The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
Migration: the complexities of transnational movement, identity and belonging. Laurie Taylor explores migration in contrasting contexts. He talks to Daniel Briggs, Professor of Criminology at the Universidad Europea, Madrid, about his study of Romanian economic migrants in Britain. Leaving behind the debt and corruption of their home in life in the hope of finding something better, what kinds of lives do they end up living in the UK? Also, Daniel Conway, Lecturer in Politics & International Studies at the Open University, discusses his research into the lives, histories and identities of white British-born immigrants in South Africa, twenty years after the post-apartheid Government took office.
The national body set up to monitor and regulate gangmasters will hold its first conference later today, amid claims that it doesn't have enough funding to adequately protect vulnerable workers. The Gangmasters Licensing Authority was set up in 2004 in the wake of the Morecambe Bay cockle picking disaster, when 23 Chinese workers drowned on the sands. Today licensed gangmasters will be asked to comment on a review of licensing regulations.
And we hear from the British Pest Control Association about the control of rats, at the start of a week of reports about pests and predators.
Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs.
John Aitchison presents the chaffinch. The name chaffinch refers to its habit of flocking in stubble fields, often in the company of other birds, to sort through the chaff for seeds. In less tidy times when spilled grain was a regular feature in farmyards and stubble was retained for longer periods, these winter flocks were widespread.
Morning news and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
On Start the Week Tom Sutcliffe explores the fracturing political landscape and the rise of anti-establishment parties. The politics lecturer Robert Ford explains the increasing support for the SNP, UKIP, and the Greens and what that means for the forthcoming General Election. Catherine De Vries is a Professor of European politics and compares what's happening across the Channel. Srdja Popovic was one of the leaders of Otpor - the movement that played a pivotal role in bringing down Slobodan Milosevic - and he advises how using humour, rice pudding and lego men can change the world. The Royal Opera House is staging Brecht and Weill's Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, a satire on money, morality and pleasure-seeking, and its director John Fulljames seeks out the contemporary resonances in this story of consumerism and loss of humanity.
Hattie Morahan reads Anna Lyndsey's astonishing account of how her life was irrevocably changed when she was diagnosed with an extreme sensitivity to light.
Jane Garvey talks to Jo Milne about how her life has changed since she had an operation that allowed her to hear for the first time - and how she is coping with losing her sight.
Rene Denfeld discusses her work as a death penalty investigator in the United States.
And, polling done for Woman's Hour by TNS ahead of the General Election identified education as the fifth biggest concern for women voters - but not for men. How are the political parties addressing their concerns?
"Nothing goes away in this world any more. Nothing gets lost. If you don't want a record of it, then don't do it."
When police camera operator Leslie Burden receives a call from a colleague concerning the disappearance of a young Polish woman, he uses his surveillance expertise to help track sightings of the missing woman, unaware he is being drawn into a web of murder and revenge even he doesn't see coming.
Eoin McNamee won the Imison Award for his debut radio drama, 'The Road Wife', which he followed with 'No Trampy Immigrants', an episode of From Fact to Fiction: 'Heroes', and most recently 'North of Riga'. A novelist and screenwriter, Eoin's novels include 'Resurrection Man' (which he adapted for film), 'The Blue Tango', 'The Ultras', '
' and 'Orchid Blue'. He also writes thrillers under the pseudonym John Creed.
Writer ..... Eoin McNamee
Producer ..... Heather Larmour.
Ever since he suffered a severe stroke in 1995, Robert has been living with its consequences. He says, "It's one of the remorseless side-effects of the affliction that, if you survive it, you will live with its after-effects and the conundrum about existence it poses, for the rest of your life." The demands of an ongoing recovery still have to be met.
This two part series is a reflection and continued discovery, twenty years on, of Robert McCrum's condition.
Ronnie Corbett returns for a third series of his popular sitcom by Ian Davidson and Peter Vincent.
Ronnie plays Sandy Hopper, who is growing old happily along with his dog Henry. His grown up children - both married to people Sandy doesn't approve of at all - would like him to move out of the family home so they can get their hands on the money earlier. But Sandy's not having it. He's not moving until the dog dies. And not just that, how can he move if he's got a lodger? His daughter is convinced that his too attractive lodger Dolores is also after Sandy and his money.
Luckily, Sandy has three grandchildren and, sometimes, a friendly word or a kindly hand on the shoulder can really help a Granddad in the twenty-first century. Man and dog together face a complicated world. And there's every chance they'll make it more so.
Sandy has made a new will and son-in-law Blake can't wait to see what it says. Dolores suggests a phoney will to give Blake the shock of his life. When the penny drops, Blake exacts his revenge.
Folkestone arrives in Tynemouth as the Graham and Wilson clans arrive for the christenings of Peter and Rosamund.
Former Energy Minister says' Big Six' energy companies have little interest in helping consumers save energy.
Is the desire to refresh town centres by converting emplty commercial property into homes backfiring?
Business watchdog, the Competition and Markets Authority wants to know what the public think about online reviews and what might be done to reduce fake and exaggerated posts.
Campaigners demand the government puiblish investiagtions into the deaths of 49 people who died after their welfare benefits were cut or denied.
Anthropologist David Graeber explores the ways debt has shaped society over 5000 years. In this episode, he examines the moral power that debt holds over us.
David argues that whenever we think about debt we end up in a deep moral confusion. We resent the "deadbeats" who fail to pay us back and yet many of us believe that people who get us into debt - money lenders - are immoral if not downright evil.
Gangsters like Don Corleone frame what they do in terms of debt. They do so in the knowledge that debt is a powerful tool for taking even pure extortion and making it seem like it's the debtor who is in the wrong. We can't help but believe Don Corleone when he tells us we owe him one.
It's not just gangsters who utilise the moral power of debt. Over the course of history commanders of foreign armies, wealthy landlords, corrupt officials, and local thugs have been able to tell their victims that those victims owe them something. If nothing else, they "owe them their lives" (a telling phrase) because they haven't killed them.
For most of human history, most human beings have been told that they are debtors. In this series, David examines the human consequences which have profound implications for the politics of the present day.
In 2006 newspaper reports that a young Scottish girl had been abducted by her father and taken to Pakistan created headlines around the world. The story seemed to represent a clash of religious and cultural values between East and West. But the problem was - the girl hadn't been abducted. In an effort to find the story behind the headlines the actress and playwright, Sudha Bhuchar, interviewed the three main family members involved. Her play is inspired by those real-life events.
Which Pharaoh ordered the construction of the Great Pyramid at Giza, one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world? And which familiar two-word term was first coined by the film critic Nino Frank, when discussing films such as The Maltese Falcon and Double Indemnity?
The competitors in today's heat will have to answer these and many other questions to stand a chance of qualifying for the semi-final stage of this year's tournament. Russell Davies is in the chair, and the contestants come from Huddersfield, Liverpool, Leeds and Kendal.
They'll also face questions suggested by a listener, with the aim of 'Beating the Brains' and winning a book token prize.
The miners strike gripped the country through the winter of 1984 and into 1985, Billy Bragg, fired up with his own political views travelled to the coal fields of South Wales, Yorkshire and the North East to play benefit gigs to help the raise funds for the striking families
By his own admission Billy thought he was going to show the miners what it was to be a radical but one meeting changed all that
He came across a singer called Jock Purdon sitting on a chair on stage with a finger in his ear, singing songs that were much more radical and much more political than anything he had heard before
Purdon was a singer and poet who wrote about what it was like for people like him, people who worked down the mines and who lived in mining communities
From that moment Bragg says he had to step back and re-assess my idea of what it was to be a protest singer and that meeting thirty years ago shaped his career as a singer songwriter
Bragg explores who Purdon was, how this uneducated Scotsman was able write songs and poems that encapsulated what it was to be a miner.
But as he find Purdon was just one of the latest in a long fertile line of writers poets and singers concentrated ins a remarkably small area, who used their experiences deep underground as inspiration for their work
There is a famous story of how the Durham miners opened an envelope in 1985 to find a cheque for £16,000 from Bruce Springsteen another singer who has written songs from the perspective of working class families. But according to Bragg, Purdon and the long line of poets who went before him were the real protest singers, singing real, human songs about what they were, and what they experienced
By exploring who Purdon was and how he r altered his outlook, Billy Bragg will reflect on his own career as the UK's foremost radial singer songwriter.
Even in this so-called secular age, people with little or no religious belief often revert to religious terminology to describe their experience. After a difficult time, someone will say, "I've been to Hell and back." And after a time of testing or of waiting, they might say they've been through Purgatory.
The word Purgatory comes from the Latin word meaning to "Purge," and refers in Catholic teaching to a place or state between heaven and hell. It has no place in Protestant or Orthodox teaching. How did the idea develop? What was its purpose? Does it have any contemporary meaning?
Joining Ernie Rea to discuss the concept of Purgatory are Miri Rubin, Professor of Medieval and Early Modern History at Queen Mary University, London: Father Paul Keane, Vice Rector of Oscott Catholic Seminary in Birmingham: and the historian of religions, Martin Palmer.
Radio 4's classic panel game, in which the contestants are challenged to speak on a given subject for a minute without hesitation, repetition or deviation.
Sheila Hancock, Graham Norton, Paul Merton and The Infinite Monkey Cage's Robin Ince are trying their hand at the game under the watchful eye of Nicholas Parsons. Although none of them seem to know very much about Marco Polo...
Karaoke at the Bull is in full swing when Eddie's called away; there's an emergency at Brookfield. He arrives to find David and Pip fighting the rising water, and adds to their woes by announcing that the Am's burst its banks. Water is coming up the lane and over the fields. For now they concentrate on the parlour. Brave Eddie goes headfirst into a drain to try to stem the flow with a deflated football. It works.
They agree to put the Herefords on Lakey Hill and the dairy herd in a building on higher ground. David and Eddie leave Pip at the farm to finish milking.
A small crowd gathers by the bridge to watch the rising river. Jubilee Field has already vanished and Harrison Burns thinks it's a bit close for comfort. Fallon's sure it will be fine. Nevertheless Burns calls the police station and finds out Borchester's flooding too. Burns pulls the plug on the music to warn people.
In a tractor, David drops Eddie in the village and is soon enlisted to help evacuate homes. With the agreement of PC Burns he offers to take people to Grey Gables on his trailer.
Kirsty Lang talks to Juliette Binoche, as she stars in a new stage adaptation of Sophocles' tragedy, Antigone.
Thomas Heatherwick, who has just been announced as the architect of Google's new California headquarters, discusses his revolutionary and futuristic designs.
Sarah Dunant reviews the BBC's new version of the classic drama Poldark, based on Winston Graham's novels set in 18th Century Cornwall.
And as a debate rages on social media over the colour of a dress, classicist Mark Bradley looks at how the ancient Greeks saw the colour blue differently.
Saudi Arabia has been in the public eye recently, not least because of the death of King Abdullah. In the first part of a new series, Egyptian writer Tarek Osman examines the history of this desert kingdom and asks why it is still so relevant and yet so misunderstood.
His journey takes him from the origins of the modern Kingdom to the current reign of King Salman.
Tracing a line back to the desert sands of the Arabian Peninsula in the 18th century and a pact made between the Al Saud royal family and the founders of an austere school of Islam, Wahhabism, we see how an alliance between monarchy and religion forms the core of the nation's existence in a volatile region.
Drawing on this religious legitimacy, the founder of the modern Kingdom, Abdel Aziz Ibn Saud embarks on a conquest of the Arabian Peninsula in the early 20th century and after a dramatic desert campaign, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is born.
With the discovery of oil Tarek charts the rise of the Kingdom and its place as a global energy power. An enduring relationship with the United States based on 'oil for security' is rocked during the 1973 Oil Crisis, when King Faisal uses energy prices as leverage against the West in response to American involvement with Israel in the Arab-Israeli War.
Larger and larger oil revenues lead to rapid development and reforms. However this modernization comes at a cost and incurs a backlash by conservative Saudi forces which shakes the foundations of the Kingdom.
Technology has been replacing manufacturing jobs for years. Is the same about to happen to white-collar work? Will new faster, smarter computers start destroying more jobs than they create?
Technologists and economists are now arguing that we are approaching a turning point, where professional jobs are becoming automated, leaving less and less work for humans to do. David Baker investigates the evidence and asks what this means for society, the individual and equality.
Dr Wright is one of the 30 NHS volunteers who set off for Sierra Leone in November. His took the decision to volunteer in the fight against Ebola after the United Nations warned that the world has just 60 days to get the virus under control or face an "unprecedented situation for which we don't have a plan" The report, issued by the organisation's health arm, said the virus was "running faster than us and it is winning the race."
The UN identified the opening of Ebola Treatment Centres and more effective community containment as key to success and in Bradford where Dr Wright is director of the Institute for Health Research, it was a rallying call that saw him immediately volunteer. He worked in southern Africa in the early 1990's, when HIV was endemic and has continued to visit. He's in charge of opening the Moyamba treatment centre: a million pound British Government funded hospital built by the Royal Engineers in just six weeks.
In this second programme in the series his recordings start at the December opening of the hospital. On day one three patients arrive: two of them exposed during a funeral. The young man, Ibrahim, seems the strongest and the team prepare to use the training they received in the York military barracks. His audio recordings take listeners onto the wards and through the last moments as Ibrahim loses his fight against the terrible disease. There's no time to take stock before more patients are arriving and throughout Christmas Dr Wright records what happens.
Working in the community is a key element of the job, with a major push to reinforce messages about safe burials and hand washing:
"One of the concerns with all of this is that we have this European army of clinicians going out all dressed up in scary protective equipment and it could be very alienating."
Professor Wright and the team get word that in a nearby area unsafe burials are still taking place: they travel there with the army and explain the dangers to local chiefs. On Christmas Eve the chiefs send him and the medical team a pig, which they can kill and feast on. But soon after this Dr Wright develops a temperature and is quickly on the other side of the "scary" bio hazard suits, where he remains in isolation awaiting the results of his own test for Ebola.
Mother of "Jihadi John" recognised son's voice when she heard it on hostage video
David Suchet reads Kazuo Ishiguro's powerful novel - a moving, mysterious and deeply philosophical book about how societies remember and forget.
“It’s queer the way the world’s forgetting people and things from only yesterday and the day before that. Like a sickness come over us all.”
The Romans have long since departed and Britain is steadily declining into ruin. In this desolate, uncultivated land of mist and rain, people find that their memories are slipping away from them. They live in an uneasy peace but memories of the wars that once ravaged the country are stirring.
In this time of forgetting, one elderly couple - Axl and Beatrice - are determined to hold onto memories of their life together.
The Human Zoo is a place to learn about the one subject that never fails to fascinate - ourselves. Are people led by the head or by the heart? How rational are we? How do we perceive the world and what lies behind the quirks of human behaviour?
Michael Blastland presents a curious blend of intriguing experiments to discover our biases and judgements, conversations, explorations and examples taken from what's in the news to what we do in the kitchen - all driven by a large slice of curiosity.
Nick Chater, Professor of Behavioural Science at Warwick University, is on hand as guide and experimenter in chief.
Our thoughts, John Milton said, are a kingdom of infinite space and they might take us anywhere -whether our subject is writ large, like the behaviours of public figures or the contradictions of politics, or located in the minutiae of everyday life. We can show how what happens on the big stage is our own behaviour writ large - like the old Linda Smith joke about the Iraq-war coalition's failure to find chemical weapons: "I'm the same with the scissors".
The Human Zoo explores why it is that our judgements are so averse to ambiguity, how mental energy is linked to our legs, why we don't want to be in the dock when the judge is hungry - and other thoughts that have nothing to do with anything much beyond the ironing.
The government denies its changes to counter-terror laws have made it easier for for people to travel to fight in Syria. MPs debate spending on defence. And peers consider plans for MPs to be disciplined by forcing a by-election. Sean Curran reports from Westminster.
TUESDAY 03 MARCH 2015
TUE 00:00 Midnight News (b053s88q)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
TUE 00:30 Book of the Week (b0540b3h)
[Repeat of broadcast at
09:45 on Monday]
TUE 00:48 Shipping Forecast (b053s88s)
The latest shipping forecast.
TUE 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (b053s88v)
BBC Radio 4 joins the BBC World Service.
TUE 05:20 Shipping Forecast (b053s88x)
The latest shipping forecast.
TUE 05:30 News Briefing (b053s88z)
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
TUE 05:43 Prayer for the Day (b0540nb1)
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with the Rev'd Rosa Hunt.
TUE 05:45 Farming Today (b0540nbf)
Duck Farming, Grey Squirrel Eradication, Mink
The RPSCA has published a report about duck welfare, which says that ducks need not only drinking water, but the opportunity to get into water. They're calling for what they call "full body access" to water for farmed ducks - not necessarily enough to swim in, but enough at least to stand up and preen in. Anna Hill talks to the charity's duck welfare expert, and also to a duck farmer who says the welfare of his birds is actually better without it.
A project which aims to eradicate grey squirrels from the UK has succeeded in removing them from the island of Anglesey in North Wales. Red squirrels have been largely pushed out by greys, which are an invasive species brought over from North America in the mid 19th century. Now the European Squirrel Initiative seems to be beginning to turn the tide in favour of the native red.
Continuing our week-long look at the impact of predators, both on farmed and wild animal populations, we hear about the threat posed to water voles by mink, and the efforts being made by conservationists to control them.
Presented by Anna Hill and produced by Emma Campbell.
TUE 05:58 Tweet of the Day (b03ths74)
Wren
Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs.
John Aitchison presents the wren. You'll often see the male wren, with its tail cocked jauntily, singing from a fence-post or shrub, bill wide and trembling with the effort of producing that ear-splitting territorial advertisement. It's the extrovert side of what can be an introvert bird that normally creeps, like a mouse, among banks of foliage or in crevices between rocks. They can live almost anywhere from mountain crags and remote islands to gardens and city parks.
TUE 06:00 Today (b0540tr5)
Morning news and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Yesterday in Parliament, Weather and Thought for the Day.
TUE 09:00 The Spy Who Came In from Al-Qaeda (b05mrj7f)
Aimen Dean was an early member of al Qaeda, swearing an oath of allegiance with Osama bin Laden. In 1998 he was picked up and interrogated by British intelligence. Disillusioned with al-Qaeda's terrorist agenda, he took the dramatic decision to become a spy for MI6 and MI5. He talks to Peter Marshall about the eight years he spent under-cover as a spy in the UK and at the heart of al Qaeda in Afghanistan. He tells his story publicly for the first time.
TUE 09:45 Book of the Week (b0540trf)
Anna Lyndsey - Girl in the Dark
New Ways of Living
Hattie Morahan reads Anna Lyndsey's astonishing account of how her life was irrevocably changed when she was diagnosed with an extreme sensitivity to light, and the ways in which she made her impossible life possible. Today, an unexpected delight and a new and shattering revelation.
Hattie Morahan is the reader.
Abridged by Julian Wilkinson.
Produced by Elizabeth Allard
TUE 10:00 Woman's Hour (b0540trh)
Women of the World Festival; Divorce; Poldark
Women in Yarl's Wood detention centre, secret filming by Channel 4 News reveals how they are treated. Jude Kelly and the fifth year of the Southbank Centre's Women of the World Festival. Alexandra Fuller and her memoir on surviving divorce. Series writer Debbie Horsfield talks about the remake of the popular 1970s series Poldark. A love triangle, betrayal and conflict are the ingredients for the BBC One costume drama. And should a parent have to return to work when the children are 7 irrespective of the job or how wealthy the non-resident parent is?
Presenter : Jane Garvey
Producer : Kirsty Starkey.
TUE 10:45 15 Minute Drama (b0540trk)
The Haunted Road
Episode 2
"Nothing goes away in this world any more. Nothing gets lost. If you don't want a record of it, then don't do it."
When police camera operator Leslie Burden receives a call from a colleague concerning the disappearance of a young Polish woman, he uses his surveillance expertise to help track sightings of the missing woman, unaware he is being drawn into a web of murder and revenge even he doesn't see coming.
With David Caves (Silent Witness) and Niamh McGrady (The Fall, Holby City).
Eoin McNamee won the Imison Award for his debut radio drama, 'The Road Wife', which he followed with 'No Trampy Immigrants', an episode of From Fact to Fiction: 'Heroes', and most recently 'North of Riga'. A novelist and screenwriter, Eoin's novels include 'Resurrection Man' (which he adapted for film), 'The Blue Tango', 'The Ultras', '
12:23' and 'Orchid Blue'. He also writes thrillers under the pseudonym John Creed.
Writer ..... Eoin McNamee
Producer ..... Heather Larmour.
TUE 11:00 Holding Back the Sea (b04pbmk1)
On December 5th last year, thousands of homes and businesses along Britain's east coast were flooded by the sea when the first of that winter's great storms combined with a particularly high tide.
Close to year on, BBC News Science Editor David Shukman travels around the Lincolnshire and Norfolk coast of the Wash, talking to residents, farmers and business owners about the problems of protecting their lives and livelihoods from future inundations by the sea.
The port town of Boston was one of the worst hit communities last December. The surge poured over its defences into 700 houses. Some families are only now returning to their ruined homes. Fortunately for Boston, the government has agreed to pay some £90 million to build a barrier across the tidal river which flows through the town. Some locals say this flood defence should have been in place years ago.
Elsewhere in Lincolnshire, communities are feeling less well shielded by the nation. North of Boston, at Friskney, a breach in a frontline sea bank let in a tsunami of seawater which flooded 500 acres of prime arable farmland to a depth of 1 metre. Around the Wash, thousands of square kilometres of Fenland farmland and rural communities lie at or below sea level behind soil embankments facing the sea. These walls were built by farmers as they claimed the country's most productive arable land from the Wash's salt marsh.
After the inundation at Friskney, farmers all around the Wash are now campaigning to be allowed to raise the height and width of their frontline banks. If they are granted permission, they will receive at best only a modest percentage contribution from central government. The Treasury will only fully fund flood defence work if the return on the money it puts up is £8 for every £1 spent. The farmers argue that the economic value and food security importance of what they produce is not taken into account in the calculations.
Alternatively, conservation organisations such as the RSPB argue that rather than bolstering defences, sections of these embankments should be deliberately breached to allow Wash salt marsh to expand. As sea level rises, more embankments will become more vulnerable. A managed retreat of the defences would do two important things, they argue. It would provide more habitat for the many thousands of wintering birds which make the Wash one of most important wildlife areas in Europe. The extra expanse of salt marsh created would also make a natural flood defence, better protecting the new bank further inland. Not surprisingly the farmers of the Wash Frontage are not sold on this idea.
On the east coast of the Wash in Norfolk, the people living and running businesses in the shoreline communities south of Hunstanton are faced with their own pressing threats. Their defences were breached in several places last December and in 1953, the great tidal surge of that year drowned dozens of people in the area.
The funds to maintain their shingle sea wall run out in early 2016. They have been told by the Environment Agency that the only means to finance this work and any future upgrading after 2016 is to pay for most of it themselves. If enough caravan park owners, landowners and residents are able to amass a viable fund voluntarily, the government will then top up the money available by 25%. A group of local businesses is now in the process of setting up a body to collect and pay out the money - a body called a Community Interest Company. It will be the first of its kind established for local flood defence. Needless to say, some in the neighbourhood regard this as an inappropriate and fragile arrangement by which to protect lives and livelihoods from the sea.
Producer: Andrew Luck-Baker.
TUE 11:30 Tales from the Stave (b0540trm)
Smetana - Ma Vlast
When the Czech composer Bedrich Smetana set about his famous symphonic cycle Ma Vlast - My Country or My Land, in the early 1870s, he was tapping into a national tradition surviving under the rule of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His evocations of historic landmarks like the rocky fortress of Vysehrad which overlooks another subject, the Vltava (Moldau) river have become familiar far beyond his Bohemian homeland.
Frances Fyfield is joined by the leading young Czech conductor Jakub Hrusa and the Czech Philharmonic orchestra violinist Magdalena Maslanova to unpick the handwritten manuscripts of his tone poems. They tell a story of a brilliant orchestral imagination which was still making alterations in this final version of one of his most celebrated works. But the autographs, with their agonisingly personal marginal notes also tell of a man who was losing his hearing.
To what extent this new isolation unleashed a passionate and vivid musical imagination is open to debate. Be that as it may the scores are treated with reverence by all Czech musicians for whom Smetana was an immense figure. The music sweeps all nationalities along in its familiar currents.
Producer: Tom Alban.
TUE 12:00 News Summary (b053s891)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
TUE 12:04 Home Front (b0540trp)
3 March 1915 - Fraser Chadwick
Fraser finds being a union representative at Marshalls' Factory the easiest part of his life.
Written by Richard Monks
Directed by Lucy Collingwood
Sound: Martha Littlehailes
Editor: Jessica Dromgoole
TUE 12:15 You and Yours (b0540trr)
Call You and Yours: School Admissions
Hundreds of thousands of primary school children in England and Wales will find out today if they can go to the secondary school of their choice. Last year in England, one in seven pupils failed to get into their first choice of school. Increasing competition for places has led some parents to take extreme steps to help guarantee their child the place they want, including paying for tutoring to help their child pass entrance exams, volunteering at the school of their choice, renting a second home within the catchment area, or attending church to gain access to a high achieving faith school. Competition is especially stiff in London, where last year three in every ten pupils did not get a place at their school of choice.
Call You & Yours wants to hear what you did to get your child into their first choice of secondary school.
Email the programme now - YouandYours@bbc.co.uk
Presenter: Winifred Robinson
Producer: Natalie Donovan.
TUE 12:57 Weather (b053s893)
The latest weather forecast.
TUE 13:00 World at One (b0540trt)
Analysis of current affairs reports, presented by Martha Kearney.
TUE 13:45 Promises, Promises: A History of Debt (b054420y)
What is Debt?
In the second episode, anthropologist David Graeber asks the obvious question - what actually is a debt?
It might seem that the answer is perfectly simple - a debt is a promise by one person to pay another person a certain sum of money, usually under certain specified terms and conditions, at some point in the future. But what about other forms of debt that have nothing to do with money? We also speak of debts to society, debts of honour and debts of gratitude.
Attitudes to debt vary wildly across the globe. We hear an account written by a European missionary in a distant land of a situation in which he saved a native's life only to find that, as a result, he was now in the native's debt.
Debts have a very different meaning when there is a power imbalance between debtor and creditor. Normally, when a debt is between equals it can be renegotiated and even written off entirely. However when the creditor has all the power, debts transform into absolute imperatives that must be repaid, no matter what the cost.
Crucially, David argues that a debt is an obligation which can be quantified. It's not just a matter of owing someone a favour. We can specify exactly what is owed. This has the advantage that we can know precisely when the debt has been paid. But it has further effects - it means a debt is impersonal, and transferable.
Producer: Max O'Brien
A Juniper production for BBC Radio 4.
TUE 14:00 The Archers (b0540h07)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 on Monday]
TUE 14:15 Drama (b04d1kvs)
EV Crowe - How to Say Goodbye Properly
Lucy feels as if she's been in the army her whole life. Her father swears this is their last posting. But can she believe him? And if not, can she cope with another tour of duty?
Written by EV Crowe - winner of the 2015 Imison Award for best debut radio drama.
Lucy ..... Ellie Kendrick
Angela ..... Hermione Norris
Martin ..... Stuart McQuarrie
Toby ..... Alex Lawther
Director ..... Abigail le Fleming
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2014.
TUE 15:00 Making History (b0540v5c)
Helen Castor travels to New Hall near Chelmsford - home to the Earl of Sussex in 1579. New research by Dr Neil Younger at the Open University has uncovered a letter from one wealthy Norfolk landowner to another, describing a visit by Elizabeth and a dramatic performance in which Sussex makes clear his support for her marriage to the Catholic Duke of Anjou. Some who had entered the debate about Elizabeth's marital situation had been punished by her - so how did Sussex get away with this?
Professor Justin Champion visits the Bishopsgate Institute in the City of London to meet with the organisers of the Lilburne 400th, John Lees and Professor Ted Vallance. John Lilburne was possibly the most radical character in the English Civil War - a so-called Leveller who managed to fall out with both Charles 1st and Cromwell but still kept his head.
Producer: Nick Patrick
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.
TUE 15:30 Costing the Earth (b0540w3c)
Hunting the Beefalo
A failed breeding experiment has led to a hybrid creature running riot in the Grand Canyon. The Beefalo is now growing in number rapidly and causing damage to the landscape, threatening the environment and eco-system and trashing ancient monuments of Native Americans. Yet with a hunting ban in the National Park how can they be controlled? Tom Heap goes in search of the legendary creature and the answers.
The iconic bison is on the emblem on the National Parks yet in 1906 its numbers in America were falling so low 'Buffalo Jones' tried a cross-breeding programme with cattle to create the hardy 'beefalo' hybrid. The state eventually took over the herd and kept numbers down through limited hunting. But the beefalo is wise it seems and has learnt it can escape that threat inside the Grand Canyon National Park.
An estimated population of around 600, and growing by up to 50% a year, is causing huge damage to the park. Its herds concentrate the damage in sensitive areas - drinking dry water holes, polluting them, over grazing and leaving bare soil, their success is damaging the landscape and eco-system. Now they're also kicking down ancient monuments of Native American tribes for whom the canyon is a spiritual home. Meanwhile tourists hoping to catch sight of the creatures have found their cars attacked.
So how do you solve a problem like the beefalo? A massive consultation has begun to look at the lethal and non-lethal options and consider if a cull is a viable option despite the sensitivities in the park. Tom Heap goes tracking the beefalo and asks how much damage will be done before a solution is found.
Presented by Tom Heap and produced in Arizona by Anne-Marie Bullock.
TUE 16:00 Good News Is No News (b051r7j4)
Former news editor Charlie Beckett explores whether there is an unrelenting negativity in the mainstream news agenda, preoccupied with violent crime, human accident, misfortune and disaster. He asks why alternative, so-called positive or solutions-based, ideas for news are so readily dismissed by journalists, broadcasters and editors.
More than twenty years ago, the news broadcaster Martyn Lewis made a very public speech calling for journalists to rethink the instinctive diet of unrelentingly negative stories. He argued for more good news, focussing on solutions. The speech was vilified across the profession. But now, with questions raised more widely about the potential distortive effects, and addictive or pacifying aspects of 24 hour news consumption is the unrelenting negativity of mainstream news a question for psychologists as much as for editors? Can news actually inhibit free thinking, divest people of their agency, making them feel helpless and inducing a retreat from the wider world.
The programme examines the story so far of the 'positive news' movement - a movement that's growing quickly, especially in the United States. The Washington Post, New York Times and Huffington Post all now have sections explicitly devoted to more positive or constructive stories. Charlie Beckett asks why there's such a visceral resistance to the arguments for change among many professional journalists and editors.
Produced by Simon Hollis
A Brook Lapping production for BBC Radio 4.
TUE 16:30 A Good Read (b0540w3f)
Anita Rani and Katharine Whitehorn
Presenter Anita Rani and journalist Katharine Whitehorn talk books, with Harriett Gilbert, including The Great Gatsby, and Katherine's surprise choice, Terry Pratchett's first Discworld novel. Will three adult women agree on a novel from a series usually thought of as the preserve of teenage boys?
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett
The Vagrants by Yiyun Li
Producer Sally Heaven.
TUE 17:00 PM (b0540w3h)
M at
5pm- Eddie Mair with interviews, context and analysis.
TUE 18:00 Six O'Clock News (b053s895)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
TUE 18:30 Trodd en Bratt Say 'Well Done You' (b048nr1v)
Series 1
Episode 4
Nominated for Best Comedy in the BBC Audio Drama Awards 2015, Trodd en Bratt Say 'Well Done You' is a comedy sketch show written and performed by Ruth Bratt and Lucy Trodd, stars of Radio 4's Showstoppers.
This week Ruth gets carried away when she's put in charge of the sound effects for Lucy's serious radio drama; Adam and Oliver finally build up the courage to speak their minds about their tiny roles in the show, and there's an advert for a decisiveness course. Probably.
Written and performed by Ruth Bratt and Lucy Trodd
Supporting cast: Adam Meggido and Oliver Senton
Script Editor: Jon Hunter
Composer: Duncan Walsh Atkins
Producer: Ben Worsfield
A Lucky Giant production for BBC Radio 4.
TUE 19:00 The Archers (b05410wn)
Floods Hit Ambridge
Three weeks of themed programmes from the last two decades reliving key moments from the characters’ lives and the events that make Ambridge unforgettable. This episode forms part of the second week when we take a look at five different events that affect the characters’ relationship to their homes and the land, in ‘There’s No Place Like Home’.
As residents of the village gather in St. Stephen’s on a March evening to listen to a talk, news arrives that the River Am has burst its banks and several houses are under water. Soon much of the village is under threat and rescue parties are organised to bring people trapped in their homes to safety, but as the waters rise Lynda is refusing to leave Ambridge Hall until she can find her dog Scruff.
This programme was originally broadcast on 3rd March 2015.
TUE 19:15 Front Row (b05410wq)
Sigourney Weaver, Inventing Impressionism, Anti-Semitism in Theatre
Sigourney Weaver, the Hollywood actress best-known for playing Ripley in the Alien films, discusses her latest role in Artificial Intelligence Sci-Fi film Chappie.
Inventing Impressionism, a new exhibition at the National Gallery, is devoted to Paul Durand-Ruel, the art dealer who discovered the Impressionist painters. Art critic Matthew Collings reviews.
Over the next couple of months several theatrical stages will host plays depicting Jewish characters. The Royal Shakespeare Company has scheduled two plays to run concurrently - The Jew of Malta and The Merchant of Venice - both of which feature anti-Semitic sentiment and characters, in the form of Barabus and Shylock. Theatre director Justin Audibert and Jewish Studies lecturer Devorah Baum discuss relevance, timing and potential censorship.
Simon Rattle has announced that he will take up a new position conducting the London Symphony Orchestra in 2017. Music critic Tom Service asks what his return means for the UK and whether London will be getting a new concert hall.
Presenter: Samira Ahmed
Producer: Olivia Skinner.
TUE 19:45 15 Minute Drama (b0540trk)
[Repeat of broadcast at
10:45 today]
TUE 20:00 File on 4 (b05410ws)
No Place of Safety
Secure children's homes look after some of the country's most vulnerable youngsters. Largely run by local authorities, they provide safe accommodation for children placed on custody grounds or for welfare reasons because they present a danger to themselves or others. The demand for places is rising but the number of beds is falling. So where does that leave those they are meant to cater for? With the government currently conducting a review into the system, File on 4 gets rare access to one home in the Midlands to meet children and staff; and talks to those struggling to find places for children across the UK.
Reporter: Fran Abrams
Producer: Emma Forde.
TUE 20:40 In Touch (b05410wv)
Gone blind or born blind
Listener, Chris Markiewicz, says that some Waitrose packaging is very difficult to read because it typically has light-coloured writing on a pale background. He brings in some of his shopping to demonstrate his problem.
One of the age-old questions that, if you're a person who is blind, you might well be asked is: "do you think it's better to be born blind, or to lose your sight later in life"? We put that question to two listeners: Lyndall Bywater who was born blind, and Ken Reid, who lost his sight in his late thirties.
Our item last week from Damon Rose about the colours and light show he is constantly seeing, even though he is totally blind, has prompted a huge reaction from listeners. We hear a selection of the responses.
Presenter: Peter White
Producer: Lee Kumutat.
TUE 21:00 Inside Health (b05410wx)
Saturated Fats, Moles, Egg Freezing
Recent research was widely reported as concluding that 30 year old guidance to limit saturated fats had been overturned and should never have been introduced - and that we can now eat as much butter, cheese, sausages and pies as we like.
But, as ever, the real story is a bit different. Inside Health debates the real evidence and hears from Sweden that rumours of change in its guidance have also been misreported.
As big companies try to attract female employees by offering 'egg freezing' as a corporate carrot, Dr Mark Porter examines the success rates and implications for women wanting to start a family.
And checking your moles - how to tell the difference between the sinister and the innocent.
TUE 21:30 The Spy Who Came In from Al-Qaeda (b05mrj7f)
[Repeat of broadcast at
09:00 today]
TUE 21:58 Weather (b053s897)
The latest weather forecast.
TUE 22:00 The World Tonight (b05410wz)
Report says 370 girls and young women potential victims of sexual grooming in Oxfordshire over past 16 years.
Document commissioned after 7 men given life for rape and trafficking of 6 girls in 2013.
TUE 22:45 Book at Bedtime (b05410x1)
Kazuo Ishiguro - The Buried Giant
Episode 2
In this time of forgetting, one elderly couple - Axl and Beatrice - are determined to hold onto memories of their life together and have set out to find their long-lost son. Their memory of him is hazy, as it is of many things. They know their journey may be a long one.
David Suchet continues Kazuo Ishiguro's powerful novel - a moving, mysterious and deeply philosophical book about how societies remember and forget.
“It’s queer the way the world’s forgetting people and things from only yesterday and the day before that. Like a sickness come over us all.”
The Romans have long since departed and Britain is steadily declining into ruin. In this desolate, uncultivated land of mist and rain, people find that their memories are slipping away from them. They live in an uneasy peace but memories of the wars that once ravaged the country are stirring.
Abridged by Sara Davies.
Producer: Mair Bosworth
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in March 2015.
TUE 23:00 The Hot Kid (b05410x3)
Rising Star and Wayward Son
Elmore Leonard's enthralling criminal odyssey is set against the dusty, sun-kissed backdrop of Oklahoma and Kansas during America's Great Depression.
Carl Webster is a rising star in the US Marshals Service, one of the elite man-hunters currently chasing the likes of Dillinger, Bonnie and Clyde, and Pretty Boy Floyd across America's Depression-ravaged heartland.
Meanwhile, Jack Belmont, the wayward son of an oil millionaire, wants to be public enemy number one. The lives of the cop and robber criss-cross repeatedly before finally confronting in an inevitable show down.
Adapted by Katie Hims
Carl Webster . . . . . Luke Norris
Jack Belmont . . . . . Adam Gillen
Louly Brown . . . . . Samantha Dakin
Tony Antonelli . . . . . Nathan Osgood
Virgil Webster . . . . . David Acton
Heidi Dilworth . . . . . Bettrys Jones
Emmet Long . . . . . Shaun Mason
Marshal Bob McMahon . . . . . Ian Conningham
Oris Belmont . . . . . John Chancer
Doris Belmont . . . . . Elaine Claxton
Norm Dilworth . . . . . Paul Heath
Nancy Polis . . . . . Roslyn Hill
Crystal Lee Davidson . . . . . Hannah Genesius
Mr Deering . . . . . Michael Bertenshaw
Director: Sasha Yevtushenko
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2015.
Critical praise for Elmore Leonard's novel:
"Elmore Leonard is our Prospero, a magician who has given us inspired fun for 50 years. He floats above the action, amused; his motto is surely Puck's "What fools these mortals be." In The Hot Kid, Oklahoma is his version of Shakespeare's enchanted isle in "The Tempest," a brave new world where maids and monsters, outlaws and oilmen, strange creatures all, act out their dubious destinies." - The Washington
Post
"As always, Leonard's prose seems effortless, his dialogue is perfect, and his humor is as dry as a moonshine martini....a terrific pleasure." - Booklist
"The whole sepia-toned caravan, in fact, is so relaxed that even the most violent felonies may leave you smiling. Leonard's gentle epic is as restorative as a month in the country." - Kirkus Reviews
TUE 23:30 Today in Parliament (b05410x5)
The sexual exploitation of hundreds of girls in Oxfordshire should never have happened, the Education Secretary tells MPs.
Nicky Morgan criticises police and social workers for failing to protect them and sets out plans for a £7 million for potential victims.
The Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, apologises to the families of those who suffered as a result of maternity service failures. An inquiry into Furness General Hospital found a "lethal mix" of problems led to the unnecessary deaths of 11 babies and a mother.
A Home Office Minister tells MPs that a second Serco staff member has been suspended from the Yarl's Wood detention centre after "serious and deeply concerning" allegations made in television documentary.
The Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, faces questions over foreign exchange rate-rigging.
And a group of MPs investigates the use of police bail.
Susan Hulme and the BBC's parliamentary team report on the proceedings at Westminster.
WEDNESDAY 04 MARCH 2015
WED 00:00 Midnight News (b053s8bg)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
WED 00:30 Book of the Week (b0540trf)
[Repeat of broadcast at
09:45 on Tuesday]
WED 00:48 Shipping Forecast (b053s8bj)
The latest shipping forecast.
WED 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (b053s8bl)
BBC Radio 4 joins the BBC World Service.
WED 05:20 Shipping Forecast (b053s8bn)
The latest shipping forecast.
WED 05:30 News Briefing (b053s8bq)
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
WED 05:43 Prayer for the Day (b05411nq)
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with the Rev'd Rosa Hunt.
WED 05:45 Farming Today (b05411ns)
TB-Resistant Cows, Chick Sexing, Birds of Prey
Scientists in China have produced a herd of genetically engineered cows that are better able to ward off bovine TB infection. This development is still very much in its early days, but the resistance has been successfully passed on to the offspring of the transgenic cows. We hear from Professor Mike Coffey of Scotland's Rural College who specialises in dairy cattle breeding, and is researching how to breed naturally for reduced susceptibility to TB.
The UK is facing a shortage of 'chick sexers'! even though it can attract a salary of up to forty thousand pounds a year. The British Poultry Council has called for this skilled job to be added to the government's list of occupations with a chronic shortage of staff. In the past that request has been refused. Their chief executive Andrew Large tells us what the job involves.
All this week on Farming Today we're looking at predators and the effect they have on both farmed and wild animal populations. Today we're considering raptors - birds of prey. Every species of raptor in the UK - from buzzard to golden eagle, is protected under law. Despite that, cases of poisoning of raptors still occur, often because the birds have been targeted for killing game bird chicks, which can threaten the work of gamekeepers running shoots. Bob Elliot, Head of Investigations at the RSPB, tells us that he's concerned at the number of illegal killings of birds of prey.
Presented by Anna Hill and produced by Mark Smalley.
WED 05:58 Tweet of the Day (b03thsbj)
Dunnock
Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs.
John Aitchison presents the dunnock. You'll often see dunnocks, or hedge sparrows, as they were once called, shuffling around under a bird table or at the bottom of a hedge. They're inconspicuous birds being mostly brown with a greyish neck and breast. They aren't, as you might imagine, closely related to sparrows, many of their nearest relatives are birds of mountainous regions in Europe and Asia.
WED 06:00 Today (b05413jv)
Morning news and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Yesterday in Parliament, Weather and Thought for the Day.
WED 09:00 Midweek (b05413jx)
Clarke Peters; Raymond Blanc; Amanda Owen; Nicholas McCarthy
Libby Purves meets pianist Nicholas McCarthy; actor and director Clarke Peters; shepherdess Amanda Owen and chef and restaurateur Raymond Blanc.
Nicholas McCarthy is a pianist who is making his debut at London's Purcell Room at Southbank Centre. Born without his right hand, he went on to study at the Royal College of Music and is the only one-handed pianist to graduate from the institution. At his concert he will perform a wide variety of repertoire including Chopin, Bach, Strauss, Liszt and Gershwin to showcase both his virtuosic and mainstream appeal. Nicholas McCarthy performs at the Purcell Room, Southbank Centre, London.
Clarke Peters is an actor, singer, writer and director. His many roles have included Lester Freamon in TV's The Wire and Othello alongside Dominic West's Iago. Clarke performed in the original Paris production of Hair and wrote and starred in the award-winning production of Five Guys Named Moe. He is the narrator in the Louis Armstrong Story at the Bristol International Jazz and Blues Festival, reading excerpts from Armstrong's autobiography and letters. The Bristol International Jazz and Blues Festival is at Colston Hall, Bristol.
Amanda Owen is a shepherdess who tends her flock of just over 1,000 sheep at Ravenseat, a hill farm of 2,000 acres at the head of Swaledale in North Yorkshire. In her book, The Yorkshire Shepherdess, she tells of how a rebellious girl from Huddersfield learnt her craft as a shepherdess and how she juggles the demands of her livestock with the demands of raising a large family in such a remote area. The Yorkshire Shepherdess is published by Pan Macmillan.
Raymond Blanc OBE is a chef, restaurateur and writer. His new book Kew On A Plate and its accompanying TV series tell the story of his collaboration with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew to create a new kitchen garden. The garden celebrates the heritage and botany of popular plants and reveals their growing and cooking secrets. Born in eastern France, Raymond arrived in the UK in 1972. Five years later he opened his first restaurant which went on to win two Michelin stars. Kew on a Plate with Raymond Blanc - Recipes, Horticulture and Heritage is published by Headline.
Producer: Paula McGinley.
WED 09:45 Book of the Week (b05413jz)
Anna Lyndsey - Girl in the Dark
A Descent into Darkness
Hattie Morahan reads Anna Lyndsey's astonishing account of how her life was irrevocably changed when she was diagnosed with an extreme sensitivity to light, and the ways in which she made her impossible life possible. Today, the disquieting persistence of the light.
Hattie Morahan is the reader.
Abridged by Julian Wilkinson.
Produced by Elizabeth Allard
WED 10:00 Woman's Hour (b05413k1)
Surviving Nazi Berlin, Being Mixed-Race
Reaction to the Oxford grooming serious case review: we speak to the mother of one of the hundreds of abused girls and Sara Thornton Chief Constable of Thames Valley Police. How one young Jewish woman survived Nazi Berlin: Hermann Simon on writing his mother's story, Gone to Ground. With different political parties to the rest of the UK what does the election look like for women in Northern Ireland? Emma Dabiri on being mixed race: colourism, terminology and parenting.
Presented by Jane Garvey
Produced by Sarah Crawley.
WED 10:40 15 Minute Drama (b05413k3)
The Haunted Road
Episode 3
"Nothing goes away in this world any more. Nothing gets lost. If you don't want a record of it, then don't do it."
When police camera operator Leslie Burden receives a call from a colleague concerning the disappearance of a young Polish woman, he uses his surveillance expertise to help track sightings of the missing woman, unaware he is being drawn into a web of murder and revenge even he doesn't see coming.
With David Caves (Silent Witness) and Niamh McGrady (The Fall, Holby City).
Eoin McNamee won the Imison Award for his debut radio drama, 'The Road Wife', which he followed with 'No Trampy Immigrants', an episode of From Fact to Fiction: 'Heroes', and most recently 'North of Riga'. A novelist and screenwriter, Eoin's novels include 'Resurrection Man' (which he adapted for film), 'The Blue Tango', 'The Ultras', '
12:23' and 'Orchid Blue'. He also writes thrillers under the pseudonym John Creed.
Writer ..... Eoin McNamee
Producer ..... Heather Larmour.
WED 10:55 The Listening Project (b05413k5)
Victoria and Lisa – Sitting Tall
An enlightening conversation between two physiotherapists about the importance of posture and how differently it's viewed by different cultures, introduced by Fi Glover, in the series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.
The Listening Project is a Radio 4 initiative that offers a snapshot of contemporary Britain in which people across the UK volunteer to have a conversation with someone close to them about a subject they've never discussed intimately before. The conversations are being gathered across the UK by teams of producers from local and national radio stations who facilitate each encounter. Every conversation - they're not BBC interviews, and that's an important difference - lasts up to an hour, and is then edited to extract the key moment of connection between the participants. Most of the unedited conversations are being archived by the British Library and used to build up a collection of voices capturing a unique portrait of the UK in the second decade of the millennium. You can learn more about The Listening Project by visiting bbc.co.uk/listeningproject
Producer: Marya Burgess
WED 11:00 Recycled Radio (b05413rw)
Series 3
Recycled: Bohemia
Welcome to the chopped up, looped up, sped up world of Recycled Radio, introduced by cartoonist Gerald Scarfe. Follow him down down the rabbit hole as we delve into the archives in search of bohemia, with a small "b".
Way back when, in the darkest depths of November 2014, David Hockney said something on Radio 4's Today programme: "That's what's gone now, bohemia's gone..."
Expect profound reflections on the nature of Jeremy Paxman's beard, hear Jeffrey Bernard exploring the nature of the advertising executive, picture Ed Balls playing the piano, and is that Andrew Marr contemplating the size of Virginia Woolf's bed?
What has any of this got to do with bohemia? What has bohemia got to do with anything else?
Recycled Radio might explain.
Producer: Polly Weston
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2015.
WED 11:30 Boswell's Lives (b05415pv)
Series 1
Boswell's Life of Callas
James Boswell, Dr Johnson's celebrated biographer pursues other legends to immortalise.
Today, he meets Maria Callas and her poodle and finds himself in an opera of his own making.
Starring Miles Jupp and Arabella Weir.
Written by Jon Canter
Director: Sally Avens
Directed by Sally Avens
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2015
WED 12:00 News Summary (b053s8bs)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
WED 12:04 Home Front (b05415px)
4 March 1915 - Robert Lyle
The harmony of Robert's home life is threatened when he intervenes to help Davy's little boy.
Written by Richard Monks
Directed by Jessica Dromgoole
Sound: Martha Littlehailes
WED 12:15 You and Yours (b05415pz)
Home Care; Fake Solicitors; Scottish House Prices
What's it like to be dependent on 15 minute appointments to provide all your home care? We talk to a family and the company that is turning down local authority work on the grounds that they don't allow enough time to do the job well.
Scams run by fake solicitors have cost some families hundreds of thousands of pounds. You and Yours investigates.
And the people looking to buy expensive homes in Scotland are rushing to get sales completed before new stamp duty rates come into effect on April 1st.
WED 12:57 Weather (b053s8bv)
The latest weather forecast.
WED 13:00 World at One (b05415q1)
Analysis of current affairs reports, presented by Martha Kearney.
WED 13:45 Promises, Promises: A History of Debt (b054423q)
The Origin of Money
In this episode, anthropologist David Graeber explores the origin of money. Defining money is a surprisingly tricky task. We use it all the time and yet, even among economists, there's no consensus about what money actually is.
You'll commonly hear that money is a measure of value, a store of value and a means of account. David argues that this all boils down to a central question - is money merely an abstraction, an accounting technique, a way of saying five of these things equal six of those, or is it primarily an object, a commodity, a physical thing, that passes from hand to hand?
We're so familiar with money, we rarely stop to think about how it actually originated. Those who do tend to come across the same story: "Once upon a time there was no money, so everyone had to make do with barter. People would simply swap things directly with one another and prices could be negotiated by supply and demand."
This barter story appears in every economics textbook. But there's a problem - it simply isn't true. David Graeber reveals that the barter narrative is in fact a myth and that when anthropologists fanned out across the globe, nowhere did they find people swapping goods as the economists describe.
We tend to think of buying on credit as a modern phenomenon, however David reveals that the earliest transactions were all carried out on credit. He concludes by arguing that money itself emerged not from barter, but as a way of measuring debts.
Producer: Max O'Brien
A Juniper production for BBC Radio 4.
WED 14:00 The Archers (b05410wn)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 on Tuesday]
WED 14:15 Drama (b043wz2m)
Original British Dramatists
Magpie
ORIGINAL BRITISH DRAMATISTS
Discover 10 new voices over 10 Afternoon Dramas
Magpie by Lee Mattinson
Jack Deam stars as Lance in this quirky, comedy drama. Lance is making changes. With new-found techniques to resist his urge to eat metal and a sensible job at the council secured, his life is on the mend. Until a little boy moves into his street, a little boy with a big secret.
Lee Mattinson has written for the Bush and Soho Theatres, National Theatre, Paines Plough, Live Theatre and BBC Three. His new stage play Crocodiles opens this Autumn.
Director/Producer Sharon Sephton
Sound Design by Paul Cargill.
WED 15:00 Money Box Live (b05417l7)
Rights and Pay for New Parents
Know your rights to maternity, paternity, adoption or shared parental leave and pay? Call 03700 100 444 from
1pm and
3pm on Wednesday or email moneybox@bbc.co.uk
If you're expecting a baby or adopting, we'll have a team advisers ready to explain your employment rights and entitlement to time off and pay.
From April there are greater benefits for adoptive parents.
A new system of shared parental leave is available for some parents of babies born or adopted after the 5 April. How will it work and how much could you receive?
If you don't want to share your leave, what are your maternity and paternity rights?
Or perhaps you're returning to work and want to work flexibly, where do you stand?
Whatever your question, joining Paul Lewis to answer your questions will be:
Stewart Gee, Head of Information and Guidance, ACAS.
Will Hadwen, Rights Adviser at Working Families.
Sarah Veale, Head of Equality and Employment Rights, TUC.
Call 03700 100 444 from
1pm to
3.30pm on Wednesday or e-mail your question to moneybox@bbc.co.uk now. Standard geographic call charges apply.
WED 15:30 Inside Health (b05410wx)
[Repeat of broadcast at
21:00 on Tuesday]
WED 16:00 Thinking Allowed (b05417l9)
Commercial Surrogacy in India, Money
Wombs for Sale: commercial surrogacy in India & beyond. Couples from all over the world can now hire Indian women to bear their children for a fraction of the cost of surrogacy elsewhere. Laurie Taylor talks to Amrita Pande, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Cape Town, and author of a detailed study into a burgeoning business which has little or no government regulation. She talked to surrogates, their families, clients, doctors and brokers to capture the full mechanics of a labour regime rooted in global gender & economic inequality. They're joined by Michal Nahman, Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of the West of England, who has studied reproductive tourism.
Also, the transformation of money in the post crisis world. Nigel Dodd, Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science, highlights the proliferation of new forms and systems of money, from local currencies and social lending to mobile money and Bitcoin. Why has our understanding of money failed to keep pace with these changes?
Producer: Jayne Egerton.
WED 16:30 The Media Show (b05417lc)
Tony Hall, BBC Director General
The Director General of the BBC, Tony Hall, has set out his plans for the "my BBC" revolution; a more personal service that will use data to provide a more tailored experience for users, and enable the BBC to compete more effectively in the digital age. In a speech on Monday, he also spoke of his support for a proposed household levy to replace the current licence fee. In his first interview for The Media Show, Steve Hewlett talks to Tony Hall about his new strategy, and gets his views on how the organisation is funded, run, and governed. Steve asks him about the 'major changes' Tony Hall says are needed in order for the BBC to survive. They discuss what is being done to restore confidence in how the BBC is overseen, and whether Tony Hall has realised his ambition of creating a simpler, clearer organisation that offers the best value for money for licence fee payers. Also in the studio to discuss the main themes are Sir Michael Lyons, former Chairman of the BBC Trust; Samir Shar, Chief Executive of Juniper TV and former non-exec director of the BBC; and Lis Howell, Director of Broadcasting at City University.
Producer: Katy Takatsuki.
WED 17:00 PM (b05417lf)
PM at
5pm- Eddie Mair with interviews, context and analysis.
WED 18:00 Six O'Clock News (b053s8bx)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
WED 18:30 Chain Reaction (b05417lh)
Series 10
Bob Mortimer talks to Vic Reeves
One half of comedy double-act Vic & Bob, Bob Mortimer, talks to the other half of comedy double-act Vic & Bob, Vic Reeves. Vic & Bob are best know as the creators and stars of The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer, Shooting Stars and House of Fools.
Chain Reaction is the long running hostless chat show where last week's interviewee becomes this week's interviewer.
Producer: Charlie Perkins
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in March 2015.
WED 19:00 The Archers (b05417lk)
At Brookfield, Pip comforts Bert as he frets about Freda. Pip in turn worries about her dad. The pit in the milking parlour is filling up again and she needs him. Tom arrives by tractor. They work together to uninstall the milk pump until the morning. It's a difficult job with the water still rising, but between them they succeed. They all settle down by the warmth of the range to wait it out.
Eddie and Ed rescue an errant turkey by boat. They continue to search for people, commenting along the way that they hope Rob's OK. His head looked bad, but at least he's talking. They stop for a moment, convinced they can hear a sound like someone calling - but they conclude it's just the wind and head back to the hotel.
Adam abandons checking the sheep in favour of helping Charlie clear a culvert. It's blocked up with junk so the digger can only go so far, but Charlie resolves to clear it by hand. Adam thinks he's being an idiot. As the flow of water increases, Charlie is dragged under and gets his foot trapped. Adam releases him but he's not breathing. Eventually Adam manages to revive him. Relieved Adam declares he's not going to leave Charlie.
WED 19:15 Front Row (b05417lm)
Alexander McQueen Exhibition, Jimmy McGovern, Kill the Messenger
As a major retrospective of the work of the celebrated fashion designer Alexander McQueen opens at the V&A, stylist Katy England and fashion photographer Nick Knight, both long-time collaborators and friends of McQueen, join chief curator Claire Wilcox to discuss McQueen's life and work.
Jeremy Renner heads the cast in Kill the Messenger, a new film based on the true story of a reporter driven to the brink of suicide when he exposes the CIA's involvement in drug-trafficking in the 1990s. Writer Misha Glenny reviews.
Screenwriter Jimmy McGovern is best known for creating the TV series Cracker, The Lakes and The Accused. He talks about how he played with fact and fiction in his new BBC2 drama series Banished, about the founding of the Sydney Cove penal colony in Australia in 1788.
Hans Haacke has been chosen as the next artist for the Fourth Plinth in London's Trafalgar Square. Ahead of the unveiling of his sculpture Gift Horse, Haacke discusses how his work explores art and the financial markets.
Presenter: John Wilson
Producer: Rebecca Armstrong.
WED 19:45 15 Minute Drama (b05413k3)
[Repeat of broadcast at
10:40 today]
WED 20:00 Moral Maze (b05418y4)
The Morality of the Imagination
When is an idea so objectionable that we should be stopped from expressing it or hearing it? That's the question at the heart of the debate about how Mohammed Emwazi turned from a quiet and hardworking schoolboy into a psychopathic murderer. The focus has been turned on his time at the Westminster University and the extremist preachers who had been invited to talk there. The government is in the process of drawing up guidance for vice chancellors as part of a new statutory requirement on universities to combat radicalisation on campus. Some universities have been accused of being too liberal and ignoring the damage that can be done to vulnerable people by those who promulgate extremist views. Others argue that especially in universities you must and should be able to debate ideas freely, rather than simply banning those who believe them. There are many examples of thought, knowledge or imagination being criminalised. They include: cartoon images of child abuse; the arrests of street preachers; this week's proposal to turn a moral duty to report suspicions of child abuse into a legal duty; so-called predictive policing, which takes incident reports and turns out a computer analysis of where crimes are most likely to occur and who might be the likely perpetrators. Are we living in more censorious times or is this a recognition that to be truly virtuous we need to possess mens sana in corpore sano? Is it simply a matter of distinguishing clearly between thoughts and deeds? Can our thoughts, ideas and imagination live in a world beyond notions of right and wrong and consequences? Or can thoughts be immoral irrespective of whether they're associated with actions? The moral maze this week: the morality of the imagination and the public sphere.
WED 20:45 Lent Talks (b05418y6)
Kate Saunders
Producer: Phil Pegum.
WED 21:00 Costing the Earth (b0540w3c)
[Repeat of broadcast at
15:30 on Tuesday]
WED 21:30 Midweek (b05413jx)
[Repeat of broadcast at
09:00 today]
WED 21:58 Weather (b05n8cpf)
The latest weather forecast.
WED 22:00 The World Tonight (b05418y8)
UKIP leader denies making a U-turn on immigration
Nigel Farage drops proposal to cap work-related immigration at fifty thousand a year.
WED 22:45 Book at Bedtime (b05419jh)
Kazuo Ishiguro - The Buried Giant
Episode 3
In this time of forgetting, one elderly couple - Axl and Beatrice - are determined to hold onto memories of their life together and have set out on a journey to find their long-lost son.
Beatrice has guided them to a Saxon village where they can shelter for the night and where she hopes to consult a medicine woman about the pain that has been troubling her. On reaching the village, they find a community in turmoil.
David Suchet continues Kazuo Ishiguro's powerful novel - a moving, mysterious and deeply philosophical book about how societies remember and forget.
“It’s queer the way the world’s forgetting people and things from only yesterday and the day before that. Like a sickness come over us all.”
The Romans have long since departed and Britain is steadily declining into ruin. In this desolate, uncultivated land of mist and rain, people find that their memories are slipping away from them. They live in an uneasy peace but memories of the wars that once ravaged the country are stirring.
Abridged by Sara Davies
Producer: Mair Bosworth
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in March 2015.
WED 23:00 Hannah Gadsby: Arts Clown (b05419l4)
1. Edouard Manet's Olympia
Art historian Hannah Gadsby kicks off her comedy lectures about four masterpieces, with Edouard Manet's masterpiece 'Olympia'.
She shares her first encounter with the art work as well as looking at what critics had to say about it at the time it was created.
Born in Tasmania, Hannah's first encounters with art was solely through books. These books taught her the language of art appreciation but they also legitimised her desire to look at 'boobs'. This was just as well as Hannah realised in her teens that she was 'a little bit lesbian' but homosexuality was still illegal in Tasmania at that time.
The painting 'Olympia' was first exhibited in Paris in 1865. It made a lot of people very angry at the time. Here was a reclining nude but this woman had attitude, looking right at the observer with no embarrassment or demureness. She was a whore - what of it?
The woman who posed for the painting was Victorine Meurent, not a prostitute but an artist in her own right and, says Gadsby, surely she had a major influence on Manet's considerably feminist approach to 'the reclining nude' in this painting.
Hannah explains what makes 'Olympia' a cornerstone of modern art and what bring her personally back to this painting again and again.
Hannah Gadsby is assisted in this series by her very own 'Quotebot' who has been inputted with every quote that's ever been written about art.
Quotebot sounds remarkably like comedy legend and all-round boffin John Lloyd.
Written by Hannah Gadsby
Script edited by Jon Hunter
Producer: Claire Jones
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in March 2015.
WED 23:15 Tim Key's Late Night Poetry Programme (b05419jk)
Series 3
Cookery
This week the comic poet has left the studio for the kitchen, as he peers into 'Tim's shopping bag' and attempts to cook up a feast. He is assisted by his guitarist and commis chef, Tom Basden.
Written and presented by Tim Key
With Tom Basden and Yasmine Akram
Produced by James Robinson
A BBC Cymru Wales Production
The Edinburgh Comedy Award-winning comedian returns for a third series of his Late Night Poetry Programme. Since series two Tim has been busy touring his latest acclaimed live show, Single White Slut, thrilling audiences at the Old Vic in Daniel Kitson's Tree, as well as filming movies such as Steve Coogan's Alpha Papa and Richard Ayoade's The Double. But now he's back on late night Radio 4 doing what he does best - attempting to recite poetry whilst tormenting his friend and musician, the equally brilliant Tom Basden.
Praise for Tim Key
"...You never know when Key will suddenly toss you a fantastic joke or startlingly well-constructed line." Radio Times
"The show... has a kind of artistry and strange beauty that makes it unlike any other hour of stand-up you are likely to see." The Observer
"In any other sphere apart from comedy, we'd probably class this way of looking at the world as certifiable. Here it feels like genius." The Telegraph.
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in March 2015.
WED 23:30 Today in Parliament (b05419jm)
Sean Curran reports from Westminster.
THURSDAY 05 MARCH 2015
THU 00:00 Midnight News (b053s8cn)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
THU 00:30 Book of the Week (b05413jz)
[Repeat of broadcast at
09:45 on Wednesday]
THU 00:48 Shipping Forecast (b053s8cq)
The latest shipping forecast.
THU 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (b053s8cs)
BBC Radio 4 joins the BBC World Service.
THU 05:20 Shipping Forecast (b053s8cv)
The latest shipping forecast.
THU 05:30 News Briefing (b053s8cx)
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
THU 05:43 Prayer for the Day (b0542xpm)
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with the Rev'd Rosa Hunt.
THU 05:45 Farming Today (b0542xpp)
YFC finance, Badger cull contract, Wurzels song
Britain's Young Farmers' Clubs form the backbone of many rural communities, but they are facing a financial crisis. Like many other youth organisations across the country, they're losing government funding. Sybil Ruscoe hears from YFC representatives from around the UK.
The pilot badger cull in Gloucestershire failed to meet its targets last year, and now Natural England - the government body in charge of the cull - says it's in discussion with the cull company, to talk about what lessons can be learnt.
As Farming Today continues its week-long look at predators, Anna Hill goes out looking for foxes with a gamekeeper in Norfolk.
And forget the brand-new combine harvester, now the Wurzels are singing about farm safety! We hear the song, and talk to one of the band.
Presented by Sybil Ruscoe and produced by Emma Campbell.
THU 05:58 Tweet of the Day (b03thsc6)
Long-Eared Owl
Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs.
John Aitchison presents the long-eared owl. The low moaning hoot of a long-eared owl filters through the blackness of a pine wood. Long-eared owls are nocturnal and one of our most elusive breeding birds. They nest in conifer woods, copses and shelter-belts of trees near wide open grasslands and heaths where they hunt for rodents.
THU 06:00 Today (b0542xt5)
Morning news and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Yesterday in Parliament, Weather and Thought for the Day.
THU 09:00 In Our Time (b0542xt7)
Beowulf
Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the epic poem Beowulf, one of the masterpieces of Anglo-Saxon literature. Composed in the early Middle Ages by an anonymous poet, the work tells the story of a Scandinavian hero whose feats include battles with the fearsome monster Grendel and a fire-breathing dragon. It survives in a single manuscript dating from around 1000 AD, and was almost completely unknown until its rediscovery in the nineteenth century. Since then it has been translated into modern English by writers including William Morris, JRR Tolkien and Seamus Heaney, and inspired poems, novels and films.
With:
Laura Ashe
Associate Professor in English at the University of Oxford and Fellow of Worcester College
Clare Lees
Professor of Medieval English Literature and History of the Language at King's College London
Andy Orchard
Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at the University of Oxford
Producer: Thomas Morris.
THU 09:45 Book of the Week (b0542ztt)
Girl in the Dark
Remission
Hattie Morahan reads Anna Lyndsey's astonishing account of how her life was irrevocably changed when she was diagnosed with an extreme sensitivity to light, and the ways in which she made her impossible life possible. Today, remission and the first cautious forays into a twilit world.
Hattie Morahan reads.
Abridged by Julian Wilkinson
Produced by Elizabeth Allard
THU 10:00 Woman's Hour (b0542ztw)
Sexism in Football, Post-Adoption Breakdown, Desiree Akhavan
Sexism in Football - why have there never been any high profile campaigns to tackle it? Jane Garvey talks to BBC sport correspondent Natalie Pirks with contributions from Carolyn Radford, CEO of Mansfield Town, Heather Rabbatts of the Football Association and Anna Kessel from Women in Football.
Post-adoption breakdown - How has social media increased the strain on adoptive relationships? Tammy Wheatley, Gloucestershire's Adoption Team Manager and John Simmonds, Director of Policy at BAAF (British Association of Adoption and Fostering) discuss.
Actor Desiree Akhavan on her latest film "Appropriate Behaviour" and its story of an Iranian bisexual woman living in New York City.
Was 2014 the year of the male feminist? Jane talks to David Brockway who runs the Great Men Project about his "Standby your Woman" session at Wow and what is being done to teach boys about gender equality.
Women in Security Services - ISC committee member and Labour MP Hazel Blears on Parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee's three-year inquiry into gender diversity within the security services.
Presenter: Jane Garvey
Producer: Rebecca Myatt.
THU 10:45 15 Minute Drama (b0542zty)
The Haunted Road
Episode 4
"Nothing goes away in this world any more. Nothing gets lost. If you don't want a record of it, then don't do it."
When police camera operator Leslie Burden receives a call from a colleague concerning the disappearance of a young Polish woman, he uses his surveillance expertise to help track sightings of the missing woman, unaware he is being drawn into a web of murder and revenge even he doesn't see coming.
With David Caves (Silent Witness) and Niamh McGrady (The Fall, Holby City).
Eoin McNamee won the Imison Award for his debut radio drama, 'The Road Wife', which he followed with 'No Trampy Immigrants', an episode of From Fact to Fiction: 'Heroes', and most recently 'North of Riga'. A novelist and screenwriter, Eoin's novels include 'Resurrection Man' (which he adapted for film), 'The Blue Tango', 'The Ultras', '
12:23' and 'Orchid Blue'. He also writes thrillers under the pseudonym John Creed.
Writer ..... Eoin McNamee
Producer ..... Heather Larmour.
THU 11:00 From Our Own Correspondent (b0542zv0)
Please Don't Kill My Boy
Around the world with correspondents' stories. In this edition: executions in Indonesia - the authorities believe they will help counter a national drug emergency. Security forces in Tunisia crack down on Islamist hardliners -- most people there insist they don't want ISIS or other militants gaining a foothold in their country; the president of Mexico has been on a state visit to Britain -- at home he faces continuing anger about the disappearance last year of 43-students; the Indian prime minister has promised a huge cash boost for the railways which are becoming ever more decrepit and dangerous and we hear about the 'marabouts' or holy men of Muslim west Africa. Theirs is an ancient tradition but these days they are quite happy to dispense advice via email, Twitter and Skype.
THU 11:30 Writing a New South Africa (b0542zv2)
Cape Town: Place and Contested Space
Johannesburg-based poet Thabiso Mohare travels to Cape Town to meet a new generation of writers, poets and playwrights and look at the theme of place and contested space in their work and the history of the city. In a city dominated by the huge Table Mountain which still ensures a certain amount of segregation, he talks to Lauren Beukes, whose sci-fi visions of South African cities are internationally successful, playwright and novelist Nadia Davids about the undealt-with legacy of slavery in the city, and Thando Mgqolozana whose novels deal with a range of social issues. Thabiso explores the status of Afrikaans in the region among the younger generation now, with poet Toni Stuart and short story writer SJ Naude, uncovering the roots of a language that was appropriated as a tool of oppression but is still felt to be a language of struggle and resistance among the communities where it originated. And there is uncompromising work from Nathan Trantraal and Ronelda Kamfer.
In a three part series, poet Thabiso Mohare ('Afurakan'), looks at South Africa through the themes the post-apartheid generation of writers are choosing to engage with in their work. These authors, poets and playwrights are exploring the past and present, from apartheid's legacy to political corruption, and the chaos of the inner city; some are exorcising ghosts, and some tackling current issues, or looking to an imagined future. There is plenty to write about after the end of the struggle. Other outlets for storytelling too - poetry and spoken word events, plugging into older traditions - are supporting the flowering of a diversity of voices as hoped for when the political landscape changed so radically in 1994, with writers of all ethnicities pitching in to the fray. Radio 4 explores the range of voices now being heard, some of the challenges they face, and the picture they present.
THU 12:00 News Summary (b053s8cz)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
THU 12:04 Home Front (b0542zv4)
5 March 1915 - Adam Wilson
Rosamund Marshall and Peter Samuel Lumley are welcomed into the church, but some of the congregation feel a lot less welcome.
Written by Richard Monks
Directed by Lucy Collingwood
Sound: Martha Littlehailes
Editor; Jessica Dromgoole
THU 12:15 Face the Facts (b0542zv6)
Life in Gangland London
John Waite enters what can only be described as a parallel world - in which gangs are simply part of life for generations growing up. Where violence - or the threat of it - is an everyday reality, where children as young as nine are used to carry drugs and where sex is used as weapon. He investigates how gangs are changing, how they recruit new members and how they try to stay one step ahead of the police.
There are now calls for compulsory gang education in every primary in school in Britain. Calls backed by former Home Office Minister Norman Baker who tells the programme that any school wanting to opt out must first justify why.
And one of Britain's most famous children's charities reveal their concerns about gang manufactured music videos which they now constantly monitor to protect the children they work with. The videos are often used to recruit new gang members - advertising the glamour and money that can come with gang life - as well as issuing threats to rivals. John speaks to one of just a handful of people banned by the courts from releasing music because the police believe it is linked to gang violence.
John also finds out what its like to lead a gang, to grow up in an area dominated by gangs and to lose a loved one to gang violence.
(The picture shows John standing near the spot where 20 year old Dwayne Simpson was stabbed to death a year ago).
Producer: Joe Kent
Editor: Andrew Smith.
THU 12:57 Weather (b054vc35)
The latest weather forecast.
THU 13:00 World at One (b0542zv8)
Analysis of current affairs reports, presented by Martha Kearney.
THU 13:45 Promises, Promises: A History of Debt (b0544243)
The Theology of Debt
Anthropologist David Graeber explores the theology of debt.
The Bible is peppered with the language of debt. Sin, forgiveness, reckoning, redemption - all of these words actually derive from the language of ancient finance. What's more, this seems to be true in all the great religious traditions - not just Judaism and Christianity, but Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Islam - all of their texts are filled with financial metaphors, many of which relate to issues surrounding debt.
We tend to think of these religions as teaching us that we must repay our debts. But the truth is that the financial metaphors in religious texts are oddly ambivalent. The original translation of the Lord's Prayer from 1381 reads "Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors". But do we forgive our debtors? Actually, most of us don't.
David Graeber explains that the great religions talk about the forgiveness of debt more than the repayment of debt and that the deeper teachings they offer is that it is the annihilation of debt which is ultimately divine. To understand why all the religious texts discuss the forgiveness of debt with such frequency, David examines the historical context of when these works were written and reveals that, in the ancient world, the institutionalised forgiveness of debts was commonplace.
Producer: Max O'Brien
A Juniper production for BBC Radio 4.
THU 14:00 The Archers (b05417lk)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 on Wednesday]
THU 14:15 Drama (b05435s7)
Mrs Pickwick's Papers
Mrs Joyce Pickwick, roving commissioner for local government, has been a thorn in the side of the civil service for years, and try as he might, Mr Scrope can’t seem to get rid of her. But now, as Mrs P gets in too deep in an investigation into the waste disposal business, he thinks he is in with a chance.
Mrs Pickwick ….. Annette Badland
Sam Weller ….. Susan Wokoma
Tracy Tupman ….. Jane Slavin
Gus Snodgrass/ Mr Legion ….. Stephen Critchlow
Scrope ….. Sam Dale
Alfie ‘Jingle’ Bell ….. Ian Conningham
Written by Mike Walker.
Directed by Jeremy Mortimer.
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in March 2015.
THU 15:00 Ramblings (b05435sd)
Series 29
Cardiac Walkers
In today's programme Clare Balding walks with a group of medics who have all suffered - as they put it - a 'cardiac event'. With good humour and no real restraint, they gather as often as possible to explore new and familiar routes for friendship and health. The group is made up of GPs, hospital doctors, surgeons and a psychiatrist, and their cardiac experiences range from living with angina to surviving a severe heart-attack. They joke about whose turn it is to carry the defibrillator, but the truth is, they don't let their medical conditions get in the way of a good ramble.
Producer: Karen Gregor.
THU 15:27 Radio 4 Appeal (b053sbq9)
[Repeat of broadcast at
07:55 on Sunday]
THU 15:30 Bookclub (b053zwq8)
[Repeat of broadcast at
16:00 on Sunday]
THU 16:00 The Film Programme (b05435sl)
Chappie, Short films, Final films, Neil Brand on Morricone
With Francine Stock.
Neill Blomkamp, the creator of science fiction satire Chappie, tell us why we should learn to stop worrying and love Artificial Intelligence.
Neil Brand reveals why the spaghetti western would not have been the same without Ennio Morricone's memorable scores.
BAFTA winner Daisy Jacobs discusses her short film The Bigger Picture which combines animation, stop-motion, papier mache pigs and her mum's kitchen table.
As Life Of Riley, the final film from auteur Alain Resnais, is released in cinemas, critic Jonathan Romney considers the last works of other great directors.
THU 16:30 BBC Inside Science (b05435sp)
Encoding memories; 350 years of the science journal; Women in science; Ceres
How does the brain lay down memory? For decades the limits of microscopes have meant that a detailed look at the way brain cells encode particular learned skills and events has proved elusive. But in a report published this week a team of researchers has identified how changes in specific connections encode a particular behavioural response. Adam Rutherford talks to Tony Zador of Cold Spring Harbour laboratories who's become the first to crack a piece of the neural code for learning and memory which could have profound medical insights.
350 years ago this week, the world's first scientific journal was published. Philosophical Transactions began by drawing together various letters and reviews that cemented the origin of modern science by publishing Isaac Newton, Christopher Wren and other founding members of the esteemed Royal Society. Historian Dr Aileen Fyfe discusses the key moments in the journal's evolution and its legacy today.
There's a look at the ongoing representation of women in science following on from a recent report examining the Royal Society's 2014 university research fellows of which only 2 out of 43 were women. The Society's President Sir Paul Nurse discusses how the imbalance in this and in science more generally should be addressed.
NASA's Dawn spacecraft is about to arrive in the orbit around the dwarf planet Ceres and will be the first mission ever to successfully visit a dwarf planet. As the spacecraft spirals closer, images have shown numerous craters and mysterious bright spots that scientists believe could reveal how Ceres formed and offer new clues to the origins of our solar system. Adam talks to the mission's deputy scientist Carol Raymond on the latest interpretations of what's currently being observed.
Producer: Adrian Washbourne.
THU 17:00 PM (b0543b0s)
PM at
5pm- Eddie Mair with interviews, context and analysis.
THU 18:00 Six O'Clock News (b053s8d1)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
THU 18:30 Britain Versus the World (b04ybblk)
Series 1
Episode 5
The panel show that pits two British comedians against a team of comics from overseas to find out which side is superior.
Joining the British captain, Hal Cruttenden, is the English comedian Zoe Lyons while the captain of the Rest of the World - Henning Wehn - is teamed with Canadian stand-up Tony Law. The contest is overseen by Irishman Ed Byrne who does his very best to stay impartial.
Host
Ed Byrne
Guests
Hal Cruttenden
Henning Wehn
Zoe Lyons
Tony Law
Programme Associate Bill Matthews
Devised and produced by Ashley Blaker.
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2015.
THU 19:00 The Archers (b0543b0v)
An awkward moment at Grey Gables between Elizabeth and Roy isn't helped when Roy tells her Hayley's asked for a divorce. Elizabeth's sorry to hear it. As they talk, it transpires that neither of them know where Phoebe is. Roy panics. Eventually he finds Phoebe, to the great relief of both of them.
There's more concern as no-one's seen Bert and Freda. There's an emotional reunion for David and Shula. PC Burns announces they've now got everyone out of the danger zone. Even Joe's ferrets are safe. Tales of wrecked houses abound.
Fallon doesn't know how she'll tell Jolene and Kenton about the Bull. Elizabeth tells her not to worry for now. Fallon has a happy moment with heroic Harrison, and declares she loves him.
David is anxious to return to Brookfield and Pip, and also to fetch Jill from St Stephen's. Elizabeth pleads with him not to risk the journey, and reluctantly he stays put. Joe reckons Phil would be proud of David, but David just hopes Pip's ok. Distraught Lynda asks why David would care about any of this - he's leaving. Hurt David feels as if he's deserted everyone. He can't even defend his own farm, and family. As soon as it's light he's going to find Jill, and go back to Brookfield. He has no choice.
THU 19:15 Front Row (b0543b0x)
Kazuo Ishiguro in conversation with John Wilson
Kazuo Ishiguro's seven previous books have won him wide renown and many honours around the world including the Man Booker Prize. His work has been translated into over 40 languages. The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go have each sold in excess of 1m copies, and both were adapted into highly-acclaimed films. His latest book and first novel in a decade, The Buried Giant, is set in a post-Arthurian England and deals with memories, love, revenge and war.
Kazuo Ishiguro discusses the inspiration behind The Buried Giant, and looks at the themes it shares with his other works. He also reveals how his writing career started after his original dream to become a singer/songwriter never quite materialised, and how it prepared him for life as a novelist.
Presenter John Wilson
Producer Sarah Johnson and Rebecca Armstrong.
THU 19:45 15 Minute Drama (b0542zty)
[Repeat of broadcast at
10:45 today]
THU 20:00 The Report (b0543b0z)
Anti-Semitism in the UK: Is It Growing?
Anti-Semitism in the UK: Simon Cox investigates the changing face of prejudice against Jewish people after recent lethal attacks in Paris, Copenhagen and Brussels. With the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, calling for European Jews to move to Israel, we look at whether there is more dangerous anti-Semitism online and on the streets of the UK.
Producer: James Melley
Researcher: Kirsteen Knight.
THU 20:30 The Bottom Line (b0543b11)
Whatever Happened To?
Sock Shop, Golden Wonder and Lehman Brothers: big names that once dominated the high street, the supermarket shelves and the financial world. They faded from view, yet still exist today. What prompted their demise? How did they lose market share? Evan Davis and guests discuss the rise and fall of these iconic companies and explore whether they can ever reach the success of their golden years.
Guests:
Vimal Ruia, Managing Director, Sock Shop
Paul Allen, CEO, Tayto
Tony Lomas, Chief Administrator, Lehman Brothers in the UK
Producer: Sally Abrahams.
THU 21:00 BBC Inside Science (b05435sp)
[Repeat of broadcast at
16:30 today]
THU 21:30 In Our Time (b0542xt7)
[Repeat of broadcast at
09:00 today]
THU 21:58 Weather (b05n8cqy)
The latest weather forecast.
THU 22:00 The World Tonight (b0543b13)
Cameron defends decision not to take part in head-to-head televised debate with Miliband
Political opponents of the Prime Minister accuse him of "cowering from the public"
THU 22:45 Book at Bedtime (b0543b15)
Kazuo Ishiguro - The Buried Giant
Episode 4
In this time of forgetting, one elderly couple - Axl and Beatrice - are determined to hold onto memories of their life together and have set out to find their long-lost son. Hoping to pass a restful night at a Saxon village, they find the community there in turmoil after an ogre attack.
A Saxon warrior named Wistan, a stranger from a distant country to the East, frees a village boy named Edwin from the ogres, only to see his own people turn on him in fear. The villagers say the boy has been bitten by an ogre and claim he will turn fiend himself with disastrous consequences.
Axl and Beatrice agree to help take the boy to safety, and Wistan and Edwin join the old pair of Britons as they continue on their journey.
David Suchet continues Kazuo Ishiguro's powerful novel - a moving, mysterious and deeply philosophical book about how societies remember and forget.
“It’s queer the way the world’s forgetting people and things from only yesterday and the day before that. Like a sickness come over us all.”
The Romans have long since departed and Britain is steadily declining into ruin. In this desolate, uncultivated land of mist and rain, people find that their memories are slipping away from them. They live in an uneasy peace but memories of the wars that once ravaged the country are stirring.
Abridged by Sara Davies
Producer: Mair Bosworth
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in March 2015.
THU 23:00 Brian Gulliver's Travels (b01mk5nk)
Series 2
Hermicia
Brian Gulliver, a seasoned presenter of travel documentaries, finds himself in a hospital's secure unit after claiming to have experienced a succession of bizarre adventures.
More memories as Brian relives his experiences in Hermicia where charity is strangely in abundance.
Brian Gulliver ..... Neil Pearson
Rachel Gulliver ..... Mariah Gale
Kalfa ..... Colin Hoult
Mena ..... Nina Conti
Boria ..... Martin Treneman
Doctor ..... Patrick Brennan
Rimanda ..... Amaka Okafor
Producer: Steven Canny
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in July 2012.
THU 23:30 Today in Parliament (b0543b17)
Susan Hulme follows the exchanges in the Commons in the ongoing row over the televised leaders' debates in the coming Election.
Also in the programme:
* criticism of rail bosses following scenes of over-crowding at a Central London terminus
* Westminster's female MPs debate how best to empower women in developing nations
* Peers condemn plans to sell off part of the Lake District.
FRIDAY 06 MARCH 2015
FRI 00:00 Midnight News (b053s8dz)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
FRI 00:30 Book of the Week (b0542ztt)
[Repeat of broadcast at
09:45 on Thursday]
FRI 00:48 Shipping Forecast (b053s8f1)
The latest shipping forecast.
FRI 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (b053s8f3)
BBC Radio 4 joins the BBC World Service.
FRI 05:20 Shipping Forecast (b053s8f5)
The latest shipping forecast.
FRI 05:30 News Briefing (b053s8f7)
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
FRI 05:43 Prayer for the Day (b0543k00)
A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with the Rev'd Rosa Hunt.
FRI 05:45 Farming Today (b0543k02)
Farm slavery in East Anglia, Seals on salmon farms, Lord Henry Plumb
As Norfolk Police hosts a conference on human trafficking and modern slavery in rural areas of East Anglia, we ask how significant the problem of slavery is in this agriculturally important region.
All this week on Farming Today we've been looking at pests and predators, on the land, in farm buildings and in the air. But fish farms too have their own range of predators, and the methods the industry uses to deal with them can be controversial. Nancy Nicolson visits a salmon farm on the west coast of Scotland.
And we hear from Baron Plumb of Coleshill - Henry Plumb - one of the elder statesmen of British farming. In the 1970s, as President of the NFU, he helped steer UK farmers into the Common Market. Later this month he turns 90, and he tells Caz Graham about his long life in farming.
Presented by Charlotte Smith and produced by Mark Smalley.
FRI 05:58 Tweet of the Day (b03thsg9)
Waxwing
Tweet of the Day is a series of fascinating stories about our British birds inspired by their calls and songs.
John Aitchison presents the waxwing. Waxwings are winter visitors from Russia and Scandinavia where they breed in conifer forests. They head south to feed on berries and other fruits, and if these are in short supply on the Continent, the birds flood into the UK. It happens every few years or so and the sight of these punk-crested plunderers swarming over rowan and other berry-producing trees is sure to attract your attention.
FRI 06:00 Today (b0543k04)
Morning news and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Yesterday in Parliament, Weather and Thought for the Day.
FRI 09:00 Desert Island Discs (b053sbvb)
[Repeat of broadcast at
11:15 on Sunday]
FRI 09:45 Book of the Week (b0543k06)
Anna Lyndsey - Girl in the Dark
Relapse
Hattie Morahan reads Anna Lyndsey's astonishing account of how her life was irrevocably changed when she was diagnosed with an extreme sensitivity to light, and the ways in which she made her impossible life possible. Today, the eternal return, and the power of things to remain the same.
Hattie Morahan reads.
Abridged by Julian Wilkinson
Produced by Elizabeth Allard
FRI 10:00 Woman's Hour (b0543k08)
Women of the World and Annie Lennox
Jane will be in a glass box at Southbank Centre's WOW - Women of the World Festival. Annie Lennox will join us, we look at 'My body back' - a campaign about sex after abuse and talk to a journalist highlighting women's issues under the threat of Ebola in Sierra Leone. We will be hearing from Gemma Cairney about the perspectives of girls in the UK, and performance artist Bobby Baker joins me to talk about a grandmother's view. There's live music from Ibibio sound machine, and we'll be finding out how to get a pay rise.
FRI 10:45 15 Minute Drama (b0543k0b)
The Haunted Road
Episode 5
"Nothing goes away in this world any more. Nothing gets lost. If you don't want a record of it, then don't do it."
When police camera operator Leslie Burden receives a call from a colleague concerning the disappearance of a young Polish woman, he uses his surveillance expertise to help track sightings of the missing woman, unaware he is being drawn into a web of murder and revenge even he doesn't see coming.
With David Caves (Silent Witness) and Niamh McGrady (The Fall, Holby City).
Eoin McNamee won the Imison Award for his debut radio drama, 'The Road Wife', which he followed with 'No Trampy Immigrants', an episode of From Fact to Fiction: 'Heroes', and most recently 'North of Riga'. A novelist and screenwriter, Eoin's novels include 'Resurrection Man' (which he adapted for film), 'The Blue Tango', 'The Ultras', '
12:23' and 'Orchid Blue'. He also writes thrillers under the pseudonym John Creed.
Writer ..... Eoin McNamee
Producer ..... Heather Larmour.
FRI 11:00 Don't Log Off (b0543k0d)
Series 6
Who Am I?
Alan Dein connects with the world online, linking up with people across the globe to discover dramas of personal identity, including an American whose roots might be more tangled than he first thought, thanks to the Cold War.
Producer Mark Burman.
FRI 11:30 Cleaning Up (b0543k0g)
3. Getting Stuck
Julie and Nobby find themselves in a sticky situation.
Every night, as time is called and people are spat out onto the streets and squeezed into rides home to dream -tossed beds - others are hard at work. Teams of cleaners are in office spaces scrubbing, vaccuming and cleaning up.
And right at the bottom of the food chain we find our gang - Spit n' Polish tackling the floors of a plush tower block in Manchester city centre.
Written by Ian Kershaw.
Julie ..... Julie Hesmondhalgh
Nobby ..... Paul Barber
Dave ..... John Thompson
Shiv ..... Lauren Socha
Nita ..... Bhavna Limbachia
Our Bri ..... Jack Deam
Produced at BBC Salford by Alison Vernon-Smith
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in March 2015.
FRI 12:00 News Summary (b053s8f9)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
FRI 12:04 Home Front (b0543k0j)
6 March 1915 - Esther O'Leary
Esther loves her new job, scavenging in Tynemouth, and is delighted to see her dad there.
Written by Richard Monks
Directed by Jessica Dromgoole
Sound: Martha Littlehailes
FRI 12:15 You and Yours (b0543k0l)
Cruise Trips, Agency Workers, Driverless Cars
It should have been a relaxing tour of the Greek islands, but turned out to be a young person's booze cruise. You can complain about flight delays and hotels, but what if the other people on your group holiday aren't what you expected?
A distributor in the supply chain for Marks & Spencer is accused of treating agency workers unfairly, by employing them on contracts that sign away their right to be paid and treated in the same way as permanent staff.
The cars of the future are likely to do the driving for you. But who will be responsible for any accidents? The passenger? The owner? The manufacturer or software developer?
Plus, the government is launching a Green Paper on giving people with learning disabilities and autism greater control over their care, as thousands remain in mental health hospitals, often hundreds of miles from their families.
The consultation runs until 29th May 2015.
To find out more go to https://www.gov.uk/government/publications
You can respond to the consultation online at: http://consultations.dh.gov.uk/
By e-mail to: norightignored@dh.gsi.gov.uk
Or by writing to:
Consultations Co-ordinator
Learning Disability, Autism and Mental Health Consultation
Department of Health
3rd Floor Area 313A,
Richmond House
79 Whitehall
London
SW1A 2NS.
FRI 12:57 Weather (b053s8fc)
The latest weather forecast.
FRI 13:00 World at One (b0543yj5)
Analysis of current affairs reports, presented by Shaun Ley.
FRI 13:45 Promises, Promises: A History of Debt (b05442ft)
The Classical World
Anthropologist David Graeber examines debt in the Classical period. It was during this age that coinage first emerged as an efficient way of paying soldiers.
The spread of coinage had enormous political and intellectual consequences. It was invented on the fringes of military operations - whether in Greece, India, or China - but was quickly taken up by enterprising kingdoms, some of which gradually gobbled up their neighbours. Eventually, vast empires emerged - the Athenian, Hellenistic, and Roman empires, Magadha, Nanda, the Qin, the Han. Armies are expensive to run and, in the end, we witnessed a cycle of violence and repayment in coinage.
Debt has an important role to play in the story of coinage. While coins were invented to pay soldiers, it was through taxation that they became embedded in the lives of entire populations. Ancient rulers indebted their subjects by demanding taxes which had to be paid in coinage. David reveals that this system of taxation was in fact an ingenious ploy to make subjects feed and provide for the army by creating a universal need for coinage.
Under ancient conditions, keeping say 50,000 men supplied with provisions was an extremely challenging undertaking. By distributing coins to soldiers, which could be exchanged with locals for provisions, ancient rulers co-opted their populations into keeping their armies fed, watered and primed to keep on conquering.
Producer: Max O'Brien
A Juniper production for BBC Radio 4.
FRI 14:00 The Archers (b0543b0v)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 on Thursday]
FRI 14:15 Drama (b0543yj7)
The Mark
The Mark
by Karen Brown
Inspired by a true story - An ambitious policeman is duped.
Dean Ellis believes his life is coming together; he gets the new job in Fraud, the new girlfriend, and then everything falls apart.
Produced and Directed by Pauline Harris.
FRI 15:00 Gardeners' Question Time (b0543yj9)
Wellesbourne, Warwickshire
Eric Robson hosts the horticultural panel programme programme from the Wellesbourne, Warwickshire. Chris Beardshaw, Pippa Greenwood and Christine Walkden answer questions from an audience of local gardeners.
Christine visits a 170 year old allotment to find out what the current custodians are up to now that spring is upon us.
Produced by Howard Shannon
Assistant Producer: Hannah Newton
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4.
FRI 15:45 Sitters' Stories (b0543yjc)
That Moment by Niall Williams
Captured in a moment in time with faces forever staring at them and fingers ever pointing, the sitters from some well-known paintings get a chance to escape from the canvas, set the story straight, or tell us their particular version of the story behind the image.
Characters from famous paintings finally get a chance to tell their story in this series of readings from Elizabeth Kuti, Sophia Hillan, and Niall Williams.
That Moment by Niall Williams
Painting: Nu a Contre-Jour by Pierre Bonnard, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium.
http://www.fine-arts-museum.be/fr/la-collection/pierre-bonnard-nu-a-contre-jour
When a young woman meets artist Pierre Bonnard in a Paris street, she creates an alter-ego for herself, one that lasts for thirty years and will see her immortalised in countless paintings.
Man Booker long-listed novelist Niall Williams (The History of the Rain) explores the relationship between French artist Pierre Bonnard and his muse – and later wife - Marthe, taking us back to a moment when he captured first captured her on canvas, in a small flat on the Rue Lepic in Paris.
Writer ...... Niall Williams
Reader ..... Selma Brook
Producer ..... Heather Larmour
FRI 16:00 Last Word (b0543yjf)
Yasar Kemal, Maureen Guy, Professor Oliver Rackham, Sir Noel Davies, Leonard Nimoy
Andrea Catherwood tells the life stories of international author and master of Turkish storytelling Yasar Kemal, Maureen Guy the Welsh opera singer who performed at Prince Charles' investiture, environmental historian Professor Oliver Rackham, Sir Noel Davies, the engineer who built Britain's fleet of Trident nuclear submarines and Leonard Nimoy the actor better know simply as "Spock".
FRI 16:30 Feedback (b0543yjh)
Is there a formula to successful comedy on Radio 4? Before leaving her post as Commissioning Editor of Comedy on Radio 4 and 4Extra, Caroline Raphael talks about her 17 years in the job and reveals which hugely successful comedy almost didn't make it to air because the Controller of Radio 4 at the time turned it down.
Also, the debate over the licence fee has been ignited by a report from the Commons Media Select Committee. It suggests replacing the licence fee with a universal levy for all households. Listeners are divided over the issue and Steven Barnett, Professor of Communications at the University of Westminster in London breaks down the pros and cons of the different ways the BBC might be funded in the future.
And on New Year's Day, a number of listeners were dismayed by their favourite Radio 4 programmes being moved to long wave to accommodate ten hours of War and Peace. Partly, they were concerned about the reception quality on long wave. This prompted vintage radio aficionado Sean Stevens to get in touch to set the record straight about what he sees as the joys of long wave.
Producer: Will Yates
A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4.
FRI 16:55 The Listening Project (b0543yjk)
Grace and Emmy - No Box to Tick
Fi Glover introduces friends who describe themselves as gender-queer and who find it trying that society expects them to conform to being labelled male or female. Another conversation in the series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.
The Listening Project is a Radio 4 initiative that offers a snapshot of contemporary Britain in which people across the UK volunteer to have a conversation with someone close to them about a subject they've never discussed intimately before. The conversations are being gathered across the UK by teams of producers from local and national radio stations who facilitate each encounter. Every conversation - they're not BBC interviews, and that's an important difference - lasts up to an hour, and is then edited to extract the key moment of connection between the participants. Most of the unedited conversations are being archived by the British Library and used to build up a collection of voices capturing a unique portrait of the UK in the second decade of the millennium. You can learn more about The Listening Project by visiting bbc.co.uk/listeningproject
Producer: Marya Burgess.
FRI 17:00 PM (b0543yjm)
PM at
5pm- Eddie Mair with interviews, context and analysis.
FRI 18:00 Six O'Clock News (b053s8fh)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
FRI 18:30 The News Quiz (b0543yjp)
Series 86
Episode 3
A satirical review of the week's news, chaired by Sandi Toksvig, with regular panellist Jeremy Hardy and guests Susan Calman, Camilla Long and Bob Mills.
FRI 19:00 The Archers (b0543yjr)
Adam is not sure which way to turn, and David is on his way.
FRI 19:16 Front Row (b0543yjt)
Anne Sofie von Otter, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Burning Man Temple in Derry, Boxing on Stage
Swedish soprano Anne Sofie von Otter, who is starring in Kurt Weill's 1930 opera The Rise and Fall of Mahagonny and has just won a Grammy for her recording of French cabaret songs, talks to Kirsty Lang.
Tina Fey's new comedy series Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is reviewed by Heat Magazine's TV Editor Boyd Hilton.
As the man behind Nevada's Burning Man festival temple, David Best, creates one of his temples for the city of Derry/Londonderry, Front Row speaks to the artist and Helen Marriage, the Director of Artichoke who commissioned the work.
And actors come out fighting as two plays set in the world of boxing open this month - the Royale is about the African American boxer Jack Johnson and No Heart, No Guts, No Glory follows young Muslim women in Bradford who take up boxing to challenge prejudice. Madani Younis, director of The Royale, and Aisha Zia, writer of No Guts, No Heart, No Glory, discuss the challenges of boxing on stage and how the metaphor of the fight works as theatre.
Presenter Kirsty Lang
Producer Ella-mai Robey.
FRI 19:45 15 Minute Drama (b0543k0b)
[Repeat of broadcast at
10:45 today]
FRI 20:00 Any Questions? (b0543yjw)
Sal Brinton, Chris Bryant MP, Mark Harper MP, Elfyn Llwyd MP
Jonathan Dimbleby presents political debate from Monmouth School in Wales with the President of the Liberal Democrats Sal Brinton, Labour's Shadow Culture Minister Chris Bryant MP, Minister for Disabled People Mark Harper MP and the leader of the Plaid Cymru group at Westminster Elfyn Llwyd MP.
FRI 20:50 A Point of View (b0544070)
The Nature of Time
Will Self reflects on the unsettling nature of time. "What gives our human cultures any sense of cohesion at all is an almost relentless effort to shore up our collective memory of the past against the remorseless depredations of time."
Producer: Sheila Cook.
FRI 21:00 Home Front - Omnibus (b0544072)
2-6 March 1915
A hundred years ago this week, Germany declared a submarine blockage of Great Britain, and - for reasons of their own - our characters begin to feel hemmed in.
Written by Richard Monks
Story-led by Shaun McKenna
Consultant Historian: Professor Maggie Andrews
Music: Matthew Strachan
Sound: Martha Littlehailes
Directed by Jessica Dromgoole.
FRI 21:58 Weather (b053s8fk)
The latest weather forecast.
FRI 22:00 The World Tonight (b0544074)
The Battle for Tikrit
An exclusive report from our correspondent with the Shia militias
FRI 22:45 Book at Bedtime (b05440ch)
Kazuo Ishiguro - The Buried Giant
Episode 5
In this time of forgetting, one elderly couple - Axl and Beatrice - are determined to hold onto memories of their life together and have set out to find their long-lost son.
They've been joined on their quest by Wistan, a mysterious Saxon warrior from the East, and Edwin, a young boy in peril. After their encounter with Sir Gawain, the group journey on to reach an isolated monastery where the monks give them a reluctant welcome.
David Suchet continues Kazuo Ishiguro's powerful novel - a moving, mysterious and deeply philosophical book about how societies remember and forget.
“It’s queer the way the world’s forgetting people and things from only yesterday and the day before that. Like a sickness come over us all.”
The Romans have long since departed and Britain is steadily declining into ruin. In this desolate, uncultivated land of mist and rain, people find that their memories are slipping away from them. They live in an uneasy peace but memories of the wars that once ravaged the country are stirring.
Abridged by Sara Davies
Producer: Mair Bosworth
First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in March 2015.
FRI 23:00 A Good Read (b0540w3f)
[Repeat of broadcast at
16:30 on Tuesday]
FRI 23:30 Today in Parliament (b05440ck)
Mark D'Arcy reports from Westminster.
FRI 23:55 The Listening Project (b05440p7)
Mel and Garry - The Importance of Being First
Fi Glover introduces a conversation between a husband and wife who have been together since they were teenagers and have done all the important things together - apart from one. Another conversation in the series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.
The Listening Project is a Radio 4 initiative that offers a snapshot of contemporary Britain in which people across the UK volunteer to have a conversation with someone close to them about a subject they've never discussed intimately before. The conversations are being gathered across the UK by teams of producers from local and national radio stations who facilitate each encounter. Every conversation - they're not BBC interviews, and that's an important difference - lasts up to an hour, and is then edited to extract the key moment of connection between the participants. Most of the unedited conversations are being archived by the British Library and used to build up a collection of voices capturing a unique portrait of the UK in the second decade of the millennium. You can 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)
15 Minute Drama
10:45 MON (b0540b3m)
15 Minute Drama
19:45 MON (b0540b3m)
15 Minute Drama
10:45 TUE (b0540trk)
15 Minute Drama
19:45 TUE (b0540trk)
15 Minute Drama
10:40 WED (b05413k3)
15 Minute Drama
19:45 WED (b05413k3)
15 Minute Drama
10:45 THU (b0542zty)
15 Minute Drama
19:45 THU (b0542zty)
15 Minute Drama
10:45 FRI (b0543k0b)
15 Minute Drama
19:45 FRI (b0543k0b)
A Good Read
16:30 TUE (b0540w3f)
A Good Read
23:00 FRI (b0540w3f)
A Point of View
08:48 SUN (b053c3q5)
A Point of View
20:50 FRI (b0544070)
Analysis
21:30 SUN (b05372sx)
Analysis
20:30 MON (b0540h85)
Annika Stranded
00:30 SUN (b01q7gz7)
Any Answers?
14:00 SAT (b053rz5p)
Any Questions?
13:10 SAT (b053c3q3)
Any Questions?
20:00 FRI (b0543yjw)
Archive on 4
20:00 SAT (b053s0zp)
BBC Inside Science
16:30 THU (b05435sp)
BBC Inside Science
21:00 THU (b05435sp)
Bells on Sunday
05:43 SUN (b053s8z1)
Bells on Sunday
00:45 MON (b053s8z1)
Beyond Belief
16:30 MON (b0540h01)
Book at Bedtime
22:45 MON (b0540j17)
Book at Bedtime
22:45 TUE (b05410x1)
Book at Bedtime
22:45 WED (b05419jh)
Book at Bedtime
22:45 THU (b0543b15)
Book at Bedtime
22:45 FRI (b05440ch)
Book of the Week
00:30 SAT (b053c3nw)
Book of the Week
09:45 MON (b0540b3h)
Book of the Week
00:30 TUE (b0540b3h)
Book of the Week
09:45 TUE (b0540trf)
Book of the Week
00:30 WED (b0540trf)
Book of the Week
09:45 WED (b05413jz)
Book of the Week
00:30 THU (b05413jz)
Book of the Week
09:45 THU (b0542ztt)
Book of the Week
00:30 FRI (b0542ztt)
Book of the Week
09:45 FRI (b0543k06)
Bookclub
16:00 SUN (b053zwq8)
Bookclub
15:30 THU (b053zwq8)
Boswell's Lives
11:30 WED (b05415pv)
Brain of Britain
23:00 SAT (b053721h)
Brain of Britain
15:00 MON (b0540gzx)
Brian Gulliver's Travels
23:00 THU (b01mk5nk)
Britain Versus the World
18:30 THU (b04ybblk)
Broadcasting House
09:00 SUN (b053sbv6)
Chain Reaction
18:30 WED (b05417lh)
Cleaning Up
11:30 FRI (b0543k0g)
Costing the Earth
15:30 TUE (b0540w3c)
Costing the Earth
21:00 WED (b0540w3c)
Desert Island Discs
11:15 SUN (b053sbvb)
Desert Island Discs
09:00 FRI (b053sbvb)
Don't Log Off
11:00 FRI (b0543k0d)
Drama
14:30 SAT (b053rz5r)
Drama
15:00 SUN (b053zwq6)
Drama
14:15 MON (b0540gzv)
Drama
14:15 TUE (b04d1kvs)
Drama
14:15 WED (b043wz2m)
Drama
14:15 THU (b05435s7)
Drama
14:15 FRI (b0543yj7)
Ebola Junction
21:00 MON (b053749b)
Face the Facts
12:15 THU (b0542zv6)
Farming Today
06:30 SAT (b053rz59)
Farming Today
05:45 MON (b05401t5)
Farming Today
05:45 TUE (b0540nbf)
Farming Today
05:45 WED (b05411ns)
Farming Today
05:45 THU (b0542xpp)
Farming Today
05:45 FRI (b0543k02)
Feedback
20:00 SUN (b053c3pq)
Feedback
16:30 FRI (b0543yjh)
File on 4
17:00 SUN (b0537662)
File on 4
20:00 TUE (b05410ws)
From Our Own Correspondent
11:30 SAT (b0532flk)
From Our Own Correspondent
11:00 THU (b0542zv0)
Front Row
19:15 MON (b0540h09)
Front Row
19:15 TUE (b05410wq)
Front Row
19:15 WED (b05417lm)
Front Row
19:15 THU (b0543b0x)
Front Row
19:16 FRI (b0543yjt)
Gardeners' Question Time
14:00 SUN (b053c3pj)
Gardeners' Question Time
15:00 FRI (b0543yj9)
Gloomsbury
19:15 SUN (b01nlbff)
Good News Is No News
16:00 TUE (b051r7j4)
Hannah Gadsby: Arts Clown
23:00 WED (b05419l4)
Holding Back the Sea
11:00 TUE (b04pbmk1)
Home Front - Omnibus
21:00 FRI (b0544072)
Home Front
12:04 MON (b0540bv3)
Home Front
12:04 TUE (b0540trp)
Home Front
12:04 WED (b05415px)
Home Front
12:04 THU (b0542zv4)
Home Front
12:04 FRI (b0543k0j)
In Our Time
09:00 THU (b0542xt7)
In Our Time
21:30 THU (b0542xt7)
In Touch
20:40 TUE (b05410wv)
Inside Health
21:00 TUE (b05410wx)
Inside Health
15:30 WED (b05410wx)
Jock Purdon, the Miners' Poet
16:00 MON (b0540gzz)
Julia, Dear Boy... Welcome to Westminster
10:30 SAT (b053rz5h)
Just a Minute
12:04 SUN (b053721t)
Just a Minute
18:30 MON (b0540h05)
Last Word
20:30 SUN (b053c3pn)
Last Word
16:00 FRI (b0543yjf)
Lent Talks
05:45 SUN (b053bq5f)
Lent Talks
20:45 WED (b05418y6)
Living World
06:35 SUN (b053sbq5)
Loose Ends
18:15 SAT (b053rzvs)
Making History
15:00 TUE (b0540v5c)
Midnight News
00:00 SAT (b0532fl1)
Midnight News
00:00 SUN (b053s85f)
Midnight News
00:00 MON (b053s878)
Midnight News
00:00 TUE (b053s88q)
Midnight News
00:00 WED (b053s8bg)
Midnight News
00:00 THU (b053s8cn)
Midnight News
00:00 FRI (b053s8dz)
Midweek
09:00 WED (b05413jx)
Midweek
21:30 WED (b05413jx)
Money Box Live
15:00 WED (b05417l7)
Money Box
12:04 SAT (b053rz5m)
Money Box
21:00 SUN (b053rz5m)
Moral Maze
22:15 SAT (b053bq5c)
Moral Maze
20:00 WED (b05418y4)
News Briefing
05:30 SAT (b0532fl9)
News Briefing
05:30 SUN (b053s85p)
News Briefing
05:30 MON (b053s87j)
News Briefing
05:30 TUE (b053s88z)
News Briefing
05:30 WED (b053s8bq)
News Briefing
05:30 THU (b053s8cx)
News Briefing
05:30 FRI (b053s8f7)
News Headlines
06:00 SUN (b053s85r)
News Summary
12:00 SAT (b0532flm)
News Summary
12:00 SUN (b053s862)
News Summary
12:00 MON (b053s87n)
News Summary
12:00 TUE (b053s891)
News Summary
12:00 WED (b053s8bs)
News Summary
12:00 THU (b053s8cz)
News Summary
12:00 FRI (b053s8f9)
News and Papers
06:00 SAT (b0532flc)
News and Papers
07:00 SUN (b053s85w)
News and Papers
08:00 SUN (b053s860)
News and Weather
22:00 SAT (b0532fm0)
News
13:00 SAT (b0532flr)
PM
17:00 SAT (b053rz5w)
PM
17:00 MON (b0540h03)
PM
17:00 TUE (b0540w3h)
PM
17:00 WED (b05417lf)
PM
17:00 THU (b0543b0s)
PM
17:00 FRI (b0543yjm)
Pick of the Week
18:15 SUN (b053zwqk)
Poetry Please
23:30 SAT (b053693b)
Poetry Please
16:30 SUN (b053zwqc)
Prayer for the Day
05:43 SAT (b053c3vw)
Prayer for the Day
05:43 MON (b0542xw6)
Prayer for the Day
05:43 TUE (b0540nb1)
Prayer for the Day
05:43 WED (b05411nq)
Prayer for the Day
05:43 THU (b0542xpm)
Prayer for the Day
05:43 FRI (b0543k00)
Profile
19:00 SAT (b053s0zh)
Profile
17:40 SUN (b053s0zh)
Promises, Promises: A History of Debt
13:45 MON (b05447pc)
Promises, Promises: A History of Debt
13:45 TUE (b054420y)
Promises, Promises: A History of Debt
13:45 WED (b054423q)
Promises, Promises: A History of Debt
13:45 THU (b0544243)
Promises, Promises: A History of Debt
13:45 FRI (b05442ft)
Radio 4 Appeal
07:55 SUN (b053sbq9)
Radio 4 Appeal
21:26 SUN (b053sbq9)
Radio 4 Appeal
15:27 THU (b053sbq9)
Ramblings
06:07 SAT (b053bv5n)
Ramblings
15:00 THU (b05435sd)
Recycled Radio
11:00 WED (b05413rw)
Saturday Live
09:00 SAT (b053rz5f)
Saturday Review
19:15 SAT (b053s0zl)
Saudi Arabia: Sands of Time
20:00 MON (b0540h0c)
Selection of BBC World Service Programmes
01:00 SAT (b0532fl5)
Selection of BBC World Service Programmes
01:00 SUN (b053s85k)
Selection of BBC World Service Programmes
01:00 MON (b053s87d)
Selection of BBC World Service Programmes
01:00 TUE (b053s88v)
Selection of BBC World Service Programmes
01:00 WED (b053s8bl)
Selection of BBC World Service Programmes
01:00 THU (b053s8cs)
Selection of BBC World Service Programmes
01:00 FRI (b053s8f3)
Shipping Forecast
00:48 SAT (b0532fl3)
Shipping Forecast
05:20 SAT (b0532fl7)
Shipping Forecast
17:54 SAT (b0532flt)
Shipping Forecast
00:48 SUN (b053s85h)
Shipping Forecast
05:20 SUN (b053s85m)
Shipping Forecast
17:54 SUN (b053s866)
Shipping Forecast
00:48 MON (b053s87b)
Shipping Forecast
05:20 MON (b053s87g)
Shipping Forecast
00:48 TUE (b053s88s)
Shipping Forecast
05:20 TUE (b053s88x)
Shipping Forecast
00:48 WED (b053s8bj)
Shipping Forecast
05:20 WED (b053s8bn)
Shipping Forecast
00:48 THU (b053s8cq)
Shipping Forecast
05:20 THU (b053s8cv)
Shipping Forecast
00:48 FRI (b053s8f1)
Shipping Forecast
05:20 FRI (b053s8f5)
Shorts
19:45 SUN (b053zwqr)
Sitters' Stories
15:45 FRI (b0543yjc)
Six O'Clock News
18:00 SAT (b0532fly)
Six O'Clock News
18:00 SUN (b053s86b)
Six O'Clock News
18:00 MON (b053s87s)
Six O'Clock News
18:00 TUE (b053s895)
Six O'Clock News
18:00 WED (b053s8bx)
Six O'Clock News
18:00 THU (b053s8d1)
Six O'Clock News
18:00 FRI (b053s8fh)
Something Understood
06:05 SUN (b053sbq3)
Something Understood
23:30 SUN (b053sbq3)
Start the Week
09:00 MON (b05403lf)
Start the Week
21:30 MON (b05403lf)
Sunday Worship
08:10 SUN (b053sbqc)
Sunday
07:10 SUN (b053sbq7)
Tales from the Stave
11:30 TUE (b0540trm)
The Archers Omnibus
10:00 SUN (b053sbv8)
The Archers
19:00 SUN (b053zwqn)
The Archers
14:00 MON (b053zwqn)
The Archers
19:00 MON (b0540h07)
The Archers
14:00 TUE (b0540h07)
The Archers
19:00 TUE (b05410wn)
The Archers
14:00 WED (b05410wn)
The Archers
19:00 WED (b05417lk)
The Archers
14:00 THU (b05417lk)
The Archers
19:00 THU (b0543b0v)
The Archers
14:00 FRI (b0543b0v)
The Archers
19:00 FRI (b0543yjr)
The Bottom Line
17:30 SAT (b053bxy9)
The Bottom Line
20:30 THU (b0543b11)
The Business of Film with Mark Kermode
13:30 SUN (b053zsn5)
The Film Programme
23:00 SUN (b053bv5q)
The Film Programme
16:00 THU (b05435sl)
The Food Programme
12:32 SUN (b053zsn1)
The Food Programme
15:30 MON (b053zsn1)
The Hot Kid
23:00 TUE (b05410x3)
The Human Zoo
23:00 MON (b01r0gj4)
The Life in My Head: From Stroke to Brain Attack
11:00 MON (b0540b3p)
The Listening Project
14:45 SUN (b04gnjw4)
The Listening Project
10:55 WED (b05413k5)
The Listening Project
16:55 FRI (b0543yjk)
The Listening Project
23:55 FRI (b05440p7)
The Media Show
16:30 WED (b05417lc)
The News Quiz
12:30 SAT (b053c3px)
The News Quiz
18:30 FRI (b0543yjp)
The Report
20:00 THU (b0543b0z)
The Spy Who Came In from Al-Qaeda
09:00 TUE (b05mrj7f)
The Spy Who Came In from Al-Qaeda
21:30 TUE (b05mrj7f)
The Week in Westminster
11:00 SAT (b053rz5k)
The World This Weekend
13:00 SUN (b053zsn3)
The World Tonight
22:00 MON (b0540h87)
The World Tonight
22:00 TUE (b05410wz)
The World Tonight
22:00 WED (b05418y8)
The World Tonight
22:00 THU (b0543b13)
The World Tonight
22:00 FRI (b0544074)
Thinking Allowed
00:15 MON (b053bq4z)
Thinking Allowed
16:00 WED (b05417l9)
Tim Key's Late Night Poetry Programme
23:15 WED (b05419jk)
Today in Parliament
23:30 MON (b0540j19)
Today in Parliament
23:30 TUE (b05410x5)
Today in Parliament
23:30 WED (b05419jm)
Today in Parliament
23:30 THU (b0543b17)
Today in Parliament
23:30 FRI (b05440ck)
Today
07:00 SAT (b053rz5c)
Today
06:00 MON (b05403lc)
Today
06:00 TUE (b0540tr5)
Today
06:00 WED (b05413jv)
Today
06:00 THU (b0542xt5)
Today
06:00 FRI (b0543k04)
Trodd en Bratt Say 'Well Done You'
18:30 TUE (b048nr1v)
Tweet of the Day
08:58 SUN (b03k5c3r)
Tweet of the Day
05:58 MON (b03ths4v)
Tweet of the Day
05:58 TUE (b03ths74)
Tweet of the Day
05:58 WED (b03thsbj)
Tweet of the Day
05:58 THU (b03thsc6)
Tweet of the Day
05:58 FRI (b03thsg9)
War and Peace
21:00 SAT (b04w89v9)
Weather
06:04 SAT (b0532flf)
Weather
06:57 SAT (b0532flh)
Weather
12:57 SAT (b0532flp)
Weather
17:57 SAT (b0532flw)
Weather
06:57 SUN (b053s85t)
Weather
07:57 SUN (b053s85y)
Weather
12:57 SUN (b053s864)
Weather
17:57 SUN (b053s868)
Weather
05:56 MON (b053s87l)
Weather
12:57 MON (b053s87q)
Weather
12:57 TUE (b053s893)
Weather
21:58 TUE (b053s897)
Weather
12:57 WED (b053s8bv)
Weather
21:58 WED (b05n8cpf)
Weather
12:57 THU (b054vc35)
Weather
21:58 THU (b05n8cqy)
Weather
12:57 FRI (b053s8fc)
Weather
21:58 FRI (b053s8fk)
Westminster Hour
22:00 SUN (b053zx02)
What the Papers Say
22:45 SUN (b053zxcw)
When the Dog Dies
11:30 MON (b01m5nlx)
Woman's Hour
16:00 SAT (b053rz5t)
Woman's Hour
10:00 MON (b0540b3k)
Woman's Hour
10:00 TUE (b0540trh)
Woman's Hour
10:00 WED (b05413k1)
Woman's Hour
10:00 THU (b0542ztw)
Woman's Hour
10:00 FRI (b0543k08)
World at One
13:00 MON (b0540bv7)
World at One
13:00 TUE (b0540trt)
World at One
13:00 WED (b05415q1)
World at One
13:00 THU (b0542zv8)
World at One
13:00 FRI (b0543yj5)
Writing a New South Africa
11:30 THU (b0542zv2)
You and Yours
12:15 MON (b0540bv5)
You and Yours
12:15 TUE (b0540trr)
You and Yours
12:15 WED (b05415pz)
You and Yours
12:15 FRI (b0543k0l)
iPM
05:45 SAT (b053c3vy)