The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
When journalist Emma Brockes was ten years old, her mother, Paula, said "One day I will tell you the story of my life and you will be amazed." Growing up in a tranquil English village, Emma knew very little of her mother's life before her. She knew she had grown up in South Africa and had seven siblings. She had been told stories about deadly snakes and hailstones the size of golf balls. There was mention, once, of a trial. But most of the past was a mystery.
When her mother dies of cancer, Emma - by then a successful journalist at the Guardian - feels the need to uncover her history. She travels to South Africa, to the extended family she has never met, and unravels a daunting tale, the events of which her mother had kept from her - events that, even amongst her mother's siblings, were never discussed.
Emma Brockes' story of her mother's past is warm and moving, in moments upsetting, and ultimately redemptive, as she rediscovers her mother.
Emma Brockes is a feature writer at the Guardian. She studied English at Oxford University, where she edited Cherwell, the student newspaper, won the Philip Geddes Prize for Journalism, and graduated with a first. In 2001 she won Young Journalist of the Year at the British Press Awards and a year later was voted Feature Writer of the Year, the youngest ever recipient of the award. Outside journalism she has written a one act play called 'The Prompt', and a book on musicals entitled, 'What Would Barbara Do? How Musicals Changed My Life'.
BBC Radio 4 joins the BBC World Service. BBC Radio 4 resumes at
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Dr David Stone, Canon Precentor of Coventry Cathedral.
Legendary test pilot Eric Winkle Brown tells us how to survive a crash - "Be prepared and be short."
He also explains how he came to be best friends with Neil Armstrong, witnessed the liberation of Belsen, interrogated top Nazis and faced death eleven times. Presented by Eddie Mair and Jennifer Tracey. ipm@bbc.co.uk.
The latest news headlines. Including a look at the papers.
Helen Mark visits Lyme Regis, along Dorset's Jurassic coast, to explore the Undercliffs, a fascinating jungle-like terrain that's been created by 200 years of landslips, and is still evolving today.
She learns that the exceptional rainfall of the last twelve months has increased the geological instability of this area that lies to the west of Lyme Regis, through which passes the South West Coast Path.
Helen meets geologists, naturalists, and the wildlife artist Elaine Franks, all of whom are passionate about the striking quality of the Undercliffs - a six mile stretch of land that's the nearest to jungle conditions that can be found in Britain.
Love them or loathe them, glasshouses and polytunnels cover an area roughly equivalent to 1,800 football pitches in the UK. Charlotte Smith travels to a 600 acre vegetable farm near Evesham in Worcestershire and takes a close-up look at some undercover crops, including tomatoes and - more unusually - pak choi. She asks grower Vito Pilade how he responds to claims that glass and polythene structures are a blot on the landscape.
Presented by Charlotte Smith. Produced by Anna Jones.
Morning news and current affairs with Justin Webb and John Humphrys, including:
It's estimated that two million children could be at risk of developing measles. Today four hospitals in the Swansea area are hosting drop-in vaccination sessions for worried children and parents. Professor John Edmunds from the London School of Tropical Medicine and Dr Paul Cosford, Director of Health Protection for Public Health England explain the risks.
Patti Smith has played a fundraising gig for the Bronte Society in Haworth, the Yorkshire village where the Bronte sisters lived. Before the gig Patti Smith met our Arts Correspondent Colin Paterson at the Bronte Parsonage Museum.
Police in Boston overnight arrested one of the two brothers suspected of carrying out bomb attacks during the city's marathon. Ben Wright has the latest from the city and Professor Michael Nacht, counter-terrorism expert and former defense department official speaks to the Today programme's John Humphrys.
Sian Williams and Richard Coles with the writer Eoin Colfer, poet Luke Wright, strict grammarian Mr Gwynne, and a father and son dealing with facial disfigurement. There's travel with Ben Fogle, young butcher Charlotte Harbottle describes her favourite sound, Pippa Diggle explains how she came to be the subject of an iconic Norman Parkinson photograph, and Petula Clark shares her Inheritance Tracks.
In the mid-1980s, the format of ITV's Coronation Street was uprooted from Manchester and relocated to Munich. This clone went on to become Germany's most popular soap, LindenStrasse.
Presenter John Jungclaussen (London correspondent for Die Zeit magazine) heads to Germany to meet the cast and ask whether LindenStrasse has managed to maintain any of its Mancunian origins.
He explores the nature of European soap opera and profile what kind of stories they feature. We also compare the sociological aspects of LindenStrasse to its British equivalent and ask how story lines reflect social attitudes.
Producer: Howard Shannon.
Peter Oborne of The Daily Telegraph asks how this April will be remembered in politics. What's it like being brought up on benefits? Why was the government humbled over home extensions? And what was it like at Lady Thatcher's funeral?
Correspondents' stories: why President Assad may now believe he's winning the argument; the garage man in Jordan recruiting young Islamists to go fight in Syria; why shackles are still being used to restrain some of the mentally ill in Indonesia -- even though officially they are banned; a truffle recipe's handed over at an army camp in Syria and exciting days in the northernmost reaches of Scandinavia as the annual reindeer migration approaches.
Bogus solicitor scam; the shine has gone off gold; check your clocks for energy tariffs
You are buying a house. The mortgage and your deposit are transferred into your solicitor's account. Your solicitor transfers it to the seller's solicitor. And it disappears. How does this happen? What can be done to stop it? We talk to victims, lawyers and the Solicitors' Regulation Authority.
The price of gold has crashed this month in the biggest two day fall since Croesus - well almost. At its peak last year gold approached $2000 dollars a troy ounce. But the price has melted away and now is around $1400. With a fall of 15% on the year but a gain of 52% over five years is now the time to buy? Or to liquidate? And how can small retail investors put real money into the golden nestegg?
Between one in eight and one in five electricity customers pay a cheaper rate for their power during the night. While they sleep heaters, washing machines, and dishwashers are busy using up cheap rate power. But is Economy 7 (or 10 or 15) a useful way to save money? Or just a complex and inflexible method of paying for energy? Especially when the day/night clocks seem to pay no attention to summer time.
A satirical review of the week's news, chaired by Sandi Toksvig. With Jeremy Hardy, Rebecca Front, Justin Moorhouse and Hugo Rifkind.
Jonathan Dimbleby presents a special edition of Any Questions? from Columbia University, New York, to mark the first 100 days of President Obama's second term. He'll be joined by Congresswoman Donna Edwards, Eliot Spitzer - 54th Governor of New York, Harry Evans, Reuters Editor at Large, and former Congresswoman Dr Nan Hayworth at Columbia University New York.
A chance for Radio 4 listeners to have their say on the issues discussed on Any Questions. Call Anita Anand on 03700 100 444 or email any.answers@bbc.co.uk or tweet using #bbcaq. Questions include the Boston bomb attacks, gun laws in the US, does the special relationship still exist? Drone attacks and what one issue should Obama tackle before leaving office?
Emilia Fox, Ben Caplan and Patricia Hodge star in a dramatisation of the novel that Alfred Hitchcock based his film, 'Suspicion' on.
Set in the early 1930s, Emilia Fox plays the part of Lina - a girl in her late twenties, from a wealthy family. In danger of becoming a spinster, life changes for the better when Lina meets Johnnie Aysgarth, a charming stranger who proposes marriage. Johnnie saves Lina from a boring life with her parents and whisks her off on an extravagant honeymoon. But on their return Lina begins to discover that Johnnie is not all he seems. His gambling threatens to ruin them but is her growing suspicion that he is also a murderer founded on reality or her imagination?
Lady Gaga was banned but Death Metal is cool - from the streets and clubs of Jakarta, we hear the contradictions that make up the burgeoning Indonesian music scene.
As many young Indonesians have more cash in their pockets, music promoters are seeing the country as a new opportunity for high profile pop tours. Artists such as Beyoncé and Rihanna have been booked to play in Jakarta, albeit modestly dressed.
But there have been frictions. The world took notice when Lady Gaga's recent show in Jakarta was cancelled - local authorities sat on the fence as conservative Islamic groups called her the "devil's messenger." It seemed that despite Jakarta's reputation as the "city of sin" (an unlikely reputation for the capital city of the most populous muslim country in the world) things were changing.
Then American death metal band Cannibal Corpse, banned from performing in some countries because of their graphic songs about mutilation and necrophilia, was approved to play in Jakarta. This is one of the contradictions in Indonesian pop - discovering that heavy metal is on the rise amongst young radical muslims.
This documentary looks at these opposing forces and how the music scene is taking shape in this influential city.
Maria Bakkalapulo talks to the group Tengkorak, a self-styled Islamic metal band sympathetic to FPI, the Islamic Defenders Front, a hard-line Islamic group in Indonesia notorious for vandalising nightclubs and even breaking up concert gigs. Tengkorak & FPI were integral in pushing Lady Gaga's show cancellation in Jakarta.
Presenter: Maria Bakkalapulo - who has reporting on music and culture in Indonesia for the past 8 years.
Produced In London by Sara Jane Hall from sound recordings by Niall Macaulay in Jakarta.
Weekend Woman's Hour - Sheryl Sandberg; Jahmene Douglas; The Politician's Husband
Facebook boss Sheryl Sandberg on why she's telling women to 'lean in' if they want to make it to the top, X Factor finalist Jahmene Douglas and his mother on how they survived the trauma of domestic violence, TV writer Paula Milne talks about political marriages ahead of her new BBC Two drama The Politician's Husband, health expert Dr Helen Bedford makes the case for the measles' vaccination, Anne Frank's step sister Eva Schloss describes life beyond the Holocaust, actor Suranne Jones and her role as one half of Scott and Bailey, Jamaica through the eyes of author Kerry Young. Presented by Jane Garvey.
Producer: Emma Wallace.
Julian Clary, Krister Henriksson, David Quantick, Sophie Kinsella, Night Beds, Treetop Flyers
There's Scandimania in the studio this week as Clive's joined by Wallander himself, Swedish actor Krister Henriksson. Krister's currently making his West end debut in 'Doktor Glas'. Performed in Swedish with English subtitles and is at Wyndham's Theatre, London until Saturday 11th May.
Clive's got a ticket to ride with journalist and writer David Quantick, who's written comedy drama 'Playhouse Presents: Snodgrass' for Sky Arts 1. Based on the novella by Ian R MacLeod, a 50 year old John Lennon sits in a dingy kitchen, smoking a roll up, unemployed and on his uppers. This is the John Lennon who walked out on the Beatles in 1962, before the hits and before they changed music for ever. It's on Thursday 25th April at
Nikki Bedi's having a sleepover with chicklit author Sophie Kinsella. Having penned the 'Confessions Of A Shopaholic' series of novels, Sophie's also written 'Sleeping Arrangements' under her real name, Madeleine Wickham. It's been adapted for the stage as a musical and is the story of two families, one holiday villa - but who's sleeping with whom? It's at London's Landor Theatre until Sunday 12th May.
Clive has a Sticky Moment with self-proclaimed 'Lord of Mince' and national treasure Julian Clary. Wedding bells are ringing for Julian, whose show flirts in the face of conformity and sees him welcome a selection of eligible bachelors to the stage to win his hand in marriage. 'Position Vacant: Apply Within' is touring until Sunday 2nd June.
Music is from London based Treetop Flyers, who perform 'Things Will Change' from their album 'The Mountain Moves'.
And from Nashville-based singer-songwriter Winston Yellen, the brainchild of Night Beds, who performs '22' from his album 'Country Sleep'.
Mark Coles profiles the long-serving and influential head of the FBI, Robert Mueller. Mueller took on the job one week before the 2001 World Trade Center attacks. Now, as he approaches retirement, the FBI is again dealing with the aftermath of an attack on American soil.
The squared-jawed Princeton graduate was decorated for bravery during the Vietnam War before training as a lawyer. Dissatisfied with private practice, he found a government job as assistant US attorney in San Francisco - a move which marked the beginning of a steady climb to the top of law enforcement in America.
He transformed the FBI from an organisation that solves crimes into one that also seeks to prevent terrorist attacks. He's now the longest-serving FBI director since J Edgar Hoover. Yet surprisingly little is known about him.
John le Carré's new novel A Delicate Truth centres on the aftermath of a counter-terror operation codenamed Wildlife which takes place in Gibraltar. It raises difficult moral and emotional territory for all involved and is described as one of le Carré's most personal novels for many years.
Promised Land is set in rural America and centres on whether a community will say yes to fracking when a big corporation arrives to try to buy up their land. Matt Damon and Frances McDormand star; Gus van Sant directs.
Ben Elton's first sitcom for 8 years is The Wright Way, set in the Health and Safety department of a local council and starring David Haig. Will it repeat the success of The Thin Blue Line?
Howard Brenton's new play focuses on the arrest of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei and was written at his request: #aiww: The Arrest of Ai Weiwei opens at the Hampstead Theatre.
And Richard Patterson lost 4 paintings in the warehouse fire that destroyed many of the works in the Saatchi collection in 2004. Now he's re-created one of them and it's amongst the work in his latest exhibition at the Timothy Taylor Gallery.
Henry Kissinger is the most celebrated figure in US foreign policy, despite having left office over thirty-five years ago.
His much-vaunted "opening to China" with President Nixon in 1972, his détente policy with the Soviet Union during the Cold War and his shuttle diplomacy across the Middle East, all saw Dr. Kissinger guiding American interests and seeking durable power balances. Ever since then, each US president has sought out Kissinger's sage advice.
But Kissinger's reputation has a darker side. Some critics still find inexcusable the Americans' bombing of Cambodia and involvement in Chile's 1973 military coup. They also deplore what they see as his indifference to human rights.
In this programme, Mark Malloch Brown, a former Foreign Office minister and top official at the United Nations, presents a personal perspective on Dr. K.
As a young man in the 1960s and 1970s, Mark was repelled by what he saw as Kissinger's ruthless realpolitik and apparent downplaying of the plight of peoples from IndoChina to Latin America.
However, over the course of his own long career, Mark's view of Dr K has changed. The collapse of communism, the rise of China and the problems left unresolved by the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq have led Mark to view Kissinger's insights into foreign policy - and how to achieve stability and security - more sympathetically.
As Kissinger's 90th birthday nears, Mark asks: what are the lessons of Dr K's thinking and practice for our own times?
Also taking part are the historian, Margaret MacMillan; the colleague and critic of Henry Kissinger, Morton Halperin; the long-standing Kissinger aide, Winston Lord; and the author of the award-winning critique of America's bombing of Cambodia, William Shawcross.
A beautiful glover's daughter is romantically pursued by a warmongering blacksmith, a poetising prince, a hot-headed clansman and a bumbling bonnet-maker in lawless 14th century Scotland.
In Walter Scott's The Fair Maid of Perth, feeble King Robert III is failing to stop his beloved country being torn apart by warring clans and pillaging nobles - chaos reigns supreme. When our heroine, Catharine Glover, suffers heartbreak and tragedy at the hands of the vengeful Earl of March, a terrible dilemma presents itself.
Should she follow the dictates of her heart by marrying the man she loves - or should she obey her father's wish and shun a world of 'hard iron and barbaric cruelties' by betrothing herself to Christ?
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4, followed by weather.
Does being the eldest child give you an advantage in life? Does the youngest get away with more? Whether you're the youngest or eldest child, or somewhere in the middle, your position in the family may influence your attitude to school, careers and relationships. In this edition of Bringing Up Britain, Mariella and her guests will be looking at the evidence and experience of how important your place in the family pecking order is, and its potential consequences.
Can it really be true, as one study revealed that the first born child has an IQ 2.3 points higher than their subsequent siblings and as one longitudinal study has revealed, the younger you are in your family, the shorter you are likely to be.
Mariella is joined around the table by anthropologist, Professor Ruth Mace, clinical psychologist, Linda Blair and family relationship counsellor Suzy Hayman to sift and debate the evidence.
A lively and funny quiz show, hosted by Steve Punt, where a team of three University students take on a team of three of their professors.
Coming this week from the University of Leicester, the specialist subjects are Medicine, Sociology and, quite literally, Rocket Science (well, Astrophysics and Space Physics), with questions ranging from tummy rumbling to black holes via cheese, snooker and T.S. Eliot.
The rounds vary between Specialist Subjects and General Knowledge, quickfire bell-and-buzzer rounds, and the 'Highbrow and Lowbrow' round cunningly devised to test not only the students' knowledge of current affairs, history, languages and science, but also their Professors' awareness of television, film, and One Direction.
The resulting show is funny, fresh, and not a little bit surprising, with a truly varied range of scores, friendly rivalry, and moments where students wished they had more than just glanced at that reading list.
The host Steve Punt, although best known as a satirist on The Now Show, is also someone who delights in all facets of knowledge, not just in the Humanities (his educational background) but in the sciences as well. He has made a number of documentaries for Radio 4, on subjects as varied as "The Poet Unwound - The History Of The Spleen" and "Getting The Gongs" (an investigation into awards ceremonies), as well as a comedy for Radio 4's Big Bang Day set in the Large Hadron Collider, called "The Genuine Particle".
Poet Jean Sprackland visits the characterful Leeds city centre bar, Whitelocks, famous for its poetic punters from Betjeman to T S Eliot. In the company of poets Ian Duhig, Jon Glover, Rommi Smith and Antony Dunn, she explores the legacy of the postwar Leeds poetry renaissance that produced such eminent poets as Geoffrey Hill, Tony Harrison and Jon Silkin.
Painting of 'Whitelocks' by Maurice de Sausmaurez, courtesy of Jane Sausmaurez. Part of the collection at the Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery at the University of Leeds.
Music: 'Another Number' by Leeds band, the Kaiser Chiefs, taken from the album, Everyday I Love You Less and Less, Wichita Recordings 2005
'Child of the Jago; by the Kaiser Chiefs, taken from the album, Start the Revolution Without Me, Wichita Recordings 2005
'Everything's Dandy' was written and performed by Rommi Smith, with music composed by Dave Evans and performed by Dave Evans and Ken Higgins
Jean Sprackland is a poet and writer. Her poetry collections include Tilt and Hard Water, and her latest collection, Sleeping Keys, is published by Cape in September 2013. Her recent non-fiction book, Strands: a year of discoveries on the beach, was a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week.
SUNDAY 21 APRIL 2013
SUN 00:00 Midnight News (b01s02ms)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
SUN 00:30 The Human Cradle (b01bmq2x)
The Invisible Map
In Maaza Mengiste's new short story, 'The Invisible Map', a young Ethiopian woman, hoping for a better life in Europe, finds herself trapped in a Libyan prison. Read by Adjoa Andoh.
The second in our series of contemporary stories from the Horn of Africa - Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia.
Produced by Emma Harding
About the author: Maaza Mengiste was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and graduated with an MFA in Creative Writing from New York University. Her debut novel, the critically acclaimed 'Beneath the Lion's Gaze', has been translated into several languages and was a finalist for a Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize. She teaches at NYU and currently lives in New York City.
SUN 00:48 Shipping Forecast (b01s02mv)
The latest shipping forecast.
SUN 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (b01s02mx)
BBC Radio 4 joins the BBC World Service. BBC Radio 4 resumes at
5.20am.
SUN 05:20 Shipping Forecast (b01s02mz)
The latest shipping forecast.
SUN 05:30 News Briefing (b01s02n1)
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
SUN 05:43 Bells on Sunday (b01s0305)
The bells of St.John the Baptist Church, Burford, Oxfordshire.
SUN 05:45 Profile (b01s02z6)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 on Saturday]
SUN 06:00 News Headlines (b01s02n3)
The latest national and international news.
SUN 06:05 Something Understood (b01s0307)
Humility
Classical scholar and Anglican minister Teresa Morgan reflects on the concept of humility and whether or not it remains relevant today.
With readings from Aesop, Rudyard Kipling and Charles Dickens, alongside music by Aretha Franklin, James Vincent McMorrow and Hubert Parry.
Producer: Eleanor McDowall
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4.
SUN 06:35 On Your Farm (b01s0309)
Eating your garden - the ethnobotanist James Wong guides us through eating the many edible plants in our gardens. There are many crops that we could be growing for food but don't think of eating, because we regard them as ornamental flowers. Dahlia tubers are edible and make a good alternative to potatoes, while hosta shoots are a delicacy in Japan.
Presented by James Wong and produced by Emma Weatherill.
SUN 06:57 Weather (b01s02n5)
The latest weather forecast.
SUN 07:00 News and Papers (b01s02n7)
The latest news headlines. Including a look at the papers.
SUN 07:10 Sunday (b01s030c)
On return from his retreat in Rome where he was part of the first Conference of Bishops to meet Pope Francis, Archbishop Vincent Nichols joins Edward to discuss his trip and what the new Pope means for the Catholic Church.
The conviction for "insulting Islam" of Turkey's world renown pianist Fazil Say has put the spotlight on growing concern in Turkey over the freedom to criticize religion. Dorian Jones reports from Istanbul.
We hear how representatives from North London's Jewish and Muslim communities have come together to do their bit to save the River Jordan and promote peace in the region on a grassroots level.
The theory of the Protestant Work Ethic has been around for more than a century, it went out of fashion for many decades but now research at Gronigen University claims that it is true. Dr André van Hoorn from Gronigen University and Professor Felipe Fernandez-Armesto from the University of Notre Dame discuss.
Should the proposed new school history curriculum include more topics that are of relevance to ethnic minority pupils? Matthew Tariq Wilkinson believes Muslim history should have greater prominence, but does everyone agree? Trevor Barnes investigates.
In the past fortnight the Nigerian Islamist terror group Boko Haram have turned down an offer of amnesty from the Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan. In addition to this a new guerrilla group in Nigeria identifying as Christians have sent threats to Muslims. Richard Dowden from the Royal Africa Society joins Edward to discuss these recent developments.
Should religion ever play a role in psychiatry? The GMC recently held a hearing after a doctor allegedly arranged an exorcism for a patient with mental health issues. Edward is joined by Dr Rob Waller and Professor Michael King.
SUN 07:55 Radio 4 Appeal (b01s030f)
Minority Rights Group International
Meera Syal presents the Radio 4 Appeal for Minority Rights Group International
Reg Charity:282305
To Give:
- Freephone 0800 404 8144
- Freepost BBC Radio 4 Appeal, mark the back of the envelope Minority Rights Group International.
SUN 07:57 Weather (b01s02n9)
The latest weather forecast.
SUN 08:00 News and Papers (b01s02nc)
The latest news headlines. Including a look at the papers.
SUN 08:10 Sunday Worship (b01s030h)
'The Call of the Good Shepherd.' Fr Christopher Jamison OSB preaches at Mass on this 50th World Day of Prayer for Vocations, live from Our Lady and the English Martyrs, Cambridge. Readings: Revelation 7:9, 14-17;
John
10:27-30; Celebrant: Mgr Peter Leeming. Director of Music: Nigel Kerry; Producer: Mark O'Brien.
SUN 08:50 A Point of View (b01rw8yj)
Adam Gopnik: On Children Leaving Home
Adam Gopnik's son is about to leave home. His suitcase is already packed. It's not a day Adam is looking forward to. Why is love between parents and their children so asymmetric, he wonders? Why do parents love their children infinitely - while children feel about their parents, at best, a mix of affection, pity, tolerance and forgiveness?
SUN 09:00 Broadcasting House (b01s030k)
Sunday morning magazine programme.
SUN 10:00 The Archers Omnibus (b01s030m)
For detailed synopses, please see daily episodes.
Writer .... Mary Cutler
Director ..... Kim Greengrass
Editor ..... Vanessa Whitburn
David Archer ..... Timothy Bentinck
Ruth Archer ..... Felicity Finch
Pip Archer ..... Helen Monks
Josh Archer ..... Cian Cheesbrough
Pat Archer ..... Patricia Gallimore
Helen Archer ..... Louiza Patikas
Tom Archer ..... Tom Graham
Brian Aldridge ..... Charles Collingwood
Lilian Bellamy ..... Sunny Ormonde
Clarrie Grundy ..... Heather Bell
Nic Grundy ..... Becky Wright
Emma Grundy ..... Emerald O'Hanrahan
Edward Grundy ..... Barry Farrimond
Neil Carter .... Brian Hewlett
Mike Tucker ..... Terry Molloy
Vicky Tucker ..... Rachel Atkins
Roy Tucker ..... Ian Pepperell
Hayley Tucker ..... Lorraine Coady
Brenda Tucker ..... Amy Shindler
Jim Lloyd ..... John Rowe
Paul Morgan ..... Michael Fenton Stephens
Celia Redwood ..... Anita Dobson
Darrell Makepeace ..... Dan Hagley
Des Chapman ..... Ben Crowe
1st Police Officer ..... Ben Whybrow
2nd Police Office ..... Rob Swinton.
SUN 11:15 The Reunion (b01s030p)
Coronation Maids
When Britain's 27-year-old newly crowned Queen emerged from Westminster Abbey on June 2 1953, she was flanked by her Maids of Honour: six of the country's most blue-blooded young women, all single, beautiful and, like the Queen, wearing gowns by Hartnell.
According to Lady Glenconner, then 20-year-old Lady Anne Coke, daughter of the Earl of Leicester, they were seen as the Spice Girls of their day.
The Maids' wardrobes and social lives were gossip-column fodder, and sometimes even front-page news, from the moment their identities were revealed until the day of the Coronation. In their New Look suits and demure hats and heels they would be endlessly photographed as the nation, still in the grip of post-war austerity, hungered for some light relief.
Queen Elizabeth followed a precedent set by Queen Victoria by having Maids of Honour instead of pages to bear her Coronation train. It was their duty to unfurl the cumbersome train as she alighted from the Gold State Coach outside Westminster Abbey and hold it aloft using six silk handles invisibly stitched into its underside.
'Ready, girls?' the Monarch asked her attendants as they paused at the Abbey doors to begin their historic procession to the altar.
Now, 60 years on from that historic day they join Sue MacGregor in The Reunion.
Producer: Emily Williams
Series Producer: David Prest
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4
SUN 12:00 The Unbelievable Truth (b01rvnxc)
Series 11
Episode 2
David Mitchell hosts the panel game in which four comedians are encouraged to tell lies and compete against one another to see how many items of truth they're able to smuggle past their opponents.
Rhod Gilbert, Richard Osman, Lucy Beaumont and John Finnemore are the panellists obliged to talk with deliberate inaccuracy on subjects as varied as moles, cabbages, trains and the BBC.
The show is devised by Graeme Garden and Jon Naismith, the team behind Radio 4's I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue.
Producer: Jon Naismith
A Random Entertainment production for BBC Radio 4.
SUN 12:32 The Food Programme (b01s0323)
Food on the Road
There's an army of lorries at work right now, transporting food and other goods all over the country. They keep food on our shelves and without them the UK's economy would collapse within days.
But what's it like to work, live - and eat - on the road?
Reporter Andrew Webb spends a day at the Orwell Crossing truck stop near the port of Felixstowe, with its 24-hour restaurant. Truck driver Dougie Rankine shares an audio diary of his perspective from high up in his cab, searching for the right meal at all times of day and night. Veteran driver John Eden recalls stopping off for nocturnal breakfasts in a notorious truck stop after negotiating 'suicide alley'.
In this edition of The Food Programme, Sheila Dillon reveals a food story on very big wheels.
Producer: Rich Ward.
SUN 12:57 Weather (b01s02nf)
The latest weather forecast.
SUN 13:00 The World This Weekend (b01s0325)
The latest national and international news, including an in-depth look at events around the world. Email: wato@bbc.co.uk; twitter: #theworldthisweekend.
SUN 13:30 The Chinese Grand Tour (b01s452x)
Overseas Chinese tourism is on the rise. Around 30 million Chinese took foreign vacations last year. Chinese visitors are venturing to Britain in increasing numbers, encouraged by their home government, keen that Chinese citizens are seen to be enjoying the fruits of the country's economic miracle.
And Chinese visitors abroad are left in no doubt that they are representing their country. Official circulars remind them to act as "ambassadors" for their country. Several times in the past few years the Spiritual Civilisation Steering Committee of the Communist Party has issued bossy instructions calling on Chinese tourists to avoid spitting, queue-jumping, loudness or haggling in shops with fixed prices.
The favoured mode of travel for Chinese visitors to Britain is the planned bus tour, but the route these bus tours follow is rather idiosyncratic. Whereas most foreign tourists to Britain follow a predictable tourist trail - Buckingham Palace, ruined Castles, beautiful cathedrals and quaint market towns, the Chinese are more interested in seeing places with a Chinese connection.
The Willow Tree in Cambridge is famous in China because it is where the modern poet Xu Zhimo wrote his poem "On Leaving Cambridge." Bus loads of Chinese Tourists stop there now. Philip Dodd boards a coach and goes with the Chinese tourists who have an idiocratic view of Britain and spends a night with them in Manchester's Chinatown.
SUN 14:00 Gardeners' Question Time (b01rw8xy)
Ickenham
This week Gardeners' Question Time is in Ickenham, Middlesex with Eric Robson in the chair and Chris Beardshaw, Pippa Greenwood and Matthew Wilson taking questions from the audience.
While the international debate continues about the alarming decline in numbers of bees and what we can do to help them, Matthew Wilson looks at why bee memory is important and what gardeners can do to encourage bees in their gardens.
For more details on pollinator-friendly plants mentioned in the programme, please visit: http://www.lbka.org.uk/pollinator_friendly_plants.html
Produced by Victoria Shepherd.
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4.
Questions answered in the programme:
Q: What can the team suggest for summer-flowering plants to cover the graves in the churchyard of a medieval church?
A: The panel recommend a more natural/rougher look by planting more bulbs such as Camassia that has starry pale blue flowers, Ornithogalum will go through into late spring/early summer, Alliums sphaerocephalon has metallic-purple flowers on a long, tall stem that will flower into early July. If you leave the grass long you're likely to get a variety of wildflowers as well as local wildlife. Pulmonarias would be good as they tend to ramble with leaves that have white spots or edges and flowers in bright, cheery colours. Aquilegia columbine would look beautiful and self seed. You could also grow Clematis as ground cover (though not around the graves). Narcissus are fairly rodent-proof, Ranunculus acris 'Flore Pleno' would also look lovely with long arching stems. Lecanthemum vulgare (or oxeye daisy) and Lychnis would be worth including too.
Q: Although I have followed instructions carefully on harvesting potatoes grown in a bag, I have repeatedly only been able to harvest potatoes the size of musket balls. What am I doing wrong?
A: If you possibly can grow in the ground it can be easier, but if you must grow in bags only put a maximum of 3 tubers in a container the size of a domestic dustbin. Since you've been putting 15 in they will all be under immense competition and never grow much bigger than marbles. You need your container to be well-drained so that you can water regularly. You should also be careful about the compost you're using, as poor-quality multipurpose compost can be too granular and dry.
Q: I have a well-established summer-Jasmine climber on a sunny west-facing fence, but the flowers are always very sparse. How can I encourage more flowers?
A: This plant will thrive on a south or west-facing aspect in late evening sun. You must be careful not to over feed it with fertilizer, especially nitrogen-based, because this will encourage top-growth but not flowering. You should take hold of the plant and lay the stems down, don't allow them to go upright. This will change the hormonal balance of the plant and instead of investing energy in going upwards and grow flowers.
Planting for pollinators:
Leave your herbaceous perennials standing at the end of the season because the hollow stems of many provide great over-wintering opportunities for solitary bees. Also we generally have an attitude of being too clean in the garden, so we should make sure to leave some areas of the garden untidy so that insects can thrive. Hedges also provide similar opportunities.
Q: Two years ago I started keeping bees and turned my paddock into a wildflower meadow. I now have dozens of 8-inch high anthills. What have I done to cause this invasion and how can I encourage them to move on without using chemicals?
A: This is likely to have been caused by the wet summer as the ants build upwards to stay dry. Ants look for undisturbed ground so a wildflower meadow is perfect for them. You can do a lot of physical disturbing with a rotavator. You could also try using the biological control nematodes that only irritate the ants and will not damage the local wildlife or plant life.
Q: We've recently leased a gravelled-over garden to provide a sitting-out area for our members. We intend to purchase some attractive small shrubs in pots which need to be low maintenance and inexpensive, what would you suggest?
A: As long as the area doesn't get too hot Acers will do well, such as Acer palmatum. Whatever you grow do grow them in large containers that would be harder to steal! They will also be easier to maintain and the plants will be happier in large containers. You could put in some miniature narcissus for spring colour. The problem is that if you use containers the plants are going to be high-maintenance, so you could install a small 4ml drip-line irrigation system. If it is hot and sunny then you could go for drought-tolerant plants such as Yucca gloriosa ("the Spanish Dagger') and all of the silver-leaf plants such as lavenders.
SUN 14:45 The Listening Project (b01s0327)
Sunday Edition - Where We Belong
The strength of community, the changes over three generations in Northern Ireland, and memories of the glamorous 1950s are all featured by Fi Glover in this Sunday Edition of Radio 4's series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.
The Listening Project is a Radio 4 initiative that offers a snapshot of contemporary Britain in which people across the UK volunteer to have a conversation with someone close to them about a subject they've never discussed intimately before. The conversations are being gathered across the UK by teams of producers from local and national radio stations who facilitate each encounter. Every conversation - they're not BBC interviews, and that's an important difference - lasts up to an hour, and is then edited to extract the key moment of connection between the participants. Most of the unedited conversations are being archived by the British Library and used to build up a collection of voices capturing a unique portrait of the UK in the second decade of the millennium. You can upload your own conversations or just learn more about The Listening Project by visiting bbc.co.uk/listeningproject
Producer: Marya Burgess.
SUN 15:00 Classic Serial (b01s0329)
The Great Scott
Rob Roy
Rob Roy by Walter Scott
Adapted by Robin Brooks
Our Rob Roy has dispensed with the Jacobite setting and updates the story to the 20th century. It is 1924 and 20-year-old Frank falls foul of his father. He has spent a year in Paris, supposedly learning the business, but actually hanging out with Imagist poets. When he refuses to join the business his father sends him north to stay with his Uncle - a radical and mixed up in the cause of Irish Nationalism.
Scott's book doesn't really depend on the historical trappings on which the author's reputation now rests. A son being banished by his father because he wants to be a long-haired poet is a perennial situation, as is the love-triangle between Frank, Die Vernon and her wicked cousin Rashleigh. With this production the listener is asked to regard Scott as a novelist like any other, concerned with the workings of the human heart and how they play out in a society more like ours.
With David Tennant as Walter Scott
All other parts were played by members of the cast
The music was composed and performed by Ross Hughes and Esben Tjalve
Producer: Clive Brill
A Pacificus production for BBC Radio 4.
SUN 16:00 Open Book (b01s032c)
Harlan Coben on his novel Six Years
Thriller writer Harlan Coben's series about a gumshoe called Myron Bolitar won him legions of fans but it was stand-alone stories like Tell No One, adapted into an award winning French movie, and the six subsequently published adventures which all debuted at No1 on the New York Times bestseller lists, that have turned him into a household name across continents.
Harlan discusses his latest stand-alone novel Six Years in which a political science professor searching for his lost love, finds himself pitted against ruthless villains.
The London Book Fair is now in its 42nd year and continues to be one of the most important events in the book calendar. Twenty five thousand publishers, literary agents, authors and readers gathered in the capital to discuss issues from the future of self-publishing and emerging markets, to uncovering the next big thing and reshaping the publishing world.
Tom Tivnan the features editor at the Bookseller unearths the hot topics.
At the London Book Fair this year Turkish publishing was given prominence. Despite previous battles with the authorities over censorship, the country has seen an unprecedented 300% increase in book sales in the last decade and boasts a fast emerging younger readership. We explore this literary phenomenon and what it has to offer to readers in the UK.
The possibilities and drawbacks of budget globe-trotting has fired the imagination of author Rodge Glass. In his collection of short stories called Love Sex Travel Musik he examines the impact of mass international travel on our hopes and dreams.
Producer: Andrea Kidd.
SUN 16:30 What I Read to the Dead: Wladislaw Szlengel (b01s032f)
Writer Eva Hoffman explores the extraordinary verse and little known life of Wladislaw Szlengel, poet of the Warsaw Ghetto. Before the war and the Nazi invasion of Poland, he had written poetry in his native tongue and witty lyrics for popular tunes sung in the nightclubs of Warsaw. But confinement in the Warsaw Ghetto and its increasingly tragic circumstances changed Szlengel's work into urgent bulletins for both fellow Jews, trapped inside the walls of their prison city, and his former Polish neighbours.
Szlengel wrote until his last days which came with the discovery of their hiding place in April 1943. Poems like The Little Station of Treblinka, What I Read to the Dead and Counterattack captured with ruthless immediacy the confused, terrifying, days and nights of Ghetto life until the beginnings of the doomed uprising in 1943 that finally brought total destruction.
The station is tiny,
Three firs grow in a line,
This is Treblinka station,
Says the ordinary sign.
There's not even a cashier's window,
A porter's room? Do not seek it.
For a million you won't get
A simple return ticket.
People read aloud Szlengel's verses in their hiding places. In them they recognized not just their plight but their own humanity as family and friends continued to be deported. His poetry survived in versions committed to memory by a handful of survivors, in a small cache of poems kept safe and buried in a unique, secret archive and, decades later, in the form of a sheaf of pages found hidden inside a table marked for firewood.
'I am looking through and sorting the poems that were written to those who are no more. Read it. This is our history.
This is what I read to the dead.
Reader Elliot Levey
Producer Mark Burman.
SUN 17:00 How to Have a Good Death (b01rvpq1)
Death is a certainty for us all, but discussions about it are taboo in Britain today.
Where and how most people die has been in the spotlight recently as the media have been publishing criticisms about the Liverpool Care Pathway for the dying patient. The pathway is an end of life care plan - a document designed to help doctors and nurses support people holistically in the last hours or days of life. But concerning reports from relatives and friends have prompted the government to commission an inquiry into how the Pathway is being used.
Dr Kevin Fong, consultant anaesthetist and broadcaster, looks into this difficult issue. He goes to Liverpool to speak with the architects of the Liverpool Care Pathway. Kevin also meets palliative care experts from around the UK to discover how to achieve best practice in end of life care and why this sometimes doesn't happen. He hears about both good and bad deaths. Ian Leech talks about how the Liverpool Care Pathway helped his 20-year-old daughter Mel to die peacefully in 2008. Dr Kate Granger, a geriatric registrar who is dying from a rare type of cancer shares her detailed ambitions for a good death, perhaps reminding us of the wider issue - that we and our loved ones need to plan and communicate about the final event of our lives.
SUN 17:40 Profile (b01s02z6)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 on Saturday]
SUN 17:54 Shipping Forecast (b01s02nk)
The latest shipping forecast.
SUN 17:57 Weather (b01s02nm)
The latest weather forecast.
SUN 18:00 Six O'Clock News (b01s02np)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
SUN 18:15 Pick of the Week (b01s032h)
Caz Graham chooses the best of BBC Radio this week...
There's a sharp idea for the Chancellor in Pick of the Week: why not tax pets?! It could pay off the national debt!
There's the bus trip of Chinese tourists off to see the UK's iconic sights.like Old Trafford and a certain magical café in Edinburgh. There's jazz from Louis Armstrong, and Banjo, yes, Banjo from actor Steve Martin.
And a look "the eroding coastline of British normality' with Jon Ronson and a man who may have "intermittent explosive disorder". Which sounds pretty painful
Mark Thomas's Manifesto - Radio 4
The Flea (Afternoon Drama) - Radio 4
A Natural History of Me - Radio 4
Granta Best of Young British Novelists (Book at Bedtime) - Radio 4
She Left Me The Gun (Book of the Week) - Radio 4
The Man Who Turned The World Upside Down - World Service
Remembering Humph - Radio 2
The Food Programme - Radio 4
The Chinese Grand Tour - Radio 4
The Folk Show With Mark Radcliffe - Radio 2
Mr Capra Goes To Hollywood - Radio 4
Open Country - Radio 4
John Ronson on..- Radio 4.
SUN 19:00 The Archers (b01s032k)
Susan puts a clean dressing on Neil's shotgun wound. She goes cold every time she thinks of what might have happened. She's just glad she got him back. Roy thinks Neil is a hero. Everyone's talking about how brave he was but Neil just thinks it's a pity one of the gang got away. Dog-fighters are the scum of the earth.
Elona still can't believe Darrell could be so stupid. She's had enough of his lies. If anyone deserved to get shot, it was Darrell not Neil. Darrell insists he wasn't part of the fighting. Elona thinks Darrell is weak. What kind of husband and father would put his family at risk by getting involved in something like that? Darrell's concerned that if Des is caught, he might shop Darrell. Neil insists he'll stand by him. They just need to stick to the same story.
Tom eventually gets hold of Roy, and asks after Brenda. Roy admits she's still upset but she's dealing with the break-up in her own way. Tom admits he's finding it tough and wishes he could go back and change things. He still can't believe it's happened. All he wants is to have Brenda back again.
SUN 19:15 Believe It! (b01hxmw4)
Series 1
Boots
Celebrity autobiographies are everywhere. Richard Wilson has always said he'd never write one.
Based on glimmers of truth, Believe It is the hilarious, bizarre, revealing (and, most importantly, untrue) celebrity radiography of Richard Wilson.
He narrates the series, weaving in and out of dramatised scenes from his fictional life-story. He plays a heavily exaggerated version of himself: a Scots actor and national treasure, unmarried, private, passionate about politics, theatre and Manchester United (all true), who's a confidant of the powerful and has survived childhood poverty, a drunken father, years of fruitless grind, too much success, monstrosity, addiction, charity work, secret work for governments and fierce rivalry with Sean Connery (not true).
All the melodramatic staples of celebrity-autobiography are wonderfully undercut by Richard's deadpan delivery.
(The title - in case you hadn't spotted - is an unashamed reference to his famous catchphrase.)
Richard is supported by a small core cast viz
David Tennant
John Sessions
Lewis Macleod
Arabella Weir
and Jane Slavin
who play anyone and everyone!
Ghost written by Jon Canter
Produced by Clive Brill
A Pacificus Production for BBC Radio 4.
SUN 19:45 Three Stories by Edith Pearlman (b01s032m)
Fidelity
"These stories are an exercise in imagination and compassion.. a trip around the world.."
ANN PATCHETT, author of Bel Canto
Edith Pearlman has been writing stories for decades and is in her mid seventies. Recognition duly arrived in America with various awards, but only recently has her collection, Binocular Vision, been acclaimed in Britain. Now there's chance to hear three of the tales on radio, and be acquainted with a voice that is compelling and new to us..
3. Fidelity
Victor Cullen is a renowned travel writer, a stickler for research. Then one day he starts making his journeys up..
Reader Peter Marinker
Producer Duncan Minshull.
SUN 20:00 Feedback (b01rw8y2)
The measles outbreak in South Wales has been near the top of the national news agenda for weeks. Time was that, whenever the MMR jab was mentioned, so too was the alleged connection to autism. Now, BBC reports state baldly that any suggested link has been "totally discredited". Are they right to be so categoric? Roger discusses the issue with the BBC's Medical Correspondent Fergus Walsh.
What makes for a good "quizzer"? We go behind the scenes with Rufus Stilgoe as he prepares for his first appearance on Radio 4's Counterpoint.
Local radio listeners upset by their treasured evening shows being replaced by an All England Show go head-to-head with David Holdsworth, the BBC's Controller of English Regions.
And we're looking for your questions for Gwyneth Williams, the Controller of Radio 4. We'll be talking to Gwyneth in a week's time, so be sure to send us your questions as soon as possible. Some listeners will even be able to put their points to the Controller directly.
Presenter: Roger Bolton
Producer: Kate Taylor
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4.
SUN 20:30 Last Word (b01rw8y0)
A conductor, a Hillsborough campaigner, an album cover designer, an immunologist and an ethnomusicologist
Matthew Bannister on
The conductor Sir Colin Davis - acclaimed interpreter of Mozart and Berlioz
Anne Williams - whose 15 year old son Kevin died in the Hillsborough tragedy. She was a prominent campaigner on behalf of victims.
The album cover designer Storm Thorgerson, best known for his work with Pink Floyd.
The immunologist Brigitte Askonas whose work led to the development of many new vaccines
And Olive Lewin the musicologist who devoted her life to re-vitalising the folk music traditions of Jamaica.
SUN 21:00 Money Box (b01s02xq)
[Repeat of broadcast at
12:00 on Saturday]
SUN 21:26 Radio 4 Appeal (b01s030f)
[Repeat of broadcast at
07:55 today]
SUN 21:30 In Business (b01rw3yw)
Indian Identity
The government of India has embarked on a huge programme to give the whole population, 1.2 billion people, a unique identity number backed by fingerprint and eyeball scans. Peter Day
asks whether the ID scheme will cut poverty as it is intended to or, as critics allege, create a
Big Brother state.
SUN 22:00 Westminster Hour (b01s032p)
Preview of the week's political agenda at Westminster with MPs, experts and commentators. Discussion of the issues politicians are grappling with in the corridors of power.
SUN 22:45 What the Papers Say (b01s032r)
Tom Newton Dunn of The Sun analyses how newspapers are covering the biggest stories.
SUN 23:00 The Film Programme (b01rw3yf)
Jeremy Irons on Trashed; new Pierce Brosnan romcom Love Is All You Need
This week the Film Programme debates whether films can really change the world. Francine Stock talks to Jeremy Irons about his documentary Trashed which looks at global waste and discusses the feature film Promised Land, starring Matt Damon and Frances McDormand, which tackles fracking. She asks Dave Calhoun, Film Editor of Time Out and Oli Harbottle of Dogwoof films if these films with a mission bring in the audiences.
The director Susanne Bier explains why she wanted to reinvent the rom com formula with her new film, Love is All You Need, starring Pierce Brosnan.
And we hear from the actor and director Mathieu Kassovitz about his new film Rebellion, based on real events in New Caledonia in 1988 when French soldiers controversially suppressed an uprising by Kanak separatists. Kassovitz, who made the critically-acclaimed La Haine, explains why Rebellion was a labour of love which caused heated reaction when released in France.
Producer: Elaine Lester.
SUN 23:30 Something Understood (b01s0307)
[Repeat of broadcast at
06:05 today]
MONDAY 22 APRIL 2013
MON 00:00 Midnight News (b01s02pm)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
MON 00:15 Thinking Allowed (b01rvpv7)
English Heritage; Clergy Lives
Heritage politics in the UK - Laurie Taylor talks to Ruth Adams, the author of a new study which argues that powerful interest groups have championed a 'country house' version of our national past in place of a more complex and diverse history. Has the heritage lobby transformed the architectural heritage of the aristocracy from a minority interest to a cause with popular support? And, if so, at what cost? Also, Dr Caroline Gatrell discusses her sociological exploration of the every day lives of modern day parish priests with her co- author, Dr Nigel Peyton, the Bishop of Brechin.
Producer: Jayne Egerton.
MON 00:45 Bells on Sunday (b01s0305)
[Repeat of broadcast at
05:43 on Sunday]
MON 00:48 Shipping Forecast (b01s02pp)
The latest shipping forecast.
MON 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (b01s02pr)
BBC Radio 4 joins the BBC World Service.
MON 05:20 Shipping Forecast (b01s02pt)
The latest shipping forecast.
MON 05:30 News Briefing (b01s02pw)
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
MON 05:43 Prayer for the Day (b01s4540)
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Dr David Stone, Canon Precentor of Coventry Cathedral.
MON 05:45 Farming Today (b01s09jn)
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall criticises government plans to re-classify farming qualifications in schools. And the asparagus season is meant to start this week, but the cold Spring means it will be a month late.
Presented by Charlotte Smith. Produced by Emma Weatherill.
MON 05:57 Weather (b01s02py)
The latest weather forecast for farmers.
MON 06:00 Today (b01s09jq)
Morning news and current affairs with Justin Webb and Sarah Montague. Including Sports Desk; Weather; Thought for the Day.
MON 09:00 Start the Week (b01s09js)
Bernardo Bertolucci
On Start the Week Tom Sutcliffe looks at the cultural history of Italy. The world renowned film director, Bernardo Bertolucci discusses his latest film Me and You. The journalist and film-maker Annalisa Piras looks back at her country's political, economic and social decline over the last two decades while the English born conductor with Italian roots, Antonio Pappano, talks about the musical soul of Italy. And Tim Parks offers a portrait of his adopted homeland - the 'charmingly irritating dystopian paradise' of Italy - as he travels the country by train.
Producer: Katy Hickman.
MON 09:45 Book of the Week (b01s09jv)
Letters from Italy
Prof Gustavo Piga
Economist Professor Gustavo Piga is the first contributor in a series of Five letters from leading Italians from the fields of politics, economics, television, art and journalism.
Professor Piga of Rome University is interested, not only in the broad economic issues which find Italy struggling near the bottom of the European heap, but also in the prevailing attitudes of his fellow countrymen and in particular the young people he teaches.
He talks about Italy's migration story and how the recent troubles have re-ignited a process which sees the best of young Italian graduates looking for a future overseas. He also tackles the notion that the young are defeated and defeatist about the crisis.
At a time when Italy is in the spotlight, both for the changing of the Pope but more especially for the recent election results and the economic fragility that has brought austerity and anger, each of the letter writers talks about their sense of Italy today, it's challenges, the dangers it faces and the possibilities for the future.
Still to come in the series:
Lucia Annunziata is editor of the Huffington Post, Italy but spent many years in Italian television including a period as head of RIA, the Italian equivalent of the BBC.
Carlo Sibilia is a member of the new Five Stars Movement lead by Beppe Grillo, the new and surprising force in Italian politics.
Dacia Maraini is a novelist and playwright and an established figure in the Italian literary landscape.
Annalisa Piras is an Italian Journalist based in London.
Producer: Tom Alban.
MON 10:00 Woman's Hour (b01s09jx)
Body image; Hadley Freeman; Dorothy Koomson; Domestic Violence Initiative; Ana Moura
Hadley Freeman gives her tips for modern ladies and discusses why women are so obsessed with body size. Fiona Golfar, editor at large for British Vogue, debates the role magazines can play. Ana Moura sings fado. Dorothy Koomson is the author of The Ice Cream Girls, now a TV drama. And reporting domestic violence - how can housing associations and neighbours help?
Presenter Jane Garvey
Producer Lucinda Montefiore.
MON 10:45 The Cazalets (b01s09jz)
Confusion
Episode 1
by Elizabeth Jane Howard
dramatised by Sarah Daniels
Polly will not allow herself to grieve over the death of her mother.
Produced and Directed by Sally Avens and Marion Nancarrow
'Confusion' is the third of four compelling Cazalet novels by Elizabeth Jane Howard, which together give a vivid insight into the lives, hopes and loves of three generations during the Second World War and beyond.
As Elizabeth Jane Howard enters her 90th Birthday year, Radio 4 are broadcasting dramatisations of all four novels between January and August 2013.
You can catch up with series two, The Cazalets: Marking Time, on iplayer.
The third series is set between 1942 and 1945: For the Cazalet family the war has brought tragedy;
Rupert has been missing since Dunkirk and only his daughter Clary refuses to believe he is dead, whilst her step-mother Zoe has buried her hope and devotes her energy to bringing up their daughter Juliet. At home, Sybil has lost her battle with cancer leaving Polly bereft and trying to comfort her father, Hugh. Even Edward seems wracked with doubt over whether he should give up his mistress, Diana, who is carrying his child and try and make a go of things with Villy once again. The younger generation seems as confused as their parents: Louise makes a hasty marriage to society painter Michael Hadleigh giving up her dreams of being an actress, whilst Polly and Clary finally convince the family they can move to London but the girls are soon to discover that independence and adulthood brings heartbreak of its own.
When Elizabeth Jane Howard began writing the novels her aims were modest. "I wanted to write about my youth, and the ten years that straddled the Second World War. I also wanted to write about what domestic life was like for people at home. A lot has been written about the battles and the war in a more direct sense, but little had been said about the way the whole of England changed. When the war ended, everybody was in a different position from where they were when it started."
Two decades later, Howard's quartet of books -- The Light Years, Marking Time, Confusion and Casting Off - charting the family's fortunes between 1937 and 1947 have sold over a million copies.
Martin Amis said of Elizabeth Jane Howard, "She is, with Iris Murdoch, the most interesting woman writer of her generation. An instinctivist, like Muriel Spark, she has a freakish and poetic eye, and a penetrating sanity."
A star cast includes Penelope Wilton as the narrator, Pip Torrens, Dominic Mafham, Naomi Frederick, Helen Schlesinger, Raymond Coulthard, Zoe Tapper, Alix Wilton Regan, Flora Spencer-Longhurst and Georgia Groome.
'Casting Off' follows in July.
MON 11:00 Journeys Down My Street (b01s09k1)
Ode to Finchleystrasse
Amidst all the coverage of contemporary migration to Britain, it is easy to forget the older generations of immigrants, from across the world, who have settled here and made Britain their home.
In this series, Mike Berlin, an urban historian from Birkbeck College, University of London, visits individual streets at the heart of such communities, to hear the stories of earlier immigrants - their arrival, their early lives and their observations on Britain today.
In this episode:
After the Nazi annexation of Austria in March 1938, Vienna's large Jewish community fled - some to Glasgow and Manchester but the vast majority to the area of North-West London close to Swiss Cottage.
The area became so full of German-speaking refugees that anecdotes tell of war-time bus conductors calling out "Finchleystrasse - Passports Please!" as the bus drew up at the top of the Finchley Road.
The shops and cafes are no longer there, but a vibrant group of elderly refugees share their memories of Finchleystrasse with historian Mike Berlin and reflect on their conflicting desires to recreate the best of Vienna whilst assimilating into British society.
Producer: Beaty Rubens
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in April 2013.
MON 11:30 The Rita Rudner Show (b01s09k3)
Diamond Encrusted Turtle Holder
The fourth and final episode of American comedian Rita Rudner's new sitcom about her chaotic return to the UK after a fifteen year break - written by Rita and her real life husband Martin Bergman.
With the help of her husband Martin (Martin Trenaman) Rita is forced to cope with a very unfamiliar England and meets an array of odd characters, including hotelier Mrs Harrison (played by the wonderful Phyllida Law) and various guests at the hotel - such as The Fabulous Twins who try to help Martin buy a gift for Rita, without much success.
Meanwhile, Rita's agent Phil hopes to get some help from Alan Carr - but there's a mix up and eventually Rita is forced to host a charity auction. Rita's also frustrated by a well - meaning support comedian, Jim Jenson who ends up being a major hindrance.
With some more classic stand up from Rita Rudner and a stellar supporting cast including Michael Fenton Stevens, Alan Carr, Dominic Frisby and Amy Wilson Thomas.
Producer: Paul Russell
An Open Mike production for BBC Radio 4.
MON 12:00 You and Yours (b01s09k5)
Online medical records, doing your bit for charity, the hi-tech tea making machine
Could a social media website help NHS patients to take control of their medical records? Some charities say they're struggling to persuade people to give their time to local community work. Why is that so many people are happy to donate money, but reluctant to give their time to charities? What would it take to persuade you to get involved in supporting others in your local community? The woman seeking damages from her lawyer after her daughter was left partially deaf after a vaccination. The Cambridge engineers who've designed a new hi-tech tea-making machine.
Email the programme via youandyours@bbc.co.uk
Producer: Jonathan Hallewell
Presenter: Julian Worricker.
MON 12:57 Weather (b01s02q0)
The latest weather forecast.
MON 13:00 World at One (b01s09k7)
Google's executive chairman Eric Schmidt justifies his company's tax bill after criticism it's immorally low, plus a future of driverless cars and holograms in our living room.
MON 13:45 Noise: A Human History (b01s09k9)
Shell Shock
The rumble of artillery bombardment in Northern France could be heard as far away as Kent during the First World War. Up close in the trenches, soldiers experienced a sonic onslaught that continued night and day: howling shells, the machine gun's rattle, and the screams of injured men.
Professor David Hendy of the University of Sussex visits Flanders to relay echoes from the Front.
30-part series made in collaboration with the British Library Sound Archive.
Signature tune composed by Joe Acheson.
Producer: Matt Thompson
A Rockethouse production for BBC Radio 4.
MON 14:00 The Archers (b01s032k)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 on Sunday]
MON 14:15 Drama (b01ntg5c)
Two Pipe Problems
I Love a Lassie
Sandy decides to travel to Greenock on Clydeside to collect his Freedom of the City award. As he has no living relatives or close friends, he invites William to accompany him on condition he behaves himself. Once again
Stanley Baxter and Richard Briers play the two elderly detectives who solve mysteries by stealth and intuition.
When Sandy and William arrive in the old shipbuilding town, they meet the Provost's secretary Moira. It becomes clear that his hosts really know virtually nothing about Sandy - in fact Moira asks to interview him so she can write up the Provost's speech for the ceremony.
The following day, Sandy shows William around his birthplace. They visit the tenement where he was born and meet a man he was at school with. He isn't wholly friendly and, when they return to the hotel, there is a message: "Do you know how much pain you left behind. Why?". Sandy is anxious, especially when another message appears on the morning of the ceremony: "Why, oh why? Now it's your turn to feel the pain. You will suffer as others have suffered".
So the race is on to uncover who exactly is out to get Sandy and why. The solution to the riddle is finally revealed at the Freedom of Greenock ceremony, when the roots of everyone's resentment are uncovered.
Director : Marilyn Imrie
A Catherine Bailey production for BBC Radio 4.
MON 15:00 The 3rd Degree (b01s09kc)
Series 3
Bath Spa University
A lively and funny quiz show, hosted by Steve Punt, where a team of three University students take on a team of three of their professors.
Coming this week from Bath Spa University, the specialist subjects are Creative Music Technology, Creative Writing and Physical and Environmental Geography, with questions ranging from VAT rates and model railways all the way to Meet The Kardashians and the Ku Klux Klan - via Mo Farah and Dame Nellie Melba.
The rounds vary between Specialist Subjects and General Knowledge, quickfire bell-and-buzzer rounds, and the 'Highbrow and Lowbrow' round cunningly devised to test not only the students' knowledge of current affairs, history, languages and science, but also their Professors' awareness of television, film, and One Direction.
The resulting show is funny, fresh, and not a little bit surprising, with a truly varied range of scores, friendly rivalry, and moments where students wished they had more than just glanced at that reading list.
The host Steve Punt, although best known as a satirist on The Now Show, is also someone who delights in all facets of knowledge, not just in the Humanities (his educational background) but in the sciences as well. He has made a number of documentaries for Radio 4, on subjects as varied as "The Poet Unwound - The History Of The Spleen" and "Getting The Gongs" (an investigation into awards ceremonies), as well as a comedy for Radio 4's Big Bang Day set in the Large Hadron Collider, called "The Genuine Particle".
Producer: David Tyler
A Pozzitive production for BBC Radio 4.
MON 15:30 The Food Programme (b01s0323)
[Repeat of broadcast at
12:32 on Sunday]
MON 16:00 And Calm of Mind (b01s09kf)
Ex-soldiers turn to Shakespeare to tackle the symptoms of post-traumatic stress. Chris Ledgard follows The Combat Veteran Players as they take Henry V from a community hall to a West End theatre. Support comes from the stage combat experts at the Royal Shakespeare Company - they come in to teach the soldiers how to act to be soldiers.
Members of the cast tell us their personal stories and one explains why, after a young adulthood spent abroad and in the army, "civvy street" is his new battleground.
Only a few of the group have acted before, and we hear them coached in the rhythms of Shakespearean verse. And we're backstage as they prepare to go on in front of a paying audience. "I'd rather take a patrol around Belfast" says the man playing the French herald, Montjoy.
Producer: Chris Ledgard
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in April 2013.
MON 16:30 The Digital Human (b01s09kh)
Series 3
Transgression
Here be trolls…
What is it about the digital world that encourages normal people to disregard the rules of everyday life? Is it the cloak of anonymity the net offers? The social rules of online communities? Or simply human nature?
This week, Aleks Krotostki delves into the dark side of the digital world to explore whether or not the internet fuels the breakdown of social and moral boundaries.
She speaks to a troll who claims Jesus and Socrates as her forebears, Dave Eshleman who was one of the guards in the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment and Professor Alex Haslam who recreated the experiment for the BBC, with startlingly different results.
MON 17:00 PM (b01s09kk)
Coverage and analysis of the day's news.
MON 18:00 Six O'Clock News (b01s02q2)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
MON 18:30 The Unbelievable Truth (b01s09km)
Series 11
Episode 3
David Mitchell hosts the panel game in which four comedians are encouraged to tell lies and compete against one another to see how many items of truth they're able to smuggle past their opponents. Ed Byrne, Mark Watson, Tony Hawks and Lucy Porter are the panellists obliged to talk with deliberate inaccuracy on subjects as varied as the horn, windows, monkeys and grass.
The show is devised by Graeme Garden and Jon Naismith, the team behind Radio 4's I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue.
Producer: Jon Naismith
A Random Entertainment production for BBC Radio 4.
MON 19:00 The Archers (b01s09kp)
Pat and Tony acknowledge it's going to take Tom time to get over Brenda but the herd disposal must go on. Now is not the time to lose faith in Tom. Tom's relieved when they suggest he doesn't need to be at the initial meeting with Rodway's (the auctioneers) tomorrow.
Ruth's sorting out Pip's washing, ready for her placement interview on Wednesday. David reckons it's Pip's attitude that needs sorting. As he throws over Pip's jeans, a ticket from a London cinema falls out - dated last Thursday. David's furious that Pip lied about being too busy revising to help with the sheep.
When David confronts Pip, she insists it was a last minute decision and she was going to tell them. She storms off when David accuses her of behaving like a spoilt, selfish ten year old. Pip races off in her car, straight into the tractor which Ruth is reversing into the yard. Nobody's hurt but Pip's car is badly damaged.
Ruth tries to persuade David it was an accident but he's furious. Pip only has herself to blame. David's relieved no-one was hurt. But if Pip hadn't lied and then lost her temper none of this would have happened.
MON 19:15 Front Row (b01s09kr)
Cultural Exchange with Tracey Emin; end of TV's Broadchurch
With Mark Lawson.
Tonight Front Row launches Cultural Exchange, in which 75 creative minds share their passion for a book, film, poem, piece of music or other work of art. Tonight Tracey Emin reflects on her favourite painting - Vermeer's Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid.
The ITV series Broadchurch reaches its climax tonight, when the murderer of Danny Latimer is revealed. It's reported that even the actor playing the killer didn't know they were the guilty party until the last moment. Broadchurch writer Chris Chibnall and John Yorke, author of Into the Woods, A Five Act Journey into Story, discuss the art of suspense in TV drama.
Jack Black stars as a funeral director who strikes up an unlikely relationship with an elderly widow played by Shirley MacLaine in the film Bernie, a black comedy based on a macabre true story. Novelist Lionel Shriver delivers her verdict.
Playwright Graham Reid discusses his latest play Love, Billy. It's the fifth part of a series which focuses on a Belfast based family, first seen on TV in 1982 with Kenneth Branagh in the leading role. In this latest instalment Billy returns to Belfast after 25 years away.
Producer Dymphna Flynn.
MON 19:45 The Cazalets (b01s09jz)
[Repeat of broadcast at
10:45 today]
MON 20:00 How to Run Europe (b01s09kt)
Charlemagne - Holy Roman Conqueror
In the second of three programmes, Anne McElvoy explores the challenges of governing the peoples of Europe across three of the continent's great empires ...and the parallels today.
The second leg of Anne's journey through Europe takes her to Aachen in Germany. Aachen today lies at a crossroads of the continent, a mile or two from both modern-day Belgium and the Netherlands; once it was, as Aix-la-Chapelle, part of France. And in the late 700s AD it was the capital of Europe, of the Holy Roman Empire founded by the Emperor Charles 1st, Karolus Magnus, better known as Charlemagne.
Anne McElvoy is joined in Aachen by Professor Rosamond McKitterick of Cambridge University to visit the Palatine chapel, all that remains of Charles's imperial palace and containing the rough-hewn stone throne of the Carolingian Emperors. There too they explore how Charlemagne managed to run his vast empire, and discover whether some of the challenges faced by those today whose job it is to bring Europe together had parallels twelve hundred years ago.
Hymned in literature's Song of Roland as the hero of the battle of Roncevalles, Charlemagne had dominion far from his own lands of Austrasia, of which Aachen was the capital. Stretching from Aquitaine in the west, to the Spanish Marches in the south and as far south east as Rome, his conquests gave him a formidable empire, united by Charlemagne's Christian faith - he was Holy Roman Emperor, crowned by the Pope - by learning and culture which he encouraged, and by Carolingian coinage. So to what extent do these unifying characteristics from 800AD have equivalents in the Europe of Angela Merkel, David Cameron and the euro-crisis?
Producers Simon Elmes & Georgia Catt.
MON 20:30 Crossing Continents (b01rw2zg)
Mexico's Village Vigilantes
Insecurity dominates the lives of millions of Mexicans, who are caught between the murderous drug cartels and absent or corrupt law enforcement. So, communities have begun to take the law into their own hands, and Crossing Continents reporter Linda Pressly travels to the southern state of Guerrero to meet a fledgling vigilante force which has grown into an organisation numbering thousands of members.
Since coming into force earlier this year, dozens of arrests made by untrained, armed civilians hailing from local pueblos and the local community has largely been supportive of their work.
But these community police organisations, as they are known, have no legal authority, and should not be carrying guns in the street - and amid claims that some are using violence to enforce the law, Crossing Continents asks who is keeping the vigilantes in check?
Reporter: Linda Pressly
MON 21:00 Material World (b01rw3yh)
Iranian Earthquake; Zebrafish; Curiosity Rover
The most powerful earthquake in Iran for half a century happened this week. More than 60 times the energy was released compared to the one nearby ten years ago which destroyed much of the city of Bam, killing 26,000 people. Yet so far the death toll from Tuesday's earthquake is far far lower. To explain this and more Dr Roger Musson from the British Geological Survey joins Quentin Cooper this week.
The genome of the tiny zebrafish has been sequenced in great detail, but why is this animal of such biological significance to researchers? Two new studies, published in the journal Nature, outline just why the zebrafish has proved so useful, and how studying and modifying its genome may not only lead to new ways of combating human diseases, but whole new concepts in biology. Discussing why the zebrafish has become the vertebrate model of choice for many scientists are Dr Jason Rihel from University College London, who uses zebrafish to study autism, schizophrenia and sleeping disorders, and Dr Derek Stemple, Head of Mouse and Zebrafish genetics at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute near Cambridge, whose team has completed this latest work.
Earth and Mars are currently in solar conjunction which means that the sun is between the two. This makes contacting NASA's Curiosity Rover on the Red Planet very tricky. It also means Paolo Bellutta, Curiosity's driver, gets a few days off work. He's used the free time to come to the UK and talk about what he does at the Royal Society of Chemistry in London. En route, he dropped into the Material World studio to say hello.
MON 21:30 Start the Week (b01s09js)
[Repeat of broadcast at
09:00 today]
MON 21:58 Weather (b01s02q4)
The latest weather forecast.
MON 22:00 The World Tonight (b01s09l4)
Sanctions lifted on Burma. But as violence continues, is it premature?
Robotic warfare - is it the future?
Violence in Northern Nigeria.
Why is biting such a social taboo?
With Carolyn Quinn.
MON 22:45 Book at Bedtime (b01s09sh)
This Is Where I Am
Episode 1
When the Scottish Refugee Council assigns Debs to act as mentor to a Somali refugee called Abdi, the two are drawn into an awkward friendship. They must meet once a month in a different part of Glasgow so that the newly widowed Debs can open Abdi's eyes to her beloved city and its people.
As they gradually get to know each other their stories are revealed. And while Debs helps Abdi come to terms with his new life in Scotland, he teaches her about the importance of family - and of laying ghosts to rest.
All Abdi has brought with him is his four-year-old daughter, Rebecca, who lives in a silence no one can reach. Until, one day, little Rebecca starts talking. And they realise why she stopped.
Read by Maureen Beattie and Jude Akuwidike.
Abridged and produced by Jane Marshall
A Jane Marshall production for BBC Radio 4.
MON 23:00 Word of Mouth (b01rvppn)
Language and Politics in India
More than a billion people, twenty two scheduled languages, and dozens more mother tongues: In the second of two programmes, Chris Ledgard explores the complex and passionate politics of language in India. In Delhi and Jaipur, we visit schools, business and newspaper offices to ask - how do the languages you speak, read and write in India influence your life?
Producer: Chris Ledgard.
MON 23:30 Today in Parliament (b01s09sk)
Susan Hulme reports on events at Westminster.
TUESDAY 23 APRIL 2013
TUE 00:00 Midnight News (b01s02qz)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
TUE 00:30 Book of the Week (b01s09jv)
[Repeat of broadcast at
09:45 on Monday]
TUE 00:48 Shipping Forecast (b01s02r1)
The latest shipping forecast.
TUE 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (b01s02r3)
BBC Radio 4 joins the BBC World Service.
TUE 05:20 Shipping Forecast (b01s02r5)
The latest shipping forecast.
TUE 05:30 News Briefing (b01s02r7)
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
TUE 05:43 Prayer for the Day (b01s09yn)
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Dr David Stone, Canon Precentor of Coventry Cathedral.
TUE 05:45 Farming Today (b01s09yq)
Anna Hill hears that Weetabix are unable to make breakfast cereals because of a lack of British wheat. Agents for British dairy processors scout in Ireland for new milk supplies.
And we question who will work on farms once Bulgarians and Romanians get full rights to work in UK.Will farming jobs pay enough to keep seasonal European workers?
Presented by Anna Hill, Produced by Emma Weatherill.
TUE 06:00 Today (b01s09ys)
Including Sports Desk, Yesterday in Parliament, Weather, Thought for the Day. Presented by John Humphrys and Sarah Montague.
TUE 09:00 Stephanomics (b01s09yv)
Phone-in edition
For the last 5 years economic questions have dominated the news. But do you have questions that haven't been answered?
What would happen if a country left the Euro? What do hedge funds actually do? What about quantitative easing? If the Government owns a third of its own debt, why can't it just write it off and solve our debt problem overnight?
In a special edition of Stephanomics, the BBC's economics editor Stephanie Flanders and an expert panel including Andrew Dilnott, Chair of the UK Statistics Authority, Janet Henry, Chief European Economist at HSBCIB and Peter Antonioni, co-author of 'Economics for Dummies' will try and answer your economics questions in a live phone-in.
Get in touch with your questions NOW. Email: stephanomics@bbc.co.uk or tweet @bbcradio4 #stephanomics or call 03 700 100 444 from
8am on Tuesday 23rd April.
TUE 09:30 Found (b01s09yx)
A Brother's Tale
Found tells the emotional and fascinating stories of families reunited after being separated by conflict, tragedy or family circumstances. As well as hearing the life stories we will also hear how various organisations help to reunite families.
In this programme, Richard found his mother through The Salvation Army's tracing service. What he didn't know was that he had a brother. Richard had left the family home as a child with his father after a row on holiday. He made contact with his mother many years later only to find he had a brother.
TUE 09:45 Book of the Week (b01s687y)
Letters from Italy
Lucia Annunziata
Five letters from leading Italians from the fields of politics, economics, television, art and journalism.
Today's letter comes from Lucia Annunziata, one of the most senior figures in Italian broadcasting. At the moment she's editor of the Huffington Post, Italy but in her time she was news editor of a major television station and President of the National broadcaster RAI, the equivalent of the BBC.
She writes of the last years events, the failed government of Mario Monti, the elections that have left confusion, even amongst the most experienced Italian journalists and political analysts, and the sense of doom that is almost palpable in the city of Rome where she lives.
At a time when Italy is in the spotlight, both for the changing of the Pope but more especially for the recent election results and the economic fragility that has brought austerity and anger, each of the letter writer talks about their sense of Italy today, it's challenges, the dangers it faces and the possibilities for the future.
The week's other contributors are:
Prof Gustavo Piga is an economist at Rome University.
Carlo Sibilia is a member of the new Five Stars Movement lead by Beppe Grillo, the new and surprising force in Italian politics.
Dacia Maraini is a novelist and playwright and an established figure in the Italian literary landscape.
Annalisa Piras is an Italian Journalist based in London.
Producer: Tom Alban.
TUE 10:00 Woman's Hour (b01s09yz)
Kate Humble; Rokia Traore; Women and Snoring
Kate Humble on her passion for farming and saving a small part of rural heritage. Rokia Traore performs live. Women and snoring. Changes to the law on adoption. Women in German politics.
Presenter Jane Garvey
Producer Steven Williams.
TUE 10:45 The Cazalets (b01s09z1)
Confusion
Episode 2
by Elizabeth Jane Howard
dramatised by Sarah Daniels
Louise's engagement to the society painter Michael Hadleigh is announced; whilst Polly finds herself
looking at Archie in a new light.
Produced and Directed by Sally Avens and Marion Nancarrow
'Confusion' is the third of four compelling Cazalet novels by Elizabeth Jane Howard, which together give a vivid insight into the lives, hopes and loves of three generations during the Second World War and beyond.
As Elizabeth Jane Howard enters her 90th Birthday year, Radio 4 are broadcasting dramatisations of all four novels between January and August 2013.
You can catch up with series two, The Cazalets: Marking Time, on iplayer.
The third series is set between 1942 and 1945: For the Cazalet family the war has brought tragedy;
Rupert has been missing since Dunkirk and only his daughter Clary refuses to believe he is dead, whilst her step-mother Zoe has buried her hope and devotes her energy to bringing up her daugher Juliet. At home, Sybil has lost her battle with cancer leaving Polly bereft and trying to comfort her father, Hugh. Even Edward seems wracked with doubt over whether he should give up his mistress, Diana, who is carrying his child and try and make a go of things with Villy once again. The younger generation seems as confused as their parents: Louise makes a hasty marriage to society painter Michael Hadleigh giving up her dreams of being an actress, whilst Polly and Clary finally convince the family they can move to London but the girls soon discover that independence and adulthood brings heartbreak of its own.
When Elizabeth Jane Howard began writing the novels her aims were modest. "I wanted to write about my youth, and the ten years that straddled the Second World War. I also wanted to write about what domestic life was like for people at home. A lot has been written about the battles and the war in a more direct sense, but little had been said about the way the whole of England changed. When the war ended, everybody was in a different position from where they were when it started."
Two decades later, Howard's quartet of books -- The Light Years, Marking Time, Confusion and Casting Off - charting the family's fortunes between 1937 and 1947 have sold over a million copies.
Martin Amis said of Elizabeth Jane Howard, "She is, with Iris Murdoch, the most interesting woman writer of her generation. An instinctivist, like Muriel Spark, she has a freakish and poetic eye, and a penetrating sanity."
A star cast includes Penelope Wilton as the narrator, Pip Torrens, Dominic Mafham, Naomi Frederick, Helen Schlesinger, Raymond Coulthard, Zoe Tapper, Alix Wilton Regan, Flora Spencer-Longhurst and Georgia Groome.
'Casting Off' follows in July.
TUE 11:00 Solar Max (b01s09z3)
As we approach 'solar max', when the sun is at its most active and ferocious, astronomer Lucie Green investigates the hidden dangers our nearest star poses to us on Earth.
In March 1989, a solar superstorm brought down Quebec's power grid. Six million people were without light and heat, as outside temperatures sank to -15C. After the winter sunrise, subway trains sat still, traffic lights went off and petrol pumps stopped delivering fuel.
Two days earlier, a giant bubble of plasma had burst from the surface of Sun traveling at millions of miles per hour. It hit the Earth and disrupted our magnetic field, creating electric currents which knocked out power grids in Canada for nine hours and even damaged two transformers here in the UK.
Now, almost a quarter of a century later, our reliance on technology that's vulnerable to solar attack is even higher, from GPS to satellites. 'Severe space weather' is the newest threat to be added to the UK National Risk Register of Civil Emergencies. The potential impacts of solar superstorm could be far-ranging, causing national blackouts, shutting airspace and interrupting financial transactions.
Lucie Green looks at what UK industry is doing to minimise the risks from solar superstorms. She visits the newly opened Space Weather Forecasting area at the Met Office and talks to engineers at the National Grid to find out how they are preparing for 'the big one'.
But with so many national hazards to deal with, from flooding to pandemic flu, how much importance should we place on solar storms?
Producer: Michelle Martin.
TUE 11:30 Ella in Berlin (b01s09z5)
Jazz singers Cleveland Watkiss and Dame Cleo Laine listen to Ella Fitzgerald's Mac the Knife, when she forgot the words in Berlin on 13 February 1960, and then have a go themselves.
For post-war Germany jazz, which had been banned under Hitler, was the music of freedom. When Norman Granz first brought his Jazz at the Philharmonic tours to Europe in the 1950s, Germans flocked to the concerts and Oscar Peterson and Ella Fitzgerald were soon firm favourites.
In February 1960, the German part of the tour opened in Berlin. Mac the Knife, from Brecht's Threepenny Opera, had been a number one for Bobby Darin for nine weeks the previous year, and Ella's friend Louis Armstrong had a hit with it in 1956. But Ella had never sung it. As a tribute to the people of Berlin, she decided she would. She did, but not the version they knew. Yet it was this
improvisation that would win her two Grammy awards.
Cleveland Watkiss, for whom Ella Fitzgerald has always been an inspiration, explores her virtuoso improvisation and scat-singing, in the company of another virtuoso performer, Dame Cleo Laine. They hear from people who were there that night in the Deutschlandhalle, including tour manager, Fritz Rau, pianist Paul Smith and guitarist Jim Hall, and from the author of a forthcoming cultural biography of Ella Fitzgerald, Judith Tick.
Cleveland Watkiss won the London Jazz Award for Best Vocalist in 2010 and was voted Wire/Guardian Jazz Awards best vocalist for three consecutive years. He's had a life-long passion for Cleo Laine and finally had the opportunity to meet - and sing with - her in the course of making this programme!
Producer: Marya Burgess
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2013.
TUE 12:00 You and Yours (b01s7yy7)
Call You and Yours: National Planning Policy Framework
On Call You &Yours we'll be taking a look at the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF)
Under the Government's original proposals in the Growth and Infrastructure Bill, an extension of up to 26 ft would not need to obtain planning permission. Nor would it require consultation with close neighbours.
It's being debated in the House of Lords today after Communities Secretary Eric Pickles was forced to rethink that original proposal. He says that while the Government wants to ease planning rules in England over the next three years the new amendment will give neighbours the right to be consulted on building work.
As it stands local councils receive around 200,000 planning applications every year for home extensions and approve about 90% of them. In the last year 22,000 were rejected outright. The majority of extensions which receive approval get it straight away or after minor amendments to the plans.
So what do you think of the government's original plan..and its amended plan? Maybe you're looking to have an extension built in the near future...how will this affect you? Are you in the building trade and believe this remains the shot in the arm that's needed to boost the construction industry?
Do the planning laws in this area need a rethink?
03700 100 444 is the number or you can e-mail via the Radio 4 website or text us on 84844. Join Julian Worricker at four minutes past twelve.
Presenter: Julian Worricker
Producer: Maire Devine.
TUE 12:57 Weather (b01s02r9)
The latest weather forecast.
TUE 13:00 World at One (b01s09zt)
The LibDem Chief Secretary to the Treasury speaks on government borrowing figures and the future of sterling. Should the British army stop recruiting soldiers under the age of 18?
TUE 13:45 Noise: A Human History (b01s09zw)
Radio Everywhere
In the early days, listening to radio was a magical, uncanny experience. Voices arrived out of thin air from hundreds of miles away. In time, the radio became a trusted part of family life - and by the 1930s and 40s, the perfect medium for propaganda, as Joseph Goebbels recognized.
Professor David Hendy of the University of Sussex considers the seductive power of the disembodied voice.
30-part series made in collaboration with the British Library Sound Archive.
Signature tune composed by Joe Acheson
Producer: Matt Thompson
A Rockethouse production for BBC Radio 4
TUE 14:00 The Archers (b01s09kp)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 on Monday]
TUE 14:15 Drama (b00wqfg9)
Leon Garfield - Devil in the Fog
Episode 1
Highwaymen, duels, swirling fogs, escaped convicts - part one of a thrilling two-part dramatisation of Leon Garfield's classic 18th C. mystery adventure.
Dramatised by Martin Jameson
Episode 1 of 2
Directed by Marc Beeby
14 year-old George is the oldest of the seven Treet children. Captained by their larger-than-life father, the Treets are touring thespians, forever on the edge of poverty. But their normally happy lives are shadowed by the twice yearly arrival of "the Stranger" who hands Mr Treet a sum of money and disappears. This year, however, the Stranger appears for the last time and Mr Treet reveals to George that he is the son of a nobleman, Sir John Dexter. Now, George must, reluctantly, be returned to him.
At the gloomy Dexter family home, George is welcomed by Sir John, who is recovering from a pistol wound received in the course of a duel with his black-hearted brother Richard. Richard has been imprisoned as a result. George does his best to settle into life in his forbidding new home.
But trouble is waiting in the fog that surrounds the house. Richard Dexter has escaped from Newgate and is hiding in a nearby copse. What's more, it soon becomes clear that someone is trying to kill George...
TUE 15:00 Making History (b01s09zy)
Tom Holland is joined in the studio by Michelle Brown, Professor of Medieval Manuscript Studies at the University of London.
Martin Ellis is on the border of England and Wales to celebrate an iconic landscape feature which doesn't attract the attention that its history warrants. He asks who Offa was, and what made him build a dyke which has become the physical border between two nations.
Joining Tom from Ireland is Dr Gillian Kenny from Trinity College in Dublin where she works on research into women in medieval Gaelic society. Remarkably, she has discovered that married women enjoyed a freedom in the Ireland of the middle ages that their English counterparts never had.
And Helen Castor is out on the cut finding out about the women who joined a scheme to keep the canals going during the Second World War. But has this middle-class history eclipsed a longer working-class one?
Contact the programme: making.history@bbc.co.uk
Produced by Nick Patrick
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.
TUE 15:30 Costing the Earth (b01s0b00)
Fish - The Next Fight
Tom Heap meets the activists hoping to bring an end to illegal fishing by tackling the problem head on: by getting in the way of pirate fishermen.
The Black Fish is a relatively new NGO (Non-Governmental Organisation) who aim to stop the fishing of juvenile Bluefin Tuna in the Mediterranean and prevent to use of illegal drift nets - by cutting them. Drift nets were banned by the United Nations in 1992 but they are still used illegally around the world.
The Black Fish are soon to launch unmanned reconnaissance aircraft in the Mediterranean to monitor illegal fishing and find out exactly who is doing it and where.
Tom also meets campaigners who believe that the only way for fish stocks to recover is for a ten year moratorium to be imposed, allowing species of fish to become plentiful once more.
Presenter: Tom Heap
Producer: Martin Poyntz-Roberts.
TUE 16:00 Word of Mouth (b01s0b02)
Instructions Instructions
Michael Rosen opens some flat-pack furniture to discover why instruction manuals are so hard to follow. Are they simply badly written or do they reveal something fundamental about how words capture movement. Beset by orphaned bolts and extraneous screws Michael plums for the latter and invites guests in to help explain the conundrum. He tracks down the company that has written the instructions to his bedside cabinet ;delving into their world he gets an insight to these experts who make a living from developing the 'perfect' instructions for us .But are words alone simply not suffice - are words and the language sometimes a problem if trying do make complex things ? Would we better off without words and have image alone - does that work ? And what about those who suffer from dyslexia how do they cope ? Whether you follow every word or simply loathe and chuck them away, instructions and manuals are a powerful influence on our lives and something most companies and organisations are starting to realise they need to get right .
Presenter : Michael Rosen
Producer : Perminder Khatkar.
TUE 16:30 Great Lives (b01s0b04)
Series 30
David Livingstone
Dr David Livingstone was the Victorian equivalent of an astronaut - a man who ventured into the interior of Africa to report on territory that was wholly unknown to Europeans. In this programme, the explorer Colonel John Blashford-Snell explains why he admires his predecessor. Matthew Parris chairs the discussion, assisted by Dr Sarah Worden of the National Museum of Scotland.
Livingstone went to Africa as a missionary but succeeded in making only one convert, who soon lapsed. Frustrated, he switched his focus to exploration, crossing southern Africa from east to west and back again. He discovered the Victoria Falls, but his attempts to reach the interior by going up the Zambezi were a disaster when he discovered that the rapids he had been warned about were impassable. On his recommendation, missionary families came out from England to settle in what is now Malawi but - as he should have anticipated - many of them died of disease.
Despite these failures, he was and is regarded as a hero. As a self-made man who put himself through university on his wages from working in a cotton mill, he embodied the Victorian can-do spirit. His map-making, natural history observations, facility with languages and sheer endurance in the face of overwhelming obstacles made him a formidable character. Above all, his legacy in helping to end the east African slave trade mean that he is still revered in Africa today.
Produced by Jolyon Jenkins.
First broadcast on Radio 4 in 2013.
TUE 17:00 PM (b01s0dd7)
Coverage and analysis of the day's news.
TUE 18:00 Six O'Clock News (b01s02rc)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
TUE 18:30 Thom Tuck Goes Straight to DVD (b01s0dd9)
Bollywood
In his debut solo Radio 4 show, comedian Thom Tuck recounted heart-rending tales of loves lost while drawing comparisons with 54 Straight-to-DVD Disney movies he'd watched, so we don't ever have to.
Thom now turns his attention to other genres of Straight-to-DVD movies - seeking out further underrated gems and drawing parallels with captivating personal tales from his own life experience, backed by cinematic music, so we can rest easy.
In this fourth and final episode, Thom looks at the bright lights of Bollywood: love triangles, comedy and dare devil thrills all set to a background of songs and dancing in a melodramatic extravaganza, a synopsis which heavily influence Thom's stories of his upbringing in Bangladesh.
"...a seductive experience" The Guardian
Produced by Lianne Coop.
TUE 19:00 The Archers (b01s0df0)
Tony and Pat have a meeting with Alec Murray from Rodway's to discuss the sale of the herd. Alec thinks it will take a couple of months to organise, giving them plenty of time to advertise. Each cow should fetch around £1,100 to £1,200 making a total ballpark figure of £200,000. This is great news. Pat thinks the amount will take some of the pain out of losing the herd. Tony doesn't want to count his chickens yet but it would be a nice lump sum towards their pension. They hope the news will perk Tom up, although Pat guesses at the moment he'd give it all up to get Brenda back.
Lilian is horrified when she realises Paul has driven them to the Felpersham races for her surprise trip. What if someone sees them!
Lilian is spotted by fellow board member Andrew Eagleton, who knows Matt. She quickly comes up with a cover story - that Paul is a builder pitched for the paper mill job. Unconcerned Paul thinks Andrew buys this. But he gets increasingly annoyed at Lilian's paranoia, especially as she wants to leave early. Why must they fit in around Matt all the time? Lilian promises to try to make things up to him but she just can't stay there any longer.
TUE 19:15 Front Row (b01s0df2)
Iron Man 3; Cultural Exchange with Tamara Rojo; Rene Burri
With John Wilson
In Iron Man 3, Robert Downey Jr reprises his role as super-hero of the Marvel comics. The film also stars Gwyneth Paltrow and Rebecca Hall. Naomi Alderman reviews.
More from the Cultural Exchange project, in which 75 leading creative minds share their passion for a book, film, poem, piece of music or other work of art. Tonight ballerina Tamara Rojo selects the pioneering choreographer who inspired her to dance, Mats Ek. At the age of 10 in Madrid, Tamara saw the Swedish choreographer's groundbreaking ballet Bernarda, based on the Lorca play The House of Bernarda Alba.
As a staff photographer for the Magnum agency, Rene Burri captured some of the defining moments of the 20th century. As he publishes a new book of colour photographs, he describes the moment he captured an image of his hero, Pablo Picasso.
Art collector Frank Cohen, who made his fortune by creating a chain of DIY stores, and his business partner Nicolai Frahm are opening a new free gallery in London, on the vast site of a former dairy. Where milk bottles used to be washed and stored, contemporary art from around the world will now hang. They discuss their approach to art collecting, and the desire to put it on show.
Producer Penny Murphy.
TUE 19:45 The Cazalets (b01s09z1)
[Repeat of broadcast at
10:45 today]
TUE 20:00 Tax Avoidance: The Hidden Cost (b01s0df4)
The revelation of how little tax Google, Starbucks and Amazon have been paying on their global operations has triggered political indignation around the world and thrown fresh light on the aggressive techniques multi-national companies can use to slash their tax bills.
More than lost tax is at stake.
In this programme, Michael Robinson reports on the additional advantages aggressive tax avoidance can provide to multinationals.
With sophisticated systems, shifting their profits to low-tax countries, these multinationals have a competitive edge over nationally-based companies whose tax bills are usually far harder to avoid.
The result: more profit for the multinational and squeezed margins for the national competitor.
And there's more. With an effective tax-avoiding infrastructure in place, aggressive multinationals are better placed to compete for new markets or to buy up competitors in higher-tax countries - further extending their global reach.
For governments around the world, many already facing slowdown and recession, such tax-avoidance powered competition is a disturbing danger. Because as a tax-avoiding company extends its operations, so a country's revenues from corporate tax come under threat.
While politicians around the world look for ways to cut back corporate tax avoidance, and with Prime Minister David Cameron promising the issue will be on the agenda when the G8 group of world leaders meet in Northern Ireland in June, this programme assesses their chances of reversing this global trend.
TUE 20:40 In Touch (b01s0df6)
The Closure of Pocklington House
Pocklington Trust is a blindness charity which runs several types of housing for the use of visually impaired people. It has given residents of its aged care home at Northwood in Hertfordshire, notice that it is to close. The charity says this is due to the condition of the building and its need for refurbishment, which it estimates, could take more than a year, and its desire to minimise disruption for residents from the hardship of a rebuild. Residents who thought they had a" home for life" tell Peter White of their disappointment and their sense of being let down by the charity.
Martin Green of the English Community Care Home Association tells us about the current picture nationally for visually impaired people seeking care in non-specialist homes.
TUE 21:00 Inside Health (b01s0df8)
Breast cancer and Tamoxifen; Drug holidays; Medicines for children; Cardiac training range
Dr Mark Porter goes on a weekly quest to demystify the health issues that perplex us.
TUE 21:30 Stephanomics (b01s09yv)
[Repeat of broadcast at
09:00 today]
TUE 21:58 Weather (b01s02rf)
The latest weather forecast.
TUE 22:00 The World Tonight (b01s0dfb)
Guantanamo hunger strike.
Libel reform bill passed - but will it work?
Abu Qatada wins latest round of legal appeal.
Sugar cane fields return to Cuba.
With David Eades.
TUE 22:45 Book at Bedtime (b01s109l)
This Is Where I Am
Episode 2
According to her mentor's contract, once a month for a year Debs' must find a suitable place to show to Abdi, a Somalian asylum seeker newly arrived from a refugee camp in Kenya.
As she begins to reveal the Scottish culture and its people to him, they embark upon a tentative friendship.
First up, is the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow, which has painful memories for the newly widowed Debs.
Read by Maureen Beattie and Jude Akuwidike
Abridged and produced by Jane Marshall
A Jane Marshall production for BBC Radio 4.
TUE 23:00 Wondermentalist Cabaret (b01s0dfd)
Series 2
Episode 4
Matt Harvey is joined by fellow poets Caroline Bird and Mark Gwynne Jones for more comedy, poetry and music from the Ways with Words festival at Dartington Hall in south Devon. The appreciative audience contribute a crowd-sourced poem, whilst one man band Jerri Hart snipes from the sidelines.
Producer: Mark Smalley.
TUE 23:30 Today in Parliament (b01s0dfl)
Sean Curran reports on events at Westminster.
WEDNESDAY 24 APRIL 2013
WED 00:00 Midnight News (b01s02s8)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
WED 00:30 Book of the Week (b01s687y)
[Repeat of broadcast at
09:45 on Tuesday]
WED 00:48 Shipping Forecast (b01s02sb)
The latest shipping forecast.
WED 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (b01s02sd)
BBC Radio 4 joins the BBC World Service.
WED 05:20 Shipping Forecast (b01s02sg)
The latest shipping forecast.
WED 05:30 News Briefing (b01s02sj)
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
WED 05:43 Prayer for the Day (b01s0djn)
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Dr David Stone, Canon Precentor of Coventry Cathedral.
WED 05:45 Farming Today (b01s0djq)
There's good news for dairy farmers. Two of the UK's major milk processors have announced they're increasing their prices. Members of Arla Milk Link and Dairy Crest will see the price they get per litre rise by more than a penny in May and June respectively. But it's a different picture for the cheese market. It follows recent protests by hundreds of dairy farmers at a number of supermarket distribution centres to try and stop another milk processor First Milk from dropping their prices - which it was rumoured might happen in June.
Also on Farming Today, farming is facing significant skills shortages and recruitment problems - despite the unemployment figures in the UK rising to two and a half million. At the moment farming relies heavily on workers from Eastern Europe to harvest fruit and vegetables. But as unemployment grows, one of the biggest farm labour agencies has started a training course to attract more British workers into the industry. It aims to get 200 people into farm jobs this year.
Presented by Anna Hill and produced by Anna Varle.
WED 06:00 Today (b01s0djs)
Including Sports Desk, Yesterday in Parliament, Weather, Thought for the Day. Presented by Sarah Montague and Evan Davis.
WED 09:00 Midweek (b01s0djv)
Marc Hare, Leslie Woodhead, Kate Prince, Howard Raymond
Libby Purves meets shoe designer Marc Hare; filmmaker Leslie Woodhead; choreographer Kate Prince and Howard Raymond, son of Paul - the King of Soho.
Shoe designer Marc Hare is known for his stylish handcrafted shoes. His creations are worn by some of the world's most fashionable men including Robert Downey Jr, Javier Bardem and Tinie Tempah. He opened his first shop in London last year and is taking part in The Secret Meaning of Shoes,a talk examining how and why shoes have become such a fetishised commodity. The Secret Meaning of Shoes is part of a series called 37 Things You Need to Know About Modern Britain at The House of St Barnabas, in London.
Leslie Woodhead OBE is a documentary maker. He shot the first TV footage of the Beatles performing at the Cavern Club in 1962 and has won many awards for his work. His book, How The Beatles Rocked The Kremlin, tells the story of how the band's music galvanised young Soviets to challenge the communist regime. How The Beatles Rocked The Kremlin - The Untold Story of a Noisy Revolution is published by Bloomsbury.
Choreographer Kate Prince is founder and artistic director of dance company ZooNation. Their production of Some Like It Hip Hop has just returned to Sadler's Wells. Referencing Billy Wilder's film and Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, the comical tale of love, mistaken identity and cross-dressing is played out in their trademark style of hip hop, comedy and physical theatre. Some Like it Hip Hop is at the Peacock Theatre.
Howard Raymond is the son of Paul Raymond who launched Raymond's Revuebar in London's Soho in 1958. Paul Raymond went on to build up a property empire and publish adult magazines such as Men Only, Mayfair, and Razzle. Howard is an adviser on a forthcoming film about his father called the King of Soho.
WED 09:45 Book of the Week (b01s687h)
Letters from Italy
Carlo Sibilia
Five letters from leading Italians from the fields of politics, economics, television, art and journalism.
Today's letter is unique in that it's a rare chance to hear from a member of the new political party in Italian politics. Beppe Grillo's Five Stars Movement won an astonishing third of the seats in the lower house of parliament at their first attempt. It's an impact that, amongst other things, has left the political system in stalemate because they refuse to negotiate with the other parties.
The Five Stars members are not speaking to the Italian press or broadcast media, but Carlo Sibilia, a New MP representing the region around Naples, gives us a unique insight into the thinking of his party.
He describes how he came to be involved in politics, why the new party, with its heavy emphasis on Internet communication, made such an impact, and why he believes it can change politics in both Italy and the rest of Europe.
He acknowledges that much of what he says may sound idealistic, but invites listeners to appreciate that he and his colleagues have actually achieved far more than most protest movements.
At a time when Italy is in the spotlight, both for the changing of the Pope but more especially for the recent election results and the economic fragility that has brought austerity and anger, each of the letter writer talks about their sense of Italy today, it's challenges, the dangers it faces and the possibilities for the future.
This week's contributors will be:
Prof Gustavo Piga is an economist at Rome University.
Lucia Annunziata is editor of the Huffington Post, Italy but spent many years in Italian television including a period as head of RIA, the Italian equivalent of the BBC.
Dacia Maraini is a novelist and playwright and an established figure in the Italian literary landscape.
Annalisa Piras is an Italian Journalist based in London.
WED 10:00 Woman's Hour (b01s0djx)
Older Women and Style; Women's Unemployment; Politics of Sex Work
Equality campaigners the Fawcett Society warn women face rising unemployment and a widening pay gap. We talk about the politics of sex work with Andrea Matolcsi from Equality Now and Molly, a Glasgow sex worker. Older women and dressing with style - glamorous, outrageous or dowdy? Blanche Marvin, theatre critic, journalist Katherine Whitehorn, and Amber Jane Butchart, lecturer at the London College of Fashion discuss being confident with style. Mary Beth Keane on her book about Typhoid Mary. Bringing up a teen in your 50s and 60s - does it make a difference how old you are? Parenting Expert, Sue Atkins, and by Yvonne Roberts, Chief leader writer at the Observer and mother of two give their opinion.
Presenter Jenni Murray
Producer Louise Corley.
WED 10:45 The Cazalets (b01s0djz)
Confusion
Episode 3
by Elizabeth Jane Howard
dramatised by Sarah Daniels
Louise discovers she's pregnant but begins to question her relationship with Michael.
Produced and directed by Sally Avens and Marion Nancarrow
'Confusion' is the third of four compelling Cazalet novels by Elizabeth Jane Howard, which together give a vivid insight into the lives, hopes and loves of three generations during the Second World War and beyond.
As Elizabeth Jane Howard enters her 90th Birthday year, Radio 4 are broadcasting dramatisations of all four novels between January and August 2013.
You can catch up with series two, The Cazalets: Marking Time, on iplayer.
The third series is set between 1942 and 1945: For the Cazalet family the war has brought tragedy;
Rupert has been missing since Dunkirk and only his daughter Clary refuses to believe he is dead, whilst her step-mother Zoe has buried her hope and devotes her energy to bringing up her daugher Juliet. At home, Sybil has lost her battle with cancer leaving Polly bereft and trying to comfort her father, Hugh. Even Edward seems wracked with doubt over whether he should give up his mistress, Diana, who is carrying his child and try and make a go of things with Villy once again. The younger generation seems as confused as their parents: Louise makes a hasty marriage to society painter Michael Hadleigh giving up her dreams of being an actress, whilst Polly and Clary finally convince the family they can move to London but the girls soon discover that independence and adulthood brings heartbreak of its own.
When Elizabeth Jane Howard began writing the novels her aims were modest. "I wanted to write about my youth, and the ten years that straddled the Second World War. I also wanted to write about what domestic life was like for people at home. A lot has been written about the battles and the war in a more direct sense, but little had been said about the way the whole of England changed. When the war ended, everybody was in a different position from where they were when it started."
Two decades later, Howard's quartet of books -- The Light Years, Marking Time, Confusion and Casting Off - charting the family's fortunes between 1937 and 1947 have sold over a million copies.
Martin Amis said of Elizabeth Jane Howard, "She is, with Iris Murdoch, the most interesting woman writer of her generation. An instinctivist, like Muriel Spark, she has a freakish and poetic eye, and a penetrating sanity."
A star cast includes Penelope Wilton as the narrator, Pip Torrens, Dominic Mafham, Naomi Frederick, Helen Schlesinger, Raymond Coulthard, Zoe Tapper, Alix Wilton Regan, Flora Spencer-Longhurst and Georgia Groome.
'Casting Off' follows in July.
WED 11:00 The Big Ditch - How the Panama Canal Changed the World (b01rvps7)
Episode 1
On passage from the Pacific to Atlantic side, Jonny Dymond (BBC correspondent) explores how digging the so-called "Big Ditch" across the narrow isthmus at Panama changed the world.
In this first episode of two, he evaluates how, a century ago when it was constructed, the canal marked the birth of a new global superpower, the United States of America. To what extent did the canal ensure its economic and military dominance?
Today, however, China's influence grows in Central America, a region traditionally America's backyard. What plans are afoot for Chinese-backed alternative routes across the isthmus to rival Panama's?
Tracing these developments, as well as other strands in this fascinating tale, Dymond investigates how the tiny nation of Panama, and the rather small waterway that bisects it, contains a rather large slice of world history.
The success story belongs to the States, but how did they pull off this extraordinary feat of engineering where many had failed? In the shady past lay the broken dreams and appalling costs of, first, the catastrophic French attempt that consumed the lives of tens of thousands of men and, centuries before, the failed projects of the Spanish Conquistadors and even the bankrupted Kingdom of Scotland.
Moving forward, as Panama improves the canal in an impressive $5bn expansion project, what will happen to the patterns of world trade? And what of China's plans and other trade routes?
Global economics and strategic geopolitics are all reflected in what happens on the canal.
Producer: Dom Byrne
A Blakeway production for BBC Radio 4 first broadcast in April 2013.
WED 11:30 Wordaholics (b01rvptv)
Series 2
Episode 3
Gyles Brandreth chairs the word-obsessed comedy panel show.
Lloyd Langford and Susie Dent compete against Dave Gorman and Natalie Haynes to find out who has the most word know-how.
Dave Gorman guesses the meaning of the phrase 'living on Queen Street' from the late 1800s; Natalie Haynes unravels the word 'autodysomophobia'; Lloyd Langford guesses the meaning of the Yiddish word 'farpotshket'; and Susie Dent shares her love of the current Liverpool word 'twirlies' and explains the meaning of the word 'quockerwodger'.
Both teams also have a go at coming up with modern phrases to replace the old cliches 'When life give you lemons, make lemonade' and 'Beauty is only skin deep'.
Writers: Jon Hunter and James Kettle.
Producer: Claire Jones
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in April 2013.
WED 12:00 You and Yours (b01s0dk3)
Cosmetic treatment regulation; How much to divorce online; Freeze your eggs; Do we need cash to catch a bus?
Radio 4's consumer affairs programme with Peter White. Today the government publishes its review of the cosmetic treatment industry. Is more regulation needed? How cheaply can we get an online divorce and whether there are any dangers in a legal process that will cost you as little as £45. How much it costs to put your eggs on ice for use in the future - is it value for money? And can we do away with cash altogether? An idea that Transport for London are considering for passengers on London buses.
WED 12:57 Weather (b01s02sl)
The latest weather forecast.
WED 13:00 World at One (b01s0dk5)
The Co-Op's Group Chief Executive tells us why they won't now be buying branches from Lloyds Bank.
Ken Clarke says no British judge would send radical cleric Abu Qatada to be tried in a country which uses torture.
Culture Secretary Maria Miller tells us why the arts need to make an economic case for state funding.
Plus as JLS splits, we look at the life cycle of the boy band.
WED 13:45 Noise: A Human History (b01s0dk7)
Music While You Shop, Music While You Work
Professor David Hendy of the University of Sussex considers how music has been used to soothe us, cheer us, and make us productive over the past 100 years.
Featuring extremely rare recordings of wartime episodes of the much-loved BBC series, Music While You Work.
30-part series made in collaboration with the British Library Sound Archive.
Signature tune composed by Joe Acheson.
Producer: Matt Thompson
A Rockethouse production for BBC Radio 4.
WED 14:00 The Archers (b01s0df0)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 on Tuesday]
WED 14:15 Drama (b00wqgms)
Leon Garfield - Devil in the Fog
Episode 2
What murky secrets lie at the heart of the fog? Who is the principal? And who is the Devil? Part two of a dramatisation of Leon Garfield's thrilling 18th C. mystery adventure.
Dramatised by Martin Jameson
Epiosde 2 of 2
Directed by Marc Beeby.
WED 15:00 Money Box Live (b01s0dk9)
First-Time Buyers
Trying to buy your first home? To work out what it could cost and ask about the schemes which may help, call 03700 100 444 from
1pm to
3.30pm on Wednesday.
According to the Land Registry the average price of a house is now £162,606 and the average price of a flat or maisonette is £153,687.
Rising house prices are making it tough for first time buyers but there are a number of options which could help you onto the property ladder.
Many lenders have designed mortgages which allow family members to offset their own savings to reduce the size of the mortgage debt, or to act as guarantor, boosting the amount which can be borrowed.
In his March budget, Chancellor George Osborne launched 'Help to Buy' to assist would be home owners with smaller deposits. You may also have heard of other government backed schemes such as 'New Buy' and 'First Buy'.
If you are considering the various ways of buying your first home, how much you could borrow, what the monthly repayments will be and whether you're are eligible for help, call 03700 100 444 from
1pm to
3.30pm on Wednesday.
Whatever your question, presenter Ruth Alexander will be joined by:
Ray Boulger from broker John Charcol
Paula John from Your Mortgage Magazine
David Hollingworth from broker London and Country
Call 03 700 100 444 on Wednesday. Phone lines are open between
1pm and
3.30pm. Standard geographic charges apply. Calls from mobiles may be higher
Presenter: Ruth Alexander
Producer: Diane Richardson.
WED 15:30 Inside Health (b01s0df8)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 on Tuesday]
WED 16:00 Thinking Allowed (b01s0dkm)
The Power of Oil
The Power of oil - Laurie Taylor explores the role of oil in shaping our society, economy and environment. He talks to James Marriott of Platform, co-author with Mika Minio-Paluello of 'The Oil Road'. Their research took them from the oil fields of the Caspian Sea to the refineries and financial centres of Northern Europe. Timothy Mitchell, Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Colombia University, joins the discussion, considering the relationship between democracy and oil. John Urry (1946-2016) also took part in the programme. He was Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University and author of a book which pioneered a sociology of energy, analysing our carbon addiction in the light of ever dwindling resources and asking if an oil free society was possible or desirable. Sadly, John died several years after the programme was first transmitted. He had done more than most British sociologists to characterise the complexities of global society. Revised repeat.
Producer: Jayne Egerton
WED 16:30 The Media Show (b01s0dkp)
Simon Singh on libel reform
As the Defamation Bill passes through the House of Lords and is signed off by the Commons, we speak to the science writer and campaigner Simon Singh. Should people who are arrested be named in the media or should their identify remain a secret until charged? A question for Susan Aslan a Media Lawyer, Trevor Kavanagh Associate Editor of The Sun and Frances Crook Chief Executive of the Howard League for Penal Reform. Plus Susanna Dinnage general manager of Discovery Networks UK on the launch of a new Channel aimed at women.
Presented by Steve Hewlett
Produced by Beverley Purcell.
WED 17:00 PM (b01s0dkr)
Full coverage and analysis of the day's news.
WED 18:00 Six O'Clock News (b01s02sn)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
WED 18:30 Alun Cochrane's Fun House (b01s0dld)
Bedroom
Comedian Alun Cochrane has a 25 year mortgage which he can only pay off by being funny. In this series he takes us on a room by room, stand up tour of his house.
He has a fridge that beeps at him when he doesn't move quickly enough and a fire alarm he can't reach. His relationship with his house is a complicated one.
A hoarder of funny and original observations on everyday life, Alun invites us to help him de-clutter his mind and tidy his ideas into one of those bags that you hoover all the air out of and keep under your bed. This show will help Alun and his house work through their relationship issues and prevent a separation that Alun can ill afford; at least not until the market picks up anyway.
Starring ... Alun Cochrane and Gavin Osborn
Written by ... Alun Cochrane and Andy Wolton
Produced by ... Carl Cooper.
First broadcast by BBC Radio 4 in 2013.
WED 19:00 The Archers (b01s0dkt)
Nic explains to Clarrie that Emma's been much nicer recently and has even offered to pass things on from Keira if Nic's baby is a girl. Clarrie gets Nic to help with the church flowers so they can have a proper catch up. Clarrie is impressed with Nic's flower arranging.
Alan is in the church. The organ could cost £30,000 to repair and there is only a few thousand in the church maintenance fund. He plans to hold a crisis meeting of the PCC.
Jazzer is down-hearted and frustrated that Adam has turned down their offer to shear the Home Farm sheep at a discount. At the moment they only have 100 from David's flock to do. Ed tries to convince him they have done the right thing. Trade will pick up when they have completed the course and have more experience.
Pip is downbeat when David collects her from the train. The insurance firm have been in touch and her car is a write-off. How is she going to afford a new car? She can't continue to scrounge lifts and catch the train. Her whole life's going to be impossible.
WED 19:15 Front Row (b01s0dlg)
Nick Park on his Thrill-o-Matic; Othello; Cultural Exchange - Mohsin Hamid
With Mark Lawson
Animator Nick Park has adapted his most famous characters Wallace & Gromit for the small screen, the big screen, the BBC Proms and now the theme park. He invites Mark to take a turn on his new ride - the Thrill-O-Matic - as it opens at Blackpool Pleasure Beach.
More from the Cultural Exchange project, in which 75 leading creative minds share their passion for a book, film, poem, piece of music or other work of art. Tonight Mohsin Hamid, author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, selects the groundbreaking sci-fi novel Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon.
The 1937 book is a history of life in the universe, in which a human from England is transported out of his body and finds himself able to explore space and other planets. Considered by Arthur C Clarke as one of the finest science fiction books ever written, Star Maker also was loved by Winston Churchill and Virginia Woolf.
Nicholas Hytner gives Othello a modern military setting, in a new staging starring Adrian Lester in the title role, with Rory Kinnear as Iago. Hermione Lee assesses whether this National Theatre production casts a fresh light on the play.
ITV's latest sitcom, Vicious, features Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Derek Jacobi as an elderly gay couple, with Frances de la Tour as their best friend. Writer and critic Philip Hoare has watched it and discusses whether Vicious lives up to its name.
Producer Ekene Akalawu.
WED 19:45 The Cazalets (b01s0djz)
[Repeat of broadcast at
10:45 today]
WED 20:00 Leader Conference (b01s0dlj)
Series 3
Episode 1
Andrew Rawnsley returns with the live, studio-based debate series taking the form of newspaper leader conferences.
Contributions from listeners are also strongly encouraged throughout the programme on Twitter (#r4leader) and by e-mail (leaderconference@bbc.co.uk).
Andrew was joined by Jenni Russell of the London Evening Standard; Trevor Kavanagh of the Sun; Anushka Asthana of the Times; Jonathan Ford of the Financial Times; and Kevin Maguire of the Daily Mirror.
They debated: the UK economy; the Abu Qatada affair; and Britain's bee population.
Where Next for the British Economy?
The economy shows little sign of sustained growth. Those voices urging a change of course are growing louder, especially given the setbacks suffered recently by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The IMF and a second ratings agency, Fitch, have, for example, clear doubts about his strategy. We share some of these reservations.
No major industrialised economy is growing strongly. But retail sales here are particularly disappointing and the Co-operative Bank has given, as one of its reasons for withdrawing from its planned acquisition of Lloyds' branches, the weak state of the economy.
We recognise that there has been a big monetary stimulus in the UK. We also understand the concerns about borrowing money now for infrastructure projects whose effects may not be felt for years. Nevertheless, the case for quicker-acting measures―like more house-building and improving Britain's roads, bridges and railways―is compelling. June's Comprehensive Spending Review also has to take account of the poor outlook for growth or it may further erode confidence when optimism is sorely needed.
Beyond this, we want to encourage more women into work where they wish to do so. Women's unemployment is at record levels and new jobs in the private sector are going disproportionately to men. Although parents can get some help with their child care bills, these costs still eat up much of a mother's pay when she returns to work. This needs to be addressed more boldly both to help women and to boost the economy.
The Abu Qatada Merry-Go-Round
Whether the radical cleric Abu Qatada should be deported to Jordan to stand trial has taken another turn with the Home Secretary's announcement of a new legal agreement with the authorities in Amman. It seeks to satisfy judges' concerns that evidence used in court has been obtained lawfully.
We fully sympathise with the frustration felt by many that a man who faces very serious charges in Jordan has so far not been made to face them there. It is also wrong that a man who is perceived to be a threat to the UK appears to be in a legal limbo.
However, the protections which the European Convention on Human Rights provides to Abu Qatada it also offers to the rest of us. The UK rightly believes in the rule of law and for so long as it is a party to the Convention it has to accept court rulings it finds inconvenient.
We therefore oppose the suggestion, apparently made by some in government, that the UK should withdraw temporarily from the Convention―to enable Abu Qatada to be deported―and then rejoin. This seems to us unsustainable both legally and politically. While it may mollify angry MPs, it would prompt high-level resignations from the government and could not in any event be got through Parliament. Other countries that are parties to the Convention would not accept it. At least until the next election, there is no parliamentary majority at Westminster for leaving the Convention. But it has to be accepted that Abu Qatada may even then still be in British custody.
Plan Bee
We want the tragic demise of bees reversed. The prime minister has many things to focus his attention on but, as life patron of the Oxfordshire Beekeepers' Association, he will understand that bees are not only essential to the pollination of crops and plants as well as to the well-being of the planet. The precipitous decline in their numbers is profoundly alarming.
We advocate an urgent an urgent programme of research into the causes of the fall in bee numbers. Companies study this problem, but as a number of them are involved in pesticide production - which some experts suspect is part of the explanation for the slump in bee numbers - we doubt it will produce a scientifically rigorous answer.
Our plan bee is an independent study which urgently investigates the causes of the hush in buzzing bees and proposes how to restore their hum to our lives.
Producer: Simon Coates.
WED 20:45 Four Thought (b01s0dll)
Series 4
Mat Paskins: The future in history
Historian Mat Paskins argues that history can be made real when we bring back to life the excitement which previous generations felt at new developments: to make us, who live in our ancestors' future, feel their wonder when first confronted with future possibility. And he tells the story of two experiments - an ambitious attempt in the eighteenth century to use black sand to make steel, and his own youthful efforts to see if he could eat everything.
Four Thought is a series of talks which combine new ideas and personal stories. Speakers explain their latest thinking on the trends and ideas in culture and society in front of a live audience. It is recorded in front of a live audience at Somerset House in London.
Producer: Giles Edwards.
WED 21:00 Costing the Earth (b01s0b00)
[Repeat of broadcast at
15:30 on Tuesday]
WED 21:30 Midweek (b01s0djv)
[Repeat of broadcast at
09:00 today]
WED 21:58 Weather (b01s02sq)
The latest weather forecast.
WED 22:00 The World Tonight (b01s0dln)
UK signs new treaty with Jordan in fresh attempt to deport Abu Qatada. Enrico Letta set to become Italy's next prime minister. And FA bans Suarez for 10 matches for biting opponent. Presented by David Eades.
WED 22:45 Book at Bedtime (b01s1f1b)
This Is Where I Am
Episode 3
Debs takes Abdi to Loch Lomond and is surprised when his little daughter Rebecca comes too. Though he can't explain to her why he is late and stressed, Abdi is enchanted by the loch which banishes the unpleasantness he has encountered earlier in the day.
Read by Maureen Beattie and Jude Akuwidike
Abridged and produced by Jane Marshall
A Jane Marshall production for BBC Radio 4.
WED 23:00 I, Regress (b01s0dlz)
Series 2
Mirrors
Matt Berry plays a a corrupt and bizarre regression therapist in this dark, Lynch-meets-Kaufman-style comedy.
Unsuspecting clients are taken on twisted, misleading journeys through their subconscious.
Each episode sees the doctor dealing with a different client who has come to him for a different phobia. As the patient is put under hypnosis, we 'enter' their mind, and all the various situations the hypnotherapist takes them through are played out for us to hear. The result is a dream (or nightmare-like) trip through the patient's mind, as funny as it is disturbing.
With:
Daisy Beaumon
Sally Okafor
Julia Deakin : Acting (adult)
Michael Shelford
A compelling late night listen: tune in and occupy someone else's head!
Producer: Sam Bryant.
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in April 2013.
WED 23:15 Don't Start (b015cnz1)
Series 1
Text
A text sparks the first of Neil and Kim's arguments. Via a Greek chorus, a not eating celery pact and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the couple spectacularly fail to agree.
What do long term partners really argue about? Sharp comedy from Frank Skinner. A masterclass in the great art of arguing. Starring Frank Skinner and Katherine Parkinson.
Well observed, clever and funny, Don't Start is a scripted comedy with a deceptively simple premise - an argument. Each week, our couple fall out over another apparently trivial flashpoint - a text from a friend, a trilby and a bad night's sleep. Each week, the stakes mount as Neil and Kim battle with words. But these are no ordinary arguments. The two outdo each other with increasingly absurd images, unexpected literary references (Androcles and the Lion pop up at one point) and razor sharp analysis of their beloved's weaknesses.
WED 23:30 Today in Parliament (b01s0dm1)
Susan Hulme hears David Cameron and Ed Miliband clash over the NHS; peers back down over the government's scheme to allow employees to swop employment rights for shares; and ministers forge a new treaty with Jordan in an effort to extradite the radical cleric, Abu Qatada.
THURSDAY 25 APRIL 2013
THU 00:00 Midnight News (b01s02tk)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
THU 00:30 Book of the Week (b01s687h)
[Repeat of broadcast at
09:45 on Wednesday]
THU 00:48 Shipping Forecast (b01s02tm)
The latest shipping forecast.
THU 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (b01s02tp)
BBC Radio 4 joins the BBC World Service.
THU 05:20 Shipping Forecast (b01s02tr)
The latest shipping forecast.
THU 05:30 News Briefing (b01s02tt)
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
THU 05:43 Prayer for the Day (b01s0qmb)
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Dr David Stone, Canon Precentor of Coventry Cathedral.
THU 05:45 Farming Today (b01s0qmd)
Beekeepers all over Britain are opening up their hives after a long winter and, for many, it's an upsetting sight. Huge colony losses are being reported up and down the country, with numbers down by 50% in some areas. Charlotte Smith asks why so many honey bees have perished.
And following the abolition of the Agricultural Wages Board, which negotiates pay and conditions for agricultural workers, Charlotte chairs a discussion between two unions - Unite and the NFU - about the challenges of recruiting young people into farming.
Presented by Charlotte Smith. Produced by Anna Jones.
THU 06:00 Today (b01s0qmg)
Morning news and current affairs with Sarah Montague and Evan Davis, including:
0810
One million schoolchildren in England are to be targeted by a measles vaccination plan aimed at curbing the growing threat of outbreaks. The BBC's Nick Garnett heard from mothers Kim, Rebecca and Joanne outside a primary school in Tameside in Greater Manchester, and Dr Mary Ramsay, head of immunisation at Public Health England, outlines the threat that the epidemic is posing.
0817
The remains of a giant cat which roamed the Devon countryside a hundred years ago have been discovered in the basement of a Bristol museum. The BBC's science correspondent Rebecca Morelle reports from Bristol, and Isla Gladstone, curator of the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery, explains that it could be the earliest recorded example of an exotic big cat on the loose in the UK.
0821
A hospital radio station is to broadcast the sound of waves, rain, birdsong and snoring to help insomniacs and tinnitus sufferers to get to sleep. The Today programme's Sarah Montague heard from Mark Vernon creator of the innovative Treatment at the Forth Valley Royal Hospital.
0830
Bulgarian and Romanian officials have appeared before the Home Affairs Select Committee to allay fears over possible immigration from their countries, when access restrictions are lifted. Bulgarian ambassador Konstantin Dimitrov and Paul Nuttall, deputy leader of UKIP, debate the implications of the ruling.
THU 09:00 In Our Time (b01s0qmj)
Montaigne
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Essays of Michel de Montaigne. Born near Bordeaux in 1533, Montaigne retired from a life of public service aged 38 and began to write. He called these short works 'essais', or 'attempts'; they deal with an eclectic range of subjects, from the dauntingly weighty to the apparently trivial. Although he never considered himself a philosopher, he is often now seen as one of the most outstanding Sceptical thinkers of early modern Europe. His approachable style, intelligence and subtle thought have made him one of the most widely admired writers of the Renaissance.
With:
David Wootton
Anniversary Professor of History at York University
Terence Cave
Emeritus Professor of French Literature at the University of Oxford
Felicity Green
Chancellor's Fellow in History at the University of Edinburgh.
Producer: Thomas Morris.
THU 09:45 Book of the Week (b01s687k)
Letters from Italy
Dacia Maraini
5 leading Italians deliver letters about Italy today, the dangers and the possibilities.
In this, the fourth letter, we hear from one of Italy's leading novelists and playwrights, Dacia Maraini.
Dacia has a reputation as a campaigning literary figure and she suggests this might have something to do with her extraordinary blend of ancestors from four nations, and her early life in Japan where she spent two years with her parents in a Japanese concentration camp.
She talks of her concerns about Italy today in terms of what she sees as the mis-information of Television which has been in the hands of one man for so long. She makes no bones about the fact that she's not a fan of Silvio Berlusconi but her real concern is that the mentality of winning at all costs has been fed by the diet of Television contests and ideas about wealth meaning achievement. This, she believes is a particular threat to women who have taken a step backwards - appearing little more than prizes in the 'game'.
She hopes the new elections herald something very new and highlights the presence in parliament of people whose interest is in the well-being of others. However, her optimism is guarded.
Italy, she says, has been like sleeping beauty. She hopes it can be awakened.
At a time when Italy's political and economic fragility is in the spotlight, 5 leading Italian figures deliver a letter about Italy today, the dangers and the future possibilities.
Five letters from leading Italians from the fields of politics, economics, television, art and journalism.
At a time when Italy is in the spotlight, both for the changing of the Pope but more especially for the recent election results and the economic fragility that has brought austerity and anger, each of the letter writer talks about their sense of Italy today, it's challenges, the dangers it faces and the possibilities for the future.
This week's contributors will be:
Prof Gustavo Piga is an economist at Rome University.
Lucia Annunziata is editor of the Huffington Post, Italy but spent many years in Italian television including a period as head of RIA, the Italian equivalent of the BBC.
Carlo Sibilia is a member of the new Five Stars Movement lead by Beppe Grillo, the new and surprising force in Italian politics.
Dacia Maraini is a novelist and playwright and an established figure in the Italian literary landscape.
Annalisa Piras is an Italian Journalist based in London.
Producer: Tom Alban.
THU 10:00 Woman's Hour (b01s0qml)
Jody Williams; Margaret Hodge; Behaviour in Nurseries
Jody Williams won the Nobel Peace Prize for her work campaigning to ban anti-personnel landmines. Powerlister Margaret Hodge MP currently chairs the Public Accounts Committee. Toby Young and Sue Palmer discuss toddler behaviour in nurseries and whether there is a need for more teacher training. Wendy Meddour and her 11 year old daughter Mina May describe how they worked together to produce an illustrated book. Jan Helm explains why the women's group Soroptimist International is launching a campaign to reduce the number of women sent to prison in the UK.
THU 10:45 The Cazalets (b01s0qmn)
Confusion
Episode 4
by Elizabeth Jane Howard
Dramatised by Sarah Daniels
1942: New Year's Eve, but the Cazalet family celebrations are marred by deceit and an over developed sense of duty.
Produced and Directed by Sally Avens and Marion Nancarrow
'Confusion' is the third of four compelling Cazalet novels by Elizabeth Jane Howard, which together give a vivid insight into the lives, hopes and loves of three generations during the Second World War and beyond.
As Elizabeth Jane Howard enters her 90th Birthday year, Radio 4 are broadcasting dramatisations of all four novels between January and August 2013.
You can catch up with series two, The Cazalets: Marking Time, on iplayer.
The third series is set between 1942 and 1945: For the Cazalet family the war has brought tragedy;
Rupert has been missing since Dunkirk and only his daughter Clary refuses to believe he is dead, whilst her step-mother Zoe has buried her hope and devotes her energy to bringing up her daugher Juliet. At home, Sybil has lost her battle with cancer leaving Polly bereft and trying to comfort her father, Hugh. Even Edward seems wracked with doubt over whether he should give up his mistress, Diana, who is carrying his child and try and make a go of things with Villy once again. The younger generation seems as confused as their parents: Louise makes a hasty marriage to society painter Michael Hadleigh giving up her dreams of being an actress, whilst Polly and Clary finally convince the family they can move to London but the girls soon discover that independence and adulthood brings heartbreak of its own.
When Elizabeth Jane Howard began writing the novels her aims were modest. "I wanted to write about my youth, and the ten years that straddled the Second World War. I also wanted to write about what domestic life was like for people at home. A lot has been written about the battles and the war in a more direct sense, but little had been said about the way the whole of England changed. When the war ended, everybody was in a different position from where they were when it started."
Two decades later, Howard's quartet of books -- The Light Years, Marking Time, Confusion and Casting Off - charting the family's fortunes between 1937 and 1947 have sold over a million copies.
Martin Amis said of Elizabeth Jane Howard, "She is, with Iris Murdoch, the most interesting woman writer of her generation. An instinctivist, like Muriel Spark, she has a freakish and poetic eye, and a penetrating sanity."
A star cast includes Penelope Wilton as the narrator, Pip Torrens, Dominic Mafham, Naomi Frederick, Helen Schlesinger, Raymond Coulthard, Zoe Tapper, Alix Wilton Regan, Flora Spencer-Longhurst and Georgia Groome.
'Casting Off' follows in July.
THU 11:00 Crossing Continents (b01s0qmq)
Belarus's university in exile
Belarus has been described as the last dictatorship in Europe. Few dare speak out against President Alexander Lukashenko and his ruling elite. But the opposition has found a way of making its voice heard through an academic community which has taken refuge abroad.
Lucy Ash visits the European Humanities University which teaches Belarusian students on its campus in neighbouring Lithuania. She talks to teachers and students, many of whom commute back and forth across the border. Is the EHU devoted to intellectual freedom and training future leaders of Belarus or is it a "trampoline for emigration" to the west?
Producer: Tim Mansel.
THU 11:30 Bernard Who? (b01s0qms)
Episode 1
This year, the actor Bernard Cribbins celebrates his 85th birthday and more than 70 years in showbusiness. In this revealing two-part series he talks to his friend and producer Martin Jenkins about his extraordinary career, and a cast of friends share their memories of working with Bernard, including David Tennant, Barbara Windsor, Barry Cryer and the late Richard Briers.
He's been directed by Hitchcock, starred alongside a galaxy of screen legends including Peter Sellers and Kenneth Williams, is good mates with David Tennant, and has performed with Barbara Windsor wearing nothing but a bikini.
Somehow Bernard Cribbins has earned a special place in the hearts of every generation; whether you're a fan of the Carry On films or his 1960s chart hits Right Said Fred and Hole in the Ground, grew up watching The Railway Children or listened to him read more than 100 classic tales on Jackanory. And he has continued to wow younger audiences as Wilfred Mott in Doctor Who, and most recently as the storytelling sailor Old Jack in the new BBC children's television series on CBeebies.
In this, the first of two programmes, Bernard looks back at his early career at Oldham Rep, where he started as an actor and assistant stage manager aged 13, on his national service with the parachute regiment in Palestine, and the big break that took him to London's West End, and from there to the Carry On films. Barry Cryer, Barbara Windsor, the playwright Ray Cooney and Richard Briers, recorded shortly before his death, share their memories of Bernard the man and the performer, and we hear Bernard's personal recollections of working with the legendary Peter Sellers, Alfred Hitchcock and Peter Cushing.
Producer: Eve Streeter
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.
THU 12:00 You and Yours (b01s0qmv)
Care home ratings, cycle safety, banned ale labels, improving broadband
Will a triple dip recession affect the way you shop, what you spend or save? A new Parliamentary report suggests £1 billion should be spent on improving cycle safety; we hear from an innovative group of cyclists copying the police to be safe on the roads.
A new study reveals eighty five percent of people would want to know they are terminally ill. Under what circumstances should the information be withheld from a patient?
The first ever ratings website launches that will help people to choose, compare and comment on care homes and other care services. A brewer is refusing to change his beer bottle labels; it risks being withdrawn from sale after a high court ruling. Can New York City follow their European city friends and embrace cycling?
Presenter: Peter White
Producer: Simon Browning.
THU 12:57 Weather (b01s02tw)
The latest weather forecast.
THU 13:00 World at One (b01s0qmx)
National and international news. Listeners can share their views via email: wato@bbc.co.uk or on twitter: #wato.
THU 13:45 Noise: A Human History (b01s0qmz)
An Ever Noisier World
The 20th century brought attempts to distinguish between 'necessary' and 'unnecessary' noise. In New York, the authorities tried to clean up Coney Island fairground, banning barkers from using megaphones and targeting street sellers, newspaper boys, and buskers. But the volume of modern life has risen inexorably.
Professor David Hendy of the University of Sussex travels to Ghana's capital, Accra, a city so loud that visitors describe its streets as a visceral shock, and introduces an elegiac recording of the wild soundscape we've lost, captured by the celebrated naturalist, Bernie Krause.
30-part series made in collaboration with the British Library Sound Archive.
Signature tune composed by Joe Acheson.
Producer: Matt Thompson
A Rockethouse production for BBC Radio 4.
THU 14:00 The Archers (b01s0dkt)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 on Wednesday]
THU 14:15 Drama (b01s0qn1)
Doug Lucie - The Milky Way
Its 1959 and milkman Bob Reilly has dreams of making it big as a singer, but after yet another knock-back begins to realise that Emceeing at the local pub might be the highlight of his career. Until, that is, he discovers his son Andy and his mates have formed a band. They're not half bad and who better to manage them and lead them to stardom than Bob himself? Soon the band, christened The Milky Way, begin to have some success, but Bob's hopes and plans for the band's future aren't necessarily those of the band themselves, causing friction between father and son and Bob to reassess his priorities and his long cherished dreams.
From acclaimed dramatist Doug Lucie a new drama about rock 'n' roll, real life, and realising what dreams in life are really worth chasing, starring Shaun Dingwall, Belinda Stewart-Wilson, Jemima Rooper, Tim McInnerny, David Cardy, Ted Reilly, Tony Bignell and Theo Gregrory.
Music by 'The Milky Way' was performed by Doug Lucie, Ian Lucie, Dave Hillman and George Stenning, with lead vocals by Tony Bignell and backing vocals by Theo Gregory and Ted Reilly.
Music was performed by Doug Lucie, Ian Lucie, Dave Hillman and George Stenning, with lead vocals by Tony Bignell.
THE MILKY WAY was written by Doug Lucie and directed by Heather Larmour.
THU 15:00 Open Country (b01s0qn3)
Fens of Cambridgeshire
What is phenology? Felicity Evans visits Fenland Cambridgeshire to learn about an influential but largely unacknowledged Victorian vicar - the Reverend Leonard Jenyns - who made a lasting contribution to science.
Jenyns is certainly not as well known as Charles Darwin, even though he passed up the chance of sailing on HMS Beagle as the ship's naturalist. In fact, Jenyns never set foot outside the UK, yet his contribution to science was enormous. Felicity hears how phenology has become a key aspect of observing climate change, noting the first and last days of the seasons.
She finds out how much Fenland Cambridgeshire has been dried out since Jenyns' day, and the ways in which this rural vicar bore witness to the habitat destruction and species extinction in his own parish in the mid-Victorian period.
Producer: Mark Smalley.
THU 15:27 Radio 4 Appeal (b01s030f)
[Repeat of broadcast at
07:55 on Sunday]
THU 15:30 Open Book (b01s032c)
[Repeat of broadcast at
16:00 on Sunday]
THU 16:00 The Film Programme (b01s0qn5)
Steve Coogan as Paul Raymond; Jack Black in new movie Bernie; Terence Stamp on his best films
Steve Coogan's discusses his latest role as the Soho entrepreneur, Paul Raymond, in The Look of Love, directed by Michael Winterbottom. He tells Francine Stock why he's attracted to characters who prove initially hard to like.
Bernie, directed by Richard Linklater, is also based on a real person and tells the story of a Texan man accused of murdering an elderly woman. Using documentary-style interviews within the feature film, it's a sympathetic portrayal by Jack Black. He explains why he was attracted to the role and his nervousness about the reaction of the real Bernie, currently serving his sentence in prison.
So how can biopics be both honest and innovative about their subjects? Film critic Hannah McGill discusses those that work and those that fail to engage.
And the actor Terence Stamp looks back at this career from Billy Budd to The Collector, Theorem and The Limey as the British Film Institute opens a retrospective on his work next week.
Producer: Elaine Lester.
THU 16:30 Material World (b01s0qn7)
Bovine TB; Big Cat; Shark teeth
DEFRA's Chief Scientific Advisor meets with scientists at the Royal Society to discuss future strategies in controlling bovine TB. Ian Boyd has called together sixty leading experts in bovine TB with the aim of developing new strategies in controlling the disease. He speaks to Quentin Cooper from the meeting. Also on the programme Christl Donnelly, Professor of Statistical Epidemiology at Imperial College London, and James Wood Alborada Professor of Equine and Farm Animal Science at Cambridge, both of whom were at the meeting.
The rediscovery of a mystery animal in the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery's underground storeroom proves that a non-native 'big cat' prowled the British countryside at the turn of the last century. When the skeleton of the animal was compared to the mounted skin, researchers realised that the description in the records was wrong and that it was in fact a Canadian lynx. The researchers studied the teeth of the lynx and looked at strontium isotopes in the bones to find out where it lived. Dr Ross Barnett, from the University of Durham and the Natural History Museum of Denmark at the University of Copenhagen, tells us more.
Shark teeth found at the bottom of aquariums are being used by scientists at Birmingham University to find out about biological diversity in ancient seas. Ultimately the work could help predict what will happen to life in the currently warming seas. Sharks lose teeth regularly and researchers think that clues to marine biological diversity over millions of years may be locked up in sharks' teeth. Studying oxygen isotopes, which are incorporated into sharks' teeth as they develop, can reveal the temperature of the seawater the shark lived in at the time. Dr. Ivan Sansom, a Palaeobiologist, is leading the project.
THU 17:00 PM (b01s0qn9)
Coverage and analysis of the day's news.
THU 18:00 Six O'Clock News (b01s02ty)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
THU 18:30 Mark Thomas: The Manifesto (b01s0qnc)
Series 5
London
Activist comedian Mark Thomas considers policy suggestions for a People's Manifesto.
Recorded in the BBC Radio Theatre, London.
Producer: Colin Anderson
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2013
THU 19:00 The Archers (b01s0qnf)
Matt goes to see Darrell. He wants to know more about how he helped foil the dog-fighting gang.
Brian can't thank Neil enough and invites him and Susan to dinner. When Darrell appears, he is reluctant to accept any praise. He is unhappy when Brian shows him how the story has made this week's Borchester Echo. Brian asks Darrell and Elona to join them all for dinner. Darrell is still anxious and uncomfortable with all the publicity. Neil tries to calm him down.
At a board meeting for Borchester Market Developments, Lilian is worried Andrew will mention seeing her at the races with Paul. Brian talks about the dog fight. He can't believe it was on his land.
Later Brian brags about the good PR he'll get from his interview with Borsetshire Life.
Lilian eventually pins Andrew down for a chat, on the pretence of asking his advice on restoration builders. She really doesn't think that he suspects anything. Relieved Lilian calls Paul to let him know she thinks Andrew believed her cover story. Paul accuses her of being over-cautious. She thinks they should keep their fingers crossed and hope that Andrew doesn't say anything.
THU 19:15 Front Row (b01s0qnh)
New Le Carré reviewed; The Politician's Husband; In the Fog
With Mark Lawson.
David Tennant and Emily Watson star in a new three part TV drama, The Politician's Husband. Written by Paula Milne, it centres on the family life, and career prospects of husband and wife MPs. As his fortunes wane, hers rise, with considerable repercussions. Baroness Virginia and Sir Peter Bottomley discuss whether it's a realistic depiction of a power couple.
More from the Cultural Exchange project, in which 75 leading creative minds share their passion for a book, film, poem, piece of music or other work of art. Tonight actor Adrian Lester contributes Bob Marley's Redemption Song and explains why it struck such a chord when he heard it first in 1981 when he was 12.
A Delicate Truth is the new novel by John le Carré and it finds the author returning to the world of espionage and diplomacy for which he is best known. The BBC's diplomatic correspondent Bridget Kendall gives her verdict.
In The Fog, an award-winning World War II film set in the Soviet Union, centres around the developing relationship between a Nazi collaborator and two members of the resistance movement who have been sent to kill him. Larushka Ivan-Zadeh reviews.
Producer Ellie Bury.
THU 19:45 The Cazalets (b01s0qmn)
[Repeat of broadcast at
10:45 today]
THU 20:00 The Report (b01s0qnk)
Bitcoin
You can use it to buy a pizza, or pay a taxi fare. Simon Cox looks at the virtual currency Bitcoin, which is exclusively online and independent of any government or company and where a user can be anonymous. In recent weeks, Bitcoin lost half its value due to a panic sell-off, but who are the people buying and selling this new currency and how does it work?
THU 20:30 In Business (b01s0qnm)
Potash of Gold
Nearly one mile underground beneath the North Sea are vast supplies of potash and polyhalite waiting to be dug up and turned into valuable fertiliser. There's just one snag: the planned new mine would be in the North York Moors National Park, where such developments are normally prohibited. Locals are taking sides for and against, as Peter Day reports.
Producer: Mike Wendling.
THU 21:00 Solar Max (b01s09z3)
[Repeat of broadcast at
11:00 on Tuesday]
THU 21:30 In Our Time (b01s0qmj)
[Repeat of broadcast at
09:00 today]
THU 21:58 Weather (b01s02v0)
The latest weather forecast.
THU 22:00 The World Tonight (b01s0r52)
In-depth reporting and analysis with Philippa Thomas.
America says it has evidence Syria used chemical weapons. Have we reached the red line ?
Europe's easing up on austerity - we'll ask if the UK should follow ?
We speak to the Bangladesh government about the Dhaka building collapse and we're joined live by a representative of the garment industry to ask if they could have done more on safety.
and Mayor Bloomberg says the Boston Bombers were trying to hit Times Square in New York.
THU 22:45 Book at Bedtime (b01s10c2)
This Is Where I Am
Episode 4
Abdi is unable to face the events of his last day at the refugee camp in Dadaab - but the first day is seared on his mind.
And, now he is no longer an asylum seeker but has been granted refugee status, he and Debs take on the Glasgow housing authorities.
Read by Maureen Beattie and Jude Akuwidike
Abridged and produced by Jane Marshall
A Jane Marshall production for BBC Radio 4.
THU 23:00 Jon Ronson On (b01s0r54)
Series 7
Undeserved Rewards
We like to think we live in a fair world - but writer and documentary-maker Jon Ronson investigates the way in which the least deserving often win the greatest rewards.
Writer Helen Keen opens the programme, describing how she won an award for comedy she wrote about working class life in a gritty northern town - but, when she met the judges, she sensed that her 'poshness' disappointed them and made her less deserving of the award.
Jon meets comedian Bob Mortimer who admits that, when he was a criminal barrister in Peckham, he couldn't resist asking his clients if they were guilty. Astonishingly, he says, all fifteen hundred admitted their guilt. Nevertheless, he fought their cases in court and a huge proportion of them walked free. He was rewarded for his success but it cost him dear on other more profound levels.
South Hampstead Synagogue sounds like an unlikely site for misplaced rewards. Jon travels there to meet a charismatic young rabbi who had a novel idea to increase youth attendance. Kids won raffle tickets for turning up and joining in. The competition ran over a year, culminating in a grand draw. The prizes were massive. Emotions were running high. But things went drastically wrong, leaving the children asking "how could God let this happen?".
Finally, Jon talks to ex-New York Times reporter Jayson Blair, who added fictitious flourishes to his news stories. He embellished details, put words in people's mouths and created poignant touches about his interviewees' lives. He knew it was wrong but his lies started earning him huge respect from his bosses and readers - until the whole façade dramatically unravelled.
Producer: Lucy Greenwell
A Unique production for BBC Radio 4.
THU 23:30 Today in Parliament (b01s0r56)
Sean Curran reports on events at Westminster.
FRIDAY 26 APRIL 2013
FRI 00:00 Midnight News (b01s02vv)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
FRI 00:30 Book of the Week (b01s687k)
[Repeat of broadcast at
09:45 on Thursday]
FRI 00:48 Shipping Forecast (b01s02vx)
The latest shipping forecast.
FRI 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (b01s02vz)
BBC Radio 4 joins the BBC World Service.
FRI 05:20 Shipping Forecast (b01s02w1)
The latest shipping forecast.
FRI 05:30 News Briefing (b01s02w3)
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
FRI 05:43 Prayer for the Day (b01s45y3)
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Dr David Stone, Canon Precentor of Coventry Cathedral.
FRI 05:45 Farming Today (b01s0s6c)
Greece and Italy are being taken to court for failing to enforce the ban on battery cages for laying hens. The European Commission has referred the case to the European Court of Justice . The ban on battery cages came into effect at the beginning of last year, but despite having 12 years to comply with it, 13 countries missed the deadline. British farmers, who say they spent millions on changing their systems to meet the ban were furious and warned of 'illegally' produced eggs undercutting the market. Now it's only Greece and Italy which are yet to comply. Also on Farming Today, The RSPB has rejected suggestions from DEFRA's Chief Scientist that they could work together to monitor the impact of the badger cull on songbird populations. Speaking in a personal capacity, Professor Ian Boyd said there was a theory that removing badgers which eat songbird eggs would preserve bird populations, and the culls offered a chance to study this. Two trial badger culls are due to start later this year in Gloucestershire and Somerset as part of The Government's efforts to reduce TB in cattle. Presented by Charlotte Smith. Produced by Anna Varle.
FRI 06:00 Today (b01s0s6f)
Including Sports Desk, Yesterday in Parliament, Weather, Thought for the Day.
FRI 09:00 The Reunion (b01s030p)
[Repeat of broadcast at
11:15 on Sunday]
FRI 09:45 Book of the Week (b01s687m)
Letters from Italy
Annalisa Piras
5 leading Italians deliver letters about Italy today, the dangers and the possibilities.
The last of five Letters from Italy at a time of huge upheaval in that country. The week ends with the thoughts of Annalisa Piras, the London based journalist and author of the recent TV documentary 'Girlfriend in a Coma'.
Annalisa's letter was written while on a recent holiday in her native country and so comes with the distant observation of one who spends time watching developments from a distance. She understands the British view of Italy and is concerned and puzzled that a political system that she used to understand seems to have become even more confusing and unfathomable.
Her letter takes her from the Tuscan countryside to Rome, to the coast and then, for her concluding thoughts back to London where she reflects on what is happening and what might happen as Italy continues to teeter on the edge of economic crisis.
At a time when Italy's political and economic fragility is in the spotlight, 5 leading Italian figures deliver a letter about Italy today, the dangers and the future possibilities.
Five letters from leading Italians from the fields of politics, economics, television, art and journalism.
At a time when Italy is in the spotlight, both for the changing of the Pope but more especially for the recent election results and the economic fragility that has brought austerity and anger, each of the letter writer talks about their sense of Italy today, it's challenges, the dangers it faces and the possibilities for the future.
This week's contributors will be:
Prof Gustavo Piga is an economist at Rome University.
Lucia Annunziata is editor of the Huffington Post, Italy but spent many years in Italian television including a period as head of RIA, the Italian equivalent of the BBC.
Carlo Sibilia is a member of the new Five Stars Movement lead by Beppe Grillo, the new and surprising force in Italian politics.
Dacia Maraini is a novelist and playwright and an established figure in the Italian literary landscape.
Annalisa Piras is an Italian Journalist based in London.
Producer: Tom Alban.
FRI 10:00 Woman's Hour (b01s0s6h)
Secret of a long marriage; Beyoncé and feminism; Biting
According to the Office of National Statistics the average marriage is expected to last 32 years. So are Ruby, Gold or Diamond weddings becoming a thing of the past and what's the key to a long and happy marriage?
Beyonce has recently described herself as a "modern day feminist" and wants to promote women's rights through music. How does she compare with other female artists such as Annie Lennox and Lady Gaga?
While biting is practically unheard of in adults it's a far more common behaviour amongst toddlers. So what's the best way to deal with biting in children?
A new study by the University of Leeds shows improved care for mothers from ethnic minority groups is needed. The number of children dying before the age of one amongst Caribbean and Pakistan communities is much higher than the national average - 81% for Pakistani and 128% for Caribbean women born outside the UK.
We hear from 2 members of a group of 13-year-old schoolgirls from York who've launched their own Body Confidence Campaign in response to the number of airbrushed images of women shown in their local shopping centre.
FRI 10:45 The Cazalets (b01s0s6k)
Confusion
Episode 5
by Elizabeth Jane Howard
Dramatised by Sarah Daniels
Zoe embarks upon a relationship and Louise finds herself alone as she gives birth.
Produced and Directed by Sally Avens and Marion Nancarrow
'Confusion' is the third of four compelling Cazalet novels by Elizabeth Jane Howard, which together give a vivid insight into the lives, hopes and loves of three generations during the Second World War and beyond.
As Elizabeth Jane Howard enters her 90th Birthday year, Radio 4 are broadcasting dramatisations of all four novels between January and August 2013.
You can catch up with series two, The Cazalets: Marking Time, on iplayer.
The third series is set between 1942 and 1945: For the Cazalet family the war has brought tragedy;
Rupert has been missing since Dunkirk and only his daughter Clary refuses to believe he is dead, whilst her step-mother Zoe has buried her hope and devotes her energy to bringing up her daugher Juliet. At home, Sybil has lost her battle with cancer leaving Polly bereft and trying to comfort her father, Hugh. Even Edward seems wracked with doubt over whether he should give up his mistress, Diana, who is carrying his child and try and make a go of things with Villy once again. The younger generation seems as confused as their parents: Louise makes a hasty marriage to society painter Michael Hadleigh giving up her dreams of being an actress, whilst Polly and Clary finally convince the family they can move to London but the girls soon discover that independence and adulthood brings heartbreak of its own.
When Elizabeth Jane Howard began writing the novels her aims were modest. "I wanted to write about my youth, and the ten years that straddled the Second World War. I also wanted to write about what domestic life was like for people at home. A lot has been written about the battles and the war in a more direct sense, but little had been said about the way the whole of England changed. When the war ended, everybody was in a different position from where they were when it started."
Two decades later, Howard's quartet of books -- The Light Years, Marking Time, Confusion and Casting Off - charting the family's fortunes between 1937 and 1947 have sold over a million copies.
Martin Amis said of Elizabeth Jane Howard, "She is, with Iris Murdoch, the most interesting woman writer of her generation. An instinctivist, like Muriel Spark, she has a freakish and poetic eye, and a penetrating sanity."
A star cast includes Penelope Wilton as the narrator, Pip Torrens, Dominic Mafham, Naomi Frederick, Helen Schlesinger, Raymond Coulthard, Zoe Tapper, Alix Wilton Regan, Flora Spencer-Longhurst and Georgia Groome.
'Casting Off' follows in July.
FRI 11:00 Mind Changers (b01s0s6m)
Anna Freud and Child Observation
Claudia Hammond presents the history of psychology series which examines the work of the people who have changed our understanding of the human mind. This week she reflects on the enduring impact of Anna Freud's approach. By insisting on observation in her nurseries, she promoted the understanding of the child's perspective. Her continuing legacy can be seen in the way children are cared for in hospital and within the legal system today.
Claudia explores how Anna, the only one of Freud's six children to follow him into the field of psychoanalysis, started out as a teacher in 1920s Vienna and soon identified the toddler age as crucial to the child's future emotional development. After she fled to London with her father in 1938, she set up the Hampstead War Nurseries, the foundation for the Hampstead Child Therapy Course and Clinic, which became the Anna Freud Centre after her death in 1982. Claudia visits the Centre to meet Nick Midgley, a child psychotherapist there, and Dr Inge Pretorius, who is in charge of the Parent Toddler service. She also meets students training to be child psychotherapists, who are taught to observe in minute detail the interaction between children and carers in the way Anna Freud pioneered.
At one of the Centre's therapeutic parent toddler group parents explain what sets it apart from other groups, and discovers that today the Anna Freud Centre is breaking new ground with its Developmental Neuroscience Lab, using EEGs to further their understanding of the psychology of children and adolescents. Co-Director of the Centre, Mary Target, believes Anna Freud would have approved, though many within psychoanalysis are sceptical of this approach.
Producer: Marya Burgess.
FRI 11:30 FindthePerfectPartner4u.com (b01s0s6p)
e=mc2 - The Mathematics of Speed Dating
Following on from Charlotte Cory's 'Thinking of Leaving Your Husband', this romantic comedy series explores the perils of internet dating for the middle-aged man.
In the final episode, Professor Tony (Henry Goodman) no nearer to meeting up with "Moody Twoshoes" - the only woman from his internet dating website FindthePerfectPartner4u.com, with whom he seems at all compatible - tries his hand at speed-dating.
At the Purple Horse in Holborn he meets, very quickly, an extraordinary succession of unsuitable women - all played, as ever, by the redoubtable Lia Williams. But will Tony find true love? Will he find Moody Twoshoes?
Charlotte Cory would like to acknowledge the help of the Mathematics Department of Greenwich University for help with - um, mathematics.
Original Music: David Chilton
Produced and directed by Gordon House
A Goldhawk Essential production for BBC Radio 4.
FRI 12:00 You and Yours (b01s0s7s)
Loch Ness Tourism, Property Scam, Exam Spending, Robert Peston, Cupcakes
80 years since the sighting which captivated tourists what's the Loch Ness Monster worth?
Also on today's programme:
The popular property website now checking for bogus adverts after would-be tenants were ripped off.
Are more controls needed over who can be a private tutor?
Why cupcakes are falling out of favour in the States
And he's only valued at 71p per message by Facebook so who would Robert Peston pay to contact through the website's new messaging service?
Presenter: Peter White
Producer: Jon Douglas.
FRI 12:52 The Listening Project (b01s0s7v)
Lynne and Donna - Flooding and Friendship
Fi Glover presents a conversation between neighbours whose friendship has been forged through the shared experience of seeing their homes flooded - twice - in the series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.
The Listening Project is a Radio 4 initiative that offers a snapshot of contemporary Britain in which people across the UK volunteer to have a conversation with someone close to them about a subject they've never discussed intimately before. The conversations are being gathered across the UK by teams of producers from local and national radio stations who facilitate each encounter. Every conversation - they're not BBC interviews, and that's an important difference - lasts up to an hour, and is then edited to extract the key moment of connection between the participants. Most of the unedited conversations are being archived by the British Library and used to build up a collection of voices capturing a unique portrait of the UK in the second decade of the millennium. You can upload your own conversations or just learn more about The Listening Project by visiting bbc.co.uk/listeningproject
Producer: Marya Burgess.
FRI 12:57 Weather (b01s02w5)
The latest weather forecast.
FRI 13:00 World at One (b01s0s7x)
National and international news. Listeners can share their views via email: wato@bbc.co.uk or on twitter: #wato.
FRI 13:45 Noise: A Human History (b01s0scn)
The Search for Silence
In the noisy modern world, silence has become an ever more desirable - and fashionable - state. We read books about it, go on retreats to find it, and soundproof our living and working spaces in its name. But when we have it is it what we want?
Professor David Hendy of the University of Sussex considers the modern quest for quiet and asks whether what really makes us humans happy is a little noise.
Conclusion of the 30-part series made in collaboration with the British Library Sound Archive.
Signature tune composed by Joe Acheson.
Producer: Matt Thompson
A Rockethouse production for BBC Radio 4.
FRI 14:00 The Archers (b01s0qnf)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 on Thursday]
FRI 14:15 Drama (b00s3hrm)
Justin Hopper - The Weighing Room
By Justin Hopper.
Noel is a jump jockey anxious to get his career back on track after a spell on the sidelines. Just what does it take to survive in the demanding and dangerous world of National Hunt racing?
Directed by Toby Swift.
FRI 15:00 Gardeners' Question Time (b01s0slz)
St Keverne
This week Radio 4's horticultural panel show is in St Keverne, Cornwall, with Eric Robson in the chair and Anne Swithinbank, Toby Buckland and Bunny Guinness on the panel.
Produced by Howard Shannon.
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4.
Q: Can you recommend a foolproof method of growing Lily of the Valley and keeping them from year to year?
A: Lily of the Valley can be a difficult plant to establish. They can be best in a border with some competition. A North-facing slope that is well composted should work well, but you should try it in many different positions if you want success.
Q: We've had an East wind off the beach for at least the last 4 weeks and a lot of plants have been scorched badly, will they recover? Can the panel advise remedial treatments?
A: It depends what the plants are (they are bamboos in this case) but they will probably self-rectify, as they will still have a good root base. The worst problem is with evergreen shrubs when they become disfigured and you can either leave it to grow and hope it repairs, or prune hard to encourage re-growth. The key thing is to grow your plants a little harder if they've been stripped, so no high-nitrogen feeds but just good garden compost so that when they come back next year they are tougher. If you thin out the clumps of bamboo it should help reduce scorching and the plant often looks nicer.
Q: We have a tiered North-facing bank next to our conservatory, can you suggest low-growing plants for summer colour? It has Hellebores and Daffodils in the Spring.
A: If you have quite small steps you shouldn't worry about it being North-facing because you haven't got a big shadow covering it and you've got long days, so you could use your colour from anything really. Pelargoniums would do well in a slightly shading place. You could plant ground-cover roses and peg them to the bank. Argyranthemums would do well. You could use shade-tolerant perennials like Phlomis russeliana, which is a ground-cover evergreen plant with yellow spikes in the summer.
Q: I've got an Aeonium Schwarzkopf which is currently flowering for the first time in the greenhouse. What should I do with it when the flowers finish?
A: They produce yellow flowers. When it's finished you should cut the whole top off the plant. It will then respond with side rosettes, taking on a more tree-like shape. You can then take cuttings for more plants or pot it on to become an even bigger specimen.
Q: For the last year I have been trying to grow Celeriac in different parts of the garden. The top growth looks good but they only produce thin routes and no bulbs. The soil is clay but I add lots of compost and horse muck. Why is this?
A: Celeriac, like celery, likes a lot of moisture. If you're on dry soil you can plant it in raised beds, lined with black polythene, with holes in the bottom. This will impede the drainage. If you add too much nitrogen this will make the tops grow, but the bottoms need more phosphates. If you start them off in trays you can plant out when the conditions are right. Low light levels also can encourage too much top growth and not enough bottom. The other issue is that they need spacing of about 30cms in all directions for the roots to spread.
Q: Why do the potatoes I buy from the supermarket for eating, that I keep in the cupboard, send out loads of shoots, while seed potatoes from the garden centre that I keep in the shed don't?
A: It's the warmth of your kitchen that encourages the potatoes to sprout more quickly.
Q: I have two ponds fed by a small river. Is there anyway of eradicating reedmace (Typhaceae) other than getting a digger to uproot it?
A: The un-organic way would be to use Glyphosate that is cleared for use in water. There is only one Glyphosate that is cleared for this use so you must be careful to get the right one and use it with caution. If you want to be organic you can buy a fabric that lies on the bottom of the pond and acts like a mulch to stop weeds growing.
Q: I like to use water from water butts to water greenhouse plants. However, my compost does become covered by a green film and cucumber plants become diseased. Can the team suggest a way of safely purifying the rainwater?
A: Make sure that the water is washing through the rain-butt. A lot of composts are prone to getting the green film on top due to their contents and this is not due to the water used. It is very good to use the water for established plants, but always take water from the tap for seedlings and young plants, because the rain-butt water may be diseased. You can keep goldfish in your waterbutt, or use Potassium permanganate if you don't want to be organic.
FRI 15:45 Afternoon Reading (b00tpv0d)
Agatha Christie's The Mysterious Mr Quin
The Face of Helen
Following the success of the first series of The Mysterious Mr Quin, Martin Jarvis reads three more stories about Agatha Christie's personal favourite character.
Mr Quin assists his friend Mr Satterthwaite to investigate three mysteries. But one mystery remains - who is Mr Harley Quin himself?
Mr Satterthwaite meets Mr Quin at a performance of 'Pagliaccia', sung by the rising tenor star Yoachim. In the audience they see a remarkably beautiful young woman. After the performance Quin mysteriously hints that, once again, they have been witness to a drama. Outside the opera house Satterthwaite offers the young woman a lift home in his car to escape a scuffle between her jealous companion, Philip Eastney and another young man, Mr Burns.
Later, Satterthwaite encounters Gillian and Charlie Burns in Kew Gardens; they are now engaged to be married. Gillian is worried that Eastney may be upset. Charlie reveals Gillian's sad history of distressing behaviour by men obsessed with her.
That evening, Satterthwaite encounters Eastney who discusses his war work on poison gas manufacture but, mainly, music. Eastney once heard Caruso sing and believes the tenor was able to shatter a glass with a particularly pitched high note.
On his way home Satterthwaite realises the significance of Quin's remark at the opera. The latest newspaper announces that tonight's concert on the wireless will include Yoachim singing a song with a particularly high final note.
Will Satterthwaite be in time to prevent a tragedy?
Producer: Rosalind Ayres
A Jarvis & Ayres Production for BBC Radio 4.
FRI 16:00 Last Word (b01s0sm3)
An interior designer, a theatre director, a cricketer, a prima ballerina and a musician
Matthew Bannister on
The designer Jocasta Innes who wrote "The Pauper's Cookbook" and "Paint Magic", introducing a generation to stippling and rag rolling. Her daughter Daisy Goodwin shares her memories.
The theatre director and poet Patrick Garland: his friend Alan Bennett pays tribute.
The cricketer Mike Denness, an elegant batsman who captained Kent and England and started an international row as a match referee.
Maria Tallchief - the native American ballet dancer who was a muse to her husband George Ballanchine.
And the singer and songwriter Richie Havens who opened the Woodstock festival when other acts were stuck in traffic. Tom Findlay of Groove Armada recalls working with him recently.
FRI 16:30 Feedback (b01s0sm5)
In the last of the current series of Feedback, Roger Bolton is joined by Gwyneth Williams, the Controller of Radio 4. She responds to listener questions on topics ranging from the coverage of Baroness Thatcher's funeral to Paul and Lillian's love affair in The Archers.
Earlier this week the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, was interviewed by John Humphrys about UK borrowing figures - but the interview took a personal turn at the end when Mr Osborne was quizzed on his tears during Margaret Thatcher's funeral. We hear the views of listeners who were unimpressed by the line of questioning.
Also, are standards of grammar and pronunciation slipping at Radio 4? Many think so. But what will the Controller make of the comments?
Producer: Kate Taylor
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4.
FRI 16:55 The Listening Project (b01s0smr)
Hannah and Jourvarnii - Learning From the Past
Fi Glover presents a conversation between a mother and daughter about the lengths a mother will go to for her children and what her daughter has learned from those decisions, in the series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.
The Listening Project is a Radio 4 initiative that offers a snapshot of contemporary Britain in which people across the UK volunteer to have a conversation with someone close to them about a subject they've never discussed intimately before. The conversations are being gathered across the UK by teams of producers from local and national radio stations who facilitate each encounter. Every conversation - they're not BBC interviews, and that's an important difference - lasts up to an hour, and is then edited to extract the key moment of connection between the participants. Most of the unedited conversations are being archived by the British Library and used to build up a collection of voices capturing a unique portrait of the UK in the second decade of the millennium. You can upload your own conversations or just learn more about The Listening Project by visiting bbc.co.uk/listeningproject
Producer: Marya Burgess.
FRI 17:00 PM (b01s0smt)
Coverage and analysis of the day's news. Including Weather at
5.57pm.
FRI 18:00 Six O'Clock News (b01s02w7)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
FRI 18:30 The News Quiz (b01s0ss6)
Series 80
Episode 3
A satirical review of the week's news, chaired by Sandi Toksvig. With Jeremy Hardy, Susan Calman, Miles Jupp and Samira Ahmed.
FRI 19:00 The Archers (b01s0ssb)
David and Ruth have decided to lend Pip money for a replacement car. She can pay them back when the insurance pays out. But the amount is not enough for Pip, who storms off. She doesn't want an old wreck she'll look stupid in.
Tony understands why Tom wants to keep busy but is worried he's pushing himself too hard. A bit choked, Tom accepts Tony's help.
Later Tony confirms with Pat and Tom that Rodways have been given the green light to sell the herd. They now need to get Alistair in to do a pre-movement TB test on the whole herd. They try to convince Pat it would be best to hold the sale at the farm rather than the market. They can't afford to be too sentimental.
Tom eventually gets hold of Roy, who agrees to meet him. Over a pint, Tom cuts to the chase. He wants to know if Brenda will change her mind. Roy can find no easy way of saying it. Tom should forget any thoughts of them getting back together. Tom's devastated. He thought he had a real future with Brenda and now it's all gone. What is he going to do?
FRI 19:15 Front Row (b01s0ssd)
The Eagles, Diana Athill's Cultural Exchange, pubs on stage
With John Wilson.
Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Joe Walsh and Timothy B Schmit of America's biggest-selling band The Eagles discuss a new documentary, History of the Eagles, which charts the ups and downs of their career and the stories behind their classic songs.
More from the Cultural Exchange project, in which 75 leading creative minds share their passion for a book, film, poem, piece of music or other work of art: tonight writer and editor Diana Athill explains why Byron's letters have had such a lasting effect on her.
The Weir by Conor McPherson, set in a remote Irish pub, and the musical version of Once, which has been transposed to a bustling Dublin pub, are both currently running in London. Josie Rourke, who is directing The Weir, and Declan Bennett, who stars in Once, reflect on the process of creating an authentic pub atmosphere on stage, and P J Mathews considers the theatrical history of the Irish pub.
Producer Jerome Weatherald.
FRI 19:45 The Cazalets (b01s0s6k)
[Repeat of broadcast at
10:45 today]
FRI 20:00 Any Questions? (b01s0ssg)
Caroline Flint, Caroline Lucas, Michael Fallon, Sir Menzies Campbell
Jonathan Dimbleby presents political debate and discussion from Harrow in Middlesex with Green MP Caroline Lucas MP Shadow Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Caroline Flint MP, and former leader of the Liberal Democrats Sir Ming Campbell.
FRI 20:50 A Point of View (b01s0ssj)
John Gray: Bitcoin's Cyber Freedom
John Gray wonders what the rise of the cyber currency Bitcoin tells us about our human need for freedom and protection, "The dream of finding some kind of talisman, a benevolent tyrant or a magical new technology, that can shelter us from power and crime and protect us from each other." Producer: Sheila Cook.
FRI 21:00 Noise: A Human History - Omnibus (b01s0ssl)
Episode 6
Omnibus edition of the episodes from the final week of a six-week series made in collaboration with the British Library Sound Archive.
The rumble of artillery bombardment in Northern France could be heard as far away as Kent during the First World War. Up close in the trenches, soldiers experienced a sonic onslaught that continued night and day: howling shells, the machine gun's rattle, and the screams of injured men. Professor David Hendy of the University of Sussex visits Flanders to relay echoes from the Front.
He also explores the early days of radio and the seductive power of the disembodied voice, coming out of thin air from hundreds of miles away. In time, the radio became a trusted part of family life - and by the 1930s and 40s, the perfect medium for propaganda, as Joseph Goebbels recognized.
The programme also considers how music has been used to soothe us, cheer us, and make us productive over the past hundred years - and includes extremely rare recordings of wartime episodes of the much-loved BBC series, Music While You Work.
Next, David travels to Ghana's capital, Accra, a city so loud that visitors describe its streets as a visceral shock, and introduces an elegiac recording of the wild soundscape we've lost, captured by the celebrated naturalist, Bernie Krause.
And finally, he considers the modern quest for quiet. In the noisy modern world, silence has become an ever more desirable - and fashionable - state. We read books about it, go on retreats to find it, and soundproof our living and working spaces in its name. But when we have it is it what we want?
Is is actually a little noise that really makes us humans happy.
Signature tune composed by Joe Acheson.
Producer: Matt Thompson
A Rockethouse production for BBC Radio 4.
FRI 21:58 Weather (b01s02w9)
The latest weather forecast.
FRI 22:00 The World Tonight (b01s0sx7)
US President Barack Obama on Friday promised a "vigorous investigation" into reports Syrian forces fired chemical weapons, deaths in police custody, the death toll now exceeds three hundred at the collapsed factory building in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka and the country singer George Jones has died at the age of 81, with Philippa Thomas.
FRI 22:45 Book at Bedtime (b01s10d7)
This Is Where I Am
Episode 5
Abdi introduces Debs to his neighbour Mrs Coutts - and little Rebecca, blossoming in the warmth of the burgeoning friendships all around her, gives them a thrilling surprise.
Read by Maureen Beattie and Jude Akuwidike
Abridged and produced by Jane Marshall
A Jane Marshall production for BBC Radio 4.
FRI 23:00 Great Lives (b01s0b04)
[Repeat of broadcast at
16:30 on Tuesday]
FRI 23:30 Today in Parliament (b01s0sx9)
Mark D'Arcy with the latest news and analysis from Westminster.
FRI 23:55 The Listening Project (b01s0sxc)
Hannah and Ruth - Hannah and Her Sisters
Fi Glover presents a conversation between twins about their relationship with each other and with their severely disabled elder sister in Radio 4's series that proves that it's surprising what you hear when you listen
The Listening Project is a Radio 4 initiative that offers a snapshot of contemporary Britain in which people across the UK volunteer to have a conversation with someone close to them about a subject they've never discussed intimately before. The conversations are being gathered across the UK by teams of producers from local and national radio stations who facilitate each encounter. Every conversation - they're not BBC interviews, and that's an important difference - lasts up to an hour, and is then edited to extract the key moment of connection between the participants. Most of the unedited conversations are being archived by the British Library and used to build up a collection of voices capturing a unique portrait of the UK in the second decade of the millennium. You can upload your own conversations or just learn more about The Listening Project by visiting bbc.co.uk/listeningproject
Producer: Marya Burgess.