SATURDAY 28 DECEMBER 2019

SAT 00:00 Midnight News (m000cn2f)
National and international news from BBC Radio 4


SAT 00:15 Living Memory (m0005t92)
Dear Me! What Next?

There's an estimated 15,000 people in Britain who have reached the age of 100 and received the famous telegram from the Queen. That's 0.02% of the overall population.

Over five programmes, we hear from some of them about the lives they've led, their experiences in the last 100 years, the lessons they've learned and how they view the future.

Today, Londoners born around the end of the First World War - including Beattie Orwell who reached political consciousness fighting Oswald Mosley's fascists in Cable Street, and Classicist Joyce Reynolds who still researches in Cambridge University library three times a week - consider the "gloomy" state of the world around them and the kind of attitude people need to keep upbeat.

Produced by Alia Cassam
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4


SAT 00:30 Last Christmas (m000cn2h)
Episode 5

Curated by Greg Wise and Emma Thompson this collection of personal writings reflects on the meaning of Christmas, drawing on the themes of kindness, acceptance and tolerance. In today's episode, the BBC's chief international correspondent, Lyse Doucet, on how the Christmas message of hope, peace and community is universal. Refugee Tindyebwa Agaba follows, with his account of childhood Christmases in Rwanda, before the militia arrived.

Abridged by Richard Hamilton
Produced by Elizabeth Allard


SAT 00:48 Shipping Forecast (m000cn2k)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping.


SAT 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (m000cn2m)
BBC Radio 4 joins the BBC World Service.


SAT 05:20 Shipping Forecast (m000cn2p)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping.


SAT 05:30 News Briefing (m000cn2r)
National and international news from BBC Radio 4.


SAT 05:43 Prayer for the Day (m000cn2t)
A spiritual comment and prayer to start the day with Bishop John Inge

Good morning.

Today, Holy Innocents’ Day, is an opportunity to remember all the children of today’s world who are caught up in and suffer from adult disputes of one sort or another. A UN report published earlier this year suggested that 2018 was the worst year on record for children caught up in conflict. There were 12,000 killed or maimed, the highest number since the United Nations began monitoring. It’s chilling to think that the world is so violent 2000 years after Jesus was born.

Shortly after his birth, King Herod heard about the birth of the king of the Jews. Feeling threatened, he ordered the slaughter of all boys under two years of age. Christians remember them now as the Holy Innocents. The gospel of Matthew records that, despite this horrific act the attempt was unsuccessful because Joseph and Mary had escaped to Egypt with the baby Jesus.

It’s easy for us to condemn all this appalling violence,. It’s right to do so but before trying to separate ourselves from it entirely we need to look into our own hearts. Jesus pointed out that evil intentions come from within, from the human heart. Are our lives a contribution to the peace of the world? That will depend on what is going on inside us. As St Francis said ‘As you announce peace with your mouth, make sure that you have greater peace in your hearts.’

Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.
Lead me from death to life,
from falsehood to truth;
lead me from despair to hope,
from fear to trust;
Lead me from hate to love,
from war to peace,
Let peace fill our hearts, our world, our universe.

Amen.


SAT 05:45 Four Thought (m000cl4s)
The Romance of Train Travel

Monisha Rajesh says the romance of train travel is not dead. After exploring the railways of India, she travelled across continents to research her book "Around the World in 80 Trains", discovering that the romance, " Wasn't dead, just reincarnated, living on in the passengers who would always tell their story to strangers, offer advice, share their food, and give up their seats."
Recorded at Primadonna literature and arts festival.
Presenter: Farrah Jarral
Producer: Sheila Cook


SAT 06:00 News and Papers (m000cpw4)
The latest news headlines. Including the weather and a look at the papers.


SAT 06:07 Open Country (m000cngx)
In the Bleak Midwinter: Holst's Cotswolds

Helen Mark visits the Cotswold village of Cranham and its surroundings: countryside that was home to the composer Gustav Holst, and now features a walking trail named after him.

Holst grew up among these gently rolling hills, and created several of his works – including the Cotswolds Symphony and his classic arrangement of In The Bleak Midwinter – thanks to inspiration gleaned from his years in the area.

Exploring his old haunts, visiting the church where he had his first job as organist and treading the same hills where Holst used to practice his trombone, Helen discovers how the landscape influenced the composer; and how his own influence lingers on in the area today.

Produced in Bristol by Lucy Taylor.


SAT 06:30 Farming Today (m000cpw6)
Farming in the Cradle of Christianity

The Hebridean Isle of Iona is 1.5 miles wide and 3 miles long, with a population of around 120 permanent residents. But each year, the island attracts over 100,000 visitors.

It has been a centre of pilgrimage for centuries and is now home to the Iona Community, an ecumenical Christian organisation whose members are spread across the globe. This Community together with the historic Iona Abbey, other religious ruins and the island's legendary beauty, has created a tourist mecca which overruns the island during the summer months. And that means farmers on the island need to be adaptive and infinitely tolerant if they want to continue to operate here too.

Presented and produced by Nancy Nicolson


SAT 06:57 Weather (m000cpw8)
The latest weather forecast.


SAT 07:00 Today (m000cpwb)
News and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.


SAT 09:00 Saturday Live (m000cpwd)
Michael Rosen

The writer and poet Michael Rosen joins Aasmah Mir and Suzy Klein. He shares his discoveries of a lost family found, the importance of play, and tells us how to eat a bagel.
Back by popular demand: the cook Julia Georgallis, gives advice on ‘How to eat your Christmas tree’.
Incurable romantic, William Cash, explains why he has a treasure trove of more than a thousand love letters, archived in a pig shed, and how restoring his family home helped him deal with heartbreak.
Inspired by her experience of suddenly losing her mother, who ‘took her precious memories with her’, Bryher Scudamore set up an online template – autodotbiography. She describes how inheriting a wallet containing letters written by her great-grandfather, led to discovering surprising stories of his life just after the American Civil War.
And Frank Skinner shares his Inheritance Tracks - Winter Wonderland, performed by Dean Martin and George Formby singing Why Women Don’t Like Me.

Producer: Louise Corley
Editor: Eleanor Garland


SAT 10:30 The Kitchen Cabinet (m000cmzw)
Series 26

Ludlow

Jay Rayner and his culinary panel are in Ludlow. Andi Oliver, Tim Anderson, Sue Lawrence and Polly Russell answer questions from the audience.

This week, the panellists discuss Christmas leftovers reinvented as pies, the perfect canapé and cooking with beer. They also meet Jon Saxon of Dog Hangs Well pub to discuss parlour pubs, and Andrew from Andrew Francis butchers to find out about the Ludlow sausage trail.

Producer: Hannah Newton
Assistant Producer: Rosie Merotra

Food Consultant: Anna Colquhoun

A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4


SAT 11:00 Feeding the Problem (m000cnhc)
Manchester’s Nick Buckley has a message which will seem to some - shocking.
The former homelessness street warden and member of Manchester’s Crime and Disorder team wants you to stop buying sandwiches and food for rough sleepers.
We know the arguments about not giving cash. That it can be spent on drugs, particularly when a hit of spice can cost 80 pence. But we like to think we are helping buy buying an extra sandwich, a coffee or a pastry and handing it to a person on the streets.
Now chief executive of the Charity Mancunian Way, Nick argues that your sandwich diverts people in crisis from safe, organised hot food points which signpost users to mental health professionals, medical care and temporary housing advice. In short – you are making rough sleeping a more viable option.
And Nick is not alone. Amanda Croome chief executive of one of Manchester’s key homelessness organisations, The Booth Centre, agrees, citing her own experience of homeless people who can only change their lives when they must engage with professionals – as opposed to the kindness of strangers.
Petra Salva, rough sleeping director of the charity St Mungo's, explains that Nick's argument holds up in London and the South East too, and describes an initiative which is an alternative to handing out ad hoc food - No Second Night Out.
Nick also meets volunteers who say they are fulfilling a vital service, and hears about practical ways to help, but the view supported by many experts is that a lot of are doing the wrong thing - for the right reason.

Presented by Nick Buckley
Produced by Kevin Core


SAT 11:30 From Our Own Correspondent (m000cpwg)
The Meaning of Home

Until recently, a small, independent and politically neutral Syrian radio station was broadcasting in exile from Istanbul. But Radio Alwan was forced to close when the Trump administration made the decision last year to pull $200m of funding for Syria’s stabilisation projects, knocking the station off air. Some of the station’s staff are scattered across Europe and those who have remained in Turkey say they now feel vulnerable following the Turkish offensive in NE Syria and what they see as a hardening of the country’s position on refugees. So where do you belong if your adopted country no longer welcomes you and the door to your own country is closed? Emma Jane Kirby met ex Radio Alwan broadcasters in Istanbul to try understand why the word “home” no longer has any meaning for them.

Across Latin America millions have left their homes to better their families' lives. These have been years of huge outward migration from Venezuela, Central America and Cuba. Will Grant has now spent more than a decade living in countries which many of their own citizens feel forced to leave.

In the municipality of Has, in the rural mountainous north of Albania, it’s estimated that one in five people has left over the past ten years. It used to mainly be men, but now even primary age children are making perilous journeys into richer parts of Europe including the UK. Jessica Bateman asked one teacher how it feels to watch your school slowly disappear.

If you are forced to leave home, the word evokes a sense of loss. In the early 1970s, the dictator who ruled Uganda, Idi Amin, suddenly decided that the country’s long-standing community of Asians – mostly small business people of Indian origin – should be kicked out. He argued they put ethnic Ugandans at a disadvantage. Reha Kansara grew up with her mother's memories of life in her "East African paradise" and has just made her first visit to Uganda to see the country for herself.

The story of the nativity often inspires people to show compassion to the homeless around Christmas. Pregnant women and new mothers are particularly vulnerable. But the challenges of new life don’t end with finding a safe place to stay. On the occupied West Bank, Jeremy Bristow recently travelled with a group of female medics to visit the minority Arab Bedouin population.


SAT 12:00 News Summary (m000cpwj)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.


SAT 12:04 Money Box (m000cncm)
The Money Clinic revisited

Money is one of the top three strains on relationships and it’s a common cause of rift between family and friends.

You might be cautious and risk averse and hate to see your partner frittering their money away on new clothes and nights out; while they might think you should stop being so miserly with your cash and splash out once in a while.

Earlier this year Ruth Alexander introduced ‘The Money Clinic’. In this special Money Box series we eavesdropped on the conversations of three couples and a mother and son talking honestly about their finances with a relationship counsellor. We learnt about their relationship with each other and how money impacted on their relationships, as well as hearing how they managed the emotional side of money. We learnt that individual attitudes to money are formed in early life, and how arguments about it are often about much more than just money.

In this programme we catch up with two households and hear what impact the Money Clinic had on their relationship with money.

If you have a money and relationship issue you would like to share, email moneybox@bbc.co.uk

Presenter: Ruth Alexander
Producer Smita Patel
Editor Emma Rippon


SAT 12:30 Dead Ringers (m000cmxr)
Christmas Specials 2019

Episode 3

A special show looking back at the highs and lows of the decade and the unforgettable characters that populated it. From the emergence of Jacob Rees Mogg to the disappearance of Theresa May. Starring Jon Culshaw, Jan Ravens, Lewis McLeod, Duncan Wisbey and Deborah Stevenson.

The writing team for the series: Tom Jamieson & Nev Fountain, Laurence Howarth, Sarah Campbell, Ed Amsden & Tom Coles, James Bugg, Sara Gibbs, Simon Alcock, Alex Hardy and others.

Producer: Bill Dare
A BBC Studios Production


SAT 12:57 Weather (m000cpwl)
The latest weather forecast


SAT 13:00 News (m000cpwn)
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.


SAT 13:10 Correspondents' Look Ahead (m000cn1t)
Looking Ahead to 2020

The end of the decade draws to a close and what a year it’s been. A US president impeached, people taking to the streets everywhere from Bolivia to Beirut, from Khartoum to Hong Kong. Young people everywhere found their voice - especially on our climate crisis, many inspired by teenage activist Greta Thunberg, whose lonely protest grew to a millions-strong cry.

As this year ends, some will breathe a sigh of relief that the world avoided another war in the Persian Gulf. But will North Korea’s unpredictable leader launch more long-range missiles next year? Will ferocious fires and monster floods get worse and commitments get better at next year’s climate talks? And when we meet next year will it be President Trump 2.0 or a new man or woman in the White House?

So many big questions. But we have some of our big hitters here to provide plenty of answers.

Presenter: Lyse Doucet
Guests: Jon Sopel, Katya Adler, Gabriel Gatehouse, Faisal Islam and Rebecca Morelle

Producer: Ben Carter


SAT 14:00 So Many Books, So Little Time (m000bp3s)
Mark Hodkinson ponders the nature of our personal book collections, why and how we gather books, what it says about us, and how we ever expect to find time to read them all.

Author Mark had just moved house. By far the most difficult task was carrying, storing and alphabetising his collection of 3,500 books. It made him stop to think. If it took, say, four days of solid reading to finish a book, he’d need 38.3 years to go through his collection. He would have to make his way through 315 million words. And that’s if he didn’t take time off to sleep, eat and have the occasional night out.

Clearly, it was a challenge too far.

So Many Books, So Little Time is an autobiographical, impressionistic audio odyssey. Mark considers that he might be afflicted by bibliomania and visits consumer psychologist Lisa Edgar to see whether owning thousands of books is normal. He calls at his local bookshop and meets its owner, George Kelsall, who has ten times as many books as Mark and has bought a large house solely to accommodate them.

He visits fellow writers, such as Austin Collings who tells Mark he is in grave danger of becoming merely an aggregate of all his books and will eventually lose his own writing voice. Trevor Hoyle tells Mark that he views books as time capsules and, pulling copies down from the shelves, he can tell Mark when he bought them, what was happening in his life at the time. Joanne Harris, the million-selling author of Chocolat, tells Mark she has filled her house full of books because she can’t bring it upon herself to throw any away.

Practical concerns are not forgotten – Mark visits a carpenter, Ashley Deakin, who previously made a bookcase a week but now does one or two a year. ‘‘People don’t want to put books on their walls any more. They just want these bloody huge televisions,’’ he says. Ashley then remembers that he built a shelving unit just a few weeks ago.

"But it was for shoes,’’ he says.

A 7digital production for BBC Radio 4


SAT 14:30 Drama (m000cpwq)
Puckoon

A madcap satire on the division of Ireland, by the godfather of British comedy, Spike Milligan.

Starring Ed Byrne, Pauline McLynn, Kate Harbour, Jane Milligan and featuring Barry Cryer as "The Author". Adapted from Spike Milligan's classic comic novel by Ian Billings.

Published in 1963, Puckoon became a publishing phenomenon, has never been out of print and has sold more than 6million copies. It's a satire on the futility of national borders and inadequacy of bureaucrats, filled with wonderful one-liners and madcap scenes which fall into one another, and remind us of the author’s great days writing the Goons.

In 1924, the Boundary Commission is tasked with creating the new official division between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. Through incompetence, dereliction of duty and sheer perversity, the border ends up running through the middle of the small town of Puckoon.

Houses are divided from outhouses, husbands separated from wives, bars are cut off from their patrons, churches sundered from graveyards. And in the middle of it all is poor Dan Milligan, our feckless protagonist (played by Ed Byrne), who is taunted and manipulated by everyone to try and make some sense of this mess.

The division of the church from its cemetery makes it difficult for the Irish residents to bury their dead. "You intend to bury an Irish citizen in what is now British territory? He will require the following: an Irish passport stamped with a visa, to be renewed annually for the rest of his stay." The corpse of Dan Doonan is taken to a photographer to get his picture taken, as part of the formalities of getting his passport renewed.

Spike Milligan was one of the greatest and most influential comic writers and performers of the 20th century, with deep connections to the BBC. Born in India in 1918, he served in the Royal Artillery during the Second World War in North Africa and Italy. At the end of the war, he forged a career as a jazz musician, sketch-show writer and performer, before joining forces with Peter Sellers and Harry Secombe to form the legendary Goon Show. Until his death in 2002, he had success on stage and screen and as the author of over eighty books of fiction, memoir, poetry, plays, cartoons and children's stories.

Cast:
Ed Byrne
Barry Cryer
Pauline McLynn
Kate Harbour
Jane Milligan
Wilf Scolding
David Shaw-Parker
Colm Gleeson
Tom Alexander

Adapted by Ian Billings
Director: Dirk Maggs
Producer: David Morley

A Perfectly Normal production for BBC Radio 4


SAT 15:30 Where Words Fail, Music Speaks (m0009s36)
The author Hans Christian Anderson coined the phrase: "Where words fail, music speaks" and nowhere is this more true in than in the case of caring for people with dementia.

Scientist and musician Emer Maguire looks at the various ways in which music can be used to build bridges and establish connections between people with dementia and their carers.

She looks at the science behind music as a therapeutic tool and how the "memory bump" informs what music will be more likely to trigger memories.

In the programme we'll see how technology is making easier for people with dementia to create personalized playlists of their favourite songs and how a dose of music can even reduce levels of medication.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 Extra in October 2019.


SAT 16:00 Woman's Hour (m000cpws)
Edna O'Brien, Christmas Traditions, Women In Law, Joanna Scanlan

Having to leave a child's bedside when they're being cared for in hospital can be a huge wrench. To help reduce the separation anxiety, a third of neonatal units in the UK are now using an app that helps parents stay in touch with their premature babies 24 hours a day. Doctors and nurses can send photos and video updates to parents when they can't be with their baby in hospital. So far, around five thousand families have used the service. Emma Barnett talks to Katharine Da Costa - a reporter for BBC South and Consultant Obstetrician Dr Maggie Blott.

This year saw an unprecedented number of women winning major awards and prizes. What does being a winner feel like, and is it always good to win? Jenni Murray hears from the writer Edna O'Brien who won the David Cohen Prize for Literature. The award celebrates a writer who has broken down social and sexual barriers for women in Ireland and beyond, and moved mountains both politically and lyrically through her writing.

Christmas is steeped in all sorts of tradition – but it’s not just trees, tinsel and turkey. Many families have their own festive rituals and the mere idea of doing things differently would make it feel… well, just not like Christmas. But why do we get so hung up on doing Christmas a certain way - even if it doesn't make us happy? What is it about human psychology that makes tradition so attractive? And if your family festivities make you want to run away and hide, what’s the best way to break the cycle? Jenni Murray talks to Dr Cristine Legare from the University of Texas at Austin about why rituals are an inevitable part of being human.

We mark the centenary of women being able to enter the legal profession. Andrea Catherwood speaks to Cherie Booth QC, Dana Denis-Smith - founder of the First 100 years, Abi Silver, a former associate at a city law firm and now a legal consultant, Beth Collette, who's a barrister in her second year of tenancy, and Mari Takayanagi - a Senior Archivist at the Houses of Parliament.

The actress and writer Joanna Scanlan is known for Thick of It, Getting On, No Offence Puppy Love and most recently The Accident. Her latest role is as Mother Superior in the BBC’s new adaptation of Dracula. She joins Jenni to discuss.

Plus, the Glasgow-based close harmony quartet The All Sorts perform.


SAT 17:00 PM (m000cpwv)
Full coverage and analysis of the day's news, plus the sports headlines.


SAT 17:30 The Inquiry (m000d3n2)
Can we eradicate polio?

Despite heroic efforts to vaccinate against this crippling disease, why does it persist? The fight to eradicate polio is an amazing story: It began with a grassroots movement in the United States and led to a global campaign to wipe out a disease that can cause paralysis and even death. There is no cure, but countless cases have been prevented by an extraordinary campaign to vaccinate every child aged five and under. It’s an operation that requires access to some of the poorest and most remote regions of the world.

But polio was supposed to have been eliminated by the year 2000. Nearly two decades later, new cases are still springing up. Why? Neal Razzell examines the challenges and the triumphs in the effort to rid the world of polio.


SAT 17:54 Shipping Forecast (m000cpwx)
The latest shipping forecast.


SAT 17:57 Weather (m000cpwz)
The latest weather forecast.


SAT 18:00 Six O'Clock News (m000cpx1)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.


SAT 18:15 Loose Ends (m000cn3r)
Michael Sheen, Prue Leith, Mavis Staples, Daisy May & Charlie Cooper, Ross Noble and many more.

Clive Anderson and Nikki Bedi pick their Loose Ends highlights from 2019. Conversation comes courtesy of an eclectic line up: Michael Sheen, Prue Leith, Mavis Staples, Daisy May & Charlie Cooper, Ross Noble and many more.

Producer: Sukey Firth


SAT 19:00 Profile (m000cnc6)
Michael Morpurgo

On ‘Profile’ this week - one of Britain’s most celebrated storytellers.

Michael Morpurgo has written 180 books over the past half century.

Over Christmas, he narrated a new BBC TV film adaptation of his 2014 children’s story ‘Mimi And The Mountain Dragon’.

Morpurgo is best known for ‘War Horse’ - a book about a horse bought by the British army to serve in the First World War and its young owner’s attempts to bring it home to safety.

Turned into a National Theatre play, then a Hollywood movie – it’s made him a household name.

Mark Coles hears from Morpurgo’s wife, brother, biographer and close friends talk about what inspired his writing - the profound impact war had on him as a child and the father he didn’t know for years.

We hear about his time in the army, the charity he set up to give city children experience of the countryside – and why now in his mid 70s, he’s taken up his love of singing again.

Producer Smita Patel
Editor Penny Murphy

The programme contains music from the BBC TV Film, "Mimi & the Mountain Dragon", composed by Rachel Portman


SAT 19:15 Saturday Review (m000cpx4)
Listeners' cultural highlights of 2019

Find out what Saturday Review listeners chose as their cultural highlights of 2019. We asked what you'd enjoyed this year and you told us about things we'd missed, disagreed about some cultural events we'd reviewed, and let us know about which ones had delighted you too. We'll discuss all the regular genres: films, theatre, exhibitions, books and television. And lots of items which we didn't get a chance to review from the past 12 months. Tom Sutcliffe is joined by Tiffany Jenkins and Shahidha Bari as well as lots of listeners on the phone from around the country, telling us what particularly impressed them last year.

Producer Oliver Jones


SAT 20:00 Archive on 4 (m000cpx6)
Sontag's Radical Will

Susan Sontag - writer, public intellectual and “empress of American culture” - may have died fifteen years ago, but she continues to shape how we think today, on subjects as diverse as photography, illness, sexuality, and violence. 



Novelist, poet, and playwright Deborah Levy charts Sontag’s role as a lucid chronicler of major cultural moments, from the sexual revolution of the 1960s to the AIDS crisis and the Bosnian war. 
 


Sontag broke with traditional post-war criticism in America, articulating how the boundaries between high culture and popular culture were crumbling. She advocated a sensual approach to seeing and experiencing art, arguing that “interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art.” She was concerned with what it means to make images out of reality and to pay attention to the suffering of others. 
 


A fearless, outspoken thinker, Sontag had a complex relationship with her own gender and sexuality. She was determined to hone a public persona that ensured people took her seriously. Levy examines her views on feminism and considers her attitudes in light of contemporary notions of identity politics and self-expression. 
 


Alongside biographer Benjamin Moser, writer and friend Sigrid Nunez, American essayist Leslie Jamison, and British writer Lisa Appignanesi, Deborah Levy considers Sontag’s major works - including Against Interpretation, On Photography, and Illness as Metaphor - in the context of our current era, arguing that her rigorous voice and daring imagination are ever vital. 

Produced by Meara Sharma
A Somethin’ Else production for BBC Radio 4


SAT 21:00 Sebastian Baczkiewicz - Pilgrim (b019dq7y)
Series 2

The Lost Hotel

The mystical, timeless man tracks a missing person and finds himself an unwilling guest at a sinister hotel. Stars Paul Hilton.


SAT 21:45 Book at Bedtime (b08n2wt2)
Rabbit, Run

Episode 7

The post-war novel that summed up middle-class white America and established John Updike as the major American author of his generation. Rabbit, Run is the first in a virtuoso Pullitzer Prize-wining quintet featuring hapless Harry Angstrom, whom we meet as a 26 year old former high school basketball star and suburban paragon in the midst of a personal crisis.

Episode 7 (of 10):
Rabbit is reunited with his wife, his old basketball coach and his in-laws, and turns over a new leaf. Yet he can't help wondering if the minister's wife Lucy is flirting with him.

Rabbit, Run established Updike as one of the major American novelists of his generation. In the New York Times he was praised for his "artful and supple" style in his "tender and discerning study of the desperate and the hungering in our midst's".

Radio 4 plans to broadcast all five novels in the series over the next few years.

Read by Toby Jones
Abridged by Eileen Horne
Produced by Clive Brill
A Brill production for BBC Radio 4.


SAT 22:00 Meeting Myself Coming Back (b00thcn8)
Series 2

Sir Jonathan Miller

Another chance to hear the audio memories of the writer, director and comedy performer Sir Jonathan Miller who died in November. This programme was first broadcast in 2010.

He became famous as a member of the Beyond the Fringe cast and went on to present television programmes and direct opera and theatre productions around the world. Now, in the last of the series "Meeting Myself Coming Back", Sir Jonathan Miller explores his life and work through the BBC Sound archive. In conversation with John Wilson, he looks back at his younger self and discusses the ways in which he has changed and developed.

Revered as a polymath, Jonathan Miller's life has taken in medical studies at university, comedy performing and television presenting with series like "The Body in Question". Throughout his career there has been a tension between his medical career and his reputation as a satirist and director. In this programme he explores the pull of the two worlds upon him and the guilt that he still feels at having abandoned his work as a doctor.

Producer: Emma Kingsley.


SAT 23:00 Quote... Unquote (m000ckvr)
Ken Cheng, Helen Lewis, Luke Jennings

Quote … Unquote, the popular celebrity quotations quiz, returns for its 55th series.

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.

Across forty years, Nigel Rees has been joined by writers, actors, musicians, scientists and various comedy types. Kenneth Williams, Judi Dench, PD James, Sir Ian KcKellen and Peter Ustinov... have all graced the Quote...Unquote stage.

Episode 4
Stand up comedian Ken Cheng
Journalist and author Helen Lewis
Author and dance critic Luke Jennings

Quotes read by Sally Grace
Production Coordinator: Candace Wilson

Produced by Simon Nicholls
A BBC Studios Production for BBC Radio 4


SAT 23:30 Four Seasons (m000clpp)
Midwinter

Poetry and music to see us through the shortest days of winter. With reflections on midwinter from writers Jay Griffiths (author of Wild: An Elemental Journey and Pip Pip: A Sideways Look at Time) and Lia Leendertz (the creator of the Almanac guides to the year in the British Isles), and astronomical insights into the winter solstice from cosmochemistry researcher Dr Tim Gregory.

With winter poems by Kathleen Jamie, Liz Lochhead, Ruth Fainlight, Gillian Clarke, Mark Doty, Kerry Hardie and Billy Collins. Read by Sinead MacInnes and Richard Harrington.

Producer: Mair Bosworth