The BBC has announced that it has a sustainable plan for the future of the BBC Singers, in association with The VOCES8 Foundation.
The threat to reduce the staff of the three English orchestras by 20% has not been lifted, but it is being reconsidered.
See the BBC press release here.
RADIO-LISTS: BBC RADIO 4
Unofficial Weekly Listings for BBC Radio 4 — supported by bbc.co.uk/programmes/
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
Mary Shelley was brought up by her father in a house filled with radical thinkers, poets, philosophers and writers of the day. Aged 16, she eloped with Percy Bysshe Shelley, embarking on a relationship that was lived on the move across Britain and Europe. She coped with debt, infidelity and the deaths of three children, before early widowhood changed her life forever. Most astonishingly, it was while still a teenager that she composed her novel Frankenstein, creating two of our most enduring archetypes today.
The life story is well-known. But who was the woman who lived it?
Mary Shelley left plenty of evidence and, in this fascinating dialogue with the past, Fiona Sampson sifts through letters, diaries and records to find the real woman behind the story. She uncovers a complex, generous character - friend, intellectual, lover and mother - trying to fulfil her own passionate commitment to writing at a time when to be a woman writer was an extraordinary and costly anomaly.
Coinciding with the 200th anniversary of the publication of Frankenstein, this is a major new work of biography by a prize-winning writer and poet.
Written by Fiona Sampson
Read by Stella Gonet
Abridged by Polly Coles
Produced by Clive Brill
A Brill production for BBC Radio 4.
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The latest shipping forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
Spiritual reflection to start the day with The Rev Dr Alison Jack of Edinburgh University's School of Divinity.
iPM is the news programme that starts with its listeners. Email ipm@bbc.co.uk. Twitter: @BBCiPM. Presented by Luke Jones and Eddie Mair.
The latest news headlines. Including the weather and a look at the papers.
Strathpeffer in the Highlands of Scotland is one of the few remaining strongholds of the elusive Scottish wildcat. The species is now considered to be rarer than the tiger with estimates of between 40 and 400 wildcats left in the wild. The reason that these estimates vary so widely is that the creatures are very hard to spot and that they are often mixed up with large feral or hybrid cats who are also responsible for diluting the remaining gene pool.
Feral cats also cause problems for the wildcats when they bring disease into the few remaining areas where experts believe wildcat populations exist. That's why the Scottish Wildcat Action team are working on a 'Trap, Neuter, Vaccinate and Release' programme. with the help of the local community, to ensure domestic cats do not interbreed with wildcats or spread disease.
David Lindo meets the team at Scottish Wildcat Action in Strathpeffer to see first hand how this programme works as the wildcat enters the vitally important breeding season from January to March.
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
The latest weather forecast.
News and current affairs. Including Yesterday in Parliament, Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
Extraordinary stories, unusual people and a sideways look at the world.
Jay Rayner and his panel of food experts take a trip to Portsmouth. Andi Oliver, Tim Hayward, Sophie Wright and Dr Annie Gray answer questions from the audience.
Produced by Hannah Newton
Assistant Producer: Hester Cant
Food Consultant: Anna Colquhoun
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4.
George Parker of The Financial Times looks behind the scenes at Westminster.
The Editor is Marie Jessel.
Reports from writers and journalists around the world. Presented by Kate Adie.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
The latest news from the world of personal finance.
This week's panel features Jeremy Hardy, Kerry Godliman and Isabel Hardman with Miles Jupp in the chair.
The latest weather forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
Jonathan Dimbleby presents political debate from Ceredigion Museum in Aberystwyth with the leader of the Welsh Conservatives Andrew R T Davies , Shadow Defence Secretary Nia Griffith MP, jungle survivor author and commentator Stanley Johnson and the leader of Plaid Cymru Leanne Wood AM.
Listeners have their say on the issues discussed on Any Questions?
By Daniel Defoe, adapted by Nick Perry.
Daniel Defoe, once more in need of ready money, finds inspiration for a new book when he meets Elizabeth Atkins in Newgate gaol. She tells him her stranger-than-fiction story; of how she was born in prison to a petty thief and of how she loved and bargained her way from rags to riches, from prostitution in the streets of London to prosperity on a Virginia plantation, and then lost it all again. Defoe interprets it all in his characteristic manner, blending fact with fiction, and re-inventing his interlocutor as the lusty and resourceful Moll Flanders.
The Harpsichord was played by Peter Ringrose.
Director: Sasha Yevtushenko.
Cathy FitzGerald invites you to discover new details in old masterpieces, using your phone, tablet or computer.
The average length of time spent looking at a painting in a gallery is 28 seconds. On Moving Pictures, we like to take a little longer. Each thirty-minute episode is devoted to a single artwork - and you're invited to look as well as listen, by following a link to an extraordinary high-resolution image made by Google Arts and Culture. Zoom in and you can see more than the artist - the pores of the canvas, the sweep of individual brushstrokes, the shimmer of pointillist dots.
In the first programme of this series, stroll along the high-street of a market town in Regency England - as imagined in a one-of-a-kind patchwork hanging, held in the collection of the V&A Museum. This needlework masterpiece features tiny applique scenes of everyday life - children flying kites, chimney sweeps heading home from work, a fishwife off to market. Cathy asks if one of the little characters might be the maker herself.
Interviewees: Jenny Lister, Kerry Taylor, Deb McGuire, Linda Seward, Tracy Chevalier
Producer and Presenter: Cathy FitzGerald
A White Stiletto production for BBC Radio 4
Ann West, Coverlet (c) Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Acquired with the support of the Friends of the V&A.
We'll be hearing from you about your experiences of the menopause with contributions from Monica, Kate and Linda.
We look at the use of digital material as evidence in rape cases. How is the material gathered and how much weight is attached to them by prosecution or defence barristers? Alison Saunders the Director of Public Prosecutions and head of the CPS and Tana Adkin QC a barrister specialising in rape and sexual offence cases discuss.
We'll find out why parents are being forced to pay for the government's 30 hour free childcare scheme through additional charges and fees as a result of underfunding. We'll hear from Shannon Hawthorne from the Pre-School Learning Alliance.
Charlotte Friedman the Psychotherapist and former barrister tells us how best to support children through divorce.
We hear from three women immersed in the world of cybersecurity. Holly Rostill is a white hat hacker at Price Waterhouse Coopers. Dr Mariarosaria Taddeo is a research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute and Helen L works at the National Cyber Security Centre at GCHQ.
The author Steph Broadribb tells us about her second crime novel Deep Blue Trouble featuring Lori Anderson, a bounty hunter and single mother living in Florida.
And we discuss the impact of the menopause on sex and relationships with Eileen Bellot the director of Hands Inc, a Health and Wellbeing charity and Heather Currie a gynaecologist and former Chair of the British Menopause Society.
Presented by Jenni Murray
Producer: Rabeka Nurmahomed
Editor:Jane Thurlow.
Full coverage of the day's news.
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The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Clive Anderson and Emma Freud are joined by Jack Jones, Warwick Davis, Sarah Hadland and Tim Cowbury for an eclectic mix of conversation, music and comedy. With music from The Go! Team and Sheila Atim.
Producer: Tim Bano.
Earlier this week Jon Lansman, founder and leader of left-wing political group Momentum, was elected to the Labour Party's National Executive Committee.
A 60-year-old veteran of the hard left, Lansman has been credited with helping get Jeremy Corbyn elected as Labour leader and to successfully rallying thousands of activists behind the Momentum movement.
But his critics say he can be a dogmatic, even bullying, leader, quick to crush dissent.
On this week's 'Profile', Mark Coles speaks to relatives, friends, colleagues and analysts about Lansman's triumphs and tragedies.
Producer: Ben Carter
Editor: Emma Rippon.
A review of the week's cultural highlights.
Generation X author Douglas Coupland explores the ideas, sound and vision of media seer Marshall McLuhan who in the 1960s coined the phrases "the medium is the message" and "the global village".
Marshall McLuhan was the first great prophet of what would become digital mass media and indeed the global media village - a thinker and writer of near supernatural foresight.
Trained as a literary scholar, throughout his career McLuhan not only examined the relationship between form and content in the media itself, offering dazzling arguments for the importance of medium over content, but anticipated the very idea of online networks, virtual reality, multiple interfaces, social media and most importantly of all, how new technologies rewire us by stealth, endlessly transforming our identities and our communities. "We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us," he said.
Drawing on cutting-edge thinking about networks and cybernetics, McLuhan foresaw a fully wired, connected world, which would bring to an end the isolated consumption of print. New cross-border (effectively online) communities would form, breaking old political barriers, creating genuinely new kinds of electronic identity. But with this McLuhan offered a warning: older ideas of privacy and the self would evaporate under new media he said, leading to the rise of what he called 'discarnate' man - the lost, disembodied user extended across an unrelenting, unforgiving electronic global nervous system.
McLuhan's ideas seem more prescient than ever. As Douglas Coupland puts it: 'The future has never happened so quickly, to so many people, in such an extreme way - just as Marshall predicted, an uncanny prophet of our own digital age.'
Contributors include novelist Tom McCarthy, DJ Spooky, Andrew McLuhan, biographer Philip Marchand, the media theorists Shannon Mattern and Bernard Dionysus Geoghegan, Zak Kyes the graphic designer, philosopher James Garvey, filmmaker Jonathan Meades and former network engineer Tung-Hui Hu, who has written on McLuhan and 1970s guerrilla television.
Presenter: Douglas Coupland
Producer: Simon Hollis
A Brook Lapping production for BBC Radio 4.
Adapted by Beatrice Colin
One of Spark's most gripping and disturbing books.
At the centre of this taut thriller is Lise, an enigmatic young woman travelling alone to a European city in search of "the one".
She seems keen to leave a trail, acquiring a brightly coloured outfit and an equally outlandish set of personas in her encounters with a series of extraordinary and desperate individuals. But as the subject of her search eludes her, her behaviour becomes increasingly erratic. We assume that she is seeking a lover but in fact she is searching for the man who will murder her. As the tension builds, The Driver's Seat asks if we are ever truly in control of our own lives.
Directed by Gaynor Macfarlane.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4, followed by weather.
Anne McElvoy takes guests and listeners alike to the edges of their certainties. She brings together two figures who are active in the public debate on opposed sides of a principle.
Anne is joined by conflict resolution specialist Gabrielle Rifkind to lead the two guests through a series of structured conversations to encourage them to air the personal experiences, instincts and feelings that underpin their public positions. Together Anne and Gabrielle invite guests to do something that doesn't often feature in debates: really listen to each other.
Joining the discussion this week to discuss whether 'we should all be feminists' are author, journalist and human rights activist Joan Smith, and former barrister and now co-editor of The Conservative Woman, Laura Perrins.
(9/12)
Last time they met, the South of England team of Marcus Berkmann and Paul Sinha inflicted a heavy defeat on newcomers Paddy Duffy and Freya McClements of Northern Ireland - so Northern Ireland will be out for revenge this week. Tom Sutcliffe is on hand to ensure fair play, and to make sure the points reflect the amount of help he has to give them in tackling such convoluted teasers as:
Why should the connection between an incipient flower, half of a Crazy duo, and the man who made up Barbie and the Munsters, be on the tip of your tongue?
The programme will, as always, also include a selection of the best question ideas received from listeners in recent months.
Producer: Paul Bajoria.
In this month's episode - The Kids Are Alright - Daljit talks to young poets just starting out and to poets writing about parenting, youth and the gap between the generations. He finds poems about parents letting go and about growing older, but not up. About taking advice from your gran, and dating now and then.
At the Edinburgh International Book Festival, he meets Scottish poets Jenny Lindsay and Michael Pedersen and Australian poets Luka Lesson and Omar Musa who have collaborated together on a spoken word performance. He finds out about a new inter-generational poetry translation project called Mother Tongues, set up by British-Ghanaian poet Victoria Adukwei Bulley. He talks with two young poets whose work has been nurtured by The Poetry Society - SLAMBassadors UK 2016 Champion Tasnima Ahmed and Cia Mangat, one of the commended poets in the Foyle Young Poets competition. And shares new work from Sinead Morrissey and Lisa Luxx.
Blast is a new alternative poetry series for Radio 4, presented by Radio 4's poet-in-residence Daljit Nagra, recorded at festivals and events around the UK and on location with the best new poets and spoken word artists. Previous episodes have featured PJ Harvey, Don Paterson, Kayo Chingonyi, Patricia Lockwood, Raymond Antrobus, Wayne Holloway-Smith, Miriam Nash and Zeina Hashem Beck.
Produced by Mair Bosworth and Hana Walker-Brown.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
The artist, or the man?
For most of the twentieth century, Eric Gill was known for his sculptures and drawings, printmaking and the iconic typeface that bears his name. But in 1989, Fiona MacCarthy's acclaimed biography of the artist - which included extensive research into Gill's private journals - revealed another side, including an incestuous relationship with his sister and the sexual abuse of two of his three daughters.
Since then, it has been difficult for many to approach his art in its previous light.
The Ditchling Museum Of Art And Craft mounted a major retrospective, Eric Gill: The Body, which ran from April to September 2017. This short story by Alison MacLeod, emerged from her time as one of the writers-in-residence for the exhibition. The voices sequence in the story is inspired by visitors' responses to the exhibition.
A work of creative non-fiction, Portrait: Eric Gill Dreaming imagines Gill in his house in Ditchling, asleep and dreaming about his work and life, and wondering whether or not they go together.
Which brings us back to the original question - the artist, or the man?
Alison MacLeod lives in Brighton. She was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award in 2011 and her stories, including the series Imagining Chekhov, have featured previously on Radio 4. Her novel Unexploded was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize and was broadcast as a Book At Bedtime. Her latest collection of stories, All The Beloved Ghosts, was published in 2017. Alison is Professor of Contemporary Fiction at the University of Chichester.
Writer: Alison MacLeod
Reader: Indira Varma
Producer: Jeremy Osborne
A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4.
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The latest shipping forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
This week's Bells on Sunday, comes from the church of St. Nicholas, Durweston in Dorset. The present ring of six bells was hung in 1911, with a tenor of 10 hundredweight. We hear them here, ringing call changes.
The latest national and international news.
Writer and priest Malcolm Doney examines the act of rumination, which refers both to digestion and the process of deep thought or consideration. He draws comparisons with a host of other natural processes, where material enters in one form and is then converted into something new and life-giving.
Exploring topics ranging from Bible interpretation to composting, Malcolm draws on the words of American novelist Ann Pratchett and farmer and yoga teacher Jennifer Lynn to underpin his observations.
The process of fermentation is also explored as it has always been linked to Christianity's core ritual - Holy Communion. Both grain and grape are made new through fermentation. Malcolm argues that our ideas and beliefs work on our insides like yeast. Invisibly, we are leavened, we rise.
Malcolm concludes that, through rumination, we can access our darkest recesses in which an enormous source of energy for new life can be found. This is a deep, almost unfathomable well from which we can draw spiritual nutrition, wisdom and understanding that provide us with fuel for living.
Presenter: Malcolm Doney
Producer: Jonathan O'Sullivan
A TBI Media production for BBC Radio 4.
Some might say starting a farming business without land, an agricultural background or much capital is impossible. But David and Bekka Corrie-Close had other ideas . Can passion, determination, some community knowledge and a bright idea replace those? In just 2 years they've gone from nothing to tending a herd of beef cattle in Cumbria, providing tasty returns to investors. They also say their 'farming with nature' strategy beautifies and nurtures the environment. Caz Graham meets the young entrepreneurs to find out how they've done it and ask if others around the country could do the same.
Produced by Anne-Marie Bullock.
The latest weather forecast.
The latest news headlines. Including a look at the papers.
Sunday morning religious news and current affairs programme.
The actor Bill Nighy makes the Radio 4 Appeal on behalf of the charity ChildHope.
Registered Charity Number: 328434
To Give:
- Freephone 0800 404 8144
- Freepost BBC Radio 4 Appeal. (That's the whole address. Please do not write anything else on the front of the envelope). Mark the back of the envelope 'ChildHope'.
- Cheques should be made payable to 'ChildHope'.
The latest weather forecast.
The latest news headlines. Including a look at the papers.
Radio 4's Sunday morning service.
"How long", asks Howard Jacobson, "before the protocols of looking forbid our looking appreciatively at anyone?"
He explores the enormous difficulties surrounding the language of appreciation, "no matter whether the viewer in question is a mechanic ogling a pin-up in his workshop or an art critic pausing at a wall of French nudes in the Wallace Collection".
Producer: Adele Armstrong.
Audio-visual artist, Kathy Hinde has always loved cranes, ever since she learned to make origami cranes as a child. Here she recalls a magical sunrise watching a balletic performed by dancing Common Cranes.
Tweet of the Day has captivated the Radio 4 audience with its daily 90 seconds of birdsong. But what of the listener to this avian chorus? In this new series of
Tweet of the Day, we bring to the airwaves the conversational voices of those who listen to and are inspired by birds. Building on the previous series, a more informal approach to learning alongside a renewed emphasis on encounter with nature and reflection in our relationship with the natural world.
Producer: Sarah Blunt
Photograph: Tony McLean.
Sunday morning magazine programme with news and conversation about the big stories of the week. Presented by Paddy O'Connell.
Brian is in trouble, and Noluthando goes too far.
Christina Lamb is chief foreign correspondent for the Sunday Times and travels the world reporting from war zones and hot spots, speaking not just to key protagonists but also seeking out and detailing the daily impact of conflict on civilians.
An only child, and brought up in Carshalton Beeches, she was a voracious reader and dreamed of being an explorer. Although she was rebellious at school, and at one point was asked to leave, she won a place at Oxford and went on to edit the university newspaper. While working as an intern for the Financial Times, she interviewed Benazir Bhutto and was invited to her wedding in Pakistan. That experience led to her determination to be a reporter from the front line.
Her work has taken her to South Africa, Brazil, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq, and among her best-selling books are two which tell the stories of remarkable young women - Nujeen Mustafa who escaped from Aleppo in her wheelchair, and the Nobel prize-winner Malala Yousafzai.
Presenter: Kirsty Young
Producer: Cathy Drysdale.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
This week, the Professor of Ignorance John Lloyd and his curator Sally Phillips welcome the acerbically charming comedian Joe Lycett, William Shakespeare's great great great great great great great 16th cousin twice removed, sociologist Prof Tom Shakespeare,and Blue Peter's longest-serving female presenter Konnie Huq. This week, the Museum reveals how wheels turned for the French Revolution, how a little blue ship on a plastic chip can get you into over 200 UK attractions, and the brain-tinglingly sensational significance of towels in the hands of a woman called Maria.
The show was researched by Mike Turner and QI.
The Production Coordinator was Tamara Shilham.
The Associate Producer was James Harkin.
The Producers were Richard Turner and Anne Miller.
It was a BBC Studios Production.
Dan Saladino looks at ideas that could make an impact on our food future featuring America's Impossible Burger, a Sardinian maggot infested cheese and mussels being grown in downtown Copenhagen.
Most people are aware of the challenges that lie ahead linked to predictions of population growth peaking at 9bn by 2050 but who is coming up with ideas of how we can feed more people with a finite amount of land, water and other resources? Dan looks at three ideas that provide an insight into work underway to find solutions.
The expert on the science of cooking Harold McGee, author of On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, tells the story of The Impossible Burger, a decade long endeavour, based in California, to find a plant based replica of beef and burger patties. Impossible Foods was founded by a bio-chemist Professor Patrick Brown. Because he was approaching the problem of rising global meat consumption from outside of the food industry he was forced to ask some very basic questions, most important of which was "why does meat taste like meat"? One of the answers Pat Brown discovered was a molecule called heme. He also knew heme could be found in plants. The outcome of years of work and millions of dollars of investment is The Impossible Burger. It's aimed not at vegetarians or vegans but meat lovers and has been designed to have the meaty, bloody juiciness of a real burger. Harold McGee describes the science behind the burger and the experience of eating one.
By the way, listen out for the traditional Sardinian music "Su Cuntrattu de Seneghe" performed by Antonio Maria Cubadda who is from Seneghe town.
The next future food story has its origins in Sardinia and a cheese called Casu Marzu. As the cheese ferments a fly called the Cheese Skipper is attracted by the aromas being released and lays its eggs inside the cheese. The larvae then hatch and start to digest the proteins and turn a hard textured cheese into a soft one. The cheese is then eaten while the wriggling maggots are still alive within the cheese. A researcher working for the United Nation's Food and Agriculture Organisation's Edible Insect project, Afton Halloran went in search of the cheese as a rare example of a European food involving edible insects. In Sardinia she met a chef Roberto Flore . They eventually married and since, have travelled the world in search of other examples of edible insects that could provide a clue to future foods. They tell Dan the story of the cheese and the conclusions they've reached so far when it comes to the potential of insects in feeding the world.
The final story comes from Copenhagen where Joachim Hjer is attempting to get people in the city to grown their own mussels in the heart of the city.
In the studio with Dan is Dr Morgaine Gaye, a "Food Futurologist" who explains which of the three stories she believes will be the one to watch in 2018.
Presented and produced by Dan Saladino.
The latest weather forecast.
Global news and analysis.
James Naughtie looks at a revolution that is altering the face of America, in ways that may last far beyond Trump's presidency.
Peter Gibbs and his panel are hosted by the Hampshire WI at Sparsholt College. Pippa Greenwood, Chris Beardshaw and Bunny Guinness are on hand to help this WI branch celebrate its 100th birthday..
This week the panellists face questions on replacing an old Bramley Apple, what to do with Ragwort, and when to pinch out sweet peas. They also offer advice on moving Mulberry trees, getting a Hibiscus to flower and combatting an invasive bamboo.
And Peter Gibbs visits Sayes Court where he meets Roo Angell to discuss the saving of John Evelyn's garden.
Produced by Dan Cocker
Assistant Producer: Laurence Bassett
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4.
Fi Glover introduces conversations about Air Ambulance rescue, the decision to donate a kidney to a stranger, and the pressures of work as a junior doctor in the Omnibus edition of the series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.
The Listening Project is a Radio 4 initiative that offers a snapshot of contemporary Britain in which people across the UK volunteer to have a conversation with someone close to them about a subject they've never discussed intimately before. The conversations are being gathered across the UK by teams of producers from local and national radio stations who facilitate each encounter. Every conversation - they're not BBC interviews, and that's an important difference - lasts up to an hour, and is then edited to extract the key moment of connection between the participants. Most of the unedited conversations are being archived by the British Library and used to build up a collection of voices capturing a unique portrait of the UK in the second decade of the millennium. You can learn more about The Listening Project by visiting bbc.co.uk/listeningproject
Producer: Marya Burgess.
Two families - one Turkish, the other Armenian-American - are bound by the same horrific past. Written by Elif Shafak and dramatised by Hattie Naylor.
One rainy afternoon in Istanbul, a nineteen-year-old, unmarried woman walks into a doctor's surgery. "I need to have an abortion," she announces.
Twenty years later, Asya Kazanci lives with her extended family in Istanbul. All the Kanzanci men die early, victims of a mysterious family curse, so this is a household of women. Among them are Asya's beautiful, rebellious mother Zeliha, her clairvoyant aunt Banu and their eccentric sister Feride, as well as the ageing Petit Ma. They are ruled over by the iron will of matriarch Gulsum.
Into the midst of this madhouse comes Asya's determined American cousin Armanoush, who unknowingly brings with her long-hidden family secrets inextricably linked to Turkey's turbulent past.
Other voices by Murak Erkek, Catriona Stirling and the cast.
Written by Elif Shafak
Dramatised by Hattie Naylor
Music by Gorkem Sen
Sound design by James Morgan and Steve Bond
Executive Producer: Sara Davies
Produced and Directed by Nicolas Jackson
An Afonica production for BBC Radio 4.
Mariella Frostrup talks to French-Moroccan novelist Leila Slimani whose book Lullaby caused a sensation in France and won the Prix Goncourt, and is now being published in English. In it, she explores what would drive a hardworking, dedicated nanny to commit the most heinous of crimes.
Also on the programme, Laura Shapiro discusses her new book What She Ate and explains why she thinks our diets are very revealing about our personalities; Leo Benedictus argues that novels are inherently sinister and Mariella discusses the literary culture, and restrictions on freedom on speech and creativity, in Turkey and Russia - part of Radio 4's Reading Europe series.
Image credit: Catherine Hélie (c)Editions Gallimard.
Roger McGough is joined by Radio 4 poet in residence Alice Oswald, who picks her favourite poems for the programme.
File on 4 exposes a multi-million pound global trade in fake diplomas.
A complex network of online universities sells degrees, doctorates and professional qualifications - for a price. Some of the buyers have gone on to trade on these credentials, including them on their CVs and gaining jobs in public life.
Others, after making an initial purchase, were blackmailed by the sellers, who threatened to expose them unless they paid out huge additional sums of money.
Despite criminal investigations in numerous countries, why is there still a thriving trade in dubious qualifications and are institutions and companies taking the issue seriously enough?
Reporter: Simon Cox
Producers: Matthew Chapman and Helen Clifton
Editor: Gail Champion.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest weather forecast.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Farrah Jarral chooses her BBC Radio highlights.
Jennifer issues an apology, and Roy sacrifices his own feelings.
Washington D.C.'s favourite political call-in show returns to Radio 4 as stand-up legend Rich Hall and a selection of comedians from both sides of the Atlantic reflect on the first year of Donald Trump's presidency.
Speaking to American pundits, comics and of course hearing extensively from the man on the street the show will explore how many of Trump's campaign promises he managed to keep and how radically one of the most interesting countries on the planet has changed over 52 weeks.
Cast:
Rich Hall
Nick Doody
Jena Friedman
Lewis MacLeod
Freya Parker
Written by Rich Hall & Nick Doody with additional material by James Kettle and Laura Major.
Producer - Joe Nunnery
A BBC Studios Production.
5 writers choose 5 poems as inspiration for new stories.
Episode 2/5
The Oracle at Glencolumbkille
A teenager at a crossroads in her life visits a famous Oracle for advice.
A new story inspired by 'The Homeric Hymn to Apollo', written by Garrett Carr author of The Rule of the Land.
Credits
Writer ..... Garrett Carr
Reader ..... Cara Kelly
Producer ..... Claire Simpson
A BBC Scotland Production for BBC Radio 4.
Investigating the numbers in the news.
Matthew Bannister on
Surgeon Captain Rick Jolly, the navy doctor who set up a makeshift field hospital during the Falklands War to treat both British and Argentine casualties.
Dolores O'Riordan, lead singer of the Irish band the Cranberries who sold forty million albums.
Cyrille Regis, the West Brom and England striker who experienced racism from fans in the 1980s.
Jenny Joseph who wrote Britain's best loved post war poem "Warning"
Peter Wyngarde the actor who played the TV detective Jason King and partly inspired the Austin Powers films.
Have you ever wondered what happens to the clothes you donate to charity?
Every year, hundreds of millions of pounds worth of clothes from rich nations are exported to Africa.
In Business travels to Tanzania, where second hand fashion is big business. Now the Tanzanian government want to phase-out these cheap imports, which they say are killing the local textiles industry. But if they do, they risk losing a lucrative trade-aid deal that allows them to export to the United States duty free. BBC Africa's Sammy Awami investigates the used clothes or 'mitumba' business, and asks local textiles producers if they are ready to clothe this rapidly-growing nation.
Producer: Helen Grady.
Weekly political discussion and analysis with MPs, experts and commentators.
Alexander Payne gives Francine Stock the low-down on Downsizing.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
Police culture, socialisation and identity. Laurie Taylor explores the process by which police officers become 'blue'. He's joined by Sarah Charman, a Reader in Criminology at the University of Portsmouth, Carol Cox, Acting Head of the School of Forensic and Applied Sciences at The University of Central Lancashire and Louise Westmarland, Professor of Criminology at the Open University.
Producer: Jayne Egerton.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
Spiritual reflection to start the day with The Rev Dr Alison Jack of Edinburgh University's School of Divinity.
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
The latest weather forecast for farmers.
Wildlife artist Jane Smith reveals why she feels such a strong connection with Snipe which produce a drumming sound which seems to encapsulate the sound of the Hebrides.
Tweet of the Day has captivated the Radio 4 audience with its daily 90 seconds of birdsong. But what of the listener to this avian chorus? In this new series of Tweet of the Day, we bring to the airwaves the conversational voices of those who listen to and are inspired by birds. Building on the previous series, a more informal approach to learning alongside a renewed emphasis on encounter with nature and reflection in our relationship with the natural world.
Producer: Sarah Blunt
Photographer: Milo Bostock.
News and current affairs. Including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
Art was power for Britain's kings and queens. In a new BBC TV series, Andrew Graham-Dixon visits the paintings amassed by King Charles I, the first great royal collector in British history. He tells Andrew Marr why after Charles was executed his royal artworks were flogged across Europe. The lost royal collection will finally be reunited this year in an exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts. Historian Leanda de Lisle brings the Stuart monarch back to life in her biography White King. But was the art-loving king a traitor, a murderer or a martyr? And it is not only kings who use art to impress. Don Thompson meets hedge fund managers and foreign oligarchs in his study of the contemporary art scene, while artist Kelly Chorpening describes the role of Camberwell College of Art in shaping the art scene.
Producer: Hannah Sander
Picture credit:
Anthony van Dyck (1599-1641), Charles I in Three Positions, 1635-36
Royal Collection Trust / (c) Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2018, www.royalcollection.org.uk.
The Dutch journalist Geert Mak travels through Europe at the close of the twentieth century reflecting on the history of the last 100 years and it's legacy. Nicholas Farrell reads.
As the new millennium was about to dawn Geert Mak was commissioned by the newspaper he worked for to write a series of articles assessing the shape Europe was in and the legacy left behind by the twentieth century's turbulent history. Mak travelled back and forth all over the continent, painting a lively and engaging portrait of the places he visited and the people he encountered who shared their stories with him. Book of the Week begins with Mak setting off from Amsterdam for Paris where he finds the remnants of the spectacular World's Fair held there in 1900. Then he follows in the footsteps of Lenin as he made his fateful journey from Zurich to Petrograd, via Stockholm and Helsinki in 1917. He contrasts the Bolshevik leader's fiery politics with the more measured route taken by the Scandinavians. Then on to Odessa and Istanbul where traces of acceptance and tolerance are found amid the worst excesses of tyranny. Finally, to Moscow where he meets the Russian cosmonaut, Anatoli Artsybarski who recalls orbiting the Earth as the Soviet Union ceased to exist in December 1991. A new piece by Geert Mak specially written for Book of the Week updates his reflections twenty years on.
Abridged by Rowan Routh
Produced by Elizabeth Allard.
Programme that offers a female perspective on the world.
Potent and playful drama set in a near-future in which doctors can no longer prescribe antibiotics. By award-winning dramatist, Oliver Emanuel.
"There is a piece of paper stuck on our fridge.
It's always been there.
This is what is says:
No knives
No playing outside
Always wash your hands."
It's Monday. Two of these rules are about to be broken. By Friday, this family's world will have turned upside down.
The Truth About Hawaii was developed through Wellcome Experimental Stories in consultation with Prof. Joanna Coast (Professor in the Economics of Health & Care, Bristol Medical School, University of Bristol) and Dr Adam Roberts (Senior Lecturer in Antimicrobial Chemotherapy and Resistance at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine).
Consultants: Prof Joanna Coast and Dr Adam Roberts
Director: Kirsty Williams.
Jackie Harrison has a 50-50 chance of developing Huntington's disease. Her grandfather, mother and uncle all died young with this devastating, neuro-degenerative disease and she cares for her younger brother who has it too.
In December 2017 it seemed that there might have been a breakthrough and there's been a surge of people at risk asking for a predictive test. It's a blood test which simply tells you if you will develop the disease - but currently there is no cure.
Jackie has previously shied away from the test, but is now considering it. The test is a gamble. A bad result can be devastating.
Having lived all her life thinking she has Huntington's, Jackie hasn't leant to drive for fear she will have her license taken away. She hasn't had children, for fear that any child would have to look after her when she became ill.
"There are very few days you're not thinking about it," she admits, checking herself for symptoms, "I twitch my shoulder and I know I do. Sometimes I've a twitchy eye or one time my thumb was shaking or shivering for no reason. I'm being bad tempered and I'm shouting at people - so you think is this the start of it?"
As Jackie approaches 50, she is increasingly persuaded to have the test. Her partner Tony describes it as a horrendous Catch 22, "Do you want to live the rest of your life in the hope that you may be free of the disease or do you want to toss the coin, with the negative of that being you find you're not free of it and you then you have no hope left?"
Should she have the test and could she cope with the result?
Narrated by Grace Dent and produced by Sarah Bowen.
Episode 3, 'Profit and Loss'. Mr and Mrs Wrigglesworth receive some bad news about a friend while Granny helps Tom with a "gambling situation".
Series 3 of the sitcom where Tom Wrigglesworth phones home for his weekly check-in with his Mum, Dad and Gran, giving listeners a glimpse into his family background and the influences that have shaped his temperament, opinions and hang-ups.
Starring Tom Wrigglesworth, Paul Copley, Kate Anthony and Elizabeth Bennett.
Written by Tom Wrigglesworth and James Kettle with additional material by Miles Jupp
Produced by Richard Morris
A BBC Radio Comedy Production.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Chris Maslanka sets out on his journey to describe the long and endlessly satisfying human appetite for the setting and solving of puzzles. In five programmes he takes a series of narratives following the developments of the Maze, of riddles, of mathematical puzzles and the use of grids, as well as covering the period in the 19th century when a new middle class established enough leisure to make the business of puzzling exactly that, a business. In the process Chris solves some of the conundrums about the utilitarian nature of puzzling and why it is that puzzles travel so well and respond to the catalyst of mechanical invention.
News and discussion of consumer affairs.
The latest weather forecast.
Analysis of news and current affairs.
It's the only taste we know from birth - sweetness. From China to Africa give a baby a taste of sugar and watch them smile. It lights up our dopamine centres like no other food, by comparison every other taste is one we learn to enjoy. Our craving for sweetness is an evolutionary response to a world where food had to searched for, hunted down and if need be fought over. And nothing was more prized by our ancestors than the sweet taste of sugar, whether it came from fruit, honey or plants.
And it's that evolutionary programming that lies at the root of our relationship with a food stuff that has built empires, enslaved millions, given so much pleasure and caused so much harm.
"Sugar is not love, but it feels like it." Bee Wilson wrote in her most recent book First Bite. She's been fascinated by it most of her life. As someone who as a teenager ping ponged between binges and crazy diets she's hugely aware of the power of sugar on the individual. In this series she looks at the history of this paradoxical food.
by Robin Brooks
A new comedy drama series about the exploits - musical and otherwise - of a string quartet.
All music was played by the Edinburgh Quartet
4/4 was created by Robin Brooks and Sarah Wooley
Directed by Gaynor Macfarlane.
(10/12)
It's the final appearance of the series for Stephen Maddock and Rosalind Miles of the Midlands, and they badly need a win against the Welsh pairing of David Edwards and Myfanwy Alexander to keep themselves from slipping to the bottom of the Round Britain Quiz league table this year.
Tom Sutcliffe asks the programme's trademark convoluted questions, and provides them with helpful discouragement from venturing down too many blind alleys as they attempt to unravel the answers. But the more help he gives them, the fewer points they'll get.
Producer: Paul Bajoria.
The Russian Revolution unleashed a brand of humour that continues to this day. In this two-part series, comedian and Russophile Viv Groskop explores a century of revolutionary comedy and asks how it continues to shape the national psyche.
The series will rediscover comedy of the Revolution: Bolshevik satire, early Communist cartoons and jokes about Lenin, as writers, satirists and comedians recall the jokes and cartoons shared by their parents and grandparents.
Producer: Georgia Catt.
Antibiotics
Brian Cox and Robin Ince are joined by comedian Chris Addison, Chief Medical Officer, Dame Sally Davies, and Professor Martha Clokie to look at the history and future for antibiotics.
Producer: Alexandra Feachem.
Eddie Mair with interviews, context and analysis.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
This week, the Professor of Ignorance John Lloyd and his curator Sally Phillips welcome the exuberant comedian Stephen K. Amos, the small but perfectly informed nanochemist Dr Suze Kundu, and the author of The Island Victoria Hislop.
This week, the Museum's Guest Committee highlight the resilience of Tooting Broadway, the bulletproof qualities of Kevlar and the influence of the Protective Eye.
The show was researched by Mike Turner and QI.
The Production Coordinator was Tamara Shilham.
The Associate Producer was James Harkin.
The Producers were Richard Turner and Anne Miller.
It was a BBC Studios Production.
Toby is overjoyed, and Jim turns detective.
Arts news, interviews and reviews.
The political columnist and broadcaster Steve Richards presents a major series looking back on David Cameron's dramatic years in power, through interviews with high-profile insiders. How did Mr Cameron go from promising not to "bang on about Europe" to being brought down by it? What is the significance of Brexit in his overall record and legacy? We look back on the other seismic events of his leadership - the first peacetime coalition government in nearly a century, the stewardship of the economy in the aftermath of a financial crash, the Scotland independence referendum, the 2015 general election victory against the odds.
In this final part, we explore the record of the coalition years, comparing David Cameron's approach with that of the current Prime Minister, Theresa May, also governing in a hung parliament. We examine other key aspects of the Cameron era such as his relationship with the media - the Murdoch press in particular - and his handling of the Scottish referendum on independence.
The programme then returns to the issue of Europe, tracing the bitter personal and political struggles that emerged during the referendum campaign, and recalling David Cameron's dramatic final days in office.
We conclude with an overall assessment of David Cameron's likely place in history and with reflections on the relevant lessons from the Cameron era for our understanding of the turbulent politics of today.
This programme introduces an interview with Gabby Bertin, Cameron's key media adviser for over a decade. Other contributors in the series include Craig Oliver, Oliver Letwin, Nicky Morgan, George Eustice, Nick Boles, Ed Vaizey, Camilla Cavendish, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Ken Clarke, Nigel Farage, David Blunkett and Vince Cable.
Producer: Leala Padmanabhan.
For nearly two decades, Swedish health professionals have been treating asylum-seeking children who fall into a deeply listless state. They withdraw from the world, refuse to speak, walk and eat - most end up being tube-fed. They are known as, "the apathetic children" in Sweden. More recently this illness has been termed Resignation Syndrome. Experts agree it is children who have experienced deep trauma who are vulnerable. Doctors link the condition to an uncertain migration status. But why, asks Linda Pressly, does it only seem to happen to children in Sweden, and how can they recover?
From the plumbing of ancient Rome, to lead acid batteries, paint, petrol and a dangerous legacy, the metal lead has seen a myriad of uses and abuses over thousands of years. In bullets and poisons it has killed us both quickly and slowly, and yet its malleability, low melting point and resistance to corrosion make it a fantastic material for all kinds of containers and water proofing. And it is key to one of the most commonly used, and ignored, devices on the planet, the car battery.
However it's only recently that the serious impact of lead poisoning on the development of children's brains has come to light.
Uta Frith, Emeritus Professor of Cognitive Development at University College London, who studied the impact of lead poisoning in the 1970s and 80s, journeys with lead from the iron age to the present day delving into the history and scandal associated with this often overlooked element.
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.
The Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk explores the complex layers of father-son relationships through the apparently simple story of a young man apprenticed to a welldigger on the outskirts of Istanbul.
With this vivid image of digging towards the centre of the earth at the heart of the story, he brings together eastern and western myths and legends to look at what is really meant by authority and rebellion. Can anyone ever escape their fate?
Cem Çelik is a "little gentleman", the son of a leftist Istanbul pharmacist whose politics take precedence over parenthood. During one of his father's lengthy and regular disappearances, 16 year-old Cem gives up his holiday job guarding his uncle's orchard and apprentices himself to a master well-digger, Mahmut. They set about digging a well to provide water for a local businessman's factory.
Heraclitus said that truth lies at the bottom of a well. The wells of Pamuk's Turkey are something quite sinister - here, guilt and shame lurk in the darkness, forever threatening to come spewing up into the light. The novel turns on Cem's encounter with the red-haired woman of the title and a subsequent act by the well that stains the rest of his life.
As Cem accepts the warm but irascible Mahmut as a surrogate father, and Mahmut slowly begins to regard Cem with a fatherly affection, the storytelling begins. First Cem listens intently to Mahmut's tales, then is himself invited to speak. Myth and folklore pervade the novel, and throw the events of Cem's life into sharp focus, against the backdrop of the ever expanding 21st century Istanbul.
Written by Orhan Pamuk
Translated by Ekin Oklap
Read by Paul Hilton
Abridged by Jill Waters and Isobel Creed
Producer: Jill Waters
A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4.
Michael Rosen and Dr Laura Wright are back with a new series of Word of Mouth, and appropriately enough they're starting with Hellos. And greetings. Former diplomat Andy Scott has greeted people in more than 60 countries, and he's written a book about his experiences called One Kiss or Two? The origins and psychology of greetings provide a rich subject and by the end of the programme they may all even reach an agreement about how many times to kiss..
Producer Beth O'Dea.
News from Westminster.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
Spiritual reflection to start the day with The Rev Dr Alison Jack of Edinburgh University's School of Divinity.
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
Wildlife artist Jane Smith is captivated by Barnacle geese arriving from the Arctic Tundra and filling the air with their barking yapping sounds and wonderful black and white markings.
Tweet of the Day has captivated the Radio 4 audience with its daily 90 seconds of birdsong. But what of the listener to this avian chorus? In this new series of Tweet of the Day, we bring to the airwaves the conversational voices of those who listen to and are inspired by birds. Building on the previous series, a more informal approach to learning alongside a renewed emphasis on encounter with nature and reflection in our relationship with the natural world.
Producer: Sarah Blunt
Photograph: Whistling Joe.
News and current affairs. Including Yesterday in Parliament, Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
Nothing annoys Eugenia Cheng more than the suggestion that there is no creativity in mathematics. Doing mathematics is not about being a human calculator, she says. She doesn't spend her time multiplying big numbers in her head. She sits in hotel bars drawing (mainly arrows) with a fine quill pen, thinking about how ideas from different areas of mathematics relate to one another and hoping to reveal a unifying, underlying logic to the whole of mathematics. Her area of research, Category Theory, makes algebra seem superficial. And if that makes your head hurt a little, don't worry. Feeling confused is an essential part of doing mathematics. 'You can't make progress without it' Eugenia says. Jim asks Eugenia what drove her to such a high level of abstraction and learns more about her mission to rid the world of maths phobia, by baking.
Producer: Anna Buckley
Photo credit: Paul Crisanti, PhotoGetGo.
The Olympic rower, Helen Glover, speaks to Kriss Akabusi about 'life after gold'.
Helen Glover is one of our most successful athletes. In a life devoted to rowing, she has won a phenomenal 21 Olympic, World and European gold medals. But now that she is considering retirement, a life away from competitive rowing feels as daunting as it is liberating.
In this programme she speaks to Kriss Akabusi MBE, the larger-than-life, multiple medal-winning Olympic, World, Commonwealth and European sprinter and hurdler. Since leaving athletics, Kriss has had a successful career on TV and in motivational speaking. He and Helen talk about the challenges in finding a new role and identity, and he encourages her to think about what she would like to do next..
Producer: Karen Gregor.
It is 1999 and Geert Mak, the Dutch journalist, retraces the historic journey Lenin made in 1917 from Zurich to Petrograd by way of Stockholm and Helsinki. Nicholas Farrell reads.
As the new millennium was about to dawn Geert Mak was commissioned by the newspaper he worked for to write a series of articles assessing the shape Europe was in and the legacy left behind by the twentieth century's turbulent history. Mak travelled back and forth all over the continent, painting a lively and engaging portrait of the places he visited and the people he encountered who shared their stories with him.
Abridged by Rowan Routh
Produced by Elizabeth Allard.
Programme that offers a female perspective on the world.
Potent and playful drama set in a near-future in which doctors can no longer prescribe antibiotics. By award-winning dramatist, Oliver Emanuel.
Sarah is 10 years old. She's not allowed to play outside. But when her brother takes her into some nearby woods, an everyday scratch turns her whole family's world upside down.
The Truth About Hawaii was developed through Wellcome Experimental Stories in consultation with Prof. Joanna Coast (Professor in the Economics of Health & Care, Bristol Medical School, University of Bristol) and Dr Adam Roberts (Senior Lecturer in Antimicrobial Chemotherapy and Resistance at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine).
Consultants: Prof Joanna Coast and Dr Adam Roberts
Director: Kirsty Williams.
What links trade unions with urine, Syria with semiconductors, and bones and bombs? The answer is phosphorus, UCL Inorganic Chemistry Professor Andrea Sella, who is himself engaged in researching new phosphorus based materials, looks at this often rather frightening element.
We hear how the health impact of phosphorus on a group of Irish girls changed politics, how the element has been used as a weapon of war and we peer into the future, as chemists break new ground on what might be possible with phosphorus and nanotechnology.
Cathy FitzGerald invites you to discover new details in old masterpieces, using your phone, tablet or computer.
Episode two takes us to the Brooklyn docks in New York on an icy day in 1912. That's the setting for George Bellows' Men of the Docks, an extraordinary masterpiece from the collection of The National Gallery, London. The picture shows longshoremen waiting for work in the steely shadow of a cargo ship. Get up close and see how Bellows creates his cold and misty world - working quickly and fearlessly and using brushes, knives, and even his fingers, to manipulate the paint.
Cathy FitzGerald hears why the artist wanted his masterpiece on display to greet the arrival in New York of the greatest ship in the world - The Titanic.
Interviewees: Chris Riopelle, Melissa Wolfe, Rob Snyder, James Heard
Producer and Presenter: Cathy FitzGerald
A White Stiletto production for BBC Radio 4
George Bellows, Men of the Docks (c) The National Gallery, London. Bought with a grant from the American Friends of the National Gallery, made possible by Sir Paul Getty's fund, and by a donation from Mark Getty KBE, 2014.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
After tracking the narrative of the maze through history, Chris turns to the word maze that is the riddle. With the help of Anglo-Saxon specialist Dr Katie Lowe and access to the Exeter Riddle book he explores the way language and its rich supply of ambiguity has provoked playfulness from the Thebans to the people conjuring up riddles for Christmas crackers.
Consumer phone-in.
The latest weather forecast.
Analysis of news and current affairs.
Bee Wilson explores Britain's relationship with sugar. First arriving here with returning crusaders it wasn't until the industrial revolution that it became a key part of our diet.
Roy Hudd and Christopher Green discover the perils of applause in a comic conversation at Wilton's Music Hall, where they tell the lost story of music hall idol Fred Barnes.
Fred was a queer icon and music hall star 'in the Greek style', who topped the national circuit in 1911. At the height of his fame, he would be seen about town in his trademark white suit and hat, with a pet marmoset on his shoulder.
But Fred's tragic family history, sudden success and enormous wealth were too hard to handle. His addictions and flamboyant offstage adventures proved his ruin, and after being branded 'a menace to His Majesty's fighting forces', Fred was banned from the stage by his employers. He sold his memoir 'How Success Ruined Me' to the papers, but was last seen in Southend pubs, singing any song for a drink - now with a chicken perched on his shoulder.
Chris and Roy play out (and argue about, and rewrite) the vital moments from Fred's private and public life, while reflecting frankly on the perils of applause, addiction and identity in their own performing lives - with jokes, chat and songs.
Words and music by Christopher Green
Christopher Green ..... himself
Roy Hudd ..... himself
Matthew Todd ..... himself
with John Orchard on the piano
Produced and directed by Jonquil Panting.
Helen Castor and her guests take us back to moments in the past when social and economic change conspired to produce the historical forerunners of two of today's most pressing issues - technological change and housing.
Tom Holland visits a fruit-packing factory in Kent where, today, much of the work is done by robots. Their introduction hasn't threatened any jobs yet but, half an hour away, are the villages where, in 1830, rural farmworkers raged against new threshing machines they feared would take away much-needed work in the winter months. Professor Carl Griffin from the University of Sussex explains how the mythical Captain Swing shook the government of the day and terrified landowners in a series of machine-wrecking riots that swept South East England, Wiltshire and East Anglia.
Britain's housing issues have kick-started a boom in a type of home that came to the rescue in the dark days after World War Two, when prefabs offered accommodation for those who were bombed or living in slums. Thanks to a certain Swedish company, we all know about flat-packed furniture but, back in the late 1940s, it was Swedish flat-packed houses that were causing a stir. Architectural writer Jonathan Glancey gives us the low-down on a house that changed lives and is, in some places, still standing.
Producer: Nick Patrick
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.
Vocal coaches Gillyanne Kayes and Jeremy Fisher, authors of This is a Voice, give Michael Rosen a workout. They get him to read against natural pitch and intonation, which proves nearly impossible, and make him match his speaking pace to a walk around the studio. What we do with our consonants and our ability with a tongue twister also turn out to play a part in the ways in which we speak.
Producer Beth O'Dea.
Actor and broadcaster Liza Tarbuck chooses the extraordinary life of the Serbian-American scientist Nikola Tesla whose inventions were ahead of his time. He founded the Tesla Electric Light Company and was responsible for the introduction of the AC current in America, seeing off competition from his rival and former hero Thomas Edison.
The fortunes and misfortunes of this brilliant and eccentric man who died virtually penniless in a New York hotel room are discussed by Liza and Matthew with the help of Professor Iwan Morus from Aberystwyth University.
Producer: Maggie Ayre.
Eddie Mair with interviews, context and analysis.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
In this series, Simon Evans examines the concept of the 'free lunch' and shines a light on new ways of making money in the 21st century.
There are many apparently 'free' economic models operating today but what are they and how do they work? Across four episodes Simon and his team will explore Social Media and how we often appear to enjoy it for free. Later on Simon examines the perhaps unfair belief that some multinationals appear to operate tax free. And what about the billions being given away 'for free' by a new breed of philanthro-capitalists? Finally, what can we learn from these operating models to help that beloved yet creaking institution, the NHS, which is also apparently free at the point of use?
As a wise person once said, there's no such thing as a free lunch. If you're not paying, you're the product.
Also featuring Financial Times economics god Tim Harford and Timandra Harkness, author of 'Big Data: Does Size Matter?' with contributions from the Queen of MoneyWeek, Merryn Somerset Webb.
Episode 2: Tax Free
Most individuals who earn money or businesses that make a profit are required to cheerfully wave off substantial proportions of their money to the public good. But as soon as those individuals or corporations achieve a certain critical mass, they just sort of drift off to some mythical island whose co-ordinates are unknown to common folk, where they erect a giant tax-repellant rainbow over them to protect them from the tiresome responsibility of paying their way. Should we in fact find this as grossly infuriating as it appears to be?
Starring: Simon Evans with Tim Harford and Timandra Harkness
Researcher: Andrew Wright
Production coordinator: Toby Tilling
Producer: Richard Morris
A BBC Studios Production.
Peggy says goodbye, and Ruth is won over.
Arts news, interviews and reviews.
There are more than half a million people living in sheltered housing, accommodation that offers additional support to the elderly, disabled or vulnerable.
But currently, in England, these schemes aren't overseen by the independent regulator of health and social care the Care Quality Commission and councils aren't required to record cases of abuse and neglect in sheltered housing.
It is leading to growing concerns that many vulnerable residents are hidden away and left to suffer without the authorities ever knowing there is a problem.
With a move to care being provided via direct payments, its likely the demand for sheltered accommodation will grow. But there's concern that new developments are being shelved due to ongoing uncertainty over funding.
File on 4 speaks to people who have been taken advantage of while living in sheltered accommodation, who feel they were sitting ducks for people looking to prey on the vulnerable.
And when things do go wrong, with an absence of regulation are there sufficient mechanisms to prevent the same things from happening again?
Reporter: Brigitte Scheffer
Producer: Ben Robinson
Editor: Gail Champion.
News, views and information for people who are blind or partially sighted.
Dr Mark Porter presents a series on health issues.
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.
The Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk explores the complex layers of father-son relationships through the apparently simple story of a young man apprenticed to a welldigger on the outskirts of Istanbul.
As the story of the well digging proceeds, he brings together eastern and western myths and legends to look at what is really meant by authority and rebellion. Can anyone ever escape their fate?
Cem Çelik is a "little gentleman", the son of a leftist Istanbul pharmacist whose politics take precedence over parenthood. During one of his father's lengthy and regular disappearances, 16 year-old Cem gives up his holiday job guarding his uncle's orchard and apprentices himself to a master well-digger, Mahmut. They set about digging a well to provide water for a local businessman's factory.
The novel turns on Cem's encounter with the red-haired woman of the title and a subsequent act by the well that stains the rest of his life.
As Cem accepts the warm but irascible Mahmut as a surrogate father, and Mahmut slowly begins to regard Cem with a fatherly affection, the storytelling begins. First Cem listens intently to Mahmut's tales, then is himself invited to speak. Myth and folklore pervade the novel, and throw the events of Cem's life into sharp focus, accompanied by the sultry backdrop of contemporary Istanbul.
Written by Orhan Pamuk
Translated by Ekin Oklap
Read by Paul Hilton
Abridged by Jill Waters and Isobel Creed
Producer: Jill Waters
A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4.
Sean Curran reports from Westminster.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
Spiritual reflection to start the day with The Rev Dr Alison Jack of Edinburgh University's School of Divinity.
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
Wildlife artist Jane Smith listens in the fog to a Great Northern Diver and is drawn towards the strange eerie call of the bird.
Tweet of the Day has captivated the Radio 4 audience with its daily 90 seconds of birdsong. But what of the listener to this avian chorus? In this new series of Tweet of the Day, we bring to the airwaves the conversational voices of those who listen to and are inspired by birds. Building on the previous series, a more informal approach to learning alongside a renewed emphasis on encounter with nature and reflection in our relationship with the natural world.
Producer: Sarah Blunt
Photograph: Della Lack.
Morning news and current affairs. Including Yesterday in Parliament, Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
How Kraftwerk's classic album Computer World has changed people's lives. Life, love and an electronic future as experienced through the music of this pioneering German band.
Producer: Melvin Rickarby.
Bettany Hughes considers changing ideas about technology at an archaeological dig, in mythology, at an electrical shop and in the future.
This surprising and invigorating history of the most influential ideas in the story of civilisation, has been described as 'a double espresso shot of philosophy, history, science and the arts'. Award-winning historian and broadcaster Bettany Hughes begins each programme with the first, extant evidence of a single word-idea in Ancient Greek culture and travels both forwards and backwards in time, investigating how these ideas have been moulded by history, and how they've shaped us.
In this programme Bettany explores technology with experts from the humanities and sciences, people who see these big philosophical ideas playing out in their own lives including philosopher Angie Hobbs, anthropologist Deborah Ruscillo, and historian Hannah Dawson and Yuval Harari author of Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow. Bettany reveals where these ideas were born and then explores the street markets, churches, offices and homes where they continue to morph and influence our daily lives, including a newly excavated Bronze Age Palace in Southern Greece.
Other ideas in this series are character, harmony, narcissism and hubris. Ideas examined previously include idea, desire, agony, fame, justice, wisdom, comedy, liberty, peace, hospitality, virtue, psyche, charisma, irony and nemesis.
Readings: Sean Baker
Series Producer: Dixi Stewart.
It's 1999 and the Dutch journalist Geert Mak, is travelling through Europe reflecting on the history of the last 100 years. Today, he takes in St Petersburg's faded grandeur and looks back to the moment in 1917 when Lenin first arrived in the city when it was called Petrograd. Nicholas Farrell reads.
As the new millennium was about to dawn Geert Mak was commissioned by the newspaper he worked for to write a series of articles assessing the shape Europe was in and the legacy left behind by the twentieth century's turbulent history. Mak travelled back and forth all over the continent, painting a lively and engaging portrait of the places he visited and the people he encountered who shared their stories with him.
Abridged by Rowan Routh
Produced by Elizabeth Allard.
Programme that offers a female perspective on the world.
Potent and playful drama set in a near-future in which doctors can no longer prescribe antibiotics. By award-winning dramatist, Oliver Emanuel.
Sarah is 10 years old. She's not allowed to play outside. But when her brother takes her into some nearby woods, an everyday scratch gets infected and turns her whole family's world upside down.
Now Sarah's in an isolated room in hospital. Her family and medical team are hoping this will stop the infection.
Whilst Sarah's imagination drifts to Hawaii, her parents are left to make an unbearable choice for their daughter.
The Truth About Hawaii was developed through Wellcome Experimental Stories in consultation with Prof. Joanna Coast (Professor in the Economics of Health & Care, Bristol Medical School, University of Bristol) and Dr Adam Roberts (Senior Lecturer in Antimicrobial Chemotherapy and Resistance at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine).
Consultants: Prof Joanna Coast and Dr Adam Roberts
Director: Kirsty Williams.
Aspiring footballers are clear they will always look after their mothers and not let success change them. Fi Glover presents another conversation in the series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.
Producer: Marya Burgess.
Series 11 of the show where one week's interviewee becomes the next week's interviewer. The first episode of Chain Reaction was broadcast on BBC Radio Five in 1991 when John Cleese was the first comedian in the hot seat. Now, 25 years on, a new series sees another raft of the world's best-loved comedians and entertainment personalities talking to each other about their lives and work. This week, the writer and presenter Victoria Coren-Mitchell asks the questions to comedian, writer and erstwhile News Quiz chair, Sandi Toksvig.
Victoria Coren-Mitchell is a columnist for The Observer and GQ amongst other publications and has presented myriad documentaries on subjects as varied as The Bohemians and Mary Poppins. As well as a prolific writing career, she keeps order on the popular and fiendishly difficult television quiz, 'Only Connect'. She is also well-known as one of the world's top professional poker players and has achieved huge success at the card table.
Sandi Toksvig is a prolific writer and broadcaster who chaired the News Quiz on BBC Radio 4 for nine years and over 220 episodes. In 2015 she was a founder member of the Women's Equality Party and, later that year was announced as the new host of the long-running BBC television series, QI.
In this installment of the hostless chat show, Victoria talks to Sandi about her long career in broadcasting, her recent foray into politics and gets some advice on how to behave when you're staying at the Icelandic Prime Minister's house.
Producer: Richard Morris
A BBC Radio Comedy Production.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
The third strand of Chris Maslanka's narrative history of Puzzling tackles the territory that brings a sizeable proportion of the population out in a cold sweat. However, he's adamant that there is, and always has been creation and, more to the point recreation in Maths. In the company of the celebrated Mathematician and fellow puzzler David Singmaster he describes the evidence of that over the centuries and together they argue that to teach Maths without the use of puzzles and the inherent satisfaction of their solution is to diminish the language itself.
Consumer affairs programme.
The latest weather forecast.
Analysis of news and current affairs.
Since earliest times, slaves have toiled to satisfy our craving for sugar. Bee Wilson explores how it was Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries that industrialised the horror.
By Shon Dale-Jones
Shon embarks on an epic quest to replace his mother's broken Royal Worcester Porcelain Company figure of the Duke of Wellington on horseback.
In 1974 Shon Dale-Jones's father invested in a Royal Worcester porcelain figure of The Duke of Wellington on horseback. He kept the figure, wrapped in sponge, in a big box, under his bed. After he died, Shon's mother decided to take the figure out and display it on the table in the bay window. But when the figure gets broken, Shon and his mum realise the true significance of The Duke.
Shon Dale-Jones has performed his one-man solo show, The Duke, across the world - from Abergavenny to Adelaide. Funny, poignant and playful, The Duke weaves together the tragi-comic fate of a family heirloom, the quandary of a script writer stretching his integrity, and an unfolding refugee crisis. Blending fantasy and reality, The Duke gently challenges our priorities in a world full of crisis.
Written and performed by Shon Dale-Jones
Directed by James Robinson
A BBC Cymru-Wales Production.
Financial phone-in.
Sociological discussion programme, presented by Laurie Taylor.
Topical programme about the fast-changing media world.
Eddie Mair with interviews, context and analysis.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Matthew Holness stars as Knut Ångström, a brooding, alcoholic, maverick Swedish detective from the tough streets of Oslo, in a Scandinavian detective yarn adapted from the bestselling Ångström trilogy by Martin English (writing as Bjorgen Swedenssonsson).
Following the death of his wife, Ångström is posted to the Njalsland peninsula where he becomes embroiled in a labyrinthine murder (or possibly not-murder) case which bears an eerie similarity to the Askeladden killings - a case from his distant past.
In episode 3, a clue left by the killer leads Ångström and Mina to the Schmilsson novelty troll factory, where Ångström's brooding threatens to get out of control.
A new comedy series by writers of the Ladybird Books for Grown Ups, Charlie Brooker's ...Wipe, That Mitchell and Webb Look and A Touch of Cloth.
Written by Joel Morris and Jason Hazeley
Cast: Matthew Holness, Nadia Kamil, Simon Kane, Kevin Eldon, Anna Crilly, David Reed, Freya Parker.
Production Co-ordinator: Tamara Shilham
Produced by Lyndsay Fenner
A BBC Studios production.
Justin issues a warning, and Lilian tries to make amends.
Arts news, interviews and reviews.
Anne McElvoy takes guests and listeners alike to the edges of their certainties. She brings together two figures who are active in the public debate on opposed sides of a political question.
Anne is joined by conflict resolution specialist Gabrielle Rifkind to lead the two guests through a series of structured conversations to encourage them to air the personal experiences, instincts and feelings that underpin their public positions. Together Anne and Gabrielle invite guests to do something that doesn't often feature in debates: really listen to each other.
Joining Anne and Gabrielle this week, to discuss whether direct action, physical force and even violence can be politically justified are Timothy Stanley, author and columnist for the Daily Telegraph, and Mark Serwotka, General Secretary of the Public and Commercial Services Union.
Producer: Phil Tinline.
Talks with a personal dimension.
In the second part of this series, the journalist and author Matthew Syed continues his investigation of how and why individuals and organisations learn from their mistakes or fail to do so. In this programme he looks at the role of entrepreneurship and education.
Producer: Martin Rosenbaum.
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.
The Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk explores the complex layers of father-son relationships through the apparently simple story of a young man apprenticed to a welldigger on the outskirts of Istanbul.
With this vivid image of digging towards the centre of the earth at the heart of the story, he brings together eastern and western myths and legends to look at what is really meant by authority and rebellion. Can anyone ever escape their fate?
Cem Çelik is a "little gentleman", the son of a leftist Istanbul pharmacist whose politics take precedence over parenthood. During one of his father's lengthy and regular disappearances, 16 year-old Cem gives up his holiday job guarding his uncle's orchard and apprentices himself to a master well-digger, Mahmut. They set about digging a well to provide water for a local businessman's factory.
The novel turns on Cem's encounter with the red-haired woman of the title and a subsequent act by the well that stains the rest of his life.
As Cem accepts the warm but irascible Mahmut as a surrogate father, and Mahmut slowly begins to regard Cem with a fatherly affection, the storytelling begins. First Cem listens intently to Mahmut's tales, then is himself invited to speak. Myth and folklore pervade the novel, and throw the events of Cem's life into sharp focus against the backdrop of contemporary Istanbul.
Written by Orhan Pamuk
Translated by Ekin Oklap
Read by Paul Hilton
Abridged by Jill Waters and Isobel Creed
Producer: Jill Waters
A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4.
Tez Ilyas returns for a second series of TEZ Talks.
In this first episode Tez talks about moving back home to Blackburn and discusses class differences and social mobility before announcing his candidacy for Prime Minister.
Written and performed by... Tez Ilyas
Produced by... Carl Cooper
This is a BBC Studios Production.
Rhys James Is... 'Irresistible'
Comedian Rhys James explores different aspects of himself through live stand up, spoken word poetry and interview clips. In this episode Rhys examines his relationships and reluctantly speaks to Carmen, who is a girl he had a crush on in school.
Written and performed by... Rhys James
Carmen... Carmen
Music by... Steve Dunne
Sound by... David Thomas
Produced by... Carl Cooper
This is a BBC Studios production.
Sean Curran reports from Westminster.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
Spiritual reflection to start the day with The Rev Dr Alison Jack of Edinburgh University's School of Divinity.
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
Wildlife artist Jane Smith is captivated by a group of Ringed Plovers and their ability to seemingly appear and disappear before her eyes so good is their colouring at camouflaging them, but their calls give them away!
Tweet of the Day has captivated the Radio 4 audience with its daily 90 seconds of birdsong. But what of the listener to this avian chorus? In this new series of Tweet of the Day, we bring to the airwaves the conversational voices of those who listen to and are inspired by birds. Building on the previous series, a more informal approach to learning alongside a renewed emphasis on encounter with nature and reflection in our relationship with the natural world.
Producer: Sarah Blunt
Photograph: Denis Eagling.
Morning news and current affairs. Including Yesterday in Parliament, Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas developed by Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43BC) to support and reinvigorate the Roman Republic when, as it transpired, it was in its final years, threatened by civil wars, the rule of Julius Caesar and the triumvirates that followed. As Consul he had suppressed a revolt by Catiline, putting the conspirators to death summarily as he believed the Republic was in danger and that this danger trumped the right to a fair trial, a decision that rebounded on him. While in exile he began works on duty, laws, the orator and the republic. Although left out of the conspiracy to kill Caesar, he later defended that murder in the interests of the Republic, only to be murdered himself soon after.
With
Melissa Lane
Catherine Steel
and
Valentina Arena
Producer: Simon Tillotson.
It's 1999 and the Dutch journalist Geert Mak, is travelling through Europe reflecting on the history of the last 100 years. Today, Mak takes in Kiev, Odessa and Istanbul where the past haunts the present, and he considers what it means to be a European. Nicholas Farrell reads.
As the new millennium was about to dawn Geert Mak was commissioned by the newspaper he worked for to write a series of articles assessing the shape Europe was in and the legacy left behind by the twentieth century's turbulent history. Mak travelled back and forth all over the continent, painting a lively and engaging portrait of the places he visited and the people he encountered who shared their stories with him.
Abridged by Rowan Routh
Produced by Elizabeth Allard.
Programme that offers a female perspective on the world.
Potent and playful drama set in a near-future in which doctors can no longer prescribe antibiotics. By award-winning dramatist, Oliver Emanuel.
Sarah is 10 years old. She's scratched her knee and developed an infection.
Now Sarah's in an isolated room in hospital. Her family and medical team are hoping this will stop the infection, but they're running out of time.
Whilst Sarah's imagination drifts to Hawaii, her mother tries to hunt down the antibiotic of last resort.
The Truth About Hawaii was developed through Wellcome Experimental Stories in consultation with Prof. Joanna Coast (Professor in the Economics of Health & Care, Bristol Medical School, University of Bristol) and Dr Adam Roberts (Senior Lecturer in Antimicrobial Chemotherapy and Resistance at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine).
Consultants: Prof Joanna Coast and Dr Adam Roberts
Director: Kirsty Williams.
Reports from writers and journalists around the world. Presented by Kate Adie.
In the middle of the greatest national crisis since the Civil War the American Government looked to the arts to both help lift the national spirit & spread the message of the New Deal. The writer Marybeth Hamilton begins her journey through this remarkable but short lived experiment with the story of fine arts.Collectively, it was hoped, Americans could renew democracy & create a better tomorrow through participation & exposure to music, art & theater. The W.P.A. was an extension of Federal Relief, meaningful work for those that needed it and qualified for it. Which meant the talents of thousands of unemployed actors, musicians, writers and artists across the nation could be put to use in the betterment of all. On the government payroll and under the auspices of Federal One, a host of talents from Jackson Pollock to Arthur Miller, Orson Welles to Zora Neale Hurston helped democratize art. For the people, by the people with the people.
Across the nation, artists painted epic murals in small towns and vast cities that valorized work and workers or America's democratic past. Community art centres brought artists, students and the public together to learn, experiment and explore the possibilities of art for all. You could find art going on at subway stations, sewerage works and public schools. A hospital, school or public institution could loan a painting for a few dollars. All of this was to provide employment in a time of crisis and renew American democracy but it raised deep questions about the role of art and who got to own it or see it. For its many critics programmes like Federal One were fostered radicalism and dissent - subverting a nation. But for the many touched by those days it was an unforgettable experiment in art and democracy.
Producer Mark Burman.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
While Chris Maslanka's series about the history of Puzzling has been constructed from a series of puzzling strands reaching across the centuries this programme concentrates on just one century, the 19th, and the rise of a leisured class in Western Europe and the United States which resulted, amongst many other things, in the inexorable rise of the printed puzzle. There was also a focal figure in the form of Lewis Carroll. Chris discusses his importance with the graph theorist Robin Wilson as well as contemplating the Dodo in Oxford's Natural History Museum, the creature that inspired Carroll and prompts Chris to reflect on the way Puzzles can sometimes become extinct.
Consumer affairs programme.
The latest weather forecast.
Analysis of news and current affairs.
From the American war of independence to the Cuban missile crisis sugar has had an unexpectedly central role in conflicts that have shaped the world.
Drama by Abigail Youngman based on the true story of probably the worst (and coldest) wedding night ever. In 1739 Empress Anna Ivanovna had an ice palace built on the River Neva in St Petersburg. An exceptionally cruel woman and inveterate match-maker, she arranged the marriage of two of her jesters: Prince Mikhail Golitsyn and Avdotya Buzhenina, a hunchback peasant woman. After a lavish ceremony, the happy couple were forced to spend the night in the ice palace. This is the story of how two very different characters attempt to survive extreme adversity.
Cast:
Mikhail / Old Mikhail.....................Karl Theobald
Avdotya.............................................Mandeep Dhillon
Traveller / Grigori Petrovich..........John MacKay
Writer....................................................Abigail Youngman
Studio Manager................................Iain Hunter
Director................................................Alison Crawford
With thanks to Yelena Alexander for guidance on Russian language and culture.
The Vikings arrived on British shores in the 8th century, and their image is deeply engrained in the British consciousness. We think of them as fierce raiders, who travelled in longboats and wore horned helmets. The helmets were a myth, but what were these arrivals from Scandinavia really like, and did they deserve their ferocious reputation? In this programme, medieval historian Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough travels to Lewis in the Outer Hebrides to explore the Norse traces which can still be found on the island today. She meets an archaeologist who takes her to her the foundations of what could have been a Norse house, a local historian who tells her about the clues still to be found in the island's place-names, and a crofter who shows her a Viking comb he stumbled upon one day while out walking. She also finds out more about some of the most famous Viking artefacts, the Lewis chessmen - a group of 12th century chess pieces made of ivory and whalebone, found in a sand dune on the island in 1831.
Presented by Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough and produced by Emma Campbell.
With Francine Stock.
Actor/director Julie Delpy explains to Francine Stock why she thinks there are still only a few female directors and why, in her experience, some male producers believe that women are too emotional to be in charge of a film production.
Adam Rutherford investigates the news in science and science in the news.
Eddie Mair with interviews, context and analysis.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
John Finnemore presents another half hour of his award-winning sketch show, joined by his regular ensemble cast of Margaret Cabourn-Smith, Simon Kane, Lawry Lewin and Carrie Quinlan.
This week, an established Radio 4 programme gets a brand new theme tune, and we get a tutorial to the world's most complicated game. Also, Patsy Straightwoman asks someone very old to tell her more and, well... Since you ask John for a 'howdy, partner'...
John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme was described by The Radio Times as "the best sketch show in years, on television or radio", and by The Daily Telegraph as "funny enough to make even the surliest cat laugh". Already the winner of a BBC Audio Drama Award and a Radio Academy Silver Award, John was named the 2016 Radio Broadcaster of the Year by the Broadcasting Press Guild for his work on Souvenir Programme.
Written by & starring ... John Finnemore
Cast ... Margaret Cabourn-Smith
Cast ... Simon Kane
Cast ... Lawry Lewin
Cast ... Carrie Quinlan
Original music composed by ... Susannah Pearse
Piano ... Susannah Pearse
Cello ... Sally Stares
Production Coordinator ... Beverly Tagg
Producer ... Ed Morrish
A BBC Studios production.
Adam is furious, and Lexi faces some difficult choices.
Arts news, interviews and reviews.
Series looking at important issues in the news. Presented by David Aaronovitch.
Many fees and charges in the investment industry - which, among other things, manages vast pension fund wealth - have been hidden for decades. Lesley Curwen meets the transparency "detectives" intent on bringing reform to a sector that has long shunned it. She asks why the investment industry has been so slow to embrace change and explores the barriers that might still lie ahead. How much money has been unnecessarily spent and how might more transparency alter the shape and structure of the industry? She also hears the stories of the pioneers who are spearheading this new approach. How difficult has the process been for them?
Producer: Rosamund Jones.
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.
The Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk explores the complex layers of father-son relationships through the apparently simple story of a young man apprenticed to a welldigger on the outskirts of Istanbul.
As the story of the well digging proceeds, he brings together eastern and western myths and legends to look at what is really meant by authority and rebellion. Can anyone ever escape their fate?
Cem Çelik is a "little gentleman", the son of a leftist Istanbul pharmacist whose politics take precedence over parenthood. During one of his father's lengthy and regular disappearances, 16 year-old Cem gives up his holiday job guarding his uncle's orchard and apprentices himself to a master well-digger, Mahmut. They set about digging a well to provide water for a local businessman's factory.
The novel turns on Cem's encounter with the red-haired woman of the title and a subsequent act by the well that stains the rest of his life.
As Cem accepts the warm but irascible Mahmut as a surrogate father, and Mahmut slowly begins to regard Cem with a fatherly affection, the storytelling begins. First Cem listens intently to Mahmut's tales, then is himself invited to speak. Myth and folklore pervade the novel, and throw the events of Cem's life into sharp focus, accompanied by the sultry backdrop of contemporary Istanbul.
Written by Orhan Pamuk
Translated by Ekin Oklap
Read by Paul Hilton
Abridged by Jill Waters and Isobel Creed
Producer: Jill Waters
A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4.
In this nicely-furnished affordable programme with very attractive views, Marcus Brigstocke decides to solve the housing crisis. He'll also be building a basement under the studio and knocking down a party wall he shares with The Archers.
With him on the show are stay-at-home twenty-somethings Margaret Cabourn-Smith ("Miranda"), William Andrews ("Sorry I've Got No Head") and Tom Crowley, all of whom should really have fled the nest by now.
Written by Marcus Brigstocke, Jeremy Salsby, Toby Davies, Nick Doody, Steve Punt and Dan Tetsell
Produced by David Tyler
A Pozzitive production for BBC Radio 4.
Sean Curran reports from Westminster.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4. Followed by Weather.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest shipping forecast.
The latest news from BBC Radio 4.
Spiritual reflection to start the day with The Rev Dr Alison Jack of Edinburgh University's School of Divinity.
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
Wildlife artist Jane Smith describes her excitement at hearing the song of the whitethroat heralding his return to her garden every year.
Tweet of the Day has captivated the Radio 4 audience with its daily 90 seconds of birdsong. But what of the listener to this avian chorus? In this new series of Tweet of the Day, we bring to the airwaves the conversational voices of those who listen to and are inspired by birds. Building on the previous series, a more informal approach to learning alongside a renewed emphasis on encounter with nature and reflection in our relationship with the natural world.
Producer: Sarah Blunt
Photograph: Dave Bushell.
Morning news and current affairs. Including Yesterday in Parliament, Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
It's 1999 and the Dutch journalist Geert Mak is travelling through Europe reflecting on the history of the last 100 years and it's legacy. Today, he meets a famous cosmonaut and looks at the fall out from the demise of the Soviet Union. To conclude Mak has written a new epilogue bringing his reflections on the continent up to date. Nicholas Farrell reads.
Abridged by Rowan Routh
Produced by Elizabeth Allard.
Programme that offers a female perspective on the world.
Potent and playful drama set in a near-future in which doctors can no longer prescribe antibiotics. By award-winning dramatist, Oliver Emanuel.
Sarah is 10 years old. She's scratched her knee and developed an infection.
Whilst her family prepare for an unexpected future, Sarah's imagination takes her to Hawaii where she's about to meet the king of rock and roll.
The Truth About Hawaii was developed through Wellcome Experimental Stories in consultation with Prof. Joanna Coast (Professor in the Economics of Health & Care, Bristol Medical School, University of Bristol) and Dr Adam Roberts (Senior Lecturer in Antimicrobial Chemotherapy and Resistance at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine).
Consultants: Prof Joanna Coast and Dr Adam Roberts
Director: Kirsty Williams.
The brain - the final frontier. Radio 4 is setting out on an exploration of the creative mind.
Gerald Scarfe's drawings have intrigued and alarmed for more than fifty years but where do his ideas come from? Professor Vincent Walsh of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience has a theory he wants to pursue. Vincent is an expert in the workings of the visual brain; he thinks that two specific areas may be talking to each other in an unexpected way, resulting in recognisable faces being mixed up with recognisable objects, hence Mrs Thatcher as an axe, a handbag, and even a shark.
Now, cartoonist and neuroscientist are going to meet. "I for one would be fascinated to know what's going on in my brain - please pursue this," says Gerald Scarfe.
The producer in Bristol is Miles Warde.
Comedy series by Katherine Jakeways about four generations of women living under one roof.
Hetty's trying to talk Maggie out of lunch with an old friend who Maggie doesn't actually like. Meanwhile Jen's work placement isn't going entirely to plan and Emily's getting in a muddle.
All Those Women explores familial relationships, ageing, marriages - it's about life and love and things not turning out quite the way that you'd expected them to. Every week we join Hetty, Maggie, Jen and Emily as they struggle to resolve their own problems, and support one another.
Written by KATHERINE JAKEWAYS
Producer Alexandra Smith
A BBC Studios Production.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
Of all the puzzles that burden the newsagent's shelves it's the Grid Puzzles that dominate. In the final programme of his series on the history of Puzzling Chris Maslanka takes a long hard look at the two across, blank a, blank i, blank a, blank i, blank (fascinating!) world of grids from Sudoku to the Cryptic crossword. He talks to Don Manley about the appeal of the shapes and restrictions of the grid and the language of the cryptic clue. They discuss the grid puzzle's future, future dimensions and how they thrive and survive in the digital age.
Producer: Tom Alban.
Consumer news and issues.
The latest weather forecast.
Analysis of news and current affairs.
Bee Wilson explores our current anxiety over sugar, which first arrived in Britain as a medicine - a far cry from the public enemy status it has acquired today.
by Al Smith
Scientific Advisor ...... Dr Claas Kirchhelle
Director ..... Sally Avens
With increasing numbers of infections becoming drug resistant Al Smith's dystopian play takes a step into the near future.
Anna is a Doctor working in infectious diseases and is forced everyday to help choose whether to treat a patient or not. But what does it do to both you and your patient when your judgement is wrong?
Culture was developed through the Wellcome Trust Experimental Stories scheme.
Horticultural panel programme.
A continuity announcer veers drastically off course during a live broadcast of The Shipping Forecast.
Written and read by Eley Williams, whose writing is "elegantly droll without the kind of hipster quirkiness that makes me want to hurl books at the wall." (Sarah Perry, author of The Essex Serpent).
Produced by Becky Ripley.
Obituary series, analysing and celebrating the life stories of people who have recently died.
Investigating the numbers in the news.
A father and son reflect on whether hair colour dictates personality. Fi Glover presents another conversation in the series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.
Producer: Marya Burgess.
Eddie Mair with interviews, context and analysis.
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
News Quiz, News Quiz, read all about it. Andy Hamilton, Angela Barnes and Fern Brady are amongst Miles' guests this week.
Brian faces the consequences, and Bert has some wise words.
News, reviews and interviews from the worlds of art, literature, film and music.
Jonathan Dimbleby presents political debate from the University of Chester's Molloy Hall with a panel including: the Scottish National Party MP Hannah Bardell , Andrew Gwynne MP who's Shadow Secretary of State for Communities & Local Government and also the National Campaign Coordinator for the Labour Party, and the record producer and entrepreneur Pete Waterman who is also a member of the Cheshire and Warrington Local Enterprise Partnership and is currently Deputy of the Local Transport Body.
A weekly reflection on a topical issue.
What makes an ex-convict renounce a life of crime? With staggering levels of re-offending, this is a vital question for our criminal justice system. One little-known radio programme has been providing some answers, through some powerful and intimate personal stories. "Outside In" is a collaboration between the BBC and National Prison Radio, presented by former prisoners. It focusses on the stories of ex-criminals who have turned their lives around. Sitting in the studio and talking to fellow ex-cons, they reveal themselves in a way that is rarely heard elsewhere. They talk about the turning points when they decided to resist returning to their old ways, sometimes after several drearily repetitive spells inside. Often the real change is developing a sense of self-worth. For a lifetime they have been told they are worth nothing. To go straight, they have to believe they are worth something.
Outside In presenter Hilary introduces some of the most powerful moments from the programme. He talks to Andrew Wilkie from National Prison Radio who explains why hearing these stories in cells across the country is helping to change minds. And we hear from some of the talented former prisoners who have performed on the programme - singing and rapping with a fierce conviction.
Producer: Shabnam Grewal.
In-depth reporting and analysis from a global perspective.
The Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk explores the complex layers of father-son relationships through the apparently simple story of a young man apprenticed to a welldigger on the outskirts of Istanbul.
As the story of the well digging proceeds, he brings together eastern and western myths and legends to look at what is really meant by authority and rebellion. Can anyone ever escape their fate?
Cem Çelik is a "little gentleman", the son of a leftist Istanbul pharmacist whose politics take precedence over parenthood. During one of his father's lengthy and regular disappearances, 16 year-old Cem gives up his holiday job guarding his uncle's orchard and apprentices himself to a master well-digger, Mahmut. They set about digging a well to provide water for a local businessman's factory.
The novel turns on Cem's encounter with the red-haired woman of the title and a subsequent act by the well that stains the rest of his life.
As Cem accepts the warm but irascible Mahmut as a surrogate father, and Mahmut slowly begins to regard Cem with a fatherly affection, the storytelling begins. First Cem listens intently to Mahmut's tales, then is himself invited to speak. Myth and folklore pervade the novel, and throw the events of Cem's life into sharp focus, accompanied by the sultry backdrop of contemporary Istanbul.
Written by Orhan Pamuk
Translated by Ekin Oklap
Read by Paul Hilton
Abridged by Jill Waters and Isobel Creed
Producer: Jill Waters
A Waters Company production for BBC Radio 4.
Lauren Laverne presents intimate late-night conversation.
Mark D'Arcy reports from Westminster.
Friends whose siblings have Down's Syndrome find much to celebrate. Fi Glover presents another conversation in the series that proves it's surprising what you hear when you listen.
Producer: Marya Burgess.