The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
Benjamin Zephaniah reads his autobiography. As the writer flourishes, the man, now a husband, suffers at the cruel hands of infertility.
Desperate to have a child and be a father, Benjamin and his wife embark on IVF but, as his career flies, his belief in his ability to conceive comes to an end. That pain will never leave him but he decides to take on the taboo and talk about it in his poems and his writings, opening the doors for other people's pain to be understood.
Written and read by Benjamin Zephaniah
Abridged by Sara Davies
Producer: Celia de Wolff
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Richard Hill.
iPM listener, Malcolm, lives on the Norfolk coast overlooking the sea. But bad weather this year has left his house in a precarious situation, after the sand dunes separating his home from the shore were washed away.
Another listener recommends wing walking at his airfield for the iPM outside broadcast. Find out why he thinks it's so great and whether the programme will ever take to the skies.
Plus BBC Radio 1's Alice Levine reads our Your News Bulletin.
Get in touch on ipm@bbc.co.uk or @BBCiPM
Presented by Luke Jones and Eddie Mair. Produced by Cat Farnsworth.
The latest news headlines. Including the weather and a look at the papers.
Helen Mark explores the site of the former Copperworks near Swansea. As the huge mechanical puppet 'The Man Engine' visits to celebrate that great history of innovation and industry we look at how the geology of Wales has shaped its landscape but also its culture.
Professor Daniel Williams tells Helen about how heavy industry here had a global impact and how it continues to influence Welsh culture. Perhaps the best example of this is that iconic sound of the Welsh Male Voice Choir, many formed around the mines and associated industry and were of necessity all male.
Today that distinctive sound remains even though the mines and copperworks have closed and we hear from Huw Roberts of the Morriston Male Voice Choir about why it is important that this sound remains part of Swansea's culture.
Doug Evans and Ray Trotman, former workers at the Copperworks take us on a tour of the site to tell us about why song was so important to them and what they feel about the remains of industry we can see today.
Geoff Dendle wants to see the site preserved as testament to the huge contribution Swansea made to global industrialisation and Will Coleman explains why his 'Man Engine' celebrates that huge endeavour but also recognises the great human cost which mining and heavy industry had on the landscape and the people here.
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
The latest weather forecast.
News and current affairs. Including Yesterday in Parliament, Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
Extraordinary stories, unusual people and a sideways look at the world.
Jay Rayner and his culinary panel travel to the end of Cromer Pier. Dr Annie Gray, Andi Oliver, Jordan Bourke and Paula McIntrye answer the questions from the audience.
This week the panel get their teeth into some delicious Cromer crab - including tasting 2017's Best Cromer Crab Sandwich - as well as getting a comprehensive lesson in how to dress one.
They also offer up lots of suggestions of how to use two other local delicacies in your cooking; samphire and mint.
As always there are questions from the audience and interviews with local persons of food interest to keep the entertainment coming at the end of the pier.
Produced by Darby Dorras
Assistant Producer: Laurence Bassett
Food Consultant: Anna Colquhoun
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4.
A look behind the scenes at Westminster.
Reports from writers and journalists around the world. Presented by Kate Adie.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
The latest news from the world of personal finance.
Miles Jupp is joined by Desiree Burch, Danny Finklestein, Holly Walsh and Andy Zaltzman for a satirical review of the week's news.
The latest weather forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
Jonathan Dimbleby presents political debate from Lady Margaret School in Fulham, London, with the Leader of the House of Commons Andrea Leadsom MP, Journalist and presenter Piers Morgan, Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry MP and the author Jeanette Winterson.
Listeners have their say on the issues discussed on Any Questions?
By Karl Marx
Dramatised by Sarah Woods
Starring David Threlfall
200 years since the birth of Karl Marx, this dramatization of his iconic work imagines what he would make of our 21st Century global economy. Sarah Woods updates the book to the present day and weaves its themes into a story. And, as with the book, the story begins with 'the commodity'.
"The commodity is, in the first place, an object outside us, a thing that by its properties satisfies human needs of whatever kind."
This is the story of the ultimate commodity: The smartphone. Today, at least half of the adult population owns one and by 2020 it's estimated around 70 per cent will - that's 6.1 billion people. It's a story that takes us from the cobalt mines of Africa to the tech firms of the UK. And what Marx's analysis reveals, is that the objects we each carry in our pockets aren't in fact phones at all...
Marx is a figure who divides opinion, but Das Kapital is one of the most influential books of the modern world. It informed and inspired a political movement that shaped the 20th Century and remains a key text in the study of modern economics. It's one of the few books that can claim to have changed the world.
Directed by James Robinson
A BBC Cymru Wales Production
The Writer
Sarah Woods works in collaboration with scientists, academics and charities to communicate current issues through innovative drama. For BBC Radio, she has written over thirty plays, series, adaptations and drama-documentaries. Recent Radio 4 projects range from a drama about our relationship with water (The State of Water) to a love story about the flu virus (My Life with Flu). Her most recent play for Radio 4 - Borderland - imagined a future UK, divided by borders. It won the Tinniswood Award for Best Audio Drama script at this year's BBC Audio Drama Awards.
Janice Forsyth presents Opening Night in Aberdeen and hears from 10ft Tall, who are creating exciting experiential theatre, and Fleeman, whose work preserves local dialect.
The folk duo with a banjo, Anna & Elizabeth, perform.
We discuss solutions to stopping online abuse and hear from Charley Hough and Jackie Teale two victims of trolling as well as Isabella Goldie the Director of Development at the Mental Health Foundation and Baroness Warsi who herself has been trolled.
Is the role of Minister for Women and Equalities taken seriously enough? Following Amber Rudd's resignation Penny Mordant takes on the role. Helen Lewis deputy editor at the New Statesman and Isabel Hardman assistant editor at The Spectator discuss.
Lyse Doucet the BBC's Chief International Correspondent tells us what it's been like to report on the War in Syria over the last eight years.
Dr Nikki Stamp is one of the only eleven female heart surgeons in the whole of Australia. She tells us about her new book Can You Die of a Broken Heart?
We hear from three women who have successfully applied for Churchill Fellowships - annual opportunities for UK citizens to explore a wide range of issues. Samantha Jury-Dada is looking at girls and women affected by gang violence, Laura Randall is researching ways of identifying children at risk of online abuse and Clare Canning is exploring the use of mindfulness interventions for people who self harm.
And what does it feel like to be outnumbered in your own family when you are the father of four girls like Simon Hooper, known on Instagram Father of Daughters or the mother of four boys like writer Ursula Hirschkorn. They discuss.
Presented by Jane Garvey
Producer: Rabeka Nurmahomed
Editor: Jane Thurlow.
Caroline Wyatt presents coverage of the day's news.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest weather forecast.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Clive Anderson and Sara Cox are joined by Robert Webb, Jake Shears, Jade Anouka and David Almond for an eclectic mix of conversation, music and comedy. With music from Tankus The Henge and The Savannahs.
Producer: Debbie Kilbride.
Series of profiles of people who are currently making headlines.
Jason Reitman's new film Tully stars Charlize Theron as a mom coping with pressures of modern motherhood and at the edge of her sanity until a night nanny appears and everything seems to be looking up
Mood Music is Joe Penhall's newest play which has just opened at London's Old Vic Theatre. It deals with the tricky business of the music biz and who can be credited with the success of a hit song. Whee there's a hit, there's a writ
Rachel Cusk's novel Kudos is the third part in her trilogy which began with Outline and Transit.
RIBA is currently staging an exhibition based around the idea of perspective. How we perceive it and its effects upon the observer.
BBC4 is about to launch a season of programmes about contemporary dance, we look at a Michael Clark performance and a new piece about The Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918
Tom Sutcliffe's guests are Tom Dyckhoff, Barb Jungr and Jenny McCartney. The producer is Oliver Jones.
Fi Glover hosts an evening at Tara Theatre in south London, as part of its 'I'll Say It Again' season of work by women artists to celebrate the centenary of Women's Suffrage. On the panel on stage with her at Britain's first purpose-built multicultural theatre are some of the women who make up this special season: Eileen Page (Eleanor of Aquitaine, Mother of the Pride); Dina Mousawi (Complicite Cooks, Syria Recipes from Home): Medhavi Patel (We Are the Lions Mr Manager); Jules Haworth, (Half Breed). The panellists will talk about their productions and share their responses to the Listening Project conversations curated by Fi.
Producer: Marya Burgess.
Love Henry James: The Aspern Papers by Henry James. Dramatised by Amanda Dalton.
Determined to succeed where his colleague failed, a literary editor insinuates himself into the decaying Venetian villa of the elderly Miss Juliana Bordereau and her niece Miss Tina. He clearly wants something from Juliana. But what can it be? A dark and intimate tale about deceit and obsession.
Director/Producer Gary Brown.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4, followed by weather.
FutureProofing presenters Timandra Harkness and Leo Johnson put their faith - and lack of faith - to the test in a journey from the Middle East to Silicon Valley, to find out how technology is disrupting the beliefs and practices of traditional faiths. They also discover how data and tech might provide the foundations for what influential thinkers like Yuval Noah Harari have dubbed a 'New Religion' for the 21st century and beyond.
FutureProofing: Faith includes encounters with leading thinkers such as Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks; a leading member of President Trump's Evangelical Advisory Panel Robert Jeffress; and the world's most prominent humanist Professor Stephen Pinker. They reveal how traditional faiths and secularists are facing the challenge from technology.
As the potential of technology to both explain the universe and deliver incredible power develops. so many of the features and promises we have found in older religions are being provided for and challenged by tech. From mind-uploading which offers the prospect of immortality and resurrection to algorithms that could suggest exact optimum life choices for us according to our genes and social circumstances. FutureProofing's presenters learn how the functions of religion could be taken over by technology and the search for the meaning of life be challenged by the accelerating pace of science.
Are data and technology about to supplant the traditional sources of faith and information about ultimate meaning in our world? And will this mean a very different kind of faith emerges in future?
Producer: Jonathan Brunert.
(10/17)
This week's contest sees another four general knowledge contenders embarking on their bid to become the 2018 Brain of Britain. Today's winner will go through to the semi-finals in a few weeks' time, with a possible place for a runner-up too if they score highly enough. Russell Davies' questions range across geography, sport, politics, languages, science and popular culture.
As always, there's also a chance for a Brain of Britain listener to win a prize by Beating the Brains.
Today's competitors are:
Tim Footman, a freelance editor from Croydon
Brian Johnson, a statistician, now retired, from Sutton Coldfield
Jean Staines, a retired IT support worker from Colchester
Anna Swain, an insurance underwriter from Bath.
Producer: Paul Bajoria.
A visit to the spring lambs and bluebell woods of Gillian Clarke's home in Ceredigion, Wales. The one-time National poet of Wales shares poems from her latest collection, Zoology as well as some old favourites.
Producer: Ellie Richold.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
A new short story commissioned for Radio 4 by the acclaimed British author Chris Power.
Two young Australian women are on the hunt for a story in a Phnom Penh hotel. One of them fears she might be very much out of her depth...
Writer: Chris Power's short story collection, Mothers, has just been published. His 'Brief Survey of the Short Story' has appeared in the Guardian since 2007.
Reader: tbc
Producer: Justine Willett.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
Bells on Sunday comes from the Church of St Michael, Southampton, Hampshire. The 8 heaviest bells were cast by the Croydon foundry of Gillett and Johnson in 1923. In 1940, Holy Rood Church - like many other buildings in Southampton - was destroyed by enemy bombing. Some of the metal salvaged from the ring of eight was used to cast two trebles by John Taylor of Loughborough and installed in 1948. The Tenor cast by Lester and Pack in 1758 weighs sixteen and a quarter hundredweight and is tuned to E. We hear them now ringing Spliced Bristol and London Number 3 Surprise Royal.
The latest national and international news.
Mark Tully considers the worth of aspiring to greater things, taking as a starting point Robert Browning's words: "....a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?"
The programme was inspired by an overheard conversation about whether advertising encourages aspiration or incites greed, and Mark explores how the messages used to sell us things can often disguise greed, and other deadly sins, as virtues worth aspiring to. Conversely, he puts in a good word for the way advertising can lead to a more aspirational world in general.
He also considers the progress we have made which would never have come about were it not for aspiration - from the Suffragette movement to the space race. But the case is also made for not overreaching our grasp, for appreciating what we already have, and for being freed from the anxiety of ambition.
With music ranging from Tom Waits' Step Right Up to JS Bach's, Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring, and readings from the work of Jack Kerouac and Soren Kierkegaard, Mark celebrates many people's tendency to challenge the status into which they were born and to aspire to a better life.
Producer: Adam Fowler
A 7Digital production for BBC Radio 4.
There aren't many farmers who can look at their sheep and cattle from an 820 metre zip wire that traverses their farm, in fact the McConchie family who farm near Gatehouse of Fleet on the Dumfries and Galloway coast may just be unique in that. The zip wire and adventure centre it's based in are part of a wide programme of diversifications the farm's undertaken to cement a solid future for the business. When all three sons decided they wanted to return to the family farm and work at home drastic changes had to be made to ensure a smooth succession from one generation to the next. As a result, one farm business has now become three; one is still rooted in farming, one is a camping and caravanning site and the third offers adventure tourism and luxury weddings. Caz Graham has been to hear the story as well as meet the lambs, enjoy the seaside and try her hand on one of Europe's longest zip wires.
The latest weather forecast.
The latest news headlines. Including a look at the papers.
Sunday morning religious news and current affairs programme.
Alan Titchmarsh makes the Radio 4 Appeal on behalf of Butterfly Conservation.
Registered Charity Number: 1111504
To Give:
- Freephone 0800 404 8144
- Freepost BBC Radio 4 Appeal. (That's the whole address. Please do not write anything else on the front of the envelope). Mark the back of the envelope 'Butterfly Conservation'.
- Cheques should be made payable to 'Butterfly Conservation'.
The latest weather forecast.
The latest news headlines. Including a look at the papers.
Live Morning Prayer from St Aloysius' RC Church, Glasgow, with a reflection on The Acts of the Apostles:
St Luke's narrative of the early disciples as they begin to take over the roles of Jesus, and Paul's vision of
the Church as the Body of Christ.
The service is led by Fr Dermot Preston SJ and the choir is the Schola Cantorum of St Aloysius' College.
Music includes hymns, For All the Saints, We Cannot Measure How you Heal and Hail Redeemer, King Divine,
with the Missa de Angelis, Gloria by Keith Roberts, and Vaughan Williams' 'O taste and see'.
Director of Music: Ann Archibald; Organist: Hugh Reid
Producer: Mo McCullough.
"My problem with words is something I have never written down or spoken out about".
The writer, Stella Tillyard, talks about her "battle" with dyslexia - from her childhood to now.
She vividly describes the "gremlin that takes me by the hand, pulls my confidence away, and makes my heart beat too fast when I have - as now - to read aloud".
Producer: Adele Armstrong.
Miriam Darlington, author of Owl Sense, selects a second week of birds for Tweet of the Day
Producer: Sarah Addezio
Photograph: Richard Austin.
Sunday morning magazine programme with news and conversation about the big stories of the week. Presented by Paddy O'Connell.
Alistair doesn't know where to turn, and Harrison is stunned.
Abi Morgan is a screenwriter and playwright best known for TV dramas The Hour, River and The Split and the films Shame, Suffragette and The Iron Lady. She won two Emmy Awards for The Hour, as well as two BAFTAs for Best Single Drama for White Girl and Sex Traffic, and Meryl Streep won an Academy Award for her portrayal of Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady.
Born into a theatrical family - her father was a theatre director, her mother is an actress - she only began to write during her university days at Exeter. After graduating, she kept herself afloat by waitressing while continuing to write and had her first play performed professionally in 1998 when she was 30.
She's become known for her gritty storylines in the dramas Murder, Sex Traffic, and Tsunami, but has also adapted several books for both the small and the big screen including Brick Lane, The Invisible Woman, and Birdsong.
Abi lives in London with her long-term partner, the actor Jacob Krichefski, and their two teenage children.
Presenter: Kirsty Young
Producer: Cathy Drysdale.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
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.
Richard Osman, Elis James, Sindhu Vee and Alan Davies the panellists obliged to talk with deliberate inaccuracy on subjects as varied as buses, dancing, monkeys and statues.
Produced by Richard Turner.
A Random Entertainment production for BBC Radio 4.
Investigating every aspect of the food we eat.
The latest weather forecast.
Global news and analysis.
Can Natalie Haynes and her team make it out of The Escape Room?
Escape Rooms are immersive, live games where groups of players are locked in a confined space and must solve puzzles to escape in time. Games are often themed. Players can flee penitentiaries, Egyptian tombs or pirate ships.
Five years ago, there were only a handful in the UK. Today, there are nearly a thousand.
In an attempt to understand this phenomenon, the writer and broadcaster Natalie Haynes is the latest person to be locked in. Her team has one hour to complete a series of tasks. While searching for clues, she'll also try to find out what's fuelling our fascination for escape.
Natalie thinks there's more to the Escape Room than a renewed interest in immersive play. With players surrendering their phones on entry, is a brief escape from the digital world part of the appeal? Is it possible to have a moment of mindfulness inside a dark, locked room?
Increasingly, companies are using the escape room's reliance on problem-solving skills for corporate training. Recruiters have recently turned to escape rooms to assess potential employees. They're even becoming a popular venue for dates.
What if your career or love life depended on your ability to escape?
A successful escape requires teamwork, communication and delegation, as well as critical thinking, attention to detail and lateral thinking. So Natalie's team is made up of psychotherapist Philippa Perry, digital entrepreneur Bejay Mulenga and comedian and puzzle enthusiast Rob Deering. They'll be observed from afar by Hungarian escape room founder Zoltán Papp and the writer Laurence Scott.
Produced by Paul Smith
A Just Radio production for BBC Radio 4.
Peter Gibbs presents the programme from the new Temperate House at Kew Gardens. James Wong, Anne Swithinbank and a special guest panellist from Kew Gardens answer the questions.
In and amongst the magnificent plants in the Temperate House the panel help out audience members with how to grow carnivorous plants at home, how to revive an ailing Hibiscus, and how to get the most out of a tired palm tree.
They also offer tips on what to do with used compost, how to pot on an olive tree, and they offer planting suggestions to climb up a windowsill.
In the feature we hear from James Wong's previous trip to the Temperate House when construction was still underway and he investigates the mammoth task of removing and replacing all the plants during the process.
Produced by Dan Cocker
Assistant Producer: Hester Cant
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4.
Fi Glover introduces three conversations that reflect a dramatic shift in circumstance or belief, from Wiltshire, Sussex and Antrim, in the Omnibus edition of the series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.
The Listening Project is a Radio 4 initiative that offers a snapshot of contemporary Britain in which people across the UK volunteer to have a conversation with someone close to them about a subject they've never discussed intimately before. The conversations are being gathered across the UK by teams of producers from local and national radio stations who facilitate each encounter. Every conversation - they're not BBC interviews, and that's an important difference - lasts up to an hour, and is then edited to extract the key moment of connection between the participants. Most of the unedited conversations are being archived by the British Library and used to build up a collection of voices capturing a unique portrait of the UK in the second decade of the millennium. You can learn more about The Listening Project by visiting bbc.co.uk/listeningproject
Producer: Marya Burgess.
Love Henry James: The American Ep1/2
Dramatised by Lavinia Murray
Humour and heartache collide in this early James novel. When Christopher Newman, an American and self-made millionaire businessmen arrives in Paris he falls in love with Claire de Cintre. A wife from an aristocratic French Family is exactly what he's looking for, but he's unaware of the dark mystery surrounding her family, and the misery and mayhem they have yet to cause.
Produced and directed by Pauline Harris.
Norwegian crime writer Jo Nesbø has sold more than 36 million copies of his Harry Hole thrillers world-wide, with this month's Bookclub choice The Snowman being number seven in the series featuring the Oslo detective.
Harry Hole is a complex character, hard-drinking, chain-smoking, uncompromising, and he is for many readers the ultimate detective, a fascinating anti-hero, conflicted and brilliant.
Perhaps not for the faint-hearted, The Snowman is one of Jo Nesbø's darkest, he says it's fair to describe the novel as a horror story, and that he pushes the envelope when it comes to the levels of violence in this story of a serial killer who leaves a snowman as his calling card at each crime scene. The ambitious plot is full of twists and turns and red herrings, and is linked to genetic secrets within families, moving the story back and forth over two decades in Norway - as well as against a backdrop of the US Presidential elections.
Presenter : James Naughtie
Producer : Dymphna Flynn
Interviewed guest : Jo Nesbø
June's Bookclub choice : The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (1985)
celebrating 20 years of Bookclub.
Join the gravelly-voiced Welsh poet Twm Morys as he takes a sonorous journey into a world of sound-harmony and chiming consonants, to explore the ancient craft of Cynghanedd.
Over many centuries, the people of Wales developed a unique set of poetic patterns. Unlike most English language forms, these focus on the sounds produced within a line and the echoes left after, rather than solely on the words themselves. The most famous of these forms is Cynghanedd, a unique sound-arrangement within one line, using stress, alliteration, and rhyme according to very strict rules. Used in Welsh-language poetry since the sixth century, it's a form which is famously brought to life every year at the National Eisteddfod music and poetry festival where one lucky bard is awarded with a Chair for writing the best piece of Cynghanedd.
But it's not just a craft for scholars and bardic masters. This patterning of consonants, rhyme, and stress is practised by people from all walks of life - in village halls across the country and even in a weekly competition on the national Welsh language radio station, BBC Radio Cymru. It's thought that there are more practitioners now than at any time in the past.
The rules of Cynghanedd, though suited especially to Welsh because of the language's unique use of consonant mutations, can equally be applied to any language under the sun - even to Tolkien's made-up ones. In English, "Do not go gentle into that good night" is a perfect example of Cynghanedd. It's a form enjoyed by many English-language poets from Ange Mlinko to Gerard Manley Hopkins.
Also known as "consonantal rhyme", Cynghanedd have more in common with music than traditional poetry and, like a piece of music, it is made up of more than just one note. Indeed, the word itself translates as "harmony"- something to be heard rather than written.
Contributors include Mererid Hopwood, Eurig Salisbury, Dylan Foster Evans, T James Jones, Ceri Wyn Jones, Professor Guillaume Thierry, Aneirin Karadog and Osian Rhys Jones.
A Terrier production for BBC Radio 4
Photograph: Iolo Penri.
Simon Cox investigates the anti-immigration, anti-Muslim organisation Knights Templar International - not to be confused with the medieval Knights Templar organisation. In a recent interview its front man Jim Dowson described KTI as a "militant Christian organisation". KTI posts regular ads on social media to recruit new members and seek donations to fight what Dowson calls the "war between militant Islam and Christianity". In a recent interview he warned "we are going towards a war in the West. We want to make sure when people hit the streets, militias will form. The Templar way is to train men up in everything - we have training course in video journalism, military stuff".
With the money raised KTI buys paramilitary equipment which is sent to places like Northern Kosovo where British troops are still stationed to keep the peace between the Muslim Kosovo Albanian community and Orthodox Christian Serbians. Last year Dowson was banned from Hungary for being a threat to national security. The British anti-racism NGO Hope not Hate warns "he (Dowson) and his organisation tread a very fine line between antagonising people's fears, stirring up and stoking people's fears. He is the 'Mr Slippery' of the far-right world in Europe". Within the far right community Dowson is a familiar figure but more generally he has kept a fairly low profile and has been dubbed in media reports "the invisible man of Britain's far right". Concern about the activities of Dowson and Knights Templar International is growing across Europe as the organisation recruits more members to its cause and threatens the peace in some of the most volatile regions.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest weather forecast.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
In this Bank Holiday Pick of the Week Poet and Lyricist Stewart Henderson presents a distinctive mix of music, memory and powerful witness from the margins.
We hear accounts of growing up as an immigrant in a hostile and far from green and pleasant land, head to the Lake District where wood is transformed into an acoustic shape of beauty and how a pound in the pocket is a parent's best friend. And along the way we hear songs that have sound tracked our lives.
Produced by Kay Whyld in Salford.
Brian hatches a plan, and Will declares war.
A one off stand up show that follows 25-year-old British Muslim comedian Bilal Zafar in his quest to find love.
Bilal is the last of his siblings to be single. His Mum has told him he should really think about marriage and he realises he has no idea how to approach this. Luckily, the world of Muslim dating is vast and Bilal has plenty of fascinating and often very funny options available in his quest for marriage.
Bilal Zafar is the winner of the Hackney New Act of the Year 2016, an Edinburgh Best Newcomer 2016 nominee and Chortle Best Newcomer 2017 nominee.
Written and Performed by Bilal Zafar
Additional Material from Glenn Moore
Produced by Daisy Knight
An Avalon production for BBC Radio 4.
Lynne Truss observes the inhabitants of Meridian Cliffs, a small wind-battered town on the south coast of England where Terry finds walking his beloved dog, Thelonius, a frustrating affair.
It seems the little pooch's only goal in life is to sniff every lamp post in town and then wee on top of it. If only Terry knew what complex canine messages he was tuning into.
Written by Lynne Truss
Directed by Kate McAll
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.
Breast screening - the Numbers
The Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, said this week that over the past decade, 450,000 women have accidentally not been invited for breast cancer screening because of a computer error - and that up to 270 women may have had their lives shortened as a result. But where does that number come from? We'll be checking the Health Secretary's maths.
Counting the Windrush Generation
Do we know how many who came to the UK from Commonwealth countries before 1971 are now at risk of being deported? We speak to the Migration Obvservatory at Oxford University to find out where the Windrush Generation are actually from, plus how many are missing vital documentation.
Has Nigel Farage been on Question Time too often?
The former UKIP leader has appeared on Question Time 32 times. Is that too many? Labour's Lord Adonis thinks so. We go back through the archives to look at the different times he was invited on and compare it to some other frequent panelists.
Painting a picture with an audiogram
Data journalist Mona Chalabi talks to Tim Harford about her unusual approach to analysing numbers. She has spent years making interesting visual depictions of data. Now she has turned her attention to some audio projects. We discover the correlation between men's voices and their testicles.
Presenter: Tim Harford
Producer: Charlotte McDonald
Editor: Richard Vadon.
Matthew Bannister on
Lord Martin of Springburn: the former House of Commons speaker Michael Martin. He resigned after MPs lost confidence in his handling of the row over their expenses.
Caroline Brown, the cellist who founded the Hanover Band to perform the works of Beethoven, Haydn and Schubert on period instruments.
Valerie Riches, who campaigned for traditional family values and against abortion.
Gustav Born, the pharmacologist who made significant discoveries about blood clotting.
Michael Anderson, the prolific film director best known for making The Dam Busters.
Producer: Neil George.
What do digital nomads mean for the world of work?
A new army of digital nomads is wandering the world. Equipped with a laptop and willing to work anywhere that has Wi-Fi and a low cost of living, they are changing the way millions think about the world of work. But how do firms and Governments adapt to a fast moving, ever changing highly skilled and paid workforce that doesn't even recognise borders? And do digital nomads represent the future of work or a threat to taxation systems and therefore the nation state? From Portugal to New Zealand via Cornwall, Jonty Bloom goes far and wide looking for answers.
Producer: Estelle Doyle
Researcher: Darin Graham.
Weekly political discussion and analysis with MPs, experts and commentators.
Award winning British director Andrew Haigh reveals why travelled to the southern states of America for his horse racing drama Lean On Pete.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
Universal Basic Income: Laurie Taylor asks if it's the answer to an increasingly precarious job landscape. Could it bring greater financial freedom for women, tackle the issue of unpaid but essential work, cut poverty and promote greater choice? Or is it a dead-end utopian ideal that distracts from more practical and cost-effective solutions? He's joined by Stewart Lansley, Visiting Fellow at the School of Policy Studies, University of Bristol and editor of a new book which shares research and insights from a variety of nations including India and Finland; John Rentoul, Visiting Professor at King's College, London and Ursula Huws, Professor of Labour and Globalisation at the University of Hertfordshire Business School
Producer: Jayne Egerton.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Richard Hill.
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
The latest weather forecast for farmers.
Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs. David Attenborough presents young Tawny Owls. Most of us know the "hoot" and "too-wit" of Tawny Owls but might be puzzled if we heard wheezing in the woods, the sound of the young.
News and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
Will we recognise the signs that democracy has ended? Cambridge professor David Runciman worries that we spend far too much time comparing today's politics with the 1930s, and that this blinds us to the frailties of democracy today. He tells Amol Rajan why he thinks our current political system will come to an end - and why we may not even notice this happening.
Professor Nic Cheeseman is all too aware that democracy can become an empty shell. His new book How To Rig An Election, co-written with Brian Klaas, looks at the myriad ways autocrats use elections for their own ends, from buying votes and bribing electors to issuing fake pens in the ballot box. And it is not only the developing world in which corruption takes place. He addresses the role of outside states in the 2016 US presidential election, and asks how western democracy can be kept healthy.
Anne Applebaum has studied the ways in which democracy can arise like a phoenix from the ashes of authoritarianism. As the author of Red Famine: Stalin's War On Ukraine, and a professor at the LSE, she has analysed the reasons why democracy flourished in Poland and Ukraine after 1989, and suggests reasons why the 2012 Arab Spring has not yet had the same results. But as a journalist for the Washington Post she is all too aware of attacks on democracy today, both in the former Soviet bloc and in America. She argues that the onus is on us to save our own systems.
Producer: Hannah Sander.
In her illuminating memoir, Christie Watson gives an account of her twenty year nursing career. At the heart of her intimate portrait of hospital life are the small acts of kindness and compassion that all of us will receive when we inevitably experience illness, whether it be ourselves or our loved ones.
We accompany Christie when she becomes a student nurse filled with anxiety as she cares for a teenage boy who is about to receive a new heart and lungs. We'll be there when she qualifies and takes up a post in the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit where the children in her care are especially fragile. As the years progress, we'll discover how Christie's expertise develops. It's not long before she's mentoring junior nurses, responding to crash calls, and playing a pivotal role in caring for those at the end of their lives and those who are just beginning. As she nears the end of her years as a nurse the tables are turned when her father loses his fight to cancer and she receives the kindness and compassion that underpin what it means to nurse and to be nursed.
Christie Watson was a registered nurse for twenty years before becoming a full time, critically acclaimed and award winning writer. Her first novel, Tiny Sunbirds Far Away won the Costa First Novel Award.
Read by Teresa Gallagher
Abridged by Penny Leicester
Produced by Elizabeth Allard.
Headlines talk of the death of the high street and over 21 000 retail jobs have been put at risk so far this year.
Toys R Us have shut down, Maplin have filed for administration, Marks & Spencer, House of Fraser and New Look are closing stores. The announcements keep on coming.
So what does this mean for women, who make up the majority of shoppers and retail workers?
Retail is a highly female sector. Women are involved in 90 per cent of all purchase decisions, and of the almost three million people working in retail, over 60 per cent are female. Yet despite this, just 10 per cent of those in the retail boardroom are female.
So what does the state of the high street and the growth of online mean for women - as consumers, as employees, and as entrepreneurs?
How has women's shopping behaviour changed? How has that contributed to the death of the high street and the growth of online? How can the boom in online shopping benefit female shoppers and entrepreneurs? What do the changes mean for women employed in retail? And as retail is dominated by female consumers and employees, does it need more women working at the top to ensure its future success?
Jane Garvey is joined by Mary Portas - retail consultant, broadcaster, and 'Queen Of Shops'; Catherine Shuttleworth - retail marketing consultant and founder of Savvy Marketing; Carol Kane - co-CEO of online fashion retailer boohoo.com; Angela Spindler - CEO of online retailer N Brown, and previously Managing Director of Debenhams and George at Asda; Kim Winser - CEO of Winser London, and previously the first female Director of Marks & Spencer, CEO of Pringle and Aquascutum, and advisor to Net A Porter; Simmone Hayward - Head of Talent at Marks & Spencer; and Kate Hardcastle - independent retail analyst and founder of Insight With Passion.
Presenter: Jane Garvey
Producer: Emma Wallace.
Linda Marshall Griffiths' dramatisation of Henry James' passionate and heart-breaking novel about desire and money.
Milly, now gravely ill but desperate to live her life to the full has taken residence in Venice. When Merton arrives she allows herself to hope that he may be the one great passion in her short life.
Directed by Nadia Molinari.
Anna Hursey has been playing table tennis for as long as she can remember and has managed to combine her school work with extended trips to train in China, where her mother is from and across Europe, where she can challenge herself against the top players. Her success has been remarkable and as her family prepare for the Commonwealth Games they reflect on what it means longer term and how Anna might continue to straddle the world in her quest to compete at the 2020 Olympics.
Shappi Khorsandi's schooling fell short in what she hoped for and, in the second of this two part series, she continues her witty and personal look at the state of the UK education system.
Comedian Shappi takes a look at the challenges and pitfalls that parents currently go through as they decide what sort of school is best for their beloved children. She talks to some of the mum-chums she met during her own children's schooling and they share their frustrations and hopes as they make this pivotal decision. Shappi also talks to teachers, journalists, writers and fellow comedians - including Michael Rosen Mark Steel and George Monbiot - to try and ascertain what's best for her as she makes a similar life changing decision on how to educate her own children.
She also interrogates her own ten year old son, hoping to get to the root of what it's like for children at school now. But he's not quite as revealing as she'd hoped!
An Open Mike production for BBC Radio 4.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Dave Pickering makes the case for a men's liberation movement.
Sharing experiences from his own life, he argues that it is not just women who need liberation from 'the patriarchy', but men themselves.
Producer: Giles Edwards.
News and discussion of consumer affairs.
The latest weather forecast.
Analysis of news and current affairs.
"Her days were numbered." Introducing Benazir Bhutto and the story of her final journey home. Pakistani politics have long been lethal and Bhutto was in no doubt about the danger she faced. With Owen Bennett-Jones.
In Africa defending an old pupil in a murder trial, Rumpole is arrested and Phillida arrives to bail him out. A spark between them is rekindled and burns throughout the final episodes of this long running Radio 4 series.
For fifteen years and 33 episodes, Rumpole has fought, won and, very rarely, lost myriad cases - and fallen in and out of love with his wife Hilda and
"the Portia of our Chambers", Phillida Trant, who adores him, and probably always will. These three final episodes leave us guessing until the very end - will Rumpole finally leave his wife Hilda, "She who must be obeyed", for Phillida?
Adapted by Richard Stoneman
Directed by Marilyn Imrie
A Catherine Bailey production for BBC Radio 4.
(11/17)
The penultimate heat of the 2018 Brain of Britain tournament features four contenders from the north of England bidding for one of the few remaining places in the semi-finals. Russell Davies chairs the contest from MediaCityUK in Salford.
This week the contenders are:
Margaret Brecknell, a shop assistant manager from Garstang in Lancashire
Diana England, a housewife from Penrith in Cumbria
Paul Gibbons, an electron microscope technician from Prescot on Merseyside
Greg Spiller, a software engineer, recently retired, from Stockport.
As always, a listener also stands to win a prize by beating the Brains with questions of his or her own devising.
Producer: Paul Bajoria.
We are living in an age of extinction, a twilight period for the oral traditions of our ancestors. Singer and song collector Sam Lee sets out on a mission to seek out and record the last of the traditional singers with a connection to the ancient oral culture of the British Isles.
In conversation with legendary folk singer Shirley Collins, Sam reveals that the singers of the old songs are still with us and they are still singing, most notably in the traveller community. It's up to us to find them, and then to listen.
Sam travels to Hampshire to meet Freda Black, a 90 year old Romany Gypsy singer, born in a horse-drawn caravan on Christmas Day. Freda has a repertoire of well over 100 traditional songs which she proudly states she will sing until she dies.
With the race against time so apparent, Sam recruits twelve folk music enthusiasts to join him on a collecting mission in Ireland. The collectors fan out across the country, tasked with recording elderly travellers with knowledge of the old songs.
We follow Sam as he hunts for new singers and returns copies of recordings to singers he's previously met. What's clear at the end of the trip is that, if you're willing to spend long days in the car, knocking on doors and chasing shadows, there are still songs out there teetering on the verge of extinction.
Sam concludes that, if these ancient songs are to thrive in today's cultural landscape, our responsibility is to transmit both what they have meant to the generations who've carried them and all that they can be now. How better to do that than to learn straight from the source whilst we still can?
Presenter: Sam Lee
Producer: Max O'Brien
A TBI Media production for BBC Radio 4.
The annual Met Gala - which takes place in New York tonight - is often described as "fashion's biggest night out". It is a fundraising event for the Metropolitan Museum of Art that welcomes celebrities from all walks of life and fashion industry paragons alike. It also signifies the opening of the NY Costume Institute's annual fashion exhibition which this year has the title 'Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination'.
Religion has had an impact on the way we dress for many centuries. Clothing is mentioned in the Bible and some might argue that Eve's fig leaf was the earliest fashion statement. But the fashion world is not just influenced by the Catholic Church. Muslim fashion - and the popularity of the 'cool hijab' - is very important today as is a growing demand for modest fashion.
Joining Professor Robert Beckford to discuss religion and fashion are Professor Reina Lewis from London School of Fashion UAL, the Rev Sally Hitchiner and New York based fashion journalist Michelle Honig who is a modern Orthodox Jew. Robert also talks to Simon Ward - former Chief Operating Officer for the British Fashion Council - about important ethical questions facing the fashion industry at the moment.
Producer: Helen Lee
Series Producer: Amanda Hancox.
Eddie Mair presents coverage and analysis of the day's news.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
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, Jack Dee, Lucy Porter and Lloyd Langford are the panellists obliged to talk with deliberate inaccuracy on subjects as varied as walking, NASA, soap operas and poets.
Produced by Richard Turner
A Random Entertainment production for BBC Radio 4.
Pat makes a discovery, and Harrison is on top of the world.
Norwich will soon be home to the new National Centre for Writing in the medieval Dragon Hall. Chris Gribble tells Kirsty Lang about the extraordinary building and the role of the Centre. Authors Sarah Perry and Sarah Hall describe the thriving literary culture of the city and Kirsty visits The Book Hive, one of the city's independent bookshops. She goes to the Norfolk and Norwich Millennium Library and to the University of East Anglia, home to the MA in Creative Writing that has Ian McEwan, Kazuo Ishiguro and Anne Enright among its famous graduates. There she meets tutor Rebecca Stott, author Imogen Hermes Gowar, whose novel The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock is shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction, and poet and MA student Gboyega Abayomi-Odubanjo.
Nearly all of us have held a grudge. It can be relatively harmless and secret or deep, long-lasting and all-consuming - and everything in between. But why do we hold them? And what purpose is achieved in sustaining them?
In this entertaining and insightful programme, the writer and broadcaster Marcel Berlins - an amateur grudge-keeper himself - investigates grudges. He discovers how we come to harbour them, explores the range of them, what can make them endure and how they can be overcome.
He begins the programme by finding out what a grudge is. Most commonly a grudge is held by one person against another but this is not invariably the case. The defining characteristic is that the person holding the grudge believes - correctly or incorrectly - that a wrong has been done to her or him.
A grudge doesn't have to be rational and understandable. Rather, it will often be something which the holder of the grudge can continue justifying to himself or herself, even if the original reason for holding it may have become obscured or even been forgotten entirely.
Marcel reveals, though, from personal experience that it is possible to hold a grudge against another person for something done to a third party. That illustrates perhaps one of the most important consequences of grudge-holding: those who hold grudges usually suffer the most. To bear a serious grudge is a form of pain which may never go away.
But if holding a grudge were too painful, we probably wouldn't harbour them? So for many people it may be quite enjoyable, a sort of comfort blanket for a troubled soul.
The danger is that, though, could justify selfishness. So Marcel thinks it would perhaps be better if he did try to overcome his grudges. So how should he do that?
Producer Simon Coates.
One in ten tractors in the world is made in Belarus. You can find them ploughing furrows and shifting snow in the US, Canada, Pakistan, Thailand...and on the farms of Somerset...At the heart of this big wheeled empire is the Minsk Tractor Works. Impossible to visit until recently, the MTW is opening its doors as part of a new country wide charm offensive. Belarus, long famous for secretiveness and isolation, has relaxed its visa regime since January 2018, and is rebranding itself as a dynamic hub for business and tourism.
Stalin founded the tractor works in 1946 as part of a colossal effort to feed a famished Soviet Union after World War 2. It developed as a cradle-to-grave complex, with its own apartment blocks, holiday camps, hospitals, Palace of Culture, and even water bottling plant. Generations of loyal Belarusians have lived and died knowing no other job.
The IMF and World Bank advisers wrote off such complexes as wasteful when they came to help implement shock therapy privatization in the 1990s.
But MTW is still there. Its 18,000 employees still live in a MTW world - with regular, if modest, pay packets. It's as though the communist-era model has been kept in the freezer to emerge a generation later. For Crossing Continents, Lucy Ash meets the workers and their families who still live and work much in the way their grandparents did. She wonders if the MTW is a preposterous dinosaur or a socially responsible business model, fit for the 21st century.
Presenter: Lucy Ash
Producer: Monica Whitlock.
This is a powerful and immersive story of water, from its wild beginnings across landscape and time to the grinding stones and workshops of Sheffield's traditional blade grinders; master craftsmen called 'little mesters'. Sheffield whose name is derived from the River Sheaf stands at the confluence of five rivers; the Don, Sheaf, Rivelin, Loxley and Porter. The rivers powered the water mills and the grindstones which were used to sharpen steel blades on which Sheffield's reputation was born. The heyday of the cutlery industry was in the 1800s and whilst the future of Sheffield's steel production remains uncertain, the rivers are a powerful reminder of its industrial past and the communities it supported. Narrator Chris Watson. Producer Sarah Blunt.
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.
As Sandy wrestles with the attraction he feels towards his new neighbour, the community gathers at the Red House to welcome Jo and Ryan to the valley.
Read by Steven Robertson
Abridged by Robin Brooks
Producer: Eilidh McCreadie
Malachy Tallack's debut novel is a quiet yet powerful study of contemporary rural Scotland that asks what remains when a way of life vanishes. Set on the rugged west coast of Shetland, in a community only ever a few steps away from extinction, Tallack's novel tackles big questions about land, inheritance and belonging without ever losing sight of the humanity and integrity of its characters.
Malachy Tallack is the author of two non-fiction titles which fused nature writing, history and memoir; Radio 4 Book of the Week 60 DEGREES NORTH and THE UN-DISCOVERED ISLANDS. Malachy won a New Writers Award from the Scottish Book Trust in 2014 and the Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship in 2015. He is a singer-songwriter, author and journalist.
Michael Rosen and Dr. Laura Wright are joined in the studio by a virtual assistant and Tom Hewitson - conversation designer for the likes of Siri, Alexa and Cortana. They discuss whether virtual assistants can ever speak like actual humans, and how us humans are developing a new vernacular for machines. Mitsuku is a bot that won an award for most human-like AI and Tay is a now-deceased bot who learnt to speak like a Nazi.
Producers Eliza Lomas & Sally Heaven.
Entrepreneur Natalie Campbell investigates the consequences of our modern obsession with leadership.
Countless books, courses and speakers reflect on leadership. But perhaps the obsession is actually covering up a deeper anxiety - that leadership is in question.
Everyone wants to understand what makes leaders tick - the charismatic ones, the retiring ones, the crooked ones. In an era of flatter, networked organisations, leadership roles are often more ambiguous. There is a sense that leadership is in short supply in society and business.
By contrast, the counterpart of leadership goes unmentioned. Is there such a thing as followership?
Natalie investigates our changing idea of leadership and and asks what it means to be a follower. How does gender and ethnicity affect these concepts? Are our assumptions about leaders and followers holding us back?
Presenter: Natalie Campbell
Producer: Heidi Pett
A Somethin' Else production for Radio 4.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Richard Hill.
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs.
Martin Hughes-Games presents the Redshank. Redshanks spend the winter on our estuaries and wetlands, taking food from the surface of the mud and probing the ooze for creatures which live beneath.
News and current affairs. Including Yesterday in Parliament, Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
Carlo Rovelli first became interested in the nature of time when he took LSD as a young man. Later he became curious about the world of the almost absurdly small, where time has no meaning and space is grainy.
He took seven years to complete his undergraduate degree, having spent a lot of time protesting against the political establishment, falling in love and travelling. An extended hippy trip across north America was, he says, perhaps the most useful time of his life. All this rebelling taught him the value of seeing the world in a different way and the benefits of challenging the status quo. In the end he concluded it was easier, and more meaningful, to challenge Einstein's understanding of time, than it was to overthrow the government.
He's a theoretical physicist who became a household name when his book Seven Brief Lessons on Physics became an unexpected international bestseller. His concise, and poetic, introduction to the laws and beauty of physics has sold more than a million copies. He's also a pioneer of one of the most exciting and profound ideas in modern physics, called loop quantum gravity.
Early in his research career, he rejected more mainstream approaches to unifying physics (string theory for example) in favour of trying to understand the quantum nature of gravity. No one in Italy was working on this when he started to think about it in the early 1980s, and his PhD thesis was effectively unsupervised. The quantum world he studies is a billion trillion times smaller than the smallest atomic nucleus. When understood at this absurdly tiny scale, the world is 'a frenzied swarming of quanta that appear and disappear'. It makes no sense to talk about time as we understand it, or even things. The world is made up of a network of interacting events, 'kisses not stones', that are linked together by loops. And the evidence that's needed to prove the theory of loop quantum gravity will be found by studying the white holes that emerge when a black hole dies.
Producer: Anna Buckley.
The Economist's Soumaya Keynes continues her quest to find out why the study of economics is so dominated by men. Does that affect the kind of economics we get, and why does that matter? In her second programme, Soumaya meets Professor Stephen Machin, Director of the Centre for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, who thinks it's a problem some in his profession are failing to recognize.
Producer: Chris Ledgard.
Christie Watson's illuminating account of her twenty year nursing career takes us back to her student days when she cared for a teenage boy in need of a new heart and lungs. As he undergoes the lengthy surgery. Christie reflects on the role of the scrub nurse in the operating theatre where tensions can run high, and her own in caring for the patient after the operation is over.
Teresa Gallagher reads.
Abridged by Penny Leicester
Produced by Elizabeth Allard.
Programme that offers a female perspective on the world.
Linda Marshall Griffiths' dramatisation of Henry James' passionate and heart-breaking novel about desire and money.
In Venice, Kate's plan to unite Merton and Milly gains pace. But are they prepared for the consequences?
Directed by Nadia Molinari.
Are plants rather cleverer than once thought? Scientists from around the world are claiming that plants cannot just sense, but communicate, learn and remember. In an experiment in Australia, plants appeared to learn to associate a sound with a food source, just as Pavlov's dogs linked the sound of a bell with dinner. In Israel they've found that plants communicated a message from one to another, and that the information was then used to survive drought. In British Columbia and the UK researchers have shown that trees pass information and nutrients to each other through an underground fungal network. This even happens more with closely related trees or seedlings than with strangers. And in California it turns out that sagebrush shrubs have "regional dialects"! Botanist James Wong explores these findings and asks whether, if plants can do all these things, and if, as one scientist says, they are a "who" and not a "what", then is it wrong to eat them?
Producer Arlene Gregorius
Contributors:
Prof. Richard Karban
Dr Monica Galiano
Prof. Ariel Novoplansky
Prof Suzanne Simard
Dr Brian Pickles
Prof Michael Marder.
Emmanuel Pariselle welcomes renowned musicians Andy Cutting and Katie Howson to his home, just outside the picturesque French city of Poitiers, where he builds diatonic button accordions for some of Europe's finest players.
In his workshop, Emmanuel combines technical skill with a passion for problem-solving, as he aims to build the perfect squeezebox for every musician. Here, he discusses how the instruments are built and maintained, the special relationship between a musician and a maker, and what qualities make a great musician.
We hear how the arrival of the Sheng from China in the early-1800s gave birth to the whole accordion family, including harmonium, mouth organ, concertina and melodeon, and how the instruments have travelled around the world to Ireland, Portugal, South Africa and Quebec.
Emmanuel talks us through the key process of tuning the reeds, operating the bellows with a foot pedal and filing off tiny amounts of steel each time to adjust the pitch.
Later, we hear him take a nervous Katie's two-row button accordion apart to try and diagnose a clickety rattle in the action. And, on a box he designed and built with Emmanuel, Andy demonstrates the difference in what the left-hand and right-hands do and explains that the longer he plays the instrument, the more it plays how he wants it to play.
Ever wondered what a free reed is? Or what distinguishes an accordion from a melodeon? Or whether you can make a musical instrument from plywood? This is a unique insight into this fascinating instrument - and three friends' relationship with it - with stories and music along the way.
Produced by Kellie While
A 7digital production for BBC Radio 4.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Sam Edwards argues that we should think again about how and what we memorialise - including wars and other major events in our national history.
Sam is a lecturer in American History at Manchester Metropolitan University, and has long been fascinated with memorials. He tells the story of how, as a young man, he would journey around the Suffolk countryside visiting the many memorials to the US 8th Air Force, and the effect it had on him.
Producer: Giles Edwards.
Consumer phone-in.
The latest weather forecast.
Analysis of news and current affairs.
An execution, a wedding and exile. Benazir Bhutto becomes the Muslim world's first female prime minister. The story of the Bhutto dynasty and the growing power of its enemies. With Owen Bennett Jones.
Rumpole defends a civil servant accused of selling secrets and is embroiled in a wine fraud. Phillida tells Rumpole she plans to leave her husband and asks him to keep it a secret. Rumpole considers just what that might mean.
For fifteen years and 33 episodes, Rumpole has fought, won and, very rarely, lost myriad cases - and fallen in and out of love with his wife Hilda and
"the Portia of our Chambers", Phillida Trant, who adores him, and probably always will. These three final episodes leave us guessing until the very end - will Rumpole finally leave his wife Hilda, "She who must be obeyed", for Phillida?
Cast:
Horace Rumpole ... Julian Rhind-Tutt
Hilda Rumpole ... Jasmine Hyde
Sam Ballard ... Michael Cochrane
Claude Erskine-Brown/Hugh Timson ... Nigel Anthony
Phillida Erskine-Brown/Tina Bradbury ... Cathy Sara
Oliver Bowling/Kenneth Eastham ... Ben Crowe
Rosemary Tuttle/Honoria Bird ... Deborah Findlay
Liz Probert ... Amy Morgan
Judge Bullingham/Martyn Vanberry ... Ewan Bailey
Adapted by Richard Stoneman
Directed by Marilyn Imrie
A Catherine Bailey production for BBC Radio 4.
In the Australian Outback survival is tough for plants, animals and people. Food and water are always in short supply. If anyone, or anything, takes too much it can spell disaster.
Peter Hadfield travels into the red heart of the continent on the trail of a surprising threat to the delicate balance- wild camels.
Producer: Alasdair Cross.
Michael Rosen and Laura Wright talk to Sally Bayley, author of Girl With Dove, about how words both mystified and rescued her during a highly unusual childhood. Producer Sally Heaven.
The actor Simon Callow nominates one of the giants of the golden age of Hollywood, Orson Welles. He once said of himself he 'started at the top and worked his way down' never managing to recreate the success he had aged 26 with Citizen Kane, which he wrote, directed and starred in. Welles' friend and collaborator Henry Jaglom talks about knowing him for the last years of his life when Hollywood had turned its back on him and he was strapped for cash and looking for work.
Producer: Maggie Ayre.
Carolyn Quinn presents coverage and analysis of the day's news.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Milton becomes an expert genealogist and gets stuck up a rather unexpected family tree.
Mention Milton Jones to most people and the first thing they think is "Help!". Each week, Milton and his trusty assistant Anton set out to help people and soon find they're embroiled in a new adventure. Because when you're close to the edge, then Milton can give you a push.
"Milton Jones is one of Britain's best gagsmiths with a flair for creating daft yet perfect one-liners" - The Guardian.
"King of the surreal one-liners" - The Times
"If you haven't caught up with Jones yet - do so!" - The Daily Mail
Written by Milton with James Cary (Bluestone 42, Miranda), and Dan Evans (who co-wrote Milton's Channel 4 show House Of Rooms), the man they call "Britain's funniest Milton," returns to the radio with a fully-working cast and a shipload of new jokes.
The cast includes regulars Tom Goodman-Hill (Spamalot, Mr. Selfridge) as the ever-faithful Anton, Josie Lawrence and Ben Willbond (The Thick Of It).
With music by Guy Jackson
Produced and directed by David Tyler
A Pozzitive production for BBC Radio 4.
Olwen puts her foot down, and Lynda forms a bond.
Arts news, interviews and reviews.
On May 8th Christie's auction house in New York will host what's expected to be the greatest auction of a single owner art collection. It will feature the sale of 1500 pieces of art collected by David and Peggy Rockefeller. Experts say the sale could raise in excess of half a billion dollars but the figure could be a lot more if the recent sale of Leonardo Da Vinci's Salvator Mundi is anything to go by.
In November 2017 the Salvator Mundi was bought for a world record $450m, which was way in excess of expectations. There's been plenty of speculation as to who the buyer was but what we do know for sure is that the painting will go on display in Abu Dhabi's newly opened Louvre museum.
In The Art of Money, John Wilson discovers how incredibly wealthy Gulf states are preparing for their post-oil futures by attempting to become cultural destinations for travellers. That means that they can be competing against each other for some of the world's art masterpieces.
He also finds out what the escalating prices mean for the rest of the art world and how nearly 80% of artworks end up being stored in mysterious freeports, which the authorities are currently investigating.
Presenter: John Wilson
Producer: Ben Carter.
In 2016 it was announced that three hotels which catered specially for the blind and partially sighted were to be sold. The sites in Windermere and Weston-Super-Mare have already changed hands - and now the Cliffden Hotel in Teignmouth has been added to the portfolio of mainstream provider Starboard Hotels. We sent our reporter Tom Walker to take a look, talking to the management team about what hospitality lessons can be applied across their other sites. And sticking with the holiday theme, we speak to Chris and Mike McMillan, two travel veterans who tell us their tips and tricks to make your break go smoothly.
Presented by Peter White
Produced by Kevin Core.
Claudia Hammond presents a series that explores the limits and potential of the human mind.
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.
The morning after the housewarming Sandy struggles with a sore head - and the memory of his indiscretion with Jo.
Read by Steven Robertson
Abridged by Robin Brooks
Producer: Eilidh McCreadie
Malachy Tallack's debut novel is a quiet yet powerful study of contemporary rural Scotland that asks what remains when a way of life vanishes. Set on the rugged west coast of Shetland, in a community only ever a few steps away from extinction, Tallack's novel tackles big questions about land, inheritance and belonging without ever losing sight of the humanity and integrity of its characters.
Malachy Tallack is the author of two non-fiction titles which fused nature writing, history and memoir; Radio 4 Book of the Week 60 DEGREES NORTH and THE UN-DISCOVERED ISLANDS. Malachy won a New Writers Award from the Scottish Book Trust in 2014 and the Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship in 2015. He is a singer-songwriter, author and journalist.
Comic monologues in which a range of characters find themselves engaging in that most un-British of activities: talking to a stranger.
Each piece is a character study: funny, frank, absurd, moving... Characters include a sex councillor who loves to draw, a spy who loves to share, a woman who likes to help too much ('I'm a serial helpist...'), a frustrated falconer, and a cheater who has to call her cheatee the morning after. And in this show, the listener themselves 'plays' the silent stranger in the piece...
Written and performed by Sally Phillips and Lily Bevan, with guest stars including Emma Thompson, Olivia Coleman, Jessica Hynes, Steve Evets, Sinead Matthews and Joel Fry.
Produced by Sam Bryant. A BBC Comedy Production.
News from Westminster.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Richard Hill.
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
Tweet of the Day is the voice of birds and our relationship with them, from around the world.
Miranda Krestovnikoff presents the Andean Cock-of-the-rock from Peru. Deep in a cloud forest a female awaits the display of her displaying males. Gathered in front of her several head-bobbing wing-waving males, these males are spectacularly dazzling; a vibrant orange head and body, with black wings and tails, yellow staring eyes, and ostentatious fan-shaped crests which can almost obscure their beaks. Male cock-of-the rocks gather at communal leks, and their performances include jumping between branches and bowing at each other whilst all the time calling loudly. Yet, for all the males' prancing and posturing, it is the female who's in control. Aware that the most dominant and fittest males will be nearest the centre of the lekking arena, it's here that she focuses her attention.
Morning news and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Yesterday in Parliament, Weather and Thought for the Day.
Singer and songwriter Tracey Thorn meets the film-maker and screenwriter Carol Morley.
Tracey Thorn formed the duo Everything But The Girl in 1982 with fellow singer-songwriter Ben Watt when they were both students at Hull University. Together they released nine studio albums, and in the mid-1990s their single Missing sold more than three million copies around the world. Since 2007, Tracey has released four solo albums, and published an acclaimed memoir, Bedsit Disco Queen: How I Grew Up and Tried to be a Pop Star.
Carol Morley grew up in Stockport and was in a band by the age of 14, because she felt it was the place 'where real life took place' - although she now admits she couldn't sing. She later studied film and video. In 2011 she wrote and directed Dreams of a Life, an investigative drama-documentary about Joyce Carol Vincent, who died towards the end of 2003, but lay undiscovered in her London flat until early 2006. More recently she has scripted and directed Out Of Blue, based on the novel Night Train by Martin Amis.
For Only Artists, Carol and Tracey reflect on the art of editing, on whether the film and music industries have changed in the past decade, and the pleasures of writing - including the joy of finding an unusual rhyme when writing lyrics.
Producer Katy Hickman.
James Naughtie explores history through front page small ads.
Front page news is a relatively late addition to the newspaper business. For most of their first couple of centuries, British newspapers carried classified ads rather than news on their front page. They transformed the hustle and bustle of the marketplace into newsprint, so you could take it home or to the inn to pore over at your leisure.
James Naughtie travels the country discovering how these front page ads give us a snapshot of time and place, exploring how they weave national and local life together - the heartbeat of history rolling daily or weekly off the presses.
The ads tell us what people were eating, drinking and wearing, what was on stage and what people were playing at home. They mark the mood of the time through notices for public meetings held to stoke up or damp down public fears of crime and political unrest. They are a record of the notices placed for houses and public buildings to be built, licenses applied for and subscriptions raised for publications and commemorations. They show the latest labour saving gadgets "trending" as technology arrived, and they track jobs and trades on the way up and down as the British Empire waxed and waned. The ever present ads for patent medicines record our most popular ailments.
The classified ads of the Newcastle Journal of 1st October 1842 reveal how new policing was overtaking the hue and cry, and ads for the arrival of a new dentist in town tell the story of the redistribution of teeth from the poor in town to the gentry in the county.
Produced by John Forsyth
A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 4.
In Christie Watson's account of her nursing career she is newly qualified, on a high risk children's ward and under the wing of a remarkable mentor. Today, Christie also discovers the power of play and of laughter.
Read by Teresa Gallagher
Abridged by Penny Leicester
Produced by Elizabeth Allard.
Programme that offers a female perspective on the world.
Henry James' passionate and heart-breaking novel dramatised by Linda Marshall Griffiths.
With Kate gone, Merton and Milly are now alone in Venice but an unexpected visit from Lord Mark changes everything.
Directed by Nadia Molinari.
A playwright and actor reflect on their roles, and the fact that it's the one without a disability who feels he has learned the most from their creative partnership. Fi Glover presents another conversation in the series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.
Producer: Marya Burgess.
Matt is 25. He has cerebral palsy and can only speak via an app on his iPad. Everyone who cares about Matt knows that this isn't the defining thing about him. He is funny and clever and "up for stuff" - partly because he is keen to show that there's nothing he can't do, but also because, if he's honest, he's aware that he's less likely than other people to get the blame.
Now Matt's left home for the first time and moved in to share a flat with his best mate, Jess. But when Bob (Allan Mustafa) shows up as the new carer, the fun really starts. Bob is new to the job and, although willing, domestic duties are not really his forte. He's better at selling weed and dealing in knocked off iPads.
But he likes Matt and treats him like a real person. So, as far as Matt is concerned, Bob is here to stay.
Ability is the semi-autobiographical co-creation of Lee Ridley, otherwise known as Lost Voice Guy. Like his sitcom creation, Lee has cerebral palsy and can only speak via an app. Lost Voice Guy is - probably - the first stand up comedian to use a communication aid. He won the BBC New Comedy Award in 2014, has done three full Edinburgh shows and been tour support for Ross Noble, Patrick Kielty and Jason Cook. Lee has previously worked for Sunderland City Council's communications team, and the BBC in Newcastle and London as well, as various local newspapers.
Katherine Jakeways is the co-creator and co-writer of Ability. Katherine is a multi-award nominated writer. She has written North by Northamptonshire, Guilt Trip and All Those Women for BBC Radio 4 as well as numerous radio plays. She has also written for Crackanory and The Tracey Ullman Show for TV along with a BBC 1 pilot, Carol and Vinney.
A Funny Bones production for BBC Radio 4.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Astrid Alben explains how only art and science together can help us appreciate complicated phenomena like moonlight.
Astrid is a poet and founder of the arts and science organisation, the PARS Foundation. In this meditative talk, she explains how bridging the artificial divide between science and the arts leads to a greater understanding of concepts as varied as moonlight, laughter and elasticity.
Producer: Giles Edwards.
Consumer affairs programme.
The latest weather forecast.
Analysis of news and current affairs.
"He warned me not to come back". Benazir's attempt to ensure a safe return to Pakistan ends in fear, triggered by a disputed telephone conversation with Pakistan's military ruler. With Owen Bennett-Jones.
Ballard's wedding looms and Rumpole faces a life changing decision about his own marriage. Hilda expects him to join her in Cornwall, and Phillida hopes he will leave to be with her at last.
For fifteen years and 33 episodes, Rumpole has fought, won and, very rarely, lost myriad cases - and fallen in and out of love with his wife Hilda and
"the Portia of our Chambers", Phillida Trant, who adores him, and probably always will. These final three episodes leave us guessing until the very end - will Rumpole finally leave his wife Hilda, "She who must be obeyed", for Phillida?
Adapted by Richard Stoneman
Directed by Marilyn Imrie
A Catherine Bailey production for BBC Radio 4.
Financial phone-in.
Sociological discussion programme, presented by Laurie Taylor.
Topical programme about the fast-changing media world.
Carolyn Quinn presents coverage and analysis of the day's news.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Malawian Comedian Daliso Chaponda looks at the relationship between the UK and Africa.
The UK and Africa have had a long a complicated past. This series looks at the history of this relationship and Daliso is our relationship guidance counsellor, helping us navigate the rocky historical waters between the two places.
A Malawian comedian who grew up all over the world, Daliso straddles cultural divides. He will help us all better understand how to sort out our differences. Or not...
In this second episode, Daliso looks at the people on both sides who don't want the relationship to work.
Written and performed by Daliso Chaponda
The Other Guy... James Quinn
Theme music by Lawi
Production Coordinator... Beverly Tagg
Producer... Carl Cooper
This is a BBC Studios Production.
Johnny finds himself in trouble, and Fallon is put on the spot.
Arts news, interviews and reviews.
FutureProofing presenters Timandra Harkness and Leo Johnson find out what might happen when we properly understand animals and how much our relationship with them will change in future.
They meet elephants in California, learn about "talking" dolphins in Florida, and discover the technological possibilities that could completely transform what we think of and how we act towards animals in future. From the possibilities of enhancing animals with technology, to ending all farming and finding a new way to grow animal protein that would do away with all slaughter, could the future herald greater equality between sentient creatures on our planet? Will humans and animals develop a partnership of equals?
Producer: Jonathan Brunert.
David Baker asks what happens to the families of people shot by the police.
Over the years, he has spent time with many such families - bereaved, grieving, often angry - in the UK and overseas. In this powerful talk David reflects on his time with three families in the United States, and asks whether their experience - not just the loss of a relative but what happened afterwards - was exceptional, or sadly not.
Producer: Peter Snowdon.
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.
Alice struggles with the research for her book as David contemplates his next move with tricky tenants Ryan and Jo.
Read by Steven Robertson
Abridged by Robin Brooks
Producer: Eilidh McCreadie
Malachy Tallack's debut novel is a quiet yet powerful study of contemporary rural Scotland that asks what remains when a way of life vanishes. Set on the rugged west coast of Shetland, in a community only ever a few steps away from extinction, Tallack's novel tackles big questions about land, inheritance and belonging without ever losing sight of the humanity and integrity of its characters.
Malachy Tallack is the author of two non-fiction titles which fused nature writing, history and memoir; Radio 4 Book of the Week 60 DEGREES NORTH and THE UN-DISCOVERED ISLANDS. Malachy won a New Writers Award from the Scottish Book Trust in 2014 and the Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship in 2015. He is a singer-songwriter, author and journalist.
Actor, writer, raconteur and impressionist John Sessions mixes showbiz stories, intriguing history, extraordinary impressions and fabulous one-liners - all linked to and from him.
John's dazzling array of skills - storytelling, erudition, vocal re-creations and comedy - are all brought into play as he starts each episode with a story or fact related to himself, and proceeds to take us all over the place by linking people, ending up back with himself.
Each show is a quick-witted, Peter Ustinov-style rollercoaster of storytelling - bizarre and brilliant, eccentric and effusive, autobiographical and alliterative, full of incredible impressions and droll digressions along the way.
Programme 4:
From My Night with Reg to Oliver Reed, via Pacino and Gandhi.
Written and Performed by John Sessions
Producer: Liz Anstee
A CPL production for BBC Radio 4.
Terry Alderton sings every song and plays every character in this one man comedy and musical explosion.
Meet Mr Trenchcoat, Victor, Street Kid, Morgan the Free Man and many others and let Terry take you on a sonic journey through comedy and possible madness.
Prepare to be surprised, shocked and delighted. No monkeys were harmed in the making of this show and, of course, he didn't actually shoot a sparrow.
Written by and starring Terry Alderton.
Additional material from Johnny Spurling, Boothby Graffoe, Richard Melvin, Julia Sutherland and Owen Parker.
Sound designed by Sean Kerwin
Produced by Richard Melvin
A Dabster production for BBC Radio 4.
News from Westminster.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Richard Hill.
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
Michael Palin presents the Mauritius kestrel from the island of Mauritius. Today the calls of several hundred Mauritius kestrels ring out across the forests and farmland of the island, so it's hard to believe that as recently as the early 1970s, only four birds could be found in the wild.
These smart chestnut falcons were almost wiped out by a cocktail of threats ...destruction of their evergreen forests, pesticides and the introduction of predators such as monkeys, mongooses, rats and cats. When a species is so critically endangered there aren't many options, and conservationists decided that their only choice was to take some of the wild Mauritius kestrels into captivity.
By 1993, 300 Mauritius kestrels had been released and by November of that year there were as many as 65 breeding pairs in the wild. Now the kestrels are back, hovering above the landscapes that nearly lost them forever.
Morning news and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Yesterday in Parliament, Weather and Thought for the Day.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the eleven stories of Celtic mythology and Arthurian romance known as The Mabinogion, most of which were told and retold for generations before being written down in C14th. Among them are stories of Pwyll and Rhiannon and their son Pryderi, of Culhwch and Olwen, of the dream of the Emperor Macsen, of Lludd and Llefelys, of magic and giants and imagined history. With common themes but no single author, they project an image of the Island of Britain before the Anglo-Saxons and Normans and before Edward I's conquest of Wales. They came to new prominence, worldwide, from C19th with the translation into English by Lady Charlotte Guest aided by William Owen Pughe.
The image above is of Cynon ap Clydno approaching the Castle of Maidens from the tale of Owain, or the Lady of the Fountain
With
Sioned Davies
Helen Fulton
and
Juliette Wood
Producer: Simon Tillotson.
In Christie Watson's illuminating account of her twenty year nursing career she is no longer a junior nurse. Experienced and working on a Paediatric Intensive Care Unit Christie encounters some of her most fragile and vulnerable patients, and her skills and compassion are tested to the limit.
Read by Teresa Gallagher
Abridged by Penny Leicester
Produced by Elizabeth Allard.
Programme that offers a female perspective on the world.
Linda Marshall Griffiths' dramatisation of Henry James' passionate and heart-breaking novel about desire and money.
Merton has returned to London leaving Milly, who is now gravely ill, in Venice. Kate and Merton are reunited but the shadow of Milly stands between them.
Directed by Nadia Molinari.
China's football-loving President Xi Jinping says he wants his country to qualify for, to host and to win the football World Cup by 2050. The men's national team has recently been defeated 6-0 by Wales, so there's some way to go yet. But they're spending billions trying to boost football in the country. Chinese entrepreneurs have also spent vast sums investing in local and foreign clubs, partly to help create a passion for playing football in the Chinese and to bring the latest training techniques back home.
Another official target for the Chinese government is to eradicate poverty within three years.
For Crossing Continents, Celia Hatton visits a special primary school in Gansu, in China's far west, which is setting out to turn those World Cup dreams into reality. Made up of children whose parents have migrated to the cities for work, the school drills the young pupils in football skills each day, to give them direction and purpose, but also in the hope that some of them will use football as route out of poverty and to garner Chinese success on the pitch.
Producer: John Murphy.
In the first of a two-part series, Laurence Llewelyn Bowen considers the exponential rise in tattooing across the UK. With as many as 25% of the population now tattooed, he asks why we're acquiring permanent inkings.
While once the markers of transgression, of the exotic, of forbidden sexuality, Laurence looks at the many and various factors that are driving us to get tattooed now.
From commemorative images of deceased family members, to political scenes marking the centenary of the Easter Rising, our desire to permanently mark our bodies is striking. Laurence meets Lal Hardy who, over five decades as one of the UK's best tattoo artists, has watched the medium move from the backstreet parlour to the high street studio. "Human beings have always wanted to change the way they look, from the earliest beings to now," he says.
At the Great British Tattoo Show, people of all generations descend upon London's Alexandra Palace to meet some of the industry's top talent and plan their next tattoo, from watercolour portraits of their pets to dotwork renderings of Hollywood actors.
Dr Matt Lodder, a heavily tattooed lecturer in contemporary art at the University of Essex, describes the emergence of the British tattoo industry in the late 19th Century. Sutherland Macdonald, the first professional tattooist in London had an upper class clientele with an interest in the Orient.
But despite the tattoo's posh history, they still have the power to appal the middle classes. Social historian Kathryn Hughes makes no excuse for her fear of permanent inkings and the writer and broadcaster Bidisha discusses her regret at getting a full sleeve on her left arm.
Producer: Paul Smith
A Just Radio production for BBC Radio 4.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Jennifer Kavanagh questions the value of success, arguing that it is the moral content of what we do, rather than doing it well or badly, on which we should judge ourselves.
Producer: Giles Edwards.
Consumer affairs programme.
The latest weather forecast.
Analysis of news and current affairs.
Secret reports, an arrest and "hidden hands" - why the official investigation into the Karachi attack on Benazir Bhutto failed. Owen Bennett-Jones takes a deep dive into Pakistan's deep state as the saga of Benazir's death continues.
Hungary, 1963. Soviet investigators are determined to find the mole in the Ministry. Archivist Franciska Lázár finds herself in their sights as her detective husband investigates what becomes a brutal murder case. Scores are being settled in Philip Palmer's Cold War detective drama.
Directed by Toby Swift.
Gertrude Jekyll was born in the late 19th Century and, as a talented gardener and craftswoman, managed to forge a highly successful path in a male-dominated world.
This year marks the 175th anniversary of Gertrude's birth. Helen Mark heads to sunny Godalming in Surrey, to visit the home and gardens where Ms Jekyll defined her gardening style, bred new plant varieties, developed a life-long partnership with the architect Edwin Lutyens, and became the 'celebrity gardener' of her day.
Uncovering Gertrude Jekyll's talent, determination and focus, and considering her legacy today, we look at the impact this iconic gardener has had on Britain's private landscapes.
News and insights from the film world.
Adam Rutherford investigates the news in science and science in the news.
Carolyn Quinn with interviews, context and analysis.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
A sitcom, written by Moray Hunter and starring Angus Deayton, about five single, middle aged neighbours living in flats in a converted house in North London.
Mitch (Angus Deayton) is a widower and part-time therapist who is looking to put his life back together now that he is single and living - supposedly temporarily - with Will (Pearce Quigley), his younger, more volatile and unhappily divorced half-brother.
Elsewhere in the building are schoolteacher Ellie (Abigail Cruttenden) who is shy, nervous and desperately missing her ex-boyfriend, overly honest, frustrated actress Louisa (Kate Isitt), and socially inept IT nerd Morris (Bennett Arron).
In Just Say No, Mitch's inability to say no causes problems when he agrees to go for drinks with Ellie and a friend of hers, Marie (Hilary MacLean), who is keen to meet him, and then agrees also to help out Morris by making up a four for a dinner party on the same evening.
Louisa meanwhile has a big casting opportunity and, perhaps unwisely, enrols the services of Will to help her film a scene.
An Absolutely production for BBC Radio 4.
Jennifer accepts the truth, and Freddie harbours suspicions.
Arts news, interviews and reviews.
Mozart's joyful 'Sparrow' Mass live from St Martin-in-the-Fields, London. The Bishop of Llandaff, the Right Revd June Osborne, finds inspiration for life today in this ancient Christian festival. The Eucharist is celebrated by the vicar, the Reverend Dr Sam Wells, and the music - also including compositions by Finzi and Colin Mawby - is provided by the Daily Service Singers, St Martin's Voices, and the Choir and Choral Scholars of St Martin-in-the-Fields. Hundreds of Radio 4 listeners join the choir, accompanied by trumpets drums and string orchestra for the Ascensiontide hymns Hail the day that sees him rise, Alleluia sing to Jesus, Christ is the King and Christ Triumphant. They are joined in the church by broadcasters and radio contributors who will lead various parts of the service. Producer: Ben Collingwood.
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.
Sandy struggles with the reappearance of his mother after a long absence as his shortcomings as a crofter are laid bare.
Read by Steven Robertson
Abridged by Robin Brooks
Producer: Eilidh McCreadie
Malachy Tallack's debut novel is a quiet yet powerful study of contemporary rural Scotland that asks what remains when a way of life vanishes. Set on the rugged west coast of Shetland, in a community only ever a few steps away from extinction, Tallack's novel tackles big questions about land, inheritance and belonging without ever losing sight of the humanity and integrity of its characters.
Malachy Tallack is the author of two non-fiction titles which fused nature writing, history and memoir; Radio 4 Book of the Week 60 DEGREES NORTH and THE UN-DISCOVERED ISLANDS. Malachy won a New Writers Award from the Scottish Book Trust in 2014 and the Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship in 2015. He is a singer-songwriter, author and journalist.
It's Kerry's first day in the Sales Support Department of Willard & Son Bath Suppliers - where she meets Adele for the very first time.
Alison Steadman and Isy Suttie star in the second of six two-handers written by Cabin Pressure's John Finnemore.
Cast:Adele............Alison Steadman
Kerry.............Isy Suttie
Written by John Finnemore
Produced by David Tyler
A Pozzitive production for BBC Radio 4.
News from Westminster.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Richard Hill.
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
Tweet of the Day is the voice of birds and our relationship with them, from around the world.
Liz Bonnin presents the blue rock thrush, perched high on a Spanish castle. The blue rock thrush has a slim silhouette, rather like that of a blackbird, but these largely sedentary, elusive and sun-loving birds are a rare sight in northern Europe. They are widespread in summer across southern Europe and also occur in the Arabian Peninsula and across most of south-east Asia. The male lives up to his name, as in sunlight his deep indigo body feathers contrast with his darker wings and tail. His mate is a more muted mid brown, and barred beneath. Blue rock thrushes often nest in old ruins, but can also be found in houses in villages and on the edge of towns. Here in sunny spots they feed on large insects like grasshoppers and will even take small reptiles in their long thrush-like bills.
Producer Andrew Dawes.
Morning news and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Yesterday in Parliament, Weather and Thought for the Day.
In Christie Watson's illuminating account of her twenty year nursing career she acquires a new understanding of kindness when the tables are turned. As her dad nears the end of his life, Christie bears witness to the dignity, peace and love offered by his nurse, and she in turn receives the solace and comfort that lie at the heart of what it means to be nursed. Finally, we accompany Christie on her last day and we end up in the car park where a memorable patient awaits her.
Teresa Gallagher reads
Abridged by Penny Leicester
Produced by Elizabeth Allard.
Programme that offers a female perspective on the world.
Linda Marshall Griffiths' dramatisation of Henry James' passionate and heart-breaking novel.
Following Milly's death, Merton is grief-stricken and Kate isn't prepared for the consequences. Will Milly's death change their lives irrevocably?
Directed by Nadia Molinari.
Over the sound of ripping wax-strips, nail drills, clippers and trimmers, Toyah Willcox invites us to eavesdrop on usually private conversations taking place in hair and beauty salons across the UK.
We drop in on appointments at Totally Polished in Blackpool, The Topiary Salon in Basingstoke, Smith Hair Studio in Edmonton and Not Another Salon in London's East End.
From holidays and bingo wins to hospital appointments and bereavements, customers relish the opportunity to swap stories, gossip and enjoy an hour's escape from the stresses of daily life. Beauticians and hairdressers are trusted confidantes, privy to shocking secrets, but they also provide an independent ear and a comforting shoulder to cry on.
For Toyah's friend and hairdresser to the stars, Keith Wainwright MBE, a trip to the salon is also an important source of physical and social contact in an increasingly online world.
According to industry reports, women and men of all ages and means are spending increasing amounts of time, and money, at hair and beauty salons in the UK. British consumers spent an estimated 1.89 billion pounds on salon services in the last quarter of 2017. We find out why.
Producer: Victoria Ferran
Executive Producer: Susan Marling
A Just Radio production for BBC Radio 4.
It's Eurovision time and the UK means business, hiring England's sleaziest cricketer Dave Podmore as backstage coach. Can Pod defeat the cream of Europe, or at least those gatecrashing Aussies? The coveted kitsch-pop crown is there for the taking.
A Hat Trick production for BBC Radio 4.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Jon Alexander argues that consumer power has become an idea which from parenting to politics is damaging society.
He argues that the age of the internet offers an alternative path, but that it is one we as a society must choose proactively.
Producer: Giles Edwards.
Consumer news and issues.
The latest weather forecast.
Analysis of news and current affairs.
An investigation into the death of Benazir Bhutto, former prime minister of Pakistan.
by Tessa Gibbs
Parenting can be so frustrating. You try to give them what they want, you make every sacrifice, you do everything you possibly can. Everything. But you never get it just absolutely right. Do you?
A black comedy about parenting, about consequences, about love - and about the possibility of doing the wrong thing, the worst thing, for all the right reasons.
directed by Gaynor Macfarlane.
Eric Robson and the panel are at RHS Rosemoor in Devon. Anne Swithinbank, Bob Flowerdew and Mount Stewart's Neil Porteus answer the horticultural questions.
Produced by Hannah Newton
Assistant Producer: Laurence Bassett
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4.
An original short story commissioned by BBC Radio 4 from the Irish writer Danny Denton and read by Hilary Rose (BBC Three's 'Young Offenders')
Bee spends her evening driving back and forth and round the same roundabout, dropping off and picking up various family members, only to find her own thoughts inevitably circling back to an unspoken secret.
Danny Denton is a writer from Cork, Ireland. He has published fiction and non-fiction in various journals and publications including The Irish Times, Irish Examiner and The Stinging Fly. His first novel 'The Earlie King and the Kid in Yellow' was published in 2018.
Writer: Danny Denton
Reader: Hilary Rose
Producer: Natalie Steed for BBC NI.
Obituary series, analysing and celebrating the life stories of people who have recently died.
Investigating the numbers in the news.
Friends who met through classes at a charity dedicated to well-being find that their lives have changed for the better. Fi Glover presents another conversation in the series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.
Producer: Marya Burgess.
Eddie Mair with interviews, context and analysis.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
A satirical review of the week's news, chaired by Miles Jupp.
The Aldridges face the future, and Adam loses his cool.
News, reviews and interviews from the worlds of art, literature, film and music.
Jonathan Dimbleby presents political debate from the Burgh Hall in Dunoon, Scotland, with a panel including Scottish National Party MP Hannah Bardell, the Secretary of State for International Trade Dr Liam Fox MP, the Leader of the Scottish Labour Party Richard Leonard MSP, and Professor Heather McGregor the Executive Dean of Edinburgh Business School.
A weekly reflection on a topical issue.
An omnibus edition of Professor Rana Mitter's audio portraits of figures who have shaped the arc of Chinese history. He begins with a Sima Qian, a historian whose objectivity got him into big trouble at court. When he confronted the emperor, he was subjected to a horrific and humiliating punishment. His second subject is a great Chinese leader who wasn't actually Chinese - Kublai Khan, the Mongol head of a dynasty that both occupied China and connected it to a wider world. If there were a competition for most famous Chinese in history, Confucius would surely come out on top. He was the philosopher and ethicist who has given China a significant part of its cultural DNA. Li Qingzhao is the woman remembered today as one of the great poets. A passionate writer who destroyed her reputation by divorcing her husband, she nevertheless established a reputation as a true patriot that has lasted to the present day in China. Professor Mitter ends this programme not with a character - but with a pioneering TV documentary series, one of the most watched in history. When it was shown in 1988 it started a national debate about modernisation and democracy, but was then was banned after Tiananmen Square in 1989.
Presenter: Rana Mitter
Producer: Ben Crighton
Researcher: Elizabeth Smith Rosser.
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.
After finally confronting his neglectful mother, Sandy has been letting off steam with neighbour Terry.
Read by Steven Robertson
Abridged by Robin Brooks
Producer: Eilidh McCreadie
Malachy Tallack's debut novel is a quiet yet powerful study of contemporary rural Scotland that asks what remains when a way of life vanishes. Set on the rugged west coast of Shetland, in a community only ever a few steps away from extinction, Tallack's novel tackles big questions about land, inheritance and belonging without ever losing sight of the humanity and integrity of its characters.
Malachy Tallack is the author of two non-fiction titles which fused nature writing, history and memoir; Radio 4 Book of the Week 60 DEGREES NORTH and THE UN-DISCOVERED ISLANDS. Malachy won a New Writers Award from the Scottish Book Trust in 2014 and the Robert Louis Stevenson Fellowship in 2015. He is a singer-songwriter, author and journalist.
News from Westminster.
Friends who share a late diagnosis of dyslexia celebrate their common experiences and ease of communication. Fi Glover presents another conversation in the series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.
Producer: Marya Burgess.