Frances Tomelty

Writer: Bernard MacLaverty

Abridger: Kirsteen Cameron

Producer: Kirsteen Cameron.

In this month's episode - The Kids Are Alright - Daljit talks to young poets just starting out and to poets writing about parenting, youth and the gap between the generations. He finds poems about parents letting go and about boys becoming men. About taking advice from your gran, and dating now and then.

At the Edinburgh International Book Festival, he meets Michael Pedersen, Jenny Lindsay, Omar Musa and Luka Lesson, the performers behind a new spoken word collaboration between Scottish and Australian poets. He finds out about a new inter-generational poetry translation project called Mother Tongues, set up by British-Ghanaian poet Victoria Adukwei Bulley. He talks with two young poets whose work has been nurtured by The Poetry Society - SLAMBassadors UK 2016 Champion Tasnima Ahmed and Cia Mangat, one of the commended poets in the Foyle Young Poets competition. And shares new work from Sinead Morrissey and Lisa Luxx.

Blast is a new alternative poetry series for Radio 4, presented by Radio 4's poet-in-residence Daljit Nagra, recorded at festivals and events around the UK and on location with the best new poets and spoken word artists. Previous episodes have featured PJ Harvey, Don Paterson, Kayo Chingonyi, Patricia Lockwood, Raymond Antrobus, Wayne Holloway-Smith, Miriam Nash and Zeina Hashem Beck.

Produced by Mair Bosworth and Hana Walker-Brown.

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 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 Canon Edwin Counsell, Rector of Llantwit Major.

The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.

Lily Burton is the youngest birder ever to present Tweet of the Day and she chooses to share her sad story of a mute swan she saw on the water beside her houseboat in Rotherham.

Producer: Tom Bonnett
Picture: Gareth Hardwick.

News and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.

Fi Glover hosts guests in The Listening Project Booth, parked in the flourishing former Fruit Market, to celebrate UK City of Culture 2017. Guests include the 'Face of Hull 2017', Kofi Smiles, Ali Hubbard of Thieving Harry's cafe, and Dr Alec Gill MBE, chronicler of Hull's fishing industry.

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.

How should we best use our time? Bettany Hughes visits a centre of industry, a 98 year old philosopher and a theoretical physicist to find out.

With John Clayson Keeper of Science and Industry at Newcastle's Discovery Museum, Professor for the Public Understanding of Philosophy Angie Hobbs, 98 year old moral philosopher Mary Midgley, and theoretical physicist and author Seven Brief Lessons on Physics Carlo Rovelli.

Producer: Dixi Stewart.

Maggie O'Farrell's startling memoir, in which the bestselling author recounts her life through a series of near-death experiences.

The book started out as a private project, a way for O'Farrell to help her young daughter who suffers from a serious immunology disorder, including severe eczema and allergies that can cause anaphylactic shock: "I've asked myself, when she has been very ill, how do you carry on when death is a daily possibility?"

In this episode, O'Farrell recalls the moment at which, aged eight, she woke up to find the world 'looked completely different': she'd contracted encephalitis, an illness that continues to have an impact upon her life.

Reader: Hattie Morahan

Writer: Maggie O'Farrell

Abridger: Kirsteen Cameron

Producer: Kirsteen Cameron.

Programme that offers a female perspective on the world.

by Gregory Evans

Megan's troubled sister, Beth, has arrived unexpectedly in London - but her life is about to get more complicated when she hears news of a considerably less welcome visitor.

Directed by Marc Beeby.

We have been catching and eating them for centuries; jellied, smoked or stewed and yet there is still much we don't know about the life of an eel as Brett Westwood discovers when he joins a traditional eel fisherman on the banks of a river in Dorset and learns about bobs and worms. Eel skins were once worn as wedding rings and their heads used as finger puppets in Ely, otherwise known as the Isle of Eels which today holds an annual festival to celebrate all things 'eel' from a giant eel paraded through the streets to the World Eel throwing competition! Producer Sarah Blunt.

Roger Law .. the artist. The name might just ring a bell as one of the two people responsible for a rather infamous satirical TV puppet show that was broadcast in the 1980s. But there's a lot more to this creator than that, and he's gone on record to say he hates puppets anyway. Since the show ended Roger's been very busy.

After a lengthy stint in Australia feverishly drawing the strange and the wonderful creatures he encountered on land or in the sea, he has returned to his roots in East Anglia for a different creative endeavour. But he's not staying put, as this new creative challenge involves making some of the biggest ceramic pots in the world, and the only place with kilns that can cope is thousands of miles away in a provincial city in China. Join him on his quest for porcelain perfection.

Presenter Andrew Graham-Dixon

Producer Mark Rickards.

The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.

On this day in 1917, eleven were killed in a daylight air raid on Dover, where Isabel is due to attend a funeral.

Written by Mike Walker
Directed by Ciaran Bermingham
Editor: Jessica Dromgoole.

Consumer phone-in.

The latest weather forecast.

Analysis of news and current affairs.

Political cartoonist and renowned cynic Martin Rowson sits down to draw and interview veteran journalist Julia Langdon, whom he worked with in his early days on newspapers.

This is the second sketch in a five part series, where Martin draws and interviews people who have shaped his work and wider life. He also puts pen to paper with ex-Chancellor George Osborne, illustrator Ralph Steadman, zoologist Sarah Christie and punk poet John Cooper Clarke.

Photographer: Sam Finney.
Producer: Becky Ripley.

Deborah Bowman, Professor of Medical Ethics & Law at St George's University of London, explores the remarkable stories behind some of the world's most discussed legal cases, and how they've have transformed medical practice for us all.

The case of 'Re C' changed the way we make decisions about our medical treatment forever. Those who were involved in the ground-breaking hearing, in 1993, remember the events vividly and with great affection. But it's unknown to the general public, because of the strange way the case came about ... and because of the extraordinary character at its heart.

Closely based on interviews with those who were there, Philip Palmer's eye-witness drama reveals the story of Mr C.

And after the three o'clock news, you can join the real-life participants as they discuss the case and its consequences, in "Test Case: The Legacy of Mr C".

Produced and Directed by Jonquil Panting.

Deborah Bowman, Professor of Medical Ethics & Law at St George's University of London, explores the remarkable stories behind some of the world's most discussed legal cases and examines how they've transformed practice for us all.

The case of 'Re C' has had a huge influence on medical practice. Yet few people know about it or the extraordinary character at its heart, whose story is revealed in our eye-witness drama "Test Case: Mr C".

But what became of Mr C, and why, decades on, does his case continue to be so widely discussed? As Mr C's fate is revealed in the High Court's decision, Deborah Bowman is joined by a panel of experts, two of whom were directly involved in Mr C's remarkable story.

They share their personal memories of Mr C, with great affection, and discuss why his legal case continues to have such far-reaching consequences for us all, shaping the way we make decisions about our medical treatment.

You can also follow the heart-breaking dilemma of "Test Case: Bournewood", and explore the impact the case had for us all, in "Test Case: The Legacy of Bournewood", on BBC iPlayer.

Produced by Beth Eastwood.

Josie Long hears stories of duets, the perfect conversational dance and gatecrashing honeymoons.

The poet John Osborne delves into late night radio phone in conversations, the artist Duncan Speakman invites the listener to engage in a duet and Phil Smith intrudes on a romantic moment.

Series Producer: Eleanor McDowall
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4.

Close friends and closet raconteurs, Christopher Matthew and Martin Jarvis take to the streets to share their memories of what life in the 1960s as they first entered the world of work in the Sixties - Martin in the theatre, Christopher in advertising.

As a distinguished past member of the National Youth Theatre and a prize winning graduate from RADA, Martin's career began at the Library Theatre, Manchester, where, among other triumphs, he and Patrick Stewart starred in a play called The Princess and the Swineherd. Martin got the biggest laugh of the evening by entering with a large cucumber in one hand and crying, 'Look, father, twelve inches long and not a kink in it!'

Meanwhile Christopher was making a smaller, but no less determined, name for himself as a junior copywriter in various London advertising agencies where he achieved distinction with his slogan for the Cheese Bureau - "Cheese Tastes Quite Nice Sometimes".

Producer: Paul Kobrak.

In 1968 Norman Lewis wrote an article called Genocide in Brazil. The photographs that accompanied it were by Don McCullin.
Lewis later said that this one piece of journalism was the great achievement of his life. It led directly to the creation of Survival International and a change in the law relating to the treatment of indigenous people in Brazil.
Lewis is known as a brilliant writer - one of our best, said Graham Greene, 'not of any particular decade of our century'. He's best remembered for A Dragon Apparent and Naples '44.
Don McCullin didn't travel with Norman Lewis to Brazil, but they struck up an unexpected friendship. He was like my father, the great photographer says. And in Norman Lewis's later years they worked together in Venezuela, Papua New Guinea and elsewhere. But McCullin didn't read many of his books. "I struggled through Naples '44" he admits. Yet his admiration for the way Lewis opened his eyes to the world remains undimmed.
Recorded on location at McCullin's Somerset farmhouse with Norman Lewis's biographer Julian Evans.
Matthew Parris presents.

The producer in Bristol is Miles Warde.

Carolyn Quinn with interviews, context and analysis.

The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.

An intruder, an ice-cream van and Daniel Barenboim make life difficult for Snoo and Alice as Simon constructs a deadly cornflakes-based trap.

Meet Alice, a former child prodigy who won a place at Oxford aged 9 but, because Daddy went too, she never needed to have any friends. She's scared of everything - everything that is, except libraries and Snoo, a slightly confused individual, with a have-a-go attitude to life, marriage, haircuts and reality. Snoo loves books, and fully intends to read one one day.

And forever popping into the library is Dr. Cadogan, celebrity doctor to the stars and a man with his finger in every pie. Charming, indiscreet and quite possibly wanted by Interpol, if you want a discrete nip and tuck and then photos of it accidentally left on the photocopier, Dr Cadogan is your man.

Their happy life is interrupted by the arrival of Simon Nielson, a man with a mission, a mission to close down inefficient libraries. Fortunately, he hates his mission. What he really wants to do is once, just once, get even with his inexhaustible supply of high-achieving brothers.

Written by Morwenna Banks and Rebecca Front
Based on an idea developed with Armando Iannucci

Produced by David Tyler
A Pozzitive production for BBC Radio 4.

Lynda makes herself indispensable, and Clarrie receives a gift.

Arts news, interviews and reviews.

Suicide is the number one killer of men under-50 in England and Wales. A 'zero suicide' approach to prevention first devised in Detroit is now changing attitudes to care in the UK. Merseyside is leading the way. Radio 4 gains exclusive access to a healthcare authority being transformed from the inside-out in a bid to treat suicide as a preventable condition and to bring lives lost down to 0% by 2020.

News, views and information for people who are blind or partially sighted.

Dr Margaret McCartney investigates the controversy of medicine's search for traces of disease in people who would otherwise never know about them, or suffer any ill effects.

There's growing world-wide concern about the extent to which screening programmes and advanced diagnostic tools are finding signs of serious diseases, particularly cancer, in people who are outwardly healthy. For example, in South Korea, a mass screening programme for thyroid cancer has detected 15 times more cases than before it started - yet there's been no improvement in death rates from the disease.

The fundamental problem is that the harder doctors look for disease in people who are apparently well, the more they will find. Yet most of it will never matter to those people.

As a result, there is a movement towards Slow Medicine - echoing Italy's Slow Food campaign - that puts more emphasis on shared decision-making between doctor and patient, not always prescribing every possible test and treatment, and keeping people "in the kingdom of the well" as long as possible, rather than moving them prematurely into "the kingdom of the sick".

Presented by Dr Margaret McCarney
Produced by Mike Hally
A Square Dog Radio production for BBC Radio 4.

In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.

Frances Tomelty reads the new novel by Bernard MacLaverty, his first in sixteen years.

A retired Northern Irish couple, Stella and Gerry, are in Amsterdam for a long weekend. Although their relationship appears safe, easy, familiar it's increasingly clear that their growing differences may be too much for their forty-year marriage to withstand. Gerry, once an architect, is a heavy drinker who is set in his ways. Stella, a retired teacher, is tired of his lifestyle and angry at his constant undermining of her religious faith.

As the tension grows between them, Stella becomes increasingly distant, while Gerry wrestles with long-buried memories of a distressing experience from early in their marriage.

Reader: Frances Tomelty

Writer: Bernard MacLaverty

Abridger: Kirsteen Cameron

Producer: Kirsteen Cameron.

An Old Army colonel and his one time batman reunite after many years at the scene of their greatest glories on the Italian front in World War Two. Many secrets are revealed and a new friendship is forged as they conspire to win back what they perceive as rightfully belonging to their old regiment.

Stanley Baxter was born in 1926 and began working for the BBC Scottish Home Service Radio Children's Hour when he was fourteen - in 1940. He was called up to do National Service at the age of eighteen and returned to perform on BBC Radio in Scotland in 1948 - continuing to do so in the 1950s with a variety of live comedy shows. He then went into films and ultimately into television - but he has continued to work in radio throughout his career.

In the week of his 88th Birthday and in the year of his 75th anniversary as a radio performer, we recorded the latest productions in the much loved, long running Radio 4 series The Stanley Baxter Playhouse.

Written by Michael Chaplin
Directed by Marilyn Imrie
A Catherine Bailey production for BBC Radio 4.

Philip Ball tells the tale of Robert Grosseteste and his medieval Big Bang Theory. This is the story of how a 13th Century Bishop, obsessed with rainbows, colour and light streaming through Cathedral windows, describes the birth of the cosmos in his treatise 'On Light'. It's a tale of daring invention and imagination, of how an early faith in scientific and mathematical principles, coupled to a belief in a universe ordered by God, gave rise to an uncannily prescient idea. It was nothing less than a medieval Big Bang.

Producer: Erika Wright.

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 Canon Edwin Counsell, Rector of Llantwit Major.

The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.

Two-time Olympic Gold medalist Alex Gregory reflects on the birds he sees such as the kingfisher and heron while out on early morning training for this Tweet of the Day.

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: Mark Ward
Photograph: Anna Bilska.

Morning news and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.

With the coming of the World Wide Web in the 1990s internet access opened up to everybody, it was no longer the preserve of academics and computer hobbyists.
Already prior to the web, the burgeoning internet user groups and chatrooms had tested what was acceptable behaviour online, but access was still limited.

Aleks Krotoski asks whether the Web through enabling much wider use of the internet is the villain of the piece in facilitating not just entertainment and commerce, but all aspects of the darker side, from malicious computer hacking attacks, worms and viruses, to new channels for criminality, online extortion and identity theft.

Ivan Hewett examines a chord from Mahler's 10th Symphony to test the idea that harmony is a reflection of history. He's joined by composer David Matthews and psychoanalyst Anthony Cantle.

Music is never created in isolation - it's conceived in relation to what's going on around a composer in terms of personal and historical events, new technologies, new ideas and artistic endeavours in other fields. In this series, Ivan Hewett is looking at five very different chords which amply demonstrate the concept that harmony is a reflection of history.

Each programme is a bite size portion of rich musical and historical investigation - and each chord has had far reaching influence on other music and is emblematic of its era.

In 1910, the first movement of Mahler's 10th Symphony finally lands on a chord of terrifying dissonance, as he surveyed the wreckage of his personal life. Mahler had discovered his wife was having an affair with the architect Walter Gropius - a discovery which left him distraught. He was in the middle of composing his 10th Symphony and suddenly this cry of anguish appears seemingly out of nowhere in the music. Mahler made a famous visit to see Freud which resulted in a 6 hour walk during which they discussed all of these matters in the context of the newly "discovered" unconscious.

The chord in question can't be found anywhere in else music. Perhaps it's just too much to bear. However, what follows this chord is music which suggests resolution, acceptance and great peace.

Ivan Hewett is a writer on music for the Daily Telegraph, broadcaster on BBC Radio 3, and teacher at the Royal College of Music.

Producer: Rosie Boulton
A Monty Funk production for BBC Radio 4.

Hattie Morahan reads Maggie O'Farrell's startling memoir, in which the bestselling author recounts her life through a series of near-death experiences.

The book started out as a private project, a way for O'Farrell to help her young daughter who suffers from a serious immunology disorder, including severe eczema and allergies that can cause anaphylactic shock: "I've asked myself, when she has been very ill, how do you carry on when death is a daily possibility?"

In this episode, O'Farrell remembers the difficult birth of her first son and the impact that a stranger's compassionate gesture had on her while doctors worked hard to save her life in the operating theatre.

Reader: Hattie Morahan

Writer: Maggie O'Farrell

Abridger: Kirsteen Cameron

Producer: Kirsteen Cameron.

Programme that offers a female perspective on the world.

by Gregory Evans

Beth has disappeared and Megan is frantic. But with Moses Lipski involved, Beth's disappearance is more threatening than Meg can imagine.

Directed by Marc Beeby.

Friends who lecture in media and film debate the thrill and the morality lessons of the horror film. Fi Glover presents another conversation in the series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.

Producer: Marya Burgess.

A third and final series of the sitcom about three women who meet during cancer treatment and start going to salsa class together to maintain their friendship. As they adjust to life after cancer they realise that they've all changed.

The series is not about cancer, but about life after cancer, how you cope the changes in your outlook, your desires and your expectations. It's also about how other people cope with the change in you.

In this final series there's a funeral and a wedding. But whose funeral and who is marrying who?

Day of the Living Dead

Written by Kay Stonham.

Produced by Katie Tyrrell.

It is a BBC Studio Production.

The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.

On this day in 1917, it was reported that playwright and former hospital orderly HH Davies had gone missing, while in Folkestone, Kitty seeks to retrieve what she has lost.

Written by Mike Walker
Directed by Ciaran Bermingham
Editor: Jessica Dromgoole.

Consumer affairs programme.

The latest weather forecast.

Analysis of news and current affairs.

Political cartoonist and renowned cynic Martin Rowson sits down to draw and interview his ink-flecked hero: illustrator and Gonzo journalist Ralph Steadman.

This is the third sketch in a five part series, where Martin draws and interviews people who have shaped his work and wider life. He also puts pen to paper with ex-Chancellor George Osborne, journalist Julia Langdon, zoologist Sarah Christie and punk poet John Cooper Clarke.

Photographer: Sam Finney.
Producer: Becky Ripley.

by Roy Williams

1/3 The Story of Marc. DS Max Mathews returns from bereavement leave to rejoin DC Sean Armitage doing what they do best. An ex-colleague, Marc, is suspected of domestic violence, but while Sean is maybe too close to the case, Max has an uncanny insight into the crime.

Music by David Pickvance
Directed by Jessica Dromgoole

This is another chance to hear the second series of Roy Williams' hard hitting dramas of modern crime. Critical acclaim for the first series included this, in the Spectator...

He writes about the stuff you'd rather not know, prefer not to think about, pretend to ignore. But it lives on with you in the mind. It won't let you go. By his words, the sharp, brittle, spot-on dialogue, he forces you to recognise the limitations of your experience, your understanding. It's not the story outline that matters, but the characterisation, the way the people speak, the language they use. Each of the characters is so clearly differentiated you know exactly what they look like without a detail being given to us. Through the conversation, the interaction, we gather in the back story, we get the gist. There are no easy answers. It's life, messy life, the life we'd rather not think about as we listen to the radio, doing the ironing, making marmalade, cocooned mostly from the nasty, brutish world dealt with by others on our behalf.

Kate Chisholm.

Professor of Neuroimaging at Oxford University, Irene Tracey investigates the ways that the brain can control pain.
How can young children be taught how to deal with pain in their karate class and why do some marathon runners not feel their blisters until the race is over?
The brain is also influenced by beliefs and expectations so how can we learn how to harness these mechanisms to help people in chronic pain.

Etiquette expert and author William Hanson was raised to say 'what' over 'pardon', 'sofa' over 'couch' and, of course, 'lavatory' rather than 'toilet'. In other words, he's very much U rather than Non-U.

These terms first came to light in 1954 when linguist Professor Alan Ross declared that U referred to the language of the upper class and Non-U referred to the language of the non-upper class. First published in an obscure philological journal in Finland, Ross' terms may well have remained tucked away if they hadn't been picked up by author and socialite Nancy Mitford, who included them in a collection of essays she published two years later.

More than 60 years on and William Hanson believes that U words have just as much clout as they ever did and is on a mission to update the list for the modern day. Yet, as he reaches out to people from all ends of the social spectrum, he begins to ask himself, does anyone still care?

He starts by quizzing Professor Simon Horobin from the University of Oxford about where U and Non-U came from and whether Nancy Mitford herself took the list of words quite as seriously as William does.

Speaking to Lord Fermoy, cousin to the late Diana, Princess of Wales, William then finds camaraderie in someone who also squirms at the use of 'toilet'. Yet his resolute stance is called into question by Kate Reardon, Editor of Tatler, whose own magazine infamously broke the news that 'you can now say the word "toilet"' just last year.

Wondering if U and Non-U's diminishing importance can be credited to a generational change, William seeks the thoughts of students at Manchester Grammar School, as well as those studying at the University of Salford.

Lastly, we join William as he makes a last ditch attempt at rousing the masses to reclaim U and Non-U by presenting his updated list of words to Holly Harley, Senior Editor at Weidenfeld & Nicholson. Is there any worth in a new set of words that help define social class?

An Audio Always production for BBC Radio 4.

Topical programme about the fast-changing media world.