SATURDAY 28 DECEMBER 2013

SAT 00:00 Midnight News (b03m83qn)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.


SAT 00:15 Food for Thought (b018gqzk)
Series 2

Andy McNab

'What do you want before the chip shop closes?' was the phrase former Special Forces soldier Andy McNab got used to as a child. In Food For Thought, he describes his transition from a thirty-six-inch-waisted 'fat kid' to fit career soldier, after a spell in juvenile detention. Joining the army meant decent food and regular meal times. You could be up on a charge if you didn't eat breakfast before Queen's Parade.

Over spam, pick'n'mix and with condensed milk in his cuppa, Andy talks to Nina Myskow about feeling looked after by the army, the daily rituals of preparing dinner in huge Dixie pots and how he cooked on an army Hexy burner in the kitchen sink when he bought his first house. He was worried about the gas bill. These days, he doesn't cook much but makes 'Desperate Dan' sausage and mash for a family special occasion. And, after a life in the military, the novelty of eating out still hasn't worn off.

Andy also details the realities and deprivations of war time capture and there's a frank revelation about the worse thing he's ever eaten. Not for the squeamish. It's all rather different to the boiled eggs and chocolate given to him by the Red Cross on his release, and the expensive kobe beef he has sampled since.

Producer: Tamsin Hughes
A Wise Buddah production for BBC Radio 4.


SAT 00:30 Book of the Week (b03m80qr)
Love, Nina: Despatches From Family Life

Dissertations, Romance and Subterfuge

Mary Poppins meets Adrian Mole in Nina Stibbe's letters from the heart of 1980s literary London. Dissertation crises, spotting Samuel Beckett and employing subterfuge to save face.

Read by Rebekah Staton
Abridged by Penny Leicester
Produced by Gemma Jenkins.


SAT 00:48 Shipping Forecast (b03m83qq)
The latest shipping forecast.


SAT 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (b03m83qs)
BBC Radio 4 joins the BBC World Service. BBC Radio 4 resumes at 5.20am.


SAT 05:20 Shipping Forecast (b03m83qv)
The latest shipping forecast.


SAT 05:30 News Briefing (b03m83qx)
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.


SAT 05:43 Prayer for the Day (b03m84wt)
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Leslie Griffiths.


SAT 05:45 iPM (b03m84ww)
'This was the year that I found out I was a woman' - Charlotte Green reads paragraphs of news sent in by the listeners. Email iPM@bbc.co.uk.


SAT 06:00 News and Papers (b03m83qz)
The latest news headlines. Including a look at the papers.


SAT 06:04 Weather (b03m83r1)
The latest weather forecast.


SAT 06:07 Open Country (b03m7z9z)
Doddington Hall, Lincolnshire

Helen Mark visits Doddington Hall in Lincolnshire to talk about how the estate's shoot forms part of the landscape management and a desire for locally-sourced produce. It also provides the farm shop and restaurant with festive fare, including pigeon burgers.

James Birch is Doddington's owner, (his wife's family have owned the estate continuously for around four hundred years). Shooting has always been part of life here and even now there's a full-time gamekeeper, who doubles as security guard and fly-tipping preventer.

The game from the shoot is used in the restaurant and is cooked by Chris Maclure, senior sous-chef, who makes sure nothing goes to waste. Helen talks to university lecturer- turned-florist Rachel Petheram, who loves the challenge of using only locally-grown flowers and herbs in her Christmas displays.

Helen also goes beating with Will Birkett, a young gamekeeper preparing for a day's shooting with his gun dogs.

Producer...Mary Ward-Lowery.


SAT 06:30 Farming Today (b03myh6x)
Farming Today This Week

The cold Spring, the horsemeat scandal and the badger cull. Three of the biggest rural stories of 2013. And today on Farming Today this Week, Charlotte Smith is joined by a panel of experts to discuss and reflect the issues and their impact on UK farming.

The discussion panel includes David Heath MP, who was farming minister for much of the year and Emyr Jones, president of the Farmers Union of Wales. They're also joined by Guardian correspondent Felicity Lawrence who closely followed the horsemeat scandal and Dr Gordon McGlone, a national expert on badgers and bovine tuberculosis.

Presented by Charlotte Smith and produced by Jules Benham.


SAT 06:57 Weather (b03m83r3)
The latest weather forecast.


SAT 07:00 Today (b03m860w)
Morning news and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Thought for the Day and Weather.


SAT 09:00 Saturday Live (b03m860y)
Philosopher Angie Hobbs

Anita Anand and JP Devlin with philosopher Angie Hobbs, poet Murray Lachlan Young, 11 year old popster Fynnjan Leach-Verhoeven and his mum Su, Saturday Live listener Ted Chance who made it into the Culture Club Christmas video in 1983, international football coach Paul Watson, 4th generation Salvation Army member Janet Martin, Andy Miller who's just finished a song he started 35 years ago, and the Inheritance Tracks of Boycie from Only Fools and Horses.

Producer Dixi Stewart.


SAT 10:30 The Playlist Series (b03m8610)
Nell Gwyn's Playlist

David Owen Norris recreates the musical world of the first female star of the English stage.

Nell Gwyn was a celebrity in the modern sense – and nobody could get enough of her. Just four years after women were first allowed on stage, "pretty witty Nell" was one of the sights of London - the equivalent of a modern stand-up comedian or rapper, improvising lines and comedy. And women on stage could deliver all sorts of subversive messages they were not allowed to express in real life, where they were expected to be chaste and obedient.

This programme is recorded on location in the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, Nell's theatre. Musician David Owen Norris discovers and records some of Nell's famous songs in her mocking, sexy and provocative voice. He then plays them to a trio of Nell Gwyn experts - actor and theatre historian Ian Kelly, scholar Judith Hawley, and early music expert Lucie Skeaping.

The songs are brought to life by jazz singer Gwyneth Herbert and classical singer Thomas Guthrie. They include a satirical account of being pinned to the ground by a fat greasy lover; a camp dialogue between Nell and her rival for the King's affections, the French Catholic Louise; and a message from Nell's sexy ghost.

David Owen Norris is a pianist and composer and Professor of Music at Southampton University.

Producer: Elizabeth Burke

A Loftus production first heard on BBC Radio 4 in December 2013.


SAT 11:00 The Forum (b03m8612)
Ice

When photographer Camille Seaman stood on the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica, she felt dizzy. It was 200 feet down to the sea, and below sea level was another 800 to 1,000 feet of ice. And all this, she thought, was made by one snowflake falling on another, through time.
On The Forum, Bridget Kendall finds out more about the ice masses of the polar ice caps. Along with Native American artist Camille Seaman, she is joined by the Danish glaciologist Poul Christoffersen, who's been measuring the effects of a warming ocean on that very ice shelf, and American engineer Mary Albert who drills down into ancient snow cores for crucial climate clues.
Photo: Breaching Iceberg – Greenland, August 8, 2008 © Camille Seaman


SAT 11:30 From Our Own Correspondent (b03m8614)
Transglobal Express

Over the past year, BBC correspondents have reported on upheaval in Egypt, war in Syria, a government shutdown in America, a new pope and a royal baby. But this special edition of From Our Own Correspondent avoids the major headlines and the big breaking stories in favour of a ground-level view of the last 12 months. So, in this programme: Rajan Datar takes a ride with a polyphonic choir in Georgia and Reggie Nadelson hears the story of Harlem's Apollo Theatre. Nick Thorpe finds strangely tender moments in a Romanian slaughterhouse while Steve Rosenberg plays piano with the man who ended the Cold War. We journey to the deserts of Sahara and South America, take trains in Portugal and Nigeria and hear reporters grapple with strange musical instruments in Vietnam and Switzerland. And there's more in this montage of some of the year's more entertaining dispatches, presented by Kate Adie.

Producer: Mike Wendling.


SAT 12:00 Money Box (b03m8616)
Listeners take on financial firms

Paul Lewis celebrates Money Box listeners who've taken on financial firms over the past year about unfair treatment. Some have got money back for themselves and often helped other listeners by their example.

Top listener tips include: don't be too loyal to any firm that provides you with a financial product. Listener Alison Gann, who to her cost stayed with the same house insurance provider, shares her thoughts a year on. Her story prompted listeners to save thousands of pounds by shopping around for cheaper insurance quotes.

Cold calling and nuisance texts was another bugbear for listeners. Richard Herman has his own website called 'saynotocoldcalls'. He outlines how to record the calls, threaten the UK firms ultimately responsible with court action, and make money in the process by billing offending firms for his time.

And the Money Box energy challenge. Do you know your rights about claiming money back from your provider under the Energy Billing code? And that some firms may hold onto your money even when you've swapped to another energy provider? So check out if you are owed any money and report back to Money Box in 2014.

Joining Paul Lewis will be Sarah Pennells from savvywoman.co.uk and David Hickson from the Fair Telecoms Campaign.


SAT 12:30 Chain Reaction (b03m81pm)
Series 9

Terry Christian talks to Kevin Bridges

Manchester's very own Terry Christian talks to Scotland's comedy superstar Kevin Bridges.

Chain Reaction is the long-running host-less chat show where last week's interviewee becomes this week's interviewer.

Producer: Carl Cooper

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in December 2013.


SAT 12:57 Weather (b03m83r5)
The latest weather forecast.


SAT 13:00 News (b03m83r7)
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.


SAT 13:15 Pick of the Year (b03m7plm)
Pick of the Year 2013

The BBC in London has moved to a brand new building and Sandi Toksvig unpacks the boxes of BBC Radio, choosing her favourite moments from 2013.

Her choices include a newsreader's nightmare with a tongue twister of a name containing 36 letters and 19 syllables; an inspirational 16 year old; an unwelcome studio pest; a love story and a tennis player, a man's ear and Morecombe and Wise making beautiful music together.

In Britten's Footsteps - Radio 4
The Chris Evans Breakfast Show: Yodelling Woman - Radio 2
News read by Neil Sleat - Radio 4
The Unsent Letters of Erik Satie - Radio 4
Shelagh Fogarty - 5Live
Mark Thomas: The Manifesto - Radio 4
The Danny Baker Show - 5Live
Today Programme: The Reduced Shakespeare Company - Radio 4
Hello, I'm Half-Caste - Radio 4 Extra
Saturday Drama: Air Force One - Radio 4
That Mitchell & Webb Sound - Radio 4
Who is the Doctor? - Radio 2
Afternoon Drama: Love, War and Trains - Radio 4
Return to Japan - Radio 4
PM: Malala Yousafzai - Radio 4

If there's something you'd like to suggest for next week's programme, please e-mail potw@bbc.co.uk.


SAT 14:00 Saturday Drama (b01dtd5q)
Otherwise Engaged

This Simon Gray dark comedy was his most successful and - many claim - best-loved play. A London publisher tries to enjoy a Saturday at home listening to Wagner. But will his infuriating friends and relations let him? With JAMES PUREFOY, HATTIE MORAHAN & NIGEL PLANER.

Director - PETER KAVANAGH.


SAT 15:30 Soul Music (b03m79cq)
Series 17

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

The story behind the song, 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas'.

It was first performed by Judy Garland in the 1944 MGM musical Meet Me In St Louis', for the now famous scene in which she and her seven year old sister, played by Margaret O'Brien are downcast about the prospect of moving away from their beloved home.

Garland asked the composer, Hugh Martin to modify his original lyric, explaining it to be too depressing for her to sing, or the audience to hear.

Martin's collaborator and friend, John Fricke, explains the importance this song had for the composer and the joy he experienced in hearing it covered by every major artist since, from Frank Sinatra to Chrissie Hynde, Punk band Fear to Cold Play, Rod Stewart to James Taylor.

It's clear that the song's enduring power lies in a beautiful melody with a melancholic feel that sums up our emotional ambivalence to the Christmas season.

We hear from those who have a special connection to the song.

Soul Music is a series exploring famous pieces of music and their emotional appeal.

Producer Lucy Lunt

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in December 2013.


SAT 16:00 Woman's Hour (b03mckks)
Weekend Woman's Hour: Why the Queen topped the Power List; Gail Rebuck; Baroness Hale; Dido Harding

Jane Garvey is joined by Eve Pollard, who chaired the judges of the first Power List and by the historian, Kate Williams to talk about the woman who topped the list - Her Majesty The Queen. We also speak to some of the women who featured on the Power List, including the leading publisher, Dame Gail Rebuck; the only woman on the Supreme Court, Baroness Hale; Chief Medical Officer, Professor Dame Sally Davies; and the Home Secretary, Theresa May and her Shadow, Yvette Cooper.

Presented by Jane Garvey
Produced and edited by Ruth Watts.


SAT 17:00 PM (b03mckkv)
Saturday PM

Full coverage of the day's news.


SAT 17:30 iPM (b03m84ww)
[Repeat of broadcast at 05:45 today]


SAT 17:54 Shipping Forecast (b03m83r9)
The latest shipping forecast.


SAT 17:57 Weather (b03m83rc)
The latest weather forecast.


SAT 18:00 Six O'Clock News (b03m83rf)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.


SAT 18:15 Loose Ends (b03mckkx)
Emma Freud, Arthur Smith, Danny Wallace, Miranda Sawyer, Scottee, Emma Kennedy, Alison Moyet, London Community Gospel Choir

Clive Anderson is joined by regular guest interviewers Emma Freud, Arthur Smith, Danny Wallace, Nikki Bedi, Miranda Sawyer and Scottee for an eclectic, festive mix of conversation, music and comedy at the Loose Ends Christmas party. With Emma Kennedy and music from Alison Moyet and The London Community Gospel Choir.


SAT 19:00 Profile (b03mckkz)
Idris Elba

After playing Baltimore drug boss Stringer Bell in The Wire, and Detective John Luther on British television, Idris Elba is now appearing in a very different role - Nelson Mandela in Long Walk to Freedom. Chris Bowlby profiles the British actor who some think will one day be the first black James Bond.

Producer: Smita Patel.


SAT 19:15 Saturday Review (b03mckl1)
Love/Hate in 2013

Love/Hate: what were the works that really divided audiences in 2013? What pushes us to extreme opinions? Comedian and writer David Schneider and the novelists Naomi Alderman and Kamila Shamsie join Tom and an audience for some lively heartfelt debate taking in the year's arts, from Nicolas Winding Refn's Only God Forgives starring Ryan Gosling to Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch.

Producer Sarah Johnson.


SAT 20:00 Archive on 4 (b03mcklz)
The Three Day Week

Back in 1973, Britain was plunged into darkness as Prime Minister Edward Heath introduced a three-day working week.

Cities fell dark. Factories and schools closed. People, often wrapped in blankets, worked by candle and torchlight. At home, people boiled water to wash and children were sent to school with luminous yellow bands so they could be seen in the gloom. And Britain's three TV channels came to an abrupt end at ten thirty!

For decades, British politics was shaped, perhaps defined, by the events of the early 1970s, with the three-day week as the centrepoint. Now it seems almost unimaginable that this could have happened in one of the world's richest countries so how did it ever get to this point? Could Heath have done anything different? Michael White of The Guardian, then a young reporter, takes us back to those extraordinary days and charts the long-term political significance of the crisis.

Producer: Jim Frank.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2013.


SAT 21:00 Roddy Doyle on Radio 4 (b03m3nhw)
Roddy Doyle's The Van

The third of Roddy Doyle's Barrytown series of novels, all to be dramatized by BBC Radio 4.
Jimmy Rabbitte is unemployed and at an all-time low. Even Ireland qualifying for the 1990 World Cup has not pulled him out of the doldrums, he needs money and fast. So when his best mate Bimbo buys a dilapidated "chipper" van and offers him the chance of a partnership, this might well be the opportunity Jimmy has been waiting for.

What could be better than working with your best mate?

Written by Roddy Doyle
Dramatised by Eugene O'Brien
Producer: Gemma McMullan
Director: Eoin O'Callaghan.


SAT 22:00 News and Weather (b03m83rh)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4, followed by weather.


SAT 22:15 The Island at the End of the World (b03mtkbm)
It may be the most isolated inhabited place on earth. Palmerston Island in the South Pacific is visited by a few yachts each year and the occasional container ship. Otherwise, the 62 inhabitants are untroubled by the outside world.
Thomas Martienssen makes the 8-day yacht journey to meet the native Palmerstonians, who are all descendants of an Englishman, William Marsters, who settled on the island in the 19th century with his three Polynesian "wives". He hears about the strong Christian faith of the islanders, listens to the ballad recounting the story of the community's founder and learns how they regularly salvage the wreckage of boats which have come to grief on the coral reefs. And he hears how fishing, the island's only source of commercial income, may now be threatened by over-exploitation of fish stocks. How long can the Palmerstonians continue to survive on their island at the end of the world?
Producer: Julie Ball.


SAT 22:30 Stig at Fifty (b03m7mdc)
The classic children's book 'Stig of the Dump' has never been out of print since it was first published 50 years ago. At the heart of the story is an unlikely hero, a filthy caveman who communicates only in grunts and lives in an unstable chalk pit beyond the adult world of rules and conventions. He is the perfect friend for bored and restless eight year old Barney, a boy on the margins, nagged by his grandmother, lectured to by his bossy sister and ambushed by a gang of ruffian older boys, the Snargets.

The award-winning children's author David Almond, whose own book 'Skellig' also features a grubby and inarticulate other-worldly hero, explores the appeal of Stig half a century after publication. He meets the book's author Clive King, who turns 90 next year, and discovers why readers are still so fascinated by Stig the prehistoric part-man/part-boy.

Almond recalls the electrifying effect the book had on his class of Tyneside children when he worked as a teacher and acknowledges the profound influence on his own fiction. He meets children for whom Stig is still a natural hero, and adult devotees like the poet and author of 'Edgelands' Paul Farley, natural history writer Patrick Barkham, and the former chair of the National Trust Dame Fiona Reynolds, who all acknowledge the influence of Stig on their own lives and careers.

And in an age where children are rarely allowed to roam free, as Barney once did, he considers what contemporary children have lost fifty years after Stig first emerged from the dump.

Producers: Caroline Beck, Andy Cartwright
A Soundscape production for BBC Radio 4.


SAT 23:00 Brain of Britain (b03m43fs)
(3/17)
Russell Davies is in Salford this week, for the third heat of the contest to find the 61st Brain of Britain champion. The competitors come from Sunderland, County Durham, Cheshire and Greater Manchester. As always, there will also be the chance for a listener to challenge the contestants with questions of his or her own, in the 'Beat the Brains' feature.

Producer: Paul Bajoria.


SAT 23:30 Neil Gaiman - Neverwhere (b01rbwlv)
The Black Friars

Beneath the streets of London there is another London. A subterranean labyrinth of sewers and abandoned tube stations. A somewhere that is Neverwhere.

An act of kindness sees Richard Mayhew catapulted from his ordinary life into a subterranean world under the streets of London. Stopping to help an injured girl on a London street, Richard is thrust from his workaday existence into the strange world of London Below.

So begins a curious and mysterious adventure deep beneath the streets of London, a London of shadows where the tube cry of 'Mind the Gap' takes on new meaning; for the inhabitants of this murky domain are those who have fallen through the gaps in society, the dispossessed, the homeless. Here Richard meets the Earl of Earl's Court, Old Bailey and Hammersmith, faces a life-threatening ordeal at the hands of the Black Friars, comes face to face with Great Beast of London, and encounters an Angel. Called Islington.

Joining the mysterious girl named Door and her companions, the Marquis de Carabas and the bodyguard, Hunter, Richard embarks on an extraordinary quest to escape from the clutches of the fiendish assassins Croup and Vandemar and to discover who ordered them to murder her family. All the while trying to work out how to get back to his old life in London Above.

A six part adaption of Neil Gaiman's novel adapted by Dirk Maggs, sees James McAvoy as Richard lead a stellar cast which includes Natalie Dormer, David Harewood, Sophie Okonedo, Benedict Cumberbatch, Christopher Lee, Anthony Head, David Schofield, Bernard Cribbins, Romola Garai, George Harris, Andrew Sachs, Lucy Cohu, Johnny Vegas, Paul Chequer, Don Gilet and Abdul Salis.



SUNDAY 29 DECEMBER 2013

SUN 00:00 Midnight News (b03m83sx)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.


SUN 00:15 Mr Capra Goes to Hollywood (b01rw2zj)
"The art of [my films] is very, very simple... it's the love of people. Add two simple ideals to this love of people - the freedom of each individual and the equal importance of each individual - and you have the principle on which I've based all my films." Frank Capra, 1982.

This programme explores the filmmaker Frank Capra's enduring vision of the American dream. The man behind It's a Wonderful Life, Mr Smith Goes to Washington, Mr Deeds Goes to Town and It Happened One Night, he remains one of America's most popular directors - yet his movies can still divide critics.

Was he simply a peddler of sentimental 'Capra-corn' or do his films offer a much more complex view of American life?

We consider what makes a movie 'Capra-esque' - looking at the balance of humour and heart in his films through to their occasional dark, noir-like edges - as well as unpicking how the 'Capra-esque' has filtered down into the contemporary American political landscape.

Produced by Eleanor McDowall
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4.


SUN 00:48 Shipping Forecast (b03m83sz)
The latest shipping forecast.


SUN 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (b03m83t1)
BBC Radio 4 joins the BBC World Service. BBC Radio 4 resumes at 5.20am.


SUN 05:20 Shipping Forecast (b03m83t3)
The latest shipping forecast.


SUN 05:30 News Briefing (b03m83t5)
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.


SUN 05:43 Bells on Sunday (b03mckq6)
York Minster

The bells of York Minster.


SUN 05:45 Profile (b03mckkz)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 on Saturday]


SUN 06:00 News Headlines (b03m83t7)
The latest national and international news.


SUN 06:05 Something Understood (b03mckq8)
Touch

Northern Irish arts journalist and broadcaster Marie-Louise Muir draws on her own experiences as a mother to reflect on the significance and value of human touch.

With reference to the writings of Bernard MacLaverty, Thom Gunn and Sinead Morrissey and music by Imogen Heap, William Walton and Nina Simone.

Readers: Cecilia Fage, Jonathan Keeble, Bernard MacLaverty
Produced by Alan Hall
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4


SUN 06:35 On Your Farm (b03mckqb)
South Dakota

Sybil Ruscoe travels to Lone Tree Ranch and meets Larry and Robin Reinhold and their six children Rachel, Molly, Danny, Caleb, Julia and Kiersten. The Reinholds rear cattle and horses on 4,000 acres of prairie in South Dakota and run a summer camp called 'Rainbow Bible Ranch' where children from all over the United States learn how to ride, ranch and pray.
When the October blizzard 'Storm Atlas' hit, the family lost 91 horses including some of their best saddle quarter horses - trained especially for young children to ride.
Larry and Sybil take in the views from the highest point of the ranch, where golden eagles soar overhead, and find some historic clues to its previous occupants - members of the Lakota Sioux Native American tribe.
Back at the homestead, Sybil asks the children what its like to grow up, go to school and work on the family ranch, before heading into the corral to meet some of Lone Tree's incredible survivors - the horses themselves.
Produced in South Dakota by Anna Jones and presented by Sybil Ruscoe.


SUN 06:57 Weather (b03m83t9)
The latest weather forecast.


SUN 07:00 News and Papers (b03m83tc)
The latest news headlines. Including a look at the papers.


SUN 07:10 Sunday (b03mckqd)
Historical food, interfaith dining and food wars

Rabbi Yehuda Brodie, head of the Manchester Beth Din; Father Ian Delinger, a chaplain at the University of Chester and Zulfi Karim, secretary of the Bradford Council of Mosques, share a meal together in which each has made a course which highlights certain religious significances for their faiths.

The BBC's Delhi Correspondent Soutik Biswas talks to William about an ambitious new Food Security Bill which recently became law in India.

There's been a well-documented growth in the number of Food Banks across the country in recent years. It's estimated 80 per cent of Anglican parishes are involved in providing free food to people on low incomes. Bob Walker's been visiting food banks in Nottingham to look at the work of the different religions in providing food for those in need.

Ertharin Cousin, Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Programme, talks to William about their goals and stumbling blocks for 2014.

Ever since the ancient Greeks and Romans, generals and politicians have used their ability to supply or withhold food as a way to control both their friends and their enemies. Those who suffer the most are the weakest, especially children. What can be done to stop food being used as a weapon of war? Tim Lang from City University and Justin Byworth from World Vision discuss.

And food historian Ivan Day shares with us some traditional seasonal recipes for food and drink.

Producers:
Carmel Lonergan
Annabel Deas

Series Producer:
Amanda Hancox

Contributors:
Ertharin Cousin
Tim Lang
Justin Byworth
Soutik Biswas
Zulfi Karim
Father Ian Delinger
Rabbi Yehuda Brodie.


SUN 07:55 Radio 4 Appeal (b03mckqg)
Street Child Africa

Martin Bell presents the Radio 4 Appeal for Street Child Africa.
Reg Charity: 1074832
To Give:
- Freephone 0800 404 8144
- Freepost BBC Radio 4 Appeal, mark the back of the envelope 'Street Child Africa'.


SUN 07:57 Weather (b03m83tf)
The latest weather forecast.


SUN 08:00 News and Papers (b03m83th)
The latest news headlines. Including a look at the papers.


SUN 08:10 Sunday Worship (b03mckqj)
'An Ikon of Light'

A service recorded in Little St Mary's Church, Cambridge with the Choir of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge.

"All great art should have a message of hope." This was the belief of composer John Tavener who died in November. His music is renowned for its visionary luminosity, affording listeners a wonderful glimpse of the glory of God through its spacious lines. It has brought comfort to many in times of sorrow - such as at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales - and a radiancy in times of celebration.

Through his music, this morning's service, at the close of the year, explores aspects of Tavener's deep Christian faith and, whilst accepting what has been, focuses our attention on the future and the hope of what can be.

Leader: The Revd Dr Cally Hammond
Preacher: Prof Ben Quash
Music director: Geoffrey Webber
Organist: Liam Crangle
Producer: Simon Vivian.


SUN 08:48 A Point of View (b03mckql)
Two Cheers for Human Rights

John Gray gives only two cheers for human rights. We are in danger, he argues, of turning them into a "comforting dogma through which we try to escape the painful dilemmas of war and politics."

"Rather than thinking of rights as a militant creed that can deliver the world from its conflicts, we should recognise rights for what they are - useful devices that quite often don't work.".


SUN 08:58 Tweet of the Day (b03k5cbg)
Lesser Redpoll

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

David Attenborough presents the lesser redpoll. You can spot Lesser Redpolls hanging like tiny acrobatic parrots among the slender twigs, while a rain of papery seeds falls down around them. They're lively birds which allow you to get fairly close, and then sometimes flocks will explode en masse for no apparent reason and fly around calling.


SUN 09:00 Broadcasting House (b03mckqn)
Sunday morning magazine programme with news and conversation about the big stories of the week. Presented by Paddy O'Connell.


SUN 10:00 The Archers Omnibus (b03mckqq)
See daily episodes for detailed synopsis.


SUN 11:15 Desert Island Discs: Longplay (b03mckqs)
Ant and Dec

4 Extra's extended edition. Kirsty Young chats to the kings of TV prime time, Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly. From December 2013.


SUN 12:00 Just a Minute (b03m43g1)
Just a Christmas Minute

Nicholas Parsons ho-ho-hosts a Christmas edition of the deviously, divine linguistic panel show with Pam Ayres, Stephen Mangan, Gyles Brandreth and Paul Merton being challenged to talk on Christmas themed subjects without hesitation, deviation or repetition for Just A Minute.


SUN 12:32 The Food Programme (b03mckr3)
100 years of Elizabeth David

Sheila Dillon and Tim Hayward discuss the legacy of Elizabeth David 100 years after her birth. The iconic food writer is credited for bringing Mediterranean cooking to post-war Britain.

Sir Terence Conran speaks about Elizabeth David's influence on kitchen design. Her nephew Johnny Grey discusses the shop Elizabeth David opened in Pimlico. And Elizabeth David's editor, Jill Norman, says that today she would not have been published.

Presented by Sheila Dillon and Tim Hayward. Produced in Bristol by Emma Weatherill.


SUN 12:57 Weather (b03m83tk)
The latest weather forecast.


SUN 13:00 The World This Weekend (b03mcl94)
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 Hardeep's Sunday Lunch (b03mcl96)
Series 2

Jackie and Graham

As New Year approaches Hardeep Singh Kohli cooks his final lunch of the series for two people whose story is all about new beginnings. Jackie Malton and Graham Godden once hated what the other represented. Jackie was Chief Inspector in the Met's "Flying Squad" investigating armed robberies and became the inspiration for Prime Suspect's lead character DCI Jane Tennison. Graham Godden was the "M25 Bandit", a notorious and prolific armed robber during the 1990s. As Hardeep cooks lunch he hears a remarkable story of transformation and change which has led these two most unlikely of friends to be sitting around the table together.

Producer: Catherine Earlam
Series Producer: Amanda Hancox.


SUN 14:00 Gardeners' Question Time (b03m81b1)
The Met Office, Exeter

Peter Gibbs presents a special edition of GQT from The Met Office in Exeter, with Pippa Greenwood, Bunny Guinness and Anne Swithinbank.

As well as answering questions from local gardeners, the panel poses its own questions to scientists who provide weather data for gardeners across the country.

Produced by Howard Shannon.
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4.

Questions this week:
Q. Could the panel suggest a slow growing grass requiring a minimum amount of cutting?

A. You could try a grass free lawn. It can be a mixture of up to thirty varieties of low-growing plants. Combine plants such as Thyme, Sedum, Achilleas and low Mints. To start with you may have to cut it eight times across the year. In the second year, you can trim it as little as three times per year. You will have colour throughout the matrix and it will attract many insects. Alternatively, reduce fertility by adding a sandy top-dressing to a fine grass seed mix.

Q. What sort of low maintenance planting would the panel recommend for a manmade, sloping bank in full sun?

A. Make sure that the site is completely weed free, so perhaps leave it fallow for a while.
You can get a lovely ground cover effect with the golden flowering Hypericums or the Potentillas. You could add some bulbs, such as Daffodils, which won't need separating for a number of years.

If you want more of a challenge, sow a perennial meadow that produces a density of ninety plants per square metre. They are designed so that you get a succession of colour from June right through until December. Alternatively, plant hundreds of Lavender cuttings or simply add sheets of Vinka and Ivy. Try planting Aubretia early in the year, followed by Osteospermum flowering for the rest of the summer.


SUN 14:45 The Listening Project (b03mcl98)
Sunday Edition - Listeners' Choice

Fi Glover introduces introduces the most requested conversations in the 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 (b03mcl9b)
Ernest Hemingway - The Old Man and the Sea

The Old Man And The Sea
by Ernest Hemingway
dramatised by Simon Armitage
This Pulitzer prize winning novel is Hemingway's masterpiece; set in Cuba on the Gulf Stream, this is the thrilling and tantalising story of an epic battle between an old, experienced fisherman and a large marlin. Santiago, has gone 84 days without catching a fish, and is considered unlucky; his only friend is young Manolin, the boy whom he's taught how to fish. When on the 85th day, Santiago sets sail again, his luck seems to change when he catches the biggest fish of his life. But the biggest battle of his life is about to commence.

Produced and Directed by Pauline Harris

Further Information

Cited by the Nobel Committee as contributing to Hemingway's Nobel Prize in Literature, the novel is a seemingly simple tale, full of emotion and drama.

It's the story of the struggle of life - a meditation on life and death, and old age. It's about the challenge of survival and the pitting of one man's ageing body and ageing mind against nature. It's about an ancient culture about to come to an end, and a practice as old as time itself. It's a final act, and the boy is there to remind us that life moves on, and a new generation steps forward.

The dramatist is SIMON ARMITAGE CBE, poet, playwright and novelist.


SUN 16:00 Open Book (b03mcl9d)
Children's Laureate Special

Children's Laureate Special.

First created in 1999, the position of Children's Laureate is awarded every two years to an eminent writer or illustrator of children's books and designed to celebrate outstanding achievement in their field while thrusting them into the limelight to champion young reading.

The current Children's Laureate Malorie Blackman, along with two former Laureates Dame Jacqueline Wilson and Michael Rosen discuss the role, from the joys of inspiring children to read to dealing with politicians. They explain how they put their own stamp on the job and its on-going legacy

Producer: Andrea Kidd.


SUN 16:30 Ko Un: The People's Poet of Korea (b03mcl9g)
In South Korea, former Zen monk Ko Un is revered as a pro-democracy activist and the people's poet. To mark his 80th birthday, Mike Greenwood explores his prolific output, in particular his epic masterwork, Ten Thousand Lives (Maninbo), in which he puts into poems the faces and lives of all the people he has known or known of. Conceived when he was imprisoned in the 1980s for rebelling against the military dictatorships then controlling South Korea, Maninbo has been published in 30 volumes in Korean. Now, for the first time, the first 10 volumes have been translated into English.

We use readings from this treasure box of poems to provide a unique window on to modern Korea, with contributions from Andrew Motion and Ko Un himself, three-times Nobel Prize for Literature runner up. "Poetry" he says, "is the music of history."

Ko Un has given us special access to his home near Seoul where, in a series of intimate interviews, he shares his story.

Born into a peasant family in 1933, Ko Un began writing poems from an early age. Traumatised by the horrors of the Korean war, he became a monk. After leaving the Buddhist community in 1962, another lost decade of despair followed, including problems with alcohol and multiple suicide attempts. After a profound political awakening in 1972, he joined in vigorous opposition to the military regime and in the struggle for human rights. He was detained, tortured, and imprisoned repeatedly and for long periods. Finally set free in 1980, Ko Un married, moved to the countryside, fathered a daughter, and entered a period of stability and happiness, though it would be more than a decade before he was granted a passport.

Producer: Eve Streeter

A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.


SUN 17:00 The Man Who Fell to Earth (b03mclq9)
In September last year, a man in his twenties was found dead in Portman Avenue, a suburban street in west London. He had suffered horrendous injuries to his head and face. He had no identity papers on him and no one had reported him missing.

Rob Walker follows the Metropolitan police investigation into who he was and how he arrived in Portman Avenue. It is a story that spans two continents and eight countries.


SUN 17:40 Profile (b03mckkz)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 on Saturday]


SUN 17:54 Shipping Forecast (b03m83tm)
The latest shipping forecast.


SUN 17:57 Weather (b03m83tp)
The latest weather forecast.


SUN 18:00 Six O'Clock News (b03m83tr)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.


SUN 18:15 Pick of the Week (b03mclqc)
Liz Barclay chooses the best of the previous seven days of BBC Radio.


SUN 19:00 The Archers (b03mclqf)
Lilian's feeling unsure about the forthcoming baby. Matt seems positively excited in comparison. Lilian's worried Leonie may have put pressure on James. Matt doesn't think it was like that; they're both adults after all. Lilian's puzzled as to how Matt can be so sure. Matt admits he's spoken to James and that James has made his own decision about the situation.

Lilian's a bit hurt that no-one spoke to her, but is glad that James has at least talked to someone. She ponders on what sort of grandma she'll make. After all she's not exactly a natural mother; James had a nanny from when he was tiny.

Thrilled Lynda rubs salt in by proclaiming her expertise with new-borns, making Lilian feel even more inadequate.

Tom and Kirsty check on the piglets and discuss their wedding plans. They're worried how Helen will cope with New Year's Eve, as she seems to be in a world of her own.

The Robin Hood performance is a roaring success. Lynda is overcome when Kenton presents her with flowers. She's been on a bit of an emotional roller coaster lately. It's Lilian, useful at last, who steps in with the tissues.


SUN 19:15 Meet David Sedaris (b03mclqh)
Series 4

Episode 5

One of the world's funniest storytellers is back on BBC Radio 4 doing what he does best.

This week, he considers his native tongue as if it were a foreign language in "English Lesson" and the trouble that taxidermy can bring in "Understanding Understanding Owls".

Producer: Steve Doherty
A Giddy Goat production for BBC Radio 4.


SUN 19:45 Modern Welsh Voices (b03mclqk)
Snowstorm

Snowstorm by Niall Griffiths

Perry and his elderly mother are snowed in, isolated in the hills of the Welsh countryside. As the last of the firewood burns, Perry's mother is determined to force her layabout son to go and fetch supplies.

The third of five original stories by writers from Wales.

Read by Eiry Thomas
Directed by James Robinson

A BBC Cymru Wales Production.


SUN 20:00 More or Less (b03m81b7)
Numbers of the year

A guide to 2013 in numbers - the most informative, interesting and idiosyncratic statistics of the year discussed by More or Less interviewees.

Contributors: David Spiegelhalter, Winton professor for the public understanding of risk at Cambridge University; Linda Yueh, BBC chief business correspondent; Simon Singh, author of The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets; Dr Pippa Malmgren, president and founder of Principalis Asset Management; Paul Lewis; presenter of BBC Radio 4's Money Box programme; Dr Hannah Fry, Centre of the Advanced Spatial Analysis at University College London; Merryn Somerset-Webb, editor-in-chief of MoneyWeek; Helen Arney, comedian.

Producer: Ben Carter.


SUN 20:30 The Inheritance Collection 2013 (b03nh34g)
The Revd Richard Coles presents a selection of the stories and music featured on Saturday Live's Inheritance Tracks throughout 2013 from Queen of clean Aggie McKenzie, comedian Graham Fellowes aka John Shuttleworth, soul guitarist George Benson, singer Maria Friedman, musician Gary Barlow, Baroness Doreen Lawrence of Clarendon, Kite Runner author Khaled Hosseini, composer Django Bates, MOBOs founder Kanya King and baking supremo Mary Berry.

Producer: Lizz Pearson.


SUN 21:00 Money Box (b03m8616)
[Repeat of broadcast at 12:00 on Saturday]


SUN 21:26 Radio 4 Appeal (b03mckqg)
[Repeat of broadcast at 07:55 today]


SUN 21:30 In Business (b03m7zmv)
Kenya's Mobile Money Revolution

Kenya is the surprising world leader in high-tech mobile money. Almost a third of the country's economy now goes through the mobile phone-based system M-Pesa. Even the company that launched it six years ago, Safaricom, didn't anticipate the gusto with which Kenyans would adopt its virtual currency.
In a country with fewer than 10,000 credit cards and where four-fifths of the population does not have a bank account, M-Pesa has emerged as a secure and easy way to pay and transfer money to anyone, anywhere across the country, and even abroad.
Now the system has morphed from a method of payment into a platform for all sorts of businesses. In Nairobi there are startups aiming to boost fundraising for funerals and weddings, help landlords collect rent, loan mobile phone credit, and much more, all based on the M-Pesa system. And alongside the flowering of new businesses, the Kenyan government has pinned its hopes on the high-tech sector for the future of the country's economic growth.
Peter Day talks to traces the story of how a mobile payment experiment kick-started an emerging tech economy.

Contributors:
Bob Collymore - chief executive, Safaricom
David Mark - co-founder, M-Changa
Kamau Wanyoike - director, MoVAS
Nancy Wang - co-founder, M-Kazi
Duncan Muchangi - co-founder, Manyatta Rent
Nikolai Barnwell - director, 88mph Nairobi
Joe Mucheru - Sub-Saharan ambassador, Google
Tony Mwai - general manager, IBM East Africa
Sam Gichuru - co-founder and director, Nailab
Kate Kiguru - co-founder and chief innovator, Ukall
Will Mutua - founder, Afrinnovator.


SUN 22:00 News Review of the Year (b03mclqm)
2013

2013 was not short of drama. The Pope resigned, chemical weapons were used in Syria and a typhoon killed thousands in the Philippines. At home, the economy seemed to turn a corner, a prince was born and 'plebgate' went on and on... It was the year that 'twerking' entered the national vocabulary, we feared poisoning by horse meat and Andy Murray (finally) won Wimbledon (hurray).
Paddy O'Connell takes a backward, sideways look at the year that was, and wonders among other things if the huge success of The Great British Bake Off tells us something more profound about the world, and us, in 2013.
Producer: Linda Pressly.


SUN 23:00 The Film Programme (b03m7zb1)
Teenagers on Film

Francine Stock explores the spirit of the teenager on film through the decades with Kim Newman, Pamela Hutchinson, Hadley Freeman and Charlie Lyne. From Andy Hardy to The Hunger Games' Katniss Everdeen, the programme charts the rise of the teenager from pre-war in-betweeners to fully fledged rebels. The director Matt Wolf discusses his documentary Teenage which takes a look at adolescence in the first half of the 20th century. There's debate about the conservatism of teen film guru, the director John Hughes whose work includes The Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Weird Science. And we unpick why 1995 marked the beginning of a ten year boom in teen flicks, from Clueless to Mean Girls.


SUN 23:30 Neil Gaiman - Neverwhere (b01rcky1)
Market Afloat

Beneath the streets of London there is another London. A subterranean labyrinth of sewers and abandoned tube stations. A somewhere that is Neverwhere.

An act of kindness sees Richard Mayhew catapulted from his ordinary life into a subterranean world under the streets of London. Stopping to help an injured girl on a London street, Richard is thrust from his workaday existence into the strange world of London Below.

So begins a curious and mysterious adventure deep beneath the streets of London, a London of shadows where the tube cry of 'Mind the Gap' takes on new meaning; for the inhabitants of this murky domain are those who have fallen through the gaps in society, the dispossessed, the homeless. Here Richard meets the Earl of Earl's Court, Old Bailey and Hammersmith, faces a life-threatening ordeal at the hands of the Black Friars, comes face to face with Great Beast of London, and encounters an Angel. Called Islington.

Joining the mysterious girl named Door and her companions, the Marquis de Carabas and the bodyguard, Hunter, Richard embarks on an extraordinary quest to escape from the clutches of the fiendish assassins Croup and Vandemar and to discover who ordered them to murder her family. All the while trying to work out how to get back to his old life in London Above.

A six part adaption of Neil Gaiman's novel adapted by Dirk Maggs, sees James McAvoy as Richard lead a stellar cast which includes Natalie Dormer, David Harewood, Sophie Okonedo, Benedict Cumberbatch, Christopher Lee, Anthony Head, David Schofield, Bernard Cribbins, Romola Garai, George Harris, Andrew Sachs, Lucy Cohu, Johnny Vegas, Paul Chequer, Don Gilet and Abdul Salis.



MONDAY 30 DECEMBER 2013

MON 00:00 Midnight News (b03mclt5)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.


MON 00:15 Something Understood (b03mckq8)
[Repeat of broadcast at 06:05 on Sunday]


MON 00:45 Bells on Sunday (b03mckq6)
[Repeat of broadcast at 05:43 on Sunday]


MON 00:48 Shipping Forecast (b03mclt7)
The latest shipping forecast.


MON 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (b03mclt9)
BBC Radio 4 joins the BBC World Service.


MON 05:20 Shipping Forecast (b03mcltc)
The latest shipping forecast.


MON 05:30 News Briefing (b03mcltf)
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.


MON 05:43 Prayer for the Day (b03mzvz6)
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Leslie Griffiths.


MON 05:45 Farming Today (b03mcmws)
Thatching straw, known as wheat reed, has been losing ground to cheaper imported water reed. But, as Sarah Swadling finds out, it still has its devotees among thatchers and farmers. She meets master thatcher Daniel Bishop who loves the art of building a roof with wheat reed. And she sees the summer harvest in action, with one of the largest growers of Devon wheat reed, John Becklake. He explains why the crop has to be harvested using 60 year old machinery.

Produced and presented by Sarah Swadling.


MON 05:56 Weather (b03mcltj)
The latest weather forecast for farmers.


MON 05:58 Tweet of the Day (b03k72zr)
Starling

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

David Attenborough presents the starling. Throughout autumn parties of starlings have been crossing the North Sea to join our resident birds and as winter's grip tightens they create one of Nature's best spectacles. These huge gatherings, sometimes a million or more strong, are called murmurations and they offer the birds safety in numbers.


MON 06:00 Today (b03mcmwv)
Monty Python star Michael Palin guest-edits the programme.


MON 09:00 Start the Week (b03mcmwx)
Michael Gove on teaching history

Andrew Marr discusses the teaching of history with the Government's Education Secretary Michael Gove. The new history curriculum for schools has been hotly contested and the Minister explains his views on whether facts and dates trump historical analysis. He's joined by Margaret MacMillan who will present a real-time countdown to the outbreak of WWI in the coming year, the academic and tv historian Simon Schama, and Tom Holland who has recently translated Herodotus, considered to be 'the Father of History'.

Producer: Katy Hickman.


MON 09:45 Book of the Week (b03mcmwz)
Man Belong Mrs Queen

Episode 1

As a bookish child with a posh accent, growing up on Merseyside in the 1980s, Matthew Baylis identified with the much-mocked Prince Philip as a fellow outsider. He even had a poster of him on his bedroom wall.

Years later, as an anthropology student , Baylis learned of the existence of a Philip cult on the South Sea island of Tanna. Why was it there? Nobody had a convincing answer. Nobody even seemed to want to find one.

His curiosity fatally piqued, he travelled over 10,000 miles to find a society both remote and slap-bang in the shipping-lanes of history. It's a place where US airmen, Lithuanian libertarians, and Graeco-Danish Princes have had as much impact as the missionaries and the slave-traders. On the rumbling slopes of this remarkable volcanic island, banjaxed by frequent doses of the local narcotic, suffering from a relentless diet of yams and regularly accused of being a divine emissary of the Duke, Baylis attempted to get to the bottom of this bizarre cult. In doing so he draws some ironic lessons about our own island 'myths' and comes to respect the pragmatic realpolitik of his South Seas hosts.

Abridged and produced by Jill Waters

A Waters Company Production for BBC Radio 4


MON 10:00 Woman's Hour (b03mcmx1)
Being a Teenager

What do teenagers really think about education, voting age and role models? We hear a personal insight from schoolgirl activist Malala Yousafzai and from teenagers across the UK. And as a nation of teens spend even more time online, YouTube star Benjamin Cook explains why 'Vloggers' have such huge popularity and impact. Emma Barnett presents.

Credits
Presenter: Emma Barnett
Producer: Kat Wong
Output Editor: Eleanor Garland.


MON 10:45 15 Minute Drama (b03mcmx3)
Margaret Oliphant - Hester

Episode 1

By Margaret Oliphant
Dramatised by Kate Clanchy and Zena Forster

Penelope Wilton and Lyndsey Marshal star in this high Victorian tale of a woman who runs her own bank.

Sometimes called 'the feminist Trollope', Margaret Oliphant is an unjustly-neglected British writer of the nineteenth century, famed for her perceptive, ironic psychology, and her strong female characters. And Hester has a striking premise: a young woman in a nineteenth-century Cheshire town, having been snubbed and discarded in marriage, does something truly radical. When the family bank is in danger of a run, she pledges her whole private fortune to save it. But instead of merely underwriting it, in return she insists on running the bank herself, as a single woman, in defiance of all convention.

Using Oliphant's deliciously witty and sardonic narration, allied to a radical dramatisation by Kate Clanchy and Zena Forster, 'Hester' reveals a flawed and fascinating heroine, reborn for radio.

1/5
This is a tale of banks and bankers. A tale of credit and discredit. This is a tale of a single woman in nineteenth-century Cheshire town, who does something truly radical.

Harp played by Ruth Faber
Producer/Director ..... Jonquil Panting.


MON 11:00 Bringing up the Grandkids (b03mfltf)
Aasmah Mir meets the families in which grandparents are in sole charge of bringing up their grandchildren, and experiencing the highs and lows of parenthood the second time around.

For around 100,000 children in the UK today Gran and Granddad are Mum and Dad - and sometimes that's even what they call them. Grandparents can provide children with love, security and a sense of belonging when parents are not able to.

There are very different circumstances that lead to children living with their grandparents. Sometimes it's because a parent has died, but it can also be because of parental drug or alcohol abuse. Other common reasons include abuse, neglect, parental illness or a very young mother.

According to the Family Rights Group, the benefits outweigh the downside, and in many cases being looked after by their grandparents can be a happy and secure experience for the children involved - their best chance at a successful future. Meeting and spending time with some of these families, we hear very different stories of family life.

Producer: Beth O'Dea.


MON 11:30 North by Northamptonshire (b03mflth)
Series 3

Episode 2

Against her better judgement, Jan has dinner with her ex-husband, and Mary and Jonathan have crossed wires.

Sheila Hancock narrates the bittersweet adventures of the residents of a small town in Northamptonshire.

Written by Katherine Jakeways.

As is well-known: Yorkshiremen wear flat caps and Essex girls wear short skirts; Liverpudlians are scallies and Cockneys are wideboys. Northamptonians gaze wistfully at these stereotypes and wish for an identity of any kind and a label less ridiculous than Northamptonians. Northamptonshire, let us be clear, is neither north, nor south nor in the Midlands. It floats somewhere between the three eyeing up the distinctiveness of each enviously.

Katherine Jakeways gives Northamptonshire an identity. And she waits, eagerly, for her home-county to thank her. And possibly make her some kind of Mayor.

Narrator ...... Sheila Hancock
Rod ...... Tim Key
Frank ...... Rufus Wright
Mary ...... Penelope Wilton
Jonathan ...... Kevin Eldon
Esther ...... Katherine Jakeways
Keith ...... John Biggins
Norman ...... Geoffrey Palmer
Orson ...... Nathaniel Parker
Jan ...... Felicity Montagu

Producer: Steven Canny

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in December 2013.


MON 12:00 You and Yours (b03mfltk)
Consumer news with Peter White.


MON 12:57 Weather (b03mcltp)
The latest weather forecast.


MON 13:00 World at One (b03mcltr)
National and international news. Listeners can share their views via email: wato@bbc.co.uk or on twitter: #wato.


MON 13:45 Across the Board (b03mfn09)
Series 1

John Healy

Dominic Lawson conducts a series of interviews over a game of chess. In this episode he talks to the writer and former homeless alcoholic John Healy. How did chess help Healy give up the booze? And why does he believe that the world of chess is harsher than life on street.


MON 14:00 The Archers (b03mclqf)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 on Sunday]


MON 14:15 Katie Hims - Listening to the Dead (b03mfn0c)
1. Enoch's Machine

Enoch Cartwright, Victorian gentleman scientist, invests everything in the development of a machine to record the voice of his dead daughter, Emily, unaware that his living daughter Clara talks to her sister every night.

Written by Katie Hims.
Directed by Jessica Dromgoole

Enoch …. Michael Bertenshaw
Clara …. Eva Sayer
Emily …. Georgie Fuller
Wesley Blackburn …. Ben Crowe
Woman at door …. Carolyn Pickles
Joe …. John Hughes
Josie …. Priyanga Burford

After developing the means to make long distance radio transmissions, Marconi devoted much of the rest of his life to listening out for the voices of the dead. If radio can conjure a voice disembodied in space, he expected, as have legions of people since, that radio can capture the voices of those disembodied in other dimensions - in time, in ethereal planes. As technology becomes more sensitive, more diverse, more obscure, there are pioneers always ready to harness the new to the service of this age old fascination.

This is the story of five generations of a family whose members can and can't hear the dead. It's an enterprise to explore the myriad ties, stories and quirks that bind families through the generations, across the spectrum of meanings of 'listening to the dead'. Between allowing the echoes of a beloved's voice to live on, and the notion that the dead can engage in communicating new information, are vast grey areas of misinformation that beguile the bereaved and thrill the imagination.

Katie Hims' previous series with Jessica Dromgoole, Lost Property, won Best Audio Drama in the Audio Drama Awards 2011, and they are now collaborating on Radio 4's epic commission, Home Front.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in December 2013.


MON 15:00 Brain of Britain (b03mfn0f)
(4/17)
How is the colour silver referred to in heraldry? And which cult movie was based on a 1951 story called The Sentinel?

The competitors in the fourth heat of Brain of Britain won't stand a chance of making it through to the semi-finals of the tournament unless they can answer these and many other questions put to them by Russell Davies. The programme this week comes from Media City in Salford, and the competitors are all from Scotland and the north of England. One of them may be going all the way to lifting the trophy as the 61st Brain of Britain champion at the end of the series.

Producer: Paul Bajoria.


MON 15:30 The Food Programme (b03mckr3)
[Repeat of broadcast at 12:32 on Sunday]


MON 16:00 The Living Mountain (b03mfndd)
Robert Macfarlane takes inspiration from writer Nan Shepherd on a very special poetic pilgrimage to the Cairngorms.

Nan Shepherd believed that it was 'a grand thing to get leave to live.' She did this by spending every minute she could in her beloved Cairngorms. In her 88-years, she covered thousands of miles on foot and became minutely aware of the rhythms of these wild places.

She collected her thoughts in 'The Living Mountain'. It's a remarkable love letter to these dramatic landscapes, but convinced that readers didn't want an "aimless, sensual exploration of the Cairngorms," Nan tucked the manuscript away in a drawer and left it there for 30-years.

Four years before she died, her book finally saw the light of day. At just 80-pages, it's small in size, but big in impact and has been described by The Guardian as "the finest book ever written on nature and landscape in Britain".

Robert Macfarlane agrees. He calls 'The Living Mountain' a "wry, beautiful hymn to 'living all the way through'". He thinks this book is hugely important as more and more of us experience less and less contact with the outside world; "We are, literally, losing touch." Nan's writing is the antithesis of this. She plunges readers right into the landscape.

Robert celebrates this intrepid literary spirit by embarking on an autumnal trip right into the heart of Nan's favourite wild places.

Produced by Victoria McArthur and presented by Robert Macfarlane.


MON 16:30 The Slow Coach (b0383k2h)
Episode 1

Liz Barclay follows three busy people on a bold experiment to slow down their pace of life.

Their 'slow coach' is Carl Honoré, once a speedy journalist, now spokesperson for a global so-called 'Slow Movement'. He argues that our increasing obsession with speed means we race through life instead of actually living it. We need to create moments of slowness and connect with our 'inner tortoise'. Carl says that, by finding a better balance between fast and slow, we'll increase our wellbeing, creativity and productivity.

It's a compelling theory, but does it work?

Three volunteers, have agreed to put Carl's theories to the test by following his advice over the course of one month.

Steve runs his own business, and gets to the end of each day without a break, reacting to a stream of emails. He hopes that slowing down can make him more efficient and give him time to reflect on the bigger picture. Lizzie works part-time in the health service, and is the mother of three young children. She worries that her constant sense of being in a rush is rubbing off on her children and would like family life to feel less hectic. Scott works as a volunteer in his local town of Bury, running every community activity from the Carnival to the Lions Club. Unable to say 'no' to anyone, he finds himself checking his emails in the cinema and forgetting to eat lunch. He'd like to get back some sense of control over his life.

The Slow Coach follows the successes and struggles of our three volunteers as they attempt to put Carl's suggestions into place in their daily lives.

Producer: Tessa Watt
A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 4 first broadcast in 2013.


MON 17:00 PM (b03mfndg)
Coverage and analysis of the day's news.


MON 18:00 Six O'Clock News (b03mcltt)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.


MON 18:15 15 Minute Musical (b03mfns4)
Series 8

Half a Sixth Form

A series of satirical, barbed, bittersweet fifteen-minute comedy musicals.

In true West End style, artistic licence is well and truly taken and stretched, as easily identifiable public figures are dressed up, gilded, fabricated and placed against a random musical backdrop for sugar coated consumption. The stories are simple and engaging but with an edge - allowing the audience to enjoy all the conventions of a musical (huge production numbers, tender ballads and emotional reprises) whilst we completely re-interpret events in major celebrities' lives.

Beautifully crafted with astronomically high production values 15 Minute Musical does for your ears what chocolate does for your taste buds. All in fifteen minutes!

Winner of the Writers Guild of Great Britain Radio Comedy Award this series provides an energy boost and a seasonal treat at 1815 over the Christmas week.

Cast: Richie Webb, Dave Lamb and Jess Robinson
Written by; Dave Cohen, David Quantick and Richie Webb
Music Composed, Performed and Arranged by: Richie Webb
Music Production: Matt Katz
Producer: Katie Tyrrell

Other episodes:

Ra Ra It's Puti
A camp look at Russia's greatest love machine.

The Last Days of Farage
Nigel Farage goes to Europe with a Britpop soundtrack.

Julian And The Assanging Technicolour Download
An overly dramatic and musical look at Julian Assange.

It's A One-Hit-Wonderful Life
Simon Cowell contemplates ending his career until his guardian angel Susan Boyle appears to show him life without Cowell - It's A Wonderful Life.

Heaven Knows I'm Middle-Aged Now
Morrissey looks for a new musical collaborator.


MON 18:30 The Unbelievable Truth (b03mfp0r)
Series 12

Episode 1

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.

Arthur Smith, Henning Wehn, Bridget Christie and Ed Byrne are the panellists obliged to talk with deliberate inaccuracy on subjects as varied as poison, etiquette, jelly and David Mitchell.

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 (b03mfp0t)
Eddie and Mike try to work out a way to get Darrell and Rosa together so they can talk. In the absence of better ideas they agree on the Bull as a meeting point. It's worth a go. Now they just have to get them there...

Emma's regaling Peggy with the tale of the puppy's exploits with the Ambridge View Christmas decorations when she's interrupted by a text from Eddie. He wants her help with Rosa. But before Emma can act, Peggy has some wise words of her own for Rosa.

Helen's desperate to talk to Adam. He's busy with a troublesome lamb and is short with her at first. But sensing the urgency he relents. He's shocked at the news of Rob and Jess's split, and advocates extreme caution. He really doesn't want to see Helen hurt again. And there's Henry to think about. It's a very big step. Helen shares his concern, but believes when you love someone you have to take some risks.

Later Adam chats with Peggy about Tom and Kirsty. He thinks Pat and Tony should make the most of at least one of their children being happy. Peggy heartily agrees. If only Helen could meet someone nice and settle down.


MON 19:15 Front Row (b03mhvqk)
New American Classics

With Mark Lawson.

This year the shelf of great American authors unexpectedly lengthened when a novel called Stoner by John Williams, forgotten since its first appearance five decades ago, was republished to widespread acclaim. At the same time two neglected novels by Renata Adler received enthusiastic reviews when brought back into print after thirty years and two little known writers, 89 year old James Salter and 76 year old Edith Pearlman, were hailed as newly discovered geniuses. Salter, Pearlman and Adler reflect on literary resurrection and Julian Barnes and Ruth Rendell discuss the comeback of Stoner.

Producer: Ellie Bury.


MON 19:45 15 Minute Drama (b03mcmx3)
[Repeat of broadcast at 10:45 today]


MON 20:00 Gypsy Pride and Prejudice (b03mfp0y)
On New Year's Day restrictions on people coming from Romania and Bulgaria to the UK will be lifted to comply with the European Union's rules on freedom of movement. Amongst them are expected to be members of the large Roma communities in those countries. They belong to possibly the most marginalised group in Europe - the Gypsies.

The new arrivals are distantly related to English Romani Gypsies, but they are divided by 500 years of history. English Gypsies have adapted their own culture, never more so than in the last thirty years when most have given up the nomadic way of life which once defined them.

So will the reuniting of parts of this ancient diaspora emphasise a common culture or highlight its divergence? Elinor Goodman looks at how the arrival of the Roma is challenging the already complex identity of England's Gypsies.

Producer: Adam Bowen.


MON 20:30 Crossing Continents (b03m7z0g)
Brazil: Fighting Slavery

Brazil's anti-slavery hit-squads are unique. Since 1995, these committed bands of labour inspectors, accompanied by heavily armed police, have rescued 46,000 people deemed to be working as slaves. But Brazil's legal definition of slavery is contentious. It includes degrading conditions of work, which campaigners say amount to coercion. Some employers reject that. And now the stakes have been raised by proposals to confiscate land from bosses found to be flouting the anti-slavery standards. In a journey that takes her from cattle country on the edge of the Amazon, to the parched, rocky badlands of the north-east, Linda Pressly meets the campaigners, employers and politicians on both sides of the argument, and hears powerful testimony from the workers trapped in the middle.

Producer: Stephen Hounslow.


MON 21:00 Shared Planet (b03m79cn)
Are There Too Many People for Wildlife to Thrive?

"Are there too many people on earth for wildlife to thrive?" This is the question we will be asking in a special edition of Shared Planet recorded with a live audience in the Great Hall of the University of Bristol. Together with questions asked by Shared Planet listeners and members of the public in the Great Hall, Monty hosts guests Fred Pearce, an environment writer and author of The Last Generation: How nature will take her revenge for climate change and Kierán Suckling, Executive Director of the Center for Biological Diversity. And of course Shared Planet correspondent Kelvin Boot will make an appearance.

Producer Mary Colwell.


MON 21:30 Start the Week (b03mcmwx)
[Repeat of broadcast at 09:00 today]


MON 21:58 Weather (b03mcltw)
The latest weather forecast.


MON 22:00 The World Tonight (b03mfq16)
Northern Ireland parties in final push for peace process deal. Russia says it won't retreat in face of second suicide bombing in Volgograd. Ireland's recovery from brink of economic collapse. Presented by Roger Hearing.


MON 22:45 Book at Bedtime (b03mfq18)
The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed out of the Window and Disappeared

Episode 6

police and thieves, and moments in world history. As his mother put it, "Things are what they are, and whatever will be will be."

At 100 years-old, Allan Karlsson is a reluctant birthday boy. In the old people's home they've prepared a party for him. The Mayor and the local press will be there. But this party never gets started. Still in his bedroom slippers, Allan makes his getaway through the window and begins an unlikely adventure.

Allan is no stranger to adventure, as the stories of his earlier life reveal - a life in which he dined with world leaders such as Franco, Truman and Stalin and found himself behind the scenes during major events of the twentieth century.

Jonas Jonasson was born in 1961 in Vaxjö, Sweden. After starting up and then running the successful media company OTW for twenty years, he sold the business and moved to Switzerland. There he completed The Hundred-year-Old Man Who Climbed Out Of The Window And Disappeared. Jonas lives on the island of Gotland in Sweden.

Translated by Rod Bradbury.

Episode 6:
The police are getting closer to Allan and his friends at Lake Farm. And so are the Never Again gang.

Reader: Martin Jarvis
Abridger: Jeremy Osborne

Producer: Rosalynd Ward
A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4.


MON 23:00 Word of Mouth (b03mfqm5)
Kids TV

Michael Rosen looks at the effects that children's television has on language development. Michael's own cv in the genre includes having directed 'Playschool'. He meets the writers of Rastamouse, Michael de Souza and Genevieve Webster to talk about the power of rhyme. They also discuss the criticism the show attracted over the dialects the characters speak in. And Michael talks to Daniel Postgate, son of the original narrator Oliver Postgate, as The Clangers prepare to make a return to the small screen. It's been over forty years since their first appearance and Michael is keen to know if those weird and wonderful Clanger sounds that were originally created on a swannee whistle will be tampered with in the new version. He asks Daniel what qualities and influences made his late father such a memorable narrator, and we also hear about a prime example of BBC censorship. Michael talks to Joe Godwin, the head of BBC Children's about the challenges facing children's programme makers in a saturated market, and we also hear expert testimony from some little people.

Producers: Milly Chowles and Sarah Langan.


MON 23:30 Neil Gaiman - Neverwhere (b01rcwkv)
The Key

Beneath the streets of London there is another London. A subterranean labyrinth of sewers and abandoned tube stations. A somewhere that is Neverwhere.

An act of kindness sees Richard Mayhew catapulted from his ordinary life into a subterranean world under the streets of London. Stopping to help an injured girl on a London street, Richard is thrust from his workaday existence into the strange world of London Below.

So begins a curious and mysterious adventure deep beneath the streets of London, a London of shadows where the tube cry of 'Mind the Gap' takes on new meaning; for the inhabitants of this murky domain are those who have fallen through the gaps in society, the dispossessed, the homeless. Here Richard meets the Earl of Earl's Court, Old Bailey and Hammersmith, faces a life-threatening ordeal at the hands of the Black Friars, comes face to face with Great Beast of London, and encounters an Angel. Called Islington.

Joining the mysterious girl named Door and her companions, the Marquis de Carabas and the bodyguard, Hunter, Richard embarks on an extraordinary quest to escape from the clutches of the fiendish assassins Croup and Vandemar and to discover who ordered them to murder her family. All the while trying to work out how to get back to his old life in London Above.

A six part adaption of Neil Gaiman's novel adapted by Dirk Maggs, sees James McAvoy as Richard lead a stellar cast which includes Natalie Dormer, David Harewood, Sophie Okonedo, Benedict Cumberbatch, Christopher Lee, Anthony Head, David Schofield, Bernard Cribbins, Romola Garai, George Harris, Andrew Sachs, Lucy Cohu, Johnny Vegas, Paul Chequer, Don Gilet and Abdul Salis.



TUESDAY 31 DECEMBER 2013

TUE 00:00 Midnight News (b03mfry8)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.


TUE 00:15 Food for Thought (b018grvm)
Series 2

Episode 4

Settled in a local Italian restaurant that has become a home from home, much-loved children's author and illustrator, Judith Kerr reminisces with Nina Myskow about the food that brings back memories of her peripatetic childhood.

Known to generations of children as the author of the Mog picture books and The Tiger Who Came To Tea, Judith was born in Berlin but was forced to flee Hitler's Germany with her parents and brother in 1933. She recalls the cherry soup made by their German housekeeper and explains that the food in Paris, where they were briefly exiled, was a revelation. She loved the garlic, snails and mussels and remembers that she and her brother drank wine, because nobody trusted the drinking water.

As a refugee in London, she could barely afford the price of a cup of tea and a bath bun but during the war, she visited Claridges with her employer. She got a little tipsy but felt that she didn't really belong there. It was only after she met her late husband, Tom, whom she recalls with fondness, that she feels she really fitted in.

Amongst the warm descriptions of family mealtimes and disastrous dinner parties, Judith also reveals the favourite treat of her cat Katinka. And despite the loss of her husband and, increasingly, her appetite, Nina discovers, Judith continues to work constantly and is appreciative of both the world around her and her wonderfully rich life.

Producer: Tamsin Hughes
A Wise Buddah production for BBC Radio 4.


TUE 00:30 Book of the Week (b03mcmwz)
[Repeat of broadcast at 09:45 on Monday]


TUE 00:48 Shipping Forecast (b03mfryb)
The latest shipping forecast.


TUE 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (b03mfryd)
BBC Radio 4 joins the BBC World Service.


TUE 05:20 Shipping Forecast (b03mfryg)
The latest shipping forecast.


TUE 05:30 News Briefing (b03mfryj)
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.


TUE 05:43 Prayer for the Day (b03mzvyr)
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Leslie Griffiths.


TUE 05:45 Farming Today (b03mfvkz)
Winter is the busiest time for Wyevale Transplants, which grows millions of native trees and shrubs every year. Sarah Swadling visits as the harvest, grading, and despatch of plants is in full swing. They'll be sent to customers as diverse as farmers restoring hedgerows and developers building roads. Wyevale's director, Steve Ashworth, tells Sarah that the emergence of Ash Dieback has cost the business more than £100,000 in stock which can't be sold. On the upside, though, he says the disease has given customers a new interest in the provenance of British grown plants.

Produced and presented by Sarah Swadling.


TUE 05:58 Tweet of the Day (b03k7330)
Tawny Owl (Winter)

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

David Attenborough presents the Tawny Owl. Tawny owls are our most urban owls, often living close to the centre of towns and cities, so long as there are hollow trees or old buildings in which they can nest.


TUE 06:00 Today (b03mfvl1)
Barclays CEO Antony Jenkins guest-edits the programme.


TUE 09:00 The Making of the Modern Arab World (b03mfvl3)
Episode 4

Egyptian author Tarek Osman uncovers the history of the modern Arab world by tracing some of the great political dreams that have shaped it, from the nineteenth century to the Arab Spring.

Throughout the series, he focuses on two countries that are currently high on the news agenda: Egypt and Syria. As Tarek discovers, these are also the states from which many of the crucial characters and ideas in this story emerged.

In this final programme, he examines the build up to the Arab Spring as two worlds collide. As the previous experiments with liberalism, nationalism and islamism founder the region's presidential hard men seek to consolidate their power by passing it onto their sons. At the same time, riding the wave of a population explosion which leaves two thirds of the Arab world under 25 years old, a new generation frustrated by the lack of jobs or political freedoms rises up to challenge the old order.

Producer: Neil McCarthy, Shoku Amirani.


TUE 09:45 Book of the Week (b03mjkw0)
Man Belong Mrs Queen

Episode 2

As a bookish child with a posh accent, growing up on Merseyside in the 1980s, Matthew Baylis identified with the much-mocked Prince Philip as a fellow outsider. He even had a poster of him on his bedroom wall.

Years later, as an anthropology student , Baylis learned of the existence of a Philip cult on the South Sea island of Tanna. Why was it there? Nobody had a convincing answer. Nobody even seemed to want to find one.

His curiosity fatally piqued, he travelled over 10,000 miles to find a society both remote and slap-bang in the shipping-lanes of history. It's a place where US airmen, Lithuanian libertarians, and Graeco-Danish Princes have had as much impact as the missionaries and the slave-traders. On the rumbling slopes of this remarkable volcanic island, banjaxed by frequent doses of the local narcotic, suffering from a relentless diet of yams and regularly accused of being a divine emissary of the Duke, Baylis attempted to get to the bottom of this bizarre cult. In doing so he draws some ironic lessons about our own island 'myths' and comes to respect the pragmatic realpolitik of his South Seas hosts.

Episode 2: On the island of Tanna, Chief Jack makes vague promises but gives little away.

Abridged and produced by Jill Waters
A Waters Company Production for BBC Radio 4


TUE 10:00 Woman's Hour (b03mfvl5)
Caroline Criado-Perez, Laura Bates, Allegra McEvedy's perfect hangover food

From the campaign to get Jane Austen on our bank notes to getting girls off Page 3, feminism has taken centre stage in 2013. But as it becomes more mainstream what difficulties has that highlighted and how can those be resolved in the coming year. How can the momentum of the last twelve months be maintained and what campaigns lie ahead.

If you are planning to see in the New Year with a few drinks tonight, then tomorrow could start with some of us at least feeling a bit the worse for wear. So how do you clear away those cobwebs and not least that banging head that accompanies the morning after. The chef Allegra McEvedy has the perfect food for hangovers.

Opposites attract (or so the age-old saying goes) but differing expectations during social occasions can be an issue of contention. If you're a gregarious extrovert that thrives on champagne and small-talk and your partner is a pensive introvert who'd rather snuggle up in front of the fire, how will you navigate the festivities together?

This week's 15 minute drama Hester, is based on the novel by Margaret Oliphant, better known as Mrs Oliphant. She published nearly a hundred novels and her portrayals of provincial life have been compared to the likes of George Eliot. This new dramatisation brings to life the remarkable women portrayed in her novel Hester, first published in 1883.

Presented by Jenni Murray
Produced by Steven Williams.
Edition Editor Beverley Purcell.


TUE 10:45 15 Minute Drama (b03mfvl7)
Margaret Oliphant - Hester

Episode 2

By Margaret Oliphant
Dramatised by Kate Clanchy and Zena Forster

Penelope Wilton and Lyndsey Marshal star in this high Victorian tale of a woman who runs her own bank.

Sometimes called 'the feminist Trollope', Margaret Oliphant is an unjustly-neglected British writer of the nineteenth century, famed for her perceptive, ironic psychology, and her strong female characters. And Hester has a striking premise: a young woman in a nineteenth-century Cheshire town, having been snubbed and discarded in marriage, does something truly radical. When the family bank is in danger of a run, she pledges her whole private fortune to save it. But instead of merely underwriting it, in return she insists on running the bank herself, as a single woman, in defiance of all convention.

Using Oliphant's deliciously witty and sardonic narration, allied to a radical dramatisation by Kate Clanchy and Zena Forster, 'Hester' reveals a flawed and fascinating heroine, reborn for radio.

2/5
When Hester is offered a merger to cancel all her debts, she finds a neat, but risky, solution.

Producer/Director ..... Jonquil Panting.


TUE 11:00 Shared Planet (b03mfvl9)
Do We Care Too Much About Nature?

"Do we care too much about nature?" This is the question we will be asking in a special edition of Shared Planet recorded with a live audience in the Great Hall at the University of Bristol. Together with questions asked by Shared Planet listeners and members of the public in the audience Monty Don hosts two guests John Burton, Chief Executive Officer of The World Land Trust and Hannah Stoddart, Head of the Economic Justice and Policy team at Oxfam GB. And of course Shared Planet correspondent Kelvin Boot will make an appearance.

Producer Mary Cowell.


TUE 11:30 About the Boys (b03mfvlc)
From a solo boy chorister singing "Once in Royal David's City" at King's College, Cambridge on Christmas Eve to Aled Jones hitting the Top 10 with "Walking in the Air", the voice of the boy treble has long held a fascination for composers and audiences. But why? Is it because of its impermanence or what it implies about our notions of boyhood? Or is it just the sheer soaring quality?

Christopher Gabbitas knows about being a treble because, as a child, he was a chorister at Rochester Cathedral. He's now a baritone with the world famous a cappella group "The King's Singers", but he remembers his treble days and the repertoire he sang, with great affection. In this programme he asks what it is about the singing voice of a boy which can inspire a range of reactions. And he finds out how different composers through the centuries have used- and continue to gain inspiration from - the treble voice.

Among the people he talks to are his King's Singer colleague, Paul Phoenix, who became famous in the 1970s as the treble soloist for the theme music to the BBC's drama series "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy".

Christopher also meets academic Martin Ashley to hear how the sound of boys' voices has changed over the decades.

And he eavesdrops on a singing lesson to hear what makes a successful treble sound.

We also hear about the way in which composers in opera have used boy's voices from Handel to Britten and into the present day.

And there's an interview with the film composer Elliot Goldenthal who's used treble voices in his scores for "Alien 3" and "Interview with the Vampire".

Producer: Emma Kingsley


TUE 12:00 You and Yours (b03mfvlf)
Call You and Yours

Consumer affairs call-in. Peter White talks about what makes us happy. Do those Christmas presents bring us happiness, or do we need something deeper?


TUE 12:57 Weather (b03mfryl)
The latest weather forecast.


TUE 13:00 World at One (b03mfryn)
National and international news. Listeners can share their views via email: wato@bbc.co.uk or on twitter: #wato.


TUE 13:45 Across the Board (b03mjkw2)
Series 1

Rachel Reeves

Dominic Lawson conducts a series of interviews over a game of chess. In this episode he interviews shadow cabinet minister and former junior chess champion Rachel Reeves. She has just become a mother. But she explains why she would never allow her daughter to beat her at the game.


TUE 14:00 The Archers (b03mfp0t)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 on Monday]


TUE 14:15 Katie Hims - Listening to the Dead (b03mfwjs)
2. Four Sons

It's 1914, and Clara Tully, a Leeds baker's wife and the proud mother of four beautiful boys, knows the war won't be over by Christmas. And she knows a much darker secret besides.

Clara …. Michelle Terry
Eloise …. Georgie Fuller
Charlie …. Harry Jardine
Robin …. Joel MacCormick
George …. John Norton
Customer …. Priyanga Burford
Customer …. Sabina Arthur
Customer …. Carolyn Pickle
Lloyd George …. Sean Murray
Finley …. Will Featherstone
Joe …. Will Howard

Written by Katie Hims.

Directed by Jessica Dromgoole.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in December 2013.


TUE 15:00 Making History (b03mfwjv)
Helen Castor is joined by Carenza Lewis from the University of Cambridge and Professor Emma Griffin from the University of East Anglia in the first of a new series of the programme in which listeners join with some of the world's leading researchers to discuss the latest work that is Making History.

Over the next five weeks, historians and archaeologists will be helping us to understand more about the origins of the Welsh language, find out how French royalty escaped revolutionary persecution in Aylesbury, discover why the gloves are off in the nation's archives, and hear how some of our leading early socialists thought that the unemployed could do with a spell in a labour camp.

Today, it's science versus history. Tom Holland is on the Wirral to hear a debate that's been rekindled by historian Michael Wood - where is Brunanburh, the site of the Great War of 937? Is it Bromborough near Birkenhead as place-name and DNA evidence might suggest or should we, as Wood argues, trust the historical sources and look across to the Humber and South Yorkshire?

Maritime historian Sam Willis is in Devon to find out how an eighteenth century inventor from Ipswich turned to gambling to finance one of the world's first submarine journeys - to the bottom of Plymouth Sound.

And we look ahead to a remarkable parliamentary anniversary, the Addled Parliament of 1614 - the only English parliament in which nothing got done.

Contact the programme: making.history@bbc.co.uk

Producer: Nick Patrick
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.


TUE 15:30 Shared Experience (b03mfn0h)
Series 1

Pest Controllers

More shared experiences discussed in a lively intimate way with host Fi Glover. This week four pest control share their passion for the job controlling bedbugs, rats, maggots and creatures many of us find repellent.

Producer: Maggie Ayre.


TUE 16:00 Word of Mouth (b03mfwjz)
Baby Talk

Michael Rosen looks at language and communication. This week we're talking baby talk, or 'Infant Directed Speech'. He asks if the cooing parentese is a natural phenomenon or is it simply a culturally learnt trait. Does it benefit or hinder language development, and do animals use it? Michael also discovers some interesting examples of baby talk in letters that Jonathan Swift wrote to two lady friends.


TUE 16:30 Great Lives (b03mfwk1)
Series 32

Sir David Chipperfield on Le Corbusier

Pioneer of Modern architecture, Le Corbusier, chosen by award winning architect Sir David Chipperfield.

Le Corbusier aimed to build a better world through radical buildings and the controversial reshaping of whole cities. Flora Samuel, Professor of Architecture at the University of Sheffield, joins Matthew Parris to unpick the life of a man who considered himself a herioc figure, fighting battles to improve the world.

Presenter: Matthew Parris. Producer: Melvin Rickarby


TUE 17:00 PM (b03mfwk3)
Coverage and analysis of the day's news.


TUE 17:57 Weather (b03mfryq)
The latest weather forecast.


TUE 18:00 Six O'Clock News (b03mfrys)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.


TUE 18:15 15 Minute Musical (b03mfxmm)
Series 8

Ra Ra It's Putin

A series of satirical, barbed, bittersweet fifteen-minute comedy musicals.

In true West End style, artistic licence is well and truly taken and stretched, as easily identifiable public figures are dressed up, gilded, fabricated and placed against a random musical backdrop for sugar coated consumption. The stories are simple and engaging but with an edge - allowing the audience to enjoy all the conventions of a musical (huge production numbers, tender ballads and emotional reprises) whilst we completely re-interpret events in major celebrities' lives.

Beautifully crafted with astronomically high production values 15 Minute Musical does for your ears what chocolate does for your taste buds. All in fifteen minutes!

Winner of the Writers Guild of Great Britain Radio Comedy Award this series provides an energy boost and a seasonal treat at 1815 over the Christmas week.

Cast: Richie Webb, Dave Lamb and Jess Robinson
Written by; Dave Cohen, David Quantick and Richie Webb
Music Composed, Performed and Arranged by: Richie Webb
Music Production: Matt Katz
Producer: Katie Tyrrell

Other episodes include:

The Last Days of Farage
Nigel Farage goes to Europe with a Britpop soundtrack.

Half A Sixth Form
Michael Gove has a licence to teach.

Julian And The Assanging Technicolour Download
An overly dramatic and musical look at Julian Assange.

It's A One-Hit-Wonderful Life
Simon Cowell contemplates ending his career until his guardian angel Susan Boyle appears to show him life without Cowell - It's A Wonderful Life.

Heaven Knows I'm Middle-Aged Now
Morrissey looks for a new musical collaborator.


TUE 18:30 Old Harry's Game (b00wr9vv)
Christmas Special

Ring in the New

Satan decides he needs a holiday away from hell.

Written by and starring Andy Hamilton.

With Annette Crosbie as Edith, Robert Duncan as Scumspawn, Jimmy Mulville as Thomas.

And Felicity Montagu, Nick Revell, Philip Pope and Michael Fentons Stevens.

Producer: Paul Mayhew-Archer

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in December 2010.


TUE 19:00 The Archers (b03mfxmp)
Keen to put his plan for a reconciliation into action, Eddie tries to coax Darrell out of the cider shed and into the Bull for a New Year's Eve drink. But he can only get him as far as Keeper's Cottage, where Darrell agrees to a bath and a change of clothes.

Eventually Eddie tricks Darrell into going to the Bull. Darrell finds it excruciating, and when he glimpses Rosa he's rooted to the spot. When at last he screws up his courage to speak to her, his fears melt away as they fall upon one another in relief and love.

Joyous Eddie declares he now knows how Father Christmas feels on Christmas morning. Happy Rosa concedes they've still got a lot of sorting out to do, but she's glad she's talking to her dad again.

As midnight approaches, Helen makes a sharp exit, and then receives a text. It's Rob. A tryst ensues, with each lamenting how awful it's been. They can't bear to be without one another. Rob entreats Helen to come back to his place... to come back to him. They embrace to the sound of fireworks and the New Year bells.


TUE 19:15 Front Row (b03mfxyf)
Adil Ray, Helen Lederer, Jackie Clune and Mark Billingham compete in the Front Row Quiz

Mark Lawson turns Quizmaster to test the cultural knowledge of two teams in the Front Row Quiz of the Year.

Singer and performer Jackie Clune and playwright Mark Ravenhill are led by writer and Booker judge Natalie Haynes. They are competing against actress and writer Helen Lederer and Citizen Khan creator and star Adil Ray, under the captaincy of crime writer Mark Billingham.

Questions cover a wide range of the year's events, including Doctor Who's 50th birthday; best-selling autobiographies, with extracts disguised by actor in residence Ewan Bailey; and a mathematical puzzle based around the compositions of Wagner, Britten and Verdi.

Producer Claire Bartleet.


TUE 19:45 15 Minute Drama (b03mfvl7)
[Repeat of broadcast at 10:45 today]


TUE 20:00 The Only Way Is Up (b03mfxyh)
Simon Cox charts the sometimes the painful challenges of recovery through the struggles of three organisations; a school, a company and a football team, as they fight back and try to haul themselves away from the bottom. What's it like working on a day-to-day basis at the bottom of the league amid increasing pressure to improve performance? How do they do it? The programme highlights the fight and attempts to overcome difficult circumstances and paints a vivid picture those who work in these organisations.

It hears from staff, pupils and Governors at Llanwern High School, until recently, branded as the worst performing school in Wales. What effect do bad results have on the morale of pupils, parents and staff? It charts the struggle of those who are putting everything into keeping an old family department store afloat. Will a major shop re-fit and Christmas sales save Wildings? Or is it past it's sell by date? And the programme follows the ups and downs of Newport County as it begins life back in the professional football league after 25 years.

Producer: Jim Frank.


TUE 20:40 The Listening Project (b03nhfcm)
Fi Glover introduces conversations about sex education and death, transgender life, pantomime camels, having an ex-priest and nun as parents, and running away to the circus, proving 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.


TUE 21:00 All in the Mind (b03mfxym)
Claudia Hammond finds out why your exercise regime could be hindered if you have been taxing your brain too much. She talks to Professor Samuele Marcora from the University of Kent about his research on why the chemical by products of being mentally exhausted can actually make physical exercise much harder. He discusses his new research with the Ministry of Defence where he is finding that soldiers can be trained to resist the overwhelming effects of cognitive fatigue. Also in the programme the moral distress experienced by nurses and more results from the BBC Stress test and what it reveals about mental well-being.


TUE 21:30 The Making of the Modern Arab World (b03mfvl3)
[Repeat of broadcast at 09:00 today]


TUE 21:58 Weather (b03mfryv)
The latest weather forecast.


TUE 22:00 The World Tonight (b03mfylq)
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.


TUE 22:45 Book at Bedtime (b03mfyls)
The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed out of the Window and Disappeared

Episode 7

A picaresque tale of a centenarian, police and thieves, and moments in world history. As his mother put it, "Things are what they are, and whatever will be will be."

At 100 years-old, Allan Karlsson is a reluctant birthday boy. In the old people's home they've prepared a party for him. The Mayor and the local press will be there. But this party never gets started. Still in his bedroom slippers, Allan makes his getaway through the window and begins an unlikely adventure.

Allan is no stranger to adventure, as the stories of his earlier life reveal - a life in which he dined with world leaders such as Franco, Truman and Stalin and found himself behind the scenes during major events of the twentieth century.

Jonas Jonasson was born in 1961 in Vaxjö, Sweden. After starting up and then running the successful media company OTW for twenty years, he sold the business and moved to Switzerland. There he completed The Hundred-year-Old Man Who Climbed Out Of The Window And Disappeared. Jonas lives on the island of Gotland in Sweden.

Translated by Rod Bradbury.

Episode 7:
Having dealt with another Never Again member, Allan and his friends must flee from Lake Farm.

Reader: Martin Jarvis
Abridger: Jeremy Osborne

Producer: Rosalynd Ward
A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4.


TUE 23:00 Britain Versus the World (b03mg0cq)
Pilot

A new panel game show that pits two British comedians against a team of comics from overseas to find out which side is superior.

Joining the British captain, Hal Cruttenden, is the Welsh comedian Lloyd Langford while the captain of the Rest of the World - Henning Wehn - is teamed with Canadian stand-up Katherine Ryan. The contest is overseen by Irishman Ed Byrne who does his very best to stay impartial.

Devised and produced by Ashley Blaker
A John Stanley production for BBC Radio 4.


TUE 23:30 Alex Horne Presents The Horne Section (b03mg0cs)
Alex Horne Presents The Horne Section New Year

Comedian Alex Horne is joined by his 5 piece band to kick off the New Year's Eve celebrations with comedy and original live music.

His guests are comedian Milton Jones, vocal gymnast Beardyman and singer and comedian Jenny Bede.

Producer: Julia Mckenzie

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in December 2013.



WEDNESDAY 01 JANUARY 2014

WED 00:00 Midnight News (b03mg0j0)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.


WED 00:15 Food for Thought (b018gylx)
Series 2

Carlos Acosta

In a rehearsal studio at the Royal Opera House, over an impromptu picnic of tostones (fried plantains) and moros y cristianos (rice with black beans), dancer Carlos Acosta recalls a lifetime of counting the carbs, and his blessings, during a successful career in ballet.

From the food ration in his native Cuba, to the abundance of sugar on the island that left him with an explicably sweet tooth, Carlos tells Nina about stealing mangoes as a boy to fund trips to the cinema. He also explains how, arriving in Europe as a teenager, he had to adapt his tastes, his attitudes and his body. He eats a steak before each performance and avoids carbohydrates after six o'clock, despite the fact that he dances for over eight hours almost every day of the week.

Eating well is crucial to Carlos' livelihood and eating badly could end his career but the Royal Ballet's principal guest artist still chows down on ice cream, chicken korma and gets drunk, occasionally. He also tells Nina where you can get the perfect mojito.

Producer: Tamsin Hughes
A Wise Buddah production for BBC Radio 4.


WED 00:30 Book of the Week (b03mjkw0)
[Repeat of broadcast at 09:45 on Tuesday]


WED 00:48 Shipping Forecast (b03mg0j2)
The latest shipping forecast.


WED 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (b03mg0j5)
BBC Radio 4 joins the BBC World Service.


WED 05:20 Shipping Forecast (b03mg0j7)
The latest shipping forecast.


WED 05:30 News Briefing (b03mg0jb)
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.


WED 05:43 Prayer for the Day (b03mzvyt)
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Leslie Griffiths.


WED 05:45 Farming Today (b03mg1d9)
Remember the glorious summer of 2013? Leave January behind and join Anna Jones for a midsummer hike in the Radnorshire hills. She meets landscape historian Stuart Fry who leads 'Walking Through History' courses, teaching people how to spot layers of tangible history in the mid-Wales countryside. Iron Age hill forts, Roman roads and Medieval droving enclosures are all plain to see...if you know what to look out for.

Anna also hears how history can be a profitable diversification for farmers. Margot Porter has opened up Ty Gwyn Farm near Llandrindod Wells to history-loving ramblers, and throws in a picnic too.

Presented and produced by Anna Jones.


WED 05:58 Tweet of the Day (b03mg1dc)
Song Thrush (Winter)

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

David Attenborough presents the story of the song thrush and reads a passage from Thomas Hardy's poem, The Darkling Thrush.

Written at the end of the 19th century, this poem is about the hope that birdsong can bring at the bleakest time of the year. This episode examines how often song thrushes sing in winter.


WED 06:00 Today (b03mg1dg)
Morning news and current affairs. Including Sports Desk; Weather; Thought for the Day.


WED 09:00 Midweek (b03mg868)
Jo Brand, Henry Winkler, Clive Rowe, Richard Mawbey

Libby Purves goes to the panto in a special programme recorded in the BBC Radio Theatre. She is joined by actor Clive Rowe; comedian Jo Brand; actor and writer Henry Winkler and wig designer Richard Mawbey.

Clive Rowe is an actor who has played the pantomime dame at the Hackney Empire on many occasions. In 2010 he appeared as Dame Daisy in Jack and the Beanstalk. In 1997 he won an Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Musical for Guys and Dolls. He is playing King Darius in The Light Princess at The National Theatre.

Jo Brand is a BAFTA-winning comedian, actor and writer. She is appearing in her first pantomime as the Genie of the Ring in Aladdin. A former psychiatric nurse, she made her name as a stand-up comic and is a regular panel member on QI and occasional presenter of Have I Got News for You. Aladdin is at New Wimbledon Theatre.

Henry Winkler OBE is an American actor, director and children's author, best known for playing The Fonz in the television series Happy Days. He is currently reprising his role as Captain Hook in Peter Pan at Richmond Theatre. His Hank Zipzer stories focus on a 10-year-old boy with dyslexia and are based on his own experiences. Peter Pan is at Richmond Theatre.

Richard Mawbey is a wig designer who produces a wide range of work for pantomime, theatre, television and film. His commissions range from Lily Savage as Widow Twankey to the cast of From Here to Eternity. He spent 10 years on the road with the legendary Danny La Rue as his hairdresser and wig designer. Richard has just produced 35 wigs for a production of White Christmas at the Edinburgh Festival Theatre.

Producer: Paula McGinley.


WED 09:45 Book of the Week (b03mjkzm)
Man Belong Mrs Queen

Episode 3

As a bookish child with a posh accent, growing up on Merseyside in the 1980s, Matthew Baylis identified with the much-mocked Prince Philip as a fellow outsider. He even had a poster of him on his bedroom wall.

Years later, as an anthropology student, Baylis learned of the existence of a Philip cult on the South Sea island of Tanna. Why was it there? Nobody had a convincing answer. Nobody even seemed to want to find one.

His curiosity fatally piqued, he travelled over 10,000 miles to find a society both remote and slap-bang in the shipping-lanes of history. It's a place where US airmen, Lithuanian libertarians, and Graeco-Danish Princes have had as much impact as the missionaries and the slave-traders. On the rumbling slopes of this remarkable volcanic island, banjaxed by frequent doses of the local narcotic, suffering from a relentless diet of yams and regularly accused of being a divine emissary of the Duke, Baylis attempted to get to the bottom of this bizarre cult. In doing so he draws some ironic lessons about our own island 'myths' and comes to respect the pragmatic realpolitik of his South Seas hosts.

Abridged and produced by Jill Waters
A Waters Company Production for BBC Radio 4


WED 10:00 Woman's Hour (b03mg86v)
Jessie J, Cher, Stevie Nicks

Jenni Murray introduces interviews with some of the best Woman's Hour music guests from 2013 - including Cher, Stevie Nicks and Jessie J. We hear from Kanya King about running the MOBO Awards and there's music from Meklit Hadero and violinist Midori. Also playing for us in the studio - one of the young artists on the BBC Sound of 2014 longlist - Chloe Howl.


WED 10:45 15 Minute Drama (b03mg871)
Margaret Oliphant - Hester

Episode 3

Penelope Wilton and Lyndsey Marshal star in this high Victorian tale of a woman who runs her own bank.

Sometimes called 'the feminist Trollope', Margaret Oliphant is an unjustly-neglected British writer of the nineteenth century, famed for her perceptive, ironic psychology, and her strong female characters. And Hester has a striking premise: a young woman in a nineteenth-century Cheshire town, having been snubbed and discarded in marriage, does something truly radical. When the family bank is in danger of a run, she pledges her whole private fortune to save it. But instead of merely underwriting it, in return she insists on running the bank herself, as a single woman, in defiance of all convention.

Using Oliphant's deliciously perceptive and sardonic narration, allied to a radical dramatisation by Kate Clanchy and Zena Forster, 'Hester' reveals a flawed and fascinating heroine, reborn for radio.

3/5
By Margaret Oliphant
Dramatised by Kate Clanchy and Zena Forster

When Hester takes her wayward cousin Edward back into the Vernon family bank, she reckons without the influence of his vapid wife Ellen.

Producer/Director ..... Jonquil Panting.


WED 11:00 Lives in a Landscape (b03mg873)
Series 15

Sirens of Yorkshire - Community First Responders

It's Friday night in Hornsea, a small village in East Yorkshire; the air is cold and the stars seem to go on forever.

Just off the High Street, a small accountancy firm is closing up; Andy, a man who loves the challenges of VAT, has finished the filing, and is having a cup of tea, chatting on the phone to a friend about the plan to save the Floral Hall.

Suddenly a siren blasts out.

It's coming from a mobile phone, connected directly to the ambulance service.

Andy is not a paramedic, but he is a Community First Responder - someone trained in life saving techniques, who has volunteered to drop everything to go and be the first on the scene in an emergency.

The actions he takes over the next few minutes could mean the difference between life and death. Within seconds he's donned a high-vis jacket and, weighed down with a rucksack of life saving equipment, is running for his car. By the time the ambulance services arrives from the nearest hospital he may have been at the scene for some time - administering life-saving first aid.

First Responders come from every walk of life, and are all highly trained volunteers. But it's a huge commitment, and responsibility, and over Christmas and New Year, a busy one. So what motivates someone to take on such a role? Good Samaritans on the surface, but is it the adrenalin rush many say they feel that makes them addicted to saving lives?

Julie Gatenby meets the Community First Responders of East Yorkshire.

Producer: Sara Jane Hall.


WED 11:30 Believe It! (b03mg87c)
Series 2

Episode 4

Jon Canter's "radiography" of Richard Wilson returns for a second series.

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 autobiography of Richard Wilson.

He narrates the series with his characteristic dead-pan delivery, 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 and fierce rivalry with Sean Connery and Ian McKellan (not true).

The title - in case you hadn't spotted - is an unashamed reference his famous catchphrase.

Written by Jon Canter
Produced and Directed by Clive Brill
A Pacificus production for BBC Radio 4.


WED 12:00 News (b03myjvd)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.


WED 12:10 Drama (b03mg87l)
Hair of the Dog

A witty and poignant ensemble drama following different characters in the pub on New Years Day.

Hair of the Dog is recorded 'as live', in a single take, on location in a London pub.

The resolutions aren't going so well - but what does the year hold for the relationships and the dreams for the future? We move through the bar, between characters and stories, between an old way of life and a new one. This is truly a New Years Day, with all its humour and it's sadness, its desire and its frustration - and the anticipation for a good year to come.

Sound by Alisdair McGregor

Written by Katie Hims
Produced and Directed by Boz Temple-Morris

A Holy Mountain production for BBC Radio 4.


WED 13:00 World at One (b03mg88q)
National and international news. Listeners can share their views via email: wato@bbc.co.uk or on twitter: #wato.


WED 13:45 Across the Board (b03mjl5j)
Series 1

Lennox Lewis

Dominic Lawson conducts a series of interviews over a game of chess. In this episode he plays the greatest ever British born boxer and former heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis. Lewis believes that chess and boxing have much in common - and that his love of chess has helped him both in and outside the ring.


WED 14:00 The Archers (b03mfxmp)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 on Tuesday]


WED 14:15 Katie Hims - Listening to the Dead (b03mg88s)
3. The Great Pretender

Ralf Little stars as a small-time 1950s psychic, who hungers for fame, despite his inability to read the thoughts of anyone, let alone the woman he works with.

Frank …. Ralf Little
TV presenter …. Arthur Hughes
Eloise …. Carolyn Pickles
Girl …. Carys Eleri
Betty …. Harry Jardine
Betty …. Joanna Monro
Peggy …. Lizzy Watts
Joe …. Sean Murray

by Katie Hims.

Directed by Jessica Dromgoole.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2014.


WED 15:00 Alex Horne Presents The Horne Section (b03mg0cs)
[Repeat of broadcast at 23:30 on Tuesday]


WED 15:45 15 by 15 (b037v4ft)
Series 2

Clog

Hardeep Singh Kohli chooses a word and sets off on an exploration into its origins, meeting people for whom it has different associations. He hopes to learn 15 things along the way.

Today's word is 'clog', and etymologist Susie Dent is on hand to explain the origin of the word as a block of wood, which came to mean the footwear as well as the notion of clogging or blocking anything from arteries to drains.

Hardeep meets Phil Howard, one of the few remaining clog-makers in Great Britain, and hears tales of three clog-busters who deal with obstructions of all kinds, in drains and down manholes.

He also talks to Kate Tattersall who runs the Camden Clog, a group of dancers who trace their dances back to the Lancashire cotton mills, where the millworkers tapped their clogs in time to the machines - a moment of history restaged by Sarah Angliss and Caroline Radcliffe.

Producer: Richard Bannerman
A Ladbroke production for BBC Radio 4.


WED 16:00 Thinking Allowed (b03mg95w)
Love

A Thinking Allowed special on 'love'. What are the origins of our notions of high romantic love? Was the post war period a 'golden age' for lifelong love? Has marriage for love now failed? Laurie Taylor hopes to finds some answers with the help of the social historian, Claire Langhamer, the philosopher, Pascal Bruckner, and the sociologist, Professor Mary Evans.Revised repeat.
Producer: Jayne Egerton


WED 16:30 The Media Show (b03mhvq9)
TV presenter chemistry

It's an all-important catchword in TV circles - "chemistry". Get the mix right between presenters, and the audience will welcome them in. Get it wrong, and shows can easily flop. But how do TV executives decide whether a combination will work? Is it pure chance, or are there ways to determine whether sparks will fly for the camera? In this special programme, Steve Hewlett talks to agent Michael Foster, TV executive Lorraine Heggesey, TV critic Kevin O'Sullivan, and famous successful duo Richard and Judy about how to create that very special something between hosts.

Producer: Katy Takatsuki
Editor: Andrew Smith.


WED 17:00 PM (b03mhvqc)
Coverage and analysis of the day's news. Including Weather at 5.57pm.


WED 18:00 Six O'Clock News (b03mg0jr)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.


WED 18:15 15 Minute Musical (b01pg54q)
Series 7

Brian Elliott

A series of satirical, barbed, bittersweet fifteen-minute comedy musicals.

Episode Two: Brian Elliott

Brian Cox in Brian Elliott about a boy who D-reams of being a Scientist.

Starring: Richie Webb, Dave Lamb and Pippa Evans
Written by: Richie Webb, Dave Cohen and David Quantick
Music by: Richie Webb
Music Production: Matt Katz
Producer: Katie Tyrrell

Beautifully crafted with astronomically high production values 15 Minute Musical does for your ears what chocolate does for your taste buds.

All in fifteen minutes!

The fun-size yet satisfying musicals take an easily identifiable public figure and give them a West End Musical make-over. The fabricated, sugar-coated story is told in an original, never heard before, musical.

Delicious musical delicacies that melt in your ear not in your hand.

So, enjoy a West End Musical experience for a fraction of the cost - well, actually for no cost at all.

With over thirty musicals selling out in the West End night after night - the British public (and the Radio 4 audience) cannot get enough of them, therefore ...

In true West End style artistic licence is well and truly taken and stretched ridiculously as easily identifiable public figures are dressed up, gilded, fabricated and placed against the backdrop of a random period of history for sugar coated consumption. The stories are simple and engaging but the writing is razor-sharp allowing the audience to enjoy all the conventions of a musical (huge production numbers, tender ballads and emotional reprises) whilst we completely re-interpret events in major celebrities' lives. With over thirty musicals selling out in the West End night after night - the British public (and the Radio 4 audience) cannot get enough of them, therefore ...


WED 18:30 What Does the K Stand For? (b03mhvqf)
Series 1

Tell Them About the Dream, Martin

Young Stephen looks for a hero that he can tell his class about.

Stephen K Amos's sitcom about his teenage years, growing up black, gay and funny in 1980s South London.

Written by Jonathan Harvey with Stephen K Amos.

Stephen K Amos ... Stephen K Amos
Young Stephen ... Shaquille Ali-Yebuah
Stephanie Amos ... Fatou Sohna
Virginia Amos ... Ellen Thomas
Vincent Amos ... Don Gilet
Miss Collins ... Gemma Whelan
Jayson ... Frankie Wilson
Random Bloke ... Harry Jardine

Producer: Colin Anderson

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in December 2013.


WED 19:00 The Archers (b03mhvqh)
Hungover Lilian can't believe the bell peal is three hours long. She tells Jolene she can't understand why people do these things.

Jolene can't get over the idea of Lilian becoming a grandma. Lilian says ruefully she was just coming round to it when Lynda started trumpeting on about Oscar. Jolene entreats Lilian not to worry. No-one does fun like she does, and that's all kids really want. Plenty of time to educate them when they're older.

As Jennifer feeds the guns, she blithely chats to Rob about Jess, unaware of the situation between them. Helen invites herself to the shoot lunch so that she can surprise Rob, and they kiss passionately in the coat closet. He assures her he wants the hole and corner stuff to stop as soon as possible. He wants everyone to know they're together.

Jennifer's talk of duck bigarade for the shoot lunch reminds Peggy she made that for Jack once. They'd shared a joke about it at the time. Remembering can still make her smile. Although she's already seen Jack, Peggy insists on being taken back to The Laurels. She spends the afternoon with him, turning the pages of their wedding album and reminiscing. As he dozes off, she decides to stay a little longer and hold his hand.


WED 19:15 Front Row (b03mfp0w)
Binge TV Special

With Kirsty Lang.
As more and more of us are bingeing on box-sets and stream programmes via our laptops, Kirsty asks whether we're witnessing the death of the cliff-hanger and water-cooler TV, as predicted by Kevin Spacey in this year's MacTaggart Lecture at the Edinburgh International Television Festival. Spacey was the star of The House Of Cards, the first series made by the subscription service Netflix and the first drama ever to be nominated for an Emmy that wasn't show on television. This year also saw the end of Breaking Bad, a word-of-mouth hit that was only available on-line or as a box-set in this country, and further evidence that we may be turning away from traditional television and watching programmes at our own leisure.

Producer: Stephen Hughes.


WED 19:45 15 Minute Drama (b03mg871)
[Repeat of broadcast at 10:45 today]


WED 20:00 Immigration: Good for Whom? (b03nbsgd)
Experts debate the issue of immigration with residents of Birmingham. Ritula Shah is in the chair.

As levels of immigration have risen to historically high levels so too has public concern about the issue: a series of opinion polls indicate that UK voters rank its importance as second only to the economy.

In the past year, two leading liberal thinkers have published controversial books warning against the dangers of excessive levels of immigration.

Prof Paul Collier, a development economist from Oxford University, and David Goodhart, director of the think tank Demos, both argue that if mass immigration is not properly controlled it has the potential to undermine trust and a sense of mutual obligation.

In front of an audience hosted by Birmingham City University, the two men debate their ideas with Nazek Ramadan of Migrant Voice and Susie Symes, Chair of the Museum of Immigration and Diversity.

The event was recorded as part of Birmingham City University's City Talks series on Tuesday 17th December 2013.

Presenter: Ritula Shah
Producers: Hannah Barnes and Jane Beresford
Researcher: Nayha Kalia.


WED 20:45 Pop-Up Ideas (b03mhvqm)
Series 2

Simon Garfield: Maps and Mistakes

"How boring would the world be," asks Simon Garfield, "if we knew precisely where everything was?"

Simon reflects on the many mistakes and deceptions in some of our best-loved maps. He begins with the map of the London Underground where lines on the map bears little resemblance to reality but is "informationally brilliant".

He talks about California, the subject of a "sustained cartographic foul-up": for 200 years it appeared on maps as an island, and it continued to do so even after navigators had tried to sail all the way round it - and failed.

And then there's "one of the great phantoms in the history of cartography" - the Mountains of Kong. They were apparently a wide central mountain belt that in the eighteenth-century appeared to stretch across thousands of miles of West Africa. Despite being repeated on map after map for almost a century, however, they were a pure figment of imagination.
Simon celebrates these mistakes, describing them as the "accidental discovery...of searching souls".

In these days of digital maps, he hopes that we can still find "strange and charming and wonderful things - mountains that don't exist and islands of the imagination".

Producer: Adele Armstrong.


WED 21:00 Show Me the Way to Go Home (b03mhw27)
Gardening grandmother Ruth Brooks, also known as 'the snail lady', was chosen as the BBC's Amateur Scientist of the Year in 2010.

She noticed that despite repeatedly throwing her snails over the garden fence, her gastropods would unfailing return home to decimate her petunias. From her Radio 4 experiments, designed by mentor Dr Dave Hodgson from the University of Exeter, they showed that snails do have a homing instinct, returning from distances of over 10 m.

In this documentary, Ruth sets out to investigate how different animals navigate, from smell maps for cats to astronomy for dung beetles. She travels to Portsmouth to meet some speedy pigeons and visits an MRI laboratory where neuroscientists are hunting for the source of their mysterious magnetic sense.

But do we humans have a homing instinct, and can we improve our sense of direction?

Producer: Michelle Martin.


WED 21:30 Midweek (b03mg868)
[Repeat of broadcast at 09:00 today]


WED 21:58 Weather (b03mg0jk)
The latest weather forecast.


WED 22:00 The World Tonight (b03mhw8f)
2013 was a year when immigration was in the headlines. Here in the UK, there is a particular focus on the possibility of thousands of EU citizens from Bulgaria and Romania arriving. Across the European Union, there's concern not just about internal movements, but the large numbers arriving from outside --- as poverty and political turmoil in the Middle East and Africa drive many migrants to travel here illegally, either searching for a better future or desperate for asylum.

Many Africans who move to Europe have valuable skills needed at home so how can African migration be reduced?

A special edition of the programme presented by Philippa Thomas.


WED 22:45 Book at Bedtime (b03mhw8h)
The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed out of the Window and Disappeared

Episode 8

A picaresque tale of a centenarian, police and thieves, and moments in world history. As his mother put it, "Things are what they are, and whatever will be will be."

At 100 years-old, Allan Karlsson is a reluctant birthday boy. In the old people's home they've prepared a party for him. The Mayor and the local press will be there. But this party never gets started. Still in his bedroom slippers, Allan makes his getaway through the window and begins an unlikely adventure.

Allan is no stranger to adventure, as the stories of his earlier life reveal - a life in which he dined with world leaders such as Franco, Truman and Stalin and found himself behind the scenes during major events of the twentieth century.

Jonas Jonasson was born in 1961 in Vaxjö, Sweden. After starting up and then running the successful media company OTW for twenty years, he sold the business and moved to Switzerland. There he completed The Hundred-year-Old Man Who Climbed Out Of The Window And Disappeared. Jonas lives on the island of Gotland in Sweden.

Translated by Rod Bradbury.

Episode 8:
Benny's brother Bosse has given shelter to Allan and friends. But in the yellow bus outside, someone is waking up. Also, we learn how Allan was recruited by the Soviet Union in the 1950s.

Reader: Martin Jarvis
Abridger: Jeremy Osborne

Producer: Rosalynd Ward
A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4.


WED 23:00 Political Animals (b03mhwd5)
Series 2

Rex and Ron

Ronald Reagan's dog, Rex, reveals that he shared his master's passion for acting.

Another unreliable dog's eye view of the trials and tribulations of Washington living in the White House.

Rex ...... Michael Bertenshaw
West Wing Guy ...... David Seddon

Written by Tony Bagley.

Director: Marc Beeby.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in January 2014.


WED 23:15 Bird Island (b01kbjdg)
Series 1

Episode 4

On one hand, Ben is on the trip of a lifetime to Sub-Antartica. On the other, he's trapped in an icy hell with one other person, a dodgy internet connection and a dictaphone. Loneliness is something of a problem. His fellow travelling scientist Graham should alleviate this, but the tragi-comic fact is, they are nerdy blokes, so they can only stumble through yet another awkward exchange. Ben experiences all the highs and lows that this beautiful, but lonely place has to offer but fails miserably to communicate this to Graham. So, Ben shares his thoughts with us in the form of an audio 'log'.

Apart from his research studying the Albatross on the Island, Ben attempts to continue normal life with an earnestness and enthusiasm which is ultimately very endearing. We're with him as chats awkwardly with Graham, telephones his mother and as he tries to form a long distance relationship with a woman through Chemistry.com. In fact, we follow Ben as everything occurs to him. We also hear the pings and whirrs of machinery, the Squawks and screeches of the birds and the vast expanse outside. Oh, and ice. Lots of ice.

EPISDE FOUR:

Bird Island is the story of Ben, a young scientist working in Antarctica, trying to socially adapt to the loneliness by keeping a cheery audio diary on his Dictaphone. An atmospheric 15 minute non audience comedy.

In this final episode Graham gives the shock news that a new member of the team is joining them.

Written by ..... Katy Wix

Produced by ..... Tilusha Ghelani.


WED 23:30 Frost on 4 (b03mjlk1)
Over a period of more than forty years, David Frost moved from the forefront of the 60s satire boom, to make his mark as one of the UK's most prominent journalists, and latterly became the politicians' favourite interviewer.

In recent years Frost celebrated his long career on BBC Radio 4 in three series where many wise and respected guests joined him to reflect on his memorable interviews.

In this special tribute to the veteran broadcaster we feature selected highlights from these remarkable programmes exploring the symbiotic worlds of comedy, journalism, religion and politics with lively discussions and fascinating archive.

Frost's career spanned journalism, comedy writing and daytime television presenting, including That Was The Week That Was, The Frost Report and Frost On Sunday. Since the mid-1960s, he has interviewed almost every prominent statesman, leader, dictator, entertainer and otherwise influential figure. He was perhaps the first interviewer of the television age to become as famous as the people he interviewed. His series of filmed encounters with former President Richard Nixon, over twelve days in 1977, made worldwide news; they, and the events leading up to them, have recently been the subject of the Hollywood movie Frost/Nixon.

As Frost and guests discuss favourite moments from television interviews from the past forty years we reveal many other moments just as compelling as Nixon in the dozens of other interviews in his canon of work.

Producer: Stephen Garner



THURSDAY 02 JANUARY 2014

THU 00:00 Midnight News (b03mg0lq)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.


THU 00:15 Food for Thought (b0368rdg)
Series 3

James Cracknell

4/5 James Cracknell

Rower, adventurer and endurance athlete James Cracknell shares his secrets for fuelling a body capable of winning two Olympic Gold medals. He describes nutrient-dense carbs and how he has had to balance his calorie intake with the energy he burns in extreme conditions, from the Sahara to the South Pole.

James discusses how his food habits have changed since losing his sense of taste and smell following brain damage sustained in a serious bike accident. Does a restaurant supper still hold any attraction for him or is he focused on the nutritional value of food now more than ever?

He describes his increased sensitivity to texture and introduces Nina to the hot sauces that he uses to stimulate his taste buds. Over carrots in chilli sauce Nina offers James some sweet treats, as James describes the impact losing his sense of taste has had on his life.

Producer: Rebecca Maxted
A Wise Buddah production for BBC Radio 4.


THU 00:30 Book of the Week (b03mjkzm)
[Repeat of broadcast at 09:45 on Wednesday]


THU 00:48 Shipping Forecast (b03mg0ls)
The latest shipping forecast.


THU 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (b03mg0lw)
BBC Radio 4 joins the BBC World Service.


THU 05:20 Shipping Forecast (b03mg0ly)
The latest shipping forecast.


THU 05:30 News Briefing (b03mg0m0)
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.


THU 05:43 Prayer for the Day (b03mzvyw)
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Leslie Griffiths.


THU 05:45 Farming Today (b03mhyzc)
Every bat used in first class cricket begins its life as a willow tree in a wet English field. Cricket Bat Willows are planted between December and March, and Sarah Swadling visits the largest supplier in the world, JS Wright in Essex, which will plant 20,000 new trees this season. They're planning to increase plantings to keep up with burgeoning demand in India and Pakistan. Sarah finds out how the way the willow is grown affects the playing quality of the bat, at manufacturers Gunn and Moore in Nottingham.

Produced and presented by Sarah Swadling.


THU 05:58 Tweet of the Day (b03mhyzf)
Raven

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

David Attenborough presents the story of the raven. Ravens are one of the most widely distributed birds in the world and can survive Arctic winters and scorching deserts. In the UK, Ravens were once widespread, even in cities but persecution drove them back into the wilder parts of our islands. Now they're re-colonising the lowlands and are even turning up on the outskirts of London where, since Victorian times, the only ravens were the ones kept at the Tower.


THU 06:00 Today (b03mhyzh)
Musician PJ Harvey guest-edits the programme.


THU 09:00 In Our Time (b03mhyzk)
Plato's Symposium

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Plato's Symposium, one of the Greek philosopher's most celebrated works. Written in the 4th century BC, it is a dialogue set at a dinner party attended by a number of prominent ancient Athenians, including the philosopher Socrates and the playwright Aristophanes. Each of the guests speaks of Eros, or erotic love. This fictional discussion of the nature of love, how and why it arises and what it means to be in love, has had a significant influence on later thinkers, and is the origin of the modern notion of Platonic love.

With:

Angie Hobbs
Professor of the Public Understanding of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield

Richard Hunter
Regius Professor of Greek at the University of Cambridge

Frisbee Sheffield
Director of Studies in Philosophy at Christ's College, University of Cambridge.

Producer: Thomas Morris.


THU 09:45 Book of the Week (b03mjlzn)
Man Belong Mrs Queen

Episode 4

As a bookish child with a posh accent, growing up on Merseyside in the 1980s, Matthew Baylis identified with the much-mocked Prince Philip as a fellow outsider. He even had a poster of him on his bedroom wall.

Years later, as an anthropology student, Baylis learned of the existence of a Philip cult on the South Sea island of Tanna. Why was it there? Nobody had a convincing answer. Nobody even seemed to want to find one.

His curiosity fatally piqued, he travelled over 10,000 miles to find a society both remote and slap-bang in the shipping-lanes of history. It's a place where US airmen, Lithuanian libertarians, and Graeco-Danish Princes have had as much impact as the missionaries and the slave-traders. On the rumbling slopes of this remarkable volcanic island, banjaxed by frequent doses of the local narcotic, suffering from a relentless diet of yams and regularly accused of being a divine emissary of the Duke, Baylis attempted to get to the bottom of this bizarre cult. In doing so he draws some ironic lessons about our own island 'myths' and comes to respect the pragmatic realpolitik of his South Seas hosts.

Abridged and produced by Jill Waters
A Waters Company Production for BBC Radio 4


THU 10:00 Woman's Hour (b03mhz28)
Divorce phone-in

Jenni Murray presents a phone-in discussing how to be happy after divorce or separation. Listeners share their experiences of successful and painful separation, whether on good terms with a former-partner or not.

January is a month which sees more couples decide to break up than any other - how can you minimise the hurt and damage to children and other family members, and negotiate shared friendship groups and social life?

Presenter: Jenni Murray
Producer: Lucinda Montefiore
Output Editor: Jane Thurlow.


THU 10:45 15 Minute Drama (b03mj1xt)
Margaret Oliphant - Hester

Episode 4

Penelope Wilton and Lyndsey Marshal star in this high Victorian tale of a woman who runs her own bank.

Sometimes called 'the feminist Trollope', Margaret Oliphant is an unjustly-neglected British writer of the nineteenth century, famed for her perceptive, ironic psychology, and her strong female characters. And Hester has a striking premise: a young woman in a nineteenth-century Cheshire town, having been snubbed and discarded in marriage, does something truly radical. When the family bank is in danger of a run, she pledges her whole private fortune to save it. But instead of merely underwriting it, in return she insists on running the bank herself, as a single woman, in defiance of all convention.

Using Oliphant's deliciously perceptive and sardonic narration, allied to a radical dramatisation by Kate Clanchy and Zena Forster, 'Hester' reveals a flawed and fascinating heroine, reborn for radio.

4/5
By Margaret Oliphant
Dramatised by Kate Clanchy and Zena Forster

Hester doesn't want to see it. But here it is, swinging round slowly. The reverse of the medal - the other side of Edward's picture.

Producer/Director ..... Jonquil Panting.


THU 11:00 Crossing Continents (b03mj1xw)
Greenland: To dig or not to dig?

Could Greenland become the world's next resource hotspot? The government there hopes so - they've been travelling the world touting the country's vast reserves of oil and gas, and huge deposits of iron ore, gold and rare-earth elements. As melting icecaps make all these resources more accessible, mining promises riches for Greenland and the ultimate prize of full independence from Denmark. But there's a catch - many of the rare earth minerals are surrounded by uranium, pitching Greenland into the world of nuclear politics and environmental hazard. Nowhere is this clearer than in the small town of Narsaq in the country's south. Two proposed rare-earth mines could reverse the town's economic decline, but one just miles away will mine uranium too. James Fletcher travels to Narsaq to ask whether mining will be a blessing or a curse.


THU 11:30 Beyond Bollywood (b03mj1xy)
Journalist Sarfraz Manzoor visits India to meet a new generation of musicians and singers performing Indie, Reggae, Ska and Rap, and examines whether this western influenced scene can seriously rival the trademark sounds of Bollywood and Bangra.

Although Bollywood music is still the mass market choice on Indian stereos the alternative scene continues to grow and find its voice. Recently there's been a notable rise in the number of rock music festivals, dance nights and music events attracting aspiring young Indians.

To discover the impact this alternative music scene is having on India, Sarfraz Manzoor journeys to Delhi and visits Hauz Khas village often cited as the catalyst for introducing a wave of new bands and fresh musical genres into the market.

Hauz Khas is home to the offices of the Indian version of The New Musical Express and Manzoor speaks with its Editor Sam Lal and learns how the Village and the internet has been pivotal in the advancement and popularity of artists such as the Ska Vengers and Rapper Prozpekt who produce socially relevant music.

Exploring India's first alternative radio station, Radio 79, Manzoor meets with Raghav Dang who broadcasts Pressure Drop and is a founder member of the band The Reggae Rajas. Meeting female artists Talia Bentson and Ritika Singh he also discovers why women are very happy to pursue a singing career in the East.

As India's alternative music scene continues to develop Manzoor will explore the challenges ahead and learn whether these new songs provide a greater sense of identity for young people.

Producer: Stephen Garner


THU 12:00 You and Yours (b03mj1y0)
The rise of online gambling

Peter White presents the first of a two part investigation into gambling in modern Britain and the price some people pay for it. We explore the different ways you can sell your house if you want to save on fees and we're in Demark to see what the country can teach the UK about energy policy.


THU 12:57 Weather (b03mg0m4)
The latest weather forecast.


THU 13:00 World at One (b03mg0m7)
National and international news. Listeners can share their views via email: wato@bbc.co.uk or on twitter: #wato.


THU 13:45 Across the Board (b03mjlzq)
Series 1

Hou Yifan

Dominic Lawson conducts a series of interviews over a game of chess. In this episode he interviews the women's world champion, Hou Yifan. Still only 19, she's one of only a handful of women to have become an elite grandmaster. And she comes from a country with no strong link to chess, China.


THU 14:00 The Archers (b03mhvqh)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 on Wednesday]


THU 14:15 Katie Hims - Listening to the Dead (b03mj1y2)
4. Ruby's Shoes

Ruby Tully grows up unaware of her clairvoyant heritage, and finds that her gift is a curse in an age of experimental psychology.

by Katie Hims,

Directed by Jessica Dromgoole.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in January 2014.


THU 15:00 Open Country (b03mj1y4)
The Legacy of Flodden Field

The Battle of Flodden was a turning point in the history of the UK, setting the stage for the subsequent Union of the Crowns between Scotland and England in 1603.

The border village of Branxton lays claim to having the "smallest visitor centre in the world". Housed in a converted telephone box, this unique project - dedicated to the Battle of Flodden - is the brain child of Clive Hallam-Baker a battle expert who lives just opposite. Flodden was the largest battle fought between England and Scotland. However today, Clive reflects on the joy of being a 'borderer' - living happily across the land of two countries.

Lord Joicey owns much of the land that bore witness to the Battle of Flodden. His estate is located in England but in working the land itself he shares the same issues as his neighbour just a mile away in Scotland. He values his cross border friendships and discusses the geographical quirks of this border that lead to his wife coming 'up' from Scotland to marry him in England.

Archaeologist Chris Burgess has been working with groups from both sides of the borders to understand more fully the landscape where the Battle of Flodden took place. Volunteers have come to commemorate their past and to enjoy each other's company in the present.

Just a few miles from the battle ground is the border village of Crookham. Here, the United Reformed Church has created a peace garden and centre for reconciliation. Designed by Dougie James, Rev Dave Herbert and Rev Mary Taylor explain how this is a truly cross-borders initiative which they hope will provide a quiet and peaceful place for people to relax, reflect and perhaps find closure.


THU 15:27 Radio 4 Appeal (b03mckqg)
[Repeat of broadcast at 07:55 on Sunday]


THU 15:30 Open Book (b03mcl9d)
[Repeat of broadcast at 16:00 on Sunday]


THU 16:00 The Film Programme (b03mj1y6)
Idris Elba on Mandela; Films for 2014; Newcastle Film Club

Francine Stock talks to Idris Elba about playing Mandela in a new film Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom directed by Justin Chadwick. Elba has recently appeared in Thor: The Dark World, Pacific Rim and BBC TV detective series Luther.

Analyst Charles Gant and independent cinema owner Kevin Markwick look back at the box office highs and lows of 2013 before turning their attention to the most anticipated films of 2014 and the awards season.

Daniel Bruhl tell all about his big filmic break.

And the award-winning film club in Newcastle, County Down in Northern Ireland.

Producer: Ruth Sanderson.


THU 16:30 BBC Inside Science (b03mj1y8)
Ancient Human Occupation of Britain

The ancient inhabitants of Britain; when did they get here? Who were they? And how do we know? Alice Roberts meets some of the AHOB team, who have been literally digging for answers.

The Natural History Museum's Chris Stringer, is the Director of AHOB, the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain, a project which, over the past 12 years, has brought together a large team of palaeontologists, archaeologists, geologists and geographers, to pool their expertise in order to unpick British History.

Nick Ashton from the British Museum has been in charge of the north Norfolk site of Happisburgh, where the crumbling coast line has revealed the oldest examples of human life in Britain, 400,000 years earlier than previous findings of human habitation, in Boxgrove in Sussex.

The ancient landscape had its share of exotic animals. Hippos have been dug up from Trafalgar Square, mammoths have been excavated from Fleet Street. Professor Danielle Schreve is an expert in ancient mammal fossils, and tells us what these bones reveal about the ancient climate. Less glamorous than the big fossils, the humble vole is so useful and accurate as a dating tool that it has been nicknamed "the Vole Clock."

Carbon dating has improved vastly in the past few years. Rob Dinnis, from Edinburgh University, explains why the AHOB team has been returning to old collections and redating them.


THU 17:00 PM (b03mj1yb)
Coverage and analysis of the day's news.


THU 18:00 Six O'Clock News (b03mg0mc)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.


THU 18:30 The Secret World (b03mj1yd)
Series 4

Episode 6

Peter Sallis lays down a track for Lady Gaga's new album.

Chancellor Merkel plays 'snog marry avoid' and Ed Miliband learns to boogie.

It can only be the strange goings on in the show that shines a light on the private lives of public people.

With:

Margaret Cabourn-Smith
Jon Culshaw
Julian Dutton
Lewis MacLeod
Jess Robinson
Duncan Wisbey

Written by Bill Dare, Julian Dutton and Duncan Wisbey.

Produced and created by: Bill Dare.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in January 2014.


THU 19:00 The Archers (b03mj1yg)
Rob and Helen decide it's time to make their relationship public. Helen resolves to tell her parents after Henry's birthday party, paving the way for Rob's arrival around four o'clock. Helen and Pat set about icing Henry's dinosaur cake. When Tom arrives, Helen announces tentatively that she has some news to impart later.

As she feeds the cats, Peggy receives a phone call telling her that Jack has died. He'd slipped away very peacefully in the night. Sympathetic Lilian agrees to take her to see him one last time. She observes gently that it shows Peggy's instinct to go back yesterday was exactly right. Peggy agrees. She's sure Jack knew for a brief moment who she was. They agree not to tell everyone immediately, but to wait until after Henry's party.

On the way back from The Laurels they call at Bridge Farm and break the news, putting paid to Helen's well-laid plans.

Oblivious Rob arrives at the allotted time. Appraised of the situation, he offers to leave the present he brought for Henry, and makes to depart. Helen follows him, and they quietly agree that, agonising though it will be, they'll delay their news until after the funeral.


THU 19:15 Front Row (b03mj1yj)
Last Vegas; Jarvis Cocker and Martin Wallace; Tom Price

With John Wilson.

Last Vegas stars Hollywood heavyweights Morgan Freeman, Robert De Niro and Kevin Kilne as a group of sixty and seventy somethings throwing a stag do for their old friend Billy, played by Michael Douglas. The film, which has been described as The Hangover for the older generation, explores issues of retirement and bereavement against the backdrop of the excesses of Las Vegas. Antonia Quirke reviews.

The novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard, known for her best-selling series about the lives of the Cazalet family, has died at the age of 90. In interviews previously recorded for Radio 4, we hear from Elizabeth Jane Howard and her step-son, Martin Amis.

Sculptor Tom Price talks about a new exhibition of his work at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. His bronze sculptures of contemporary figures were initially inspired by the expressions on people's faces as they watched a performance piece by Price in which he spent a week licking a gallery wall. Tom Price discusses the legacy of the YBAs and using dentists' tools to create the fine detail on his sculptures.

Jarvis Cocker and Martin Wallace talk about their film The Big Melt which was commissioned to celebrate the centenary of stainless steel production in Sheffield. Created from archive from the British Film Institute and set to a score composed by Cocker and performed by Sheffield musicians, the film tells the story of steel and of Sheffield's past.

Front Row looks ahead to what 2014 may have in store in the world of pop music. Music journalist Kitty Empire discusses the musicians that are likely to dominate the next twelve months and which artists are likely to release new albums.

Producer: Olivia Skinner.


THU 19:45 15 Minute Drama (b03mj1xt)
[Repeat of broadcast at 10:45 today]


THU 20:00 The Report (b03mj1yl)
Miners' Strike Miscarriages?

With cabinet papers relating to the 1984 miners' strike due to be published tomorrow, Jenny Chryss examines growing calls for a public inquiry into allegations of widespread falsification of evidence by the police against some of the miners who ended up facing charges.

On June 18 1984, scores of pickets and police officers were injured during one of the bloodiest events of the year long strike. Protesters at Orgreave were trying to stop coke from the plant being transported to the British Steel mill at Scunthorpe. Ninety three people were arrested that day with some charged with riot, which carries a potential life sentence. However, nearly four months into the trial of fifteen of the accused pickets the case against them collapsed.

Thirty years on, it's alleged that some police officers manipulated the evidence given in court and colluded over their statement writing or were told what to write. But no officer has ever been charged.

And allegations about police malpractice spread beyond Orgreave. The programme hears from one former miner who says he was beaten almost unconscious during a picket at Frickley Colliery in West Yorkshire and then charged with a public order offence on the basis of falsified evidence. The case against him was later dropped.

Campaigners and some MPs are now calling for a public inquiry and are drawing parallels between these allegations and similar revelations about the manipulation of evidence after the Hillsborough football disaster five years later. The Hillsborough Independent Panel revealed that more than a hundred and sixty South Yorkshire police statements had been altered after the disaster in which ninety six Liverpool fans died in April 1989.

Producer: Sally Chesworth.


THU 20:30 In Business (b03mj272)
The Music Industry

It has been long established that the music industry has changed irrevocably over the past decade, with the internet disrupting the status quo as it has many other sectors. But the story has moved on from an industry dying from dwindling record sales.

The traditional way of releasing your record has changed thanks to new publishing companies, companies that gather music statistics and the streaming services such as Spotify and Deezer. Now these companies are disrupting the industry once again. Peter Day speaks with the key businesses involved such as Spotify and Musicmetric and the traditional, established players such as Sony Music.

Yet streaming services have also caused controversy because their payments to musicians are seemingly minuscule. Radiohead's lead singer Thom Yorke has battled against Spotify, calling it the 'last fart of a dying corpse' ; how can musicians make money now? Peter hears from a band just starting out, Yossarian, to Moby who has sold millions of records and singer songwriter Billy Bragg. We compare how much musicians receive from different sources of revenue.

But others see the streaming services as saviours and the future of the music industry. Is the problem of small returns from songs streamed actually a clash between a new way of listening to music and the traditional way the industry has been run? Sony Music explain how they are writing their record deals with musicians and that they are thinking about changing this for the new digital age.

Producer: Charlotte Pritchard.


THU 21:00 BBC Inside Science (b03mj1y8)
[Repeat of broadcast at 16:30 today]


THU 21:30 In Our Time (b03mhyzk)
[Repeat of broadcast at 09:00 today]


THU 21:58 Weather (b03mg0mj)
The latest weather forecast.


THU 22:00 The World Tonight (b03mj29y)
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.


THU 22:45 Book at Bedtime (b03mj3hm)
The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed out of the Window and Disappeared

Episode 9

A picaresque tale of a centenarian, police and thieves, and moments in world history. As his mother put it, "Things are what they are, and whatever will be will be."

At 100 years-old, Allan Karlsson is a reluctant birthday boy. In the old people's home they've prepared a party for him. The Mayor and the local press will be there. But this party never gets started. Still in his bedroom slippers, Allan makes his getaway through the window and begins an unlikely adventure.

Allan is no stranger to adventure, as the stories of his earlier life reveal - a life in which he dined with world leaders such as Franco, Truman and Stalin and found himself behind the scenes during major events of the twentieth century.

Jonas Jonasson was born in 1961 in Vaxjö, Sweden. After starting up and then running the successful media company OTW for twenty years, he sold the business and moved to Switzerland. There he completed The Hundred-year-Old Man Who Climbed Out Of The Window And Disappeared. Jonas lives on the island of Gotland in Sweden.

Translated by Rod Bradbury.

Episode 9:
After painstaking detective work, Chief Inspector Aronsson makes his way to Bosse's farm. And we learn how Allan once found himself in a room with Kim Il Sung and Mao Tse-Tung.

Reader: Martin Jarvis
Abridger: Jeremy Osborne

Producer: Rosalynd Ward
A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4.


THU 23:00 Alice's Wunderland (b03mj3hp)
Series 2

Unclear War

A trip to Wunderland, the Poundland of magical realms. In this last episode of the series, Wunderland is under threat frpm an Unclear War.

Sketch show by Alice Lowe.

Also starring Richard Glover, Simon Greenall, Rachel Stubbings, Clare Thompson and Marcia Warren.

Produced by Lyndsay Fenner.


THU 23:30 Bingo, Barbie and Barthes: 50 Years of Cultural Studies (b03c2zw4)
Episode 1

Fifty years after Richard Hoggart established Cultural Studies with the founding of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham, Laurie Taylor takes a personal look at what this new discipline has given us -- taking cultural studies out of the academy to ask: has it really narrowed the separation between high and low culture, or just been an excuse for soap fans to write dissertations on Coronation Street?

Founded with money donated by Penguin following the Lady Chatterley trial, the idea of the CCCS was to move away from traditional cultural thinking, which emphasized the importance of "high culture," toward a focus on contemporary "lived experience" and popular culture. So out went a preoccupation with the Great Tradition, and in came a theory-infused approach to pop music and soap operas.

Society was changing. There needed to be a response to the explosion in leisure and popular culture in the post-war period and it took outsiders -- Richard Hoggart, Raymond Williams and the slightly younger Stuart Hall -- to identify what these new appetites could tell us about changes in the wider society.

The aim in refocusing on mass media and popular song was to develop a critical language that would spread throughout society. It was of absolute importance that people were able to arm themselves against peddlers of rubbish. It mattered to those founders that people be able to look at a magazine or a soap and work out whether it had been produced out of sincere enthusiasm or cynicism.

In the intervening years, culture has been radically democratised -- via tabloids, TV and the internet -- and it's cultural studies that provided the critical tools to understand that. But has it really made us any more savvy about what's being sold to us, culturally?

Featuring: Christopher Frayling, Paul Gilroy, Stuart Hall, Lynsey Hanley, Matthew Hilton, Owen Jones, Caspar Melville, Angela McRobbie and Paul Willis.

Producer: Martin Williams.



FRIDAY 03 JANUARY 2014

FRI 00:00 Midnight News (b03mg0pb)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.


FRI 00:30 Book of the Week (b03mjlzn)
[Repeat of broadcast at 09:45 on Thursday]


FRI 00:48 Shipping Forecast (b03mg0pd)
The latest shipping forecast.


FRI 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (b03mg0ph)
BBC Radio 4 joins the BBC World Service.


FRI 05:20 Shipping Forecast (b03mg0pk)
The latest shipping forecast.


FRI 05:30 News Briefing (b03mg0pn)
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.


FRI 05:43 Prayer for the Day (b03mzvyy)
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Leslie Griffiths.


FRI 05:45 Farming Today (b03mj8ll)
The Environment Agency has issued flood warnings and alerts across Britain, following weeks of heavy rain, and the bad weather shows no signs of stopping. For many farmers, the conditions are becoming very tough, with ditches overflowing and grassland churned into mud, whilst animals grazing outdoors are being moved to higher ground. Caz Graham hears from two farmers who've been affected.

As the Duke of Cambridge prepares to embark upon a ten week course in agricultural management, we ask what he should be learning, both inside and outside the classroom.

And Beatrice Fenton is in the Cotswolds, finding out about a project to boost the numbers of farmland birds with swathes of winter birdseed crops.

Presented by Caz Graham and produced by Jules Benham.


FRI 05:58 Tweet of the Day (b03mj8ln)
Magpie

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

David Attenborough presents the magpie. Magpies have always had a rascally streetwise image. They featured in anti-theft campaigns on television in the 1980s, and long before that, their kleptomaniac tendencies were celebrated by Rossini in his opera, 'The Thieving Magpie'. Their pied plumage isn't just black and white, but gleams with iridescent greens, blues and purples.


FRI 06:00 Today (b03mj8lq)
Morning news and current affairs. Including Sports Desk; Weather; Thought for the Day.


FRI 09:00 Desert Island Discs: Longplay (b03mckqs)
[Repeat of broadcast at 11:15 on Sunday]


FRI 09:45 Book of the Week (b03mj8ls)
Man Belong Mrs Queen

Episode 5

As a bookish child with a posh accent, growing up on Merseyside in the 1980s, Matthew Baylis identified with the much-mocked Prince Philip as a fellow outsider. He even had a poster of him on his bedroom wall.

Years later, as an anthropology student, Baylis learned of the existence of a Philip cult on the South Sea island of Tanna. Why was it there? Nobody had a convincing answer. Nobody even seemed to want to find one.

His curiosity fatally piqued, he travelled over 10,000 miles to find a society both remote and slap-bang in the shipping-lanes of history. It's a place where US airmen, Lithuanian libertarians, and Graeco-Danish Princes have had as much impact as the missionaries and the slave-traders. On the rumbling slopes of this remarkable volcanic island, banjaxed by frequent doses of the local narcotic, suffering from a relentless diet of yams and regularly accused of being a divine emissary of the Duke, Baylis attempted to get to the bottom of this bizarre cult. In doing so he draws some ironic lessons about our own island 'myths' and comes to respect the pragmatic realpolitik of his South Seas hosts.

Abridged and produced by Jill Waters
A Waters Company Production for BBC Radio 4


FRI 10:00 Woman's Hour (b03mj8lv)
Men and anti-sexism campaigns; reasons to enjoy January; Romany version of Carmen

We look at men who want to join in the struggle with women against sexism. How easy is it for them to get involved? Are they reluctant or embarrassed to make their voices heard? Do women need to be more welcoming of them?

Carmen, the beautiful, passionate Spanish gypsy woman is probably best known from the Opera by Bizet. BBC Radio Drama North have produced a new version by Romany writer, Dan Allum staring Candis Nergaard as Carmen. They talk about the new production which will be the Woman's Hour drama starting on Monday 6th January.

Most of us probably need little convincing that January deserves its thoroughly maligned reputation but is it actually as bad as we like to make out ? In a spirit of open mindedness to kick off the new year, we reconsider possible reasons for enjoying January and the season of midwinter with novelists M J Hyland and Victoria Hislop.

Presenter: Jenni Murray
Producer: Bernadette McConnell.


FRI 10:45 15 Minute Drama (b03mj8lx)
Margaret Oliphant - Hester

Episode 5

Penelope Wilton and Lyndsey Marshal star in this high Victorian tale of a woman who runs her own bank.

Sometimes called 'the feminist Trollope', Margaret Oliphant is an unjustly-neglected British writer of the nineteenth century, famed for her perceptive, ironic psychology, and her strong female characters. And Hester has a striking premise: a young woman in a nineteenth-century Cheshire town, having been snubbed and discarded in marriage, does something truly radical. When the family bank is in danger of a run, she pledges her whole private fortune to save it. But instead of merely underwriting it, in return she insists on running the bank herself, as a single woman, in defiance of all convention.

Using Oliphant's deliciously perceptive and sardonic narration, allied to a radical dramatisation by Kate Clanchy and Zena Forster, 'Hester' reveals a flawed and fascinating heroine, reborn for radio.

5/5
By Margaret Oliphant
Dramatised by Kate Clanchy and Zena Forster

This life is full of repetitions. Once again Mr Rule is facing a run on the bank which could close Vernon's forever.

Producer/Director ..... Jonquil Panting.


FRI 11:00 UK Confidential (b03mj8lz)
1984

Martha Kearney uncovers the secrets within the Government files of 1984.

Margaret Thatcher's government faced some formidable adversaries. The long-anticipated battle with the National Union of Mineworkers and its leader, Arthur Scargill, finally erupted, dominating the political scene well into 1985. The charismatic Ken Livingstone, leader of the Greater London Council, was winning the costly PR war against abolition of the GLC. And terror hit home with the shooting of policewoman Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan Embassy and the IRA bombing of the Conservative Party Conference in Brighton.

On the world stage, the Cold War reached a crucial turning point. The cost of the nuclear arms race was rocketing and the world needed a new approach to East-West relations. Rising star of the Soviet Politburo, Mikhail Gorbachev, was invited to Britain and spent five hours at Chequers in a now famous meeting with the Prime Minister.

As the official Cabinet papers of 1984 are opened to the public for the first time, Martha Kearney discovers how these events were viewed in Government. With access to the Prime Minister's personal correspondence, minutes of top secret meetings and telephone calls, and confidential policy advice, Martha can now offer fresh insights into history.

Former Ministers and other key insiders from the time join Martha in the studio to help her interpret the papers and give their own impressions of the revelations within them.

Producer: Deborah Dudgeon
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4.


FRI 12:00 You and Yours (b03mj8m3)
Online gambling

In a second special report, Peter White investigates the politics and protection for users of gambling websites.

One in five of every new bike sold in the Netherlands is electric, but despite the advantages of 'assisted cycling' in countries with hills and inclines, they're yet to take off in the UK to the same degree.

And the Energy Ombudsman says account switching has led to a sharp rise in complaints.

Presenter: Peter White
Producer: Joel Moors.


FRI 12:57 Weather (b03mg0pr)
The latest weather forecast.


FRI 13:00 World at One (b03mg0pv)
National and international news. Listeners can share their views via email: wato@bbc.co.uk or on twitter: #wato.


FRI 13:45 Across the Board (b03mj945)
Series 1

Natan Sharansky

Dominic Lawson conducts a series of interviews over a game of chess. In this episode he plays the former Soviet dissident and Israeli politician Natan Sharansky.


FRI 14:00 The Archers (b03mj1yg)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 on Thursday]


FRI 14:15 Katie Hims - Listening to the Dead (b03mjcb9)
5. Tuesday's Child

Tuesday grows up assuming her mother abandoned her, despite the voices in her dreams that try to tell her otherwise

Tuesday ..... Jeany Spark
Tuesday 11 ..... Rose Hilton Hille
Tuesday 3 ..... Rosa Yevtushenko
Frank ..... David Seddon
Peggy ..... Lisa Stevenson
Maggie ..... Carolyn Pickles
Ruby ..... Ami Metcalf
Nish ..... Paul Bazely
Oliver 20 ..... Joel MacCormack
Oliver 55 ..... Michael Bertenshaw
Dan ..... Harry Jardine
Melinda ..... Georgie Fuller
Boss ..... Sean Murray

by Katie Hims,

Directed by Jessica Dromgoole

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in January 2014.


FRI 15:00 Gardeners' Question Time (b03mjcbc)
Shropshire

Peter Gibbs presents the horticultural panel show from Shropshire. Answering questions from the local audience are Chris Beardshaw, Bob Flowerdew and Anne Swithinbank.

Chris explores the pioneering history of the Shropshire Horticultural Society and the early days of the longest running flower show. Anne Swithinbank visits The Quarry in Shrewsbury to share her passion for one of the stars of the winter garden.

Producer: Howard Shannon.
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4.

This week's questions:

Q. Does the panel have any suggestions for a temporary screen to hide an unsightly area of my garden? It needs to be 4-5ft(1.5m) high by August next year.

A. Michaelmas Daisies would provide a good cover. Give them a chop in May so that they become bushy rather than too tall. Try the small perennial Rudbeckias, the upright grass Calamagrostis, or even Popping Corn with its vibrant red cobs.

Q. Could the panel tell me what would happen if I pollarded a Silver Birch to about 8ft (2.4m)?

A. Pollarding would ruin the appearance of such a tree. The best way to reduce the size of a Birch tree is to coppice it. Coppicing is rejuvenating from ground level whereas pollarding is cutting the head off.

As this is a single stem specimen and the bark is fully developed, coppicing may not be effective and it may remain as a stump. Wait until spring and cut into the bark with a pruning saw, penetrating only a few millimetres. Imagine it as a clock face, cutting from the twelve point around to two. This generates dormant buds from below the cut and throws up a new shoot. The following year do it on the opposite side a little further up, forming a second shoot. Let these shoots mature to about a thumb-size in thickness and then cut off the tree head. Go into a 5-8 to eight year rotation, taking out any old wood.

Q. What would the panel suggest using to underplant a traditional laid hedge?

A. If it is a naturalistic setting, you can't beat Sweet Cicely. It is a Cow Parsley-like plant with a ferny leaf and white flowers. Mix in early flowering specimens such as Trachystemon Orientalis. It is a member of the Borage family with blue flowers and broad, bristly foliage. Also try adding Lamiums, such as the Florentinum with its yellow flowers.

Q. What could I plant into a south-facing window box for a splash of colour this spring? Incidentally, I usually forget to water anything I plant!

A. The best survivors are Pinks. You could add Rosemary and Sage in-between. Try adding structure with some small Euonymus such as the Emerald 'n' Gold or Emerald Gaiety. Add spring flowering plants and bulbs that can be taken out and added to the garden.

Q. How can I control the rampaging Nasturtium that is taking over my allotment?

A. You can eat all parts of the annual form of Nasturtium. It will prolifically produce seeds in hot, impoverished soil. It is best to dig it in a good 30cm (11inches), burying the seeds too deep to allow them back through. When you see the seeds germinating, pluck them out and eat them in a salad.

Q. Does the panel have any suggestions for low growing planting to stabilize a steep, 8ft high riverbank? It is prone to flooding but is well drained the rest of the time.

A. Iris Pseudacorus or Yellow Flag is robust and could be planted in clumps during spring. Once it has developed you could add some smaller boggy plants. You might need to introduce some mechanical stability, such as gabions, to support the bank and allow you to place plants behind the barrier. Another structural solution is to take staffs of alder and willow. Trim out sections of the fresh wood and knock them into the ground. Place these at regular intervals with the willow weaved in between. You will end up with living verticals, connected by a basket-like structure where sediment collects. The plants will root into the ground and can be pruned over winter.


FRI 15:45 First for Radio (b03mjcbf)
Series 2

Finding Your Voice

This returning series features three emerging novelists who have been well praised and won prizes but haven't until now written short stories for radio. Ned Beauman (author of Boxer, Beetle and The Teleportation Accident), Jenn Ashworth (Cold Light and The Friday Gospels) and Alis Shaw (The Man Who Rained, The Girl with Glass Feet) make their story debuts for Radio 4.

1. Finding Your Voice
In Ned Beauman's tale, an actor with a beautiful voice has to act ruthlessly after a strange trip to Bulgaria..

Reader Nicholas Boulton

Producer Duncan Minshull.


FRI 16:00 Last Word (b03mjcbh)
Elizabeth Jane Howard, John Fortune, Vera Houghton, Sir Christopher Curwen, Harold Camping

Julian Worricker on

The award-winning novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard. Hilary Mantel reflects on the writer who she says helped us to do the necessary thing - open our eyes and our hearts.

Also the comedian and satirist John Fortune who found fame through his TV collaborations with John Bird and Rory Bremner.

Vera Houghton, a pioneer in the fields of abortion law reform and free birth control.

Sir Christopher Curwen, who was head of the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, when Oleg Gordievsky - Britain's star source inside the KGB - was successfully exfiltrated from Moscow.

And the American radio evangelist, Harold Camping, who was the first major end-of-the-world forecaster of the internet age.

Producer: Neil George.


FRI 16:30 More or Less (b03mjcbk)
The Power of Pension Fees

When the government announced that fees charged by pension providers could be capped, many listeners were sceptical that the benefits could be as great as was being claimed. Money Box presenter Paul Lewis explains why the numbers do add up. And Tim Harford interviews Dr Matt Levy of UCL about the power of compound charges, and why people often find it so hard a mathematical concept to understand.

Are Christians "by far the most persecuted religious body on the planet"? It's claimed that an average of 100,000 have died as martyrs every year for the past decade. The Vatican's called it a credible number. But is it? Ruth Alexander and Tim Harford fact-check the widely-quoted statistic.

Plus, the logic of imperial measures, as explored by Number Hub presenter Matt Parker; and is Britain's railway really Europe's 'most improved'?

Also, six cyclists were killed in just two weeks in London at the end of 2013. Does this statistic show dangers have increased for cyclists? Tim interviews Jody Aberdein, who has crunched the numbers for Significance Magazine (You can find the article Jody co-wrote with Professor David Spiegelhalter of Cambridge University here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1740-9713.2013.00715.x/pdf).

Presenter: Tim Harford
Producer: Ruth Alexander.


FRI 17:00 PM (b03mjcbm)
Full coverage and analysis of the day's news.


FRI 18:00 Six O'Clock News (b03mg0py)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.


FRI 18:30 Chain Reaction (b03mjcbp)
Series 9

Kevin Bridges talks to Frankie Boyle

Razor sharp Scottish comedian Kevin Bridges talks to his comedy mentor, Frankie Boyle.

Chain Reaction is the long running host-less chat show where last week's interviewee becomes this week's interviewer.

Producer: Carl Cooper

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in December 2013.


FRI 19:00 The Archers (b03mjcbr)
Joe visits Peggy to pay his respects, and they discuss Jack's legacy in the village. Peggy's glad to hear Darrell and Rosa are back on speaking terms.

Driving back in the trap, Joe fills Eddie in on what a hard life Peggy's had. Eddie demurs, but tells Joe not to go on about it. He's trying to keep Darrell on the up. He's just telling Joe he'd like convert Fat Paul's old truck for Darrell, when they're nearly run off the road by Jill in her car.

Ruth lets David know he'll be doing the milking next Thursday. She's taking Jill to the hairdresser. Anything's better than Jill driving herself. But Ruth notices a diary clash later. They're just trying to sort out Jill's transport when, right on cue, Eddie arrives demanding they stop Jill from driving.

Jill recovers at Peggy's with a restorative cup of sweet tea. She's definitely not getting behind the wheel again! Peggy suggests she doesn't do anything hasty. A simple operation could solve the problem, couldn't it? They share memories of Jack over family photos, before Kenton arrives to collect Jill.

Alone at last, Peggy says her goodbyes to Jack to the strains of Love Is The Sweetest Thing.


FRI 19:15 Front Row (b03mjcbt)
Naomie Harris; Nigella Lawson in The Taste; Mahan Esfahani; 2014 in books and art

With John Wilson.

Naomie Harris talks about playing Winnie Mandela in the biopic Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom. Harris discusses taking on the part without realising the crucial role that Winnie Mandela played in forming the modern South Africa, researching her life and relationships and meeting Winnie Mandela herself.

Nigella Lawson is one of three judges in new cookery show The Taste. Part Masterchef, part The Voice, the programme, which has already been a hit in America, involves judges eating just one anonymous spoonful of each dish, and judging on taste alone. Boyd Hilton discusses the increasing number of fusion TV formats.

John talks to the Iranian-American harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani, who in 2011 gave the first solo harpsichord recital at the BBC Proms, and who is now releasing his debut CD featuring sonatas by CPE Bach, son of JS Bach.

Front Row looks ahead to what 2014 may have in store in literature and art. Alex Clark discusses the books that are likely to make an impact this year and Rachel Campbell-Johnston previews the exhibitions to look forward to.


FRI 19:45 15 Minute Drama (b03mj8lx)
[Repeat of broadcast at 10:45 today]


FRI 20:00 Correspondents' Look Ahead (b03mjcbw)
2014

Owen Bennett-Jones is joined by four of the BBC's top foreign and economic correspondents who give their predictions about what is likely to shape our world in 2014. James Robbins draws on more than ten years experience as the BBC's diplomatic correspondent, while North America Editor Mark Mardell provides his view from Washington. Chief International Correspondent Lyse Doucet takes a short break from reporting across the world while Chief Business correspondent Linda Yueh gives her view of the global economic outlook. Where is our attention most likely to be focused? And what will be the consequences for the United Kingdom and the rest of the world?
Produced by Mark Savage.


FRI 20:50 A Point of View (b03mjcby)
The Perils of Belief

John Gray reflects on the damage that can be caused by evangelical belief in a religion or in a political idea. "Whether they are religious or political, evangelists seem to me a blight on civilisation. For them as for those they persecute or bully, belief is an obstacle to a fulfilling life."

Producer: Sheila Cook.


FRI 21:00 Saturday Drama (b01pnfjp)
White Snow

Faced with an upstart stepdaughter and lied to by her King about the real object of his affection, his unnaturally perfect daughter, the Queen is forced into decisive and deadly action. In this re-imagining of the Grimm brother's fairy-tale, we find ourselves at one with a fun loving and light hearted Queen, who having been wooed by an emotionally arrested king, soon finds that her main rival is his somewhat spooky and unhealthily translucent daughter, Snow White. It isn't clear what hold this eerily passive child has over the King but the implication is that the trauma of being cuckolded by his first wife, has been transformed into the myth of a flawless child - a child who keenly aware of her power over him, determines that nothing, especially not a mere stepmother is going to come between them. By any reasonable assessment of the situation, Snow White has to die...but will she?

Dramatised by Frances Byrnes
Directed by Eoin O'Callaghan.


FRI 21:58 Weather (b03mg0q2)
The latest weather forecast.


FRI 22:00 The World Tonight (b03mjcc0)
With Carolyn Quinn.

The UK's flooded coastlines; we hear from Wales and Cornwall.

The US role in South Sudan and diplomatic hopes.

Energy security and costs in the UK - the political debate continues.


FRI 22:45 Book at Bedtime (b03mjcc2)
The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed out of the Window and Disappeared

Episode 10

A picaresque tale of a centenarian, police and thieves, and moments in world history. As his mother put it, "Things are what they are, and whatever will be will be."

At 100 years-old, Allan Karlsson is a reluctant birthday boy. In the old people's home they've prepared a party for him. The Mayor and the local press will be there. But this party never gets started. Still in his bedroom slippers, Allan makes his getaway through the window and begins an unlikely adventure.

Allan is no stranger to adventure, as the stories of his earlier life reveal - a life in which he dined with world leaders such as Franco, Truman and Stalin and found himself behind the scenes during major events of the twentieth century.

Jonas Jonasson was born in 1961 in Vaxjö, Sweden. After starting up and then running the successful media company OTW for twenty years, he sold the business and moved to Switzerland. There he completed The Hundred-year-Old Man Who Climbed Out Of The Window And Disappeared. Jonas lives on the island of Gotland in Sweden.

Translated by Rod Bradbury.

Episode 10:
At Bosse's farm, Allan and his friends are apparently under arrest. And in 1968, Allan becomes a CIA agent in Moscow.

Reader: Martin Jarvis
Abridger: Jeremy Osborne

Producer: Rosalynd Ward
A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4.


FRI 23:00 Great Lives (b03mfwk1)
[Repeat of broadcast at 16:30 on Tuesday]


FRI 23:30 Bingo, Barbie and Barthes: 50 Years of Cultural Studies (b03cf03d)
Episode 2

It's fifty years since Richard Hoggart established Cultural Studies with the founding of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies in Birmingham, and in this second programme looking at the discipline, Laurie Taylor looks at the ways in which cultural studies has reached beyond academia and into everyday life.

Featuring: Sir Christopher Frayling, Paul Gilroy, Stuart Hall, Lynsey Hanley, Matthew Hilton, Caspar Melville, Suzanne Moore and Joe Moran.

Producer: Martin Williams.