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.
After Andy Warhol's death, Lou Reed and John Cale put aside their old differences to record a tribute to him. When they performed some of the songs at an event in France, the two other members of the Velvet Underground joined them onstage, leading fans to hope for a reunion tour. The projected tour was shortlived, however, with Reed's need for control once again creating tensions with the band. In 1992, as his second marriage was coming to an end, Reed met Laurie Anderson, who would be his partner until the end of his life. Reed went into recovery from his addictions, and began to explore artistic outlets and collaborations outside rock and roll. Over the next two decades he collaborated with many artists and musicians on a wide range of musical and artistic projects. In 2013 he became seriously ill and needed a liver transplant. He emerged from the operation announcing he was a triumph of modern medicine, but his optimism was unfounded. He died, at home in Long Island, in October that year.
Read by Demetri Goritsas
Abridged and produced by Sara Davies.
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The latest shipping forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day, with the Venerable Karen Lund, archdeacon of Manchester.
A massage therapist on why he sexually abused his clients and how his community and family stuck by him after he was caught.
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.
Adrian Goldberg travels around Birmingham meeting with fellow Brummies, all of whom have a special vision for the future of Birmingham's landscape. He begins on a huge piece of blank wasteland in the very heart of the city centre which is waiting to become the home of the Birmingham terminal for HS2. He's joined by Waheed Nazir from Birmingham City Council to consider how the anticipation of HS2 is already changing Birmingham's skyline as well the city's sense of its own future.
Adrian joins the Birmingham Trees for Life team in a park on the far Eastern rim of the city. The team have coordinated the planting of over 70,000 trees in Birmingham over the past 10 years with many groups of children and volunteers.
His next stop is to Britain's first retrofit zero carbon house, just 2 miles out of the city centre in Balsall Heath. Architect John Christophers has a special interest in Sustainable Architecture, and his recently built family home is an inspiring vision of how existing housing stock could be transformed to become carbon neutral homes. When an architectural critic from The Times visited this house he said: "I have seen the future, and it's in Birmingham".
Adrian's next visit is to the Apple Day at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. This is the brain child of HR manager Antony Cobley who has led an initiative to plant orchards and gardens around the hospital grounds for patients and relatives to the hospital.
Sutton Park is one of Europe's largest urban parks and is 9 miles to the north of the city centre. Here Adrian joins a group of Rangers and volunteers on a project to transform a dense wood of holly which hasn't been coppiced for over 200 years, to an open woodland of ancient oaks and newly planted rowan trees.
Presented by Adrian Goldberg
Produced by Rosie Boulton.
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
The latest weather forecast.
News and current affairs. Including Yesterday in Parliament, Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
Extraordinary stories, unusual people and a sideways look at the world.
Alan Dein continues his virtual global journey, calling random people he stumbles across on line.
Through extraordinary stories of tolerance, Alan hears what people endure in their political, religious and love lives.
Bob, a Lebanese computer intern, tells of his struggles as a fervent Islamist, Samira a Brazilian teacher confesses to infidelity and Tariro shares her joy as the tanks roll into Harare.
Producer: Sarah Bowen.
Radio 4's weekly assessment of developments at Westminster.
Reports from writers and journalists around the world. Presented by Kate Adie.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
The Royal Bank of Scotland, Lloyds and Yorkshire Building Society Group have all recently announced plans for branch closures. It comes as the future of ATMs go under scrutiny. Will changes proposed by LINK, the UK's largest cash machine network which includes banks, building societies and independent operators, lead to hundreds of independently-owned machines disappearing? John Howells, Chief Executive of LINK and Ron Delnevo, Director of the ATM Industry Association discuss.
A written statement to Parliament this week confirmed that the government intends to continue to freeze working age benefits for another year from next April. At that same time the state pension and other benefits are set to increase by three percent. Guest Phil Agulnik. Director of Entitledto
Puzzled listeners have been contacting Money Box. They've received a letter from the credit reference agency Equifax warning them that their name, telephone number and date of birth data had been hacked in a cyberattack which targeted the company's US systems in May. They say they're confused because they're not Equifax customers and they'd never knowingly used its services. Guests: Emily Orton, Chief Marketing Office of the cyber security firm Darktrace and Nicola Fulford, Head of Data Protection and Privacy for the technology and digital media law firm Kemp Little.
Reporter Tony Bonsignore has an update on the case of pensioners Naresh and Madhu Shah, the couple who lost nearly £200,000 to a fraudster.
Presenter: Paul Lewis
Producer: Charmaine Cozier
Editor: Andrew Smith.
Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis present the week via topical stand-up and sketches.
This week we break out the commemorative china with Lucy Porter, explore Twitter panic with Kae Kurd and peek through the advent window with Flo and Joan.
Plus an interview with Sunday Times Political Editor Tim Shipman.
Featuring George Fouracres.
Written by the Cast with additional material from Jon Hunter, Laura Major, Alice Gregg and Jenny Laville.
Producer... Adnan Ahmed
A BBC Studios Production.
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The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
Shaun Ley presents political debate and discussion from the Sean Hollywood Arts Centre in Newry, Northern Ireland, with a panel including the Chairman of the House of Commons Culture Media and Sport Select Committee Damian Collins, the Deputy Leader of the DUP Nigel Dodds MP, the Labour MP Kate Hoey, the MLA for South Belfast Mairtin O Muilleoir and the Irish Times columnist Fintan O'Toole.
Listeners have their say on the issues discussed on Any Questions?
Kwame Kwei-Armah's drama tells the story of the tense negotiations around the Lancaster House Conference, and the road to Zimbabwe's Independence.
On 4th March 1980 the Shona majority in Rhodesia was decisive in electing Robert Mugabe to head the first post-independence government as Prime Minister. Six weeks later, on April 18th, Zimbabwe celebrated its first Independence Day.
On the 21st December 1979, following three months of talks, the Lancaster House Agreement finally brought independence to Rhodesia following Ian Smith's Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965.
Margaret Thatcher's government had invited Bishop Muzorewa and Ian Smith, and the leaders of the Patriotic Front, led by Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe to participate in a Constitutional Conference at Lancaster House in London, to be chaired by the foreign secretary, Lord Carrington.
The purpose of the Conference was to discuss and reach agreement on the terms of an Independence Constitution, and to ensure that elections should be supervised under British authority to enable Rhodesia to proceed to legal independence and the parties to settle their differences by political means.
Robert Mugabe .... Lucian Msamati
Edgar Tekere ..... Danny Sapani
Bishop Muzorewa ..... Chuk Iwuji
Lord Carrington ..... Richard Cordery
Robin Renwick ..... Tony Bell
Joshua Nkomo ..... Jude Akuwudike
Ian Smith ..... William Gaminara
Sir Shridath Ramphal ..... Kwame Kwei-Armah
Kenneth Kaunda ..... Ben Onwukwe
Bob Marley ..... Lloyd Thomas
With Sean Baker, David Seddon, Alison Pettit
Directed by Jeremy Mortimer.
Lindsey Chapman witnesses the climax of an eventful year in Hull and looks at what the next steps might be for the 2017 UK City of Culture.
South Africa has the highest number of people living with HIV in the world, we hear from Nozandulela 'Nozi' Samela from the charity mothers2mothers. She tells us how she came to terms with her own HIV status and how through medication and education she managed to prevent passing the virus onto her unborn child.
We discuss the implications of a case of a woman who had cohabited with her partner for sixteen years and won the right to compensation after he died as a result of medical negligence. In the past such damages have only been available to people who are married or civil partners. So how much of an impact will this decision have on the legal recognition of couples who have lived together but not married? We hear from the BBC Home Affairs Correspondent June Kelly and Jo Edwards former chair of Resolution, the national family lawyers' association.
How do gender differences shape women's experience and treatment for addiction? Dr Sally Marlow from Kings College London, Katharine Sacks-Jones Agenda director from the alliance of organisations for women and girls at risk and Ian Hamilton a lecturer in addiction and mental health discuss, and we hear from three women who we are calling Georgia, Sam and Joanne about their experiences with addiction.
Thirteen year old Marcus who was born with a facial cleft and cleft palate and his mum Sam talk about living with a facial disfigurement. A survey by the charity Changing Faces has found that almost half of those surveyed experienced bullying about their appearance at school. We also hear from Elizabeth Noble from Changing Faces.
How do you talk to children about death? We hear from Barbara Want, whose husband Nick Clarke died of cancer in 2006, on how she broke the news to her then four year old twins and from Victoria Milligan whose husband and daughter died in a speedboat accident in 2013 leaving her injured and with three children bereaved.
Charlotte Vincent the choreographer and dancer talks about her new all male production 'Shut Down': it examines notions of masculinity through dance.
And we Cook The Perfect Tortilla with Chorizo with the chef Nieves Barragan Mohacho.
Presented by Jane Garvey
Producer: Rabeka Nurmahomed
Editor:Jane Thurlow.
Full coverage of the day's news. Presented by Luke Jones.
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The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Clive Anderson and Emma Freud are joined by Professor Brian Cox, Barbara Taylor Bradford and Paul Chowdhry for an eclectic mix of conversation, music and comedy. With music from Dan Gillespie Sells and Lail Arad & JF Robitaille.
Producer: Sukey Firth.
Series of profiles of people who are currently making headlines.
A Christmas Carol is London's Old Vic Theatre's Christmas offering this year. It's a new version by Jack Thorne (who wrote Harry Potter and The Cursed Child) directed by Matthew Warchus and starring Rhys Ifans as Ebenezer Scrooge
The Disaster Artist is a tribute to one of the worst films ever - Tommy Wisseau's The Room. If the original was such a stinker, can a film about it be funny about the ineptitude or just cruel?
Elisa Lodato's novel An Unremarkable Body tells the story of a middle-aged daughter coming to terms with the death of her mother.
There's an exhibition of work by Rose Wylie at London's Serpentine Galleries
Crown Court was a daytime TV series which ran for 12 years from 1972. It's being resurrected with Judge Rinder as the gavel-banging star; Judge Judy meets 12 Angry men?
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Patrick Gale, Briony Hanson and John Mullan
The producer is Oliver Jones.
From backstage to front page, from printing press to digital age, criminologist Chris Greer traces the evolution of the scandal machine, revealing how scandals have changed - and how they might be changing us.
He's joined by a cast of scurrilous scandal mongers, investigative journalists and Westminster insiders, each with their own experiences of the inner workings of the scandal machine. Among them, Private Eye editor Ian Hislop, author and former parliamentary insider Michael Dobbs, screenwriter Amanda Coe and writer, broadcaster and former MP, Matthew Parris.
Social media has pushed the scandal machine into overdrive. Each day brings a deluge of fresh allegations against celebrities, politicians and institutions. But what exactly is a scandal and how did we get to this point?
Scandals are, in essence, morality tales. They bring the powerful to their knees, destroy reputations and end careers. Fear of being named and shamed in a front-page scandal is a powerful check on behaviour. But the shape and nature of scandal, and the way it is reported, is changing. Where scandals once mainly focused on the misconduct of individuals, today entire institutions are more commonly in the spotlight.
From Profumo to Weinstein and beyond, Chris Greer uses the archive to create a soundtrack of scandal.
A 7digital production for BBC Radio 4.
by Graham Greene
Dramatised by Nick Warburton.
Directed by Sally Avens
Querry, a celebrated architect of churches, doubting his faith and his lack of humanity has fled to a remote leprosy in Africa. There, he has begun to find a type of contentment. But his whereabouts are leaked to the press and Querry becomes a hunted man with nowhere left to run.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4, followed by weather.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's engagement was announced this week after a frenzy of speculation. We are used to media excitement about the personal lives of young royals, but perhaps this also says something about the value we still place in the institution of marriage. At the same time, the fact that nobody seems to mind that Ms Markle is divorced suggests an acceptance that relationships are more complex than they used to be, and that divorce no longer carries any great social stigma. Beyond the traditions and expectations of the royal family, the reality is that the number of unmarried couples living together in Britain has more than doubled in the last two decades, from 1.5 million in 1996 to 3.3 million in 2017. In that time, some may lament the fact that fewer people are getting married, but it is also the case that fewer people are getting divorced. It's seldom easy to end a marriage, and there is now a campaign to ease the pain by introducing quicker and simpler 'no-fault' settlements. Such a move received the backing this week of Britain's most senior judge Baroness Hale, who also believes co-habiting couples should have greater legal protection when their relationships break down. Her supporters say long-drawn-out divorces are more likely to have harmful consequences for children, while improving the legal status to non-married couples is a necessary step towards a fairer society. Her opponents say these measures would weaken the institution of marriage, which they see as an important public declaration by two people (whether of the same or opposite sex) promoting stable relationships, commitment and self-sacrifice. Is marriage still a moral cornerstone of society? Should it continue to have a special legal status and be incentivised with tax breaks? Or is the traditional ideal of the nuclear family, bound together by marriage, both patronising and outdated?
Producer: Dan Tierney.
(3/12)
How might a learning experience for military personnel leave you with the leftovers, and why are they the same only different?
For the third contest of Round Britain Quiz's 70th anniversary season, Northern Ireland take on the South of England. Making their debut for Northern Ireland are the new partnership of the journalist Freya McClements and the writer and film-maker Paddy Duffy. They face the formidable South of England pairing of the writer Marcus Berkmann and the comedian Paul Sinha.
Tom Sutcliffe is in the chair to provide the occasional helpful nudge and to steer the panel out of some of their more fanciful blind alleys, as they wrestle to unpack the cryptic questions in the limited time available. As always, the programme includes several questions suggested by RBQ listeners.
Producer: Paul Bajoria.
When the poet Frank Ormsby was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease, his response was unexpected. He embarked on a newly fertile creative period, documenting his experiences and finding a voice in his poetry that he was beginning to lose in his daily communications.
His first act was to search Google - for jokes. "Which would you rather have, Parkinson's or Alzheimer's. Obviously Parkinson's! I'd rather spill half my pint than forget where I left it."
As he discusses with Marie-Louise Muir, the illness has changed him. It's mellowed him. After a career as a school teacher, his daily life is now quieter and more solitary. There's a poetry, almost, in his pauses and silences.
Frank belongs to the generation of Northern Irish writers that has followed in the footsteps of Seamus Heaney and Michael Longley, His medication, he believes, has aided his creativity. But it has also induced hallucinations. He finds himself sitting on his own in his study but surrounded by people, by the ghosts of his mother-in-law and unidentified visitors. And he's also haunted by a fear that the earth will open up and swallow him.
But if you ask how he's doing, he writes,
"I'll tell you the one
about 'parking zones disease'.
I'll assure you that the pills seem to be working".
Photo credit: Malachi O'Doherty
With readings by Frank himself and Ciaran McMenamin from The Darkness of Snow.
Produced by Alan Hall
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
An original short story commissioned by BBC Radio 4 from the acclaimed Irish novelist Joseph O'Connor. As read by David Wilmot (Ripper Street, Black Sails, The Guard.)
Joseph O'Connor was born in Dublin. He is the author of eight novels as well as two collections of short stories and a number of bestselling works of non-fiction. He has received numerous awards including the Irish PEN Award for Outstanding Contribution to Irish Literature.
Writer ..... Joseph O'Connor
Reader ..... David Wilmot
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 Great St. Mary's Church in Cambridge.
The tower holds a peal of 12 Bells cast in 2009 with the Tenor - weighing just over 24 hundredweight - tuned to the key of D.
We hear now the Ely Diocesan Team ringing 'Yorkshire Surprise Royal'. This was the test piece in June for The Ridgman Trophy - a 10 Bell Striking Competition which is held annually in East Anglia.
The Ely Diocesan Team successfully defended their title for the 3rd year in a row.
The latest national and international news.
Journalist Abdul-Rehman Malik explores the nature and purpose of true friendship through the insights of writers from varied faith traditions.
He examines what the Scottish theologian Hugh Black calls the "limits of friendship", the idea that there is in each one of us a private world that no-one can inhabit. CS Lewis describes a very English type of friendship, reserved yet revealing - we can survive without it, Lewis writes, but life is so much better with it.
Running through the programme is a story by the 13th century Persian poet Farid ud-Din Attar about Shaykh Sanan, whose infatuation with a Christian girl has an enormous impact on his friends and disciples. There is poetry from Rabindranath Tagore and a story from the Quran that explains why we are especially drawn to some people and not others.
The music included in the programme, from artists as diverse as Eric Clapton and Georges Bizet, illustrates how friendship can survive despite turbulent times.
Presenter: Abdul-Rehman Malik
Producer: Jonathan Mayo
A TBI Media production for BBC Radio 4.
Pioneering craft cheesemaker, Mary Quicke has seen the business through countless peaks and troughs. What, though, is the future of the British cheese business post-Brexit? Sarah Swadling meets her on her Devon farm.
The latest weather forecast.
The latest news headlines. Including a look at the papers.
Sunday morning religious news and current affairs programme.
The Rev Dr Sam Wells makes the Radio 4 Christmas Appeal for the work of St Martin-in-the-Fields with homeless people.
Reg Charity: 1156305 / 261359
To Give:
- Freephone 0800 082 82 84
- Freepost St Martin's Appeal
- Cheques should be made payable to 'St Martin-in-the-Fields Christmas Appeal.'
The BBC Radio 4 Christmas Appeal with St Martin-in-the-Fields is now in its 91st year. The money raised from this annual appeal supports work with homeless and vulnerable people across the UK, through the work of The Connection at St Martin's and the Vicar's Relief Fund.
Photo credit: Marksteen Adamson 2017.
The latest weather forecast.
The latest news headlines. Including a look at the papers.
On the First Sunday of Advent, the Rev. Roy Jenkins reflects on finding Hope in the Wilderness. The live service from Albany Road Baptist Church, Cardiff, led by the Rev. Susan Stevenson, includes the hymns Hark the Glad Sound (Bristol); O Come, O Come Immanuel; All My Hope on God is Founded (Michael) and The Truth Sent from Above (R. Vaughan Williams). The Cardiff Ardwyn Singers, under the musical direction of David Michael Leggett, are accompanied by David Geoffrey Thomas. Producer: Karen Walker.
"On my computer", writes Zia Haider Rahman, "I have a folder of exchanges with organisations and corporations, a folder called 'Hope'".
Zia describes the letters he's written to some of Britain's foremost institutions on their lack of diversity.
He says empirical research of cognitive scientists points ever more clearly to the immense difficulty of changing minds.
Producer: Adele Armstrong.
Childrens author and poet Michael Morpurgo discusses the cackling magpie in this Tweet of the Day, a bird that seemingly never dies.
Producer: Tom Bonnett
Photograph: Ken Bentley.
Sunday morning magazine programme with news and conversation about the big stories of the week. Presented by Paddy O'Connell.
Aasmah Mir reports on how the money from last year's Radio 4 Christmas Appeal with St Martin in-the-Fields has been spent on changing the lives of homeless people through the work of The Connection at St Martin's, and how crisis grants from the Vicar's Relief Fund have helped secure housing or have kept vulnerable people in accommodation all around the UK. The appeal is now in its 91st year.
To Give:
- Freephone 0800 082 82 84.
- Send a cheque to FREEPOST St Martin's Christmas Appeal. Cheques should be made payable to St Martin-in-the-Fields Christmas Appeal.
- Or donate online via the Radio 4 website.
Alan does some award-worthy buttering up, and Justin has a big decision to make.
Tim Martin is the chairman and founder of the pub company JD Wetherspoon. He opened his first pub, Martin's Free House, in 1979 in North London. Now the chain employs 37,000 people, in 891 pubs of which 54 are hotels. Travelling from his home in Devon, Tim visits at least ten of them a week taking detailed 'call notes' on the staff, the beer, the quality of the food and even the cutlery.
In 2016 he became one of the most high-profile UK business people arguing in favour in leaving the EU. He printed half a million beer mats for his pubs, making the case for Brexit.
His success in the pub industry might be in the genes. His father, initially an aerobatic pilot, later worked for Guinness, which took the family around the globe and Tim spent his childhood in both New Zealand and Northern Ireland. He trained for the law but instead chose the career of a publican.
Presenter: Kirsty Young
Producer: Cathy Drysdale.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
The nation's favourite wireless entertainment pays a visit to the Winter Gardens in Margate. Old-timers Barry Cryer and Tim Brooke-Taylor are joined on the panel by Tony Hawks and Andy Hamilton with Jack Dee in the chair. Colin Sell provides piano accompaniment. Producer - Jon Naismith. It is a BBC Studios production.
It's that time of year when Sheila Dillon and special guests take a close look at the food, cookery and drink books of 2017.
Joining Sheila are the food writer Bee Wilson, and the Features Editor at the book trade magazine The Bookseller, Tom Tivnan. Expect tales of literature, simplicity, deliciousness... and a deep dive into the idea of 'comfort'.
Presenter: Sheila Dillon
Producer: Rich Ward.
The latest weather forecast.
Global news and analysis.
Peter White and Adam Hills explore the boundaries of humour and who can mock who. Adam sprang to fame with his series The Last Leg, which began life as an accompaniment to the 2012 Paralympics, but has now become a staple of Friday night viewing to round off the week's news.
In No Triumph No Tragedy Peter White, blind since birth, challenges Adam about the ethics of disability humour - its cruelty, its inconsistency - and asks what the rules really are. The two take an irreverent tour of the jokes you can and can't tell and just who can tell them.
Adam reveals how he even took humour to his father's death bed and says that it's the greatest way to cope with all that life throws at you. He grew up in Sydney and his parents were told not to treat him differently from his brother - he grew up thinking there was nothing he couldn't do:
"The problem with the word disabled, he says, is that it has so many negative connotations: "I don't think people who are disabled consider themselves disabled."
His shows are based on audience interaction and he loves the liberation of performing in this way. On stage he feels most closely that he's the person he wants to be: "When I'm performing it's the closest I get to the person I wish I was every day - positive, interested in people, nothing rattles me and in the moment I feel relaxed and happy."
No Triumph No Tragedy is a no holes bared interview with prominent disabled people and later in the series Peter meets up and coming politician Cyrus Habib, dubbed the man to watch by the Washington Post. Cyrus lost his eyesight to cancer when he was eight but has gone on to become America's first blind Lieutenant Governor.
His rise through the political ranks brings with it change to the way that Government runs. He controls who speaks in the Senate, which has now been kitted out so that lawmakers will push a button before jumping in - the list transmitting in braille to Cyrus, who can then call on them to speak in turn. He discusses the impact technology is having on improving the opportunities of disabled people in the workplace.
Eric Robson and the panel are in Lancaster. Bunny Guinness, Anne Swithinbank and Matthew Wilson answer this week's questions.
The experts offer their advice on cutting tall hedges and pruning an encroaching Itea Ilicifolia, and they suggest plants for a very small pond. They also come up with plant ideas for a garden with a shallow top soil and discuss managing a small concrete yard with very little sunlight.
Matt Biggs chats to Lee Connolly - aka the Skinny Jeans Gardener - about ways of getting children hooked on horticulture.
Produced by Hannah Newton
Assistant Producer: Hester Cant
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4.
Fi Glover introduces conversations from Jura and Hull about being comfortable with who you are and where you are 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.
Robert Rigby's dramatisation of Alan Sillitoe's landmark short story set in the late 1950s.
Borstal boy Smith remembers his crimes and plots his future as he runs, training for the national cross-country event. The governor is desperate for the kudos of victory, telling Smith that hard work and athletic success will turn him into an honest man.
At only 17 years-old, Smith is a genuinely angry young man. His life is already a battle between them and us. There are the In-laws, as he terms the law-abiding, property owning majority, and the Out-laws, the substantial minority who have no stake in the system.
First published in 1959, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner is uncompromisingly tough, at times bleakly comic, and always totally unsentimental.
Sound Design: David Chilton
Spot Effects: Alison McKenzie
Production Manager: Sarah Tombling
Director: Carl Prekopp
Producer: Lucinda Mason Brown
A Goldhawk Essential production for BBC Radio 4.
Made up of 13 chapters each told from a different person's point of view, Jennifer Egan's experimental novel A Visit from the Goon Squad interlocks the lives of Bennie Salazar, an aging former punk rocker and record executive, and Sasha, the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. We first meet Sasha in her mid-thirties, on her therapist's couch in New York City, confronting her long-standing compulsion to steal. Bennie's star in the music business, meanwhile, is on the wane.
Although Bennie and Sasha never discover each other's pasts, the reader does, in intimate detail, along with the secret lives of a host of other characters whose paths cross theirs. The stories travel between New York, Naples and Kenya, and span several decades, from the seventies punk scene to the near future; they are in turn hilarious and moving. Jennifer describes the stories as being standalone, and the styles range from a pastiche of celebrity journalism to a PowerPoint presentation. The Pulitzer judges called the book "an inventive investigation of growing up and growing old in the digital age, displaying a big-hearted curiosity about cultural change at warp speed".
Presenter : James Naughtie
Interviewed guest : Jennifer Egan
Producer : Dymphna Flynn
January's Bookclub choice : In Siberia by Colin Thubron (1999).
Paul Farley hears Andrew Motion read excerpts from a new long poem about his parents: Essex Clay. The first part tells the story of his mother's riding accident and slow death.
Producers: Tim Dee and Melvin Rickarby.
With university tuition fees at over £9,000 a year and the ending of maintenance grants, two six formers face one of the biggest questions in their lives. Is it worth paying to go to Uni?
Coming from very different backgrounds, Destiny Clark and Maelo Manning go on an investigative journey during their final school year from UCAS application to A level results as they make up their minds whether to opt for university or follow another path such as an apprenticeship. As they weigh up their options, they visit university fairs and open days, talk to students, parents, teachers, academics and employers, and look at apprenticeship schemes. They pick their way through what one head of sixth form describes as a minefield of choice.
Destiny attends the Forest Academy in Hainault, Essex where she is studying French A level and Media Btec, an A level equivalent. When Destiny first enrolled in Year 7, the school was in special measures but it has since turned itself around. The school, which has an ethnically mixed and diverse intake, has a rapidly increasing sixth form with more and more students going to uni every year. More than half the students are from disadvantaged backgrounds and, for them, thousands of pounds-worth of university debt is a real concern. Assistant principal and head of sixth form Ed Macleod and his team encourage students like Destiny to consider university despite the cost but also to look at some of the higher-level apprenticeships where study and work combine.
Meanwhile Maelo's mother Jane has always been determined that her only child goes to the best possible university and intends to pay all her costs upfront. Maelo has attended a private school St Dunstan's College in South London, since the age of four. She's taking four A levels with predicted As and A stars, and wants to follow a career in law.
Producer: Sara Parker
Executive Producer: Samir Shah
A Juniper production for BBC Radio 4.
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The latest weather forecast.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Gerry Northam chooses his BBC Radio highlights.
Contemporary drama in a rural setting.
by Ed Harris
War time comedy series by Ed Harris. Dot and the gals are tasked with an important mission, to monitor the Russian Ambassador, Comrade Pavlenti Lavovich. But Lavovich seems more interested in singing sensation, Harriet Pertly.
Director/Producer Jessica Mitic.
When a girl disappears in the heart of England how far back do you have to go to find the truth?
Kate O'Flynn continues Jon McGregor's gripping new series. A community is rocked when 13-year-old Becky Shaw goes missing on a holiday to the Peak District. Now her disappearance sparks long-buried memories, and opens old wounds. Today: a local woman remembers seeing Becky on an eventful night out the summer before...
The fifteen stories of The Reservoir Tapes each stand alone but together build a compelling portrait of a village shaken by tragedy, as they explore events that precede and follow the disappearance of the teenage Becky Shaw. A companion to Jon McGregor's critically acclaimed Man Booker long-listed novel Reservoir 13, these stories and their different perspectives offer tantalizing glimpses as what to might have happened to the teenage girl.
Writer: Jon McGregor is an acclaimed British novelist who has been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize three times. His third novel, Even the Dogs, won the International Dublin Literary Award.
Reader: Kate O'Flynn
Producer: Justine Willett.
Roger Bolton with listeners' views on BBC radio programmes.
Earlier this week Prince Harry and Meghan Markle announced their engagement, followed by their first joint interview with the BBC presenter Mishal Husain. But should the presenter have highlighted Ms Markle's mixed race background? We hear your views on the royal engagement coverage.
In a fast-moving situation, how do you discover what is really going on? The BBC's Southern Africa Correspondent Andrew Harding tells us how he reported on recent events in Zimbabwe.
Also Radio 4's recent dramatisation of Graham Greene's novel Stamboul Train included some of the author's original anti-Semitic passages. Radio 4's Commissioning Editor for Drama and Fiction Jeremy Howe tells us why he decided not to edit out some of those remarks.
And Roger goes behind-the-scenes at Radio 4's consumer affairs programme You and Yours, sitting down with presenter Winifred Robinson to hear more about how the programme interacts with its listeners.
Producer: Kate Dixon
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4.
(Photo: Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky)
Matthew Bannister on
The Russian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky, known for playing leading operatic roles - and for his silver hair and matinee idol looks.
Unity Spencer who overcame a dysfunctional upbringing as the daughter of the painter Stanley Spencer to be recognised as an accomplished artist in her own right.
Lewis Golden, the war veteran who set up the successful Everest Double Glazing business.
John Butler - piano tuner to stars like Oscar Peterson, Sammy Davis Junior and Frank Sinatra.
And Joy Lofthouse, one of the last surviving female pilots who delivered Spitfires to their airbases during the war.
If you're the Chancellor of the Exchequer, worrying about where the next financial crisis might come from, what keeps you awake at night?
Jonty Bloom hears about the potential problems which might induce insomnia; including car loans, High Frequency Trading and the threat of Cyber attack.
Producer: Phoebe Keane.
Weekly political discussion and analysis with MPs, experts and commentators.
Francine Stock meets Michael Haneke, award winning director of Funny Games, The White Ribbon, Amour and his latest, Happy End. He tells her why our modern obsession with screens should not replace real life.
Critics Larushka Ivan-Zadeh and Tim Robey present a beginnner's guide to the films of Michael Haneke.
Perfume expert Dariush Alavi presents the latest in his series The Scent Of Cinema with an olfactory analysis of Martin Scorsese's florid costume drama The Age Of Innocence.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
A revolution in feeling: How the Enlightenment forged our understanding of human emotion and the ways in which this relates to the contemporary political world. Laurie Taylor talks to the literary historian, Rachel Hewitt, Russell Foster, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the Department of European and International Studies King's College London and to Karin Wahl-Jorgensen, Director, Research Development and Environment, Cardiff School of Journalism, Cardiff University
Producer: Jayne Egerton.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day, with the Reverend Karen Lund, archdeacon of Manchester.
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
The latest weather forecast for farmers.
Actress Greta Scacchi compares the birds she once knew in Australia with those who now visit her London home, especially the goldfinch which makes her very happy.
Producer: Andrew Dawes
Photograph: Gareth Hardwick.
News and current affairs. Includes Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
Totalitarianism has reclaimed Russia. So journalist Masha Gessen tells Andrew Marr. Her book 'The Future is History' follows four figures born as the Soviet Union crumbled and whose new-found freedom is being slowly eradicated. The Soviet Union banned religion but ranked citizens by "nationality" - with Jews near the bottom and ethnic Russians at the top. Dominic Rubin explores the country's relationship with religion in 'Russia's Muslim Heartlands', while Oxford professor Roy Allison unpicks Russian involvement in the Arab world. Putin is influential as far away as Libya and Egypt, and is a key ally to the Assad regime in Syria. And just as Putin has mastered the art of propaganda at home, Moscow-born Liwaa Yazji looks at the role of propaganda in the Syrian civil war through her new play 'Goats'.
Henry Blofeld reads his autobiography.
Henry became a cricket writer in 1964 and ten years later graduated to the Test Match Special team, where he commentated on cricket for 43 years, announcing his retirement this year.
Episode 1: A Tentative and Rather Shy Bat
Henry's early years at the crease
Writer: Henry Blofeld
Reader: Henry Blofeld
Abridger: Pete Nichols
Producer: Karen Rose
A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4.
Programme that offers a female perspective on the world.
Lucy Catherine's Viking epic of love, revenge and faith inspired by the Icelandic sagas.
Gudrun, a young woman from 11th century Iceland, forges her path through a world of unearthly beauty yet uncompromising harshness. Left to burn by her husband for the part she played in the killing of his best friend, separated from her daughter, cut adrift from her beloved homeland, Gudrun longs for death.
Produced and directed by Gemma Jenkins
Series 2 ended with Gudrun telling her husband, Bolli, that she was the one responsible for starting the blood feud that led to him killing his best friend and brother, Kjartan. Driven berserk by her betrayal, he sets fire to their family home with Gudrun trapped inside and rides off with their daughter.
At the start of series 3, Gudrun, rescued from the flames, hovers between life and death as she's smuggled away from her homeland by rebel Icelander, Felman.
Iceland is now an occupied country, its people forced to convert to Christianity by the ruthless King of Norway, Olaf Trygvasson.
Gudrun's a wanted woman having killed the King's high priest. Felman hopes once she's recovered from her injuries she'll return to Iceland at the head of a rebellion - but does Gudrun still have the stomach for the fight?
Despite the warmongering and bloodshed Gudrun is a story of family and a mother's love. Suspicious of how power and ambition are wielded by men she's left feeling increasingly isolated. She longs for the freedom to live her life according to her own rules.
Gudrun is under the protection of Freija, the Norse Goddess of love and war. Freija's voice cries out for a new kind of leadership. She can sometimes be as slippery a customer as her protégée - is she really on Gudrun's side or does she have an agenda of her own?
The show is inspired by the famous Laxdaela Saga featuring the original Nordic Noir heroine, Guðrún ÓsvÃfursdóttir. There is speculation that the saga was written by a woman.
The epic battle that concludes series 3 is based on historical fact, drawing upon the Battle of Svolder between rival kings, Sweyn and Trygvasson.
Kate Phillips reprises the role of Gudrun. Previous roles include Jane Seymour in Wolf Hall, Linda in Peaky Blinders and Lise in War & Peace, all on BBC1.
And Gudrun returns in June 2018 when she takes to the seas and travels to the heart of the Byzantine Empire.
This is the story of Rani Bilkhu. When she was 11 years old her baby step brother Jaspal died. No-one in her family ever speaks about this and the silence has tormented Rani for decades. She didn't go to the funeral, no one did. In fact no one even knows where Jaspal is buried.
Rani is second generation Panjabi Sikh and says, in her culture, especially in the 1980s, there was a tendency for families to cover up difficult issues and not involve children in bereavement.
Now, as she reaches 50, Rani wants some answers. She wants to find Jaspal's grave not just for herself but for also for her mum and hopes it'll bring them closer together.
The presenter is Grace Dent and the producer is Perminder Khatkar.
Beattie Edmondson and Nikesh Patel star in Sue Teddern's romantic comedy, inspired by Katherine Whitehorn's cookery classic. Spring 1965. Trisha moves into a new bedsitter with the toast-loving Moira. Extracts from Cooking in a Bedsitter are read by Eleanor Bron.
Directed by Emma Harding.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
On this day in 1917, President Wilson, in his State of the Union Address, recommended declaring war on Austria-Hungary, and in Tynemouth, Duncan is battling with his demons.
Written by Caroline Horton
Directed by Ciaran Bermingham
Editor: Jessica Dromgoole.
News and discussion of consumer affairs.
The latest weather forecast.
Analysis of news and current affairs.
Reverend Giles Fraser recently had a heart attack followed by quadruple bypass surgery. His heart has suddenly become very real to him in a way it never was before. This is life and death stuff, and he has been forced to look at changing his ways.
He sets out to find people who can help him understand the workings of this most resonant and symbolic of organs.
How can he find a way to live better with his quite literally broken heart? And how can he understand the human heart in its broader context - negotiating a path from the pump, to the Valentine's Day card emblazoned with the instantly recognisable two-curves-with-a-point-at-the-bottom?
The heart has been demoted in relation to the status of the brain. Death is no longer decided by the stopping of the heart, but by brain death. The heart can be re-plumbed, jump-started, and even transplanted. And yet it retains a mystique and is, for many of us across culture and time, the place where we feel our true self to be located, as well as our emotions and the torch of our romantic passions - a sacred heart for many.
Recent research into the heart is tantalisingly suggestive of the idea that the heart is associated with emotion on a chemical level, and might even be able to transfer memory during transplant. Did the Romantic poets have it right all along?
Episode 1: The Pump.
- Dr. Vassilios Avlonitis, a cardiac surgeon at St. Thomas's Hospital in London, who literally held his patient's heart in his hands in order to save his life.
Producer: Victoria Shepherd
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4.
Presented and narrated by Paul French
Drama written by Nick Perry
In February 2017, a Korean man walked through Kuala Lumpur airport when he was ambushed by two young women who appeared to smear his face with a chemical compound later identified as the nerve agent VX. He died shortly afterwards, when it was revealed that he was the estranged half-brother of the current supreme leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un.
The drama-documentary depicts the frightening and often bizarre sequence of events that led to the death at the airport. Mixing fact with juicy, fantastic rumour we trace the story of how the man once tipped to succeed his father as leader of the world's only communist monarchy, fell from grace (or was he pushed?), and forced to go into exile abroad. Meanwhile, we follow the unexpected rise of his half-brothers, and of how the youngest defied all expectations and outfoxed them all. For at its core, this is a timeless story about power; about three princes, sons of the Kim Jong-il by different mothers, who each had a claim to a very precarious crown.
Paul French presents the drama-documentary. He is the author of the New York Times bestselling book Midnight in Peking; a Goodreads Choice Awards finalist, winner of both an Edgar (US) and Dagger (UK) awards and currently being developed for British television as a drama series.
Nick Perry has written the drama. His first play Arrivederci Millwall won the Samuel Beckett Award. TV credits include Clubland (1991) and Superbomb (2007). For Radio 4, Nick has written many original dramas including The Loop, November Dead List, London Bridge, Referee, as well as adapting The Confidential Agent, The Shootist, He Died With His Eyes Open and Moll Flanders.
Director: Sasha Yevtushenko.
(4/12)
In what endeavour might Piper's companion, a stupid boy and a modern maker of things electric contribute the right notes?
Tom Sutcliffe puts this and other impenetrable-sounding teasers to the teams from Wales and the Midlands, in the latest clash of Round Britain Quiz's 70th anniversary season. Wales, represented by Myfanwy Alexander and David Edwards, are the defending RBQ champions and will be fighting to keep a clean sheet against the redoubtable Midlands pairing of Stephen Maddock and Rosalind Miles.
As always, the programme includes several of the best question ideas sent in by Round Britain Quiz listeners in recent months.
Producer: Paul Bajoria.
Following four distinguished photographers at work on four very different photo shoots, exploring both sides of the story: the process of photographing and of being photographed.
It seems like we're all photographers now, and never have more photographs been taken - events documented, lives snapped, moments frozen. With high quality cameras in most back pockets these days, it's been estimated that a trillion photographs will be taken this year.
What are we doing when we point a camera at something - and why?
In this series we get behind the lens, as we hear about the process and practice of professional photographers. What motivates them? What are they trying to capture? Which shots work best?
And, crucially, what do they think they're doing?
But as well as a programme about the photographer at work, it's also a programme about the photographer's subject - about the people and places being photographed, the world that the photographer is momentarily entering - and what it means to have a camera pointed at you.
Each programme will be accompanied by an on-line gallery of photographs.
We all know that lying in a court of law carries serious penalties so do we really need to place our hands on holy books and affirm our sincerity by swearing an oath? Joining Ernie Rea to discuss whether or not there is any place for God in a modern courtroom are Joshua Rosenberg, legal commentator and presenter of Radio 4's Law in Action; family law barrister Jasvir Singh, Chairman of City Sikhs; and Sarah Donaldson a Manchester based barrister and Quaker.
Producer: Helen Lee.
Eddie Mair with interviews, context and analysis.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
The antidote to panel games pays a return visit to the Winter Gardens in Margate. Old-timers Barry Cryer and Tim Brooke-Taylor are joined on the panel by Tony Hawks and Andy Hamilton with Jack Dee in the chair. Colin Sell attempts piano accompaniment. Producer - Jon Naismith. It is a BBC Studios production.
There is a shock in store for Ian, and Eddie hatches a plan.
Arts news, interviews and reviews.
Nick Rankin examines a detailed document, written in French and discovered in the wartime files of the Iberia Section of S.O.E., the Special Operations Executive. This personal account by Squadron-Leader Hugh Mallory Falconer tells how he established a secret wireless network covering the Western Mediterranean and linking Gibraltar with North African cities including Casablanca, Tangier and Oran. This network not only helped pave the way for Operation TORCH, the Anglo-American invasion of Vichy French North Africa in November 1942, but when the US armed forces went into combat, it was Falconer's radio network that held up when the other Allied communications systems failed. For three days in was the low level radio post housed in a cave in the Rock of Gibraltar that kept the Allied Commander Eisenhower in touch with his ground forces. In an increasingly challenging situation Mallory's network helped ensure this pivotal moment in the war did not turn into a disaster. Later in the North Africa campaign, Falconer was captured by the Germans on an S.O.E. mission in Tunisia and was held in a variety of prisoner of war camps until he was liberated in 1945.
Nick talks to historians of the period, operators who explain the challenges and brilliance of the S.O.E. operatives and he tracks down Falconer's daughter who has her own recollections of her father's wartime exploits. She had no idea that Downing Street, in a memo of 19th May 1943 had described the work of Mallory and his team in glowing terms. 'It is abundantly clear that the operators handling the signals... were as essential to the operations as the organ blower to the cathedral organist.'
Producer: Tom Alban.
In the West Bank hundreds of families share a passion for breeding horses. Amid the narrow streets and cramped apartment buildings small stables can be found with owners grooming beautiful Arabian colts and fillies. These new breeders are now making their mark at Israeli horse shows where competition to produce the best in breed is intense. As Palestinian and Israeli owners mingle on the show ground, political differences are put to one side as they share a passion for the Arabian horse.
For Crossing Continents, Linda Pressly follows one Palestinian owner and his colt as they navigate their way through Israeli checkpoints to the next big event in the Israeli Kibbutz of Alonim. Winning best in show is the plan but will they even get there?
Estelle Doyle producing.
There's science, music, poetry and the deepest human experience in the rhythm of the heartbeat. That rhythm - the normal, heaving violence and beauty of an inner beast - sets the tempo for everything we do.
That is when it's dancing in time. Because about a third of us will one day have an agitating discordance at the heart of our lives - an irregular heart rhythm.
For presenter Michael Blastland, the experience of paroxysmal atrial fibrillation made him confront his own heartbeat for the first time. "It is one of the most disconcerting things to have this turbulence in your chest. This broken rhythm. I feel utterly unhinged in that state. I cannot think, cannot sit still."
In this programme, Michael explores what that rhythm, largely taken for granted, means to us. And what happens when it goes wrong.
We meet Mike, whose team mates kept him alive with CPR for over half an hour when he collapsed on the rugby pitch, and Paul, whose heart often stopped for eight seconds at a time. The poet George Szirtes argues that Tennyson's verse enacts his heartbreak. Director Kezia Cole reveals what happened when she projected an audience's heartbeats onto the set. And we follow consultant cardiologist Mike Koa-Wing into the operating theatre at Watford General hospital as he burns away the heart cells responsible for a patient's irregular heartbeat.
Ultimately, Michael asks, is disruption a worthy price to pay for appreciation? Is the heightened awareness of his own heartbeat, and the life that it fuels, worth the disturbing disturbance of arrhythmia?
Featuring original music by Simon Jarvis
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4.
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.
John Updike's masterful Rabbit quintet established Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom as the quintessential American White middle class male. The first book Rabbit, Run was published in 1960 to critical acclaim. Rabbit Redux is the second in the series, published in 1971 and charting the end of the sixties - featuring, among other things, the first American moon landing and the Vietnam War.
Despite its very strong language, sex, and reflection of racist attitudes of the time, Time Magazine said of the book and its author, "Updike owns a rare verbal genius, a gifted intelligence and a sense of tragedy made bearable by wit. A masterpiece."
It's extraordinary how many of its themes reverberate down to the present day.
Abridged by Eileen Horne
Read by Toby Jones
Produced by Clive Brill
A Brill production for BBC Radio 4.
John Wilson continues with another recording for the series in which leading artists discuss the album that made them or changed them. Recorded in front of a live audience at the BBC's iconic Maida Vale Studios, each edition includes two episodes, with John initially quizzing the artist about the album in question, and then, in the B-side, the audience asks the questions. Both editions feature exclusive live performances.
Singer-songwriter David Gray talks to John Wilson about the album that catapulted him to fame in 2001; White Ladder. Featuring the hits Babylon, This Year's Love and Sail Away, the album became one of the longest-charting in UK chart history, spending almost three consecutive years in the UK top 100, and won Gray an Ivor Novello Award for the single Babylon.
To date, David Gray has sold 12 million albums worldwide, received a BAFTA nomination, two Ivor Novello Awards, a Q award, two Brit nominations and a Grammy nomination.
Producer: Edwina Pitman.
Sean Curran reports from Westminster.
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 spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with the Reverend Karen Lund, archdeacon of Manchester.
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
Comedian Sue Perkins recalls attending the Staffordshire Country Show where she came face to face with a great horned owl possessing a powerful grip.
Producer Andrew Dawes
Photograph Neils Jensen.
News and current affairs. Including Yesterday in Parliament, Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
Jonathan Freedland compares the plight of black cab drivers with the fate of London's watermen.
For centuries watermen had a monopoly on Thames river crossings until advances in new technology allowed for bridges to be built across the river in the mid 18th Century. The men who ferried passengers on the Thames lost their jobs and livelihood.
Today, technology threatens the modern day taxi business with the rise of smartphone app Uber and the dawn of the driverless car.
As automation and artificial intelligence technologies improve, Jonathan Freedland and panellists explore what history can tell us about how workers might fare today.
Producer: Sarah Shebbeare.
Journalist and mother Samantha Simmonds meets Nicki Karet who like Samantha has children who frequently compete against one another and often over the most trivial things to explore how these situations arise, how intense they can become and the ways in which Nicki tries to deal with them.
Producer Sarah Blunt.
Henry Blofeld reads his autobiography.
Henry became a cricket writer in 1964 and ten years later graduated to the Test Match Special team, where he commentated on cricket for 43 years, announcing his retirement this year.
Episode 2: Testing Times in the City
"For about a day and a half, I was treated as if my name was Henry de Rothschild."
Writer: Henry Blofeld
Reader: Henry Blofeld
Abridger: Pete Nichols
Producer: Karen Rose
A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4.
Programme that offers a female perspective on the world.
Lucy Catherine's Viking epic of love, revenge and faith inspired by the Icelandic sagas.
Nursed back to health by the nuns, Gudrun finds solace in the routine of convent life. A shocking account told to her in confidence and news from Iceland breaks this tranquillity and Gudrun knows she must take up the sword again if she is to win back her daughter.
Produced and directed by Gemma Jenkins.
Why do some of us do bizarre things in our sleep? Like riding a motorbike, using a shoe to 'phone for a pizza or even having sex while sleeping? These are complex behaviours and yet sleepwalkers aren't aware of what they're doing and often have no memory of their strange night-time activities.
These sleep disorders are known as non-REM parasomnias and include conditions like night terrors and sleep eating.
So why does it happen? Sleepwalking usually occurs during deep sleep, when something triggers the brain to wake - but not completely. So the areas that control walking and other movement wake up, yet other parts, involved in awareness and rational thinking, remain asleep. What's confusing is that sleepwalkers look awake - their eyes are open - but they're really not awake. They're not really asleep either. The brain is awake and asleep at the same time. We have known this happens in some animals, who can sleep with half of their brain at a time. But recently, we have learnt that similar things can happen in the human brain.
In the first of a three-part series, neurologist, Dr Guy Leschziner, talks to patients he's been treating at his sleep clinic at Guy's and St Thomas' hospitals in London. They include Jackie who began sleepwalking as a child and continued her strange night-time behaviour as an adult, riding her motorbike whilst sleeping.
We hear from James whose night terrors have become so violent his wife has begged him to get help; from Alex who rescues people from floods in his sleep. And we talk to Tom, whose recent diagnosis of sexsomnia has had a significant impact on his life.
These remarkable sleepwalking experiences help us to understand the complex workings of the human brain.
Presenter: Dr Guy Leschziner
Producer: Sally Abrahams.
Journalist and teacher Blanche Girouard travels to see a moving musical collaboration between school pupils with complex educational needs and professional musicians, as they create and perform an original show together.
William Carslake and Patrick Stockbridge have successful careers composing and playing with orchestras and choirs. Another side of their life is bringing musical composition, stage performance and having a good time exploring instruments to young people who have special educational needs around the UK. The work they create together then becomes part of performance festivals and events alongside mainstream schools.
In this programme, they develop a musical about food, the senses, and being lost in the jungle. It's a noisy, funny and inspirational process. They have just 48 hours to write the show from scratch, before a performance in front of the whole school. We hear the thoughts and reactions of pupils and composers as they put their shoulders to the task.
The programme also offers a powerful illustration of the skills and effort by dedicated teachers and carers at the school in Telford, as they shape classes and creative experiences around the changing, often complex needs of each young person in their care.
A Foghorn Company production for BBC Radio 4.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
On this day in 1917, Russia and Germany agreed a tentative ceasefire at Brest-Litovsk, and in North Shields Edie is unsure about her visit to Collingwood.
Written by Caroline Horton
Directed by Ciaran Bermingham
Editor: Jessica Dromgoole.
Consumer phone-in.
The latest weather forecast.
Analysis of news and current affairs.
Reverend Giles Fraser recently had a heart attack followed by quadruple bypass surgery. His heart has suddenly become very real to him in a way it never was before. This is life and death stuff, and he has been forced to look at changing his ways.
He sets out to find people who can help him understand the workings of this most resonant and symbolic of organs.
How can he find a way to live better with his quite literally broken heart? And how can he understand the human heart in its broader context - negotiating a path from the pump, to the Valentine's Day card emblazoned with the instantly recognisable two-curves-with-a-point-at-the-bottom?
The heart has been demoted in relation to the status of the brain. Death is no longer decided by the stopping of the heart, but by brain death. The heart can be re-plumbed, jump-started, and even transplanted. And yet it retains a mystique and is, for many of us across culture and time, the place where we feel our true self to be located, as well as our emotions and the torch of our romantic passions - a sacred heart for many.
Recent research into the heart is tantalisingly suggestive of the idea that the heart is associated with emotion on a chemical level, and might even be able to transfer memory during transplant. Did the Romantic poets have it right all along?
Episode 2: The Sacred Heart
Giles meets Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury until 2012. As a Reverend in the Church of England, Giles is curious to look again at the iconography of the Sacred Heart in its spiritual and historical dimensions, and at how the beat of the heart relates to prayer, poetry, and our sense of the rhythms and boundaries of our lives.
Producer: Victoria Shepherd
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4.
Alma Mahler was one of the most remarkable women of the 20th century, one whose magnetic aura touched an entire generation of creative artists. John Banville's drama explores how her marriage to the great Austrian composer reaches a crisis, the "hammer blow" of Mahler discovering his wife's affair.
Accompanist ..... Keith McAlister
Writer ..... John Banville
Producer ..... Gemma McMullan.
Falling from a great height and last words across a telephone line - Josie Long hears stories of relationships stretched across space.
From the crossover between skydiving, Soren Kierkegaard and falling in love, to the final words uttered into the ear of a loved one on another continent.
Series Producer: Eleanor McDowall
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4.
John Wilson continues with another recording for the series in which leading artists discuss the album that made them or changed them. Recorded in front of a live audience at the BBC's iconic Maida Vale Studios, each edition includes two episodes, with John initially quizzing the artist about the album in question, and then, in the B-side, the audience asks the questions. Both editions feature exclusive live performances.
Singer-songwriter David Gray talks to John Wilson about the album that catapulted him to fame in 2001; White Ladder. Featuring the hits Babylon, This Year's Love and Sail Away, the album became one of the longest-charting in UK history, spending almost three consecutive years in the UK top 100, and won Gray an Ivor Novello Award for the single Babylon.
Having discussed the making of White Ladder, the international hit album (in the A-side of the programme, broadcast on Monday 4th December 2017 and available online), David Gray responds to questions from the audience and performs acoustic live versions of some of his best-loved tracks.
Producer: Edwina Pitman.
Andrew McGibbon analyses great artists at a significant time in their careers, but from the perspective of someone who worked for them, inspired them, employed them or even did their job for them while no one was looking.
In "I Was Phillip K Dick's Reluctant Host", Michael Walsh - a journalist and respected film reviewer for The Province, a leading Vancouver newspaper - talks about the time he came to the aid of the author of Minority Report, Blade Runner, Total Recall and Man in the High Castle, who he met at a convention in 1972.
Discovering that Dick has sold his house in California and was planning to stay in Canada, Michael invited Phillip to stay with him and his wife Susan at their home in Vancouver.
It would go on to be one of the most challenging experiences of Michael's life, as drug dependency, unwanted advances on Michael's wife and unpredictable mood swings made the period something of an emotional rollercoaster for the wary hosts - but also fascinating insight into one of Sci-Fi's greatest ever visionaries.
Written and Presented by Andrew McGibbon
Producers: Nick Romero and Louise Morris
A Curtains For Radio production for BBC Radio 4.
Goldfrapp's Will Gregory is centre-stage at the Colston Hall in Bristol to tell Matthew Parris why he feels a kinship with Irish writer Flann O'Brien whose books 'At Swim-Two-Birds' and 'The Third Policeman' are now hailed as literary masterpieces but which only came to prominence after the author's death. Carol Taaffe, who has written about Flann, helps make sense of the man who wrote under three pseudonyms - Brian O'Nolan, Flann O'Brien, and Myles na gCopaleen. They look more closely at the novels and newspaper column he wrote alongside his job in the Civil Service, whilst maintaining a steady presence in Dublin's pubs.
Will reads extracts he believes illustrate the brilliance with which O'Brien slips between realism and surrealism, and Carol sheds light on who said that 'At Swim-Two-Birds' "....was just the book to give your Sister if she's a loud dirty boozy girl."
Producer: Toby Field.
Eddie Mair with interviews, context and analysis.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Mark Steel's In Town - Bedford
Mark Steel returns to Radio 4 with the 8th series of his award winning show that travels around the country visiting towns that have nothing in common but their uniqueness. After thoroughly researching each town, Mark writes and performs a bespoke evening of comedy for the local residents.
In the first episode Mark visits Bedford.
Everyone has heard of Bedford but not many seem to know where it is or what goes on there. It is a town full of surprises; it has the highest concentration of Italians in the country, it is the home of the biggest airship in the world and it has a museum dedicated to a cult called The Panacea Society, who believe The Garden of Eden is actually in Bedford.
Written and performed by ... Mark Steel
Additional material by ... Pete Sinclair
Production co-ordinator ... Hayley Sterling
Sound Manager ... Jerry Peal
Producer ... Carl Cooper.
Jennifer is concerned, and Elizabeth imparts some advice.
Arts news, interviews and reviews.
The Balfour Declaration is just 67 words - one very long sentence on a small piece of paper issued on November 2nd 1917. But the effects of that sentence are still felt to this day across the Middle East. In the ferment of debate generated by the centenary of the Balfour Declaration this year David Reynolds goes back to its historical roots: to find out how and why it was conceived. Because that document cannot be understood apart from the dramatic autumn of 1917, when the Great War hung in the balance. Britain's Russian ally was on the verge of collapse amidst revolution. The Ottoman empire's military success against British imperial forces was now finally foundering. After the terrible British setbacks of Gallipoli, Kut & disappointment in the war for the Holy Land, General Allenby was finally poised for victory in Palestine. On December the 9th he was able to grant prime minister Lloyd George his Christmas present of Jerusalem's 'liberation' from centuries of Ottoman rule. By that time the fateful Balfour Declaration had been issued in London. Its impact could barely be absorbed across war torn Palestine still suffering the privations of famine, plague and conflict . In London, the small Zionist movement were delighted by their role in shaping the Declaration yet they were just part of a tangle of British imperial planning that, in late 1917, had seen a chance to decide the war and also define the peace. Manipulating Jews and Arabs, Russia and America, British decision makers were convinced of their ability to pull the strings of world politics. But not for the first time (or the last) British leaders would become victims of their own hubris. The very long sentence was a very British story.
Producer: Mark Burman.
News, views and information for people who are blind or partially sighted.
In the fifty years since the first human heart transplant, there have been incremental improvements in treatment and every year about 200 people in the UK will have a heart transplant but thousands more are waiting for a donor heart. The need to find a reliable supply of hearts has led researchers to look at more novel approaches.
Kevin Fong investigates the current research and together with Professor John Dark of Newcastle University he predicts the treatments of the future.
There are many intriguing possibilities; Dr Doris Taylor suggests the work with stem cells is finally paying off, so within decades a damaged heart could be replaced by one grown in the laboratory.
Heart surgeon Andre Simon thinks complete mechanical hearts made of metal and plastic will in the next 50 years be as easy as buying a mobile phone.
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.
John Updike's masterful Rabbit quintet established Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom as the quintessential American White middle class male. The first book Rabbit, Run was published in 1960 to critical acclaim. Rabbit Redux is the second in the series, published in 1971 and charting the end of the sixties - featuring, among other things, the first American moon landing and the Vietnam War.
Despite its very strong language, sex, and reflection of racist attitudes of the time, Time Magazine said of the book and its author, "Updike owns a rare verbal genius, a gifted intelligence and a sense of tragedy made bearable by wit. A masterpiece."
It's extraordinary how many of its themes reverberate down to the present day.
Abridged by Eileen Horne
Read by Toby Jones
Produced by Clive Brill
A Brill production for BBC Radio 4.
June Whitfield stars as Miss Marple in the second of three Agatha Christie dramatisations by Joy Wilkinson.
Miss Marple uncovers a mystery when she looks into the curious sacking of a lady's maid. Her investigative skills are also required when her nephew, crime writer Raymond West, arrives on the doorstep with a severe case of writer's block.
Directed by Gemma Jenkins.
Susan Hulme reports from Westminster.
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 spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day, with the Venerable Karen Lund, archdeacon of Manchester.
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
While in Spain, theatre director Tara Robinson recalls seeing a treecreeper close on a tree while she and her partner were relaxing by the poolside.
Producer Andrew Dawes
Photograph Steve Balcombe.
Morning news and current affairs. Including Yesterday in Parliament, Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
Series in which two artists discuss creative questions.
Primed with thick-rimmed shades and cursing verse, Dr John Cooper Clarke recites punk poetry whilst posing for cartoonist Martin Rowson.
This is the final 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, illustrator Ralph Steadman and zoologist Sarah Christie.
Photographer: Sam Finney.
Producer: Becky Ripley.
Henry Blofeld reads his autobiography.
Henry became a cricket writer in 1964 and ten years later graduated to the Test Match Special team, where he commentated on cricket for 43 years, announcing his retirement this year.
Episode 3: You Can Afford Occasionally to Look Over the Boundary
Wise Words from the Producer
Writer: Henry Blofeld
Reader: Henry Blofeld
Abridger: Pete Nichols
Producer: Karen Rose
A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4.
Programme that offers a female perspective on the world.
Lucy Catherine's Viking epic of love, revenge and faith inspired by the Icelandic sagas.
Her plans to return to Iceland in tatters, a guilt stricken Gudrun agrees to travel to Denmark as bodyguard to the convent's abbess.
Produced and directed by Gemma Jenkins.
When someone with roots deep in the soil of Wiltshire meets the reincarnation of King Arthur, Stonehenge and long barrows come into play. Fi Glover presents another conversation in the series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.
Producer: Marya Burgess.
Surgeon Stephen Westaby explores the events leading up to the first heart transplant and reflects on the consequences of that extraordinary medical breakthrough.
"The heart is merely a pump," said Christiaan Barnard, a little-known Cape Town surgeon who became famous overnight following the dramatic events of 3rd December 1967 when he led a 30-strong team through the landmark procedure.
A survival story, a daring professional achievement, a watershed moment in the relationship of the public to the medical profession, it also proved to be a turning point in our conceptions of identity and body, raising fundamental questions of what makes us who we are.
Through archive and new interviews with those who worked with Barnard - or came to know him later in life, as Stephen Westaby did, when Barnard became an increasingly eccentric figure - the programme explores the myths and ethics surrounding the man and medical technique he pioneered.
Produced by Phil Smith
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4.
After a successful first series on Radio 4 and a sold-out run at the Edinburgh Festival, policeman turned comic, Alfie Moore, returns with the series that forces his audience to make the policing decisions as he takes them through a real life crime scenario. This week Alfie tackles the tricky subject of Stop Search
Written and performed by Alfie Moore,
Script Editor ..... Will Ing,
Producer..... Alison Vernon-Smith.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
On this day in 1917, French munitions ship the SS Mont-Blanc blew up in Halifax, Canada injuring 10,000 people and killing 2000 - the largest manmade explosion in history up until that point. And in Tynemouth Joyce is in a volatile frame of mind.
Written by Caroline Horton
Directed by Ciaran Bermingham
Editor: Jessica Dromgoole.
Consumer affairs programme.
The latest weather forecast.
Analysis of news and current affairs.
Reverend Giles Fraser recently had a heart attack followed by quadruple bypass surgery. His heart has suddenly become very real to him in a way it never was before. This is life and death stuff, and he has been forced to look at changing his ways.
He sets out to find people who can help him understand the workings of this most resonant and symbolic of organs.
How can he find a way to live better with his quite literally broken heart? And how can he understand the human heart in its broader context - negotiating a path from the pump, to the Valentine's Day card emblazoned with the instantly recognisable two-curves-with-a-point-at-the-bottom?
The heart has been demoted in relation to the status of the brain. Death is no longer decided by the stopping of the heart, but by brain death. The heart can be re-plumbed, jump-started, and even transplanted. And yet it retains a mystique and is, for many of us across culture and time, the place where we feel our true self to be located, as well as our emotions and the torch of our romantic passions - a sacred heart for many.
Recent research into the heart is tantalisingly suggestive of the idea that the heart is associated with emotion on a chemical level, and might even be able to transfer memory during transplant. Did the Romantic poets have it right all along?
Episode 3: The Open Heart
Giles talks to his one-time psychoanalyst, Susie Orbach. His physical rehabilitation is well under way, but the emotional ripples are more elusive and counter-intuitive. He wants to understand his response to the trauma of his heart attack and surgery. Where he was expecting a gloomy sense of physical depletion and mortality, he has found instead a sense of elation. Why?
Producer: Victoria Shepherd
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4.
A tough and resourceful teenage girl is driven from her home and onto the freezing city streets on the last night of her life. As the streets fill up with drunken Christmas revellers, Billie is blown around the city like a leaf on the wind, from one encounter to another, clinging onto the hope that she can find Cal, the one man she knows who would take her in.
The unforgiving city is evoked in an original musical score by Coldcut, electronic music pioneers known for their continually innovative and ground breaking work and now celebrating 30 years at the vanguard of modern music.
Featuring a remarkable debut performance as Billie by Georgie Scholes, who was 15 years old at the time of recording, and with support including Don Warrington as Blessed.
Written by Tom Kelly, this is an an epic and breathtaking drama played out on the small scale of one young girl's search for warmth on the city streets. Even if her fate is sealed, she might somehow help the rest of us, including Arham the taxi driver (played by Zaydun Khalaf), find the strength to carry on.
Other parts played by members of the company
Music composed and performed by Coldcut
Sound design by Alisdair McGregor
Writen by Tom Kelly
Produced and directed by Boz Temple-Morris
A Holy Mountain production for BBC Radio 4.
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.
It's Maggie's 60th birthday, so bring on the surprise present! And also some unwelcome revelations and a lot of facts about ballooning...
All Those Women explores familial relationships, ageing, marriages - it's about life and love and things not turning out quite the way that you'd expected them to. Every week we join Hetty, Maggie, Jen and Emily as they struggle to resolve their own problems, and support one another.
Written by KATHERINE JAKEWAYS
Script editor Richard Turner
Producer Alexandra Smith
A BBC Radio Comedy Production.
The panto rehearsal descends into chaos, and Lilian feels guilty.
Arts news, interviews and reviews.
Combative, provocative and engaging debate chaired by Michael Buerk. With Shiv Malik, Michael Portillo, Claire Fox and Giles Fraser.
Sexual politics. Does no always mean no?
Two people come together to swap one story which helped shape their views. They each listen to the other then they retell the story as if it had happened to them. Does this attempt at understanding one another bring new empathy? Can you really step into another's shoes and see the world from their perspective?
In the first programme, Luke, a 34 year-old musician, meets Ellie, a 24 year-old masters student to talk about sexual politics.
Earlier this year, Luke performed a very public romantic gesture to try and tell a girl who had dumped him how he felt. He bought a piano, set it up in central Bristol and said he was playing to let a girl know that he loved her. He received a huge backlash on social media - people said "no means no", that he was pressurising her. Hurt and confused, Luke wants to understand what makes actions acceptable or unacceptable today. He doesn't think no always means no - when someone is hurting they push those around them away. It should be okay to try and stick around in those situations. He wants others to understand that it's unfair to cut off relations with someone you've got close to without a proper explanation.
Eight years ago, Ellie broke up with her boyfriend of three years, and after declaring his love for her, he became more persistent. For a year he pursued her. He'd wait outside her house in his red car. To this day she still thinks of it whenever she sees a red car on the road. As a result of her experience, she thinks that a gesture isn't romantic unless you're absolutely sure it's reciprocated and that persistence and entitlement are male phenomena. Every woman she has ever spoken to has had an experience of a man not taking no for an answer.
Producer: Polly Weston.
Philip Ball tells the dramatic tale of Lise Meitner, the humanitarian physicist of Jewish descent who unlocked the science of the atom bomb after escaping Hitler's Germany.
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.
John Updike's masterful Rabbit quintet established Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom as the quintessential American White middle class male. The first book Rabbit, Run was published in 1960 to critical acclaim. Rabbit Redux is the second in the series, published in 1971 and charting the end of the sixties - featuring, among other things, the first American moon landing and the Vietnam War.
Despite its very strong language, sex, and reflection of racist attitudes of the time, Time Magazine said of the book and its author, "Updike owns a rare verbal genius, a gifted intelligence and a sense of tragedy made bearable by wit. A masterpiece."
It's extraordinary how many of its themes reverberate down to the present day.
Abridged by Eileen Horne
Read by Toby Jones
Produced by Clive Brill
A Brill production for BBC Radio 4.
Another darkly comic tale from the mind of Sir Lenny Henry, who plays Phil Hedley, an actor known for his "tough guy" roles. When Phil is suddenly cut from his hit cop drama "Tough Diamonds", for getting too close to the executive producer's daughter, the work dries up and he is forced to take a job fronting documentaries on gangs for niche cable channel Man Planet. But although Phil acts the tough guy, when is finds himself interviewing a drug lord in the middle of the Jamaican bush, it turns out he might not actually be as tough as he first thought...
Written by and starring Sir Lenny Henry
Produced by Sam Michell.
Edinburgh Comedy Award nominee 2015 and triple Chortle Award Winner Joseph Morpurgo presents a series of 'educational' audio adventures for BBC Radio 4.
Welcome to the Louvre! Home to some of the world's greatest art treasures, including the Mona Lisa. This guide will take you step-by-step through the gallery, offering essential info and commentary as you go.
Written and performed by Joseph Morpurgo, with Naomi Petersen and Jonathan Broke.
Sound design by Craig Schuftan
Producer Alexandra Smith
A BBC Studios Production.
Sean Curran reports from Westminster.
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 spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day, with the Venerable Karen Lund, archdeacon of Manchester.
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
The simple call of the cuckoo in spring has inspired theatre director Tara Robinson to create a play all about bird migration.
Producer Andrew Dawes
Photograph Mark Pirie.
Morning news and current affairs. Including Yesterday in Parliament, Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the c1000 ideas which listeners sent in this autumn, to be announced on the Today programme at 8.30am on 7th December. This is the fourth Listener Week, following Kafka's The Trial in 2014, Captain Cook in 2015 and Garibaldi and the Risorgimento in 2016.
Henry Blofeld reads his autobiography.
Henry became a cricket writer in 1964 and ten years later graduated to the Test Match Special team, where he commentated on cricket for 43 years, announcing his retirement this year.
Episode 4: Yes, We've Got a Freaker
Trevor Bailey misses the mark, but not by much!
Writer: Henry Blofeld
Reader: Henry Blofeld
Abridger: Pete Nichols
Producer: Karen Rose
A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4.
Programme that offers a female perspective on the world.
Lucy Catherine's Viking epic of love, revenge and faith inspired by the Icelandic sagas.
Gudrun finds herself caught up in intrigue and double dealings. She plans to use the power games between the Kings of Norway and Denmark to her advantage.
Produced and directed by Gemma Jenkins.
As they retreat from Northern Iraq so-called Islamic State has left thousands of women and children behind. Some are the abandoned families of IS fighters, others are being held as prisoners or slaves. There are also boys who were forced to fight for IS. A desperate effort is now underway to reunite these women and children with the families they have been separated from - and to rehabilitate those whose minds have been stolen by the group. Tim Whewell reports from Iraq on the children left behind by the fighters of Islamic state.
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.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
On this day in 1917, miners in Sutton returned to work after a strike, and at Marshalls factory Marion is speaking up for the workers.
Written by Caroline Horton
Directed by Ciaran Bermingham
Editor: Jessica Dromgoole.
Consumer affairs programme.
The latest weather forecast.
Analysis of news and current affairs.
Reverend Giles Fraser recently had a heart attack followed by quadruple bypass surgery. His heart has suddenly become very real to him in a way it never was before. This is life and death stuff, and he has been forced to look at changing his ways.
He sets out to find people who can help him understand the workings of this most resonant and symbolic of organs.
How can he find a way to live better with his quite literally broken heart? And how can he understand the human heart in its broader context - negotiating a path from the pump, to the Valentine's Day card emblazoned with the instantly recognisable two-curves-with-a-point-at-the-bottom?
The heart has been demoted in relation to the status of the brain. Death is no longer decided by the stopping of the heart, but by brain death. The heart can be re-plumbed, jump-started, and even transplanted. And yet it retains a mystique and is, for many of us across culture and time, the place where we feel our true self to be located, as well as our emotions and the torch of our romantic passions - a sacred heart for many.
Episode 1: The Broken Heart
Giles meets cultural historian Dr Fay Bound Alberti at Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey and ask how the landmark moments in the story of heart surgery and medicine to fix the pump - the transplants and bypasses - relate to the heart as poetic symbol. The heart has long represented love and courage, and been perceived of as the home of emotions. Is cutting edge science hinting that the Romantic poets were right all along? Recent research into the heart is tantalisingly suggestive of the idea that the heart is associated with emotion on a chemical level, and might even be able to transfer memory during transplant.
Producer: Victoria Shepherd
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4.
By Matthew Broughton
Snowdonia, 1980. It's the dawn of a new decade and the future is coming. But in the wilds of Snowdonia, the ancient history of the landscape is hard to escape. Rachel Turner is looking for fossils with her four-year-old son, Joe. But when a freak earthquake shakes the land beneath their feet, Joe vanishes. With the help of two locals, Rachel embarks on a desperate search to find her son. But as darkness descends, the secrets hidden in the ancient forests of the mountain are uncovered.
The first series of Tracks became the most successful drama series launched by Radio 4 in 2016. Over nine 45 minute episodes it told the story of Dr Helen Ash, as she uncovered a dark medical conspiracy. It received a five-star iTunes rating, was one of Apple's chosen podcasts of the year 2016, won awards for Best Use of Sound (Audio Drama Awards) and Best Fiction (British Podcast Awards) and is nominated for Best Series at the Prix Europa.
Tracks: Strata is a prequel to series one, set thirty-six years before the events that rocked the life of Helen Ash. It stars Fiona O'Shaughnessy (Utopia), Kai Owen (Torchwood) and Robert Pugh (Game of Thrones). Told over six fifteen minute episodes, the drama is an 'online first' commission for Radio 4 - it will be serialised as a podcast online before being broadcast on air as two forty-five minute Afternoon Dramas.
Tracks: Strata explores the roots of a conspiracy that's set to envelop the world in the third series, which will arrive on Radio 4 next year.
Directed by James Robinson
A BBC Cymru Wales Production.
Helen Mark is in Formby in Merseyside, a part of the country that is regarded as a haven for the native red squirrel. She discovers what it is about the landscape and the practices conservationists have adopted, which some find controversial, that's allowing the native reds to thrive in this part of the country.
Continuing along the Sefton coastline Helen meets a local resident turned poet; she discovers what makes Formby's sand dunes so special and finds out about the claim that Formby had the first known life boat in existence.
The producer is Perminder Khatkar.
With Francine Stock.
Powell and Pressburger's A Matter Of Life And Death is reconsidered as it's returns to cinemas.
Adam Rutherford investigates the news in science and science in the news.
Eddie Mair with interviews, context and analysis.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Susan Calman is the least relaxed person she knows. She has no down time, no hobbies (unless you count dressing up your cats in silly outfits) and her idea of relaxation is to sit on her sofa playing Assassin's Creed, an hour into which she is in a murderous rage with sky high blood pressure. Her wife had to threaten to divorce her to make her go on holiday, and she's been told by the same long-suffering wife that unless she finds a way to switch off, and soon, she's going to be unbearable.
Susan decided her best bet was to try to immerse herself in the pursuits that her friends find relaxing, to find her inner zen and outer tranquillity. In the first series of this show she attempted to ditch the old Susan Calman and attempted to find the new Susan Calm, by watching Cricket; going Hillwalking; visiting an Art Gallery and being spontaneous. She enjoyed these pursuits, but all too soon found herself slipping back into her old ways. So she's trying again. This week she takes a trip to the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh to learn about Gardening with Val McDermid, in the hope of one day being able to tell her Euphorbia from Euphoria.
In other episodes Susan will go to a music festival with Robin Ince, try her hand at baking with Selasi Gbmormittah and have a go at birdwatching with Emma Kennedy.
Keep Calman Carry On is an audience stand up show in which Susan reports on how successful she's been - both at relaxing and at the pursuit itself - as well as playing in and discussing a handful of illustrative clips from her efforts. It's an attempt to find out how people find solace or sanctuary in these worlds and how Susan can negotiate her own place in them.
Produced by Lyndsay Fenner. A BBC Studios Production.
Lexi offers a shoulder to cry on, and Brian puts his foot in it.
Arts news, interviews and reviews.
Series looking at important issues in the news. Presented by David Aaronovitch.
Why are so many US workers forced into job contracts that make it hard for them to leave? Employers routinely ask new recruits to agree to "non-compete" clauses when they start work. This means they might be unable to work for a competitor company, or to set up on their own. Is this a good way to protect intellectual property or an unnecessary infringement of workers' rights? Claire Bolderson goes to Massachusetts to explore the personal and economic impact of the legislation and asks if reform might, finally, be a possibility.
Producer: Rosamund Jones.
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.
John Updike's masterful Rabbit quintet established Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom as the quintessential American White middle class male. The first book Rabbit, Run was published in 1960 to critical acclaim. Rabbit Redux is the second in the series, published in 1971 and charting the end of the sixties - featuring, among other things, the first American moon landing and the Vietnam War.
Despite its very strong language, sex, and reflection of racist attitudes of the time, Time Magazine said of the book and its author, "Updike owns a rare verbal genius, a gifted intelligence and a sense of tragedy made bearable by wit. A masterpiece."
It's extraordinary how many of its themes reverberate down to the present day.
Abridged by Eileen Horne
Read by Toby Jones
Produced by Clive Brill
A Brill production for BBC Radio 4.
Welcome To Wherever You Are is a stand-up show that refuses to be constrained by geography when it comes to booking guests; instead, it uses modern technology to connect a studio audience in the BBC Radio Theatre, London, with the best comedians in the world - no matter where they happen to be.
This week, host Andrew Maxwell checks in with Tats Nkonzo to hear how the Rainbow Nation is doing; finds out if Singapore has changed since he was last there with Sharul Channa; and gets up to speed with the Iceland/Denmark rivalry with Reykjavik's own Ari Eldjárn.
Andrew Maxwell is a multi-award-winning stand up and double Edinburgh Comedy Award nominee, familiar to Radio 4 audiences for his appearances on The News Quiz, The Now Show, and his own series Andrew Maxwell's Public Enemies. He's also appeared on Live At The Apollo, Mock The Week, and Have I Got News For You.
Presented by ... Andrew Maxwell
Featuring ... Tats Nzonzo
Featuring ... Sharul Channa
Featuring ... Ari Eldjárn
Production co-ordinator ... Hayley Sterling
Producer ... Ed Morrish
A BBC Studios Production.
Susan Hulme reports from Westminster.
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 spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day, with the Reverend Karen Lund, archdeacon of Manchester.
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
Despite having a call like an asthmatic dog, for birdwatcher and naturalist Mark Cocker, the flight of a wintering short-eared owl is one of the most beautiful sights you will ever see.
Producer Tim Dee
Photograph Steve Boddy.
Morning news and current affairs. Including Yesterday in Parliament, Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
Henry Blofeld reads his autobiography.
Henry became a cricket writer in 1964 and ten years later graduated to the Test Match Special team, where he commentated on cricket for 43 years, announcing his retirement this year.
Episode 5: Enchanting Ghosts
Arlott, Johnners, CMJ et al
Writer: Henry Blofeld
Reader: Henry Blofeld
Abridger: Pete Nichols
Producer: Karen Rose
A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4.
Programme that offers a female perspective on the world.
Lucy Catherine's Viking epic of love, revenge and faith inspired by the Icelandic sagas.
Ragnarok approaches and Gudrun hopes this bloody battle will see her reunited with her daughter.
Produced and directed by Gemma Jenkins.
A week used to be a long time in politics. Not anymore. Today, an hour can feel like an eon.
From the race against time to deliver Brexit, to the apparently near-daily earthquakes generated by the Trump presidency, we seem to be living through an era of superfast politics. But what has caused the speed-up -and where is it leading?
We live in a world of instant messaging, 24-hour news, and same day delivery. It can feel exhausting, but has it also made us impatient? And is impatience damaging our engagement with politics?
Travelling back through history, to the Reformation and the French Revolution, historian Rhys Jones explores other eras of superfast politics, and wonders whether our need for speed today is rushing us headlong towards catastrophe.
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4.
Michael and Maxine Wilson and their daughters, Lola and Cat have resolved to live a more ethical life. Millions of people try every day to make 'good' choices and do the 'right thing'. It's hard. Most of us live with hypocrisy and failure all the time but keep on trying. The Wilsons are trying about 20% harder and learning to live with about 19% more failure.
In the last episode in the series Max and Mike attempt to get their heads around the sensitive subject of S.E.X. and technology. Their teenage daughter Cat's latest relationship seems to be mainly conducted through the phone and they fear she doesn't have a clue on the risks attached in sharing intimate images. However, a full and frank adult conversation seems to be beyond Mike who has hang-ups of his own and Max and Mike's attempt to educate the children on the dangers of pornography on the web via a complex metaphor of Brexit and a possible desensitisation to 'David Davis' leaves Lola simply well-versed in European politics and Cat angry. Meanwhile, Max, in attempt to addressing society's obsession with technology, makes a clanging faux pas via her local library web seminars. As the usual family harmony disintegrates it looks like their annual visit to the 'Words and Curds' festival in Wales is set it be a real downer until they bump into Caitlin Moran on her way to a book signing. Is it possible that this celebrated feminist author of a number of books including 'How to be a Woman' will have the answers they crave?
Producer...Julia McKenzie
Production Coordinator...Tamara Shilham
A BBC Studios Production.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
On this day in 1917, British troops surrounded Jerusalem, and at Marshalls Fraser returns to a factory under siege.
Written by Caroline Horton
Directed by Ciaran Bermingham
Editor: Jessica Dromgoole.
Consumer news and issues.
The latest weather forecast.
Analysis of news and current affairs.
Reverend Giles Fraser recently had a heart attack followed by quadruple bypass surgery. His heart has suddenly become very real to him in a way it never was before. This is life and death stuff, and he has been forced to look at changing his ways.
He sets out to find people who can help him understand the workings of this most resonant and symbolic of organs.
How can he find a way to live better with his quite literally broken heart? And how can he understand the human heart in its broader context - negotiating a path from the pump, to the Valentine's Day card emblazoned with the instantly recognisable two-curves-with-a-point-at-the-bottom?
The heart has been demoted in relation to the status of the brain. Death is no longer decided by the stopping of the heart, but by brain death. The heart can be re-plumbed, jump-started, and even transplanted. And yet it retains a mystique and is, for many of us across culture and time, the place where we feel our true self to be located, as well as our emotions and the torch of our romantic passions - a sacred heart for many.
Recent research into the heart is tantalisingly suggestive of the idea that the heart is associated with emotion on a chemical level, and might even be able to transfer memory during transplant. Did the Romantic poets have it right all along?
Episode 5: The Lonely Heart
Giles speaks to essayist on love and the language of the heart, Adam Phillips. What effect has putting his life in his surgeon's hands, being totally dependent, really had on him and his faith in other people?
Producer: Victoria Shepherd
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4.
By Matthew Broughton
In the mountains of Snowdonia the future is about to be uncovered. The concluding part of the conspiracy thriller's second series.
Snowdonia, 1980. Rachel Turner is on a desperate hunt for her missing son, Joe. But her search is hampered by the fact that deep in the forest, in a stone circle ringed with fire, an elderly woman is giving birth to a mysterious baby. And the truth of the baby's identity has implications for the future of mankind.
The first series of Tracks became the most successful drama series launched by Radio 4 in 2016. Over nine 45 minute episodes it told the story of Dr Helen Ash, as she uncovered a dark medical conspiracy. It received a five-star iTunes rating, was one of Apple's chosen podcasts of the year 2016, won awards for Best Use of Sound (Audio Drama Awards) and Best Fiction (British Podcast Awards) and is nominated for Best Series at the Prix Europa.
Tracks: Strata is a prequel to series one, set thirty-six years before the events that rocked the life of Helen Ash. It stars Fiona O'Shaughnessy (Utopia), Kai Owen (Torchwood) and Robert Pugh (Game of Thrones). Told over six fifteen minute episodes, the drama is an 'online first' commission for Radio 4 - it will be serialised as a podcast online before being broadcast on air as two forty-five minute Afternoon Dramas.
Tracks: Strata explores the roots of a conspiracy that's set to envelop the world in the third series, which will arrive on Radio 4 next year.
Directed by James Robinson
A BBC Cymru Wales Production.
Eric Robson and his panel are in Welton-by-Lincoln. Bunny Guinness, Christine Walkden and Bob Flowerdew help the audience with this week's horticultural issues.
Produced by Dan Cocker
Assistant Producer: Hester Cant
A Somethin' Else 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 couple have fond memories of working at Barry Island Butlins, where they met over 35 years ago. 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.
Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis present the week in topical stand-up and sketches, with help from Angela Barnes, Fern Brady, Helen Arney and Kwame Asante.
Produced by Victoria Lloyd
A BBC Studios Production.
Writer ..... Adrian Flynn
Director ..... Marina Caldarone
Editor ..... Huw Kennair-Jones
Jill Archer ..... Patricia Greene
Pip Archer ..... Daisy Badger
Brian Aldridge ..... Charles Collingwood
Jennifer Aldridge ..... Angela Piper
Lilian Bellamy ..... Sunny Ormonde
PC Harrison Burns ..... James Cartwright
Susan Carter ..... Charlotte Martin
Ian Craig ..... Stephen Kennedy
Justin Elliott ..... Simon Williams
Toby Fairbrother ..... Rhys Bevan
Alan Franks ..... John Telfer
Usha Franks ..... Souad Faress
Joe Grundy ..... Edward Kelsey
Eddie Grundy ..... Trevor Harrison
Emma Grundy ..... Emerald O'Hanrahan
Shula Hebden Lloyd ..... Judy Bennett
Alistair Lloyd ..... Michael Lumsden
Jim Lloyd ..... John Rowe
Adam Macy ..... Andrew Wincott
Elizabeth Pargetter ..... Alison Dowling
Johnny Phillips ..... Tom Gibbons
Robert Snell ..... Graham Blockey
Lynda Snell ..... Carole Boyd
Peggy Woolley ..... June Spencer
D.I. Thorpe ..... Flaminia Cinque.
News, reviews and interviews from the worlds of art, literature, film and music.
Jonathan Dimbleby presents political debate and discussion from Coventry Cathedral with a panel including the political commentator Alex Deane, the social justice activist Saffiyah Khan, the Work and Pensions Secretary David Gauke MP and the Shadow Leader of the Lords Baroness Smith.
A reflection on a topical issue.
The fourth omnibus of Season 12, Giddy with Possibility, set in Tynemouth, in the week, in 1917, when Jerusalem was surrendered to the British.
Cast
Duncan Chadwick ..... Mark Stobbart
Edie Chadwick ..... Kathryn Beaumont
Joyce Lyle ..... Tracy Whitwell
Marion Wardle ..... Laura Elphinstone
Fraser Chadwick ..... Edmund Wiseman
Alan Lowther ..... David Seddon
Esther O'Leary ..... Anna Bolton
Ethel Manning ..... Sophie Scott
Hannah O'Leary ..... Mia Bainbridge
Iris Reed ..... Charlie Hardwick
Johnnie Marshall ..... Paul Ready
Joseph Fannon ..... Shaun Prendergrast
Judith Turner ..... Kate Okello
Kenny Stokoe ..... Dean Logan
Lester Reed ..... Trevor Fox
Matilda James ..... Hannah Wood
Maud Drummond ..... Vineeta Rishi
Peggy Tanney ..... Abbie Andrews
Phyllis Marshall ..... Christine Absalom
Ray Wardle ..... Cleo Wealleans- Watts
Sarah Illingworth ..... Naomi Frederick
Stella Wardle ..... Morgan Armstrong
Trevor Lamb ..... Philip Correia
Written by Caroline Horton
Directed by Ciaran Bermingham
Editor: Jessica Dromgoole
Story led by Shaun McKenna
Sound: Martha Littlehailes
Composer: Matthew Strachan
Consultant Historian: Maggie Andrews.
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.
John Updike's masterful Rabbit quintet established Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom as the quintessential American White middle class male. The first book Rabbit, Run was published in 1960 to critical acclaim. Rabbit Redux is the second in the series, published in 1971 and charting the end of the sixties - featuring, among other things, the first American moon landing and the Vietnam War.
Despite its very strong language, sex, and reflection of racist attitudes of the time, Time Magazine said of the book and its author, "Updike owns a rare verbal genius, a gifted intelligence and a sense of tragedy made bearable by wit. A masterpiece."
It's extraordinary how many of its themes reverberate down to the present day.
Abridged by Eileen Horne
Read by Toby Jones
Produced by Clive Brill
A Brill production for BBC Radio 4.
Mark D'Arcy reports from Westminster.
The vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields and the CEO of The Connection at St Martins share the experiences that brought them there. Fi Glover presents another conversation in the series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.
Producer: Marya Burgess.