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

Author and journalist Charlotte Higgins explores our ancient fascination with mazes and labyrinths, and reflects on their significance - in art and in mythology, in literature and in life.

In this final reading from her new book Higgins turns her attention from man-made mazes and discusses the magical properties of some mazes made by nature (but featured in art) - from the dark, impenetrable forests of the Grimms' fairy tales, to the snow-bowed pines of C.S. Lewis's Narnia, to the haunting and mysterious moonlit woods of Paolo Uccello's fifteenth-century painting The Hunt in the Forest* at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, "the first picture I dared to try to write about."

There are also some powerfully evocative childhood memories of a farm near her family home in Staffordshire, and the woods beside it which stretched down to the motorway that cut through the valley: "I loved those woods, but they frightened me. Whenever I went into them I could feel them closing in. The freedom of the fields and the low, rolling hills would be lost. The sky would disappear..."

Red Thread is written and read by Charlotte Higgins.

The book is abridged and produced by David Jackson Young.

The latest shipping forecast.

The latest shipping forecast.

The latest news from BBC Radio 4.

A reading and a reflection to start the day, with the Rev Dr Craig Gardiner, a tutor at South Wales Baptist College.

A listener on the problems she faced after her son died suddenly and why it might be something which might affect others.
Plus Jim Naughtie reads our bulletin of Your News.

Presented by Luke Jones and produced by Cat Farnsworth.
This is the programme that starts with your story. Let us know yours. ipm@bbc.co.uk.

The latest news headlines. Including the weather and a look at the papers.

Lundy Island sits just off the North Devon Coast in the Bristol Channel. It has a fascinating history which dates back to the Bronze Age and has been home to pirates and outlaws. Previous owners have even had their own stamps and coinage produced but today it is managed by the Landmark Trust and the island and its surrounding waters are recognised for their rich wildlife and habitat. David Lindo visits the island as it holds the very first 'Lundy Marathon'. 250 trail runners will brave the rocky coastal paths over a distance of 14 miles and they hope the sport they love can work in harmony with this precious and remote habitat.

The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.

The latest weather forecast.

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

Shaun Keaveny and Sonali Shah are joined by Rylan Clark-Neal who found fame as a contestant on the X-Factor in 2012. He subsequently won Celebrity Big Brother in 2013 and is now a presenter on programmes including This Morning and Big Brother's Bit on the Side. Paralympian David Smith won gold at Rio in 2016. He explains what it takes to be a Boccia champion. Mary Ellis discovered scything and has since been successful in competitions and is keen to share her knowledge. Dale Vince is a green industrialist, has a record breaking electric car and turned his local football team, Forest Green Rovers, vegan.

Gyles Brandreth shares his Inheritance Tracks. He has chosen Maurice Chevalier and Hermione Gingold singing 'I Remember It Well' from the film Gigi AND 'Simon Smith and His Amazing Dancing Bear' by Scooter and Fozzie Bear from The Muppets.

Gyles Brandreth is performing his show Break a Leg! at the Edinburgh Festival until 26th August.
The World Boccia Championships runs from the 12th August 2018 - 18th August 2018 in Liverpool.

Producer: Claire Bartleet
Editor: Beverley Purcell.

Jay Rayner and the panel are in Ironbridge. Dr Annie Gray, Rob Owen-Brown, Sophie Wright and Tim Anderson answer the culinary questions.

The panellists travel back in time to Blists Hill Victorian Village, familiarising themselves with the culinary ways of 1900. While there, they answer audience questions on topics such as cocoa nibs, the benefits of a griddle pan and what to do with glut of raspberries, as well as offering up recipe ideas for an autumn pork dish.

Local producers Neil and Sue Curry and Martin Dudley talk about cast iron and Shropshire Cheeses respectively and museum curator Georgina Grant gives an idea of the food scene in a typical 1900 village.

Produced by Hannah Newton
Assistant Producer: Laurence Bassett

Food Consultant: Anna Colquhoun

A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4.

Boudica, also known as Boadicea, was a member of Iron Age aristocracy in Roman-occupied Britain and her husband was the ruler of the Iceni people. When he died in around 60AD, Boudica, driven by Roman brutality, led a rebellion against the Roman army and marched on the three key Roman cities of present-day Colchester, London and St Albans. It was a ferocious attack that nearly drove the Romans out of Britain before Boudica was finally defeated. Today she is an iconic and sometimes controversial figure. To explore the story of Boudica, Bridget Kendall is joined by Professors Richard Hingley and Miranda Aldhouse-Green and Dr. Jane Webster.

Photo: Queen Boudica of the Iceni (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images).

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

The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.

The surprising story of GDP and whether it's time to change how we measure our economy.

Economics with Subtitles is your everyday guide to economics and why you should care. In this edition, Ayeisha and Steve look at how we quantify economic success. Should dodgy drug deals be included? What is Steve's contribution to GDP? And should we ban people who pinch too many of your crisps?

Producers: Simon Maybin & Phoebe Keane
Presenters: Ayeisha Thomas-Smith & Steve Bugeja.

An energetic, intelligent female-anchored show with a female panel - using the events, trends and talking points they think should really be top of the news agenda in a series of fresh and funny challenges.

Host Jo Bunting is joined by a panel of women including Anneka Rice, Eleanor Tiernan, Cariad Lloyd and Dr Sue Black

Jo Bunting is a producer and writer of topical comedy and satire, with credits including Have I Got News For You, the Great British Bake Off spin off show An Extra Slice with Jo Brand, and the successful topical chat show That Sunday Night Show presented by Adrian Chiles on ITV. Jo was a guest interviewer on Loose Ends for several years and a panellist on Loose Women.

An Avalon production for BBC Radio 4.

The latest weather forecast.

The latest news from BBC Radio 4.

Ritula Shah presents political debate from the Mersea Centre on Mersea Island in Essex with a panel including the Shadow International Trade Secretary Barry Gardiner, Matt Goodwin Professor of Politics and International Relations at Kent University and an Associate Director of Chatham House, the writer Germaine Greer and former cabinet minister Priti Patel.

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

by HG Wells, dramatised by Melissa Murray

Mars on radio 4: As the Martians continue their merciless invasion, transforming the landscape and decimating the population, Robert begins to lose his reason.

Directed by Marc Beeby.

The music writer Laura Barton visits another four locations in Britain and listens closely to the music found in different landscapes.

Today it's Aberdeen - Silver City. Sparkling silver in the sun, but a dour grey under a heavy sky, Aberdeen is built from granite hewn from local quarries and nestled on Scotland's north-east coast between green hills and the forbidding North Sea. In recent years, gas and oil money has changed the city, bringing in workers from around the world, but it's retained a distinctly Scottish culture.

Laura walks the golden sands of Aberdeen beach with singer-songwriter Kathryn Joseph, whose recent success has taken her to live in Glasgow. She also catches an impromptu folk performance in the Blue Lamp, visits daughter and father Katie and Charley Buchan who perform as Best Girl Athlete and live at the top of a high rise in the centre of the city, and she accompanies the 'psych folk' musician Alan Davidson on a stroll along the River Don and through Old Aberdeen.

Music in this programme:
Best Girl Athlete - In Your Head and Silver City (Album: Best Girl Athlete, Fit Like Records)
CS Buchan - Unpredictable Energies (Album: Material Others, Emubands)
Kitchen Cynics - Strandloopers, Harlaw and Jon Justice (Album: Apardion, Songs of Aberdeen, Fit Like Records)
Best Girl Athlete - Hills (Album: Carve Every Word, Fit Like Records)
Kathryn Joseph - The Why What, Baby and The Weary (Album: Bones You Have Thrown Me and Blood You Have Spilled, Hits the Fan Records)
Kathryn Joseph - And You Survived (pre-release white label)

Produced by Alan Hall
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4.

Gemma Arterton discusses her new film The Escape where she plays at stay at home mother who walks out on her marriage and children.

More than four hundred thousand children do not have a bed of their own, forcing many to share or sleep on the floor. Gerri McAndrew from the charity Buttle UK and Assistant Head Teacher Bex Wilson, who realised one of her own pupils was having to sleep on the floor, discuss.

Sherin Khankan tells us about becoming a female imam, founding the first mosque for women in Denmark.

How do eating disorders harm your teeth and why aren't dentists talking about it. We hear from Laura Dennison who suffered from bulimia for five years and from the dentist Dr Uchenna Okoye.

The British Afro-Caribbean artist Sonia Boyce talks about her part in a BBC documentary exploring the history of British artists of African and Asian descent. Why have they not been represented on gallery walls?

New Zealand has become only the second country in the world to pass a law granting victims of domestic violence ten days paid leave by their employers so they can escape from their partners. Jan Logie, the Green MP who fought for seven years to pass her bill into law and Suzanne Jacob from the domestic abuse charity SafeLives discuss.

Can you be a feminist and still enjoy cooking? We look at the recipes printed in the feminist magazine Spare Rib with food historian Polly Russell, and journalists Zoe Strimpel and Niellah Arboine.

Highlights from the Woman's Hour week. Presented by Jenni Murray
Producer: Rabeka Nurmahomed
Editor Lucinda Montefiore.

Coverage and analysis of the day's news.

The latest shipping forecast.

The latest weather forecast.

The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.

Nikki Bedi and Scottee are joined by Janis Ian, Tasmina Perry, Tyrone Huntley and Siobhan McSweeney for an eclectic mix of conversation, music and comedy. With music from Jake Shears and Janice Ian.

Producer: Sukey Firth.

Theatre maker Raquel Meseguer, who lives with chronic pain, has a vision for public resting spaces. Challenging our etiquette and perceptions of people lying down, she imagines how our cultural spaces might embrace 'Cloudspotters', her euphemism for people with hidden conditions like her own.
"It was a lightbulb moment to realise that I am able, but I am also disabled by a built environment and vertical culture that is simply not designed for me... my lying down invariably proves problematic, and reveals strict etiquettes of our public spaces, and prejudice towards the simple act of lying down." "It was only by challenging etiquette that my world got bigger again."
Recorded in front of a live audience at Somerset House in London.
Presenter: Olly Mann
Producer: Sheila Cook

http://www.ovalhouse.com/whatson/detail/a-crash-course-in-cloudspotting

https://uncharteredcollective.com/a-crash-course-in-cloudspotting/

Photo credit: Paul Blakemore.

Italian film Sicilian Ghost Story is based on a real life kidnapping of the son of a Mafia supergrass
The new production of Othello at London's Globe Theatre includes Mark Rylance as Iago
HBO's Succession is a new series telling the story of a media empire led by an ageing patriarch which is thrown into confusion when he suffers a brain haemorrhage: which of his children is capable of taking over the responsibilities and pressures of running the company?
Magic Realism: Art in Weimar Germany 1919-1933 at Tate Modern is an exhibition of many of the artists whose work was cast as degenerate by the Nazis. The term 'magic realism' was coined in 1925 to describe an artistic movement away from expressionism to a harsh, cold, unsettling veracity
Andrew McMillan's collection of poems: playtime explores the different ways boys grow into their sexual selves and adult identities through rites of passage.
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Linda Grant, Terence Blacker and Deborah Bull. The producer is Oliver Jones.

Broadcaster and comedian Steve Punt scours the archives to exhume the often pretentious and opinionated philosophical outpourings of pop stars through the ages.

With the help of music journalists Paul Morley, Kate Mossman, DJ and record producer Ras Kwame and surprising soundbites from the archive, Steve explores the concept of the pop star as philosopher. From pop star hobbies, to politics and theories of aliens and the Illuminati, Steve explores the attempts of pop stars to make sense of a chaotic world.

Presenter: Steve Punt
Producer: Georgia Catt.

by Jonathan Ruffle

Series created by Jonathan Ruffle.

Meticulously based on unit war diaries and eye-witness accounts, each episode of TOMMIES traces one real day at war, exactly 100 years ago.

Through it all, we follow the fortunes of Mickey Bliss and his fellow signallers, from the Lahore Division of the British Indian Army. They are the cogs in an immense machine, one which connects situations across the whole theatre of the war, over four long years.

Indira Varma, Lee Ross and Pippa Nixon star in this special story for Remembrance Day, set at La Gorgue on 11th November 1915. A day when Second Lieutenant Mickey Bliss finds himself in two meetings. One which might change the whole war for the Signal Service. And one which is about to change his life forever.

Producers: David Hunter, Jonquil Panting, Jonathan Ruffle
Director: Jonquil Panting.

Psychotherapist Susie Orbach explores the private relationship between therapist and patient. We join Susie in her consulting room, where she meets a different client each day.

Today, Susie meets John. He is a retired railway worker who has always been closely involved with union affairs. In a previous meeting he has told Susie that he loves her.

All of the clients are played by actors, but these are not scripted scenes. Each client profile has been carefully constructed by therapist Susie, director Ian Rickson (former artistic director at the Royal Court, and director of the highly acclaimed Jerusalem) and radio producer Kevin Dawson. The client profiles have been given to the actors who have learned about the characters' lives, backgrounds, and reasons for seeking therapy. The scenes have then been improvised and recorded on concealed microphones at Susie's surgery.

Throughout the encounters in this series, we get to hear the therapist at work, experiencing what it's like to eavesdrop on the most intimate of exchanges.

To help us with our understanding of the process, Susie Orbach commentates on what is happening in the room, giving us an insight into her role as a therapist and shining a light on the journey both she and her patient have embarked upon.

Psychotherapist: Susie Orbach
John: Peter Wight
Producer: Kevin Dawson
Director: Ian Rickson

A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4.

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

Anne McElvoy returns with the series that asks figures from opposing sides of a political issue to listen to each other, and explore the roots of each other's beliefs, with the help of conflict resolution specialist Gabrielle Rifkind.

In this first edition of the new series, Anne brings together Nick Cohen, columnist for the Observer and Simon Heffer, columnist for the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, to debate the question 'Is English Nationalism Toxic?'

Producer: Phil Tinline.

A funny and dynamic quiz show hosted by Steve Punt - this week from Brunel University with specialist subjects including Politics, Theatre and Computer Science and questions ranging from La Dame Aux Camelias and XOR gates to wardrobe malfunctions and Axl Rose.

The programme is recorded on location at a different University each week, and it pits three Undergraduates against three of their Professors in an original and fresh take on an academic quiz.

The rounds vary between Specialist Subjects and General Knowledge, quickfire bell-and-buzzer rounds and the Highbrow and Lowbrow round cunningly devised to test not only the students' knowledge of current affairs, history, languages and science, but also their Professors' awareness of television, sport, and quite possibly Justin Bieber. In addition, the Head-to-Head rounds see students take on their Professors in their own subjects, offering plenty of scope for mild embarrassment on both sides.

Other Universities featured in this series include Merton College Oxford, Dundee, Hertfordshire, Sheffield and Newcastle.

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

Roger McGough is joined by John Cooper Clarke, with a selection of his favourite poems from the Poetry Please archive of listeners' requests. His choices include requests for poems by Sir Henry Newbolt, Rudyard Kipling, Sylvia Plath, and Pam Ayres.

Occasionally described as the Poet Laureate of Punk, John Cooper Clarke has performed in many guises; rock star, fashion icon, TV and radio presenter, social and cultural commentator and reluctant national treasure. Ahead of the release of a new poetry collection, 'The Luckiest Guy Alive', his first in 37 years, he shares his love of classic verse, some newly-penned poems and his hilarious musings on life.

Producers: Elliott Prince and Sarah Addezio.

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

An original short story commissioned by BBC Radio 4 from the Northern Irish writer Jan Carson. As read by Tara Lynne O'Neill (Derry Girls).

Jan Carson is a writer and arts programmer based in Belfast. The author of the collections 'Postcard Stories' and 'Children's Children', her work has also appeared in journals including 'Banshee', 'Harper's Bazaar' and 'The Honest Ulsterman' in addition to being read on BBC Radio 4 and Radio 3. Her forthcoming novel 'The Fire Starters' will be published by Doubleday in 2019.

Writer ..... Jan Carson
Reader ..... Tara Lynne O'Neill
Producer ..... Michael Shannon.

The latest shipping forecast.

The latest shipping forecast.

The latest news from BBC Radio 4.

Bells on Sunday comes from the parish church of St Lawrence, Alton in Hampshire. In 1926 the Croydon Foundry of Gillett and Johnston cast the peal, generally reckoned to be the best ring of eight in the county, and hung them in a new steel frame. The tenor weighs eighteen hundredweight and is tuned to E. We hear them ringing Bristol Surprise Major.

Dominic Lawson hears from people who have changed their mind in a fundamental way on issues of great public significance.

The former Labour MP Gisela Stuart was ardently pro-EU and built a political career helping to promote British membership. But she changed her mind about the whole enterprise and became a key national leader of the Leave campaign to take Britain out of the EU. In this programme she reveals the true story of how her views were transformed and she then faced the uncomfortable challenges of campaigning for an issue that set her against friends, colleagues and family.

Producer: Jonathan Brunert.

The latest national and international news.

The birth of her nephew prompts musician Jahnavi Harrison to explore what she calls "the adventure of embodiment". She looks at how physical activities, both ritual and everyday, can lead to a state of transcendence.

Jahnavi explains how yoga teaches the practitioner to see the body as a temple dedicated to the glory of God; how pilgrimage, by engaging the body in repetitive movement, makes an internal journey of prayer and sacrifice easier instead of just sitting in an armchair thinking about it; and how physical work can become a spiritual blessing.

Readings include the wisdom of Saint Teresa of Avila and the Bhagavad Gita. The music includes tracks from George Harrison, Thomas Newman and the Monteverdi Choir.

Presenter: Jahnavi Harrison
Producer: Jonathan Mayo
A TBI production for BBC Radio 4.

When Martha Roberts hit a midlife crisis instead of buying a fast car she bought some pigs. Her only experience of farming had been the summers she'd spent on her grandparents' farm near Abergavenny. In search of a sense of home, she returned to the area and based her pig business on that same land. Martha tells Sarah Swadling how she's found happiness through pigs and a connection to the local landscape.

The latest weather forecast.

The latest news headlines. Including a look at the papers.

Sunday morning religious news and current affairs programme.

Baroness Boothroyd makes the Radio 4 Appeal on behalf of the charity Fight for Sight.

Registered Charity Number: 1111438
To Give:
- Freephone 0800 404 8144
- Freepost BBC Radio 4 Appeal. (That's the whole address. Please do not write anything else on the front of the envelope). Mark the back of the envelope 'Fight for Sight'.
- Cheques should be made payable to 'Fight for Sight'.

The latest weather forecast.

The latest news headlines. Including a look at the papers.

Live from the Tavistock Festival in the seven hundredth anniversary year of St. Eustachius' Parish and in a week when the Church marks the Feast of the Transfiguration - a mountaintop experience for three of the disciples who witnessed Jesus' clothes become 'as bright as a flash of lightening' as his ministry was endorsed by a heavenly voice. The Exon Singers with Conductor & Artistic Director Joseph Judge, Festival Organist Josef Laming and the FIGO Ensemble, sing movements from Schubert's Mass in G. 2 Peter 1:16-19; Luke 9:28-36. Celebrant: The Very Revd Christopher Hardwick; Preacher: Canon James Mustard. Producer: Katharine Longworth.

Michael Morpurgo argues it's time to think again over Brexit.

"It is surely time to accept that we have made a mistake", he writes, "that whichever way we voted, things are not turning out the way we expected".

"Or are we too proud?" he asks.

Producer: Adele Armstrong.

For writer, filmmaker and co-founder of the bird song recognition app Warblr Florence Wilkinson, the brown thrasher, as the state bird of Georgia in the United States, is a apt choice as she recalls how her citizen science inspired project is being used to help schoolchildren recognise birdsong in North America and elsewhere.

You can here more from Florence and her work in the accompanying Tweet of the Week podcast, via the Radio 4 website.

Producer : Sarah Addezio.

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

An arrival ruffles feathers, and disaster looms for Freddie.

Pam Ayres is a poet and broadcaster.

Pam was born in the Vale of the White Horse and retains her characteristic Berkshire burr. She is the youngest of six children, and grew up in the company of her four brothers and a sister in a small council house.

Although she was interested in writing from an early age, she failed her 11-plus exam and left school at 15 to join the Civil Service and later the Women's Royal Air Force, where she found opportunities to appear in amateur dramatics.

She began to perform her comic verse in local folk clubs in the early 1970s and her first break came when she secured a spot on BBC Radio Oxford. In 1975, she won the TV talent show Opportunity Knocks and by the following year she had given up her day job.

Pam has sold more than three million copies of her books, and has been called "the people's poet", thanks to her ability to write verse which resonates with a wide audience. Her best-loved poems include Oh, I Wish I'd Looked After Me Teeth, which was voted one of the UK's top ten comic verses in a BBC poll. Striking a very different note, her poem Woodland Burial has become a popular reading at funerals.

Presenter: Kirsty Young
Producer: Sarah Taylor.

The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.

Back for a second week at the Playhouse Theatre in Oxford, regulars Barry Cryer, Graeme Garden and Tim Brooke-Taylor are joined on the panel by programme stalwart Jeremy Hardy with Jack Dee in the chair. Piano accompaniment is provided by Colin Sell.
Producer - Jon Naismith.
It is a BBC Studios production.

Harlem based chef Marcus Samuelsson tells his personal food story which took him from Ethiopia and Sweden and onto New York City and from being an orphan to an award winning chef.

Produced and presented by Dan Saladino.

The latest weather forecast.

Global news and analysis.

An intimate portrait of singer, composer and multi-instrumentalist Hannah Peel.

Hannah Peel inhabits many different worlds. She can, blithely, be described as a singer-songwriter, known for stripped back renditions of 80s pop songs, accompanying herself with a hand-turned music box. But then she's also composed an epic concept album for brass band and electronics and provided the music for a theatrical re-imagining of Graham Greene's Brighton Rock, as well as being a session musician as a singer, violinist, trombonist, keyboard player and arranger.

Her personal life - like her professional activities - traverses different worlds, too. Her childhood was divided between Northern Ireland, where she was born and to which she returns often, and Yorkshire, where she grew up in the brass band tradition.

Now, she's a synthesiser convert and calls her studio The Lab. Yet, in all her music-making, her voice carries the legacy of a family steeped in the culture of singing.

Presented and produced by Alan Hall
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4
(Photo credit: Adam Patterson).

Peter Gibbs and the team are at the Sir Harold Hillier Gardens in Hampshire. Bob Flowerdew, Matt Biggs and Anne Swithinbank answer questions from the GQT inbox, postbag and from social media.

As the panellists take a tour around the gardens, they are joined by botanist Barry Clarke to answer questions on Brussel Sprouts, containing Lily-of-the-Valley in a rockery, and good garden uses for leftover wool.

They also help listeners with issues such as getting a Swiss Cheese plant to fruit, how to encouraging an Edgeworthia to get going, and moving a small oak tree.

A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4.

Fi Glover introduces conversations between female friends who face changes as one has a child or moves away, and men whose friendship grew out of a training relationship 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.

by Jules Verne, dramatised by Gregory Evans.

Three very different people escape the American Civil war by stealing a balloon - which crashes near a deserted island. But perhaps it is not quite as deserted as they think it is...

Directed by Marc Beeby.

Neel Mukherjee talks about his Man Booker Prize nominated book The Lives of Others, which explores the way an Indian family's history is disrupted when one member becomes involved in extremist political activism.

The programme was recorded in the library at Styal Prison, Cheshire, with a reading group of women prisoners, and with the support of the National Literacy Trust and the Books Unlocked reading scheme.

The Lives of Others is set in Calcutta and the ricefields on the edge of the jungle in the west of West Bengal. It takes place in the second half of the 1960s and centres on the large and relatively wealthy Ghosh family, led by a patriarch and matriarch who rule the family, from the top of a large shared house, with other relatives on lower floors depending on their social standing.

The eldest grandson, Supratik, has left home and joined the Naxalite communist rebels and is working secretly in the countryside to mobilise the peasants against the landlords. Letters from him to an unnamed correspondent form one thread of narrative. The other is an intricate account of events and relationships on the various floors of the Ghosh house. There are tragedies and comedies, deaths and births, disasters and feasts and a mystery involving jewellery.

The cast is huge and the reader spends time, at one point or another, with most of them. The reading group at Styal prison talk about the large cast of characters and how they drive the story, and also describe the importance of the prison library and reading in their daily lives.

Presenter : James Naughtie
Interviewed Guest : Neel Mukherjee
Producer : Dymphna Flynn

September's Bookclub choice : The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller (2011).

Roger McGough is joined by Wendy Cope, with a selection of her favourite poems from the Poetry Please archive of listeners' requests. Choices include requests for poems by A E Housman, Philip Larkin, W H Auden, Fleur Adcock, Edna St Vincent Millay and Charles Causley.

Wendy Cope has published several volumes of poetry including Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis and Serious Concerns. A remarkable talent for parody and for using humour to address grave topics, she also recites some of her new poems from her recent collection, Anecdotal Evidence (Faber 2018).

Producer: Sarah Addezio.

Could abortion be banned in the United States? Since the election of President Trump, and particularly since with his nomination of a second Supreme Court Justice, the question has taken on a new urgency, for both sides of America's abortion wars. Now Philippa Thomas travels to two states which encapsulate the debate - Texas and Kentucky - to explore the past, present and future of this most controversial issue.

In Texas, Philippa hears from women on why they chose to have abortions and the context of their lives; from the anti-abortion 'sidewalk counsellors' who try to persuade women seeking abortions - often just outside the doors of abortion clinics - to choose a different option; and from pastors on both sides of the issue.

In Kentucky, she visits the state's last functioning abortion clinic and is invited to a smart suburb of Louisville to see for herself one answer to the challenge often posed to anti-abortion activists about what are the alternatives.

Finally, in Washington DC, Philippa goes to the US Supreme Court to hear arguments in the latest abortion-related case. It will be the court's nine judges - with their lifetime tenure and current fine balance between abortion rights supporters and abortion opponents - who will decide the fate of abortion across the United States. And Philippa asks whether President Trump's latest appointee could tilt the balance against abortion rights.

Producer: Giles Edwards.

The latest shipping forecast.

The latest weather forecast.

The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.

We get around a bit in Pick of the Week with broadcaster Sheila McClennon...

There's peacocks in Preston - a bird which has become a byword for male beauty, and we meet the preening pick up artists of Tokyo on the hunt for a mate.

There's music that means the world to David Sedaris, and a world of music from the humming sands of the Namib desert to a musical river on the Isle of Man.

We investigate the Norwegian murder mystery that has been baffling investigators and journalists for nearly fifty years - was the woman found dead in a remote valley outside Bergen some kind of Soviet spy? There's espionage in Moscow and on the shores of Lake Geneva, and some rather gruesome medical instruments.

And, if you're after a laugh there's Jake Yapp's merciless spoof of the Listening project, some surprisingly risque comedy from the 1930's and the altogether much gentler Bunk Bed.

Freddie's nightmare continues, and Harrison is conflicted.

The third series of writer Jon Canter's version of Richard Wilson's autobiography. Will you believe any of it?

After a recent brush with death, Richard considers the legacy he will leave behind. So he ponders the best way to bequeath something to the next generation.

Produced and Directed by Clive Brill
A Brill production for BBC Radio 4.

A multi-contributor series of specially-commissioned stories with subterranean settings.

Episode 2: Out Of The Depths by Tom Connolly
Hoping to take his new relationship to the next level, Mike takes Mary and her kids to Paris on the Eurostar. A visit to the Catacombs with Mary's son is supposed to be a bonding exercise...

Tom Connolly is the producer and director of award winning short films for the BBC and Channel 4, including the critically acclaimed Dogfight. His debut novel The Spider Truces was shortlisted for the Writers' Guild of Great Britain Award and the Desmond Elliott Prize. His play The Man In The Lift was broadcast on Radio 4 in 2013.

Read by Barnaby Kay

Produced by Jeremy Osborne
A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4.

Roger Bolton asks why Today is losing listeners and hears views on the Radio 1 interview that never aired. Natalie Haynes talks about finding hilarity in antiquity.

The latest set of RAJAR radio listening figures were released this week. There was a big fall in the number of people tuning in to Radio 4's Today. We hear from disgruntled listeners about why they've stopped listening and former Editor of Today and Controller of 5Live, Roger Mosey, discusses whether the corporation should be worried.

Radio 1 caused a social media storm last week by first trailing - and then cancelling - an interview with the controversial YouTube vlogger Logan Paul. The online star had been invited for an interview with Charlie Sloth despite making headlines earlier this year when he made a video that many felt made light of suicide. Listeners explain why they were angry about the interview and respond to Radio 1's explanation for cancelling it.

Natalie Haynes Stands up for the Classics is perhaps the model of an unlikely hit - a self-described ex-comedian looking for humorous ways to explore the lives of figures from ancient history. Feedback listeners seem to love it, so Natalie joins Roger Bolton to answer their questions and reveal the origin of her obsession with Classics.

Producer: Will Yates
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4.

Pictured: Mary Ellis

Matthew Bannister on

Mary Ellis - a leading pilot for the Air Transport Auxiliary who risked her life to deliver fighters and bombers during the war.

Shinobu Hashimoto, the screenwriter who teamed up with the director Akira Kurosawa to make great classics of Japanese cinema, including the Seven Samurai and Rashomon.

Dr William McBride, the Australian obstetrician who raised the alarm about the terrible side effects of the drug Thalidomide.

Lincoln Brower who devoted his life to the study and protection of the Monarch butterfly.

Mahendra Kaul, the pioneering Indian TV and radio broadcaster who was the face of the BBC's Asian Programmes Unit for 20 years.

Archive clips from: 'Spitfire Women', BBC Four 18/09/2010; 'Supersense', BBC TV 23/01/1989; Sonia Deol, Asian Network 27/12/2011; 'Ten Million Wings', Radio 4 16/03/2004.

As K-pop and K-drama go global, what are the secrets of their success?

The Korean Wave - South Korea's pop culture exports of music and TV dramas - has already swept across much of Asia, including the giant markets of China and Japan, bringing billions of pounds into the country's economy every year. Now, with boy band BTS topping the US album charts, and hit dramas reaching streaming services around the world, the wave appears to be growing into a tsunami. How did this medium-sized Asian nation end up as the global entertainment industry's biggest overachiever? Simon Maybin explores what puts the pop into Korean pop culture.

Producer: John Murphy.

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

James Wilby remembers starring in Maurice, a story of the forbidden love between two men amid the stifling conformity of Edwardian England. As James Ivory's film adaption of EM Forster's novel returns to cinemas this summer Wilby looks back on filming alongside Hugh Grant and how the film was overlooked in Britain in in 1987.

Rosamund Pike and director Patrick Kennedy talk about the art of phoning it in. From their short film, The Human Voice, which consists entirely of Rosamund on the phone for 18 minutes to some of cinema's must iconic on the phone scenes.

Presenter: Antonia Quirke
Producer: Kate Bullivant.

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

A dream-like journey, a man trying to prove he hasn't died and a reflection on a eulogy. Josie Long presents documentaries where words linger long after they're uttered.

Featuring the voices of the oral historian Studs Terkel, recorded a couple of years before he passed away, and the writer Julia Cooper, finding the words she wished she could offer her younger self.

A Taxi Stops
Produced by Rikke Houd

Afterwords
Featuring Jeremy Lee Bass
Produced by Andrea Rangecroft

Eulogy
Featuring Julia Cooper
Produced by Veronica Simmonds

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

The latest shipping forecast.

The latest shipping forecast.

The latest news from BBC Radio 4.

A reading and a reflection to start the day, with the Rev Dr Craig Gardiner, a tutor at South Wales Baptist College.

The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.

The latest weather forecast for farmers.

Tweet of the Day is the voice of birds and our relationship with them, from around the world.

Chris Packham presents the brown thrasher, usually seen in North America. Brown thrashers are related to mockingbirds which breed across most of eastern and central North America. They're famous for their vast repertoire which can include over 1000 song types. They spend much of their time skulking in dense shrubs at woodland edges and in parks and gardens. They're russet on top, white below and heavily streaked like a large thrush but with much longer tails and stout curved bills. Their name comes from the noisy thrashing sound they make as they search the leaf litter for food. Normally, brown thrashers are short distance migrants within North America but in 1966, in November of that year, in Dorset, birdwatchers almost dropped their binoculars in disbelief when they heard the call of a brown thrasher coming from a coastal thicket. It remained here until February 1967 and is the only British record.

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

Are we bringing up children creative enough for the future they face?

The World Economic Forum forecasts that by 2020 creativity will be in the top 3 most important skills for future jobs. Many children going into school now will grow up to do a job that doesn't yet exist; faced with the challenges of AI, automation, green issues and an ageing population, creativity and imagination will be vital.

To find out where creativity comes from, how best we can nurture it and test the creative health of the nation, Mariella is joined by Vincent Walsh, Professor of Human Brain Research at University College London, Bernadette Duffy, early years consultant, John Lane, Vice Chancellor of Norwich University of the Arts and Innovation Manager Nick Skillicorn.

Producer: Sarah Bowen.

The story of a man's search for the truth about his family's past

The last time Hesseline - known as Lien - saw her parents was in The Hague as she was collected at the door by a stranger and taken to a city far away to be hidden from the Nazis. She was raised by her foster family as one of their own but, some years after the war, she became estranged from the family who took her in. What was her side of the story? Bart van Es - a grandson of the couple who looked after Lien - was determined to find out.

Lien was now in her 80s and living in Amsterdam. Reluctantly, she agreed to meet him and eventually they struck up a remarkable friendship. The Cut Out Girl combines a powerful recreation of Lien's intensely harrowing childhood story with the wider picture of life in Holland under the Nazi occupation.

In the first episode, Bart goes to Amsterdam to meet Lien and ask if she might be willing to tell him her story.

Written by Bart Van Es
Read by Daniel Weyman
Abridged by Isobel Creed and Lizzie Davies
Produced by Lizzie Davies
A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4.

Gemma Cairney, Gia Milinovich and Michelle Dewberry go to Manchester (the singles capital of the UK) to try to figure out the secret to love.

Our Woman's Lab team test ideas and find solutions for an important issue affecting women, in the real world. This time their mission is: Dating.

Each presenter is paired each presenter up with a single Mancunian and together they have 36 hours to discover new ways of meeting people, dating and hopefully finding love. We find out what the experts make of their ideas and finally test them out on the streets of Manchester. We chose Manchester because, according to ONS figures, it has more single people than anywhere else in the UK, so where better to find single women who might want to join in the challenge?

Fleur, a 29 year old business development executive describes herself as queer and loves writing poetry. She's never had a long term relationship. Shelly is a 44-year-old entrepreneur who's looking for an adventurous younger man who doesn't want children. And Sarah is 67 and divorced with two grown-up children, she's looking for a Jewish partner and hates dating apps.

Presenter: Gemma Cairney
Presenter: Michelle Dewberry
Presenter: Gia Milinovich
Producer: Deborah Coughlin.

This series sees Maya sink into the world of prostitution and narcotics.
It's 1945 in San Francisco. Aged 17, and a single mother, Maya falls in love.

Dramatized by Patricia Cumper
Produced & Directed by Pauline Harris

Further info: BBC Radio 4 are broadcasting in six weekly intervals six dramatisations of poet, essayist, writer and activist Maya Angelou's six autobiographies. The books that make up the life and times of Maya Angelou are some of the best, most beautiful and haunting pieces of autobiography written . They run the gamut from life affirming to tragedy and back again with a tone that is a joyous, direct and searingly honest, and are an extraordinary portrait of 20th century black America.

Cast info:
Sope Dirisu has played many classical roles including Coriolanus and Pericles for the Royal Shakespeare Company. Paapa Essiedu has won several awards for his outstanding performance as Hamlet, his other classical roles include Pericles, Edmund in King Lear, and Romeo in Romeo and Juliet for the RSC. He had a leading role, Nate - Kiri's father in C4's Kiri. Adjoa Andoh has many stage, tv and film credits including series regular in Casualty for three years.

TV credits include 2017, Television, Donna Kroll, Acceptable Risk, Saffron Pictures/Facet4 for RTE, Kenny Glenaan
Pippa Bennett-Warner - 2016, Television, Margaret, Liar, Two Brothers Pictures for ITV/AMC, James Strong
2015, Television, Prosecution, Line of Duty, World Productions for BBC2, Michael Keillor
2015, Television, Alicia Whitechurch, New Tricks, Headstrong Pictures for BBC1, Daikin Marsh.

Giles Fraser investigates the movement founded ten years ago by a group of young philosophers in Oxford, who want to make us target the time and money we give to charity most effectively.

Much of what they say feels like common sense - they use data to analyse where the needs are greatest in the world and more data to assess which charities address those needs most effectively. They also think hard about how we can best use our time to help others - whether we have just a few spare hours to volunteer, or whether we're contemplating which career path to follow.

The Effective Altruism movement have come up with some eye-catchingly counter-intuitive answers for doing the most good - become a banker rather than a doctor, don't give to disaster relief appeals, do buy clothes produced in sweatshops.

Giles discovers that, if you're going to be an Effective Altruist, you have to toughen up and not allow sentiment to get in the way - you can't prioritise causes close to your family or communities and your heart.

So can people really be persuaded to give to charity by appealing to their heads rather than their hearts? How accurate is the data that Effective Altruists base their decisions on? And crucially, what does the way we give to others tell us about what it is to be human?

Giles talks to philosophers John Gray and Peter Singer, to developmental economist Natalie Quinn, and to Bridget Angear, the woman behind Comic Relief's marketing campaign.

Produced by Jane Greenwood
A Loftus production for BBC Radio 4.

By Ed Harris

A national initiative to boost morale causes havoc in the personnel team, as Dot and the gals turn on each other in Ed Harris' witty, wartime comedy.

Director . . . . . Sasha Yevtushenko.

The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.

On this day in 1918, the Workers Union protested the withdrawal of key men from farms for Army service, while in Seale Hayne, Daniel prepares to join the harvest.

Written by Sarah Daniels
Directed by Jessica Dromgoole.

The Government plans for one in five of us to be using district heating in just over ten years' time.
By 2030 eight million households are expected to be using it compared to half a million at the moment.
District heating is meant to be cheaper and greener by using one big boiler joined to lots of homes.
But some people say they're stuck with expensive energy supplies with no chance to switch and nowhere to go to complain.
The Competition and Markets Authority looked into it and wants news laws to regulate district heating before it gets any bigger.
Our reporter, Melanie Abbott, visits an estate in London, where district heating users are desperate to disconnect.
We also speak to Bindi Patel, Head of the Heat Trust, about steps to regulate this growing industry.

We look at the hazards of buying and selling horses online. We hear how it's common practice to buy a horse without seeing it first.
We also talk to people who say they've bought horses via Facebook that either haven't arrived or been delivered in poor health.
We ask Action Fraud if there's anything people can do if they find themselves caught up in a horse transaction that goes wrong.

There's been a big rise in the number of people choosing to extend their properties rather than moving house.
High prices, stamp duty, and a host of other fees have made extensions a more attractive option.
An additional bedroom can increase the value of your home by more than 11 per cent and a larger kitchen by around five per cent.
A Government initiative to double the size of an extension that can be built without planning permission seems to be having a significant impact.
Our reporter Bob Walker finds out more about the scheme.

Presenter: Winifred Robinson
Producer: Tara Holmes.

The latest weather forecast.

Analysis of news and current affairs.

Travis Elborough charts the rise and fall of the antique, examining how, ultimately, the present always dictates which bits of yesteryear we deem worthy of collecting.
In the first episode, he looks back at the origins of the antiques trade and traces how it developed in Britain during the nineteenth and early twentieth century. He discovers the fashion for buying suits of armour and unearths the significance of "Wardour Street English".
Producer: Sheila Cook

Producer: Sheila Cook.

Shirley is single and self employed. She owns a struggling Afro-centric bookstore in Seattle. It's been flooded several times but she can't afford flood insurance because she has to pay so much in health insurance. It's a monumental task to navigate the small print of her Care Inc health policy and Shirley is desperate because she has been denied the treatment that her medical specialist insists she needs. Why? According to Care Inc her policy is too basic. Her Platinum policy isn't as comprehensive as the Gold policy!

In the call centre at the health insurance company, employees face a daily barrage of callers who are frustrated, furious and fearful - callers who don't understand why they can't get the drugs their doctors order or why their claim is denied. To make matters worse for everyone, the staff at Care Inc now face an unprecedented merger with a large pharmaceutical company.

Nina is a call operator. It's a job she is overqualified for, but she and her fiancé are buying a house and the job pays well. When she sees an opportunity to help a needy customer, she risks her job and breaks the rules.

Cast:
Nina..................Flor De Liz Perez
Shirley..............Patrice Flemings
Susan................Kelley Rae O' Donnell
Marcus.............Joshua Boone
Brian.................Pete McElligott

Other parts played by :
Maria Diez
Emily Perkins
Lauren B McConnell
Moti Margolin

Written by Eric Micha Holmes

Medical Advisor - Dr Stephen Adler
Recorded by Louis Mitchell in Brooklyn, New York
Mixed by Jon Calver in London

Produced by Judith Kampfner
A Corporation for Independent Media production for BBC Radio 4.

(1/13)
The quest for the 32nd BBC Counterpoint champion gets under way, as Paul Gambaccini welcomes the first three competitors of the 2018 season. One of them will win a place in the semi-finals and stands a chance of going all the way to the title. To do so they'll have to prove the breadth of their musical knowledge and field Paul's questions on everything from opera to R&B.

The quiz includes the fiendish special subject round, where the competitors choose a musical topic on which to answer questions without having had any chance to prepare.

Taking part in the first contest of the series are:

Trevor Collins, a retired textile designer from London
Michael Dale, an events organiser and festival director living in Glasgow
Emma Raczkowski, a marketing manager from London.

Producer: Paul Bajoria.

Join Natalie Haynes and guests for half an hour of comedy and the Classics from the BBC Radio Theatre in London.

Natalie is a recovering comedian who is a little bit obsessive about Ancient Greece and Rome. Each week she takes a different figure from the Ancient World and tells their story through a mix of stand-up comedy and conversation.

Today she stands up in the name of Horace, the Roman poet who made friends of his enemies through the beauty of his writing, whom we all still quote today, often without realising. You know that bit of Latin in the Wilfred Owen poem? That's Horace. The son of a freedman, Horace was a master at avoiding political controversy. He was no looker, being by his own account short and fat, but he definitely had a racy side (think mirrors on the ceiling).

A town mouse, a country mouse, and a lot of gossip from a thousand years ago.

With special guests novelist and poet Ben Okri and classicist Professor Llewelyn Morgan.
Producer...Mary Ward-Lowery.

The Human Voice

Brian Cox and Robin Ince are joined by comedian and beatboxer Beardyman, acoustic engineer Prof Trevor Cox and neuroscientist Prof Sophie Scott to explore the amazing capabilities of the human voice. They chat about chatting, vocalise about voices and explore the extraordinary and unique way the human voice works from opera singing to laughter, and discovery why our voice has been so key to our success and survival as a species.

Producer: Alexandra Feachem.

Eddie Mair with interviews, context and analysis.

The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.

Year 51 and Series 82 of the nationally treasured panel game. In this first episode of the new series, Nicholas Parsons introduces four fine players of the game, Paul Merton, Gyles Brandreth, Tony Hawks and Zoe Lyons.

What exactly took Gyles to Corsica and why is everyone so wound up about George V?

Hayley Sterling blows the whistle.
Producer: Richard Morris
A BBC Studios Production.

Kate is on the attack, and Rex faces some awkward questions.

Arts news, interviews and reviews.

Jane Rogoyska meets Polish people who were exiled to Siberia by Stalin as children, early in the Second World War.

The changing winds of war took them from Siberia and Kazakhstan to Uzbekistan, Persia (now Iran) and onto India or Africa - then to Britain. They thought that Britain was another stopping point on their odyssey home to Eastern Poland but they and their descendants are still here.

A Pennine production for BBC Radio 4.

The conviction of a prominent expert in Norway's troubled child protection system - for downloading images of child sex abuse - has put the organisation under scrutiny once again. In April this year a child psychiatrist was convicted of downloading thousands of the images on his computer. Up until his arrest he played a key role in decisions about whether children should be separated from their parents for their own good. But there has been no public discussion in Norway about the implications of his conviction, no outrage in the newspapers, no plans to review cases he was involved in - even though the country's child protection agency, Barnevernet, has been much criticised in recent years for removing children from their families without justification. In April 2016 Tim Whewell reported on the story for Crossing Continents after Barnevernet attracted an international storm of protest over its child protection policies. Tim now returns to Norway to report on this extraordinary twist in the story and to find out why child protection in one of the world's wealthiest countries appears to be in crisis.
Produced and Reported by Tim Whewell.

(Image: A row of family shoes. Credit: BBC)

Brett Westwood looks at the history of a bird which has become a byword for male beauty. It's all about the tail: inspiration for everyone from Darwin to Oscar Wilde, from poets to peacocking pop stars.

In Lancashire, Brett walks among peacocks of every shade and type, and with colour scientist Pete Vukusic explores the secrets of the bird's shimmering, iridescent appeal. Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, a natty dresser himself, explains the birds influence on pioneering artist Aubrey Beardsley, and Maan Barua reveals the enduring influence of the bird in its native India - traded as a gift for centuries, and elected as a national symbol following independence.

In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.

A grieving father sets out in the snow to bring home his son.

Richard Orr reads David Park's beautiful story of a father coming to terms with the loss of a son.

Tom's son Luke is ill and, because of snowstorms, all flights are cancelled. Armed with supplies, his camera and a playlist, he must set out to drive from Belfast to Sunderland to bring him home.

Writer: David Park
Abridger: Robin Brooks
Reader: Richard Orr
Producer: Natalie Steed.

by Jon Canter

Comedy as James Boswell becomes a time travelling biographer doing for other celebrities what he did for Dr Johnson. Today he meets Muhammad Ali, banned from boxing and in the wilderness can Boswell help him out of it and make The Greatest - Greatester.

On 22nd March 2017, 25 year old Will Dyson was walking along Westminster Bridge, when a vehicle mounted the pavement and hit him from behind. The Terror Attack left 5 people dead and more than 50 injured. Will was one of the injured. In the lead up to the year anniversary, Will faces up to his changing views of the incident.

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

The latest shipping forecast.

The latest shipping forecast.

The latest news from BBC Radio 4.

A reading and a reflection to start the day, with the Rev Dr Craig Gardiner, a tutor at South Wales Baptist College.

The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs.

Bill Oddie presents the Egyptian goose. Although Egyptian geese are common throughout most of sub-Saharan Africa and in Egypt, they are now officially a British bird. These striking birds attracted the attention of wildfowl collectors and the first geese were brought to the UK in the 17th century. By the 1960's it became obvious that the geese were breeding in the wild in East Anglia and since then they've spread in south and eastern England.

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

In this series, the historian Peter Hennessy asks senior politicians to reflect on their life and times. Each week, he invites his guest to explore their early formative influences, their experiences and their impressions of people they've known.

In this programme, Peter Hennessy's guest is Sayeeda Warsi (Baroness Warsi), a lawyer, politician and the first Muslim to sit in the Cabinet. She was born and grew up in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire. After studying at Leeds University, she trained as a lawyer and became a solicitor in Dewsbury.

She discusses how her life was changed by the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001. She sold her legal practice and went to Pakistan, but after nine months decided that she should return to Britain and face the challenges in her life. Her politics had been influenced by her parents, especially her father's work ethic although he voted Labour. She stood for the Conservatives in Dewsbury in 2005. Although she didn't win, she was appointed vice-chairman of the Conservative Party. Two years later, David Cameron, the then Conservative Leader, appointed her Shadow Minister for Social Cohesion and she became a member of the House of Lords. In 2009, she came to national prominence by appearing on BBC One's Question Time, when Nick Griffin, the BNP Leader took part.

After the 2010 election, David Cameron appointed her to the Cabinet as Minister without Portfolio and also made her Conservative Party co-chairman. Two years later, she was appointed Senior Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and also Minister of State for Faith and Communities. However, she resigned in 2014 over the Government's policy on the Israel-Gaza conflict. She is the author of 'The Enemy Within: a Tale of Muslim Britain'.

Producer: Rob Shepherd.

The story of a man's search for the truth about his family's past

The last time Hesseline - known as Lien - saw her parents was in The Hague as she was collected at the door by a stranger and taken to a city far away to be hidden from the Nazis. She was raised by her foster family as one of their own but, some years after the war, she became estranged from the family who took her in. What was her side of the story? Bart van Es - a grandson of the couple who looked after Lien - was determined to find out.

Lien was now in her 80s and living in Amsterdam. Reluctantly, she agreed to meet him and eventually they struck up a remarkable friendship. The Cut Out Girl combines a powerful recreation of Lien's intensely harrowing childhood story with the wider picture of life in Holland under the Nazi occupation.

In the second episode, Bart continues his research in Lien's hometown of The Hague.

Written by Bart Van Es
Read by Daniel Weyman
Abridged by Isobel Creed and Lizzie Davies
Produced by Lizzie Davies
A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4.

Programme that offers a female perspective on the world.

Poet, writer, essayist, and activist Maya Angelou's extraordinary account of Afro-American life in post-war US. Maya is 18 and a single mother. To thwart a seduction Maya proposes a business proposition and slides into the world of prostitution.

With its playful, hand-holding, pebble-juggling ways, the otter wins the cuteness contest with its eyes closed. It's no wonder such a stunningly elegant and charismatic animal has been the star of films and books and the inspiration for thousands to make pilgrimages to rivers in Devon or rings of bright water in Scotland.

But do not be deceived. As Brett Westwood discovers, this elusive wild animal is a skilled and ferocious predator and, given half a chance, he'll have your fingers off!

Writer Miriam Darlington shows Brett the paw prints on the banks of the river Dart, and describes the first time she ever saw an otter.

Anthony Phillips, once the guitarist for global pop group Genesis, now composes music for screen and, he tells us, it all started with reading and feeling compelled to make music inspired by Tarka.

Dr Elizabeth Chadwick, who manages to slit otters open for science, explains how the otter's insides are a barometer of health for our environment.

Dr Daniel Allen charts the history of otter hunting from anglers removing fish-eating vermin, to a Great British summertime sport, and the legislation that saved them.

and Olivia Morgan reads Robert Macfarlane's spell for conjuring an otter, over the watery sounds of Joanna Newsom's Divers, in an attempt to evoke the slippery land fish that inspires such awe, devotion and fear.

Producer: Ellie Richold.

At a vibrant open-air party in Mumbai, stories of young, contemporary India converge - from the rise of the nation's first global superstar DJ, to the varied lives of his young fans.

DJ Nucleya is the hottest property in Indian dance music: the breakout star whose rise marks a turning point in Indian culture. Before him, dance music (or EDM) was the preserve of the monied middle-classes. But Nucleya has ripped up the rule book: placing traditional Indian street music - ecstatic pounding tabla and dholes - at the core of his art, and attracting a legion of young, predominantly working-class fans.

Told in immersive binaural stereo, Indian Rave charts the story of a single event in the searing Mumbai heat earlier this year - a teeming aural world of stories, sensations and sheer headrush. Woven through it are the voices and stories of just some of the thousands of Indians in attendance - and the tale of the rise of a 21st century Indian musical superstar.

Producer: Steven Rajam for BBC Wales.

The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.

On this day in 1918, farmers were encouraged to apply for soldiers to help with the harvest, as thousands were given agricultural furlough, and on Halecot Farm, Effie resolves their labour problems.

Written by Sarah Daniels
Directed by Jessica Dromgoole.

Consumer phone-in.

The latest weather forecast.

Analysis of news and current affairs.

Travis Elborough charts the rise and fall of the antique, examining how, ultimately, the present always dictates which bits of yesteryear we deem worthy of collecting.
In the second episode, he continues his survey of the history of the antiques business, charting the brisk trade in artefacts between Britain and America in the 1920s and 1930s. He singles out the newspaper magnate, William Randolph Hearst, as an extreme example of an avid collector of all things antique, including whole buildings.
Interviewees include antiques expert, John Bly, historian Dr Eleanor Quince, of the University of Southampton, and Victoria Kastner, author of Hearst Castle: The Biography of a Country House and State Historian for the San Luis Obispo Coast District, California State Parks.
Producer: Sheila Cook.

When he was a teenager, Paul dreamed of heading out on the road with a guitar and head full of songs. But it was far too scary, so he got a proper job instead. Now, thirty years on, he's picked up his guitar again and is determined to live the dream.

Along the way, he takes a side trip back in time through a 1970s childhood. He relives the agony and ecstasy of learning the guitar and doing gigs in old people's homes and youth clubs, as well as confronting the truth about what made it all fall apart.

Then he strides out onto a stage, in front of 500 people, and prepares to sing live for the first time in more than three decades.

Paul Dodgson is a writer and composer. He has previously written two acclaimed autobiographical dramas for BBC Radio 4 (You Drive Me Crazy and Home).

The mandolin was played by Fred Gregory Davies.
The Gurt Lush Choir sang Moon River, by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer, arranged by Wendy Sergeant.

Sound by David Thomas

Produced and directed by Kate McAll
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.

John Wilson continues with his new series in which he talks to leading performers and songwriters about 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 puts the questions. Both editions feature exclusive live performances.

Programme 2 (B-side). Having discussed the making of "Tigerlily", her debut solo album made after leaving 10,000 Maniacs (in the A-side of the programme, and available online), Natalie Merchant responds to questions from the audience and performs live versions of some to the tracks from the album.

Complete versions of the songs performed in this programme (and others) can be heard on the 'Mastertapes' pages on the Radio 4 website, where the programmes can also be downloaded and other musical goodies accessed.

Producer: Paul Kobrak.

Lauren Laverne meets three people who started life as bankers, part of the graduate intake for a leading merchant bank back in 1987 and discovers where they ended up.

In October 1987 Edward Heckles; Gill Meekison and Richard Symes started work at Kleinwort Benson, a leading merchant bank, as part of its graduate trainee scheme.

Back then they enjoyed a high octane working environment and thrived in the hothouse of high finance. Today one of them is a teacher; one a health campaigner and the third has spent their entire career at the same bank.

In this programme they reminisce about the heady days of the City in the 1980s and ruminate on how their lives unfolded. Have their personal ups and downs left them philosophical and rueful or happy and fulfilled?

Producer: Paula McGinley
Editor: Eleanor Garland.

"We are ready to take the Pole in any kind of weather on offer," wrote the Norwegian Roald Amundsen in December 1911. Born in 1872, Amundsen is part of a group of men - including the playwright Henrik Ibsen and the explorer Fridjtof Nansen - who gave shape to Norwegian identity just as the country broke free from Sweden and achieved independence. He is also remembered as the man who beat the British explorer Scott to the South Pole. The different cultures of their two countries come under scrutiny in this episode.
The nominator is Erica Wagner, former literary editor of The Times and a writer who knows Norway well.
There are two experts - Pieter van de Merwe from the National Maritime Museum; and Roland Huntford, whose book on Scott and Amundsen caused an angry fuss when first published in 1979.

The producer in Bristol is Miles Warde.

Eddie Mair with interviews, context and analysis.

The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.

Jake Yapp applies his sharp satirical eye to the modern media, exploring its strengths, weaknesses and idiosyncrasies through stand-up, sketch and music.

Episode 3 - Columnists

Jake turns his focus to the columns, exploring their progression, value and most common tricks and tropes.

Written, performed and composed by Jake Yapp
Starring George Fouracres and Emily Lloyd-Saini
Additional material by Robin Morgan
Produced by Joe Nunnery
A BBC Studios Production.

Susan's attitude proves surprising, and history repeats itself for Roy.

Arts news, interviews and reviews.

Radio 4 documentary.

Paola Peretti's debut novel The Distance Between Me and the Cherry Tree is based on her own struggle with sight loss. The work is coloured by this impending life-altering change in perspective - and literary perspective is very much what this episode is about. We talk to Paola about how her diagnosis affects her work, and to the crime novelist Mark Hardie about how he addresses the knotty, detailed references of the crime fiction genre having lost his sight more than a decade ago. And the biographer Paddy Briggs joins the conversation, to talk about his perspective on visual impairment. Paddy is not visually impaired - but the subject of his latest work is. He's written a book about the racehorse owner and pensions expert Alan Pickering - Look Where You're Going. So how does Paddy address sight as a subject - and how does he avoid the pitfalls of talking about a disability he doesn't have?
Presented by Peter White
Produced by Kevin Core.

Dr Mark Porter presents a series that aims to demystify perplexing health issues.

In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.

Richard Orr continues David Park's haunting story of a grieving father confronting his loss.

As Tom drives on through the snow he remembers how he fell in love with his wife Lorna and an encounter with her violent ex-boyfriend.

Writer: David Park
Abridger: Robin Brooks
Reader: Richard Orr
Producer: Natalie Steed.

Mary is 86 and facing an eye test to decide if she can continue to drive. Will the test put an end to her 65 year driving career - or can she carry on?

She's been diagnosed with several eye conditions including glaucoma, cataracts and macula degeneration, and now she faces the field of vision test - the test which will decide whether she's fit to continue to drive.

She lives in rural Somerset, where public transport is scarce. For 40 years she had the same Morris Traveller and now she drives a Fiat. Although she says, "a car is only necessary in that it has four wheels. And a roof is quite useful." If she has to stop driving, she'll have to depend on her daughter - this is not what she wants. "It's absolutely typical of my age - we fear that if we once give way, the flood gates will open, and we will become dependent."

This is more than a story about driving - it's about independence and the possible loss of it. But is there something else in Mary's life that could pose a greater threat to her driving than any eye test?

Produced in Bristol by Polly Weston.

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

The latest shipping forecast.

The latest shipping forecast.

The latest news from BBC Radio 4.

A reading and a reflection to start the day, with the Rev Dr Craig Gardiner, a tutor at South Wales Baptist College.

The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.

Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about the British birds inspired by their calls and songs.

Michaela Strachan presents the common redstart. Redstarts are summer visitors from sub-Saharan Africa. The males are very handsome birds, robin-sized, but with a black mask, white forehead and an orange tail. John Buxton gave us a fascinating insight into their lives when, as a prisoner of war in Germany, he made a study of them.

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

'A Life's Work' is a new series in which Paddy O'Connell brings together three people, from three different generations, who have all dedicated their lives to the same profession.

This week, the guests are going to be talking about matters of life and death although the conversations will actually be more about death as all three are funeral directors.

The funeral business has seen big changes over the last two decades which have been fuelled by contemporary attitudes to death and a demand for new ways of saying goodbye to our loved ones.

So, what do funeral directors think of the way in which their profession has evolved in recent years and how have they themselves been a part of that evolution?

Contributors:

David Holmes has been in the funeral business since the age of 17 (40 years ago) and founded his own company in 1989. He describes Holmes and Family as being very definitely at the 'traditional' end of the business.

Jenny Gilbert grew up in the family business (AJ Adkinson & Son, founded 1929) and says that she provides "funerals with a modern twist" as well as traditional funerals. In 2015, she was in charge of the reburial of Richard III in Leicester Cathedral.

Louise Winter's first experience of death was only five years ago at her grandfather's funeral (when she was 26). At the time she thought that there must be a better way of doing funerals so she became an 'alternative' funeral director and founded her own funeral company - Poetic Endings". Louise is a former editor of The Good Funeral Guide.

Producer: Helen Lee.

David Cannadine examines the careers of British Prime Ministers through their props of power.

In producing his seventeen novels, Benjamin Disraeli was unusual among British Prime Ministers in that he created his own props. Indeed, his duel public persona as author and politician brought him public acclaim and prominence and transformed him into one of the first ever media celebrities. But this turned out to be a very high-risk strategy. Disraeli's novels prompted a great deal of distrust among both his political opponents and those within the Conservative party, and they were used to portray him as an opportunist who was not to be trusted.

David Cannadine visits Hughenden Manor in Buckinghamshire, Disraeli's former home and the place where he wrote his most famous novels, to explore how this Prime Minister merged fact and fiction in his life and in his work.

Readings by Ewan Bailey and Will Huggins

Series Producer: Melissa FitzGerald
Series Researcher: Martin Spychal

A Blakeway production for BBC Radio 4.

The story of a man's search for the truth about his family's past

The last time Hesseline - known as Lien - saw her parents was in The Hague as she was collected at the door by a stranger and taken to a city far away to be hidden from the Nazis. She was raised by her foster family as one of their own but, some years after the war, she became estranged from the family who took her in. What was her side of the story? Bart van Es - a grandson of the couple who looked after Lien - was determined to find out.

Lien was now in her 80s and living in Amsterdam. Reluctantly, she agreed to meet him and eventually they struck up a remarkable friendship. The Cut Out Girl combines a powerful recreation of Lien's intensely harrowing childhood story with the wider picture of life in Holland under the Nazi occupation.

In the third extract, Lien has to move to a new family in search of safety.

Written by Bart Van Es
Read by Daniel Weyman
Abridged by Isobel Creed and Lizzie Davies
Produced by Lizzie Davies
A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4.

Programme that offers a female perspective on the world.

Maya is struggling to find a way forward, and has returned to her Grandmother in Arkansas.

Dramatized by Patricia Cumper
Produced and directed by Pauline Harris.

The mother of a twin with special needs relies on her friend for a sense of perspective and to retain her sense of humour. Fi Glover presents another conversation in the series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.

Producer: Marya Burgess.

All grandkids make mistakes, but only Jack and Millie's do it quite so loudly - and on video.

The annual Summer show at the Royal Academy and a record-breaking sauna set the scene for a philosophical disquisition on the perils of parenting and the lure of lycra.

So Millie's son Melvin has given her a new tablet with a voice recorder?

So suddenly Jack and Millie have decided to record everything that happens to them? And for this, we should be grateful?

Well Yes! Because this is a new comedy show written by Jeremy Front (writer of the Charles Paris mysteries for Radio 4) and starring Jeremy Front and Rebecca Front as Jack and Millie Lemman, an older couple who are fully engaged with contemporary life while being at war with the absurdities of the modern world.

Written by Jeremy Front
Produced by David Tyler

A Pozzitive production for BBC Radio 4.

The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.

On this day in 1918, the Allied forces attacked the German army at Amiens, in the third battle of Picardy, and in Devon, Adeline launches a gentle offensive.

Written by Sarah Daniels
Directed by Jessica Dromgoole.

Consumer affairs programme.

The latest weather forecast.

Analysis of news and current affairs.

Travis Elborough charts the rise and fall of the antique, examining how, ultimately, the present always dictates which bits of yesteryear we deem worthy of collecting.
In episode three, his chronological survey of the antiques trade reaches the post-war era of the swinging sixties when antiques became fashionable with pop stars, and nostalgia for Victoriana co-existed with the modernising trends epitomised by the 1951 Festival of Britain.
Producer: Sheila Cook.

By Jonathan Ruffle

Mickey Bliss's bold deception plan is put into action and could change the course of the war, but on the personal front his past catches up with him.

Meticulously based on unit war diaries and eye-witness accounts, each episode of Tommies traces one real day at war, exactly 100 years ago, telling untold stories about the war in Gaza, Gallipoli, Serbia, Mesopotamia, Russia, Macedonia, Italy, Turkmenistan and Tanzania, as well as on the Western Front.

And through it all we've followed the fortunes of Mickey Bliss and his fellow signallers, from the Lahore Division of the British Indian Army. Like their comrades they are cogs in an immense machine, one which connects situations across the whole theatre of war, over four long years.

Series created by Jonathan Ruffle
Producers: Jonquil Panting, David Hunter, Jonathan Ruffle
Director: David Hunter.

Josie Long presents short documentaries about creating something out of nothing, fresh starts and the beginning of the end.

From a band that existed before they'd ever met each other to the new beginnings which bring sweet, if painful, endings in a relationship between a mother and daughter.

The Dandelion Adventure
Produced by Geoff Bird

Good Year for the Roses
Produced by Sophie Townsend

Meteor Shower
Produced by Nanna Hauge Kristensen

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

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.

Stand-up comic Josh comes to terms with the impending birth of his first child.

In the fifth episode, Josh and his wife Monique employ handyman Dean to get the flat ready for the baby. However Josh soon discovers that Dean holds some very challenging opinions, especially when it comes to Jews.

Written by Josh Howie.

Produced by Ashley Blaker
A Black Hat production for BBC Radio 4.

Shula's birthday ends in fireworks, and Toby is set an impossible challenge.

Arts news, interviews and reviews.

Anne McElvoy returns with the series that asks figures from opposing sides of a political issue to listen to each other, and explore the roots of each other's beliefs, with the help of conflict resolution specialist Gabrielle Rifkind.

In this edition, Anne brings together Joanna Williams, Associate Editor of Spiked, and Sophie Walker, leader of the Women's Equality Party, to debate the question: 'Is 'Victim Culture' an Obstacle to Justice?'

Producer: Phil Tinline.

Manwar Ali tells Dominic Lawson why he changed from violent Islamist fighter pursuing global jihad, to become a leading campaigner in Britain against violence and extremism.

Manwar Ali fought in many wars around the globe to achieve the victory of radical Islam. He backed armed conflict to right what he saw as fundamental injustice done to him and fellow Muslims. He fought in Afghanistan, Kashmir and Burma, and helped recruit and radicalise hundreds of others for this cause. But witnessing specific horrors on the battlefield led him to change his mind about jihad. He became convinced that the very means he had embraced to liberate his people were actually destroying individuals and their community. He tells his story of how he realised that violence would not serve the aims he sought, and how he overcame suspicion and intimidation from within his own community to campaign for anti-radicalisation measures against the extremists he sees as destroying Muslim communities around the globe.

Producer: Jonathan Brunert.

Putting sodium into water is one of the most memorable experiments from school chemistry lessons. It's this ability to react ferociously with water which is the starting point for sodium's key role in powering all of biology. Simply, without sodium we wouldn't exist. It helps provide the electricity that allows us to move, breathe, think. Sodium could help with pain. Recent discoveries of families who feel searing pain with mild warmth, or those who feel no pain at all even in childbirth has opened up new avenues in pain research. Their rare genetic mutations change the way sodium works in their body and so neuroscientists understanding these are developing drugs that could give rise to a much needed new generation of pain killers.