The BBC has announced that it has a sustainable plan for the future of the BBC Singers, in association with The VOCES8 Foundation.
The threat to reduce the staff of the three English orchestras by 20% has not been lifted, but it is being reconsidered.
See the BBC press release here.

Radio-Lists Home Now on R4 Contact

RADIO-LISTS: BBC RADIO 4
Unofficial Weekly Listings for BBC Radio 4 — supported by bbc.co.uk/programmes/



SATURDAY 14 DECEMBER 2013

SAT 00:00 Midnight News (b03kv8f4)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.


SAT 00:30 Book of the Week (b03nxy5r)
Long Walk to Freedom

Episode 5

Published in 1995, Long Walk to Freedom is Nelson Mandela's own story of his journey from his birth in 1918 in a tiny village in the Transkei, and an idyllic childhood, through his life as a young lawyer in the bustling city of Johannesburg under apartheid, increasing politicisation by his experiences in the city, membership of the African National Congress, arrest and 27 years' imprisonment, to release and eventual election as President in South Africa's first national, non-racial, one-person-one-vote election.

Episode 5:
After 20 years' imprisonment on Robben Island, the political situation is changing and Mr Mandela is moved suddenly to a prison on the mainland.

This extraordinary story is read by the South African actor John Kani who first came to prominence in Europe in the plays 'Sizwe Bansi is Dead' for which he won a Tony in New York, and The Island which he co-wrote. He received an Olivier award for 'My Children My Africa.'

The music at the beginning of the programme is the South African National Anthem, Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika.

Abridged by Michelene Wandor
Produced by Chris Wallis
A Watershed production for BBC Radio 4.


SAT 00:48 Shipping Forecast (b03kv8f6)
The latest shipping forecast.


SAT 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (b03kv8f8)
BBC Radio 4 joins the BBC World Service. BBC Radio 4 resumes at 5.20am.


SAT 05:20 Shipping Forecast (b03kv8fb)
The latest shipping forecast.


SAT 05:30 News Briefing (b03kv8fd)
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.


SAT 05:43 Prayer for the Day (b03kvdbv)
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Father Eugene O'Neill.


SAT 05:45 iPM (b03kvdbx)
"Not everyone with my illness is a murderer" - iPM discusses paranoid schizophrenia with one listener who has the illness. And we hear from a man in the Kiev about watching the protests and deciding whether to join them. Email iPM@bbc.co.uk.


SAT 06:00 News and Papers (b03kv8fg)
The latest news headlines. Including a look at the papers.


SAT 06:04 Weather (b03kv8fj)
The latest weather forecast.


SAT 06:07 Open Country (b03kv26z)
Shropshire Union Canal

Felicity Evans travels along the backwaters of the Shropshire Union Canal meeting people who've adopted a new area as their own.

Starting out near Beeston she joins Wirral Autistic Society who have adopted a 2 mile stretch of the canal, which they've used regularly, to maintain its upkeep. She sets to work and finds out how it's changed how they feel about the area.

Along the way she helps monitor the hedgerows which were introduced when the canals were created to stop stock entering the waterways. Now many sections are in poor condition but they need to be improved to help a rare moth which has adopted it as its own.

Travelling on to Ellesmere Port and the National Waterways Museum finds out who still use the canals and how a new generation are learning the traditional skills to rebuild and restore heritage boats.

Produced in Bristol by Anne-Marie Bullock.


SAT 06:30 Farming Today (b03lkmn2)
Farming Today This Week

Earlier this week MEPs voted through reforms to the Common Fisheries Policy. They cover discards, trawling, greater regionalisation and help for fishing communities. The aim is to make fishing more sustainable. Farming Today asks what the ban on discards will mean for both fishermen and conservationists.

The UK fishing fleet has declined dramatically over the last seventy years. In the 1930s Britain's fishing industry employed nearly 50,000 people. By last year, that number had dropped to 12,500. Charlotte Smith talks to the Cornish Fish Producers Organisation, and to the Marine Conservation Society, to ask what the future looks like both for the industry and for the fish stocks of the future.

Presented by Charlotte Smith and produced by Emma Campbell.


SAT 06:57 Weather (b03kv8fl)
The latest weather forecast.


SAT 07:00 Today (b03lkmn4)
Morning news and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.


SAT 09:00 Saturday Live (b03lkmn6)
Dreda Say Mitchell, Ed Smith, Doreen Lawrence

Richard Coles and Suzy Klein with author, journalist and educational adviser Dreda Say Mitchell. They are also joined by listeners Sarah and Mark Horsburgh on their experience of offering respite foster care. We travel to Nottingham with John McCarthy on the trail of Alan Sillitoe, meet two lads who tell of a chance encounter with Nelson Mandela and Doreen Lawrence's Inheritance Tracks.

Producer Alex Lewis.


SAT 10:30 The Playlist Series (b03lkmpm)
John Clare's Playlist

The ploughboy-poet John Clare recorded an entire musical culture - the songs and tunes he heard around him in the early 19th century countryside.

Everybody sang all the time - the milkmaids, the agricultural labourers, men in the pub at night - and John Clare wrote down and collected their songs. Some were sentimental, some bawdy, some nonsensical. His collection, written out on tiny scraps of paper, has become our only record of a rich musical culture which has now disappeared as noisy machinery and the rise of music halls put paid to that singing.

The songs Clare knew were also the key to his phenomenal success â€" they were how he managed to transform himself from a ploughboy to a poet. Ballad-writing was his apprenticeship.

Clare's status has risen recently, so that he is now regarded by many as England's finest nature poet. But his songs are still almost unknown.

In this programme, musician David Owen Norris unearths Clare's music from the Northamptonshire Archives and sets it for singers Gwyneth Herbert and Thomas Guthrie to perform. He then plays it on location in Clare's cottage in the village of Helpstun to three Clare experts - poet Paul Farley who has edited an edition of Clare, scholar Sara Lodge and folksong expert Derek Scott. We hear a haunting song of abandonment which Clare's mother taught him, a smutty song The Cuckoo's Nest ("give me a girl with a wriggle and a twist"), a song of Clare's which became a hit on the West End stage, and a haunting song which Clare wrote at the end of his life in the Northamptonshire Asylum.

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

Producer: Elizabeth Burke.
A Loftus production for BBC Radio 4.


SAT 11:00 The Week in Westminster (b03lkmpp)
Isabel Hardman of The Spectator investigates the impact of Nelson Mandela on British politics. Aspiring politicians give their view of MPs' pay. Why do some government IT projects get out of hand? And the inside story of parliamentary heckling.

The Editor is Peter Mulligan.


SAT 11:30 From Our Own Correspondent (b03lkmpr)
Turmoil in Thailand

Correspondents with stories from around the world: in this edition, Jonathan Head on how an argument over democracy lies at the heart of the current political turmoil in Thailand; Lucy Williamson's in the Chinese city closest to North Korea where a brutal leadership purge was underway; Katy Watson meets a man in the United States who a thousand women a year turn to for help after having breast cancer surgery; James Harkin on the Syrian air force officer who's been imprisoned on three separate occasions and Joanna Robertson in Paris explodes the myth that French women don't get fat and hears the claim that in French society, a fat female is a failure.

From Our Own Correspondent is produced by Tony Grant.


SAT 12:00 Money Box (b03lkmpt)
Pension industry accused; Steve Webb MP; Lloys mis-selling fine

Every year 400,000 newly retired people buy an annuity - a pension for life. But there was coruscating criticism this week of the way annuities are sold. 'Excessive' profits, 'hidden' commission, 'weak' regulation - just three of the phrases used by the Financial Services Consumer Panel which advises the Financial Conduct Authority. After years of reviews and endless guidance why is the annuities market still broken? And are pensioners really being burgled?

Everyone who has already reached state pension age by 5 April 2016 will be able to buy extra pension from October 2015. Details of the scheme were published yesterday but failed to answer the key question - how much will it cost? The maximum boost is expected to be £25 a week. And we know the deal will be cost neutral. So even an extra £1 a week index-linked for life is likely to cost at least many hundreds of pounds to buy. The Pensions Minister explains why he's doing it and why he isn't revealing the price.

Lloyds Bank was fined a record £28 million this week for paying staff huge bonuses to sell insurance and investments to customers with little regard for their suitability. It earned £212 million in commission from the potentially unsuitable sales of more than a million products to nearly 700,000 customers. But the bank expects to pay compensation to less than 12,000 of them. It will choose who gets it. And its customer complaint lines are still high-cost 0845 numbers.


SAT 12:30 The News Quiz (b03kvd55)
Series 82

Episode 6

A satirical review of the week's news, chaired by Sandi Toksvig. With guests Samira Ahmed, Hugo Rifkind and Rufus Hound joining regular panellist Jeremy Hardy.


SAT 12:57 Weather (b03kv8fn)
The latest weather forecast.


SAT 13:00 News (b03kv8fq)
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.


SAT 13:10 Any Questions? (b03kvd59)
Sajid Javid MP, Chuka Umunna MP, Shami Chakrabarti, Amjad Bashir

Jonathan Dimbleby presents political debate and discussion from the Farnley Academy in Leeds with the Director of Liberty Shami Chakrabarti, Financial Secretary to the Treasury Sajid Javid MP, Shadow Business Secretary Chuka Umunna MP, and UKIP's spokesman on Small Business Amjad Bashir.


SAT 14:00 Any Answers? (b03lkmpw)
MP salaries, sex segregation, SATs

Your thoughts on the proposals to increase MPs' salaries to 74 thousand pounds; whether the segregation of the sexes is ever justifiable in an educational setting; and testing in schools.

Anita Anand hears your reaction to the subjects discussed in Any Questions? by Sajid Javid, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, Chuka Umunna, Shadow Business Secretary, Shami Chakrabarti, Director of Liberty, Amjad Bashir, small business spokesman for UKIP.

You can have your say on any of the subjects discussed on Any Answers? just after the news at 2pm on Saturday. Call 03700 100 444 from 1230, e-mail anyanswers@bbc.co.uk, tweet using #BBCAQ, or text 84844.


SAT 14:30 Saturday Drama (b03lkmpy)
Winter Exercise

1981. The Cold War is hotting up. War between the Soviet and Western blocs seems a real possibility. And so, for two weeks in March, a group of top civil servants meets daily as part of Wintex-Cimex, a biennial exercise to test the UK Government's readiness for each stage of a descent into nuclear conflict. David Aaronovitch presents this documentary drama closely based on the recently released Cabinet Office file partially dramatised here by playwright Philip Palmer.

Directed by Toby Swift
Produced by Phil Tinline

1981 was a particularly tense point in the Cold War. Wintex-Cimex would reveal just how prepared, or otherwise, Britain was, not only for the terrifying complexities of a nuclear stand-off, but for coping with internal unrest, food shortages, attacks by enemy special forces at large in the country - even the possibility of a chemical attack. The full detail of this uniquely disturbing scenario - the assumptions and decisions made - was only released in 2012. David Aaronovitch is joined by Professor Beatrice Heuser of the University of Reading, Dr Kristan Stoddart of Aberystwyth University and Professor Richard Vinen from King's College, London to discuss the implications of what the dramatised extracts from the exercise created from the Cabinet Minutes reveal.


SAT 15:30 Soul Music (b03kqf04)
Series 17

Can't Take My Eyes Off You

Few songs can claim to be - quite literally - as far reaching as the 1967 classic 'Can't Take My Eyes off You'. In this edition of Radio 4's 'Soul Music', we hear from former astronaut Christopher Ferguson who heard this song as an early morning wake-up call aboard the space shuttle Endeavour. And from mum of two Michelle Noakes who sang this classic piece to the baby she was told she may never be able to carry. We also hear from the honeymoon couple whose marriage proposal began with a hundred strong 'flash mob' performance of this track and from Frankie Valli himself, who reflects on one of the most moving performances he ever gave when he sang 'Can't Take My Eyes off You' to a crowd of recently returned Vietnam Veterans. DJ Mark Radcliff recalls the many artists since Valli that have covered this song (not least his mum as she sang along to the Andy Williams version) and composer Bob Gaudio tells us how this now universally famous piece of music began life in a room over looking Central Park with a melody originally penned for a children's nursery rhyme.

Producer: Nicola Humphries.


SAT 16:00 Woman's Hour (b03lkmq0)
Weekend Woman's Hour: Birgitte Hjort Sorensen; Lady Justice Hallett; Scrunchies

Birgitte Hjort Sorensen on Danish TV drama Borgen and playing Virgilia in Coriolanus. Michelle Young tells Jane about her 'fight for equality' in one of the UK's most colourful divorce cases. Child care around the world - we hear very different experiences in Fiji and China. And, love it or loathe it, the scrunchie is back. We talk about the best way to wear a scrunchie and if it's really fashionable to tie your hair back like its 1985 with Amber Jane Butchart and Leillah Sekalala. Singer Susan Boyle has revealed she has Aspergers, a form of Autism. Why is the condition so hard to diagnose in women and what is the impact of finding out later in life? Sarah Hewitt and Dr Judith Gould, from the National Autistic Society Lorna Wing Centre for Autism discuss. And the politics of a family Christmas, with Ulrika Johnson.

Presenter: Jane Garvey
Producer: Katie Langton
Output Editor: Jane Thurlow.


SAT 17:00 PM (b03lkn5b)
Saturday PM

Full coverage of the day's news presented by Paddy O'Connell. China becomes the first nation in nearly forty years to land a spacecraft on the Moon. We'll find out what they hope to discover. Northern Ireland's political leaders have described a bomb attack in Belfast as 'despicable'. We'll hear from the capital city.

We'll be in South Africa as Nelson Mandela's funeral cortege reaches his childhood home. One of the UK's former ambassadors to Iran gives us his assessment of Tehran's claim that an MI6 agent has been arrested there.

And are farmers the best people to spend subsidies aimed at conserving wildlife? We have a debate.


SAT 17:30 iPM (b03kvdbx)
[Repeat of broadcast at 05:45 today]


SAT 17:54 Shipping Forecast (b03kv8ft)
The latest shipping forecast.


SAT 17:57 Weather (b03kv8fw)
The latest weather forecast.


SAT 18:00 Six O'Clock News (b03kv8fy)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.


SAT 18:15 Loose Ends (b03lkn5d)
Terry Jones, Shlomo, Una Stubbs, Fabien Riggall, Emma Freud, the Wave Pictures, Sumie

Nikki has just one more wafer-thin mint with Monty Python's Terry Jones. National Theatre Wales is adapting Terry's children's stories for the stage. Once upon a time in a kingdom far, far away lived a princess, four crazy knights, an angry fairy, a dragon (of sorts) and a very Silly King! 'Silly Kings' is at Cardiff Castle from 19th December until 4th January.

Nikki's got beatboxer and Mouthtronica Shlomo on a loop and talks to him about creating a magical seascape of sounds using human voices for a production of 'The Little Mermaid'. A tale of adventure, courage and the pursuit of true love, diving into a world where sea-folk dwell amongst iridescent corals, and swaying seaweed. 'The Little Mermaid' is at Bristol Old Vic until 18th January.

Emma Freud Aint Afraid of No Ghost! She talks to Fabien Riggall; founder of Future Cinema, an immersive experience, allowing its audience to integrate themselves into the narrative. His latest venture offers 'Ghostbusters' fans the chance to inhabit the world of three eccentrics who start a ghost catching business. Who ya gonna call? 'Future Cinema' is at London's Troxy on 22nd and 23rd December.

Nikki talks to 'Sherlock' actress Una Stubbs about playing Miss Chambers in new drama 'The Tractate Middoth'. In a quiet academic library, John Eldred seeks out the help of young Mr Garrett in his search for an obscure Hebrew text. But there is something unusual about this book and something not entirely scholarly about Eldred's intentions. It's on BBC Two on 25th December at 21.30.

With music from The Wave Pictures, who perform 'Red Cloud Road (Part 2)' from their album 'City Forgiveness'. And from Sumie, who performs 'Show Talked Windows' from her self-titled debut album.

Producer: Sukey Firth.


SAT 19:00 Profile (b03lkn5g)
Michelle Bachelet

Edward Stourton profiles the Michelle Bachelet, the favourite in this weekend's presidential election in Chile. If Bachelet wins as expected, then it will be her second term as president of a country which elected her to office in 2006. Bachelet took 47 per cent of the vote, almost twice as much as her rival, in the first round but it was not enough to secure an outright victory.

Bachelet's family were victims of the coup in Chile under General Pinochet in 1973. Her father, an Air Force general who refused to go along with the actions of his brother officers, died after being tortured. The regime also tortured Bachelet herself - and her mother - before allowing them to go into exile, first to Australia and then to East Germany, where they joined many of their compatriots.

Profile talks to a fellow Chilean exile who knew Bachelet when she was a student in the GDR, the speechwriter who helped her to victory seven years ago and a British diplomat who helped to sell Chile some second hand frigates and was impressed by Bachelet's plain-dealing.

Producer: Mark Savage.


SAT 19:15 Saturday Review (b03lkn5j)
American Psycho as theatre; Everything You Always Wanted to Know...; Mind Maps at the Science Museum

Matt Smith (the almost-former Dr Who) takes his first post-timelord steps in a stage musical based on American Psycho, the quintessential yuppie novel. How will they deal with the rat?

The Mind Maps exhibition at the Science Museum in London explores how mental health problems and other psychological disorders have been treated over the past 250 years. It includes objects from the museum's medical collection, archive images and art works, but how hard is it to show how the mind (rather than the brain) works?

A two-part BBC TV drama tells the story of the The Great Train Robbery of 1963. Starring Jim Broadbent as the policeman who made it his mission to track them down; part one tells the story of the robber's planning and execution of the job, and part two follows the police investigation. Is it possible to dramatise a crime without glamorising the criminals?

In the film The Innocents a young governess believes her two wards have become possessed by evil spirits. When it was released in 1961 it was rated certificate X and failed at the box office. In the intervening half century it has been hailed as a horror classic and is now being re-released as a certificate 12. Will a 50 year old black and white horror film appeal to a modern audience?

'Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Acting But Were Afraid To Ask, Dear' is a barbed guide to theatre written by an anonymous theatre reviewer known simply as West End Producer. Chapters include The Correct Way To Bow At The Curtain Call and Getting Into Drama School (learning how to sit in a circle).

Tom Sutcliffe's guests this week are Abigail Morris, James Runcie and Cahal Dallat.

Producer: Oliver Jones.


SAT 20:00 Archive on 4 (b03kp9bs)
Prisoners of Conscience Revisited

Twenty five years ago, the film-maker Rex Bloomstein began producing human rights appeals for BBC television. 'Prisoners of Conscience' ran for five years and Bloomstein asked many high profile figures, including James Callaghan, Judi Dench and Tom Stoppard, to tell the stories of prisoners of conscience from all over the world.

More than sixty cases were featured - journalists, politicians, academics, writers, clerics as well as ordinary people - all imprisoned unjustly or for their beliefs.

Now Bloomstein revisits some of those stories and discovers what has happened since. When were the prisoners released? How did they recover? And what have they done since?

Malawian poet Jack Mapanje recalls being arrested by police officers who admitted even they didn't know why he was being detained. Mapanje spent three years in prison for a crime that has never been revealed to him.

Bloomstein also hears from South Korean academic Professor Suh Sung who was arrested for being a North Korean spy. The torture to confess endured by Sung, drove him to attempt suicide by setting himself on fire. There's also the Palestinian scientist Dr. Jad Ishaq whose life was changed forever after being held in an Israeli detention centre; and Maryam al-Khawaja, niece of the Bahraini pro-democracy activist Salah al-Khawaja, who is in prison again in Bahrain after the Arab Spring. Other interviewees include the Vietnamese democracy campaigner Dr Nguyen Dan Que, the Cuban poet Ernesto Diaz Rodriguez and human rights lawyer Philippe Sands.

Rex Bloomstein also investigates the current landscape for prisoners of conscience in a post 9/11, war-on-terror world and asks what has really changed.

Producers: Simon Jacobs and Rex Bloomstein
A Unique production for BBC Radio 4.


SAT 21:00 The James M Cain Series (b03kpkyv)
The Butterfly

When Jess Tyler's two-timing wife left him he stayed on at the farm alone, growing corn and going to Church. Nearly twenty years later, a young woman turns up with a suitcase, and there's an immediate attraction between them. The problem is that the young woman is Jess's daughter, Kady. Or is she? Only the butterfly birthmark can settle the question for good. A tale of revenge, murder and forbidden love, adapted by Adrian Bean.

A BBC/Cymru Wales production, directed by Kate McAll.


SAT 22:00 News and Weather (b03kv8g0)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4, followed by weather.


SAT 22:15 Moral Maze (b03ktz12)
Forgiveness

"As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I'd still be in prison." If ever there was man who demonstrated the power of forgiveness it was Nelson Mandela. His personal example showed how forgiveness is the most powerful catalyst in the resolution of conflict. South Africa still has its problems but how much worse would they have been if Mandela had called for retribution for all the victims of apartheid, instead of leading the country in a process of truth and reconciliation, where crimes committed under the regime would be forgiven if people confessed their guilt and told the truth about their actions. Mandela was certainly a moral exemplar that we would all do well to try and emulate. Closer to home many people in Northern Ireland are still struggling to find personal peace despite the political settlement of the Good Friday Agreement. A few weeks ago, when Northern Ireland's attorney general John Larkin proposed ending Troubles-related prosecutions his idea was metaphorically drowned out by those demanding justice for the dead. Would the reaction be different if he'd made his proposal now, with Nelson Mandela's example fresh in our mind? In the interest of peace, do we all have a duty to forgive? Or are we expecting too much from victims, so that we can have the comfort of forgetting their pain and loss? Eric Lomax was a prisoner of the Japanese on the infamous Burma-Siam railway. He was mercilessly beaten in captivity. A film of his life "The Railway Man" tells the remarkable story of how Mr Lomax forgave the man who tortured him. As he said "sometimes the hating has to stop." But are their some things we should never forgive? What are the moral limits of forgiveness?


SAT 23:00 Brain of Britain (b03kpnk7)
(1/17)
Russell Davies welcomes the first four contestants in the quest for the 2014 Brain of Britain.

Forty-eight competitors from all over Britain take part this winter, with the eventual winner being named the sixty-first Brain of Britain champion in the spring of 2014. The longest-running general knowledge quiz on British radio is still the title every serious quiz contestant wants to win.

Whether it's science, history, music, mythology, popular culture, literature or sport, there's no telling what the next question will be about, and no clever strategies to resort to if you don't know the answer. There's a point for every correct answer and a bonus point for getting five right in a row. There are no other rules!

The programme also offers the chance for a listener to 'Beat the Brains' by suggesting questions which might be more than a match for the combined knowledge of the contestants.

Producer: Paul Bajoria.


SAT 23:30 A Notebook on Aime Cesaire (b03kpkyz)
When poet and politician Aimé Césaire died at the age of 94 in 2008, it robbed the Caribbean island of Martinique of its most articulate and powerful voice. He was a prolific writer - of poetry, plays and essays - and served as Mayor of Martinique's capital Fort-de-France for over 50 years, as well as representing Martinique in the French National Assembly for 45 years. Aimé Césaire dedicated his life, in print and in public, to his people and his island.

Aimé Césaire would have been 100 this year, and to walk around Fort-de-France is to be confronted with his image on almost every street, as Martinique honours his centenary and comes to terms with his loss and his legacy.

Although a potent critic of colonialism, Césaire was central in advocating for Martinique to become a département of France in 1946 - not a dominion or an independent nation, but an equal part of the French Republic. Thus, in part, was created the Martinique of today, a Gallic outpost in the Caribbean, fully part of the European Union, and where the currency is the Euro. But while the official language may be French, the lingua franca is Creole.

Perhaps Césaire's most celebrated work is the long poem Notebook of a Return to My Native Land (Cahiers d'un retour au pays natal), a fragmentary, excoriating meditation on the predicament of colonial Martinique. Begun in 1936, after Césaire had spent several years in France, it is in Notebook of a Return to My Native Land that he first employed the term that would become inseparable from his name: Négritude. Developed with fellow Francophone intellectuals in Paris in the 1930s, Négritude was an influential literary and ideological movement marked by a rejection of colonialism in favour of a common black identity, rooted in Africa and as such possessed of a shared historical context.

Using extracts from Notebook of a Return to My Native Land, this programme sketches a fragmentary portrait of Aimé Césaire in his centenary year, and also of Martinique itself, since to talk about one is necessarily to talk about the other.

Featuring Christian Lapousiniere, director of the Césaire Study and Research Centre, filmmaker Euzhan Palcy, anthropologists Richard and Sally Price, and Dominique Taffin, director of the Martinique National Archive.

Includes readings by John Norton.

Producer: Martin Williams.



SUNDAY 15 DECEMBER 2013

SUN 00:00 Midnight News (b03lkm8h)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.


SUN 00:30 Afternoon Reading (b01292vc)
Three for My Baby

Harold Lloyd Is Not the Man of My Dreams

These stories take their cue from the Johnny Mercer classic 'One For My Baby' - made famous by Fred Astaire, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and especially Frank Sinatra. Each of these specially-commissioned pieces tell of a 'brief episode' of the kind the song alludes to but doesn't describe. In other words, these are stories about doomed love: affairs that turned sour, were thwarted by circumstance or were never, ever, going to work.

Harold Lloyd Is Not The Man Of My Dreams by Morven Crumlish

She met Walter on the day she was supposed to fall in love. But Walter had no inkling of the conflicting emotions that could be aroused by silent comedians ...

Morven Crumlish's stories have been published and broadcast widely, and she also contributes to the Guardian. Her work has featured in three previous Sweet Talk productions for BBC Radio 4. 'Loulou and Barbie and the Seven Deadly Sins' appeared in Curly Tales 2 (2005); Dilemmas of Modern Martyrs - five of her stories - in 2008; and most recently 'A Good Impression' (Platform 3, 2010). Morven lives in Edinburgh.

Reader: Morven Christie

Producer: Jeremy Osborne
A Sweet talk production for BBC Radio 4.


SUN 00:48 Shipping Forecast (b03lkm8k)
The latest shipping forecast.


SUN 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (b03lkm8m)
BBC Radio 4 joins the BBC World Service. BBC Radio 4 resumes at 5.20am.


SUN 05:20 Shipping Forecast (b03lkm8p)
The latest shipping forecast.


SUN 05:30 News Briefing (b03lkm8r)
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.


SUN 05:43 Bells on Sunday (b03lknd8)
The bells of St. Edward's, Stow-on-the-Wold in Gloucestershire.


SUN 05:45 Profile (b03lkn5g)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 on Saturday]


SUN 06:00 News Headlines (b03lkm8t)
The latest national and international news.


SUN 06:05 Something Understood (b03lkndb)
Made by Hand

Look at the current interest in baking, growing your own and hand crafts. Increasingly it seems, people are finding that making something for themselves, can be more enriching than just going to the shops. It's in step with our 'make do and mend times', but perhaps it's more profound than that.

Samira Ahmed reflects on how the impulse to make things with our hands is human instinct. The act of making demands concentration and can give time to reflect. Creating something handmade can bring deep satisfaction and a sense of achievement.

She considers the spiritual value of making by hand in Shaker communities and in monastic life.
And she hears stories of people for whom creating with their hands has particular significance, like the British World War II prisoner of war, who stitched subversive messages into his needlework samplers, right under the noses of his captors. Samira also visits the workshop of Eleanor Lakelin, who handcrafts bowls and objects from wood, and asks her about the meditative aspects of creating something by hand.

Featuring music by J S Bach, Alison Krauss and Billy Bragg and with the thoughts of writers including
Pablo Neruda, Carl Honore and Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson.

Producer: Caroline Hughes

A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4.


SUN 06:35 On Your Farm (b03lkndd)
Early Lambing

Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat...and lambs are being born! Sybil Ruscoe visits Warborough Farm in Oxfordshire, which is one of the earliest intensive sheep farms to start lambing. Through the first two weeks of December, farm manager David Barber and his team of shepherds work day and night to deliver nearly 3,000 lambs into the world. Sybil experiences the highs and lows of early lambing, and finds out what it's like to spend a cold December night in a shed while the rest of the country is carol singing and Christmas shopping.

Presented by Sybil Ruscoe and produced by Anna Jones.


SUN 06:57 Weather (b03lkm8w)
The latest weather forecast.


SUN 07:00 News and Papers (b03lkm8y)
The latest news headlines. Including a look at the papers.


SUN 07:10 Sunday (b03lkndg)
Mandela funeral; Judaism in Jamaica; What makes a religion?

On the day of Nelson Mandela's funeral we hear from the BBC's John Humphrys live in South Africa ahead of the service in Qunu. While the guest list for the funeral includes numerous VIP's, Mandela's burial will be a private affair. African religion expert Dr Richard Hoskins joins Edward to discuss the traditional African aspects of the burial. But where will South Africa be now Mandela has gone? Frequently cited as the centre of the country's moral compass, The Bishop of Pretoria, Johannes Seoka, joins Edward to look ahead to a South Africa without Mandela.

From the 29th March 2014 same-sex couples will be able to marry in England and Wales. However the arrangements for allowing the conversion of civil partnerships to marriages will follow later. Trevor Barnes meets three couples from different faiths who are planning to marry under the new laws.

The Royal Commission into Child Abuse in Australia started hearing evidence in Sydney this week. Phil Mercer reports from Sydney to discuss the Catholic Church's response to allegations of child abuse and the 'Towards Healing' process set up by the church in 1996.

This week saw Scientology gain status as an official religion following a Supreme Court ruling giving a legal blessing to the UK's first Scientology wedding. But what makes a religion? Professor John Haldane and Professor Linda Woodhead discuss.

Jamaica has one of the oldest Jewish communities in the Western Hemisphere, but also one of the smallest. Nick Davis reports from Kingston on the attempts to revive the faith.

Producers: Annabel Deas, Jill Collins
Series Producer: Amanda Hancox

Contributors:
Professor John Haldane
Dr Richard Hoskins
John Humphreys
The Bishop of Pretoria, Johannes Seoka
Professor Linda Woodhead.


SUN 07:55 Radio 4 Appeal (b03lkndj)
Macmillan Cancer Support

Jo Brand presents the Radio 4 Appeal for Macmillan Cancer Support.
Reg Charity: 261017
To Give:
- Freephone 0800 404 8144
- Freepost BBC Radio 4 Appeal, mark the back of the envelope 'Macmillan Cancer Support'.


SUN 07:57 Weather (b03lkm90)
The latest weather forecast.


SUN 08:00 News and Papers (b03lkm92)
The latest news headlines. Including a look at the papers.


SUN 08:10 Sunday Worship (b03lkndl)
The Coming of Christ as Judge

"The Coming of Christ as Judge"
A service for the third Sunday of Advent from St Mary's Church, Swansea.

Reading: James 5:7-10

Leader: The Rev'd Simon Griffiths
Preacher: The Most Rev'd Dr Barry Morgan, Archbishop of Wales
Organist: Peter Heginbotham
MD: Dr William Reynolds

Producer: Karen Walker.


SUN 08:48 A Point of View (b03kvd5c)
Why Dickens Endures

John Gray gives his own theory for the cultural longevity of Charles Dickens, celebrating his view of life as a theatre of the absurd. "Dickens enjoyed human beings as he found them: unregenerate, peculiar and incorrigibly themselves."

Producer: Sheila Cook.


SUN 08:58 Tweet of the Day (b03k5b9c)
Long-tailed Duck

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

Chris Packham presents the long-tailed duck. The musical call of the long-tailed duck gives it the Scottish name of 'calloo', or 'coal- and-candlelight'. In the UK you're more likely to see them in Scotland and northern England where they seek out shellfish, diving up to 60 metres to retrieve them.


SUN 09:00 The Funeral of Nelson Mandela (b03phvnm)
Presented by John Humphrys, with Allan Little in Qunu.


SUN 10:00 The Archers Omnibus (b03lkndq)
Shula struggles with her emotions. Meanwhile Jennifer and Jess begin to bond.


SUN 11:15 Desert Island Discs (b03lknds)
Gillian Clarke

Kirsty Young's castaway is Gillian Clarke.

Wales's National Poet, she has received the Queen's Gold Medal for her work. She writes about everything from dinosaurs to suicide, but the potency and power of nature is a recurring motif.

Although she's recognised for her significant and distinguished contribution to her homeland's literature and culture, her verse has been translated into ten languages and she regularly receives fan mail from South America, Pakistan and most countries in between.

Aside from writing, her main project in life is the conservation of her own small patch of West Wales - restoring hedges, conserving bluebells and tending sheep take up her spare time.

She says, "A poem is the only work of art you can have for nothing. Read it, memorise it, copy it into your notebook and it's yours."

Producer: Paula McGinley.


SUN 12:00 I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue (b03kpy5w)
Series 60

Episode 5

The godfather of all panel shows pays a visit to the Milton Keynes Theatre. Old-timers Barry Cryer, Graeme Garden and Tim Brooke-Taylor are joined on the panel by David Mitchell, with Jack Dee in the chair. Colin Sell accompanies on the piano.

Producer - Jon Naismith.


SUN 12:32 The Food Programme (b03lkndv)
Fish & Chips

Sheila Dillon explores a renaissance in the great British fish and chip shop, with the help of food blogger Daniel Young.

At Upton Chippy near Gainsborough in Lincolnshire, not much has changed since the first fry there in 1948. The fish comes fresh from Grimsby market, the potatoes from a local farmer. The batter recipe is the same (and yes, it's a secret) and it's all cooked in beef dripping on a coal-fired range, one of the last in the UK. Not many fish and chip shops have kept the faith like owner Sally Shaw and her loyal customers, one of whom admits that even when he owned his own fish and chip shop, he always had Friday off so he could come here.

Sheila visits Rhoti Chai, an Indian street-food restaurant in London, for an Indian-style pop-up fish & chips event organised by food blogger Daniel Young. Amritsari fish and masala fries as well as curried mayo and chai-spiced pickled eggs are on the menu.

James Ritchie of Simpsons in Cheltenham explains why there's nowhere to hide with a chip and Mitch Tonks of the multi-award-winning Rockfish Seafood & Chips in Devon explains why you have to know the fish game to become a winner.

Producer...Mary Ward-Lowery.


SUN 12:57 Weather (b03lkm94)
The latest weather forecast.


SUN 13:00 The World This Weekend (b03lkndx)
The latest national and international news, including an in-depth look at events around the world. Email: wato@bbc.co.uk; twitter: #theworldthisweekend.


SUN 13:30 Hardeep's Sunday Lunch (b03lkndz)
Series 2

Marina Chapman

Marina Chapman is a grandmother from Yorkshire with a truly exceptional story to tell - a "jungle book" style tale of survival in the wild against all odds. Born in 1950's Colombia, Marina's story starts when she was dramatically abducted around the age of five and abandoned deep within a region of dense tropical forest. The story of what happened next is quite literally beyond belief but it's a story that Hardeep Singh Kohli travels to Bradford to hear over a Sunday lunch of Colombian style food and flavours.

Producer: Catherine Earlam.


SUN 14:00 Gardeners' Question Time (b03kvbyc)
The Millennium Seed Bank

Eric Robson hosts GQT from The Millennium Seed Bank at Wakehurst Place. On this week's panel are Bunny Guinness, Anne Swithinbank and Christine Walkden.

We mark the eightieth birthday of the iconic post-war garden designer, John Brookes, who coined the term 'room outside'. Christine Walkden explores the depths of the underground Millennium Seed Bank and traces the journey of the seed from collection to preservation.

Produced by Victoria Shepherd
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4

This week's questions:

Q. Is it possible to save an apple tree that has blown over in the wind?

A. Yes, it is very possible to salvage a fallen tree. Use some stakes to keep it upright throughout the winter and then remove them next summer. It may have lost some of its fine roots, so make sure you water it properly next summer. You could prune the head to reduce the wind resistance or support some of the heavier branches. Add mulch to encourage the feeding roots to grow back.

Q. Is a hotbed a good way of growing early vegetables and how would one go about it?

A. One way of doing it is to stack manure or spent hops about 2ft (61cm) deep, cover it with 6 inches (15cm) of soil and sprinkle a handful of sulphate ammonia over the top. You can add a wooden and glass frame over the top to allow you to capture all of the heat from below.

Q. Could the panel suggest some long flowering plants in blues, reds and whites to help create a First World War commemorative display?

A. The single strained Begonias would look beautiful and you could try the white flowering forms with dark red leaves. They don't need deadheading and can cope well in lousy weather.
Perhaps try the red Maltese Cross Lychnis or the brick red Pelargoniums. Marguerite Argyranthemum would provide an array of white daisies. You could try one of the blue Salvias.
Tender perennials are often better value for money as they have a very long flowering season. Salivia Indigo Spires flowers from May right through until early December. Salvia Bethellii has a pinky-red flower and provides colour for a long period. The tender perennials can be lifted at the end of the display and planted somewhere else.

Q. How should a Mandevilla be cared for over the winter?

A. Mandevillas are fabulous climbing plants, with windmill-like flowers spanning 1-3inches (2.5-7.5cm) across. Bring the pot into a cool, frost-free room. Keep it on the dry side because they don't need much water. Don't worry if it loses some leaves and its tips because you can trim it back in spring.

Q. How can you propagate a Cornus Controversa Variegata or the Wedding Cake Tree?

A. They are beautiful specimens with tiers of leaves. You could take them as bare root cuttings, but they would probably do very well as new growth in spring. Put them into a mix of peat and grit, and cover with polythene. They will probably take a long time to form the stunning structure, so it might actually be worth just buying a mature plant.

You could try air layering. Damage a small piece of stem about 6 inches (15cm) from the tip of a good shoot. Bind some damp moss mixed with compost around it with polythene. Leave it for a year or so and keep misting the bag.

Q. Could the panel suggest some native wild flowers to add yearlong colour in a cemetery?

A. The Cuckoo Flower or Cardamine Pratensis always reminds you that spring has arrived. Perhaps try digging slits into some of the turf or use a grazing animal before sowing; otherwise the seeds will have to compete with the grass. Meadow Sweet is ideal for a damp spot and will provide end of season colour. Try Yellow Rattle to reduce the fertility rate of the grass. Once the growth rate of the grass has slowed, add plants such as Ajuga Reptans and Penny Royal. Fritillaria Meleagris takes three years but the time will fly by and is well worth it for the beautiful bell-shaped flowers.


SUN 14:45 The Listening Project (b03lknf1)
Sunday Edition - Women Dealing with Life

Fi Glover introduces four conversations in which choices and memories and dealing with what life throws at you all play a part, whether you're talking about terminal cancer, acne, friendship or dreadlocks.

The Listening Project is a Radio 4 initiative that offers a snapshot of contemporary Britain in which people across the UK volunteer to have a conversation with someone close to them about a subject they've never discussed intimately before. The conversations are being gathered across the UK by teams of producers from local and national radio stations who facilitate each encounter. Every conversation - they're not BBC interviews, and that's an important difference - lasts up to an hour, and is then edited to extract the key moment of connection between the participants. Most of the unedited conversations are being archived by the British Library and used to build up a collection of voices capturing a unique portrait of the UK in the second decade of the millennium. You can upload your own conversations or just learn more about The Listening Project by visiting bbc.co.uk/listeningproject

Producer: Marya Burgess.


SUN 15:00 Roddy Doyle on Radio 4 (b03lknpn)
The Commitments

Jimmy Rabbite is on a mission - he wants to spread the gospel of soul to Dublin. Barrytown is about to become Motown as Jimmy decides to put a band together.

The first of Roddy Doyle's Barrytown series of novels, all to be dramatized by BBC Radio 4. Roddy Doyle's ground-breaking classic is the story of a working class Dublin band -The Commitments.

With Joey the Lips Fagan on trumpet, Billy The Animal Mooney on drums, Derek the Meatman Scully on bass, Dean Good Times Fay on sax, L. Terence Foster on guitar, James the Soul Surgeon Clifford on piano and - not forgetting the singers - Declan Blanketman Cuffe and The Commitmentettes, Sonya, Sofia and Tanya. This Dublin band are ready to bring some serious soul, the working man's rhythm, to Dublin's Northside.

Dramatised by Eugene O'Brien. Directed on location in Dublin by one of Ireland's finest filmmakers, Jim Sheridan (In the Name of The Father, In America, My Left Foot, The Field.)

The young cast is comprised of a new generation of talented young Irish actors and the music is by the emerging Dublin band, The Riptide Movement.

THE BAND
Guitar ..... JP Dalton
Bass ..... Gerard McGarry
Drums ..... Garrett Byrne
Sax ..... Ciaran Sutton
Trumpet ..... Robert Grant
Piano ..... Enda Collins

Written by Roddy Doyle
Dramatised by Eugene O'Brien
Producer: Gemma McMullan
Director: Jim Sheridan.


SUN 16:00 Open Book (b03lknpq)
Lord Peter Wimsey, John Freeman, Kate Mosse

The scholarly, monocle wearing second son of a Duke, who solves bizarre murders ably assisted by his manservant Bunter might seem an anomaly among the Wallenders and Rebus's of today's detective fiction but against unlikely odds Lord Peter Wimsey, created by Dorothy L Sayers, continues to delight readers. Despite her death in 1957 her character lives on not least thanks to Jill Paton Walsh who has taken on the task of continuing Wimsey's adventures, beginning with Sayer's unfinished manuscript Thrones, Dominations. She's just published her fourth Peter Wimsey book The Late Scholar and joins Mariella Frostrup and lifelong Sayers' fan, Sarah Crown, to discuss his, and the books', enduring appeal.

We continue our series on the book you would never lend for fear of never getting it back. Today is the turn of the best-selling author and co-founder of the Women's Prize for Fiction Kate Mosse.

For the last fifteen years, John Freeman has had his finger firmly on the literary pulse. Until recently, he was the Editor-in-Chief of Granta, and part of the panel that put together their most recent, much discussed, once a decade list, Best of Young British Novelists. He's reviewed thousands of books and profiled some of the world's most influential writers from Doris Lessing to John Updike. These encounters have now been collected in his latest book How To Read A Novelist.

Producer: Andrea Kidd.


SUN 16:30 Poetry Please (b03lknps)
Poetry Please Special: Edge

'Edge' is an extraordinary new poem that brings together two major talents in a confluence of science and art. The poem is a journey through space, in words by Katrina Porteous, and music for computer by the pioneering composer Peter Zinovieff. It was recorded, live, in front of an audience in the planetarium at the Centre for Life in Newcastle during this year's British Science Festival.

'Edge' visits four moons, each representing one of the primary elements: Water, Fire, Earth and Air. They are Jupiter's fiery moon Io; two of Saturn's moons, icy Enceladus and methane-rich Titan, which could possibly host primitive life. The fourth is Earth's own Moon, that witness to life on Earth.

The poem is performed by Katrina Porteous and the actor David Seddon. It draws on a range of dramatic voices - whispers, chants and incantations. Peter Zinovieff's music incorporates sounds collected from space - from Sputnik, the Apollo and Voyager missions, and the landing of the Cassini-Huygens probe on Titan.

'Edge' follows a tidal structure, visiting and revisiting each 'world', exploring the relation between chaos and cosmos. Along the way, we pick up clues to the possibility of the first stirrings of life, and finally, from Earth's Moon, we catch sight of our own planet, distinguished by the emergence not only of life but of consciousness and imagination.

'Out of the stuff of stars -
Gas, dust, ice -
Someone is painstakingly
Threading a necklace.'

Extract II (Saturn's moon, Titan)

At the Centre for Life 'Edge' was accompanied by a sequence of images of the moons and the cosmos beyond compiled by planetarium supervisor Christopher Hudson. This will be streamed on the Radio 4 website as 'Edge' is broadcast.

Producer: Julian May.


SUN 17:00 Inside the Fed (b03kqg09)
The US Federal Reserve - America's central bank - is 100 years old. Simon Jack tells the surprising story of an institution which despite crashes and crises is a cornerstone of the global economy.

With rare access to the Federal Reserve itself Simon talks to some of those who have been intimately involved with it over the decades.

He discovers some unlikely tales in the Fed's struggle to maintain its independence and he finds out what things were really like there during the worst of the financial crisis in 2008.

Producer: Sandra Kanthal.


SUN 17:40 Profile (b03lkn5g)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 on Saturday]


SUN 17:54 Shipping Forecast (b03lkm96)
The latest shipping forecast.


SUN 17:57 Weather (b03lkm98)
The latest weather forecast.


SUN 18:00 Six O'Clock News (b03lkm9b)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.


SUN 18:15 Pick of the Week (b03lnprc)
The best of BBC Radio this week with Benjamin Zephaniah

This week we celebrate three great lives, one from South Africa, one from Alabama, and one from Northamptonshire. I speak of Nelson Mandela, Hank Williams, and John Clare of course. There is also comedy, music, drama, history and we have also worked out the perfect definition of infinity. Yes we have it all on this week's Pick Of The Week, and just to keep the presenter happy there is even a bit poetry.

Programmes chosen this week;

A Cause for Caroling - Radio 4
John Clare's Playlist - Radio 4
Great Lives - Ricky Ross on Hank Williams - Radio 4
The Weekend Documentary - Notes From Kampala - BBC World Service
What does the K stand for? - Radio 4
Meet David Sedaris - Radio 4
The Infinite Monkey Cage - Radio 4
Afternoon Drama - Fearless - Radio 4
Adult Sex Workers Series - BBC Radio Stoke
Pop Up Ideas - Radio 4
Witness -The Soweto Uprising - BBC World Service
Book of the Week - Long Walk to Freedom - Radio 4
The World Tonight (Friday) - Andre Fourie - Radio 4
World on 3 - Nelson Mandela Tribute - Radio 3.


SUN 19:00 The Archers (b03lnprf)
Eddie anticipates some good firewood trade over Christmas. Ed reflects on how lucky they are compared to Darrell, who's sleeping rough in Heydon Wood. Eddie hadn't realised things had got that bad.

Ed worries that George hates him for shooting Baz. Ed is determined to put things right. He wants to find a puppy for George for Christmas.

Rosa tells Ed she's looking forward to celebrating over Christmas and the New Year. Ed tells her he saw Darrell yesterday but she's not interested.

Leonie bursts into tears about James. Lynda's concerned, and delays her visit to the Robin Hood rehearsal until Robert gets back. Leonie is grateful. She really doesn't want to be on her own right now.

Eddie tells Neil that Joe is getting stronger. But his Christmas wish is to see Joe take the reins on the cart and drive around the green. Neil is anxious about the three hour peal on New Year's Day - the Kent Treble Bob. He hopes everyone will be able to keep their concentration up for that long.

Ed, Neil and Eddie discuss Darrell. Eddie points out that Darrell is one of them. It's their responsibility to make sure he's all right.


SUN 19:15 Meet David Sedaris (b03lnprh)
Series 4

#2 to Go; Innocents Abroad

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

This week, in "#2 to Go", a trip to China does not work out well for David - especially on the food front.

The second story is called "Innocents Abroad" and tackles the tricky tightrope of "going native" when learning a foreign language.

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


SUN 19:45 Modern Welsh Voices (b03lntqf)
Brown Jug

Brown Jug by Linda Ruhemann. The first of five original stories by writers from Wales.

Whilst shopping for souvenirs in a small holiday town a man's past is evoked and it brings a new perspective on the present.

Read by Robert Pugh
Directed by Helen Perry

A BBC Cymru Wales Production.


SUN 20:00 Feedback (b03kvd4z)
The news of Nelson Mandela's death reverberated around the world on Thursday evening. But by Friday morning it dominated not only the news but also the normal schedule across BBC Radio 4. Many listeners were frustrated by the coverage which they say was just too much, and at the expense of important national news about the worst storms for a generation and the Autumn Statement. And the coverage continues. We speak to the Head of the BBC Newsroom, Mary Hockaday, and ask whether Nelson Mandela's death really warranted all that airtime.

And is Radio 4 becoming a speech and music network? Listeners are divided about whether melody has a place as part of Radio 4's speech output with programmes like Mastertapes, Soul Music and dedicated music documentaries all occupying airtime in recent weeks. We speak to Radio 4's Commissioning Editor for the Arts, Tony Phillips, about whether there are now more music programmes on the network.

While popular music may not be every listener's cup of tea, there are certainly plenty of you who enjoy the dulcet tones of bells on Radio 4. Last week Denis Nowlan, Radio 4's Network Manager, asked for listeners' help to reveal when bells were first heard on a Sunday on the network. Since then, we've heard from many of you who remember them from your childhood.

We'll also be visiting Ambridge to speak to the woman who presides over sixty years of history - The Archers Archivist, Camilla Fisher. She's joined by long-term script writer Joanna Toye to pull out some hidden gems from the thousands of minute details she holds about characters' lives.

Producer: Will Yates
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4.


SUN 20:30 Last Word (b03kvd4x)
Stan Tracey, General Alfonso Armada, Mary Eyre, Bob George, Mary Riggans

Matthew Bannister on

The jazz pianist and composer Stan Tracey. His son, Clark, reflects on playing drums with his father for thirty five years.

Also the Spanish General Alfonso Armada who was jailed for his part in the abortive coup of 1981.

Mary Eyre who played hockey for England - and tennis at Wimbledon.

Bob George, the biology teacher who became the UK's leading expert on fleas.

And the actress Mary Riggans, best known for her roles in "Take The High Road" and "Balamory".

Producer: Neil George.


SUN 21:00 Money Box (b03lkmpt)
[Repeat of broadcast at 12:00 on Saturday]


SUN 21:26 Radio 4 Appeal (b03lkndj)
[Repeat of broadcast at 07:55 today]


SUN 21:30 In Business (b03kv48v)
Workload

Once there were quotas for employing disabled people. Now there is equality legislation and protection from discrimination in the workplace. Employers are ultra-sensitive about this but what does it actually mean for people with disabilities and the people they work with? Peter Day finds out.


SUN 22:00 Westminster Hour (b03lntqh)
Preview of the week's political agenda at Westminster with MPs, experts and commentators. Discussion of the issues politicians are grappling with in the corridors of power.


SUN 22:45 What the Papers Say (b03lntqk)
Caroline Daniel of the FT looks at how papers covered the week's biggest stories.


SUN 23:00 The Film Programme (b03kv271)
Harvey Weinstein; Xmas gifts from the film world; Alfonso Cuaron on Gravity

Francine Stock talks to legendary film producer and co founder of Miramax films Harvey Weinstein, about his life in films, including his most recent release Mandela. Plus a pick of the best Christmas gifts from the film world with Catherine Bray and Jason Solomons. As we enter the "award season" critic Tim Robey discusses the Golden Globe nominations. And Alfonso Cuaron discusses his 3D wonder Gravity, still pulling them into the box office.

Producer: Hilary Dunn.


SUN 23:30 Something Understood (b03lkndb)
[Repeat of broadcast at 06:05 today]



MONDAY 16 DECEMBER 2013

MON 00:00 Midnight News (b03lkmbc)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.


MON 00:15 Thinking Allowed (b03ktz0p)
Pocket Calculator in Papua New Guinea; Chicago

The Great American City - US Professor of Social Sciences, Robert J Sampson, discusses his landmark research project with Laurie Taylor. Following in the influential tradition of the Chicago School of urban studies, but updating it for the twenty-first century, he argues that communities do still matter because life is decisively shaped by where we live. Neighbourhoods influences a wide variety of phenomena including teen births, altruism and crime. Not even national crisis can destroy the enduring impact of place.

Also, the anthropologist, Anthony Pickles, reveals the significance of pockets for controlling money in Highland Papua New Guinea.

Producer: Jayne Egerton.


MON 00:45 Bells on Sunday (b03lknd8)
[Repeat of broadcast at 05:43 on Sunday]


MON 00:48 Shipping Forecast (b03lkmbf)
The latest shipping forecast.


MON 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (b03lkmbh)
BBC Radio 4 joins the BBC World Service.


MON 05:20 Shipping Forecast (b03lkmbk)
The latest shipping forecast.


MON 05:30 News Briefing (b03lkmbm)
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.


MON 05:43 Prayer for the Day (b03lnvwv)
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Father Eugene O'Neill.


MON 05:45 Farming Today (b03lnvwx)
The rural economy is at risk because too much emphasis is put on farming and tourism. Professor Mark Shucksmith from Newcastle University says governments across Europe need to take other rural businesses more seriously. And money from the common agricultural policy should be used to help.

His comments come as ministers in England are expected to make an announcement on how much money they'll switch from direct subsidy payments to farmers, and into rural development projects.

However, the Country Land and Business Association says that the English Government should not move the maximum 15% of direct subsidy payments into the agri-environment and enterprise pot - or pillar 2. They want to see the Government transfer 9% to protect the money that's given directly to farmers as part of their Single Farm payment.

Many smallholders are also set to lose out financially as the rules on who can claim farm subsidy are changed as the government increases the minimum amount of land needed to be able to claim from one hectare to five hectares, that's an extra 12 acres.

And in the village of Porlock in Somerset, residents are looking to restore the historic oyster farming areas along the harbour.

Presented by Charlotte Smith and produced by Jules Benham.


MON 05:56 Weather (b03lkmbp)
The latest weather forecast for farmers.


MON 05:58 Tweet of the Day (b03k5bwv)
Shelduck

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

David Attenborough presents the shelduck. Shelducks are birds of open mud and sand which they sift for water snails and other tiny creatures. They will breed inland and they nest in holes. Disused rabbit burrows are favourite places and they'll also settle down in tree cavities, sheds, out-buildings and even haystacks.


MON 06:00 Today (b03lnvwz)
Morning news and current affairs. Including Sports Desk; Weather; Thought for the Day.


MON 09:00 Start the Week (b03lnvx1)
Josie Rourke on strategy and Coriolanus

On Start the Week Tom Sutcliffe talks to Josie Rourke about her production of Coriolanus, the story of the war hero destroyed by his own pride and the forces of realpolitik. His battle strategy fails on the streets of Rome as the masses get their first taste of democracy. David Runciman asks whether democracy breeds complacency rather than wisdom or reform, and in his study of Strategy, Lawrence Freedman asks why great military strategists often make such poor political leaders. Dominic Lawson tries to keep his moves hidden, as he enthuses about the world of chess.

Producer: Katy Hickman.


MON 09:45 Book of the Week (b03lnx3l)
Diana Cooper - Darling Monster

Episode 1

This new book contains the letters sent from aristocrat, society darling and actress of stage and early screen, Lady Diana Cooper, to her only son, John Julius Norwich.

When Lady Diana married rising political star Duff Cooper, they became the golden couple who knew everyone who was anyone. Her letters serve as a portrait of a time, capturing some of history's most dramatic events and most important figures with immediacy and intimacy. But they also give us a touching portrait of the love between a mother and son, separated by war, oceans and the constraints of the time they lived in.

Her letters span the years 1939 to 1952, taking in the Blitz, Diana's short spell as a farmer in Sussex, a trip to the Far East when husband Duff was collecting war intelligence, the couple's three years in the Paris embassy, as well as a great number of journeys around Europe and North Africa.

Read by John Julius Norwich and Patricia Hodge

Producer: David Roper
Abridger: Barry Johnston

A Heavy Entertainment production for BBC Radio 4.


MON 10:00 Woman's Hour (b03lnzxc)
Penelope Leach; PowerLister Barbara Judge; Self-harm in women prisoners

What is the best way to care for pre-school children? On the programme last week we looked at a kindergarten boarding school in China and community care in Fiji. Psychologist Penelope Leach is one of the guests discussing childcare in the early years. Powerlister Barbara Judge, described as one of the best connected women in Britain, on the importance of taking yourself seriously. What figures released on Monday reveal about women prisoners who self-harm. James Morton, runner-up on The Great British Bake Off 2012, shows Jane how to make the perfect festive bread, Stollen.

Presenter: Jane Garvey.
Producer: Lucinda Montefiore.
Output editor: Anne Peacock.


MON 10:45 Roddy Doyle on Radio 4 (b03lnzxf)
The Snapper

Episode 1

Barrytown is buzzing with speculation. Sharon Rabbitte is pregnant and she's not telling anyone who the father is. But with tongues wagging and rumours mounting, just how long will it take everyone to work out who in Barrytown is the "snapper's" Da?

The second of Roddy Doyle's Barrytown series of novels, all to be dramatized by BBC Radio 4. After a drunken encounter at the soccer club do, Sharon is pregnant and much to the annoyance to her dad, Jimmy, refusing to name the baby's father. So when Jimmy gets wind that it might be someone close to home all hell breaks loose.

The cast includes David Wilmot as Jimmy Snr (Ripper Street, Anna Karenina) and Aoife Duffin as Sharon (Moone Boy.)

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


MON 11:00 David Attenborough: My Life in Sound (b03lnzxh)
In an exclusive interview for Radio 4 David Attenborough talks to Chris Watson about his life in sound.

One of Sir David's first jobs in natural history film making was as a wildlife sound recordist. Recorded in Qatar, David Attenborough is with wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson, there to make a film about a group of birds he is passionate about, The Bird of Paradise. It is in Qatar where the worlds largest captive breeding population is and it is in this setting Chris Watson takes Sir David back to the 1950's and his early recording escapades, right through to today where David Attenborough narrates a series of Tweet of the Day's on Radio 4 across the Christmas and New Year period.


MON 11:30 Ed Reardon's Week (b03lnzxk)
Series 9

The Bride of Auntie

Ed Reardon leads us through the ups and down of his week, complete with his trusty companion, Elgar, and his never-ending capacity for scrimping and scraping at whatever scraps his agent, Ping, can offer him to keep body, mind and cat together.

Ed discovers that he can put his extensive general knowledge to good use when he finally finds his niche and becomes a contestant on the Radio 4 seminal quiz 'What Do You Know'. Not only is his general knowledge excellent, but he's also being paid a fee to the grand sum of £43. Is his luck turning at last?

Written by Andrew Nickolds and Christopher Douglas
Produced by Dawn Ellis.


MON 12:00 You and Yours (b03lnzxm)
Digital radio future; Equitable Life compensation

Winifred Robinson looks at the future for digital radio in the UK as the Governent prepares to make a key announcement at the Go Digital Conference. The MP calling for safe standing at Premier League football games. New payments to those who lost out when Equitable Life hit trouble and the challenges of heating a home when it's listed.


MON 12:57 Weather (b03lkmbr)
The latest weather forecast.


MON 13:00 World at One (b03lkmbt)
National and international news. Listeners can share their views via email: wato@bbc.co.uk or on twitter: #wato.


MON 13:45 A Cause for Caroling (b03lp80w)
A Second Golden Age

In the sixth part of his story of the Christmas Carol Jeremy Summerly reaches the 19th century and publications of old folk carols from what was thought to be a dying tradition. However, by mid-century, with the Tracterean movement in the Church of England at its height the carol and the singing of carols was once again hugely popular. It was the publication of a 'Christmas Carols New and Old by Henry Ramsden Bramley and John Stainer in 1867, that marked the height of another caroling golden age. However, it was now big business and there were reputations at stake when folk carol collectors saw their work hoovered up by the might of Bramley and Stainer. Jeremy also tells the story of the little 16th century Finnish manual 'Piae Cantiones' that provided a series of memorable re-workings of fifteenth century words and melodies, including In Dulce Jubilo and Good King Wenceslas.

Series Description:

The Christmas carol is as popular now as it was when carolers celebrated the birth of Edward III in 1312. Back then the carol was a generic term for a song with its roots in dance form, nowadays only the strictest scholar would quibble with the fact that a carol is a Christmas song.

But the journey the carol has taken is unique in music history because each shift in the story has been preserved in the carols that we sing today. Go to a carol concert now and you're likely to hear folk, medieval, mid-victorian and modern music all happily combined. It's hard to imagine that happening in any other situation.

In these programmes Jeremy Summerly follows the carol journey through the Golden age of the Medieval carol into the troubled period of Reformation and puritanism, along the byways of the 17th and 18th century waits and gallery musicians and in to the sudden explosion of interest in the carol in the 19th century. It's a story that sees the carol veer between the sacred and secular even before there was any understanding of those terms. For long periods the church, both catholic and protestant, was uneasy about the virility and homespun nature of carol tunes and carol texts. Nowadays many people think that church music is defined by the carols they hear from Kings College Cambridge.

He traces the folk carol in and out of church grounds, the carol hymn, the fuguing carol and the many other off-shoots, some of which survive to this day and many others which languish unloved but ready for re-discovery.

It's a journey full of song describing the history of a people who needed expression for seasonal joy in the coldest, hardest time of the year. And however efficient the heating system may be, the carol still generates warmth. Much of that is to do with the positive nostalgia of this music.

That nostalgia is in part due to the fact that carols are one of the first kinds of song children actually sing rather than hear. Many favourite carols were actually written for Children; Once in Royal David's City the most familiar example. Another factor is the concentration in the texts on the humanity of nativity with tunes garnered from the uninhibited world of folk song and ballad.

The series title is taken from a Thomas Hardy poem in which he ponders of a Darkling Thrush why it should chose to sing - 'so little cause for carolings of such ecstatic sound' - is the question asked. THis series is an attempt to answer why Carols remain so popular and familiar to so many. In fact Hardy himself, in his first novel Under The Greenwood Tree, went some way to answering his own question when he described the Mellstock Quire singing at Midnight on Christmas Eve:

'Then passed forth into the quiet night an ancient and time worn hymn, embodying a quaint Christianity in words orally transmitted from father to son through several generations down to the present characters, who sang them out right earnestly."

Jeremy brings the series up to date with the story of the famous Nine Lessons and Carols service broadcast by the BBC since the 1920s but born originally in Truro. It's a service that commands a worldwide audience measured in many millions, but as Jeremy concludes it has left an imbalance in the appreciation of our caroling tradition, a tradition that has always had one foot in the pub and another in the choir stalls.

Producer: Tom Alban.


MON 14:00 The Archers (b03lnprf)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 on Sunday]


MON 14:15 Borgen: Outside the Castle (b03lpbzr)
Episode 1

DR, the Danish producers of 'Borgen', originally commissioned this thriller to run alongside the first series of their acclaimed political drama. Hans Gammelgaard, Private Secretary in the Ministry of the Environment, is seeking approval for the controlled use of genetically modified crops by Danish farmers. He expected opposition but not from unseen enemies prepared to go to any lengths in pursuit of their own agenda. By Tommy Bredsted and Joan Rang Christensen, in an English version by Joy Wilkinson.

Original music by Halfdan E.
Directed by Anders Lundorph

********

Originally produced in ten parts by DR, Denmark's national broadcaster, this radio spin-off of 'Borgen' is set against the backdrop of the first series of the television drama which followed the unlikely emergence of Birgitte Nyborg as the country's new prime minister. Both series have at their centre the Danish parliament, nicknamed Borgen - 'the castle'. While the TV drama focuses on the politicians, the radio drama is set in the world of the civil service. Both share the same soundtrack composed by Halfdan E.


MON 15:00 Brain of Britain (b03lpbzt)
(2/17)
Competitors from Oxfordshire, West Sussex, London and Kent join Russell Davies for the second heat in the current series of the longest-lived general knowledge quiz on British radio.

The eventual winner after heats, semi-finals and Final will be named the sixty-first Brain of Britain in the spring of 2014.

As always, the contestants will also pool their brainpower to tackle questions from a listener hoping to win a prize by 'Beating the Brains'.

Producer: Paul Bajoria.


MON 15:30 The Food Programme (b03lkndv)
[Repeat of broadcast at 12:32 on Sunday]


MON 16:00 Stories in Sound (b03lpbzw)
Derry to Mostar and the Conquest of Happiness

Marie-Louise Muir follows a play co-produced in Northern Ireland and Bosnia as it travels from Derry-Londonderry to Mostar, asking what use is art in traumatic situations?


MON 16:30 The Infinite Monkey Cage (b03lpbzy)
Series 9

Should We Pander to Pandas?

This week, Brian Cox and Robin Ince wonder if the world would be better off without spending an undue amount of time and energy trying to get giant pandas to mate and instead concentrated on saving species which let's face it, are a lot less cute but probably more important for the planet. Should we make a distinction between the organisms we want to save as opposed to those we need to save? The science and politics of biodiversity and conservation, explored and explained (sort of) with the help of Sandy Knapp, Simon Watt and comedian Sara Pascoe. Producer: Rami Tzabar.


MON 17:00 PM (b03lpc00)
Coverage and analysis of the day's news.


MON 18:00 Six O'Clock News (b03lkmbw)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.


MON 18:30 I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue (b03lpc02)
Series 60

Episode 6

Back for a second week at the Milton Keynes Theatre, regulars Barry Cryer, Graeme Garden and Tim Brooke-Taylor are joined on the panel by David Mitchell, with Jack Dee in the chair. Piano accompaniment is provided by Colin Sell.

Producer - Jon Naismith.


MON 19:00 The Archers (b03lpc04)
Tom's flat out with the pigs and all the incoming Christmas orders. not to mention the panto rehearsals. Lynda's pedantic directing is getting to Tom but he's glad that rehearsals have meant he has been able to see more of Kirsty.

Kirsty thinks Tom's a bit tactless to be so loved up in front of Helen, especially with Jess's party playing on her mind. She wishes Jess had ordered her party food from somewhere else, and isn't looking forward to delivering it on Thursday. Kirsty suggests a girls' night out tomorrow. Helen takes a bit of persuading but seems to cheer up when Kirsty insists Tom will look after Henry.

Jennifer's helping Jess prepare for her party. Rob returns home but is less than enthusiastic. He still has no desire to indulge her plans and wants no part in the organising.

Jennifer shares some recipe ideas with Jess, and they're full of mutual admiration of each other's lives. Rob's as cynical as ever and knows what the party is all about. It won't make him change his mind. He remains adamant. He doesn't want to live in Ambridge.


MON 19:15 Front Row (b03lpc06)
Andrew Lloyd Webber; Christmas TV; Anchorman 2

With Mark Lawson.

Ron Burgundy returns in Anchorman 2. Will Ferrell's hirsute newsreader and his crack team of reporters make it to the big-time as they bring their unique brand of newsgathering to New York city. Mishal Husain discusses whether this sequel to the cult comedy has stayed classy.

Andrew Lloyd Webber's latest musical examines the life and death of society osteopath Stephen Ward, a key figure in the 1963 Profumo scandal, who later committed suicide. Lloyd Webber explains the crucial role Front Row played in the musical coming to fruition and discusses his frustration at the secrecy surrounding the events of Ward's trial.

It's the battle of the costume dramas this Christmas. From the BBC it's Death Comes to Pemberley, adapted from PD James's follow-up to Pride and Prejudice. Six years after the marriage of Elizabeth Bennett and Mr Darcy, the couple are preparing for the annual ball at their magnificent Pemberley home, when the family's peace is shattered by a murder in the estate's woodlands. And from ITV, it's Downton Abbey where it's the summer season and as part of Rose's 'coming out' she is to be presented at Buckingham Palace. Rachel Cooke reviews both.

Producer: Ellie Bury.


MON 19:45 Roddy Doyle on Radio 4 (b03lnzxf)
[Repeat of broadcast at 10:45 today]


MON 20:00 Whatever Happened to Community? (b03lpc08)
Reconstructing Community

Giles Fraser has left a glittering job as Canon Chancellor of St Paul's Cathedral and is now working as the priest of a run-down parish in Elephant and Castle. This has set him thinking about the nature of community, which he investigates in this very personal series.

In this final programme he asks what lies at the heart of community. Is it possible to intervene to make communities stronger?

Giles visits the RSA project in Bristol, Social Mirror. Its aim is to combat a growing plague of loneliness, especially amongst older people. Gaia Marcus, who runs the project, believes that a lack of social connectedness can impact heavily on mental health, well-being and life prospects. Social Mirror offers 'social prescriptions' to people visiting their doctors' surgery - including bingo, walking, tai chi, gardening and drama - forging links between individuals and building social networks.

Social geographer Jane Wills explains the role of social organising in strengthening communities. An idea born in America and made famous by Barack Obama, it is gaining currency here.

David Goodhart from the think tank Demos and Frank Cottrell Boyce, who scripted the opening ceremony of last year's Olympic Games, discuss the role of national identity.

And, in an increasingly secular age, Giles asks theologian John Milbank and priest and broadcaster Richard Coles whether there still a role for the church in building our communities.

Producer: Jane Greenwood.
A Loftus production for BBC Radio 4.


MON 20:30 Crossing Continents (b03kv1dx)
Indonesia's humungous healthcare plan

On 1 January 2014 Indonesia will launch the largest public health insurance scheme in the world. It will unite a bewildering array of current schemes to cover the entire population, with the poor getting their health care free. Former BBC Jakarta Correspondent Claire Bolderson asks whether the world's fourth most populous country has the resources and organisational skills to make such an ambitious scheme work?
Producer: Mike Gallagher.


MON 21:00 Shared Planet (b03kqf02)
Eco-Tourism

Humans in the form of scientific research or for artistic endeavour have for centuries travelled the world in search of new landscapes and places. It was not until the arrival of cheap air travel in the 1970's that far flung remote areas became accessible to anyone. Seeing and engaging with a wild landscape or animal has been shown to improve our desire to protect nature. But as the sheer numbers of people travelling to see wildlife spectacles increases, is it possible that the wildlife they have come to see may be changing their behaviour in response to this pressure. This week's field report comes a whale and dolphin watching trip in the Azores where tourist boats head off in search of a once in a lifetime wildlife spectacle.

Producer Andrew Dawes.


MON 21:30 Start the Week (b03lnvx1)
[Repeat of broadcast at 09:00 today]


MON 21:58 Weather (b03lkmby)
The latest weather forecast.


MON 22:00 The World Tonight (b03lpc0b)
David Cameron says Afghan mission is accomplished;
The future of NATO;
Why Father Christmas has changed;
Ed Miliband outlines his plan for housing reform;
The future of airports - what should tomorrow's report recommend?
With Ritula Shah.


MON 22:45 Book at Bedtime (b03lpc0d)
Aunts Aren't Gentlemen

A Typical Man about Town

Blake Ritson reads a classic Jeeves and Wooster story from P G Wodehouse, one of the masters of comic fiction.

'Mr Wooster,' he said, 'you are a typical young man about town.'
'Oh thanks,' I responded, for it sounded like a compliment, and one always likes to say the civil thing.

Bertie Wooster has been overdoing the metropolitan life a little, so on doctor's orders, finds himself retiring to the quiet hamlet of Maiden Eggesford to 'sleep the sleep of the just and lead the quiet Martini-less life'. Only the presence of his irrepressible Aunt Dahlia shatters the rustic peace as an imbroglio develops - destined to be famous down the long years as the 'Maiden Eggesford Horror' or 'The Case Of The Cat Which Kept Popping Up When Least Expected' - which involves a stolen cat, an over-sensitive racehorse, and some star-crossed lovers. Wooster's quick-thinking butler Jeeves, as always, comes to the rescue.

In the first episode: 'A typical man about town' - on discovering some alarming spots, Bertie Wooster heads off to his quack, but on the way bumps into a former fiancee turned firebrand, her jealous paramour, and a very unwelcome adversary from the past.

The author of almost a hundred books and the creator of Jeeves, Blandings Castle, Psmith, Ukridge, Uncle Fred and Mr Mulliner, P G Wodehouse was born in 1881 in Guildford, Surrey. He was created a Knight of the British Empire in 1975 and died on St. Valentine's Day in the same year at the age of ninety-three. Jeeves and Wooster were perhaps his best-known creations; 'Aunts Aren't Gentlemen' was published in 1974, and was the last novel to feature the literary duo.

Reader: Blake Ritson is an acclaimed stage an screen actor, who first gained recognition for his role in Tom Stoppards 'Arcadia', and more recently for his TV roles in 'Emma', 'Upstairs Downstairs' and 'Mansfield Park'.

Abridger: Richard Hamilton
Producer: Justine Willett.


MON 23:00 Curlew River (b03hvqlf)
The works of Benjamin Britten have been performed all over the world, from Aldeburgh (where so many of them were written) to Kuala Lumpur.

Tenor Ian Bostridge introduces us to Curlew River, one of Britten's strangest and most remarkable musical works. The chamber opera was first performed in Orford Church, but was born out of Britten's tour of the Far East in 1956. It's set in East Anglia, on the banks of the imaginary River Curlew, but is inspired by Japanese Noh theatre.

Ian Bostridge is playing the role of a mother who has lost her child in a production at St Giles, Cripplegate, in London. We follow him through the rehearsal process, hear what it's like to perform the part, and learn how Britten incorporated Eastern music and drama into a Christian parable set in the fenlands of medieval England.

Producer: Isabel Sutton
A Just Radio production for BBC Radio 4 first broadcast in 2013.


MON 23:30 Today in Parliament (b03lpc0g)
The Home Secretary tells MPs she does not at the moment intend to limit the number of EU citizens who can come to Britain.

But Theresa May says a cap on EU migrants was a "possibility" in the future.

MPs debate Government plans to shake-up the way care for the elderly is funded in England.
There is strong criticism of North Korea in the Commons following the execution of a senior member of the regime in Pyongyang.

And the former Prime Minister, Sir John Major, gives peers some advice on how best to promote Britain abroad.

Susan Hulme and team report on today's events in Parliament.



TUESDAY 17 DECEMBER 2013

TUE 00:00 Midnight News (b03lkmcw)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.


TUE 00:30 Book of the Week (b03lnx3l)
[Repeat of broadcast at 09:45 on Monday]


TUE 00:48 Shipping Forecast (b03lkmcy)
The latest shipping forecast.


TUE 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (b03lkmd0)
BBC Radio 4 joins the BBC World Service.


TUE 05:20 Shipping Forecast (b03lkmd2)
The latest shipping forecast.


TUE 05:30 News Briefing (b03lkmd4)
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.


TUE 05:43 Prayer for the Day (b03lpfwc)
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Father Eugene O'Neill.


TUE 05:45 Farming Today (b03lpfwf)
Later today a British dairy processor will enter the Global Dairy Trade auction, putting UK skimmed milk powder onto the worldwide market for the first time. The massive demand for dairy products in developing economies, along with a shortage of dairy produce at the moment, means Arla Foods in the UK will take the plunge into worldwide selling for the first time. Anna Hill asks what the significance of the move is for the UK dairy industry.

How much water should farmers be allowed to take out of the ground to supply their farms? The rules on water abstraction, which date back to the 1960s, could be about to change. In the age of climate change, we find out what this might mean for farmers.

And living the good life? Farming Today visits a smallholding - one of around 150,000 in England. Is it just a hobby, or a genuine source of food?

Presented by Anna Hill and produced by Emma Campbell.


TUE 05:58 Tweet of the Day (b03k5c26)
Ptarmigan

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

David Attenborough presents the ptarmigan. Few birds are tough enough to brave winter on the highest of Scottish mountains but Ptarmigan are well adapted to extreme conditions. They're the only British bird that turns white in winter and Ptarmigan have feathers that cover their toes, feet and nostrils to minimise heat loss.


TUE 06:00 Today (b03lpfwh)
Morning news and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Yesterday in Parliament, Weather and Thought for the Day.


TUE 09:00 The Making of the Modern Arab World (b03lpfwk)
Episode 2

Egyptian author Tarek Osman traces the ideas that have shaped the modern Arab world, focussing on Egypt and Syria. Today, he explores the rise and fall of Arab nationalism.

Producer: Phil Tinline.


TUE 09:45 Book of the Week (b03lpfwm)
Diana Cooper - Darling Monster

Episode 2

This new book contains the letters sent from aristocrat, society darling and actress of stage and early screen, Lady Diana Cooper, to her only son, John Julius Norwich.

When Lady Diana married rising political star Duff Cooper, they became the golden couple who knew everyone who was anyone. Her letters serve as a portrait of a time, capturing some of history's most dramatic events and most important figures with immediacy and intimacy. But they also give us a touching portrait of the love between a mother and son, separated by war, oceans and the constraints of the time they lived in.

Her letters span the years 1939 to 1952, taking in the Blitz, Diana's short spell as a farmer in Sussex, a trip to the Far East when husband Duff was collecting war intelligence, the couple's three years in the Paris embassy, as well as a great number of journeys around Europe and North Africa.

Today, Lady Diana sets up a smallholding in Sussex for the war effort. She will not dig for victory, but will certainly milk a cow in order to produce her own cheese.

Read by John Julius Norwich and Patricia Hodge
Producer: David Roper
Abridger: Barry Johnston

A Heavy Entertainment production for BBC Radio 4.


TUE 10:00 Woman's Hour (b03lpfwp)
A Girl Called Jack; Sam Bailey; Constance Markievicz

Sam Bailey on her X Factor victory, how her life's changed and what it means to be supporting Beyonce on tour.

Two years ago Jack Monroe describe herself as 'unemployed, broke, and broken. Now her blog "A Girl Called Jack" about feeding herself and her son on £10 a week, attracts a huge following, she writes a column for a national newspaper and is about to become the face of one of our biggest supermarkets. We spend time with in her tiny Southend kitchen.

Laurie Graham's husband was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease last year. It was six years on from when she first noticed that something was wrong. Now she's coming to terms with living with a man who can't even remember their wedding day. We look at the impact of dementia on couples and the peculiar kind of loneliness when you live with someone with the condition.

William Hague recently announced a global summit in London next year to demand justice for victims of sexual violence in warzones. Jane spoke to one of the victims planning to attend, Jineth Bedoya Lima, a top reporter in Colombia. At 26 Jineth was kidnapped, tortured and raped by a right-wing paramilitary group and has since campaigned to give a voice to other victims of conflict-related sexual violence.

And we celebrate the achievements of Constance Markievicz who in 1918 became the first woman ever returned to the Commons at Westminster, but as a member for Sinn Féin she did not take her seat.

Presented by Jane Garvey.
Studio Producer Beverley Purcell
Editor Alice Feinstein.


TUE 10:45 Roddy Doyle on Radio 4 (b03lpfwr)
The Snapper

Episode 2

Barrytown is buzzing with speculation. Sharon Rabbitte is pregnant and she's not telling anyone who the father is. But with tongues wagging and rumours mounting, just how long will it take everyone to work out who in Barrytown is the "snapper's" Da?

The second of Roddy Doyle's Barrytown series of novels, all to be dramatized by BBC Radio 4. After a drunken encounter at the soccer club do, Sharon is pregnant and much to the annoyance to her dad, Jimmy, refusing to name the baby's father. So when Jimmy gets wind that it might be someone close to home all hell breaks loose.

The cast includes David Wilmot as Jimmy Snr (Ripper Street, Anna Karenina) and Aoife Duffin as Sharon (Moone Boy.)

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


TUE 11:00 Shared Planet (b03lpfwt)
Noise in the Environment

Before the arrival of the Industrial Revolution in the 18th Century many believe the planet was largely a silent place. However what this overlooks is that the natural world is an incredibly noisy environment as species communicate between each other sometimes over vast distances. What has changed is that from around 1800 one species on the planet is arguably losing its ability to hear the presence of natural sound, and that species is Homo sapiens. Today the amount of anthropogenic noise 7 billion people produce across this planet is for many resulting in a disconnection with our natural neighbours and an inability to experience silence. If we can no longer hear the natural world, are we possibly becoming disconnected from everything around us? Monty Don explores this question through the difficulty of hearing natural sounds in the countryside without the interference of human noise.

Producer : Andrew Dawes.


TUE 11:30 Soul Music (b03lpfww)
Series 17

Brahms' German Requiem

How Brahms' German Requiem, written as a tribute to his mother and designed to comfort the grieving, has touched and changed peoples lives.

Stuart Perkins describes how the piece arrived at the right time in his life, after the death of his aunt.

Axel Körner, Professor of Modern History at University College London, explains the genesis of the work and how the deaths of Brahms' friends and family contributed to the emotional power of the piece.

Daniel Malis and Danica Buckley recall how the piece enabled them to cope with the trauma of the Boston marathon bombings.

Simon Halsey, Chief Conductor of the Berlin Radio Choir, explores how Brahms' experience as a church musician enabled him to distil hundreds of years of musical history into this dramatic choral work.

For Imani Mosley, the piece helped her through a traumatic time in hospital. Rosemary Sales sought solace in the physical power of Brahms' music after the death of her son. And June Noble recounts how the piece helped her find her voice and make her peace with her parents.

Producer: Melvin Rickarby.


TUE 12:00 You and Yours (b03lpfwy)
Call You and Yours - Christmas: Is it all it's cracked up to be?

Call You and Yours with Winifred Robinson is all about the reality of Christmas. It's supposed to be a time of joy, but for many it's disappointing and stressful.


TUE 12:57 Weather (b03lkmd6)
The latest weather forecast.


TUE 13:00 World at One (b03lkmd8)
National and international news. Listeners can share their views via email: wato@bbc.co.uk or on twitter: #wato.


TUE 13:45 A Cause for Caroling (b03lpfx0)
Folk Carol Survival and Revival

In the seventh programme in his series describing the gathering history of the Christmas Carol in Great Britain Jeremy Summerly returns to the Gallery tradition that was squeezed out of 19th century Church worship but steadfastly refused to die. It's now in rude health in several parts of the country but nowhere is it more energetically sustained than in South Yorkshire and Derbyshire. With the guidance of Dr Ian Russell who holds folk carol festivals and the enthusiasm of pub carolers who sustain the tradition Jeremy shares a pint and a clutch of fuguing carols which flower happily in the 21st century while having roots in the 18th and 19th.
He also finds out about an American offshoot of the gallery style that's been preserved in the icy blasts of Pennsylvannia USA since it was first seeded there in the middle of the 19th century.

Series Description:
The Christmas carol is as popular now as it was when carolers celebrated the birth of Edward III in 1312. Back then the carol was a generic term for a song with its roots in dance form, nowadays only the strictest scholar would quibble with the fact that a carol is a Christmas song.
But the journey the carol has taken is unique in music history because each shift in the story has been preserved in the carols that we sing today. Go to a carol concert now and you're likely to hear folk, medieval, mid-victorian and modern music all happily combined. It's hard to imagine that happening in any other situation.
In these programmes Jeremy Summerly follows the carol journey through the Golden age of the Medieval carol into the troubled period of Reformation and puritanism, along the byways of the 17th and 18th century waits and gallery musicians and in to the sudden explosion of interest in the carol in the 19th century. It's a story that sees the carol veer between the sacred and secular even before there was any understanding of those terms. For long periods the church, both catholic and protestant, was uneasy about the virility and homespun nature of carol tunes and carol texts. Nowadays many people think that church music is defined by the carols they hear from Kings College Cambridge.
He traces the folk carol in and out of church grounds, the carol hymn, the fuguing carol and the many other off-shoots, some of which survive to this day and many others which languish unloved but ready for re-discovery.
It's a journey full of song describing the history of a people who needed expression for seasonal joy in the coldest, hardest time of the year. And however efficient the heating system may be, the carol still generates warmth. Much of that is to do with the positive nostalgia of this music.
That nostalgia is in part due to the fact that carols are one of the first kinds of song children actually sing rather than hear. Many favourite carols were actually written for Children; Once in Royal David's City the most familiar example. Another factor is the concentration in the texts on the humanity of nativity with tunes garnered from the uninhibited world of folk song and ballad.
The series title is taken from a Thomas Hardy poem in which he ponders of a Darkling Thrush why it should chose to sing - 'so little cause for carolings of such ecstatic sound' - is the question asked. THis series is an attempt to answer why Carols remain so popular and familiar to so many. In fact Hardy himself, in his first novel Under The Greenwood Tree, went some way to answering his own question when he described the Mellstock Quire singing at Midnight on Christmas Eve:
'Then passed forth into the quiet night an ancient and time worn hymn, embodying a quaint Christianity in words orally transmitted from father to son through several generations down to the present characters, who sang them out right earnestly."
Jeremy brings the series up to date with the story of the famous Nine Lessons and Carols service broadcast by the BBC since the 1920s but born originally in Truro. It's a service that commands a worldwide audience measured in many millions, but as Jeremy concludes it has left an imbalance in the appreciation of our caroling tradition, a tradition that has always had one foot in the pub and another in the choir stalls.

Producer:Tom Alban.


TUE 14:00 The Archers (b03lpc04)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 on Monday]


TUE 14:15 Borgen: Outside the Castle (b03lpfx2)
Episode 2

DR, Denmark's national broadcaster and producers of 'Borgen', originally commissioned this thriller to run alongside the first series of their acclaimed political drama. Hans Gammelgaard, Private Secretary in the Ministry of the Environment, is seeking approval for the controlled use of genetically modified crops by Danish farmers. He expected opposition but not from unseen enemies prepared to go to any lengths in pursuit of their own agenda. By Tommy Bredsted, Joan Rang Christensen and Rum Malmros, in an English version by Joy Wilkinson.

This radio spin-off is set against the backdrop of the first series of the television drama, when Birgitte Nyborg became the country's new prime minister. Both series have at their centre the Danish parliament, nicknamed Borgen - 'the castle'. While the TV drama focuses on politicians, the radio drama is set in the world of the civil service. Both share the same soundtrack composed by Halfdan E.

Part 2
Grandson Nick forces Hans to pick himself up after being sacked, and they join forces with cynical journalist, Jan Gleerup, to find out who has been pushing commercial interests in the GMO debate in Borgen. And then the threatening phone calls start....

Director ..... Polly Thomas
Sound designer ..... Nigel Lewis
PC ..... Willa King

A BBC Cymru/Wales production for BBC Radio 4.


TUE 15:00 The Kitchen Cabinet (b03lph1b)
Series 5

Cardiff

Jay Rayner hosts the last programme in the current series of Radio 4's culinary panel programme, from Cardiff. Answering questions from the audience are chef and cookery teacher Angela Gray, food writer Tim Hayward, Scottish-Indian fusion chef Angela Malik, and food scientist Peter Barham.

From within the Aladdin pantomime set at The Gate Arts Centre, the panel discusses perfect party food, seasonal beverages and alternative Christmas desserts.

We also find out about the long Italian tradition present in Wales and ask whether there is a limit to what can be put onto a pizza, and Angela Gray defends the Bara Brith tea loaf.

Food Consultant: Anna Colquhoun.

Produced by Victoria Shepherd.
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4.


TUE 15:30 Shared Experience (b03lph1d)
Series 1

I Saw a Ghost

Shared Experience is a new series. Fi Glover and guests sit round a kitchen table to share strange tales that turn out to be unexpectedly common. In the first programme Fi talks to people who've seen a ghost. Fi's guests have come from different places, with different backgrounds; they live very different lives. But they have one experience they all share - the day they saw a ghost and what happened to them after. In Britain, strange tales are more common than you think.


TUE 16:00 Word of Mouth (b03lph1g)
Prime Suspects

Michael Rosen has just 24 minutes to crack the case of the police interview. His hard-bitten squad of investigators includes top crime authors Peter James and John Harvey and the writer of ITV's 'Scott and Bailey', Sally Wainwright .

Until the 1980s the police had no formal training in interviewing techniques. When a suspect entered the interrogation room he could have faced a barrage of foul language, veiled threats and downright lies. There was usually no solicitor present and no recordings of the interview. A successful interrogation was one where the suspect 'coughed', admitting to the crime as quickly as possible.

Today things are considerably more restrained. The word 'interrogation' has been banned in England and Wales. Every 'investigative interview' is captured electronically and every policeman gets training in the latest psychological techniques to draw out suspect and witness testimony. The changes might be good for justice but they're a nightmare for novelists and dramatists.

Without the threats, the bullying and the violence what's left for the crime writer who enjoys the language of villains and crimefighters under extreme pressure? Michael talks to best-selling novelists Peter James and John Harvey and TV writer Sally Wainwright about the delicate path they tread between the dull reality of police official language and the tempting darklands of their violent imaginations.

Producer: Alasdair Cross.


TUE 16:30 Great Lives (b03lph8m)
Series 32

Michael Horovitz on Allen Ginsberg

Matthew Parris is joined by Michael Horovitz who nominates fellow poet and founder of the 'Beat Generation', Allen Ginsberg, as his Great Life. Ginsberg's friend and biographer Barry Miles provides biographical detail of this colourful and controversial writer, who through his battle for free expression inspired American counter culture.

Producer: Melvin Rickarby

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in December 2013.


TUE 17:00 PM (b03lph8p)
Coverage and analysis of the day's news.


TUE 18:00 Six O'Clock News (b03lkmdb)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.


TUE 18:30 That Mitchell and Webb Sound (b03lph8r)
Series 5

Episode 4

A horror story for slugs; the Escalator brothers inventing the world's first horseless staircase; and the very last programme the BBC ever does...

Offbeat sketches from the lopsided world of David Mitchell and Robert Webb.

With Olivia Colman and James Bachman.

Producer: Gareth Edwards

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in December 2013.


TUE 19:00 The Archers (b03lph8t)
Jess is in Ambridge Organics finalising her party order. She takes great interest in Helen's cheese and Helen is grateful when Kirsty is able to take over. Helen just wants to be as far away as possible from Jess and Rob's domestic bliss.

At the start of their night out, Helen and Kirsty bump into Jess. Jess is uber-friendly with them both and Helen is glad to get away from her.

Ed thinks he might have found a new puppy for George. Emma is delighted and really appreciates the hard work Ed's put into finding this litter. She can't wait to go and see the puppies.

Ed finds an unexpected lodger in the cider shed. Darrell is in a terrible way. Eddie quickly brings blankets and a heater. He's determined to get Darrell into the house. Darrell is grateful for their help but doesn't want to impose and is adamant he'd rather be on his own in the shed.

Ed and Eddie get on with the last lot of turkeys. They discuss Darrell, and what they can do to help him. Eddie is determined that he won't turn his back on Darrell.


TUE 19:15 Front Row (b03lph8w)
Mark Gatiss, American Hustle reviewed, Albums of 2013

With Mark Lawson.

Oscar contender American Hustle stars Christian Bale and Amy Adams as a pair of con artists who are forced to help the FBI in a huge sting operation, but things go awry when Bale's erstwhile wife, Jennifer Lawrence, gets involved. Critic Antonia Quirke delivers her verdict.

It would be hard to miss Mark Gatiss' work over the course of the holiday period. On Christmas day, he makes his directorial debut with The Tractate Middoth and follows it with Ghost Writer, a documentary about M.R. James, who wrote the original story upon which his drama is based. Earlier in the day, there's a chance to catch up on his bio-pic about the beginnings of Dr Who, An Adventure In Space And Time. New Year's Day sees the start of a new series of Sherlock, which Gatiss co-created and takes a supporting role as Holmes' brother, Mycroft. Meanwhile, the actor-writer-director is appearing on stage in London in a new version of Coriolanus.

2013 has been an eventful year in music, bookended by surprise albums from David Bowie and Beyonce and featuring the rise of 17 year old New Zealander Lorde and a chart topping album from Rod Stewart, his first UK number 1 since 1976. For those who are dazzled by the choice, Gemma Cairney, Sara Mohr-Pietsch and Kate Mossman join Mark to give their recommendations for the pop, classical and alternative albums of the year.

Producer: Dymphna Flynn.


TUE 19:45 Roddy Doyle on Radio 4 (b03lpfwr)
[Repeat of broadcast at 10:45 today]


TUE 20:00 Lines in the Sand (b03lph8y)
Mark Doyle charts the challenge from Islamist militants in Europe's backyard, and asks if a series of separate conflicts are becoming part of a wider front.

In January this year armed extremists in Mali took over a large swathe of the country before being beaten back by French forces. The Islamists were killed and dispersed - but they were far from beaten. Across the edge of the Sahara, a large number of other violent, Islamist-related incidents followed or came into focus. One of the men who had led the occupation of northern Mali, Mochtar Bel Mochtar, audaciously attacked a BP oil installation in southern Algeria, across Mali's northern border. Islamists attacked a uranium mine and a military barracks in Mali's neighbour, Niger. Suicide bombers began operating in both countries for the first time. And most significantly, the conflict in Northern Nigeria intensified. The Boko Haram group, which has reported links to the Mali insurgents, occupied significant parts of the most populous country in the region. The lines in the Saharan sand are much broader than we thought - and they are shifting. The wider international community has now followed the French. A United Nations peacekeeping force is on the ground in Mali. European soldiers, including British, are retraining the Malian army. It has been decided that the fight against Saharan threat is worth blood and treasure.

BBC International Development Correspondent Mark Doyle is a veteran reporter of the continent. He gives listeners a visual picture of this new battleground, and investigates what the fighting is really about. Through on-the-ground reportage in Libya, Mali, Nigeria and Somalia, and interviews with African and European players, he asks if the tactics the domestic and international forces deploy will work.

Producer: Neal Razzell.


TUE 20:40 In Touch (b03lph90)
Smartphone apps

Smartphone apps expert and In Touch reporter Lee Kumutat and lutenist Matthew Wadsworth join Peter White to discuss the best and favourite apps for blind and partially-sighted users for both the iPhone and Android phones.

Lee tries one of them which takes a picture and then, using speech, describes the image.

Matt also plays his lute!


TUE 21:00 All in the Mind (b03lph92)
Why rituals like blowing out candles on a birthday cake table before eating it can improve the taste. Claudia Hammond talks to Michael Norton from Harvard University about his new research on the powerful effect of rituals on food and how it can work for chocolate and even carrots. Why people with an extraordinary ability to remember every details of their life and the events going on years ago are still susceptible to false memories. What does this reveal about how our memories work? More on the All in the Mind 25th anniversary mental health awards with awards judge, Marion Janner. What are the rules for people on medication for a mental health condition who want to give blood? Claudia talks to Jennie Naylor from NHS blood and transplant. Also in the programme why a meaningful life might not be a happy one and Claudia is joined by cognitive neuroscientist and blogger, Christian Jarrett to bust the myths about the differences between male and female brains.


TUE 21:30 The Making of the Modern Arab World (b03lpfwk)
[Repeat of broadcast at 09:00 today]


TUE 21:58 Weather (b03lkmdd)
The latest weather forecast.


TUE 22:00 The World Tonight (b03lph94)
Russia offers bailout package to Ukraine;
British Doctor died in Syria in suspicious circumstances;
Hunger to be debated in Parliament;
With Roger Hearing.


TUE 22:45 Book at Bedtime (b03lph96)
Aunts Aren't Gentlemen

The Quiet, Martini-less Life

Blake Ritson reads a classic Jeeves and Wooster story from P G Wodehouse, one of the masters of comic fiction.

'Mr Wooster,' he said, 'you are a typical young man about town.'
'Oh thanks,' I responded, for it sounded like a compliment, and one always likes to say the civil thing.

Bertie Wooster has been overdoing the metropolitan life a little, so on doctor's orders, finds himself retiring to the quiet hamlet of Maiden Eggesford to 'sleep the sleep of the just and lead the quiet Martini-less life'. Only the presence of his irrepressible Aunt Dahlia shatters the rustic peace as an imbroglio develops - destined to be famous down the long years as the 'Maiden Eggesford Horror' or 'The Case Of The Cat Which Kept Popping Up When Least Expected' - which involves a stolen cat, an over-sensitive racehorse, and some star-crossed lovers. Wooster's quick-thinking butler Jeeves, as always, comes to the rescue.

Today: 'The quiet, Martini-less life' - man-about-town Wooster finds himself, on doctor's orders, sampling the quiet life in the sleepy village of Maiden Eggesford. But then, best laid plans....

The author of almost a hundred books and the creator of Jeeves, Blandings Castle, Psmith, Ukridge, Uncle Fred and Mr Mulliner, P G Wodehouse was born in 1881 in Guildford, Surrey, in 1881. He was created a Knight of the British Empire in 1975 and died the same year at the age of ninety-three. Jeeves and Wooster were perhaps his best-known creations; 'Aunts Aren't Gentlemen' was published in 1974, and was the last novel to feature the literary duo.

Reader: Blake Ritson
Abridger: Richard Hamilton
Producer: Justine Willett.


TUE 23:00 The Infinite Monkey Cage (b03lpbzy)
[Repeat of broadcast at 16:30 on Monday]


TUE 23:30 Today in Parliament (b03lph98)
Sean Curran reports from Westminster.



WEDNESDAY 18 DECEMBER 2013

WED 00:00 Midnight News (b03lkmfb)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.


WED 00:30 Book of the Week (b03lpfwm)
[Repeat of broadcast at 09:45 on Tuesday]


WED 00:48 Shipping Forecast (b03lkmfd)
The latest shipping forecast.


WED 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (b03lkmfg)
BBC Radio 4 joins the BBC World Service.


WED 05:20 Shipping Forecast (b03lkmfj)
The latest shipping forecast.


WED 05:30 News Briefing (b03lkmfl)
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.


WED 05:43 Prayer for the Day (b03lpjp1)
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Father Eugene O'Neill.


WED 05:45 Farming Today (b03lpjp3)
As Defra decides to stop single farm payments on smallholdings under five hectares, MEPs call for more support for the smallest food producers across the EU. Anna Hill hears from Scottish MEP, Alyn Smith who explains the proposals of a new Small Farm Scheme, which includes financial support for those farming tiny pockets of land.

Our reporter Lucy Bickerton heads to Somerset and meets smallholder Sally Morgan who runs courses for wannabe smallholders and finds out it's not for the faint-hearted.

A system which allowed free movement of horses between France, Ireland and the UK without health certificates is to be tightened up next year. The change comes after concerns about traceability following the horsemeat scandal. From May 2014 most horses, except thoroughbreds and competition animals will have to be assessed by a vet and pass a health check before travelling between the UK and France. Ireland will be exempt from the changes. Anna visits the stables at World Horse Welfare to find out more.

Sheep farmers around the country are gearing up for lambing and while new figures show net margins are improving, there's still a huge difference between the top producers and the average farmer. Why is there such a gulf in the UK sheep industry?

Presented by Anna Hill and produced by Anna Jones.


WED 05:58 Tweet of the Day (b03k5c3r)
Sanderling

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

David Attenborough presents the sanderling. Twinkling along the tideline, so fast that their legs are a blur, sanderlings are small waders. It's the speed with which they dodge incoming waves that catches your attention as they run after the retreating waters and frantically probe the sand.


WED 06:00 Today (b03lpjp5)
Morning news and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Yesterday in Parliament, Weather and Thought for the Day.


WED 09:00 Midweek (b03lpjp7)
Imogen Stubbs, Mary Kenny, John Julius Norwich, John Halpern

Libby Purves meets crossword setter John Halpern; historian and travel writer John Julius Norwich; journalist Mary Kenny and actor Imogen Stubbs.

John Halpern is a crossword setter. His work features in the Guardian (under the name Paul), the Financial Times (as Mudd) and the Times (Anon). His new book, The Centenary of the Crossword, starts with the story of Arthur Wynne - a journalist from Liverpool who created the first crossword on December 21 1913. The book includes inside information about how crosswords are compiled, tips for solving different types of clues and examples of puzzles from prominent setters around the world. The Centenary of the Crossword is published by Andre Deutsch.

John Julius Norwich is an historian, travel writer and broadcaster. The only son of Lady Diana and Duff Cooper, his new book features correspondence from his mother between 1939 and 1952. The letters recount her experiences during the Blitz and life with her society friends Evelyn Waugh and the Mitfords. Darling Monster - The Letters of Lady Diana Cooper to Her Son John Julius Norwich is published by Chatto & Windus.

Mary Kenny is an Irish journalist, author, playwright and broadcaster. She has written for over 25 newspapers over a career spanning four decades. In her new book she recalls her life from her days as a young reporter for the London Evening Standard to coping with the responsibility of being a full time carer for her husband. Something of Myself and Others is published by Liberties Press.

Imogen Stubbs is an actor and writer. She discovered her passion for acting while studying at Oxford University. She is best known for her stage performances with the Royal Shakespeare Company, notably as Desdemona in Othello opposite Willard White which was directed by Trevor Nunn. She is currently starring in Strangers on a Train by Craig Warner at the Gielgud Theatre, London.

Producer: Paula McGinley.


WED 09:45 Book of the Week (b03lpjp9)
Diana Cooper - Darling Monster

Episode 3

This new book contains the letters sent from aristocrat, society darling and actress of stage and early screen, Lady Diana Cooper, to her only son, John Julius Norwich.

When Lady Diana married rising political star Duff Cooper, they became the golden couple who knew everyone who was anyone. Her letters serve as a portrait of a time, capturing some of history's most dramatic events and most important figures with immediacy and intimacy. But they also give us a touching portrait of the love between a mother and son, separated by war, oceans and the constraints of the time they lived in.

Her letters span the years 1939 to 1952, taking in the Blitz, Diana's short spell as a farmer in Sussex, a trip to the Far East when husband Duff was collecting war intelligence, the couple's three years in the Paris embassy, as well as a great number of journeys around Europe and North Africa.

Today, Lady Diana moves into the French Embassy, along with her husband the politician Duff Cooper and his lover Louis de Vilmorin. Their parties become legendary.

Read by John Julius Norwich and Patricia Hodge
Producer: David Roper
Abridger: Barry Johnston

A Heavy Entertainment production for BBC Radio 4.


WED 10:00 Woman's Hour (b03lpjpc)
Nicola Sturgeon; Jung Chang; Gone With the Wind

Powerlister Nicola Sturgeon talks about being deputy first minister of Scotland and her political career. We look at the latest figures on forced marriage for people with learning difficulties. How should professionals best intervene? 75 years on and Gone With the Wind is being screened again. Why is it so enduring and what is the film's feminist appeal? What you need to know about travelling home safely after a christmas night out. And our 'Come Into My Kitchen' series continues as we visit the home of Wild Swans writer Jung Chang.


WED 10:45 Roddy Doyle on Radio 4 (b03lpjpf)
The Snapper

Episode 3

Barrytown is buzzing with speculation. Sharon Rabbitte is pregnant and she's not telling anyone who the father is. But with tongues wagging and rumours mounting, just how long will it take everyone to work out who in Barrytown is the "snapper's" Da?

The second of Roddy Doyle's Barrytown series of novels, all to be dramatized by BBC Radio 4. After a drunken encounter at the soccer club do, Sharon is pregnant and much to the annoyance to her dad, Jimmy, refusing to name the baby's father. So when Jimmy gets wind that it might be someone close to home all hell breaks loose.

The cast includes David Wilmot as Jimmy Snr (Ripper Street, Anna Karenina) and Aoife Duffin as Sharon (Moone Boy.)

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


WED 11:00 Lives in a Landscape (b03lpjph)
Series 15

Going, Going, Gone

Alan Dein present's Radio 4's series of documentaries telling out-of-the-ordinary stories from contemporary British life.

In the Sheffield auction room they see it all, from miners' welfare centres, to country manors and repossessed bowling alleys, and whatever state the buildings are in there's nearly always someone willing to bid for them.

The process is largely overseen by Adrian Little, whose own father was a livestock auctioneer. His right hand man is Mohammed Mahroof, whose father came from Pakistan to work in the steel works and had no intention of staying in his rented accommodation where he slept twelve to a room.

Over a four week period viewings take place on a welfare centre in Grimethorpe, a council library in Sheffield and homes in various states of disrepair. That doesn't seem to deter. Scores of people come and dream about the type of home they can make for themselves in this desirable area of the city. Others don't view at all - preferring to turn up at the auction room to snap up anything which can provide them with a rental income or a conversion possibility.

As Mahroof drives round the city he can't resist reciting the value of nearly every building he passes: a habit he clearly inherits from his Dad. And for those in Grimethorpe, the auction represents the end of the days of community provision. Dot watches developers peer and poke their way round the galleried rooms: all of them want to bulldoze the site and erect flats in place of the meeting spaces she remembers from the miner's strike: 'it's sad to see these buildings lost to us,' she says, 'but that's the way it is - the old times have gone for good.'

Producer/reporter: Sue Mitchell.


WED 11:30 Believe It! (b03lpjpk)
Series 2

Secrets

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

Celebrity autobiographies are everywhere. Richard Wilson has always said he'd never write one. Based on glimmers of truth, BELIEVE IT is the hilarious, bizarre, revealing (and, most importantly, untrue) celebrity autobiography of Richard Wilson.

He narrates the series with his characteristic dead-pan delivery, weaving in and out of dramatised scenes from his fictional life-story. He plays a heavily exaggerated version of himself: a Scots actor and national treasure, unmarried, private, passionate about politics, theatre and Manchester United (all true), who's a confidant of the powerful and has survived childhood poverty, a drunken father, years of fruitless grind, too much success, monstrosity, addiction, charity work and fierce rivalry with Sean Connery and Ian McKellan (not true).

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


WED 12:00 You and Yours (b03lpjpm)
Charity Investigations

How much do you know about the way charities use your money? If the Charity Commission has concerns about the way a charity is run, or is investigating its work, should the public routinely be told?

The government says it wants to help people with disabilities to find a job. It has published a new Disability Employment Strategy. Will it make a real difference in helping people to find work and stay in work? What support do employers need to encourage them to recruit more people with disabilities?

The latest on efforts to bring high speed broadband to rural parts of the UK. And the village where you don't need to choose between going to the pub - and going to the movies.

Do contact the programme with your stories and experiences. Email youandyours@bbc.co.uk

Producer: Jonathan Hallewell
Presenter: Winifred Robinson.


WED 12:57 Weather (b03lkmfn)
The latest weather forecast.


WED 13:00 World at One (b03lkmfq)
National and international news. Listeners can share their views via email: wato@bbc.co.uk or on twitter: #wato.


WED 13:45 A Cause for Caroling (b03lpjpp)
The Birth of Nine Lessons with Carols

In the eighth programme of his series charting the development of the Christmas Carol in Britain Jeremy Summerly reaches the critical moment at which the 19th century enthusiasm for carols sung in church resulted in a vehicle in which they could take a leading role. It was developed by Bishop Benson of Truro who, in 1880 found himself holding services in a huge wooden shed while a new cathedral was being built next door. To celebrate the new diocese and capture the enthusiasm he recognise in the nonconformist tradition of carol singing in Cornwall, Benson developed a narrative service running from Adam's original sin to the birth of Christ and the impact of the word made flesh.

Jeremy visits Truro and then follows Benson's service to the moment in 1918 when a war-wearied Dean of King's College Chapel, Cambridge, Erich Milner-White decided to use the service as part of his college's Christmas celebrations. The changes he made survive to this day.

Series Description:

The Christmas carol is as popular now as it was when carolers celebrated the birth of Edward III in 1312. Back then the carol was a generic term for a song with its roots in dance form, nowadays only the strictest scholar would quibble with the fact that a carol is a Christmas song.

But the journey the carol has taken is unique in music history because each shift in the story has been preserved in the carols that we sing today. Go to a carol concert now and you're likely to hear folk, medieval, mid-victorian and modern music all happily combined. It's hard to imagine that happening in any other situation.

In these programmes Jeremy Summerly follows the carol journey through the Golden age of the Medieval carol into the troubled period of Reformation and puritanism, along the byways of the 17th and 18th century waits and gallery musicians and in to the sudden explosion of interest in the carol in the 19th century. It's a story that sees the carol veer between the sacred and secular even before there was any understanding of those terms. For long periods the church, both catholic and protestant, was uneasy about the virility and homespun nature of carol tunes and carol texts. Nowadays many people think that church music is defined by the carols they hear from Kings College Cambridge.

He traces the folk carol in and out of church grounds, the carol hymn, the fuguing carol and the many other off-shoots, some of which survive to this day and many others which languish unloved but ready for re-discovery.

It's a journey full of song describing the history of a people who needed expression for seasonal joy in the coldest, hardest time of the year. And however efficient the heating system may be, the carol still generates warmth. Much of that is to do with the positive nostalgia of this music.

That nostalgia is in part due to the fact that carols are one of the first kinds of song children actually sing rather than hear. Many favourite carols were actually written for Children; Once in Royal David's City the most familiar example. Another factor is the concentration in the texts on the humanity of nativity with tunes garnered from the uninhibited world of folk song and ballad.

The series title is taken from a Thomas Hardy poem in which he ponders of a Darkling Thrush why it should chose to sing - 'so little cause for carolings of such ecstatic sound' - is the question asked. THis series is an attempt to answer why Carols remain so popular and familiar to so many. In fact Hardy himself, in his first novel Under The Greenwood Tree, went some way to answering his own question when he described the Mellstock Quire singing at Midnight on Christmas Eve:

'Then passed forth into the quiet night an ancient and time worn hymn, embodying a quaint Christianity in words orally transmitted from father to son through several generations down to the present characters, who sang them out right earnestly."

Jeremy brings the series up to date with the story of the famous Nine Lessons and Carols service broadcast by the BBC since the 1920s but born originally in Truro. It's a service that commands a worldwide audience measured in many millions, but as Jeremy concludes it has left an imbalance in the appreciation of our caroling tradition, a tradition that has always had one foot in the pub and another in the choir stalls.

Producer:Tom Alban.


WED 14:00 The Archers (b03lph8t)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 on Tuesday]


WED 14:15 Borgen: Outside the Castle (b03lpjpr)
Episode 3

Forced into early retirement, former civil servant Hans Gammelgaard has formed an unlikely alliance with Nick, his environmental activist grandson, and journalist Jan Gleerup. They are determined to discover who is pulling the strings at the Ministry of the Environment and manipulating legislation on genetically modified crops. By Tommy Bredsted and Joan Rang Christensen, in an English version by Joy Wilkinson.

Music by Halfdan E
Directed by Anders Lundorph

*******

Originally produced in ten parts by DR, Denmark's national broadcaster, this radio spin-off of 'Borgen' is set against the backdrop of the first series of the television drama which followed the unlikely emergence of Birgitte Nyborg as the country's new prime minister. Both series have at their centre the Danish parliament, nicknamed Borgen - 'the castle'. While the TV drama focuses on the politicians, the radio drama is set in the world of the civil service. Both share the same soundtrack composed by Halfdan E.


WED 15:00 Money Box Live (b03lpjxy)
State Pension

Need advice about your state pension? In his Autumn Statement, Chancellor George Osborne announced a further increase in state pension age and an opportunity for some people to boost their additional state pension. To ask about the changes or your entitlement call 03700 100 444 from 1pm to 3.30pm on Wednesday or e-mail moneybox@bbc.co.uk.

Earlier this year Pensions Minister Steve Webb announced plans for a flat-rate pension which will affect people who reach state pension age from 6 April 2016. The provisions are currently progressing through parliament in the Pensions Bill and should receive Royal Assent next year.

If you want to find out about building up, delaying or claiming a state pension you can ask our team how it works.

Or perhaps you have a question about pension credit or other financial assistance. Age UK say that around £5.5 billion in Pension Credit, Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit remains unclaimed each year.

Whatever your question, presenter Paul Lewis will be waiting for your call. Joining Paul will be:

Michelle Cracknell, Chief Executive, The Pensions Advisory Service.

Malcolm McLean, Pensions Consultant, Barnett Waddingham.

Sally West, Strategy Adviser, Income and Poverty, Age UK.

Call 03700 100 444 between 1pm and 3.30pm on Wednesday or e-mail moneybox@bbc.co.uk now. Standard geographic charges apply. Calls from mobiles may be higher.

Presenter: Paul Lewis
Producers: Diane Richardson and Sally Abrahams.


WED 15:30 All in the Mind (b03lph92)
[Repeat of broadcast at 21:00 on Tuesday]


WED 16:00 Thinking Allowed (b03lpjy0)
Couples and Chronic Illness; Fashion and Dress in Later Life

Fashion and dress in later life: Laurie Taylor talks to the sociologist, Julia Twigg, about her study into the links between clothing and age. Throughout history certain forms and styles of dress have been deemed appropriate for people as they get older. Older women, in particular, have been advised to dress in toned down, covered up styles. Drawing on fashion theory and cultural gerontology, Professor Twigg interviewed older women, fashion editors, clothing designers and retailers. She asks if the emergence of a 'grey market' is finally shifting cultural norms and trends. The broadcaster, writer and fashion enthusiast, Robert Elms, joins the discussion.

Also, Research Student, Eloise Radcliffe, discusses her study into how couples cope when one develops a chronic illness.

Producer: Jayne Egerton.


WED 16:30 The Media Show (b03lpjy2)
BuzzFeed; BBC governance; Danish writers' rooms

Today the BBC Trust published a report by PwC into the BBC's failed Digital Media Initiative (DMI) technology project. Serious weaknesses were found in the management of the programme. Also, this week the Public Accounts Committee criticised a 'culture of cronyism' at the BBC for allowing excessive payouts to be made to some of its top departing executives. The journalist Simon Jenkins and Jean Seaton, Professor of Media History at the University of Westminster, discuss the culture and future governance of the BBC.

The social sharing news and entertainment site BuzzFeed attracted more than 10 million unique UK users in November. The site is best known for its light-hearted collection of lists such as 'The 24 most important selfies' or 'The 12 most tenuous newspaper headlines about Kate Middleton in 2013'. Luke Lewis, UK Editor talks about BuzzFeed becoming a serious news player.

The Danish public service broadcaster, DR, has enjoyed considerable success with The Killing and Borgen. Danish academic Dr Eva Novrup Redvall, author of a new book 'Writing and Producing Television Drama in Denmark', has spent time observing the writers' room for Borgen. She argues its success is due to the position of writers within the production culture. TV scriptwriter and author Anthony Horowitz, who is currently in production with a new series of Foyles War, talks about the writing process here in the UK.

Producer: Dianne McGregor.


WED 17:00 PM (b03lpjy4)
Full coverage and analysis of the day's news.


WED 18:00 Six O'Clock News (b03lkmfs)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.


WED 18:30 What Does the K Stand For? (b03lpjy6)
Series 1

The Cat Next Door

An actress moves in next door to the Amos household and encourages Young Stephen to overcome his stage fright.

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

Written by Jonathan Harvey with Stephen K Amos.

Himself ... Stephen K Amos
Young Stephen ... Shaquille Ali-Yebuah
Stephanie Amos ... Fatou Sohna
Virginia Amos ... Ellen Thomas
Vincent Amos ... Don Gilet
Miss Collins ... Gemma Whelan
Fola ... Kathryn Drysdale
PE Teacher ... Harry Jardine
Bo Bells ... Rachel Atkins

Producer: Colin Anderson

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in December 2013.


WED 19:00 The Archers (b03lpjy8)
Jill admires the bracelet David bought Ruth for their anniversary. They discuss the finishing touches to the surprise anniversary party. Jill is nostalgic about her relationship with Phil. She remembers how excited she was the night before their wedding. David and Ruth seem as happy as they were.

Ed and Emma are excited to see the litter of puppies. They are perfect and Ed can't wait for George to come and pick one out. However, the farmer delivers a blow when he tells Ed they won't be able to take one home until after Christmas. First pick has already been promised to another family, and they're away until the new year. Ed isn't happy but the farmer won't break his promise.

Leonie is devising a list of James's personality traits, hoping that might shed some light on their uncertain future. Leonie tries to discuss it with Lynda but she's more interested in getting to the Robin Hood rehearsal on time. Upset Leonie reveals that there's something she hasn't told Lynda - she's pregnant! Leonie hasn't told James, and with the way he's been treating her she doesn't feel the need to. She's not even sure she's going to have the baby.


WED 19:15 Front Row (b03lpjyb)
Coriolanus, Olivia Colman, Alex Ferguson's ghost writer, comedy DVDs

Mark Lawson reviews the new production of Coriolanus. Josie Rourke directs Shakespeare's tragedy of political manipulation and revenge, with Tom Hiddleston making his return to the Donmar Warehouse in London in the title role.

Producer: Rebecca Armstrong.


WED 19:45 Roddy Doyle on Radio 4 (b03lpjpf)
[Repeat of broadcast at 10:45 today]


WED 20:00 Whatever Happened to Community?: The Debate (b03lrzjk)
Giles Fraser, former Canon Chancellor of St Paul's Cathedral, is now the priest of a run-down parish in Elephant and Castle. This has set him thinking about the nature of community, which he's been exploring in Radio 4's three-part series Whatever Happened to Community?

Now, he now brings together four key players to debate the nature of community and what's happening to it in 21st century Britain. Baroness Warsi is Minister for Faith and Communities and Hilary Benn is Shadow Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government. Jane Wills, Professor of Human Geography at Queen Mary, University of London, and writer and philosopher Roger Scruton complete the panel.

In front of an audience of local people at his church in South London, Giles askes whether communities are in crisis. What should the Government do to strengthen community bonds - or must change come from grass roots and local organisers? The audience will also put their own questions to the panel.

Polemical, refreshingly candid, and unafraid to ask uncomfortable questions, Giles and his guests will get to the heart of how we live now. Do we really want to live together like this?

Recorded on location at St Mary's Church, Newington, South London.

Produced by Jane Greenwood and Jo Coombs
A Loftus production for BBC Radio 4.


WED 20:45 Pop-Up Ideas (b03lrzjm)
Series 2

Jerry Brotton: Mapping History

Jerry Brotton, Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary, University of London, argues that how we see the world depends on where we stand on it.

He takes us back to the Hereford mappamundi - with its unicorns, griffins, cannibals and fabled cities - a world picture completely consistent, logical, and comprehensible to the England of 1300.

Google Hereford today, Professor Brotton says, and you find "a very different set of digital preoccupations"; not Babel or Jerusalem but how far we are from Hereford's Cider Museum or the nearest bike shop.

He concludes that "each period in history gets the map it deserves, whatever version of salvation it offers".

Producer: Adele Armstrong.


WED 21:00 Frontiers (b03lrzjp)
Chronotypes

Are you a lark or an owl? Are you at your best in the morning or the evening? Linda Geddes meets the scientists who are exploring the differences between larks and owls. At the University of Surrey's Sleep Research Centre she talks to its director, Professor Derk-Jan Dijk, and finds out her own chronotype by filling in a questionnaire.

Linda discovers why we have circadian rhythms and why they don't all run at the same rate. Dr Louis Ptacek from the University of California, San Francisco, explains his investigation of the genes of families whose members get up very early in the morning and of those who get up very late.

She finds out why our sleep patterns change as we age - teenagers really aren't good at getting up in the morning. Professor Mary Carskadon from Brown University explains that although some schools have experimented with a later start there is no plan to put this into universal practice.

Linda talks to Professor Til Roenneberg from Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich about his concept of social jetlag. And she hears about research trying to reduce the exhaustion often suffered by shift workers. Dr Steve Lockley of Harvard University tells her about using blue light to improve the wellbeing of people with medical conditions.


WED 21:30 Midweek (b03lpjp7)
[Repeat of broadcast at 09:00 today]


WED 21:58 Weather (b03lkmfv)
The latest weather forecast.


WED 22:00 The World Tonight (b03lrzjr)
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.


WED 22:45 Book at Bedtime (b03lrzjt)
Aunts Aren't Gentlemen

Has He Brought It Yet?

A classic Jeeves and Wooster story from P G Wodehouse, one of the masters of comic fiction.

'Mr Wooster,' he said, 'you are a typical young man about town.'
'Oh thanks,' I responded, for it sounded like a compliment, and one always likes to say the civil thing.

Bertie Wooster has been overdoing the metropolitan life a little, so on doctor's orders, finds himself retiring to the quiet hamlet of Maiden Eggesford to 'sleep the sleep of the just and lead the quiet Martini-less life'. Only the presence of his irrepressible Aunt Dahlia shatters the rustic peace as an imbroglio develops - destined to be famous down the long years as the 'Maiden Eggesford Horror' or 'The Case Of The Cat Which Kept Popping Up When Least Expected' - which involves a stolen cat, an over-sensitive racehorse, and some star-crossed lovers. Wooster's quick-thinking butler Jeeves, as always, comes to the rescue.

Today: 'Has he brought it yet?' - the tribulations of the star-crossed lovers and a disappearing cat are tempting Bertie away from the quiet, Martini-less life.

The author of almost a hundred books and the creator of Jeeves, Blandings Castle, Psmith, Ukridge, Uncle Fred and Mr Mulliner, P G Wodehouse was born in 1881 in Guildford, Surrey, in 1881. He was created a Knight of the British Empire in 1975 and died the same year at the age of ninety-three. Jeeves and Wooster were perhaps his best-known creations; 'Aunts Aren't Gentlemen' was published in 1974, and was the last novel to feature the literary duo.

Reader: Blake Ritson
Abridger: Richard Hamilton
Producer: Justine Willett.


WED 23:00 Political Animals (b03lrzjw)
Series 2

Buddy and Bill

Bill Clinton's dog, Buddy, relives his turbulent tenure - made perilous by his arch enemy, Socks the Cat.

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

Buddy ..... Kerry Shale
Socks ..... Joel Maccormack
West Wing Guy ..... David Seddon

Written by Tony Bagley.

Director: Marc Beeby.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in December 2013.


WED 23:15 Bird Island (b01k2b18)
Series 1

Episode 3

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

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

EPISDE THREE:

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

Ben and Graham encounter a seal cub that's been attacked. He takes it home and carefully nurses it back to life and share the pup's progress with his mum and Dad.

EPISDE THREE CAST:

Ben ..... Reece Shearsmith
Graham ..... Julian Rhind-Tutt
Beverley..... Alison Steadman
Robin..... Gerard Mcdermott

Written by ..... Katy Wix

Produced by ..... Tilusha Ghelani.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2012.


WED 23:30 Today in Parliament (b03lrzjy)
Susan Hulme reports on the last Prime Minister's Questions of the year. An emotional debate on foodbanks. And is there a crisis at A&E ?

Editor: Peter Mulligan.



THURSDAY 19 DECEMBER 2013

THU 00:00 Midnight News (b03lkmgs)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.


THU 00:30 Book of the Week (b03lpjp9)
[Repeat of broadcast at 09:45 on Wednesday]


THU 00:48 Shipping Forecast (b03lkmgv)
The latest shipping forecast.


THU 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (b03lkmgx)
BBC Radio 4 joins the BBC World Service.


THU 05:20 Shipping Forecast (b03lkmgz)
The latest shipping forecast.


THU 05:30 News Briefing (b03lkmh1)
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.


THU 05:43 Prayer for the Day (b03ls14y)
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Father Eugene O'Neill.


THU 05:45 Farming Today (b03ls150)
Will cuts to rural fire services mean slower response times in remote parts of Britain , especially after a 2.9% cut in local government funding in 2014? The average time it takes to respond to a countryside emergency has deteriorated by around 25% over the last three decades. Charlotte Smith discusses the issue with Graham Briggs from the Rural Services Network who fears it could put lives in danger.

What's the difference between a small farmer and a small holder? Well, apparently one is "fluffy and Nancy Pandy" and the other is "business focused". Charlotte hears from both sides of the fence, as it were.

And reactions to the Fisheries Council meeting in Brussels where a decision has been made on fish quotas. Northern Ireland is disappointed with a 9% cut to the prawn quota while Wales is pleased with an increase for plaice fishing in the Bristol Channel and Celtic Sea. Charlotte hears from Alun Davies, the Welsh Minister for Natural Resources and Food.

Presented by Charlotte Smith and produced in Bristol by Anna Jones.


THU 05:58 Tweet of the Day (b03k5c63)
Snow Bunting

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

David Attenborough presents the snow bunting. The ornithologist and author, Desmond Nethersole-Thompson, described the snow bunting as 'possibly the most romantic and elusive bird in the British Isles'. When you disturb a flock of what seem to be brownish birds, they explode into a blizzard of white-winged buntings, calling softly as they swirl around the winter strandline.


THU 06:00 Today (b03ls152)
Morning news and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Yesterday in Parliament, Weather and Thought for the Day.


THU 09:00 In Our Time (b03ls154)
Complexity

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss complexity and how it can help us understand the world around us. When living beings come together and act in a group, they do so in complicated and unpredictable ways: societies often behave very differently from the individuals within them. Complexity was a phenomenon little understood a generation ago, but research into complex systems now has important applications in many different fields, from biology to political science. Today it is being used to explain how birds flock, to predict traffic flow in cities and to study the spread of diseases.

With:

Ian Stewart
Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at the University of Warwick

Jeff Johnson
Professor of Complexity Science and Design at the Open University

Professor Eve Mitleton-Kelly
Director of the Complexity Research Group at the London School of Economics.

Producer: Thomas Morris.


THU 09:45 Book of the Week (b03ls156)
Diana Cooper - Darling Monster

Episode 4

This new book contains the letters sent from aristocrat, society darling and actress of stage and early screen, Lady Diana Cooper, to her only son, John Julius Norwich.

When Lady Diana married rising political star Duff Cooper, they became the golden couple who knew everyone who was anyone. Her letters serve as a portrait of a time, capturing some of history's most dramatic events and most important figures with immediacy and intimacy. But they also give us a touching portrait of the love between a mother and son, separated by war, oceans and the constraints of the time they lived in.

Her letters span the years 1939 to 1952, taking in the Blitz, Diana's short spell as a farmer in Sussex, a trip to the Far East when husband Duff was collecting war intelligence, the couple's three years in the Paris embassy, as well as a great number of journeys around Europe and North Africa.

In the fourth episode, Duff and Diana Cooper continue their travels - taking in Venice, Marrakesh, Tangier, Algiers and Seville. At home in 1949, all hopes are pinned on the dawn of a new era.

Read by John Julius Norwich and Patricia Hodge
Producer: David Roper
Abridger: Barry Johnston

A Heavy Entertainment production for BBC Radio 4.


THU 10:00 Woman's Hour (b03ls158)
Sexual Offences Investigation Team; Anne-Marie Cockburn; Sandi Toksvig

Jenni visits the Sexual Offences Investigation Team in Hertfordshire to see how they deal with allegations of sexual violence. A young woman talks about her experience of immediately reporting being raped to the Police. Plus we hear from Deputy Assistant Commissioner for the Metropolitan Police Martin Hewitt about his concerns as national policing lead for sexual offences at Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO).

Martha Fernback was 15 when she died after taking half a gram of MDMA. That was 5 months ago. Her single mum buried herself in writing as a way of channelling her immense pain as she mourned the loss of her only child. Her outpourings have now been published, and her book 5,742 days - the number of days Martha lived - documents her agonising journey. Anne-Marie Cockburn talks about her daughter and the positivity that's helping her face the future.

We visit Polesden Lacey near Dorking in Surrey to experience an Edwardian Christmas. The house was the country home of the fabulously wealthy heiress, Margaret Greville, who'd married Ronnie, the eldest son of Lord Greville. Margaret was widowed young, but as 'Mrs Ronnie,' she became the confidante of royalty and hosted lavish Christmas house parties.

And with Boxing Day just a week away it's time to open the latest window in the Radio 4 Advent Calendar - it's Sandi Toksvig.


THU 10:45 Roddy Doyle on Radio 4 (b03ls15b)
The Snapper

Episode 4

Barrytown is buzzing with speculation. Sharon Rabbitte is pregnant and she's not telling anyone who the father is. But with tongues wagging and rumours mounting, just how long will it take everyone to work out who in Barrytown is the "snapper's" Da?

The second of Roddy Doyle's Barrytown series of novels, all to be dramatized by BBC Radio 4. After a drunken encounter at the soccer club do, Sharon is pregnant and much to the annoyance to her dad, Jimmy, refusing to name the baby's father. So when Jimmy gets wind that it might be someone close to home all hell breaks loose.

The cast includes David Wilmot as Jimmy Snr (Ripper Street, Anna Karenina) and Aoife Duffin as Sharon (Moone Boy.)

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


THU 11:00 Crossing Continents (b03ls15d)
Bangladesh: Trials of Strength

Farhana Haider investigates the prosecution of alleged war criminals and asks if the trials are being used to target the opposition.

There were numerous reports of atrocities during the brutal war of 1971 between Pakistan on one side and the new state which was to become Bangladesh, which had support from India. The Pakistani Army and Islamic sympathisers in Bangladesh were accused of rape and of mass killings which some have described as genocide. In 2010 the governing Awami League set up war crimes trials which have started to hand down convictions this year, attracting strong public support. However, many international observers have criticised the conduct of the trials as less than free and fair. And supporters of the largest Bangladesh's largest Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami have reacted furiously to the conviction of several of their leaders, saying the process is politically motivated.

Farhana Haider asks whether the legal process will really enable Bangladesh to come to terms with its bloody beginnings.

Producer: John Murphy.


THU 11:30 The Lost Tapes of Orson Welles (b03ls15g)
Episode 1

This two-part programme is a revealing series of informal conversations with the man best known as America's great cultural provocateur and one of the finest of filmmakers.

Director Orson Welles was asked to write his life story in his later years. He declined but was convinced by his friend Henry Jaglom to discuss his life over a weekly lunch at their favourite Hollywood restaurant, Ma Maison. The hundreds of tapes, recorded from 1983 to 1985, reveal extraordinary, frank, conversations between Welles and the independent director Jaglom.

The tapes gathered dust in a shoebox in the corner of Jaglom's production office for over thirty years - until now, but this programme provides an opportunity to hear the amazing material they contain for the first time.

Welles talks intimately, disclosing personal secrets and reflecting on the people of the time. At times the tapes display the great film maker as a world champion grudge keeper, rather different from the amiable character who appeared in interviews when he was alive. As we hear, he hated the way Charlton Heston always called Touch of Evil (directed by Welles) a 'minor film'. Welles also found the work of fellow directors, Woody Allen, Charlie Chaplin and Alfred Hitchcock, difficult to embrace. But, as we hear, he had some unexpected enthusiasms.

Presenter Christopher Frayling reveals the great director free to be irreverent and Welles is sometimes cynical and romantic, sentimental but never boring, and often wickedly entertaining. The programmes also feature the thoughts of fellow diner Henry Jaglom, film author Peter Biskind, as well as actor and Welles scholar Simon Callow.

Producer: John Sugar
A Sugar production for BBC Radio 4.


THU 12:00 You and Yours (b03ls15j)
Shopping figures; Charity letters; Christmas lights sabotage

The Office for National Statistics releases its last shopping figures before Christmas.

A listener asks if it is ethical for charities to keep sending donation letters to his elderly relative.

A husband exacts his revenge on his wife over festive lights by writing his own Christmas letter.


THU 12:57 Weather (b03lkmh3)
The latest weather forecast.


THU 13:00 World at One (b03lkmh5)
National and international news. Listeners can share their views via email: wato@bbc.co.uk or on twitter: #wato.


THU 13:45 A Cause for Caroling (b03ls15l)
Import and Export

The penultimate programme in Jeremy Summerly's series tracing the history of the Christmas Carol in Britain. Jeremy picks up the story in the first half of the 20th century with carols from all over the world becoming more popular in this country much to the irritation of Ralph Vaughan Williams who continued to champion the folk tradition, albeit in a refined choral form. This was a time when the grandeur of Victorian caroling gave way to a leaner aesthetic with the Oxford Book of Carols being published in 1928, the same year in which the BBC broadcast the King's College, Cambridge Nine Lessons and Carols for the very first time. As it became an established favourite the carols used, gathered in many cases over centuries, become known both nationally and indeed internationally.

Series Description:
The Christmas carol is as popular now as it was when carolers celebrated the birth of Edward III in 1312. Back then the carol was a generic term for a song with its roots in dance form, nowadays only the strictest scholar would quibble with the fact that a carol is a Christmas song.
But the journey the carol has taken is unique in music history because each shift in the story has been preserved in the carols that we sing today. Go to a carol concert now and you're likely to hear folk, medieval, mid-victorian and modern music all happily combined. It's hard to imagine that happening in any other situation.
In these programmes Jeremy Summerly follows the carol journey through the Golden age of the Medieval carol into the troubled period of Reformation and puritanism, along the byways of the 17th and 18th century waits and gallery musicians and in to the sudden explosion of interest in the carol in the 19th century. It's a story that sees the carol veer between the sacred and secular even before there was any understanding of those terms. For long periods the church, both catholic and protestant, was uneasy about the virility and homespun nature of carol tunes and carol texts. Nowadays many people think that church music is defined by the carols they hear from Kings College Cambridge.
He traces the folk carol in and out of church grounds, the carol hymn, the fuguing carol and the many other off-shoots, some of which survive to this day and many others which languish unloved but ready for re-discovery.
It's a journey full of song describing the history of a people who needed expression for seasonal joy in the coldest, hardest time of the year. And however efficient the heating system may be, the carol still generates warmth. Much of that is to do with the positive nostalgia of this music.
That nostalgia is in part due to the fact that carols are one of the first kinds of song children actually sing rather than hear. Many favourite carols were actually written for Children; Once in Royal David's City the most familiar example. Another factor is the concentration in the texts on the humanity of nativity with tunes garnered from the uninhibited world of folk song and ballad.
The series title is taken from a Thomas Hardy poem in which he ponders of a Darkling Thrush why it should chose to sing - 'so little cause for carolings of such ecstatic sound' - is the question asked. This series is an attempt to answer why Carols remain so popular and familiar to so many. In fact Hardy himself, in his first novel Under The Greenwood Tree, went some way to answering his own question when he described the Mellstock Quire singing at Midnight on Christmas Eve:
'Then passed forth into the quiet night an ancient and time worn hymn, embodying a quaint Christianity in words orally transmitted from father to son through several generations down to the present characters, who sang them out right earnestly."
Jeremy brings the series up to date with the story of the famous Nine Lessons and Carols service broadcast by the BBC since the 1920s but born originally in Truro. It's a service that commands a worldwide audience measured in many millions, but as Jeremy concludes it has left an imbalance in the appreciation of our caroling tradition, a tradition that has always had one foot in the pub and another in the choir stalls.
Producer:Tom Alban.


THU 14:00 The Archers (b03lpjy8)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 on Wednesday]


THU 14:15 Borgen: Outside the Castle (b03ls15n)
Episode 4

DR, Denmark's national broadcaster and producers of 'Borgen', originally commissioned this thriller to run alongside the first series of their acclaimed political drama. Hans Gammelgaard, Private Secretary in the Ministry of the Environment, is seeking approval for the controlled use of genetically modified crops by Danish farmers. He expected opposition but not from unseen enemies prepared to go to any lengths in pursuit of their own agenda. By Tommy Bredsted, Joan Rang Christensen and Rum Malmros, in an English version by Joy Wilkinson.

This radio spin-off is set against the backdrop of the first series of the television drama, when Birgitte Nyborg became the country's new prime minister. Both series have at their centre the Danish parliament, nicknamed Borgen - 'the castle'. While the TV drama focuses on politicians, the radio 8drama is set in the world of the civil service. Both share the same soundtrack composed by Halfdan E.

Part 4
Jan flies to Nigeria to try to find out who is supplying genetically modified seed corn to the famer there, while Hans and Nick track down the elusive GMO researcher, Erika Blomkvist.

Director ..... Polly Thomas
Sound designer ..... Nigel Lewis
PC ..... Willa King

A BBC Cymru/Wales production for BBC Radio 4.


THU 15:00 Open Country (b03ls15q)
Royal Haslar Hospital

The Royal Haslar Hospital in Gosport was created in the 18th century to provide care for the sick and injured from naval conflicts. It later treated other military personnel and in the last few decades before its closure in 2009 went on to treat civilian patients.

The site bursts with centuries of history, having seen patients from battles including Trafalgar, the Crimean War, both World Wars and many others. The staff treated allied troops and prisoners of war. Felicity Evans explores the site, hearing from former staff who treated patients at different periods and have become fascinated by its history. She takes in the range of buildings from the Admiral's house, to the medical wards - including G block where those with shell shock were treated - staff quarters and the memorial gardens and she pays tribute to the thousands buried in unmarked graves in the Paddock.

The site is held with high affection locally and Felicity also speaks to the developers behind plans to reopen the site, building on its heritage of health care.

Presented by Felicity Evans. Produced in Bristol by Anne-Marie Bullock.


THU 15:27 Radio 4 Appeal (b03lkndj)
[Repeat of broadcast at 07:55 on Sunday]


THU 15:30 Open Book (b03lknpq)
[Repeat of broadcast at 16:00 on Sunday]


THU 16:00 The Film Programme (b03ls15s)
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty; American Hustle; All Is Lost; Location scouting

Francine Stock talks to Ben Stiller about The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Based on a short story by James Thurber, he both stars as Walter and directs. Walter daydreams his way through life, while yearning for his co-worker, played by Kirsten Wiig. Stiller describes what attracted him to this tale and why his 2001 comedy Zoolander remains close to his heart.
American Hustle, a grifters story set in the 1970s, has already been nominated for awards including the Golden Globes. It's directed by David O Russell, whose last outing Silver Linings Playbook picked up an Oscar for Jennifer Lawrence who also appears in American Hustle. Russell explains why he finds the 1970s an era of innocence.

Steve Mortimore is the man you need to call should you require an aircraft carrier to film on at a few weeks notice.. As a location manager, he has worked on World War Z starring Brad Pitt and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy among others. The Film Programme went along to his latest set in Sussex where he's working in a railway tunnel on The Secret Service, a comic book adaptation directed by Matthew Vaughn.

And the director who has been dragging Robert Redford underwater. JC Chandor's All Is Lost stars Redford as a man lost at sea as he battles to survive. He gives an insight into the actor's dedication to authenticity and doing his own stunts as much as possible, though he's now in his 70s.

Producer: Elaine Lester.


THU 16:30 BBC Inside Science (b03ls15v)
Antimicrobial soap; GAIA; Stone-age jellybones; Antarctica

Antibacterial soaps and body washes make up an industry worth millions of pounds, but in the USA, producers have been told that they have just over a year to prove their products are safe, or, re-label or reformulate them. Many believe that using antimicrobial soaps, which often include the chemicals triclosan or triclocarban, keeps you clean and reduces the chance of getting ill or passing on germs to others. But the Food and Drug Administration in the USA says it's the job of manufacturers to demonstrate the benefits, to balance any potential risks. Professor Jodi Lindsay, expert in microbial pathogenesis from St Georges, University of London, tells Dr Adam Rutherford where this leaves British and European consumers.

The world's most powerful satellite camera was launched today into space. Its mission, to map the billion stars in our galaxy. Professor Gerry Gilmore, Principal Investigator for GAIA, tells Inside Science about the planned "walk through the Milky Way" and BBC Science Correspondent, Jonathan Amos, spells out how GAIA could help detect future asteroids, like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs on earth.

Just after the Second World War in a site in North Yorkshire, the discovery of a flint blade triggered the discovery of one of the world's most important Mesolithic or Stone Age sites. What makes Star Carr so special is that organic artefacts, bone harpoons, deer headdresses and even homesteads, were preserved in the peat 11000 years ago. But these precious artefacts are in trouble. Changing acidic conditions are turning the Mesolithic remains to jelly. Sue Nelson reports from the Vale of Pickering on how archaeologists are working with chemists to try to pinpoint exactly why the Stone Age remains are deteriorating so quickly.

And Professor Chris Turney talks to Adam from his research ship in Commonwealth Bay in the Antarctic, where he is leading a team of scientists to recreate the journey made by Douglas Mawson, 100 years ago, on the Australasian Antarctic Expedition.

Producer: Fiona Hill.


THU 17:00 PM (b03ls15x)
Full coverage and analysis of the day's news.


THU 18:00 Six O'Clock News (b03lkmh7)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.


THU 18:30 The Secret World (b03ls15z)
Series 4

Episode 4

The Queen hatches a plot to get Pippa Middleton out of the way.

Ed Miliband is so keen to pally-up with some builders that he ends up helping them do their work.

And Russell Crowe has a bizarre fixation with sprouts.

The Secret World is the impression show with a difference.

With

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

Written by Bill Dare, Julian Dutton and Duncan Wisbey.

Produced and created by: Bill Dare.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in December 2013.


THU 19:00 The Archers (b03ls161)
It's party time at Blossom Hill Cottage but Rob's mood hasn't lightened. Nervous Jess is grateful when Jennifer turns up to give her a hand. Jess pleads with Rob to try to have a nice evening.

Helen is apprehensive about delivering the food but Kirsty reassures her it'll be quick and they can head to The Bull straight after.

With the party under way, Jess finds Rob's mood hard to deal with, and struggles to keep smiling. Jennifer is concerned that Jess is overwhelmed. When Helen and Kirsty arrive with the food, she manages to rope them inside to help serve the food and drink.

When Rob sees Helen pouring drinks, he's livid and confronts Jess in the kitchen. Jess is quick to defend herself, and tells him Jennifer asked them to do it.

Kirsty is appalled by Rob's behaviour and the way he was speaking to Jess. She thinks Helen has had a lucky escape.

With the party over, Jennifer consoles Jess, but things go from bad to worse when Jess's untouched salmon falls onto the floor. Rob refuses to help Jess tidy up, and storms upstairs warning her not to follow him.


THU 19:15 Front Row (b03ls163)
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, David Morrissey, Cities of Culture that weren't, Text on screen

With John Wilson.

Ben Stiller directs and stars in the second screen adaptation of the 1939 short story by James Thurber, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Stiller plays a timid magazine photo manager who lives life vicariously through his daydreams, but when a negative goes missing, his real life takes an adventurous turn. Film critic Gaylene Gould reviews.

Actor David Morrissey talks to John about filming on a train with Sheridan Smith for new two-part drama The 7.39, why The Walking Dead decides how long his beard should be, and narrating the audiobook of his namesake's autobiography.

As Derry-Londonderry's year as City of Culture comes to an end, Front Row revisits the other cities that were shortlisted for the award. Chris Gribble who runs the Writers' Centre Norwich, Stuart Griffiths, Chief Executive of the Birmingham Hippodrome and Paul Billington, director of Culture and Environment for Sheffield, discuss the experience of being shortlisted, how their city's culture has fared this year, and how their cultural institutions are surviving the arts cuts that have made the headlines in 2013.

Adam Smith reflects on the proliferation of text on the small and big screen - from text messages to 3D subtitles.

Producer: Rebecca Armstrong.


THU 19:45 Roddy Doyle on Radio 4 (b03ls15b)
[Repeat of broadcast at 10:45 today]


THU 20:00 The Report (b03ls165)
The Brixton Maoists

At the end of November 2013 the Metropolitan police released details of what has been described as Britain's worst case of domestic slavery.

Following the arrest of two people in Lambeth, South London, it was revealed that three women had been taken into care - a 69-year-old from Malaysia, a 57-year-old from Ireland, and a 30-year-old Briton.

It was claimed the three women had been held for 30 years, but further details began to emerge which suggest this is a unique case and not typical of other stories of domestic servitude.

Two of the women, Josephine Herivel and Aishah Wahab, had been members of a small Maoist collective which formed in Brixton in the 1970s - The Workers Institute of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. The women were still living with the group's founder and his wife - the couple who were recently arrrested and bailed by the police - while the youngest woman, Rosie Davies, is believed to have been born into the household.

On this edition of The Report, Simon Cox probes the circumstances under which these women came to live together, exploring the relationship they had with their suspected captors.

The programme speaks to those who came into contact with the Maoist collective over the past three decades, as well as relatives of former members of the group, to ask how the women could seemingly lose contact with wider society.

Reporter: Simon Cox
Producer: Richard Fenton-Smith
Researcher: Hannah Moore.


THU 20:30 In Business (b03ls167)
Curtain Up

Pantomime is a very British tradition, still as popular as ever with audiences. But it's also an important annual cash cow for regional theatres and big production companies. In Business goes to Nottingham to follow the progress of the city's two rival pantomimes: one made in-house at the Nottingham Playhouse, with a much-loved dame on his thirtieth (and last) pantomime and the other at the Theatre Royal, bought in from a big pantomime making production company starring the American Baywatch actor, known as "The Hoff". Peter Day finds out what's involved and why pantomimes matter so much to regional theatres.

(Image Robert Day).


THU 21:00 BBC Inside Science (b03ls15v)
[Repeat of broadcast at 16:30 today]


THU 21:30 In Our Time (b03ls154)
[Repeat of broadcast at 09:00 today]


THU 21:58 Weather (b03lkmh9)
The latest weather forecast.


THU 22:00 The World Tonight (b03ls169)
The murderers of Fusilier Lee Rigby are convicted, what has the case told us about radicalisation in the UK?

Russian President Vladimir Putin says he will pardon one of his biggest political enemies, the former tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

And as two of Hosni Mubarak's sons are cleared of embezzlement, is Egypt turning back the clock on the changes brought by the revolution?

With David Eades.


THU 22:45 Book at Bedtime (b03ls16c)
Aunts Aren't Gentlemen

I Can Explain Everything

Blake Ritson reads a classic Jeeves and Wooster story from P G Wodehouse, one of the masters of comic fiction.

'Mr Wooster,' he said, 'you are a typical young man about town.'
'Oh thanks,' I responded, for it sounded like a compliment, and one always likes to say the civil thing.

Bertie Wooster has been overdoing the metropolitan life a tad, so on doctor's orders, finds himself retiring to the quiet hamlet of Maiden Eggesford to 'sleep the sleep of the just and lead the quiet Martini-less life'. Only the presence of his irrepressible Aunt Dahlia shatters the rustic peace as an imbroglio develops, involving a stolen cat, an over-sensitive racehorse, and some star-crossed lovers. Wooster's quick-thinking butler Jeeves, as always, comes to the rescue.

Today: 'I can explain everything' - Bertie finds himself unexpectedly betrothed, and in receipt of a missing cat.

The author of almost a hundred books and the creator of Jeeves, Blandings Castle, Psmith, Ukridge, Uncle Fred and Mr Mulliner, P G Wodehouse was born in 1881 in Guildford, Surrey, in 1881. He was created a Knight of the British Empire in 1975 and died the same year at the age of ninety-three. Jeeves and Wooster were perhaps his best-known creations; 'Aunts Aren't Gentlemen' was published in 1974, and was the last novel to feature the literary duo.

Reader: Blake Ritson
Abridger: Richard Hamilton
Producer: Justine Willett.


THU 23:00 Alice's Wunderland (b03ls16f)
Series 2

Episode 2

A trip to Wunderland (a poundland of magical realms), which is getting awarded the prestigious by-the-sea status.

Sketch show by Alice Lowe.

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

Producer: Lyndsay Fenner

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in December 2013.


THU 23:30 Today in Parliament (b03ls175)
Mark D'Arcy reports from Westminster.



FRIDAY 20 DECEMBER 2013

FRI 00:00 Midnight News (b03lkmj7)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.


FRI 00:30 Book of the Week (b03ls156)
[Repeat of broadcast at 09:45 on Thursday]


FRI 00:48 Shipping Forecast (b03lkmj9)
The latest shipping forecast.


FRI 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (b03lkmjc)
BBC Radio 4 joins the BBC World Service.


FRI 05:20 Shipping Forecast (b03lkmjf)
The latest shipping forecast.


FRI 05:30 News Briefing (b03lkmjh)
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.


FRI 05:43 Prayer for the Day (b03ls7xp)
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Father Eugene O'Neill.


FRI 05:45 Farming Today (b03ls7xr)
English farmers will receive a 12% cut in subsidy from DEFRA 'modulation' of CAP funding from 2015.

But it's less than they feared , and less than a cut of 15% in Wales. The Scottish government is giving more to farmers with a 9.5% reduction.

What does this mean for farmers competing across borders ?

Farming Today hears from Ministers in England and Wales and goes to a Welsh farm for first hand reaction.

Presented by Charlotte Smith and produced by Willy Flockton.


FRI 05:58 Tweet of the Day (b03k5c8y)
Purple Sandpiper

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

David Attenborough presents the purple sandpiper. On winter beaches, where waves break on seaweed-covered rocks, purple sandpipers make their home. 'Purple' refers to the hint of a purple sheen on their back feathers. They are well camouflaged among the seaweed covered rocks and being relatively quiet, compared to many waders, are easy to overlook.


FRI 06:00 Today (b03ls7xt)
Morning news and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Yesterday in Parliament, Weather and Thought for the Day.


FRI 09:00 Desert Island Discs (b03lknds)
[Repeat of broadcast at 11:15 on Sunday]


FRI 09:45 Book of the Week (b03ls7xw)
Diana Cooper - Darling Monster

Episode 5

This new book contains the letters sent from aristocrat, society darling and actress of stage and early screen, Lady Diana Cooper, to her only son, John Julius Norwich.

When Lady Diana married rising political star Duff Cooper, they became the golden couple who knew everyone who was anyone. Her letters serve as a portrait of a time, capturing some of history's most dramatic events and most important figures with immediacy and intimacy. But they also give us a touching portrait of the love between a mother and son, separated by war, oceans and the constraints of the time they lived in.

Her letters span the years 1939 to 1952, taking in the Blitz, Diana's short spell as a farmer in Sussex, a trip to the Far East when husband Duff was collecting war intelligence, the couple's three years in the Paris embassy, as well as a great number of journeys around Europe and North Africa.

In the final episode, John Julius Norwich is now a student at Oxford, while his mother Lady Diana Cooper continues to live in France. Her husband Duff is offered a peerage.

Read by John Julius Norwich and Patricia Hodge
Producer: David Roper
Abridger: Barry Johnston

A Heavy Entertainment production for BBC Radio 4.


FRI 10:00 Woman's Hour (b03ls7xy)
Black Voices; Ladybird Books; Louise Farrenc; Lucy Powell MP

A cappella singing from Black Voices. A visit to Ladybirdland. 19th century French composer Louise Farrenc. MP Lucy Powell on Parliament and parenthood. Presented by Jenni Murray.


FRI 10:45 Roddy Doyle on Radio 4 (b03ls7y0)
The Snapper

Episode 5

Barrytown is buzzing with speculation. Sharon Rabbitte is pregnant and she's not telling anyone who the father is. But with tongues wagging and rumours mounting, just how long will it take everyone to work out who in Barrytown is the "snapper's" Da?

The second of Roddy Doyle's Barrytown series of novels, all to be dramatized by BBC Radio 4. After a drunken encounter at the soccer club do, Sharon is pregnant and much to the annoyance to her dad, Jimmy, refusing to name the baby's father. So when Jimmy gets wind that it might be someone close to home all hell breaks loose.

The cast includes David Wilmot as Jimmy Snr (Ripper Street, Anna Karenina) and Aoife Duffin as Sharon (Moone Boy.)

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


FRI 11:00 Maths and Magic (b03ls7y2)
Maths and magic go back a long way - the oldest written card trick was by Luca Pacioli, a friend of Leonardo, and appears in a treatise which also contains the first account of double entry book keeping. Many tricks in the working magician's repertoire rely on maths.

But this is surprising. Maths is about logic, magic is about illusion. How can it be possible to fool someone with logic? What does it tell us about the way our minds work? Can things seem magical just because we don't understand them?

Magician Jolyon Jenkins investigates the link between these two apparently disparate worlds. He learns of the simple algebra-based trick that repeatedly fooled Albert Einstein. And he sets himself the challenge of learning a maths-based trick that can not only fool working mathematicians, but seems genuinely magical. It culminates in a public performance in front of a group of mathematicians at the MathsJam festival.

Presenter/producer: Jolyon Jenkins.


FRI 11:30 On the Rocks (b03ls7y4)
Series 1

Barter

by Christopher William Hill. It's 1937 on the remote Scilly Island of St. Martin's, where the islanders are resisting the attempts of the Penzance GPO man to modernise the post office - around which their world revolves.

Episode 4: Barter. Morwenna is trying to improve herself and Frank needs a lesson in island economics.

Directed by Mary Peate.

Sound by Jenni Burnett, Anne Bunting and Caleb Knightley
Production Co-ordinator, Jessica Brown.


FRI 12:00 You and Yours (b03ls7y6)
Consumer news with Peter White.


FRI 12:52 The Listening Project (b03ls7y8)
Pat and Tony - Memories and Marriage

Fi Glover introduces Pat and Tony, both married to partners with dementia. While they mourn the loss of the person they married, they celebrate the love that endures.

The Listening Project is a Radio 4 initiative that offers a snapshot of contemporary Britain in which people across the UK volunteer to have a conversation with someone close to them about a subject they've never discussed intimately before. The conversations are being gathered across the UK by teams of producers from local and national radio stations who facilitate each encounter. Every conversation - they're not BBC interviews, and that's an important difference - lasts up to an hour, and is then edited to extract the key moment of connection between the participants. Most of the unedited conversations are being archived by the British Library and used to build up a collection of voices capturing a unique portrait of the UK in the second decade of the millennium. You can upload your own conversations or just learn more about The Listening Project by visiting bbc.co.uk/listeningproject

Producer: Marya Burgess.


FRI 12:57 Weather (b03lkmjk)
The latest weather forecast.


FRI 13:00 World at One (b03lkmjm)
National and international news. Listeners can share their views via email: wato@bbc.co.uk or on twitter: #wato.


FRI 13:45 A Cause for Caroling (b03lsdg6)
Ring in the New

Jeremy Summerly concludes his history of the carol in Britain pondering the success of new carols over the last century. While King's College, Cambridge organist Stephen Cleobury insures a supply of newly commissioned carols for his massive international audience Jeremy wonders whether the popular songs from Berlin's 'White Christmas' to Slade's 'Merry Christmas' don't help sustain a more genuine caroling tradition.
He also recalls his own first experience of carols at Lichfield cathedral where John Rutter's 'Shepherd's Pipe Carol' was an astonishing discovery for the eager young chorister.
And Jeremy also ponders the continued appeal of the carol and why, while it's been in decline throughout its history, it continues to thrive.

Series Description:
The Christmas carol is as popular now as it was when carolers celebrated the birth of Edward III in 1312. Back then the carol was a generic term for a song with its roots in dance form, nowadays only the strictest scholar would quibble with the fact that a carol is a Christmas song.
But the journey the carol has taken is unique in music history because each shift in the story has been preserved in the carols that we sing today. Go to a carol concert now and you're likely to hear folk, medieval, mid-victorian and modern music all happily combined. It's hard to imagine that happening in any other situation.
In these programmes Jeremy Summerly follows the carol journey through the Golden age of the Medieval carol into the troubled period of Reformation and puritanism, along the byways of the 17th and 18th century waits and gallery musicians and in to the sudden explosion of interest in the carol in the 19th century. It's a story that sees the carol veer between the sacred and secular even before there was any understanding of those terms. For long periods the church, both catholic and protestant, was uneasy about the virility and homespun nature of carol tunes and carol texts. Nowadays many people think that church music is defined by the carols they hear from Kings College Cambridge.
He traces the folk carol in and out of church grounds, the carol hymn, the fuguing carol and the many other off-shoots, some of which survive to this day and many others which languish unloved but ready for re-discovery.
It's a journey full of song describing the history of a people who needed expression for seasonal joy in the coldest, hardest time of the year. And however efficient the heating system may be, the carol still generates warmth. Much of that is to do with the positive nostalgia of this music.
That nostalgia is in part due to the fact that carols are one of the first kinds of song children actually sing rather than hear. Many favourite carols were actually written for Children; Once in Royal David's City the most familiar example. Another factor is the concentration in the texts on the humanity of nativity with tunes garnered from the uninhibited world of folk song and ballad.
The series title is taken from a Thomas Hardy poem in which he ponders of a Darkling Thrush why it should chose to sing - 'so little cause for carolings of such ecstatic sound' - is the question asked. THis series is an attempt to answer why Carols remain so popular and familiar to so many. In fact Hardy himself, in his first novel Under The Greenwood Tree, went some way to answering his own question when he described the Mellstock Quire singing at Midnight on Christmas Eve:
'Then passed forth into the quiet night an ancient and time worn hymn, embodying a quaint Christianity in words orally transmitted from father to son through several generations down to the present characters, who sang them out right earnestly."
Jeremy brings the series up to date with the story of the famous Nine Lessons and Carols service broadcast by the BBC since the 1920s but born originally in Truro. It's a service that commands a worldwide audience measured in many millions, but as Jeremy concludes it has left an imbalance in the appreciation of our caroling tradition, a tradition that has always had one foot in the pub and another in the choir stalls.
Producer:Tom Alban.


FRI 14:00 The Archers (b03ls161)
[Repeat of broadcast at 19:00 on Thursday]


FRI 14:15 Borgen: Outside the Castle (b03lsdg8)
Episode 5

Hans Gammelgaard fears for his family after receiving anonymous death threats. Time is running out as a bill relaxing rules on the use of genetically modified crops is ready to be approved in the E.U. By Tommy Bredsted and Joan Rang Christensen, in an English version by Joy Wilkinson.

Original music by Halfdan E.
Directed by Anders Lundorph

********
Originally produced in ten parts by DR, Denmark's national broadcaster, this radio spin-off of 'Borgen' is set against the backdrop of the first series of the television drama which followed the unlikely emergence of Birgitte Nyborg as the country's new prime minister. Both series have at their centre the Danish parliament, nicknamed Borgen - 'the castle'. While the TV drama focuses on the politicians, the radio drama is set in the world of the civil service. Both share the same soundtrack composed by Halfdan E.


FRI 15:00 Gardeners' Question Time (b03lsdgc)
1870s Special at Beamish

Eric Robson chairs a special 1870s themed episode of GQT from Beamish, The Living Museum of the North. Answering the audience's historical gardening questions are Chris Beardshaw, Bob Flowerdew and Christine Walkden.

The panel travels back in time to explore a fascinating moment in the horticultural history which still influences the way in which we garden today. Eric Robson visits Gravetye Manor to find out how William Robinson's influential book, The Wild Garden, set English gardening on a new and exciting course.

Produced by Howard Shannon
Assistant Producer: Darby Dorras
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4

This week's questions:
Q. Could the panel make some recommendations for plants and flowers to be used in gentlemen's buttonholes and ladies' personal adornment?

A. Flowers with bells look very attractive, such as the highly fragrant Lily of the Valley. Similarly, London Pride provides white and pink bells and can be contrasted with Ivy leaves. For gentlemen, the Rose is a very popular buttonhole. You can also try Ixia in electric blue. It usually grows in Africa, so it would need a hot, sunny position and you may need to lift the bulb at the back end. The fragrant navy blue Lord Nelson Sweet Pea also works well as a beautiful buttonhole.

Q. Could the panel recommend fruits and vegetables that require little attention but provide good results?

A. Try growing the climbing Nasturtium Tropaeolum Tuberosum. It is easy to grow and an attractive specimen. All you need to do is to plant and lift it. Plant the tubers in April at about 4 inches (10cm) deep. The clover-like growth will get to about 6ft (1.8m) tall and produce yellow and orange flowers throughout the summer. Let the first frost get to it and then dig up the tubers. Skirrets grow well on dry, impoverished soil. Sow them out in March, giving them plenty of space. Again, allow the frost to affect them and leave the roots to sit in the ground. They are similar to Jerusalem Artichokes in appearance.


FRI 15:45 Saki (b03m3rn2)
The Music on the Hill

by Hector Hugh Munro, better known by his pen name Saki.

Feisty Edwardian bride Sylvia has triumphed against the odds in her society marriage, but gradually becomes aware of a strange and threatening presence in the woods...

Read by Francesca Dymond

Produced by Allegra McIlroy.


FRI 16:00 Last Word (b03lsdgg)
Peter O'Toole, Lord Roberts of Conwy, Colin Wilson, Joan Fontaine, Ronnie Briggs

Matthew Bannister on:

The actor Peter O'Toole, acclaimed for his performances as Lawrence of Arabia and Jeffery Bernard and notorious for his hell raising exploits.

The long serving Welsh Office minister Lord Roberts of Conwy - a passionate champion of the Welsh language.

The author Colin Wilson, who was hailed as a major new talent when he published The Outsider at the age of 24, but, despite writing many other books, never repeated his mainstream success.

The Hollywood star Joan Fontaine, best known for playing the second wife in Hitchcock's Rebecca, who carried on a long term feud with her sister Olivia De Havilland.

And the Great Train robber Ronnie Biggs.


FRI 16:30 More or Less (b03lsdgj)
Britain's 80,000 homeless children

Eighty thousand children will wake up homeless on Christmas Day, according to the housing charity Shelter. Tim Harford explores this statistic.

It's been reported that there's a global wine shortage. But there seems to be plenty of wine available for the More or Less Christmas bash. Tim Harford fact-checks the claim.

Mathemagical mind-reading: Jolyon Jenkins, amateur magician and presenter of BBC Radio 4's Maths and Magic programme, reveals the maths behind a classic long-distance mind-reading card trick.

It's said that the four Christmas football fixtures are crucial to Premier League teams. But do the numbers back this up?

As Economics Editor Stephanie Flanders leaves the BBC, More or Less airs what is perhaps her finest broadcasting moment.

Presenter: Tim Harford
Producer: Ruth Alexander.


FRI 16:56 The Listening Project (b03lsdgl)
Shahid and Henna - Building a Future Together

Fi Glover introduces a conversation between Muslim newly weds about their love match and subsequent traditional marriage, and the adjustments they are having to contend with, proving once again that it's surprising what you hear when you listen.

The Listening Project is a Radio 4 initiative that offers a snapshot of contemporary Britain in which people across the UK volunteer to have a conversation with someone close to them about a subject they've never discussed intimately before. The conversations are being gathered across the UK by teams of producers from local and national radio stations who facilitate each encounter. Every conversation - they're not BBC interviews, and that's an important difference - lasts up to an hour, and is then edited to extract the key moment of connection between the participants. Most of the unedited conversations are being archived by the British Library and used to build up a collection of voices capturing a unique portrait of the UK in the second decade of the millennium. You can upload your own conversations or just learn more about The Listening Project by visiting bbc.co.uk/listeningproject

Producer: Marya Burgess.


FRI 17:00 PM (b03lsdgn)
Coverage and analysis of the day's news. Including Weather at 5.57pm.


FRI 18:00 Six O'Clock News (b03lkmjp)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.


FRI 18:30 The News Quiz (b03lsdgq)
Series 82

Episode 7

A satirical review of the week's news, chaired by Sandi Toksvig.


FRI 19:00 The Archers (b03lsdgs)
Eddie manages to persuade Darrell to help him deliver the turkeys, and is encouraged by Darrell's attitude. Darrell even handles some of the transactions. Eddie is proud to see Darrell making an effort.

Susan tells Helen about some of the gossip she heard. According to Alice, Jess's party turned into a fiasco and Jess got emotional when she and Rob started arguing. Unsure of what to say, Helen makes her excuses to leave.

Rob visits Helen at the shop. He's genuinely apologetic that she ended up serving Jess's guests. Helen is cool but her mood relaxes when he tells her what a ghastly evening he had. They share a moment, and feelings between them are palpable. Helen asks when he's going to Hampshire. He tells her it'll be on Christmas Eve. He thanks her for being nice, even though he doesn't deserve it. Helen tells him to have a good break.

Eddie persuades Darrell to go and see Rosa at work. Unimpressed Rosa doesn't want to hear what he's been up to with Eddie. She tells him everyone is talking behind his back and that she isn't his daughter any more. In fact, she wishes he was dead.


FRI 19:15 Front Row (b03lsdgv)
Julie Andrews; All Is Lost; Michael Palin; protecting art during war

With Kirsty Lang.

As Mary Poppins looks forward to its 50th birthday, and a film about the making of the movie, Saving Mr Banks, is tipped for Oscar success, Julie Andrews reflects on a career that has made her an icon for generations of children. She also discusses the emotional impact of no longer being able to sing, and reveals how she plans to entertain audiences on a 2014 tour.

Presenter and Python Michael Palin talks to Kirsty about the life and work of painter Andrew Wyeth - the focus of his new television documentary - and explains why costume changes will be the hardest part of the Monty Python reunion tour.

Robert Redford stars in All is Lost, a survival film about a man lost at sea, with almost no dialogue or supporting cast. Mark Eccleston delivers his verdict.

George Clooney's forthcoming film, The Monuments Men, depicts a group of soldiers tasked with protecting art stolen by the Nazis during the Second World War. In light of this, Major Hugo Clarke of the International Blue Shield - an organisation promoting the protection of art and culture in war zones - John Curtis of the British Museum, and archaeologist Dr Lamia al-Gailani, discuss the importance of training the military to protect cultural heritage during conflict.

Producer: Ellie Bury.


FRI 19:45 Roddy Doyle on Radio 4 (b03ls7y0)
[Repeat of broadcast at 10:45 today]


FRI 20:00 Any Questions? (b03lsdgx)
Michael Portillo, Chris Mullin, Nikki King, Mark Damazer

Jonathan Dimbleby presents political debate and discussion from St Andrew's Church in Middlesex with former Conservative minister Michael Portillo, Former Labour minister now diarist Chris Mullin, business woman Nikki King, and Mark Damazer who's the Master of St Peter's College, Oxford.


FRI 20:50 A Point of View (b03lsdgz)
Islamo-Christian Heritage

In the week when Prince Charles has drawn attention to violence against Christians in the Middle East, William Dalrymple says it's time to remember the "old and often forgotten co-habitation of Islam and Christianity".

"Christmas time is perhaps the proper moment to remember the long tradition of revering the nativity in the Islamic world. ...There are certainly major differences between the two faiths, not least the central fact, in mainstream Christianity, of Jesus' divinity. But Christmas - the ultimate celebration of Christ's humanity - is a feast which Muslims and Christians can share without reservation.".


FRI 21:00 A Cause for Caroling (b03lsdh1)
A Cause for Caroling: Omnibus

Joy to the World

Jeremy Summerly completes his history of the Christmas Carol in Britain covering the 19th century caroling revival and golden age to the invention of the Nine Lessons with Carols service in Truro and its subsequent use at King's College, Cambridge in 1918. Ten years later the BBC decided to broadcast the service and a local caroling tradition very quickly found itself being exported all over the globe.
Jeremy also deals with the folk caroling traditions that were excluded by the church of England's belated enthusiasm for caroling but which survive to this day, particularly in the villages and towns of South Yorkshire.

Series Description:
The Christmas carol is as popular now as it was when carolers celebrated the birth of Edward III in 1312. Back then the carol was a generic term for a song with its roots in dance form, nowadays only the strictest scholar would quibble with the fact that a carol is a Christmas song.
But the journey the carol has taken is unique in music history because each shift in the story has been preserved in the carols that we sing today. Go to a carol concert now and you're likely to hear folk, medieval, mid-victorian and modern music all happily combined. It's hard to imagine that happening in any other situation.
In these programmes Jeremy Summerly follows the carol journey through the Golden age of the Medieval carol into the troubled period of Reformation and puritanism, along the byways of the 17th and 18th century waits and gallery musicians and in to the sudden explosion of interest in the carol in the 19th century. It's a story that sees the carol veer between the sacred and secular even before there was any understanding of those terms. For long periods the church, both catholic and protestant, was uneasy about the virility and homespun nature of carol tunes and carol texts. Nowadays many people think that church music is defined by the carols they hear from Kings College Cambridge.
He traces the folk carol in and out of church grounds, the carol hymn, the fuguing carol and the many other off-shoots, some of which survive to this day and many others which languish unloved but ready for re-discovery.
It's a journey full of song describing the history of a people who needed expression for seasonal joy in the coldest, hardest time of the year. And however efficient the heating system may be, the carol still generates warmth. Much of that is to do with the positive nostalgia of this music.
That nostalgia is in part due to the fact that carols are one of the first kinds of song children actually sing rather than hear. Many favourite carols were actually written for Children; Once in Royal David's City the most familiar example. Another factor is the concentration in the texts on the humanity of nativity with tunes garnered from the uninhibited world of folk song and ballad.
The series title is taken from a Thomas Hardy poem in which he ponders of a Darkling Thrush why it should chose to sing - 'so little cause for carolings of such ecstatic sound' - is the question asked. THis series is an attempt to answer why Carols remain so popular and familiar to so many. In fact Hardy himself, in his first novel Under The Greenwood Tree, went some way to answering his own question when he described the Mellstock Quire singing at Midnight on Christmas Eve:
'Then passed forth into the quiet night an ancient and time worn hymn, embodying a quaint Christianity in words orally transmitted from father to son through several generations down to the present characters, who sang them out right earnestly."
Jeremy brings the series up to date with the story of the famous Nine Lessons and Carols service broadcast by the BBC since the 1920s but born originally in Truro. It's a service that commands a worldwide audience measured in many millions, but as Jeremy concludes it has left an imbalance in the appreciation of our caroling tradition, a tradition that has always had one foot in the pub and another in the choir stalls.
Producer:Tom Alban.


FRI 21:58 Weather (b03lkmjr)
The latest weather forecast.


FRI 22:00 The World Tonight (b03lsdh3)
Nigella Lawson says she was "maliciously vilified" at trial of former assistants cleared of fraud. UN says at least 11 civilians were killed with two peacekeepers in South Sudan. Pardoned Khodorkovsky released from Russian prison and flown to Berlin. Presented by David Eades.


FRI 22:45 Book at Bedtime (b03lsdh5)
Aunts Aren't Gentlemen

Trying to Brazen It Out

A classic Jeeves and Wooster story from P G Wodehouse, one of the masters of comic fiction, read by Blake Ritson.

'Mr Wooster,' he said, 'you are a typical young man about town.'
'Oh thanks,' I responded, for it sounded like a compliment, and one always likes to say the civil thing.

Bertie Wooster has been rather overdoing the metropolitan life, so on doctor's orders, finds himself retiring to the quiet hamlet of Maiden Eggesford to 'sleep the sleep of the just and lead the quiet Martini-less life'. Only the presence of his irrepressible Aunt Dahlia shatters the rustic peace as an imbroglio develops, involving a stolen cat, an over-sensitive racehorse, and some star-crossed lovers. Wooster's quick-thinking butler Jeeves, as always, comes to the rescue.

Today: 'Trying to brazen it out' - Bertie is still trying to extricate himself from a very unwelcome betrothal, while avoiding the terrifying Pop Cook. Must he rely again on his quick-thinking butler, Jeeves?

The author of almost a hundred books and the creator of Jeeves, Blandings Castle, Psmith, Ukridge, Uncle Fred and Mr Mulliner, P G Wodehouse was born in 1881 in Guildford, Surrey, in 1881. He was created a Knight of the British Empire in 1975 and died the same year at the age of ninety-three. Jeeves and Wooster were perhaps his best-known creations; 'Aunts Aren't Gentlemen' was published in 1974, and was the last novel to feature the literary duo.

Reader: Blake Ritson
Abridger: Richard Hamilton
Producer: Justine Willett.


FRI 23:00 Great Lives (b03lph8m)
[Repeat of broadcast at 16:30 on Tuesday]


FRI 23:30 Today in Parliament (b03lsdh7)
The latest news from Westminster.


FRI 23:55 The Listening Project (b03lsdh9)
Suzanne and Karen - Let's Talk About Sex

Fi Glover introduces a conversation between a happily married - and sexually fulfilled - woman and her friend, a serial mistress, about their plan to abolish bad sex and ensure everyone benefits from good, proving once again that it's surprising what you hear when you listen.

The Listening Project is a Radio 4 initiative that offers a snapshot of contemporary Britain in which people across the UK volunteer to have a conversation with someone close to them about a subject they've never discussed intimately before. The conversations are being gathered across the UK by teams of producers from local and national radio stations who facilitate each encounter. Every conversation - they're not BBC interviews, and that's an important difference - lasts up to an hour, and is then edited to extract the key moment of connection between the participants. Most of the unedited conversations are being archived by the British Library and used to build up a collection of voices capturing a unique portrait of the UK in the second decade of the millennium. You can upload your own conversations or just learn more about The Listening Project by visiting bbc.co.uk/listeningproject

Producer: Marya Burgess.




LIST OF THIS WEEK'S PROGRAMMES
(Note: the times link back to the details; the pids link to the BBC page, including iPlayer)

A Cause for Caroling 13:45 MON (b03lp80w)

A Cause for Caroling 13:45 TUE (b03lpfx0)

A Cause for Caroling 13:45 WED (b03lpjpp)

A Cause for Caroling 13:45 THU (b03ls15l)

A Cause for Caroling 13:45 FRI (b03lsdg6)

A Cause for Caroling 21:00 FRI (b03lsdh1)

A Notebook on Aime Cesaire 23:30 SAT (b03kpkyz)

A Point of View 08:48 SUN (b03kvd5c)

A Point of View 20:50 FRI (b03lsdgz)

Afternoon Reading 00:30 SUN (b01292vc)

Alice's Wunderland 23:00 THU (b03ls16f)

All in the Mind 21:00 TUE (b03lph92)

All in the Mind 15:30 WED (b03lph92)

Any Answers? 14:00 SAT (b03lkmpw)

Any Questions? 13:10 SAT (b03kvd59)

Any Questions? 20:00 FRI (b03lsdgx)

Archive on 4 20:00 SAT (b03kp9bs)

BBC Inside Science 16:30 THU (b03ls15v)

BBC Inside Science 21:00 THU (b03ls15v)

Believe It! 11:30 WED (b03lpjpk)

Bells on Sunday 05:43 SUN (b03lknd8)

Bells on Sunday 00:45 MON (b03lknd8)

Bird Island 23:15 WED (b01k2b18)

Book at Bedtime 22:45 MON (b03lpc0d)

Book at Bedtime 22:45 TUE (b03lph96)

Book at Bedtime 22:45 WED (b03lrzjt)

Book at Bedtime 22:45 THU (b03ls16c)

Book at Bedtime 22:45 FRI (b03lsdh5)

Book of the Week 00:30 SAT (b03nxy5r)

Book of the Week 09:45 MON (b03lnx3l)

Book of the Week 00:30 TUE (b03lnx3l)

Book of the Week 09:45 TUE (b03lpfwm)

Book of the Week 00:30 WED (b03lpfwm)

Book of the Week 09:45 WED (b03lpjp9)

Book of the Week 00:30 THU (b03lpjp9)

Book of the Week 09:45 THU (b03ls156)

Book of the Week 00:30 FRI (b03ls156)

Book of the Week 09:45 FRI (b03ls7xw)

Borgen: Outside the Castle 14:15 MON (b03lpbzr)

Borgen: Outside the Castle 14:15 TUE (b03lpfx2)

Borgen: Outside the Castle 14:15 WED (b03lpjpr)

Borgen: Outside the Castle 14:15 THU (b03ls15n)

Borgen: Outside the Castle 14:15 FRI (b03lsdg8)

Brain of Britain 23:00 SAT (b03kpnk7)

Brain of Britain 15:00 MON (b03lpbzt)

Crossing Continents 20:30 MON (b03kv1dx)

Crossing Continents 11:00 THU (b03ls15d)

Curlew River 23:00 MON (b03hvqlf)

David Attenborough: My Life in Sound 11:00 MON (b03lnzxh)

Desert Island Discs 11:15 SUN (b03lknds)

Desert Island Discs 09:00 FRI (b03lknds)

Ed Reardon's Week 11:30 MON (b03lnzxk)

Farming Today 06:30 SAT (b03lkmn2)

Farming Today 05:45 MON (b03lnvwx)

Farming Today 05:45 TUE (b03lpfwf)

Farming Today 05:45 WED (b03lpjp3)

Farming Today 05:45 THU (b03ls150)

Farming Today 05:45 FRI (b03ls7xr)

Feedback 20:00 SUN (b03kvd4z)

From Our Own Correspondent 11:30 SAT (b03lkmpr)

Front Row 19:15 MON (b03lpc06)

Front Row 19:15 TUE (b03lph8w)

Front Row 19:15 WED (b03lpjyb)

Front Row 19:15 THU (b03ls163)

Front Row 19:15 FRI (b03lsdgv)

Frontiers 21:00 WED (b03lrzjp)

Gardeners' Question Time 14:00 SUN (b03kvbyc)

Gardeners' Question Time 15:00 FRI (b03lsdgc)

Great Lives 16:30 TUE (b03lph8m)

Great Lives 23:00 FRI (b03lph8m)

Hardeep's Sunday Lunch 13:30 SUN (b03lkndz)

I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue 12:00 SUN (b03kpy5w)

I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue 18:30 MON (b03lpc02)

In Business 21:30 SUN (b03kv48v)

In Business 20:30 THU (b03ls167)

In Our Time 09:00 THU (b03ls154)

In Our Time 21:30 THU (b03ls154)

In Touch 20:40 TUE (b03lph90)

Inside the Fed 17:00 SUN (b03kqg09)

Last Word 20:30 SUN (b03kvd4x)

Last Word 16:00 FRI (b03lsdgg)

Lines in the Sand 20:00 TUE (b03lph8y)

Lives in a Landscape 11:00 WED (b03lpjph)

Loose Ends 18:15 SAT (b03lkn5d)

Maths and Magic 11:00 FRI (b03ls7y2)

Meet David Sedaris 19:15 SUN (b03lnprh)

Midnight News 00:00 SAT (b03kv8f4)

Midnight News 00:00 SUN (b03lkm8h)

Midnight News 00:00 MON (b03lkmbc)

Midnight News 00:00 TUE (b03lkmcw)

Midnight News 00:00 WED (b03lkmfb)

Midnight News 00:00 THU (b03lkmgs)

Midnight News 00:00 FRI (b03lkmj7)

Midweek 09:00 WED (b03lpjp7)

Midweek 21:30 WED (b03lpjp7)

Modern Welsh Voices 19:45 SUN (b03lntqf)

Money Box Live 15:00 WED (b03lpjxy)

Money Box 12:00 SAT (b03lkmpt)

Money Box 21:00 SUN (b03lkmpt)

Moral Maze 22:15 SAT (b03ktz12)

More or Less 16:30 FRI (b03lsdgj)

News Briefing 05:30 SAT (b03kv8fd)

News Briefing 05:30 SUN (b03lkm8r)

News Briefing 05:30 MON (b03lkmbm)

News Briefing 05:30 TUE (b03lkmd4)

News Briefing 05:30 WED (b03lkmfl)

News Briefing 05:30 THU (b03lkmh1)

News Briefing 05:30 FRI (b03lkmjh)

News Headlines 06:00 SUN (b03lkm8t)

News and Papers 06:00 SAT (b03kv8fg)

News and Papers 07:00 SUN (b03lkm8y)

News and Papers 08:00 SUN (b03lkm92)

News and Weather 22:00 SAT (b03kv8g0)

News 13:00 SAT (b03kv8fq)

On Your Farm 06:35 SUN (b03lkndd)

On the Rocks 11:30 FRI (b03ls7y4)

Open Book 16:00 SUN (b03lknpq)

Open Book 15:30 THU (b03lknpq)

Open Country 06:07 SAT (b03kv26z)

Open Country 15:00 THU (b03ls15q)

PM 17:00 SAT (b03lkn5b)

PM 17:00 MON (b03lpc00)

PM 17:00 TUE (b03lph8p)

PM 17:00 WED (b03lpjy4)

PM 17:00 THU (b03ls15x)

PM 17:00 FRI (b03lsdgn)

Pick of the Week 18:15 SUN (b03lnprc)

Poetry Please 16:30 SUN (b03lknps)

Political Animals 23:00 WED (b03lrzjw)

Pop-Up Ideas 20:45 WED (b03lrzjm)

Prayer for the Day 05:43 SAT (b03kvdbv)

Prayer for the Day 05:43 MON (b03lnvwv)

Prayer for the Day 05:43 TUE (b03lpfwc)

Prayer for the Day 05:43 WED (b03lpjp1)

Prayer for the Day 05:43 THU (b03ls14y)

Prayer for the Day 05:43 FRI (b03ls7xp)

Profile 19:00 SAT (b03lkn5g)

Profile 05:45 SUN (b03lkn5g)

Profile 17:40 SUN (b03lkn5g)

Radio 4 Appeal 07:55 SUN (b03lkndj)

Radio 4 Appeal 21:26 SUN (b03lkndj)

Radio 4 Appeal 15:27 THU (b03lkndj)

Roddy Doyle on Radio 4 15:00 SUN (b03lknpn)

Roddy Doyle on Radio 4 10:45 MON (b03lnzxf)

Roddy Doyle on Radio 4 19:45 MON (b03lnzxf)

Roddy Doyle on Radio 4 10:45 TUE (b03lpfwr)

Roddy Doyle on Radio 4 19:45 TUE (b03lpfwr)

Roddy Doyle on Radio 4 10:45 WED (b03lpjpf)

Roddy Doyle on Radio 4 19:45 WED (b03lpjpf)

Roddy Doyle on Radio 4 10:45 THU (b03ls15b)

Roddy Doyle on Radio 4 19:45 THU (b03ls15b)

Roddy Doyle on Radio 4 10:45 FRI (b03ls7y0)

Roddy Doyle on Radio 4 19:45 FRI (b03ls7y0)

Saki 15:45 FRI (b03m3rn2)

Saturday Drama 14:30 SAT (b03lkmpy)

Saturday Live 09:00 SAT (b03lkmn6)

Saturday Review 19:15 SAT (b03lkn5j)

Selection of BBC World Service Programmes 01:00 SAT (b03kv8f8)

Selection of BBC World Service Programmes 01:00 SUN (b03lkm8m)

Selection of BBC World Service Programmes 01:00 MON (b03lkmbh)

Selection of BBC World Service Programmes 01:00 TUE (b03lkmd0)

Selection of BBC World Service Programmes 01:00 WED (b03lkmfg)

Selection of BBC World Service Programmes 01:00 THU (b03lkmgx)

Selection of BBC World Service Programmes 01:00 FRI (b03lkmjc)

Shared Experience 15:30 TUE (b03lph1d)

Shared Planet 21:00 MON (b03kqf02)

Shared Planet 11:00 TUE (b03lpfwt)

Shipping Forecast 00:48 SAT (b03kv8f6)

Shipping Forecast 05:20 SAT (b03kv8fb)

Shipping Forecast 17:54 SAT (b03kv8ft)

Shipping Forecast 00:48 SUN (b03lkm8k)

Shipping Forecast 05:20 SUN (b03lkm8p)

Shipping Forecast 17:54 SUN (b03lkm96)

Shipping Forecast 00:48 MON (b03lkmbf)

Shipping Forecast 05:20 MON (b03lkmbk)

Shipping Forecast 00:48 TUE (b03lkmcy)

Shipping Forecast 05:20 TUE (b03lkmd2)

Shipping Forecast 00:48 WED (b03lkmfd)

Shipping Forecast 05:20 WED (b03lkmfj)

Shipping Forecast 00:48 THU (b03lkmgv)

Shipping Forecast 05:20 THU (b03lkmgz)

Shipping Forecast 00:48 FRI (b03lkmj9)

Shipping Forecast 05:20 FRI (b03lkmjf)

Six O'Clock News 18:00 SAT (b03kv8fy)

Six O'Clock News 18:00 SUN (b03lkm9b)

Six O'Clock News 18:00 MON (b03lkmbw)

Six O'Clock News 18:00 TUE (b03lkmdb)

Six O'Clock News 18:00 WED (b03lkmfs)

Six O'Clock News 18:00 THU (b03lkmh7)

Six O'Clock News 18:00 FRI (b03lkmjp)

Something Understood 06:05 SUN (b03lkndb)

Something Understood 23:30 SUN (b03lkndb)

Soul Music 15:30 SAT (b03kqf04)

Soul Music 11:30 TUE (b03lpfww)

Start the Week 09:00 MON (b03lnvx1)

Start the Week 21:30 MON (b03lnvx1)

Stories in Sound 16:00 MON (b03lpbzw)

Sunday Worship 08:10 SUN (b03lkndl)

Sunday 07:10 SUN (b03lkndg)

That Mitchell and Webb Sound 18:30 TUE (b03lph8r)

The Archers Omnibus 10:00 SUN (b03lkndq)

The Archers 19:00 SUN (b03lnprf)

The Archers 14:00 MON (b03lnprf)

The Archers 19:00 MON (b03lpc04)

The Archers 14:00 TUE (b03lpc04)

The Archers 19:00 TUE (b03lph8t)

The Archers 14:00 WED (b03lph8t)

The Archers 19:00 WED (b03lpjy8)

The Archers 14:00 THU (b03lpjy8)

The Archers 19:00 THU (b03ls161)

The Archers 14:00 FRI (b03ls161)

The Archers 19:00 FRI (b03lsdgs)

The Film Programme 23:00 SUN (b03kv271)

The Film Programme 16:00 THU (b03ls15s)

The Food Programme 12:32 SUN (b03lkndv)

The Food Programme 15:30 MON (b03lkndv)

The Funeral of Nelson Mandela 09:00 SUN (b03phvnm)

The Infinite Monkey Cage 16:30 MON (b03lpbzy)

The Infinite Monkey Cage 23:00 TUE (b03lpbzy)

The James M Cain Series 21:00 SAT (b03kpkyv)

The Kitchen Cabinet 15:00 TUE (b03lph1b)

The Listening Project 14:45 SUN (b03lknf1)

The Listening Project 12:52 FRI (b03ls7y8)

The Listening Project 16:56 FRI (b03lsdgl)

The Listening Project 23:55 FRI (b03lsdh9)

The Lost Tapes of Orson Welles 11:30 THU (b03ls15g)

The Making of the Modern Arab World 09:00 TUE (b03lpfwk)

The Making of the Modern Arab World 21:30 TUE (b03lpfwk)

The Media Show 16:30 WED (b03lpjy2)

The News Quiz 12:30 SAT (b03kvd55)

The News Quiz 18:30 FRI (b03lsdgq)

The Playlist Series 10:30 SAT (b03lkmpm)

The Report 20:00 THU (b03ls165)

The Secret World 18:30 THU (b03ls15z)

The Week in Westminster 11:00 SAT (b03lkmpp)

The World This Weekend 13:00 SUN (b03lkndx)

The World Tonight 22:00 MON (b03lpc0b)

The World Tonight 22:00 TUE (b03lph94)

The World Tonight 22:00 WED (b03lrzjr)

The World Tonight 22:00 THU (b03ls169)

The World Tonight 22:00 FRI (b03lsdh3)

Thinking Allowed 00:15 MON (b03ktz0p)

Thinking Allowed 16:00 WED (b03lpjy0)

Today in Parliament 23:30 MON (b03lpc0g)

Today in Parliament 23:30 TUE (b03lph98)

Today in Parliament 23:30 WED (b03lrzjy)

Today in Parliament 23:30 THU (b03ls175)

Today in Parliament 23:30 FRI (b03lsdh7)

Today 07:00 SAT (b03lkmn4)

Today 06:00 MON (b03lnvwz)

Today 06:00 TUE (b03lpfwh)

Today 06:00 WED (b03lpjp5)

Today 06:00 THU (b03ls152)

Today 06:00 FRI (b03ls7xt)

Tweet of the Day 08:58 SUN (b03k5b9c)

Tweet of the Day 05:58 MON (b03k5bwv)

Tweet of the Day 05:58 TUE (b03k5c26)

Tweet of the Day 05:58 WED (b03k5c3r)

Tweet of the Day 05:58 THU (b03k5c63)

Tweet of the Day 05:58 FRI (b03k5c8y)

Weather 06:04 SAT (b03kv8fj)

Weather 06:57 SAT (b03kv8fl)

Weather 12:57 SAT (b03kv8fn)

Weather 17:57 SAT (b03kv8fw)

Weather 06:57 SUN (b03lkm8w)

Weather 07:57 SUN (b03lkm90)

Weather 12:57 SUN (b03lkm94)

Weather 17:57 SUN (b03lkm98)

Weather 05:56 MON (b03lkmbp)

Weather 12:57 MON (b03lkmbr)

Weather 21:58 MON (b03lkmby)

Weather 12:57 TUE (b03lkmd6)

Weather 21:58 TUE (b03lkmdd)

Weather 12:57 WED (b03lkmfn)

Weather 21:58 WED (b03lkmfv)

Weather 12:57 THU (b03lkmh3)

Weather 21:58 THU (b03lkmh9)

Weather 12:57 FRI (b03lkmjk)

Weather 21:58 FRI (b03lkmjr)

Westminster Hour 22:00 SUN (b03lntqh)

What Does the K Stand For? 18:30 WED (b03lpjy6)

What the Papers Say 22:45 SUN (b03lntqk)

Whatever Happened to Community?: The Debate 20:00 WED (b03lrzjk)

Whatever Happened to Community? 20:00 MON (b03lpc08)

Woman's Hour 16:00 SAT (b03lkmq0)

Woman's Hour 10:00 MON (b03lnzxc)

Woman's Hour 10:00 TUE (b03lpfwp)

Woman's Hour 10:00 WED (b03lpjpc)

Woman's Hour 10:00 THU (b03ls158)

Woman's Hour 10:00 FRI (b03ls7xy)

Word of Mouth 16:00 TUE (b03lph1g)

World at One 13:00 MON (b03lkmbt)

World at One 13:00 TUE (b03lkmd8)

World at One 13:00 WED (b03lkmfq)

World at One 13:00 THU (b03lkmh5)

World at One 13:00 FRI (b03lkmjm)

You and Yours 12:00 MON (b03lnzxm)

You and Yours 12:00 TUE (b03lpfwy)

You and Yours 12:00 WED (b03lpjpm)

You and Yours 12:00 THU (b03ls15j)

You and Yours 12:00 FRI (b03ls7y6)

iPM 05:45 SAT (b03kvdbx)

iPM 17:30 SAT (b03kvdbx)