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.
Lindsey Hilsum's powerful new biography of the fearless journalist who shone a light on ordinary people enduring conflict. Today, the hard road to recovery, and reporting the Syrian conflict. Juliet Aubrey reads.
Abridged by Penny Leicester
Produced by Elizabeth Allard
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping
The latest shipping forecast
National and international news from BBC Radio 4
A short reflection and prayer with Jonathan Rea
iPM visits a pre-term pregnancy clinic at St.Thomas' Hospital which tries to prevent miscarriages and help mothers carry to term.
A few weeks ago we spoke to a listener who had decided not to try again for a baby after miscarrying. A trainee doctor heard this and invited us to the clinic which might be able to help.
iPM starts with your story. Let us know yours on iPM@bbc.co.uk
Presented by Luke Jones
Produced by Frankie Tobi
The latest news headlines. Including the weather and a look at the papers.
Helen Mark visits the 'thankful' village of Herodsfoot in Cornwall. At its centre is a war memorial that looks like any other, to the extent that most people in the village had no idea that it was not a memorial to the fallen. All thirteen of those who served in World Ward One returned alive. The story of the men of Herodsfoot is unique in Cornwall and has been made into a community play to mark the centenary. But there's another reason why the people of the village were safe from the perils of the frontline, by an accident of the Cornish landscape.
Producer...Mary Ward-Lowery
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside
The latest weather forecast.
News headlines and sport.
Michael Palin talks with Rev. Richard Coles and Aasmah Mir about travelling in the footsteps of a ship, Erebus, that went missing in the late 1840s and was only re-discovered in 2014. He also discusses the special relationship with his fellow Monty Pythons. Dani Crilly tells the story of the horse who she says saved her life. Vee Walker talks to us from Bavay in France, which was liberated by Vee’s grandfather Major Tom Westmacott in 1918. Beatboxer and composer Jason Singh explains how he works and why he appreciates sound.
Matt Baker will take a short break from the CIN Rickshaw Challenge to speak to us. Nana Mouskouri shares her Inheritance Tracks - she has chosen Suzanne by Leonard Cohen and Love is a Losing Game by Amy Winehouse. And Martin Impey whose life and career changed when he completed a promise made to his grandmother, to find his great uncle who never returned from WW1.
Erebus by Michael Palin is out now.
Vee Walker – Major Tom’s War is out now.
Nana Moukouri’s latest Album ‘Forever Young’ is out now.
Wilfred Owen’s Dulce et Decorum est – Illustrated by Martin Impey is out now.
Producer: Claire Bartleet
Editor: Eleanor Garland
Jay Rayner and the panel visit Dover Castle in Kent. Dr Annie Gray, Tim Anderson, Jordan Bourke and Sophie Wright answer the culinary questions.
Produced by Miranda Hinkley
Assistant Producer: Laurence Bassett
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4
Steve Richards chairs a discussion with George Parker FT Helen Lewis New Statesman and Peter Oborne Daily Mail on how near we to a Brexit deal.
The Editor is Marie Jessel.
Correspondents around the world tell their stories and examine news developments in their region
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Paul Lewis presents the latest news from the world of personal finance.
Hugh Dennis presents the week via topical stand-up and sketches.
Hugh and the team look at the mid-terms, Lloyd Langford investigates the Proud Boys, Felicity Ward has something to help the Australian cricket team and Jess Robinson tackles the biggest story this week - the Spice Girls reunion.
Gemma Arrowsmith and Luke Kempner provide additional voices.
It was written by Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis and the cast, with additional material by Gareth Gwynn, Ian Smith, Mike Shephard and Laura Sleep.
The song was written and arranged by Jess Robinson, Matthew Crosby and Michael Roulston.
The production coordinator was Sarah Sharpe.
It was a BBC Studios production.
The latest weather forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
Jonathan Dimbleby presents political debate from Clyst Hydon in Devon with a panel including Aaron Bastani from Novara Media, the President of the NFU Minette Batters, the Labour backbench MP Ben Bradshaw and the Minister for Children and Families Nadhim Zahawi MP.
Producer: Lisa Jenkinson
Have your say on the issues discussed on Any Questions?
A special edition of Home Front, Radio 4's epic drama series marking the centenaries of the First World War. It’s 10 November, 1919, a year and a day after the last episode, and Folkestone is preparing for the first Remembrance Day, and contemplating a new post-war world.
Cast
Florrie Wilson ..... Claire Rushbrook
Albert Wilson ..... Jamie Foreman
Kitty Lumley ..... Ami Metcalf
Victor Lumley ..... Joel MacCormack
Adam Wilson ..... Billy Kennedy
Jessie Moore ..... Lucy Hutchinson
Alice Macknade ..... Claire Louise Cordwell
Esme Macknade ..... Katie Angelou
Gabriel Graham ..... Michael Bertenshaw
Isabel Summer ..... Keely Beresford
Charles Summer ..... Rufus Wright
Ralph Winwood ..... Nick Murchie
Mrs Edkins ..... Rachel Davies
Bill Macknade ..... Ben Crowe
Norman Harris ..... Sean Baker
Marion Wardle ..... Laura Elphinstone
Edie Chadwick ..... Kathryn Beaumont
Other roles ..... Bea White, Rex Wood, Jonah Collingwood Harrold, Isobel Barry, Olivia Wales, Emma Handy, John Lightbody, Sean Murray, Ryan Whittle and Lewis Bray
Written by Katie Hims
Directed by Jessica Dromgoole
Producer: Ciaran Bermingham
Assistant Producer: Hannah Ratcliffe
Production Coordinator: Sarah Morrison
Production Management Assistant: Leanne Allen
Production Management Assistant: Graham Eveleigh
Sound: Martha Littlehailes
Composer: Matthew Strachan
Television executive Peter Bazalgette examines empathy. He talks to primatologist Frans de Waal, whose pioneering work with chimpanzees has helped to illuminate how our own evolutionary history suggests a deep-rooted propensity, both emotional and cognitive, for feeling the emotions of others.
Highlights from the Woman's Hour week.Presented by Jenni Murray
Producer: Rabeka Nurmahomed
Editor:Jane Thurlow
Full coverage of the day's news.
This week the programme looks at the business of agents. What exactly do they do and are they adding value to their clients' careers? Evan Davis discusses their role with three agents from the worlds of show business, football and books.
GUESTS
Professor Jonathan Shalit, Chairman, InterTalent Rights Group
Anna Davis, Literary Agent. Founder and Creator of Curtis Brown Creative Writing course. Curtis Brown Group
James Featherstone, Founder and Owner, OmniSports
Producer: Julie Ball.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest weather forecast.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Clive Anderson and Scottee are joined by Ross Noble, Daniel Mays and Beverley Knight for an eclectic mix of conversation, music and comedy. With music from Camille O'Sullivan and Beverley Knight.
Producer: Paula McGinley
An insight into the character of an influential person making the news headlines.
Jake Gyllenhaal and Carey Mulligan in Paul Dano's directorial debut Wildlife; a story of familial unravelling in 1960s America
Middle England is Jonathan Coe's latest novel; the third part of his trilogy which began in 2001 with The Rotters Club. It follows the same characters and their offspring dealing with life from 2010 to today
Jane Austen began - but never finished - a book which became known as The Watsons. In Laura Wade's new play opening at Chichester's Festival Theatre she picks up the story to interrogate what happens to characters when the author abandons them....?
Home Futures is a new exhibition at London's Design Museum comparing 20th century prototypes with the latest domestic innovations, and it asks "Are we living in yesterday's tomorrow?"
Grand Designs is a long established Channel 4 TV show whose format allows viewers to follow the trials tribulations and triumphs of daring innovative home building projects. There's also a 'spinoff' Home of the Year edition
Tom Sutcliffe is joined by Rebecca Stott, Maev Kennedy and Sarah Crompton. The producer is Oliver Jones
Podcast Extra:
Maev is delighted by the Twickenham Cinema Club
Rebecca recommends Emma Rice's production of Wise Children at The Old Vic
Sarah recommends Robert Icke's production of The Wild Duck at The Almeida Theatre
Since 2014 the world has been reflecting on the centenary of the First World War. The atrocities of the conflict have been well-covered but how has our interpretation changed over time?
With powerful accounts of veterans, from the iconic 1964 BBC series The Great War and the Imperial War Museum’s sound archive, as well as moving early commemorations at the Cenotaph, historian Dan Snow looks at how and why our perceptions of the conflict have changed over time, and how that’s affected the way we commemorate the event.
Joined by Dan Todman, Lucy Noakes, Helen McCartney and Jean Seaton, as well as Peter Hart, who interviewed many veterans on behalf of the IWM, we’ll look at why Remembrance still seems to matter to people today and, as the centenary draws to a close, how it might change going forward.
Producers: Megan Jones and Glyn Tansley
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.
Welcome to the modern world where airspace needs protecting, dating profile photographs need taking and lonely people need cuddling. It's the home of bizarre jobs brought about by a myriad of 21st century by-products.
Nick Baker meets the people behind some of the Britain's most niche jobs, gets inside the role, scopes out what it says about our world today and assesses whether it's time for a career change.
5. Cuddle Therapists
Meeting the therapists who offer cuddle sessions by the hour, Nick Baker asks why demand for this niche service is on the increase and, after trying out the service for himself, he has concerns which need addressing.
Producer: Leeanne Coyle
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4.
National and international news from BBC Radio 4
The centenary of the end of the First World War this weekend is a significant moment for collective moral reflection. What is the point of remembering the fallen? Is it to make a solemn vow that we will not let their sacrifice turn out to have been in vain and that we will fight to hold onto the freedoms they fought to defend? Or is it formal commitment that we will not repeat the mistakes of the past and that we will never again send our young men to die uselessly for a cause they do not understand? We can all accept that the rituals and symbols of remembrance say a lot about the values and shared emotions of our nation in the 21st century, but do they express the best or the worst of our nationhood? History and psychology teach us that we are bad at learning from our mistakes. Maybe that’s because remembrance, according to critics, sentimentalises the past, sugar-coating history with the politics of the present, reinforcing nationalism rather than national togetherness. Maybe, in many corners of our grieving and grudgeful planet, there is a moral case for forgetting. That view - reply the crowds who lined the streets of Wootton Bassett to welcome home the heroes of Helmand - is unpatriotic rubbish. Meanwhile the armed forces are seeing their biggest personnel shortage in a decade. The Chief Of Defence Staff, General Sir Nick Carter recently questioned whether today’s young people understand the "notion of service". If that’s true, should we welcome their independence of mind, or deplore their lack of loyalty? If it does nothing else, perhaps the act of remembrance serves to remind us of the virtue of sacrifice and that millions of people once rallied to a cause they believed to be greater than themselves.
Producer: Dan Tierney
Quote … Unquote, the popular humorous celebrity quotations quiz, returns for its 54th series.
In almost forty years, Nigel Rees has been joined by writers, actors, musicians, scientists and various comedy types. Kenneth Williams, Judi Dench, PD James, Larry Adler, Ian KcKellen, Peter Cook, Kingsley Amis, Peter Ustinov… have all graced the Quote Unquote stage.
Join Nigel as he quizzes a host of celebrity guests on the origins of sayings and well-known quotes, and gets the famous panel to share their favourite anecdotes and quotes.
Episode 1
Award-winning writer of the Vicar of Dibley - Paul Mayhew-Archer
Broadcaster and author - Francine Stock
Comedian - Phil Wang
Presenter, Nigel Rees
Producer, Simon Nicholls
A BBC Studios Production
According to Charles W. Eliot - President of Harvard and cousin of T.S. - everything required for a complete, liberal education could fit on a shelf of books just five feet in length. In 1909 the first volume of the Harvard Classics was published - and grew to become a 51-volume anthology of great works, including essays, poems and political treatises.
But what if people today, from all walks of life, were asked to recommend books to be included on a five-foot shelf? Which books do they think might be required for a complete home education?
Ian Sansom has set a course for Wigtown - Scotland’s National Booktown – to find out.
Local craftsman Steve has been busy creating just the shelf for the job - exactly five foot long - and fashioned from elm wood and whiskey barrels recycled from a local distillery. Ian will be playing shopkeeper at the Open Book in Wigtown - a B&B meets bookshop which allows visitors to indulge their fantasy of running their own bookstore. With Ian parked behind the counter, all that's needed is for visitors to drop by and try to persuade him of the books they think deserve a rightful place on The Five-Foot Shelf. But of course not everything will make it on and, as custodian of the shelf, Ian can be ruthless. Well, kind of...
No academics. No critics. No nonsense. The Five-Foot Shelf is a guide for readers by readers about the books which matter to them.
Producer: Conor Garrett
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
An original short story by the writer Colin Walsh specially commissioned by BBC Radio 4.
Colin Walsh grew up in Galway. In 2017, he won the RTE Francis MacManus Short Story Award, was a prizewinner in the Bridport Short Story Prize and was shortlisted for the Bath Short Story Award and the Aesthetica Creative Writing Award. In 2018, he won the Doolin Writer’s Weekend Flash Fiction competition. His stories have been published in the journal.ie and various anthologies.
Writer ..... Colin Walsh
Reader ..... Liam O'Brien
Producer ..... Michael Shannon
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping
The latest shipping forecast
National and international news from BBC Radio 4
Bells on Sunday for Remembrance comes from Westminster Abbey. The Company of Ringers there goes back as far as 1255, when the Abbey possessed five bells. The current ten were hung by the Whitechapel foundry in 1971 and they have a Tenor weighing thirty and a quarter hundred weight tuned to D. We hear the bells ringing Stedman Caters, half muffled at one stroke. This involves a leather pad being strapped to one side of the clapper, an arrangement used on solemn occasions such as this Remembrance Sunday.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
On the centenary of the Armistice, bells ring out across the UK in commemoration and rejoicing. From death knells to joyful peals, Mark Tully celebrates the power of bells.
During both World Wars, church bells were silenced. They were allowed to be rung only as alarm bells to warn of an invasion. On Armistice Day, ringers rushed to belfries to sound the bells in relief and jubilation. At St Dunstan’s Church in East Sussex, Mark meets some of those ringers’ contemporary counterparts, and hears how ringing connects them to the past.
Readings from Dylan Thomas, AP Herbert and Carol Ann Duffy show the role of bells in remembrance, celebration and congregation. Music includes pieces which mixes orchestral instruments with recordings of church bells.
Readers: Rachel Atkins, Paterson Joseph and Francis Cadder
Presenter: Mark Tully
Producer: Hannah Marshall
A 7digital production for BBC Radio 4
One hundred years ago, the First World War finally came to an end. Thousands of ex-servicemen returned home, many in search of work on the land. A century on, Sybil Ruscoe finds out about a charity which is helping 21st century ex-soldiers adapt to life after military service. 'High Ground' offers them a taste of the opportunities on offer in rural careers such as agriculture and forestry. Can tank-drivers turn their hand to driving tractors, and do army doctors make good tree surgeons?
Producer: Emma Campbell
The latest weather forecast.
Daljit Nagra reads his poem Where's. One of ten poems for Armistice day. All our poems come from Armistice: A Laureate's Choice of Poems of War and Peace edited by Carol Ann Duffy and published by Faber & Faber in the UK
The latest news headlines. Including a look at the papers.
Sunday morning religious news and current affairs programme presented by Edward Stourton.
The actor Dev Patel makes the Radio 4 Appeal on behalf of Railway Children
Registered Charity Number: 1058991,
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 ‘Railway Children’.
- Cheques should be made payable to ‘Railway Children’.
The latest weather forecast.
Sean O'Brien reads his poem, The Sunken Road. One of ten poems for Armistice day. All our poems come from Armistice: A Laureate's Choice of Poems of War and Peace edited by Carol Ann Duffy and published by Faber & Faber in the UK, first published in Europa published by Picador
The latest news headlines. Including a look at the papers.
To mark the centenary of the Armistice which brought fighting to an end on the Western Front in World War One, Sunday Worship comes from the Chapel of the Royal Hospital, Chelsea. The Hospital is the home of the Chelsea Pensioners - veterans of the British Army who served in Korea, the Falkland Islands, Cyprus, Northern Ireland and World War Two - many of whom take part in the service, along side the staff who care for them.
The preacher is The Right Reverend and Right Honourable The Lord Chartres KCVO PC, and the service is led by the Chaplain of the Royal Hospital, The Revd Steven Brookes. Director of Music: Will Vann. Producer: Ben Collingwood.
Michael Morpurgo reflects on our future connection with the First World War.
"How will we pass it on, this torch of history?", he asks. "Those missing men, those wounded, those who lived to count the cost, their story is our story and we must tell it again, keep it alive"
Producer: Adele Armstrong.
Throughout the First World War, birds were protected across the Western Front and elsewhere, which resulted in some remarkable stories of soldiers ceasing fire in order to protect birds from being killed.
Writer Derek Niemann who worked for the RSPB for 25 years, has latterly turned his time to writing, including the book Birds in a Cage, an affectionate tale of British prisoner of war ornithologists. On this the Centenary of the First World War Armistice Derek recalls how one species, the grey partridge, thrived in the area that became known as no-mans land. Including one remarkable story involving a French Colonel who halted a planned artillery barrage to allow his sergeant to move a covey of grey partridge to safety.
Producer Andrew Dawes
The latest news headlines. Including a look at the papers.
Helen Mort reads her poem Armistice. One of ten poems for Armistice day. All of the poems have come from Armistice: A Laureate's Choice of Poems of War and Peace edited by Carol Ann Duffy and published by Faber & Faber in the UK.
Writer ..... Gillian Richmond
Director ..... Peter Leslie Wild
Editor ..... Jeremy Howe
David Archer ..... Timothy Bentinck
Ruth Archer ..... Felicity Finch
Ben Archer ...... Ben Norris
Kenton Archer ..... Richard Attlee
Jolene Archer ..... Buffy Davis
Tony Archer ..... David Troughton
Tom Archer ..... William Troughton
Lilian Bellamy .... Sunny Ormonde
Neil Carter ..... Brian Hewlett
Susan Carter ..... Charlotte Martin
Bert Fry ..... Eric Allan
Emma Grundy .... Emerald O'Hanrahan
Shula Hebden Lloyd .... Judy Bennett
Jim Lloyd ..... John Rowe
Elizabeth Pargetter ….. Alison Dowling
Lynda Snell ..... Carole Boyd
Roy Tucker ..... Ian Pepperell
Peggy Woolley ..... June Spencer
Lexi Viktorova.... Ania Sowinski
Hannah Riley ..... Helen Longworth
Natasha ..... Mali Harries
Lee ..... Ryan Early
Geraldine ..... Bharti Patel
Jonathan Dimbleby sets the scene in London's Whitehall for the solemn ceremony when the nation remembers the sacrifice made by so many in the two world wars and in other more recent conflicts.
The traditional music of remembrance is played by the massed bands. After the Two Minutes Silence and Last Post, HRH The Prince of Wales lays the first wreath on behalf of nation and Commonwealth, before a short Service of Remembrance. During the March Past, both veterans and those involved in recent conflicts throughout the world share their thoughts.
Producer: Helen Lee
Maura Dooley reads her poem Quiver. One of ten poems for Armistice day. All our poems are taken from Armistice: A Laureate's Choice of Poems of War and Peace edited by Carol Ann Duffy and published by Faber & Faber in the UK.
Television executive Peter Bazalgette examines empathy. He talks to primatologist Frans de Waal, whose pioneering work with chimpanzees has helped to illuminate how our own evolutionary history suggests a deep-rooted propensity, both emotional and cognitive, for feeling the emotions of others. 1/3
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Professor of Ignorance John Lloyd and his curator Lee Mack welcome comedian and writer Bridget Christie, writer and historian Andrea Wulf and Oscar-winning documentary-maker Vikram Jayanti.
This week, the Museum’s Guest Committee discover the therapeutic value of spontaneous crying, look hard into the mirror and make neat little labels for their herbs and spices.
The show was researched by Mike Turner and Emily Jupitus of QI.
The Producers were Richard Turner and Anne Miller.
A BBC Studios Production.
Food writer, chef and presenter Genevieve Taylor tells the story of how Cambodia’s cooking history was almost lost in the genocide that saw millions die in the mid-1970s. While food from its neighbours Thailand and Vietnam was spreading all over the world, Cambodia’s finest dishes were side-lined or lost. In the UK, there are just three restaurants focussing on Cambodian cuisine. Now, slowly but surely its traditional dishes are making a comeback.
Genevieve goes to Cambodia in search of the ingredients that make up its distinct flavours and in the UK she talks to Y Sok who runs two Cambodia restaurants in Marple and Altrincham, she meets Simon and Kamya Allen from the Khmer Kitchen in Somerset and she hears the story of Longteine de Monteiro, a chef who fled the Khmer Rouge regime and set up Cambodian restaurants in France and the US.
The latest weather forecast.
Global news and analysis, presented by Mark Mardell.
Art collector and broadcaster Alvin Hall, examines how the dynamic work of African-American self-taught artists is gaining recognition from American institutions today - and how much more needs to be done to address this neglected canon.
Having to fight both the barriers of race and of operating outside the art world, self-taught African-American artists are still not always afforded as much recognition as their formally trained peers.
Groundbreaking exhibition Outliers and American Vanguard Art at The National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. is seeking to change this, positioning self-taught and outsider artists alongside one another and making reference to how self-taught artists inspired their formally trained peers. Alvin visits the exhibition and speaks to its curator, Lynne Cooke.
He explores the legacy of several key 20th century self-taught African-American artists and tells their life stories. Maxwell Anderson, the Director of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation, explains the ongoing process of integrating their vast collection of African-American vernacular art from the South into museums' collections.
Alvin probes the difficulties around the term "self-taught" and its problematic alternatives "primitive" and "naïve". He considers how limiting categorising such a diverse range of art can be. Have so-called Outsiders become part of the mainstream?
Alvin also meets self-taught black artists working today. Have they noticed a shift in interest and representation? Informally trained artist Kevin Sampson, questions whether, in today’s hyper-connected society, there is such a thing as "self-taught" anymore.
Writer and presenter: Alvin Hall
Additonal research: Alvin Hall and Louise Morris
Producers: Louise Morris and Andrew McGibbon
A Curtains For Radio production for BBC Radio 4
Simon Armitage reads his poem, The Handshake. One of ten poems for Armistice day. All our poems are taken from Armistice: A Laureate's Choice of Poems of War and Peace edited by Carol Ann Duffy and published by Faber & Faber in the UK.
Eric Robson and the panel are in Henfield, West Sussex. Bob Flowerdew, Pippa Greenwood and Matt Biggs answer this week’s horticultural queries.
The panellists offer advice on what to do with spreading bamboo, how best to deal with moles, and growing lilies from seed. They also make suggestions on growing sage successfully, and give planting ideas to ramble up the wall of a house.
Matt Biggs gets a tour of the Chelsea Pensioners' gardens and allotments at The Royal Hospital Chelsea.
Produced by Darby Dorras
Assistant Producer: Hester Cant
A Somethin’ Else production for BBC Radio 4
The many different hurdles in life being discussed by men: half-brothers reflect on the birth fathers they never knew; childhood friends reminisce on how their paths continued to cross; and fathers talk about how a dreadful coincidence brought them closer together.
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: Mohini Patel
Douglas Dunn reads his poem, Souvenirs of Versailles. One of ten poems for Armistice day. All our poems are taken from Armistice: A Laureate's Choice of Poems of War and Peace edited by Carol Ann Duffy and published by Faber & Faber in the UK.
by Avin Shah
Today we are with the soldiers of the 2/10 Royal Scots still fighting in the frozen wastes of Northern Russia as news of the Armistice percolates through.
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, Egypt, Macedonia, Italy, Turkmenistan and Tanzania, as well as on the Western Front.
Capt. Clive Crosby . . . Chris Reilly
Capt. Richard Gallyman . . . Ryan Whittle
Dmitri Ivanovich . . . Andrew Byron
Lt. Stephen Liddell . . . Monty d'Inverno
Wang Fu . . . Liam Lau Fernandez
Rosemary Valentine . . . Madeleine Worrall
Olga . . . Ivana Basic
Eugenie . . . Elizabeth Counsell
Admiral Rosslyn Wemyss . . . Sean Murray
Orderly . . . Lewis Bray
Driver . . . Cameron Percival
Commentator . . . Indira Varma
Producers: Jonquil Panting, Jonathan Ruffle, David Hunter.
Director . . .David Hunter
Tommies' creator Jonathan Ruffle talks about the research behind the series at the National Archives, with producer Jonquil Panting.
Imtiaz Dharker reads her poem, Armistice. One of ten poems for Armistice day. All our poems are taken from Armistice: A Laureate's Choice of Poems of War and Peace edited by Carol Ann Duffy and published by Faber & Faber in the UK.
Exploring literary responses to the Great War in the immediate aftermath of the Armistice. The University of Leicester's Victoria Stewart, and biographer Jean Moorcroft Wilson, discuss the ways that fiction reflected the horror of war in the decade after 1918.
Novelist Richard T. Kelly considers the pitfalls of including real people in works of fiction.
Bestselling novelist Maria Dahvana Headley explains why Beowulf felt like the appropriate framework through which to explore race, class and violence in contemporary America.
And Managing Director of Waterstones James Daunt helps Open Book to launch a new series looking at the challenges of making bookselling pay.
A Thankful or ‘Blessed’ village is a place where every soldier returned alive from World War One. Songwriter Darren Hayman heard about ‘Thankful Villages’ and knew that he had his next album title. He then embarked on a three year odyssey to visit all 54 of them..
Hayman writes a song for every village based on local characters, hidden stories and chance meetings. He records soundscapes in graveyards, playgrounds, churches, road sides and village fetes, uses playground xylophones, and old church organs.
Some songs take the form of instrumentals inspired by location, some are interviews with village residents set to music, others are new songs with lyrics or found local traditional songs.
The first Thankful Villages were identified and named by Arthur Mee in 1936 in his series of guidebooks, The King’s England.
“Thankful Villages is such a beautiful and strange title, I knew what I had to do. I had to visit every one of Britain’s 54 Thankful Villages,” says Hayman. “It was not going to be a project about war. Arthur Mee’s definition was really just a starting point; a random device to point me to small places. That’s what I love and that’s the one certainty I had about Thankful Villages, that it would be about small things, small things that matter.’
Producer: Thom Hoffman
A Greenpoint production for BBC Radio 4
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
The best of BBC Radio this week
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest weather forecast.
Zaffar Kunial reads his poem, Poppy. One of ten poems for Armistice day. All our poems are taken from Armistice: A Laureate's Choice of Poems of War and Peace edited by Carol Ann Duffy and first published in Us, both published by Faber & Faber in the UK.
In the presence of members of the Royal Family and of Her Majesty’s Government, the official national commemoration of the centenary of the end of World War One, live from Westminster Abbey. The service will commemorate the armistice signed between the Allies and Germany at Compiègne, France, for the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front, which took effect at eleven o'clock in the morning — the ‘eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month’ of 1918. The service is led by the Dean of Westminster, and the preacher is the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Reverend and Right Honourable Justin Welby. Commentator: Martin Bashir. Organist and Master of the Choristers: James O’Donnell. Sub-Organist: Peter Holder. Producer: Ben Collingwood.
Johnny receives a lesson in life and Hannah has regrets,
By John Nicholson, Richard Katz and Javier Marzan
In 19th-century provincial France, a pair of vermin controllers seek their fortune. Arriving in the market town of Yonville, things start to go wrong when their rat-catching kit goes missing and then when they find themselves entangled in the marital woes of the town's doctor.
In this new series the comedy troupe Peepolykus assume the roles of minor characters in great works of fiction and derail the plot of the book through their hapless buffoonery.
Cast:
Emma . . . . . Ingrid Oliver
John . . . . . John Nicholson
Javier . . . . . Javier Marzan
Charles . . . . . Richard Katz
Tuvache . . . . . Leo Wan
Hippolyte . . . . . Stephen Critchlow
Justin . . . . . Caolan McCarthy
Homais . . . . . Chris Pavlo
Madame Codoux . . . . . Jessica Turner
Felicite . . . . . Rebecca Hamilton
Director . . . . . Sasha Yevtushenko
Twelve flights. Twelve travellers. Twelve stories.
In David Szalay's gripping short story series, twelve travellers circumnavigate the globe en route to see lovers, children, parents, brothers and sisters, or nobody at all. From London to Madrid, Dakar to Sao Paolo, Seattle to Hong Kong, and beyond, these are stories of lives in turmoil, each in some way touching the next.
In today's story, a well-known Canadian dashes for a last-minute flight to see her new grandchild...
Writer: David Szalay
Reader: Barbara Barnes
Producer: Justine Willett
Original Music: Kirsten Morrison
Roger Bolton with audience comment on BBC radio.
The new BBC Sounds app launched last week. Designed to eventually replace iPlayer Radio, its primary aim is to get young people listening to BBC content. So what do listeners make of it? Roger hears their views and talks to media consultant and podcast expert Matt Deegan.
Living with the Empire, a recent BBC Radio 4 series, examined the legacy of the British Empire, looking for its traces in the UKs monuments, people and contested memories. It was presented by historian and MP Kwasi Kwarteng, who responds to listener reaction and reflects on the making and timing of the three part series.
A century after the end of World War One, the Radio 4 drama series Tommies is coming to a close. It's been on air for the length of the war centenary, with each episode tracing one real day at war, exactly 100 years later. Feedback goes behind the scenes as the team records the episode for Armistice Day.
Producer: Will Yates
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4
Pictured: Lord Heywood
Matthew Bannister on
Lord Heywood, the senior civil servant who worked with four Prime Ministers: Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Theresa May.
Pamela Lonsdale, the children's TV producer who brought us Rainbow.
Sangharakshita, the British born Buddhist leader whose reputation was tarnished by allegations of sexual misconduct with his students.
Tom Jago, the drinks marketeer who developed Bailey's Irish Cream, Malibu and Le Piat D'Or.
And Francis Lai, the Love Story composer.
Interviewed guest: Ed Balls
Interviewed guest: Ronnie Le Drew
Interviewed guest: Liz Crowther
Interviewed guest: Dharmachari Vishvapani
Interviewed guest: Rebecca Jago
Producer: Neil George
Archive clips from: Jeremy Vine, Radio 2 05/11/2018; Radio 4 News Flash, 16/09/1992; Westminster Hour, Radio 4 04/11/2018; The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe Ep. 8, Part 1, ITV 1967; Rainbow, Thames TV 01/11/1972; Midweek, Radio 4 05/07/1989; Matter of Fact: Going for Refuge, BBC East 12/11/1992.
Paul Muldoon reads his poem, Armistice Day. One of ten poems for Armistice day. All our poems are taken from Armistice: A Laureate's Choice of Poems of War and Peace edited by Carol Ann Duffy and published by Faber & Faber in the UK.
How many democracies around the world are gradually being dismantled. Democracies today are less and less likely to be overthrown in violent coups. Today’s methods of establishing one party rule are much more subtle and insidious. Political scientist Professor Matt Qvortrup explores how the modern authoritarian leader takes control of his or her country. High on their list will be subtly manipulating elections to win with a comfortable but credible majority: appointing their own supporters to the judiciary whilst watering down their powers: silencing critics in the press while garnering positive coverage from their media supporters: punishing opponents by denying them employment while rewarding lackeys with key positions. And using technology to help rig votes and spread propaganda. Matt traces these methods back to Roman times while looking at their contemporary relevance in countries as diverse as Kenya, Poland, Hungary, and Venezuela.
Producer: Bob Howard
Preview of the week's politics with politicians, pundits and experts.
With Antonia Quirke.
Mike Leigh's Peterloo documents the massacre in St Peter's Field, Manchester in 1819 when the British cavalry charged at peaceful protesters with sabres drawn. Production designer Suzie Davies reveals why they couldn't film in the actual location, or indeed in Manchester, but somewhere highly unlikely.
Poet Bridget Minamore discusses what it was finally like to watch a movie and see herself reflected in the screen.
Paleoclimatologist Kate Hendry tells Antonia why Denis Quaid gets her job all wrong in the climate change drama The Day After Tomorrow.
Jackie Kay reads her poem, Outlook Tower. One of ten poems for Armistice day. All our poems are taken from Armistice: A Laureate's Choice of Poems of War and Peace edited by Carol Ann Duffy and published by Faber & Faber in the UK.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
Shoes: Laurie Taylor explores their cultural history and sociological meanings. He's joined by Elizabeth Semmelhack, Senior Curator of the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto, Tim Edwards, Honorary Fellow in Sociology at the University of Leicester and Naomi Braithwaite, Senior Lecturer in the School of Art & Design at Nottingham Trent University.
Producer: Jayne Egerton
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping
The latest shipping forecast
National and international news from BBC Radio 4
A short reflection and prayer with Jonathan Rea
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside
The latest weather forecast for farmers.
Migrating Barnacle geese inspire audio-visual artist Kathy Hinde to create an installation in Scotland to celebrate their winter residence.
Tweet of the Day has captivated the Radio 4 audience with its daily 90 seconds of birdsong. But what of the listener to this avian chorus? In this new series of Tweet of the Day, we bring to the airwaves the conversational voices of those who listen to and are inspired by birds. Building on the previous series, a more informal approach to learning alongside a renewed emphasis on encounter with nature and reflection in our relationship with the natural world.
Producer: Sarah Blunt
Photograph: Eljay Rogers.
Radio 4's flagship news and current affairs programme; including Thought for the Day
Poland turns 100 this November. The country had existed for a thousand years but it was only in 1918 with the Treaty of Versailles that an independent Poland was created. Amol Rajan explores its turbulent history.
No nation's story has been so distorted as Poland's, says historian Adam Zamoyski. He looks back to the great medieval nation that was once a European heavyweight. But Russia, Prussia and Austria divided Poland up in 1797 and turned it into a backwater - before the Nazis and Soviet soldiers arrived to do more damage.
The decades since independence in 1918 have seen extraordinary twists in the tale. Composer Roxanna Panufnik combines Polish poetry with a Catholic mass in her new oratorio Faithful Journey - Mass for Poland. This huge work for choir and orchestra covers the bloodshed of two world wars, the relative prosperity and optimism of the 1930s, the censorship of communist rule and a new hope for the coming years.
In the 1950s Stalin offered the people of Warsaw a choice between two gifts: a metro system or a vast skyscraper. They asked for the metro. He built the Joseph Stalin Palace of Culture and Science instead. Today the Palace is one of Poland's most recognisable sights and has starred on the cover of Vogue. But Michal Muraswki explains that to Poles today the Palace represents their communist legacy - something that the ruling Law and Justice Party are keen to forget,
The reforms of the Law and Justice Party, including a move to ban all abortions, have been met with criticism at home and abroad. Award-winning journalist Witold Szablowski examines Poland's relationship with Europe, with its neighbours and with its past.
Producer: Hannah Sander
Five historians explore the global impact of the 1918 armistice and the legacy it has left in our world: from the fringes of Europe to the Middle East. They challenge the conventional narrative about the end of the First World War and the peace settlements that followed, with repercussions still felt today.
In the first episode, Heather Jones, Professor in Modern European History at University College London, takes us back to the French forest of Compiègne where delegates signed the armistice on 'the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month', marking a victory for the Allies against Germany. She argues that, although we think of the armistice today as the end of the First World War, in reality it marked a pause, rather than an ending, as the war continued in Europe in forms which still shape our modern world: paramilitarism, political assassinations, ethnic cleansing and deportations. Interwar Europe never truly moved on from the armistice to peace. Ferdinand Foch, the Supreme Allied Commander during the First World War commented in 1919, "this is not peace; it is an armistice for twenty years."
Readings by Helen Ayres and Will Huggins
Produced by Melissa FitzGerald
A Blakeway production for BBC Radio 4
The programme that offers a female perspective on the world
Skye and Dexter are back in this award-winning serial, one of the highlights of the BBC Children in Need Appeal on Radio 4.
Their mum Jak hasn’t had a drink for eleven months now and she’s doing alright. They’ve even got a morning routine. She forgets words sometimes, but she might not have known them in the first place. And that’s how it is, in recovery.
Skye is fifteen and Dexter's six, and they live in Gainsborough in Lincolnshire. Skye has always had to look out for Dex. But now Skye ‘s going on a school trip, if she can be sure that Jak will stick to the plan.
The story was developed with the help of the Young Carers' Transition Project in Nottingham, which receives funding from BBC Children in Need and through longterm research with young people and families in Gainsborough.
Skye...Sydney Wade
Dexter...Alfie Johnson-McCann
Jak...Una McNulty
Pearce...Beau Anten
Alex...Don Gilet
Alisha...Megan Huntley
Alice...Lauren Bowler
Poem by Octavia Bettis
Writer...Amanda Whittington
Director...Mary Ward-Lowery
Music by The Breeders and David Bowie, performed by Tom Constantine.
For the first time, more than half the British population says it ticks the No Religion box in surveys. Jane Little asks if that means they believe in nothing beyond the material world.
In social media, faith seems alive and well - hashtags like #PrayforLondon or #PrayforManchester invariably start trending shortly after a terror attack. And when someone dies, they are often addressed as though they are able to read those messages. “Fly with the angels in the stars,” was one of many messages to Stephen Hawking who, in his lifetime, had dismissed the afterlife as a fairy story.
GK Chesterton famously, if apocryphally, stated that when a man stops believing in God, he does not believe in nothing, he believes in anything. So, are people who have turned their backs on organised religion making up their own comforting set of beliefs when it comes to the most difficult things in life, such as death and the loss of loved ones? Are they trying to have their atheist cake while still wanting to lick the icing of soothing beliefs?
Jane Little meets people who define themselves as non-religious, yet hold strong beliefs in the supernatural - people like Russ and Kerry from Uttoxeterwho lost their baby daughter Ruby Jane when she was just three months old but believe she is still sending them signs in the form or feathers, Pat who is an atheist but claims to have had a whole raft of encounters with ghosts, and Rowan who feels "belief" isn’t a strong enough word for her experience of angels.
We hear from those who have used the #PrayforLondon hashtag and ask what non-religious people mean by it.
Jane is joined by experts including Tony Walter, a sociologist specialising in Death Studies, who coined the phrase "once-human angel" for what has become a huge social media phenomenon in the last ten years.
A CTVC Radio production for BBC Radio 4
The return of the hostless chat show as presenter Sara Cox interviews comedian Joe Lycett.
Chain Reaction is the talk show with a twist where one week's interviewee becomes the next week's interviewer. John Cleese was first in the hot seat back in 1991 and since then, a procession of big names from the world of comedy and entertainment including Jennifer Saunders, Jarvis Cocker and Eddie Izzard have helped continue the chain.
Since the early days of The Girlie Show on Channel 4, Sara Cox has gone on to become one of the UK's best loved presenters. She is perhaps most well-known as a ratings hit in the early morning breakfast chair on BBC Radio 1 and her regular TV and radio appearances since then have included hosting BBC 2's Great Pottery Throw Down, appearing on myriad panel shows and pressing the nation's collective nostalgia button every Friday night on her very own Radio 2 Sounds of the Eighties show.
Sara's interview pick is Joe Lycett because "he makes me happy" and because someone needed to finally chart his much discussed journey "from Birmingham to 10th hottest man in the world". Joe is a stand-up comedian who some know as "the parking fine man" from 8 out of 10 Cats Does Countdown while others celebrate him for any number of acclaimed live tours and festival shows that have delighted the British comedy viewing public in recent years. This programme not only confirms that Joe is a man who can famously write a show title - "That's the Way A Ha A Ha, Joe Lycett" and "If Joe Lycett Then You Should Have Put a Ring On It" to name just two - but also hints at a addictive fondness for baths.
Producer: Richard Morris
A BBC Studios Production.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
A new history of ideas presented by Melvyn Bragg but told in many voices.
Melvyn is joined by four guests with different backgrounds to discuss a really big question. This week the question is 'How do I tell wrong from right?'
Helping him answer it are Neuro-psychologst Paul Broks, Philosopher Angie Hobbs, Theologian Giles Fraser and Lawyer Harry Potter.
For the rest of the week Paul, Angie, Giles and Harry will take us further into the history of ideas about morality with programmes of their own.
Between them they will examine the idea of conscience and moral intuitions, the relationship between morality and the law, whether moral systems can work on the battlefield and what the brain seems to do when we are making moral decisions.
Radio 4's consumer affairs programme.
The latest weather forecast.
Mon-Thurs: Analysis of news and current affairs, presented by Sarah Montague. Fri: Analysis of news and current affairs, presented by Mark Mardell.
Martha Kearney and Andrew Dilnot assess how the UK government spends your money.
From costed manifestos to austerity and “magic money tree”, the particulars of government spending have never been more important to the electorate. And with government revenue, spending and debt all at record highs, the question of where that money goes has never been bigger.
Political debates often focus on the small slices of state largesse that are up for grabs in that year’s budget - Martha and Andrew take the chance to look at the rest of it, the numbers behind the headlines that really reflect what’s being done with your cash.
Episode 1 – Education
The 21st century has seen education budgets transformed – from tuition fees to funding for schools. Martha and Andrew look at the money government spends on every kind of education.
Producers: Robert Nicholson and Simon Jarvis
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4
The clock is ticking on the Armistice. The first day of peace is still full of risk, as Mickey, Celestine, Jack, Harry and Florrie meet up in Mons, where the war began.
All anyone knows for sure is that the Armistice terms last for only 36 days. And if it's to hold, there are spies, sabotage, mutinying German troops, and a traumatised Belgian population to deal with. Let alone, a booby trap bomb somewhere in the city, timed to detonate today.
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, Egypt, 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. They have been cogs in an immense machine, one which has connected situations across the whole theatre of the war, over four long years.
Maj. Mickey Bliss . . . Lee Ross
Dr Celestine de Tullio . . . Pippa Nixon
Commentator . . . Indira Varma
Lt. Col. Harry de Tullio . . . Matthew Tennyson
QMAAC Florrie Fanshawe . . . Karen Bartke
Sgt. Jack Bliss . . . Ashley Kumar
Dr Visart . . . William Brand
Hptm. Hubert Cron . . . Alexander Devrient
George Brereton . . . Don Gilet
Stretcher Man . . . Tony Turner
Cpl. Brennan . . . Lewis Bray
Hitchhiker . . . Liam Lau Fernandez
Sgt. Bishop . . . Cameron Percival
Trumpeter . . . Pete Ringrose
Writer . . . Jonathan Ruffle
Director . . . Jonquil Panting
Series Creator . . . Jonathan Ruffle
Quote … Unquote, the popular humorous celebrity quotations quiz, returns for its 54th series.
In almost forty years, Nigel Rees has been joined by writers, actors, musicians, scientists and various comedy types. Kenneth Williams, Judi Dench, PD James, Larry Adler, Ian KcKellen, Peter Cook, Kingsley Amis, Peter Ustinov… have all graced the Quote Unquote stage.
Join Nigel as he quizzes a host of celebrity guests on the origins of sayings and well-known quotes, and gets the famous panel to share their favourite anecdotes and quotes.
Episode 2
Historian, broadcaster and writer of award-winning sketch show Horrible Histories - Greg Jenner
Comedian and writer - Sindhu Vee
Actor and comedian - Roy Hudd
Presenter ... Nigel Rees
Producer ... Simon Nicholls
A BBC Studios Production
Artist Emma Critchley meets filmmakers, photographers, sculptors and painters who are drawn beneath the sea to create underwater art.
Julie Gautier performs a graceful, lyrical ballet on the floor of the deepest pool in the world. Without a tank of air or mask, she dances magically through crystal-clear waters across a sunken stage.
In the azure waters of the world, sculptor Jason deCaires Taylor uses the seabed as his canvas. He has installed hundreds of life-sized, concrete people on the sea floor. Fish weave through his couple playing on sea-saw, tourists taking photographs or migrants huddling in a raft. As Jason works towards the opening of his first cold water installation, Emma asks what draws him to the sea, the meaning of his work and how audiences can engage with underwater art.
She explores the unpredictability of working with the sea, hearing stories of storms, seasickness and near drowning.
Suzi Winstanley is petrified of the deep, but her passion for documenting wildlife has taken her to the remotest and coldest places in the world. With fellow artist Olly Williams, they collaborate to paint, lightning-fast, their experience of encountering white shark and leopard sea.
Emma braves the wintery British waters to talk concentration, boundaries and time with artist Peter Matthews who immerses himself in the ocean for hours, sometimes days, floating with his drawing board and paper.
Sunlight dances on the twisting fabrics of headless bodies in photographer Estabrak’s pictures. For her, working in Oman, underwater is the only safe space to tell stories.
For some the pull of the sea is political, for others environmental, but all the artists find extraordinary freedom in this huge untapped underwater world.
Producer: Sarah Bowen
Pope Francis has reached an historic agreement with the Chinese government which could restore diplomatic ties broken in 1951. Before September this year, Catholic bishops appointed by either the Vatican or the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association were not recognized by the other party. But now the Pope has agreed that in future, the Chinese can submit a list of suitable names from which Rome will make a selection. The Pope has also officially recognised seven Bishops appointed by the Chinese authorities in previous years.
The Communists under Chairman Mao tried to kill off religion but it didn’t work and so Mao’s successors have had to compromise. The Chinese constitution says that citizens should be able to “enjoy freedom of religious belief" but in reality it does not guarantee the right to practice those religious beliefs.
Buddhism is the most dominant religion and has been practiced in China for two millennia. The Chinese government recognises five faiths; Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism but religions in China are subject to a certain level of state control.
Joining Ernie Rea to discuss the place of Religion in Modern China are Dr Gregory Scott, Lecturer in Chinese Culture and History at the University of Manchester, Dr Caroline Fielder, Lecturer in Chinese Studies at the University of Leeds, and Dr Maria Jaschok, Director of the International Gender Studies centre at Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford.
Producer: Helen Lee
Series Producer: Amanda Hancox
PM at 5pm: interviews, context and analysis.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
The 70th series of Radio 4's multi award-winning ‘antidote to panel games’ promises yet more quality, desk-based entertainment for all the family.
The series starts its run at the Lighthouse concert hall in Poole where regulars Tim Brooke-Taylor and Barry Cryer are joined on the panel by Tony Hawks and local boy John Finnemore, with Jack Dee as the programme's reluctant chairman.
Regular listeners will know to expect inspired nonsense, pointless revelry and Colin Sell at the piano.
Producer - Jon Naismith.
It is a BBC Studios production.
Emma hatches a cunning plan and Adam fears for the future
Live daily magazine programme on the worlds of arts, literature, film, media and music
Do universities have a broad enough diversity of political opinion? Matthew Flinders, professor of politics at Sheffield University, asks fellow academics whether the intellectual climate in universities is damagingly constrained by a lack of "viewpoint diversity".
Producer: Martin Rosenbaum
Many key findings in psychological research are under question, as the results of some of its most well-known experiments – such as the marshmallow effect, ego depletion, stereotype threat and the Zimbardo Stanford Prison Experiment – have proved difficult or impossible to reproduce. This has affected numerous careers and led to bitter recriminations in the academic community. So can the insights of academic psychology be trusted and what are the implications for us all? Featuring contributions from John Bargh, Susan Fiske, John Ioannidis, Brian Nosek, Stephen Reicher, Diederik Stapel and Simine Vazire.
Presenter: David Edmonds
Producer: Ben Cooper
In the ashes of World War 2, a new international order was built. Its aim: to ensure relative peace and stability. In this series, the BBC's former Diplomatic Editor Bridget Kendall examines why all this now seems to be falling apart.
In this episode, Bridget explores how, after the revolutions of 1989, a resurgent European Community became the European Union, and absorbed the liberated states of Eastern Europe - but how, since then, the EU has been beset first by financial crisis, then migration crisis and Brexit. She asks how its founding ideals are faring in a Europe very different from the postwar world of its birth, as populist nationalism rises again.
And she examines how much Europe will matter anyway in the emerging 21st century world order, in which China looks set to play an increasingly dominant role. Can authoritarian capitalism and a rejection of the postwar vision of human rights, democracy and the rule of law really win over the world?
Speakers in this series include:
ex-Prime Minister of the UK Tony Blair, ex-Foreign Minister of Poland Radek Sikorski, Deputy Leader of Alternativ fur Deutschland Beatrix von Storch, Director of the Carnegie Center Moscow Dmitri Trenin, ex-US Deputy Secretary for Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Director of the Blavatnik School of Government Ngaire Woods, head of the Eurasia Group Ian Bremmer; journalists Isabel Hilton and Peter Hitchens, and historians Dr Brigitte Leucht, Professor Piers Ludlow and Professor John Bew.
Producer: Phil Tinline
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.
Adrian finds himself homeless again. Bianca offers to put him up, but is moving to London. Adrian has a frank exchange with his mother.
The third book in the exquisitely funny Adrian Mole series by Sue Townsend, one of our most celebrated comic writers. The Wilderness Years is read by Harry McEntire
Following on from The Secret Diary and The Growing Pains, it is now 1991 and our diarist is 23.
Adrian is still infatuated with his childhood sweetheart Pandora and is living in her box room in Oxford. Already in possession of a husband and a boyfriend, and sick of his attentions, Pandora recommends a therapist to help Adrian move on.
Unfulfilled by his job at the Department of the Environment, Adrian’s aspirations to become a poet and author are undimmed. Whilst working on his first novel, ‘Lo! The Flat Hills of my Homeland’, he is plagued by the literary success of his old nemesis, Barry Kent.
Adrian struggles to understand why he is so unsuccessful with women but his perseverance eventually pays off. How the female brain works remains a mystery to him, however.
As he continues to battle valiantly with the slings and arrows that life throws at him, Adrian starts to feel less of an outsider and more at ease with himself.
Abridged by Sara Davies
Produced by Alexa Moore
A Pier Production
Documentary adventures that encourage you to take a closer listen.
Dallas is a city built on creeks and streams and, in the 1970s, the children of Dallas often roamed a secret landscape of culverts, waterways and tunnels. Meanwhile, above ground, adults in the city were reckoning with a local court order to desegregate the city's schools. Almost twenty years after Brown v Board of Education ruled that racial segregation violated the US Constitution, Dallas began bussing minority students into majority-white schools.
The change brought conflict and strife, but also opened up new worlds for children in a city isolated by race. In classrooms and playgrounds, an osmosis of experience, perspective and rumours took place. Julia Barton, who is white, heard a murky legend of a tunnel to Fair Park, home of the bombastic and beloved State Fair of Texas. Much later (and buttressed by a local basketball star's biography), Julia's black classmate Sam Franklin helps her track the legend down.
But the children of Dallas have a new legend now. The story of desegregation itself has become a distant myth as white families fled the city's schools, leaving new patterns of isolation in their wake. Only the Fair's iconic Big Tex - a 55-foot tall, talking statue of a cowboy - seems to stay the same in Dallas from year to year. But even he may be more changeable than locals want to admit.
With Julia's classmate Nikki Benson, former teenage tunneller Melvin Qualls, local historian Donald Payton, retired teacher Leonard Davis and Sixth Graders from Alex Sanger Elementary School.
Presented by Julia Barton
Additional research by Paula Bosse
Produced by Hannah Dean and Alan Hall
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4
All the news from today's sitting at Westminster.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping
The latest shipping forecast
National and international news from BBC Radio 4
A short reflection and prayer with Jonathan Rea
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.
Miranda Krestovnikoff presents the Goldfinch. With its bright yellow wing-flashes and face painted black, white and red, the goldfinch is one of our most colourful birds.
Radio 4's flagship news and current affairs programme; including Thought for the Day
Mike Stratton talks to Jim Al-Khalili about his genetics research which culminated in the discovery of the BRCA 2, one of the main genes involved in hereditary breast cancer.
When it comes to travel is the expectation greater than the realisation? Lynne Truss has been a writer for over 25 years and without making it a conscious ambition she has travelled to a huge number of destinations. But if you ask her if she likes travelling, she will say "Absolutely not, I hate it. I find its utterly stressful." This has made her curious as to why we travel. In an age when we have access to the world at the click of a button on the internet or the TV, why do we still want to physically go somewhere else? What do we hope to get out of the experience? Is the hassle of delayed flights, airless rooms, endless queues, the heat, the mosquitoes and the tummy upsets all really worth it? In this, the first of three programmes about the travel experience, Lynne meets global traveller and writer Geoff Dyer. Producer Sarah Blunt.
Five historians explore the global impact of the 1918 armistice and the legacy it has left in our world: from the fringes of Europe to the Middle East. They challenge the conventional narrative about the end of the First World War and the peace settlements that followed, with repercussions still felt today.
Today, Santanu Das, Professor of English Literature at King’s College London, explores what the 1918 armistice meant for the victorious Allies’ colonial subjects after the First World War.
He argues that the armistice brought expectations that their war contribution would be rewarded with the granting of dominion status, yet the Paris Peace Conference turned such hopes to dust. Instead of marking peace, the world was convulsed with fresh violence as revolt and reprisal broke out among oppressed subjects in the US, Egypt, Korea, China and, most notably, in India during the Amritsar massacre of April 1919. Here, Professor Das says, the armistice marked the beginning of the end of Empire.
Readings by Will Huggins and Susheel Kumar
Produced by Melissa FitzGerald
A Blakeway production for BBC Radio 4
The programme that offers a female perspective on the world
Skye and Dexter are back in this award-winning serial, one of the highlights of the BBC Children in Need Appeal on Radio 4.
It's three days till the trip. Three days for Skye to get all the kit together and get the nits out of her hair.
The story was developed with the help of the Young Carers' Transition Project in Nottingham, which receives funding from BBC Children in Need and through longterm research with young people and families in Gainsborough.
Skye...Sydney Wade
Dexter...Alfie Johnson-McCann
Jak...Una McNulty
Pearce...Beau Anten
Alex...Don Gilet
Alisha...Megan Huntley
Alice...Lauren Bowler
Poem by Octavia Bettis
Writer...Amanda Whittington
Director...Mary Ward-Lowery
Music by David Bowie, performed by Tom Constantine
Over the course of three programmes, close friends Martin Jarvis and Christopher Matthew have journeyed back into their separate and interwoven lives - to their school days in south London and Surrey, to their first forays into work in advertising and in the theatre and to their middle years in film & television and in print. Now in a new and final episode, they set out to complete their journey and attempt to tie up their very many loose ends... and get to grips with the looming spectre of retirement.
Ten years on from when their pensions should have kicked in (even longer in Christopher's case) they compare notes on how much they've slowed down since... and ask themselves: why do they go on and can they keep it up?
Producer: Paul Kobrak.
Artist Peter Shenai explores the sounds of climate change. Over the last year, Radio 4 has followed the processes as he has struggled to create an aural experience out of scientific date from Hurricane Katrina.
Working with climate scientists at Imperial College London, Peter investigates how raw weather data might be rendered in 3D for casting. With atmospheric physicist Carlo Corsaro, he homes in on Hurricane Katrina, the giant storm that devastated New Orleans in 2005, reproducing the cone shapes of the hurricane in a series of bells.
In doing so, he draws on the symbolic relationship between bells and climate catastrophe - drawing on the iconography of bells as alarm warnings, as markers of remembrance, sadness or joy, or as alerts to bring us together in community.
Despite setbacks, five bells - each intimately linked to a specific moment in Katrina’s development - are then taken to New Orleans and a number of people who lived through the storm are asked to ring each one. We hear from New Orleanians from all walks of life as they ring these uniquely resonant bells and reflect on what they mean for a city still recovering from a disastrous brush with the first hints of how widespread climate change could eventually affect the world.
Peter Shenai is creating a new kind of art, viscerally bringing climate disruption into human understanding.
Producers: Matthew Teller and Adam Fowler
An Overtone production for BBC Radio 4
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
How do you make good moral decisions when you have no time to make them?
This is a question that troubled Giles Fraser after he met soldiers who had served in Afghantistan. The moral codes Giles had studied required a lot of time for thinking and reflection but you simply don't get that when deciding whether to shoot on the battle field. This led Giles to think about the Greek philosopher Aristotle and his system of virtue ethics – a way of thinking about morals that emphases character rather than rules.
Giles talks to former SAS soldier Andy McNabb and philosopher Nancy Sherman on how do you distinguish right from wrong in today's 'battle space' where the rules of engagement are no longer clear. And whether the answer is to be in a 2500 year old piece of Greek thinking.
This programme is part of a week of programmes.
Radio 4's consumer affairs programme.
The latest weather forecast.
Mon-Thurs: Analysis of news and current affairs, presented by Sarah Montague. Fri: Analysis of news and current affairs, presented by Mark Mardell.
Martha Kearney and Andrew Dilnot assess how the UK government spends your money.
From costed manifestos to austerity and “magic money tree”, the particulars of government spending have never been more important to the electorate. And with government revenue, spending and debt all at record highs, the question of where that money goes has never been bigger.
Political debates often focus on the small slices of state largesse that are up for grabs in that year’s budget - Martha and Andrew take the chance to look at the rest of it, the numbers behind the headlines that really reflect what’s being done with your cash.
Episode 2 – Pensions
Pensions for old age, sickness and disability make up the largest single slice of public spending. Martha and Andrew discover what makes pensions so expensive for the taxpayer and look into the future of funding pensions for an ageing population.
Producers: Robert Nicholson and Simon Jarvis
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4
Heather by Thomas Eccleshare
A reclusive children’s writer becomes a publishing phenomenon. Her books are treasured across the country. Her public are desperate to know just who is behind these wonderful stories. So the publisher presses her to do some publicity, but she constantly makes excuses. What is she afraid of? A gripping morality tale about language, prejudice, redemption and what matters more, the story or the storyteller.
Harry...........................Rachael Stirling
Heather......................Charlotte Melia
Tariq............................Shane Zaza
Director/Producer Gary Brown
Thomas Eccleshare is the Verity Bargate Award-winning writer of 'Pastoral'. His latest play 'Instructions For Correct Assembly' recently premiered at The Royal Court.
Over the last decade, wet wipes have become ubiquitous. There's a wipe for almost everything, from faces to furniture, and it's a multi-million pound industry. But our sewerage systems are paying the price. Tom Heap goes on a call-out with the teams whose job is unblocking the drains - and finds that the culprits are usually wet wipes. It doesn't stop with the sewers: wipes can now be found in their millions on our beaches and in our rivers - where they are affecting wildlife, and in some cases even changing the shape of the riverbed itself. Water companies say that nothing but pee, poo and paper should be flushed down the toilet. Many wipes are labelled "do not flush" - but Tom talks to experts who cast doubt over whether even the ones marked "flushable" really are.
Producer: Emma Campbell
Long-running legal magazine programme featuring reports and discussion
Winner of this year's prize for Women's Fiction Kamila Shamsie and the former Conservative MP, former prisoner and best selling novelist Jeffrey Archer share their book choices with Harriett Gilbert. Chinaman by Shehan Karunatilaka, a comic tale about a Sri Lankan cricket journalist is chosen by Kamila Shamsie, while Jeffrey Archer discusses Fred Uhlman's Reunion set in pre war Germany from 1971. The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald from 1959 is Harriett's choice.
Producer: Maggie Ayre
PM at 5pm: interviews, context and analysis.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
The multi-award winning comic Mark Watson, assisted and impeded in equal measure by henchmen Sam Simmons and Will Adamsdale, as he revives his quest to make sense of life against the backdrop of a world that, in recent times, has come to appear even more peculiar than usual.
The tenacious trio take on some of human life's central topics - family, spirituality, Scandinavia. Watson peddles his unique, high-octane stand-up while Simmons and Adamsdale chip in with interjections which include (but are not limited to) music, shopping lists, life advice, stunts, avant-garde offerings and divvy interactions.
Expect big laughs, controlled chaos and an attempt to answer the one question none of us can quite escape from - what exactly is going on?
This week, in the final episode of the series, Watson allows Simmons to choose a topic which demonstrates the epitome of Good Living. They've tackled most of human life, but now the trio turn their attention to the biggest of them all - Scandinavia. Is it a northern utopia? Does it even exist?
Mark Watson is a multi-award winning comedian, including the inaugural If.Comedy Panel Prize 2006. He is assisted by Sam Simmons, winner of Fosters Edinburgh Comedy Award 2015 and Will Adamsdale who won the the Perrier Comedy Award in 2004.
Produced by Lianne Coop
An Impatient production for BBC Radio 4.
Emotions run high on Peggy's birthday and Neil is not impressed
Live daily magazine programme on the worlds of arts, literature, film, media and music
Northern Ireland has some of the highest rates in Europe of pollution linked to agricultural waste – the by-product of intensive pig, poultry and cattle farming. One solution is to turn the waste into energy through green recycling schemes that attract multi-million pound subsidies. But is the system being ‘gamed’ by industry?
An investigation by BBC Radio 4’s File on 4 programme has found that some waste-to-energy schemes are receiving public cash despite operating without planning approval. Their aim was to reduce harmful emissions and pollution, but there are mounting concerns that some schemes have exacerbated environmental harm. The energy regulator OFGEM is responsible for administering the waste-to-energy schemes. Are they doing enough to protect the public's money and has yet another green subsidy effectively back-fired?
Reporter: Lesley Curwen
Producer: David Lewis
Editor: Gail Champion
News, views and information for people who are blind or partially sighted.
Claudia talks to Jo, Susan and Chanelle about their experience of group therapy at a personality disorder clinic in South London. Psychotherapist, Merryn Jones talks about treatment and why intensive group therapy can help people cope with the intense emotional difficulties often caused by traumatic early life experiences.
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.
Adrian gets a new job and his love life finally takes off. He decides to move to London to be with Bianca.
The third book in the exquisitely funny Adrian Mole series by Sue Townsend, one of our most celebrated comic writers. The Wilderness Years is read by Harry McEntire
Following on from The Secret Diary and The Growing Pains, it is now 1991 and our diarist is 23.
Adrian is still infatuated with his childhood sweetheart Pandora and is living in her box room in Oxford. Already in possession of a husband and a boyfriend, and sick of his attentions, Pandora recommends a therapist to help Adrian move on.
Unfulfilled by his job at the Department of the Environment, Adrian’s aspirations to become a poet and author are undimmed. Whilst working on his first novel, ‘Lo! The Flat Hills of my Homeland’, he is plagued by the literary success of his old nemesis, Barry Kent.
Adrian struggles to understand why he is so unsuccessful with women but his perseverance eventually pays off. How the female brain works remains a mystery to him, however.
As he continues to battle valiantly with the slings and arrows that life throws at him, Adrian starts to feel less of an outsider and more at ease with himself.
Abridged by Sara Davies
Produced by Alexa Moore
A Pier Production
Ross Noble presents his surreal magazine show featuring celebrity guests and stories from around Britain - the best bits, the worst bits, the fascinating bits and the downright strange bits.
Ross is joined in the studio by presenter, writer and singer/ songwriter Nick Knowles. Piers reports from England's oldest festival, Terri reports on some of the ancient loopholes enshrined in UK law, and the team investigate the mysterious appearance and then disappearance of an old man.
Britain in Bits with Ross Noble is written by and stars Ross Noble.
Also starring:
Emma Sidi
George Fouracres
Nick Knowles is played by Nick Knowles
The talent wrangler was Niall Ashdown
The production coordinator was Hayley Sterling
The producer was Matt Stronge
It was a BBC Studios production
All the news from today's sitting at Westminster.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping
The latest shipping forecast
National and international news from BBC Radio 4
A short reflection and prayer with Jonathan Rea
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside
The clacking call of the stonechat punctuates nature writer Melissa Harrison's memories of cagoule-clad walks on Dartmoor with her family in the 1970's.
Tweet of the Day has captivated the Radio 4 audience with its daily 90 seconds of birdsong. In this latest series of Tweet of the Day, we bring to the airwaves the conversational voices of those who listen to and are inspired by birds. Building on the previous series, a more informal approach to learning alongside a renewed emphasis on encounter with nature and reflection in our relationship with the natural world.
Producer: Tom Bonnett
Picture: Kirsty Taylor.
Radio 4's flagship news and current affairs programme; including Thought for the Day
The poet Don Paterson meets the composer Thomas Adès.
Don Paterson received the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry in 2010, but when he left school at 16 he was aiming for a career in music, and worked as a guitarist and composer for many years. In 1993, his first volume of poems, Nil Nil, won the Forward Prize for the Best First Collection, and since then his work has won every major British award. He is professor of poetry at the University of St Andrews.
By his mid-20s, Thomas Adès had won an international reputation as a composer, notably for his opera Powder Her Face, and his orchestral work Asyla, premiered by Simon Rattle in Birmingham. Since then he has written two more large scale operas, as well as numerous works for orchestra and for smaller groups. He is also a conductor and pianist.
Producer Clare Walker
Politics has always been angry, it touches every part of our day to day lives and political beliefs are not simply ideas to us, but part of our identities. Anger builds around big events such as elections, protests or referendums, but usually calms and dissapates in the aftermath. But today, we do not seem to reach the calm. Even those who come out on top, are now sore winners.
Oliver looks at the angry political environment we in the western world are living in today, exploring how emotion shapes the political world more than policy, if we are in part of a historical cycle of discontent, and if we are going to continue to have to accept that the future will be continually more angry, or if there’s a point where our anger will finally break.
Five historians explore the global impact of the 1918 armistice and the legacy it has left in our world: from the fringes of Europe to the Middle East. They challenge the conventional narrative about the end of the First World War and the peace settlements that followed, with repercussions still felt today.
In this third programme, Patricia Clavin, Professor of International History at Jesus College Oxford, explores the search for peace and international security after the 1918 armistice.
She reminds us that it wasn’t just dominated by men - women were also at the forefront of a practical approach to peace. The ‘hunger catastrophe’ which beset Europe after the war led to British scientists like Dr Harriette Chick tackling the problem of 'feeding the peace' head-on. The spectacle of hungry children and the evidence that want and disease did not recognise national frontiers emerged at the heart of the women’s peace movement.
While the Allied leaders believed that victory gave them authority to re-organise the European state-system, the new world order was also shaped by bread and butter issues on the ground that forced their way into the lofty world of international diplomacy.
Readings by Helen Ayres and Will Hubbard
Produced by Melissa FitzGerald
A Blakeway production for BBC Radio 4
The programme that offers a female perspective on the world
Skye and Dexter are back in this award-winning serial, one of the highlights of the BBC Children in Need Appeal on Radio 4.
Skye's getting stressed about leaving Dexter with Jak when she goes on her school trip.
This year's story was developed with the help of the Young Carers' Transition Project in Nottingham which receives funding from BBC Children in Need, and through long term research with children and families in Gainsborough.
Skye...Sydney Wade
Dexter...Alfie Johnson-McCann
Jak...Una McNulty
Pearce...Beau Anten
Alex...Don Gilet
Alisha...Megan Huntley
Alice...Lauren Bowler
Poem by Octavia Bettis
Writer...Amanda Whittington
Director...Mary Ward-Lowery
Music by David Bowie, performed by Tom Constantine
Two 13 year old friends talk about the pressures of social media. Fi Glover presents another conversation in the series that proves it’s surprising what you hear when you listen
A lonely old gentleman receives an unexpected visitor and hears a story which changes his life.
Stanley Baxter is joined by Geoffrey Palmer, Penelope Wilton and Tracy Wiles to tell a heartwarming story of two babies from very different backgrounds whose lives become forever linked by events in Glasgow ninety years ago.
The play is written especially for Stanley Baxter by award winning TV writer Michael Chaplin.
Directed by Marilyn Imrie
A Catherine Bailey production for BBC Radio 4.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
The eighteenth century writer Jeremy Bentham thought that telling right from wrong as simple: morally right things were the ones that increased the total of human happiness. Wrong things were the ones that increased the stock of suffering. His principle is known as utilitarianism.
It sounds rational, but does it do justice to the way we actually think about morality? Some things seem wrong even when, according to utilitarianism, they are right.
Recently, philosophers and psychologists have started to apply experimental methods to moral philosophy. In this programme, neuropsychologist Paul Broks looks at the recent research. Some experimenters, such as Guy Kahane in Oxford, have been putting people in scanners to see which bits of the brain are most active when they struggle with moral dilemmas. Fiery Cushman at Harvard has been getting people to carry out simulated immoral acts (such as asking volunteers to fire a fake gun at the experimenter) to see how they react to unpleasant but essentially harmless tasks. And Mike Koenigs at Wisconsin Madison University has been looking at how psychopathic criminals and people with brain damage deal with moral puzzles. One school of thought now suggests that utilitarianism, far from being the "rational" way to decide right from wrong, is actually most attractive to people who lack the normal empathic responses – people very like Jeremy Bentham, in fact.
This programme is part of a week of programmes looking at the history of ideas around Freedom.
Radio 4's consumer affairs programme.
The latest weather forecast.
Mon-Thurs: Analysis of news and current affairs, presented by Sarah Montague. Fri: Analysis of news and current affairs, presented by Mark Mardell.
Martha Kearney and Andrew Dilnot assess how the UK government spends your money.
From costed manifestos to austerity and “magic money tree”, the particulars of government spending have never been more important to the electorate. And with government revenue, spending and debt all at record highs, the question of where that money goes has never been bigger.
Political debates often focus on the small slices of state largesse that are up for grabs in that year’s budget - Martha and Andrew take the chance to look at the rest of it, the numbers behind the headlines that really reflect what’s being done with your cash.
Episode 3 – Healthcare
How much money does it take for us to afford the NHS? Andrew and Martha look at the real cost of one of the most contentious areas of government expenditure.
Producers: Robert Nicholson and Simon Jarvis
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4
Tonio is a teenager from a rough part of Washington DC who escapes his troubled life by playing pickup basketball. One afternoon, he impulsively insults some fellow players. They threaten him. He knows he’s in for a long drawn out struggle. A seasoned white cop patrolling the neighbourhood tries to protect Tonio because he knows he’s a good kid. The question is - what hope does a kindly cop have of preventing assault or worse? What will happen to Tonio now that a gang is after him?
String Music by George Pelecanos is from his short story collection The Martini Shot, adapted by Judith Kampfner. Crime writer Pelecanos tells stories about the area of DC where he grew up. For years, he’s observed life on the streets, in the clubs, parks and playgrounds of a bad neighbourhood and listened to the diversity of voices in his community. He has been called ‘the Zola of Washington DC and Emmy nominated for his TV work, writing and producing for The Wire and Treme.
String Music is set in the summer of 2001 when DC had one of the highest murder rates in the country. The streets that are home to Tonio and Sergeant Peters are especially violent this summer weekend when both the humidity and the tension rise.
This is the second in a two part series, Black and Blue, about black men and the police in America, recorded and produced in New York City and broadcast on consecutive days. The cast - many of whom performed in the TV series The Wire - all come from the area of Washington DC where the story is set, giving the drama authentic characters with the distinctive 'street' accent.
Cast:
Tonio Harris….Nick Pelecanos
Uncle Gaylen….Thaddeus Street
James Wallace….Anwan Glover
Antuane…..Malcolm Xavier
Dimitrius Johnson…..Camari Brown
Peter Hawk…..Eric Lockley
Mother…..Cheronda Farrish
Sergeant Peters…..Richard Pelzman
Officer Roberts…..Peter S Cooper
Dispatcher…..Sydney Beveridge
Latisha…..Victoria Wallace
Boyfriend…..Cole Taylor
Mrs Lang…..Joy Jones
Tonya…..Nyeema Carter
Sound Design by Charles De Montebello
Adapted and produced by Judith Kampfner
A Corporation for Independent Media production for BBC Radio 4
Paul Lewis and a panel of guests answer calls on personal finance.
Laurie Taylor explores the latest research into how society works.
A topical programme about the fast-changing media world.
PM at 5pm: interviews, context and analysis.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Alice's mum has a new boyfriend, and Bob doesn't like him.
Bob – Steve Speirs
Gruff – Elis James
Alice – Katy Wix
Jeffrey – Simon Greenall
Elaine – Felicity Montagu
Anthony – Mike Wozniak
Written by Benjamin Partridge & Gareth Gwynn
Produced by Victoria Lloyd
A BBC Studios Production
Helen gives out the wrong signals and Lynda offers a solution
Live daily magazine programme on the worlds of arts, literature, film, media and music
Combative, provocative and engaging debate chaired by Michael Buerk. With Michael Portillo, Claire Fox, Shiv Malik and Tim Stanley.
David Baddiel tries to understand global trade.
With trade in the headlines - from both Brexit and President Trump - David is keen to understand how world trade works (or doesn't), and where the World Trade Organisation fits in.
Producer: Giles Edwards
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.
Adrian and Bianca find themselves at odds with each other. A trip to Leicester has unexpected consequences.
The third book in the exquisitely funny Adrian Mole series by Sue Townsend, one of our most celebrated comic writers. The Wilderness Years is read by Harry McEntire
Following on from The Secret Diary and The Growing Pains, it is now 1991 and our diarist is 23.
Adrian is still infatuated with his childhood sweetheart Pandora and is living in her box room in Oxford. Already in possession of a husband and a boyfriend, and sick of his attentions, Pandora recommends a therapist to help Adrian move on.
Unfulfilled by his job at the Department of the Environment, Adrian’s aspirations to become a poet and author are undimmed. Whilst working on his first novel, ‘Lo! The Flat Hills of my Homeland’, he is plagued by the literary success of his old nemesis, Barry Kent.
Adrian struggles to understand why he is so unsuccessful with women but his perseverance eventually pays off. How the female brain works remains a mystery to him, however.
As he continues to battle valiantly with the slings and arrows that life throws at him, Adrian starts to feel less of an outsider and more at ease with himself.
Abridged by Sara Davies
Produced by Alexa Moore
A Pier Production
Bittersweet comedy drama about a community mental health nurse.
Cat Lady April builds a shrine to David Bowie though her cats cut up rough if they have to hear any of Bowie’s Eighties output. Ray despairs of pharmaceuticals and Graham adjusts to life without his mum.
Starring Paul Whitehouse and Esther Coles, with Rosie Cavaliero and Cecilia Noble.
Produced by Paul Whitehouse and David Cummings
Associate Producer Tom Jenkins.
A Down The Line production for BBC Radio 4
Lenny Henry's Rogues Gallery is a series of comic monologues with twists-in-the-tale, written and performed by Lenny Henry. Episode 1 is the story of a modern day miracle, as witnessed by a blind man.
All the news from today's sitting at Westminster.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping
The latest shipping forecast
National and international news from BBC Radio 4
A short reflection and prayer with Jonathan Rea
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside
Rower and two times Olympic Gold medallist Alex Gregory tells the story of his childhood pet, a house sparrow called Sparky.
Tweet of the Day has captivated the Radio 4 audience with its daily 90 seconds of birdsong. But what of the listener to this avian chorus? In this new series of Tweet of the Day, we bring to the airwaves the conversational voices of those who listen to and are inspired by birds. Building on the previous series, a more informal approach to learning alongside a renewed emphasis on encounter with nature and reflection in our relationship with the natural world.
Producer Mark Ward.
Radio 4's flagship news and current affairs programme; including Thought for the Day
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Horace (65-8BC), who flourished under the Emperor Augustus. He was one of the greatest poets of his age and is one of the most quoted of any age. Carpe diem, nil desperandum, nunc est bibendum – that’s Horace. He was the son of a freedman from southern Italy and, thanks to his talent, achieved high status in Rome despite fighting on the losing side in the civil wars. His Odes are widely thought his most enduring works, yet he also wrote his scurrilous Epodes, some philosophical Epistles and broad Satires. He’s influenced poets ever since, including those such as Wilfred Owen who rejected his line: ‘dulce et decorum est pro patria mori’.
With
Emily Gowers
Professor of Latin Literature at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of St John’s College
William Fitzgerald
Professor of Latin Language and Literature at King’s College London
and
Ellen O’Gorman
Senior Lecturer in Classics at the University of Bristol
Producer: Simon Tillotson
Five historians explore the global impact of the 1918 armistice and the legacy it has left in our world: from the fringes of Europe to the Middle East. They challenge the conventional narrative about the end of the First World War and the peace settlements that followed, with repercussions still felt today.
Mustafa Aksakal, Associate Professor of History and Chair of Modern Turkish Studies at Georgetown University USA, explores how the armistice had a very different meaning in the Ottoman Empire than on the Western front.
When the armistice was declared in November 1918, the fighting paused for a moment - but the violence resumed quickly across the Middle East as the Ottoman Empire collapsed. In Turkey, the armistice period is now seen as the Great Moment of Defiance, when Mustafa Kemal defied the victorious powers’ heavy peace terms and the Turkish nation was born.
Professor Aksakal argues that the power grab for resources and territory in the Middle East after the First World War has left a legacy of unrest in the region.
Readings by Will Huggins and Susheel Kumar
Produced by Melissa FitzGerald
A Blakeway production for BBC Radio 4
The programme that offers a female perspective on the world
Skye and Dexter are back in this award-winning serial, one of the highlights of the BBC Children in Need Appeal on Radio 4.
Skye freaked out after losing Dex on Dog Island. She's a horrible person, that horrible things happen to, and she knows she deserves it.
This year's story was developed with the help of the Young Carers' Transition Project in Nottingham which receives funding from BBC Children in Need, and through long term research with children and families in Gainsborough.
Skye...Sydney Wade
Dexter...Alfie Johnson-McCann
Jak...Una McNulty
Pearce...Beau Anten
Alex...Don Gilet
Poem by Octavia Bettis
Writer...Amanda Whittington
Director...Mary Ward-Lowery
Music by David Bowie, performed by Tom Constantine
Correspondents around the world tell their stories and examine news developments in their region.
Embroidery is experiencing a boom and with that an astonishing image overhaul. Traditionally viewed as a simple domestic task or maligned as a humdrum craft, a new generation of embroiderers are challenging this with complex, political, dynamic artwork that renews a desire for a lost haptic touch.
Many are drawn to stitch for its tactile nature, hypnotic sound and its ability to convey profound ideas. One artist sews into the sole of her own foot, another embroiders photographs of war time gay erotica. But this new generation of artists are also struggling to be exhibited or seen on the same platform as artists making painting and sculpture.
Dress historian, Amber Butchart, talks to some of these leading contemporary embroidery artists who are liberating embroidery from its past, helping it flourish into a remarkable and radical form of progressive art.
For much of the British medieval and early modern periods, embroideries and tapestries were the most valued form of artistic expression. Embroidered clothing denoted power and status, and it was men who were part of embroiderers guilds.
But the practice lost its prestige and became more associated with women’s domestic work in the last few centuries. This, combined with the transition of embroidery being considered more of a craft than a fine art, also dogs the medium.
As textile artist Raisa Kabir explains, the artworks are a “living archive of histories that have not been noted”. Embroidery is a perfect medium to tell untold stories. Kabir uses complicated weaving and embroidery techniques as well as performance and sound pieces to comment on race, gender, labour and colonial histories.
Hand embroiderer Hannah Hill uses Instagram to share her punchy embroidery about everything from sexual identity to grime music, while Richard McVetis’ intricate graphic embroideries represent abstract mappings of time – with sewing being a form of therapy to him, “an antidote to the busy world we live in".
Presenter: Amber Butchart
Producers: Louise Morris and Andrew McGibbon
A Curtains For Radio production for BBC Radio 4
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Criminal Barrister Harry Potter asks whether the law should enforce morals, and if so, which morals?
Should the law tell us what we can and can't do? Or should it go further and tell us what is right, and what is wrong?
Criminal Barrister Lawyer Harry Potter asks what a moral law might be, in a multi-faith multi-cultural Britain. His key thinker is Jeremy Bentham – 18th century English eccentric and radical – whose theory of Utilitarianism fused law and morality.
Harry introduces the grisly tale of cannibalism which challenged the Victorian version of Christian law; he surveys the transformation of the law from the 1960s, with former Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge: from the imprisonment of homosexuals to gay marriage. And Professor Philip Schofield from University College London explains Bentham's radical concepts, which promised the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people and would have resulted in the tearing down of our great institutions.
This programme is part of a week of programmes looking at the history of ideas around Freedom.
Radio 4's consumer affairs programme.
The latest weather forecast.
Mon-Thurs: Analysis of news and current affairs, presented by Sarah Montague. Fri: Analysis of news and current affairs, presented by Mark Mardell.
Martha Kearney and Andrew Dilnot assess how the UK government spends your money.
From costed manifestos to austerity and the “magic money tree”, the particulars of government spending have never been more important to the electorate. And with government revenue, spending and debt all at record highs, the question of where that money goes has never been bigger.
Political debates often focus on the small slices of state largesse that are up for grabs in that year’s budget- Martha and Andrew take the chance to look at the rest of it, the numbers behind the headlines that really reflect what’s being done with your cash.
Episode 4 – Benefits
After years of profound reform and controversial cuts, Andrew and Martha take stock of spending on the benefits for working age people.
Producers: Robert Nicholson and Simon Jarvis
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4
Part three of the conspiracy thriller. Written by Matt Hartley . Starring Hattie Morahan and Jonathan Forbes.
Helen and Freddy explore the dark underbelly of the trade in human eggs.
A gripping thriller, chart-topping podcast and winner of Best Sound (BBC Audio Drama Awards) and Best Fiction (British Podcast Awards), now Tracks is back with another 9 part headphone-filling thrill-ride.
Helen…. Hattie Morahan
Freddy….. Jonathan Forbes
Dr Geffroy.... Richard Elfyn
Dr. Solomon.... Kerry Shale
Katrina.... Elina Alminas
Dr. Williams.... Carys Eleri
Lead writer.... Matthew Broughton
Directed by Rebecca Lloyd-Evans
Produced by James Robinson
A BBC Cymru Wales Production
Elveden is a quaint rural Suffolk village with an intriguing history as the last Maharajah of the Sikh Empire was buried here in 1893. For almost two decades the village has attracted coach loads of Sikhs from all over the country and the world flocking to see the graveside of Maharajah Duleep Singh.
Bobby Friction, a broadcaster and DJ who is Punjabi Sikh has grown up hearing stories all about the last King of the Sikh Empire. He visits Elveden for the first time for Open Country to see for himself the graveside on the day that marks 125 years since Duleep Singh died. Bobby finds out more about the Maharaja and travels to the adjoining town of Thetford where the Maharaja has become an important part of the landscape.
The producer is Perminder Khatkar.
With Antonia Quirke
Luca Guadagnino reveals his plans to turn Call Me By Your Name into a long-running saga that will span decades, and how he was inspired to re-make Suspiria even before he’d seen Dario Argento’s original in 1977.
Neil Brand shows us how Alan Silvestri's score for Back To The Future changed the game for future movies.
As 9 To 5 returns to cinemas and Working Girl celebrates its 30th anniversary, Gaylene Gould and Anna Smith chart the movie stereotypes of the working woman.
Adam Rutherford investigates the news in science and science in the news.
PM at 5pm: interviews, context and analysis.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
A new one-off show as part of Radio 4's season of Sunday night stand-up specials from Tom Allen, star of The Royal Variety Performance, 8 out of 10 Cats and Mock The Week amongst many others.
Tom Allen is Actually Not Very Nice explores what happens when Tom's calm and collected exterior collapses, be it when confronting some rowdy teenagers on a bus or arguing with his Mum's friend Joyce about ham. He used to be such a nice boy but what has happened to turn him naughty?
With help from the assembled studio audience, Tom works out how best to navigate some tricky social situations and how to keep a lid on his fury when confronted with life's small injustices.
Featuring Gabby Best.
Producer: Richard Morris
A BBC Studios Production.
Lexi drops a bombshell and Oliver causes a stir
Live daily magazine programme on the worlds of arts, literature, film, media and music
Evan Davis chairs a round table discussion providing insight into business from the people at the top.
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.
Adrian’s Grandma is admitted to hospital. He receives an interesting holiday brochure.
The third book in the exquisitely funny Adrian Mole series by Sue Townsend, one of our most celebrated comic writers. The Wilderness Years is read by Harry McEntire
Following on from The Secret Diary and The Growing Pains, it is now 1991 and our diarist is 23.
Adrian is still infatuated with his childhood sweetheart Pandora and is living in her box room in Oxford. Already in possession of a husband and a boyfriend, and sick of his attentions, Pandora recommends a therapist to help Adrian move on.
Unfulfilled by his job at the Department of the Environment, Adrian’s aspirations to become a poet and author are undimmed. Whilst working on his first novel, ‘Lo! The Flat Hills of my Homeland’, he is plagued by the literary success of his old nemesis, Barry Kent.
Adrian struggles to understand why he is so unsuccessful with women but his perseverance eventually pays off. How the female brain works remains a mystery to him, however.
As he continues to battle valiantly with the slings and arrows that life throws at him, Adrian starts to feel less of an outsider and more at ease with himself.
Abridged by Sara Davies
Produced by Alexa Moore
A Pier Production
Tez Ilyas returns for a third series of TEZ Talks.
In this first episode Tez talks about those moments in life that you would change if you could go back in time.
Written and performed by... Tez Ilyas
Produced by... Carl Cooper
This is a BBC Studios Production.
Comedian. Writer. Ex-Zoo Keeper. Bird Watcher. Definitely NOT a people person.
Sam and Henry are making a series about birds, and every week - armed with Sam's 'Big Book of Birds' they're looking for a different one. Sadly, and despite Henry's very best efforts, Sam keeps being distracted by the people they run into. Each encounter sparks an investigation into Sam's past, because once they've sorted out his issues, then they'll really be able to focus on the bird-watching.
This week they're in Toronto, on the hunt for a fiddle warbler.
The unique talents of the multi-award winning Sam Simmons have landed on BBC Radio 4.
“If you can imagine someone combining the rage of Basil Fawlty with the lunacy of Spike Milligan you are getting somewhere close to Simmons. Painfully frank, riotously inventive and a deserving award winner.” The Evening Standard (UK)
Written by and starring SAM SIMMONS
With:
HENRY PAKER
SARAH KENDALL
MIKE WILMOT
FREYA PARKER
Sound design by CRAIG SCHUFTAN
Producers JOSEPH NUNNERY
ALEXANDRA SMITH
A BBC Studios Production.
All the news from today's sitting at Westminster.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping
The latest shipping forecast
National and international news from BBC Radio 4
A short reflection and prayer with Jonathan Rea
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside
High up in the rain-forests of Papaua New Guinea the BBC's Frank Gardner recalls hearing the King of Saxony Bird of Paradise for Tweet of the Day.
Tweet of the Day has captivated the Radio 4 audience with its daily 90 seconds of birdsong. But what of the listener to this avian chorus? In this new series of Tweet of the Day, we bring to the airwaves the conversational voices of those who listen to and are inspired by birds. Building on the previous series, a more informal approach to learning alongside a renewed emphasis on encounter with nature and reflection in our relationship with the natural world.
Producer: Tom Bonnett
Picture: Wanghc732.
Radio 4's flagship news and current affairs programme; including Thought for the Day
As one of the Guardian’s first female foreign correspondents, Hella Pick reported on events that shaped the world in the second half of the 20th century, from Martin Luther King's civil rights activism to Watergate, the Gdansk shipyard strikes to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Born in Vienna in 1929, she was raised by her mother who, in March 1939, put her on a Kindertransport train to Britain to escape the Nazis. Her mother was able to follow her to England a few months later and Hella spent her formative years in the Lake District. After reading Politics at London School of Economics, she worked as commercial editor of a London-based weekly publication called West Africa. After she left, she offered her services to The Guardian – and spent the next 35 years or so with the paper.
While UN correspondent, she worked alongside Alistair Cooke in New York and subsequently held posts as European Integration correspondent, Washington correspondent, Eastern Europe correspondent, and diplomatic editor before retiring in the mid-1990s. Since leaving The Guardian, she has nurtured a new career as a writer, publishing a biography of Simon Wiesenthal and a book about Austria’s post-war history.
Presenter: Lauren Laverne
Producer: Cathy Drysdale
Five historians explore the global impact of the 1918 armistice and the legacy it has left in our world: from the fringes of Europe to the Middle East. They challenge the conventional narrative about the end of the First World War and the peace settlements that followed, with repercussions still felt today.
Today, Jorn Leonhard, Professor of European History at the University of Freiburg, explores the German experience of the 1918 armistice. He explains how most Germans expected victory until the final weeks of the First World War and were unable to imagine defeat. On top of military defeat came the fall of the monarchy and the founding of the German republic. German soldiers returned to a country traumatised by the unexpected defeat, revolution and political polarization.
Professor Leonhard argues that this combination fuelled what's been called the ‘stab-in-the-back’ legend, which was later used by Adolf Hitler against the hated democracy, and it explains why the armistice centenary has not attracted as much attention in Germany as it has in other countries.
Readings by Helen Ayres and Will Hubbard.
Produced by Melissa FitzGerald
A Blakeway production for BBC Radio 4
The programme that offers a female perspective on the world
Skye and Dexter are back in this award-winning serial, one of the highlights of the BBC Children in Need Appeal on Radio 4.
Skye knows now that she'll never get away. She'll stay here forever, like Jak. Because they're made out of the same stuff.
This year's story was developed with the help of the Young Carers' Transition Project in Nottingham which receives funding from BBC Children in Need, and through long term research with children and families in Gainsborough.
See Monday for cast details.
Writer...Amanda Whittington
Director...Mary Ward-Lowery
Music by David Bowie, performed by Tom Constantine.
Sayeeda Warsi explains how to be a Muslim woman in 21st-century Britain.
Vera and Henry are in Paris with Ginny and Lionel - a last-minute irresponsible whirlwind of pleasure before the war starts.
But it’s not the carefree, scintillating city of their youth. The atmosphere is oppressive - everyone is preparing for war. Nevertheless, Gertrude Klein’s parties of the literati beckon, and Hammingaway escorts Henry and Lionel to the Folies Bergere afterwards.
Venus reappears briefly with the awful news that Hitler has invaded somewhere or other, it begins with a P, and the foursome scuttle home, arriving on the very evening when Sizzlinghurst is rocked by a massive explosion.
Cast:
VERA SACKCLOTH-VEST................................MIRIAM MARGOLYES
HENRY MICKLETON..........................................JONATHAN COY
GINNY FOX..........................................................ALISON STEADMAN
LIONEL FOX........................................................NIGEL PLANER
MRS GOSLING....................................................ALISON STEADMAN
MR GOSLING...................................................... NIGEL PLANER
ERNEST HAMMINGAWAY............................. .JOHN SESSIONS
GERTRUDE KLEIN............................................. JOHN SESSIONS
VENUS TRADUCES........................................... MORWENNA BANKS
JAMES VOYCE....................................................JOHN SESSIONS
WAITER ...............................................................JOHN SESSIONS
A Little Brother production for BBC Radio 4
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Philosopher Angie Hobbs examines the concept of conscience or moral intuition and asks whether it stands up to rational scrutiny.
In his Novel 'The Brothers Karamazov' the 19th century Russian writer Dostoevsky posed a moral dilemma – would it be morally right to murder an innocent child in exchange for Paradise on earth for all other humans.
In other words does the end ever justify the means or are there actions which are simply unacceptable whatever the benefit?
Angie Hobbs examines our moral intuitions and our sense of 'conscience' by talking through Dostoevsky's dilemma and asking what we really mean when we declare an act unconscionable.
This programme is part of a week of programmes looking at the history of ideas around Freedom.
Radio 4's consumer affairs programme.
The latest weather forecast.
Mon-Thurs: Analysis of news and current affairs, presented by Sarah Montague. Fri: Analysis of news and current affairs, presented by Mark Mardell.
Martha Kearney and Andrew Dilnot assess how the UK government spends your money.
From costed manifestos to austerity and the “magic money tree”, the particulars of government spending have never been more important to the electorate. And with government revenue, spending and debt all at record highs, the question of where that money goes has never been bigger.
Political debates often focus on the small slices of state largesse that are up for grabs in that year’s budget - Martha and Andrew take the chance to look at the rest of it, the numbers behind the headlines that really reflect what’s being done with your cash.
Episode 5 - Defence
From submarines to cyber warfare, Martha and Andrew look at what it takes to fund our armed forces.
Producers: Robert Nicholson and Simon Jarvis
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4
by Nick Warburton
Richard Wells ..... Paul Ritter
Clare Wells ..... Kate Duchêne
John Hector ..... Ronald Pickup
Lux ..... Michelle Asante
Chucker ..... Don Gilet
Barb ..... Jeanette Percival
Mikey ..... Cameron Percival
Anthony ..... Lewis Bray
Directed by Sally Avens
When Richard and Clare Wells inherit a house in Breck Howe they also inherit a sitting tenant, John Hector, who sees the house and the town as his own personal fiefdom. With money tight Richard and Clare decide to take in B&B guests, a decision which John is determined to change.
Ronald Pickup's work spans time from The Day of The Jackal to The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. He was recently seen in The Queen and The Darkest Hour.
Paul Ritter can be seen in 'Friday Night Dinners', 'No Offence', and 'Hang Ups'
Kate Duchêne is best known for her role as Miss Hardbroom in The Worst Witch.
Nick Warburton is an award winning writer for radio and tv.
Eric and the panel are in Boston Spa, West Yorkshire.
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4
An Indian ghost story from an exciting new voice in fiction, Deepa Anappara. It’s monsoon season, and as the rain turns into floods, a woman is trapped in her home. But is she really alone?
Reader: Indira Varma
Producer: Justine Willett
Writer: Deepa Anappara
Matthew Bannister tells the life stories of people who have recently died, from the rich and famous to unsung but significant.
Radio 4's forum for comments, queries, criticisms and congratulations
A teenager and her mentor reflect on how far she has come since they first met. Fi Glover presents another conversation in the series that proves it’s surprising what you hear when you listen.
Producer: Mohini Patel
PM at 5pm: interviews, context and analysis.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Hugh Dennis presents the week via topical stand-up and sketches.
With stand-up from Lucy Porter and Ahir Shah and music from Beardyman.
Gemma Arrowsmith and Luke Kempner provide additional voices.
It was written by Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis with the cast.
The production coordinator was Sarah Sharpe
It was a BBC Studios production.
Writer ..... Simon Frith
Director ..... Kim Greengrass
Editor ..... Jeremy Howe
Jill Archer ..... Patricia Greene
David Archer ..... Timothy Bentinck
Ruth Archer ..... Felicity Finch
Ben Archer ...... Ben Norris
Helen Archer ..... Louiza Patikas
Tom Archer ..... William Troughton
Christine Barford .... Lesley Saweard
Lilian Bellamy .... Sunny Ormonde
Neil Carter ..... Brian Hewlett
Susan Carter ..... Charlotte Martin
Justin Elliott ..... Simon Williams
Emma Grundy .... Emerald O'Hanrahan
Shula Hebden Lloyd .... Judy Bennett
Jim Lloyd ..... John Rowe
Adam Macy ..... Andrew Wincott
Jazzer McCreary ..... Ryan Kelly
Elizabeth Pargetter ….. Alison Dowling
Lily Pargetter ..... Katie Redford
Johnny Philips .... Tom Gibbons
Lynda Snell ..... Carole Boyd
Oliver Sterling .... Michael Cochrane
Roy Tucker ..... Ian Peperrell
Peggy Woolley ..... June Spencer
Lexi Viktorova.... Ania Sowinski
Hannah Riley ..... Helen Longworth
Lee ..... Ryan Early
Live daily magazine programme on the worlds of arts, literature, film, media and music
Jonathan Dimbleby presents political debate from Masham in Yorkshire with a panel including Shadow Brexit Minister Jenny Chapman MP and the CEO of Siemens UK Juergen Maier.
Producer: Lisa Jenkinson
Weekly reflections on topical issues from a range of contributors.
Neil MacGregor begins an omnibus edition of his celebrated series on the expression of shared beliefs in communities - around the world and across time.
Exploring how communities articulate their understanding of the cosmos and their place in it, the former Director of the British Museum focuses on the significance of the daily return of the sun; the cleansing nature of water; the purifying properties of fire - and the significance of a 40,000 year old carving in mammoth ivory of a lion-man.
Producer: Paul Kobrak
The series is produced in partnership with the British Museum
Photograph: (c) The Trustees of the British Museum.
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.
A new girl starts work at ‘Savages’. Adrian goes on a writing holiday to Greece and feels liberated by the experience.
The third book in the exquisitely funny Adrian Mole series by Sue Townsend, one of our most celebrated comic writers. The Wilderness Years is read by Harry McEntire
Following on from The Secret Diary and The Growing Pains, it is now 1991 and our diarist is 23.
Adrian is still infatuated with his childhood sweetheart Pandora and is living in her box room in Oxford. Already in possession of a husband and a boyfriend, and sick of his attentions, Pandora recommends a therapist to help Adrian move on.
Unfulfilled by his job at the Department of the Environment, Adrian’s aspirations to become a poet and author are undimmed. Whilst working on his first novel, ‘Lo! The Flat Hills of my Homeland’, he is plagued by the literary success of his old nemesis, Barry Kent.
Adrian struggles to understand why he is so unsuccessful with women but his perseverance eventually pays off. How the female brain works remains a mystery to him, however.
As he continues to battle valiantly with the slings and arrows that life throws at him, Adrian starts to feel less of an outsider and more at ease with himself.
Abridged by Sara Davies
Produced by Alexa Moore
A Pier Production
All the news from today's sitting at Westminster.
Brothers reflect on their troubled lives - of drug abuse, homelessness and attempted suicides. Fi Glover presents another conversation in a series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.
Producer: Mohini Patel