SATURDAY 26 JULY 2025
SAT 00:00 Midnight News (m002g540)
National and international news from BBC Radio 4
SAT 00:30 Wolf Moon: A Woman's Journey into the Night by Arifa Akbar (m002g52m)
Episode 5 - Sacred Night
In Arifa Akbar's new book about the night the singing of prayers for the world at midnight brings unexpected beauty and truth to the darkness. Manjinder Virk reads.
Arifa Akbar, writer and theatre critic, takes us on a personal and artistic journey into the night where she explores how darkness, especially for women, has shaped our minds, society and culture.
Wolf Moon is an elegant exploration of the night, which considers how the darkness is largely understood as a time for nightmares and fear, especially for women. So, she looks at the fearfulness invoked by murderous predators like the nineteenth century's Ripper, and of what it means to be a homeless woman when night falls. Yet, in this her latest book, Arifa Akbar reminds us that the night is also full of beauty and possibility. It’s a time for joy and for fun from London's Theatreland to a hedonistic nightclub in Berlin, and by contrast, she visits a convent, where an order of nuns wake at the midnight to sing their elegiac prayers for the world. She also travels to Svalbard to experience a place where night is absent and finds perpetual daytime unsettling. In sum, Wolf Moon is a reflective and thoughtful consideration of what happens after the sun has set.
Arifa Akbar is a theatre critic, a trustee of the Orwell Foundation and English PEN. She is currently a fellow of the London Centre for the Humanities. Her first book, is the acclaimed memoir, Consumed.
Abridged by Katrin Williams
Produced by Elizabeth Allard
SAT 00:48 Shipping Forecast (m002g542)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping
SAT 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (m002g544)
BBC Radio 4 presents a selection of news and current affairs, arts and science programmes from the BBC World Service.
SAT 05:30 News Summary (m002g546)
National and international news from BBC Radio 4
SAT 05:34 Shipping Forecast (m002g548)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping
SAT 05:43 Prayer for the Day (m002g54b)
A Quiet Yet Remarkable Moment
Good Morning,
In this 55th anniversary of Prayer for the Day representatives of Cytun: Churches Together in Wales from across the denominational and geographical breadth of Wales will take a daily prayer in turn.
In 1925 we saw the first tangible demonstration of inter-denominational collaboration in Wales. A quiet yet remarkable moment took place in Detroit when Gwilym Davies, a Welsh Baptist and passionate peace advocate, addressed the Federal Council of the Churches in America. He presented a bold statement from the Church leaders of Wales—a collective call for peace in the aftermath of the First World War.
Responding to this, a one Dr Speere— described Wales, somewhat patronisingly, as “a small but great nation.” And yet, perhaps without knowing it, he spoke a profound truth.
Because what is greatness?
In many traditions, including Christianity, greatness is found in humility, in mercy, and in peacemaking. Jesus said, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” Not the powerful, not the victorious, but the peacemakers.
It’s a deeply countercultural idea—that to be great is not to dominate, but to serve.
And so I pray for strength, that I, like those who spoke boldly for peace in the shadow of war, choose the greatness of humility, mercy, and conviction over the noise of power.
Amen.
SAT 05:45 Uncharted with Hannah Fry (m0022ssm)
12. Scandal in the Air
At a niche engineering conference, a young researcher shares some data that looks like an embarrassing mistake. Little does he know, his simple bar chart is the first pebble in an avalanche exposing a scandal of epic proportions.
Producer: Ilan Goodman
Sound Designer: Jon Nicholls
Story Editor: John Yorke
SAT 06:00 News and Papers (m002gcvf)
The news headlines, including a look at the newspapers.
SAT 06:07 This Natural Life (m002g4pz)
Lira Valencia
Lira Valencia grew up in Croydon, the daughter of refugee parents from South America. In this programme she shows Martha Kearney around the Walthamstow Wetlands nature reserve in London, where she now works as a ranger. She tells Martha about the passion for wildlife which she has had ever since she was a small child. Growing up in a flat with no outdoor space, her favourite place was her grandmother's back garden in Streatham, where she discovered a fascination with snails which endures to this day. She talks about the barriers which she had to overcome in order to work in the conservation sector, and explains how she'd like to be a role model for other children from diverse and urban backgrounds with a passion for wildlife.
Producer: Emma Campbell
SAT 06:30 Farming Today (m002gcvh)
26/07/25 Farming Today This Week: Why would young people farm?
Given all the challenges, why on earth would young people get into farming?
Charlotte Smith presents a special panel discussion programme recorded at the Royal Welsh Show, with Teleri Fielden from the Farmers' Union of Wales, Radnor Young Farmers Club's Elizabeth Swancott and Professor Iain Donnison from Aberystwyth University.
Produced by Beatrice Fenton.
SAT 06:57 Weather (m002gcvk)
The latest weather reports and forecast
SAT 07:00 Today (m002gcvm)
Today (Saturday)
SAT 09:00 What's Up Docs? (m002g4g6)
Can caffeine boost your performance?
Welcome to What’s Up Docs?, the podcast where doctors and identical twins Chris and Xand van Tulleken untangle the confusion around every aspect of our health and wellbeing.
This week, Chris thinks he has seen a hack to optimise his caffeine intake, but will it stack up? To find out if there is any evidence behind Chris’ theory, the Docs have a stimulating conversation with Andy Smith, Professor of Occupational and Health Psychology at Cardiff University, who has been studying the effects of caffeine for over 30 years. They discuss what caffeine does to the brain, why some of us can handle more of it than others, and whether consuming it is a safe way to enhance both our cognitive and physical performance.
If you want to get in touch, you can email us at whatsupdocs@bbc.co.uk or WhatsApp us on 08000 665 123.
Presenters: Drs Chris and Xand van Tulleken
Guest: Professor Andy Smith
Producer: Jo Rowntree
Executive Producer: Rami Tzabar
Editor: Kirsten Lass
Assistant Producer: Maia Miller-Lewis
Assistant Producer and Researcher: William Hornbrook
Tech Lead: Reuben Huxtable
Social Media: Leon Gower
Digital Lead: Richard Berry
Composer: Phoebe McFarlane
Sound Design: Melvin Rickarby
At the BBC:
Assistant Commissioner: Greg Smith
Commissioning Editor: Rhian Roberts
A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 4
SAT 09:30 Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics (m002g4fb)
Alexandria: The City
Natalie is joined by Professors Islam Issa and Edith Hall to tell the story of the ancient city of Alexandria. Located on the Nile Delta, this spectacular and highly innovative city was founded by Alexander the Great around two and half thousand years ago. And like all great ideas, it came to him in a dream.
'Rockstar mythologist' Natalie Haynes is the best-selling author of 'Divine Might', 'Stone Blind', and 'A Thousand Ships' as well as a reformed comedian who is a little bit obsessive about ancient Greece and Rome.
Islam Issa is Professor of Literature and History at Birmingham City University. His book 'Alexandria, the City that Changed the World' is the Winner of the Runciman Award and The Times, Sunday Times, TLS, Booklist, Epoch Times and Waterstones Book of the Year.
Edith Hall is Professor of Classics at Durham University, specialising in ancient Greek literature. She has written over thirty books and is a Fellow of the British Academy.
Producer...Mary Ward-Lowery
SAT 10:00 You're Dead to Me (m002gcvp)
Kellogg Brothers: a family feud and the creation of a cereal empire
Greg Jenner is joined in nineteenth-century America by historian Dr Vanessa Heggie and comedian Ed Byrne to learn all about the feuding Kellogg Brothers. John and Will Kellogg were born into a large family in Battle Creek, Michigan, in the middle of the 1800s. Following a childhood marred by illness and death, John earned a medical degree before returning to run the Sanitorium – a health and wellness centre – in his hometown, where he prescribed a variety of treatments both sensible and surreal, including a vegetarian diet, fresh air and exercise, hydrotherapy, and regular enemas! He was soon joined in his wellness venture by his business-minded brother Will, and together they invented a breakfast cereal we still know and love today: cornflakes. But after years of John’s bullying Will left to launch his own business: the Kellogg company. This episode tells the story of these battling brothers and their food and wellness business ventures, exploring everything from their sibling relationship and the competing stories they tell about the invention of their most famous cereal, to John’s Seventh Day Adventist beliefs and his pioneering wife with her meat-free meal replacements.
If you’re a fan of family feuds, wellness fads of the past and the history of food, you’ll love our episode on the Kellogg Brothers.
If you want more history of science and health with Dr Vaness Heggie, check out our episodes on Victorian Bodybuilding and Arctic Exploration. And for more American entrepreneurs, listen to our episodes on PT Barnum and Madam CJ Walker.
You’re Dead To Me is the comedy podcast that takes history seriously. Every episode, Greg Jenner brings together the best names in history and comedy to learn and laugh about the past.
Hosted by: Greg Jenner
Research by: Charlotte Emily Edgeshaw
Written by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner
Produced by: Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner
Audio Producer: Steve Hankey
Production Coordinator: Gill Huggett
Senior Producer: Emma Nagouse
Executive Editor: Philip Sellars
SAT 10:30 Artworks (m0029rvy)
Art that Conquered the World
The Great Wave
A huge blue and white wave towers over three unfortunate boats, with Mount Fuji framed by the cresting wall of water. Katsushika Hokusai’s Underneath the Wave off Kanagawa is a celebrity - one of a very few artworks known the world over, reproduced on everything from socks to surfboards, from book covers to beer bottles.
But how and why did this humble woodblock print hit the big time? In this series, art historian Dr James Fox traces the twists of fate and happy accidents that propelled a handful of images into global pop culture, making them so famous they even have their own emojis.
From first printing in Japan in 1831 to a rapturous reception in 19th century Europe, the surf boom of 1960s California and shops on every high street, James tells the story of how The Great Wave conquered the world.
Contributors include:
surf photographer Jeff Divine
Kyota Ko, author of Horror Tales of Japan
Terrie Isaac, trend forecaster with BDA London
Matthew Broughton
Lily Richards of Vintage, Penguin Random House
The reader is Todd Kramer
Producer: Julia Johnson
Executive Producer: Laurence Bassett
A TBI Media production for BBC Radio 4
SAT 11:00 Radical with Amol Rajan (m002g4qp)
Robert Macfarlane: Rivers Are Dying So Give Them Rights
Serious pollution incidents by water companies in England rose by 60% last year, but the best-selling author Robert Macfarlane says there is a way to save our rivers.
Days after a long-awaited review of the water sector in England and Wales was published, Amol sat down with Robert for a conversation about the state of rivers globally, why some are dying and how we can save them.
From President Donald Trump's dismantling of the Clean Water Act in the US to the dying River Wye, Robert takes us on a journey around the world and explains why he is optimistic about the future.
He says we can do things like give our rivers rights and mobilise citizen scientists to save them.
Robert also digs out Amol's report card from when he taught him at Cambridge University more than twenty years ago.
GET IN TOUCH
* WhatsApp: 0330 123 9480
* Email: radical@bbc.co.uk
Amol Rajan is a presenter of the Today programme on BBC Radio 4. He is also the host of University Challenge on BBC One. Before that, Amol was media editor at the BBC and editor at The Independent. Radical with Amol Rajan is a Today Podcast.
It was made by Lewis Vickers with Izzy Rowley. Digital production was by Gabriel Purcell-Davis. Technical production was by Rohan Madison. The editor is Sam Bonham. The executive producer is Owenna Griffiths.
SAT 11:30 From Our Own Correspondent (m002gcvr)
Syria's sectarian faultlines
Kate Adie introduces stories from Syria, Lebanon, Chile, Pakistan and France.
Sectarian violence has erupted again in Syria, this time between Druze and Bedouin communities, leaving hundreds of people dead. The country's interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, blamed the violence on ‘outlawed factions’ and has vowed to protect the Druze. Though as Jon Donnison heard in the Druze-majority town of Suweida, locals are also blaming government forces for the violence.
Meanwhile in Lebanon, thousands of Alawite Syrians - the same Shia Muslim sect of the former President Bashar al-Assad - have fled across the border in recent months to escape a previous bout of sectarian violence which broke out back in March. Emily Wither travelled to Tripoli where she met young Alawites looking to define themselves beyond the Assad regime.
In Chile we visit a ghost town in the Atacama Desert as it's brought back to life for one day a year. Former residents of Chuquicamata return to where they once lived for an annual party - though the former mining town is now too polluted for humans to live in. Robin Markwell paid a visit.
In the Pakistan province of Punjab, authorities have launched a crackdown against people keeping big cats like lions and tigers as household pets. The BBC’s Pakistan correspondent Azadeh Moshiri joined wildlife rangers on a raid on an illegal big cat farm.
And we’re in Marseille where a group of eminent restaurateurs have come together to protect the heritage of a much-treasured French dish - Bouillabaisse. Rob Crossan went to sample a bowl, to see if it lives up to the hype.
Series Producer: Serena Tarling
Production Coordinators: Sophie Hill & Katie Morrison
Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith
SAT 12:00 News Summary (m002gcvt)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
SAT 12:04 Money Box (m002gcvw)
Pensions, On-Call Firefighters, Childcare
When will you retire? And will you have enough money to live comfortably? Big questions and this week the government announced two major reviews to study them after concerns that today's workers will be poorer in retirement than their parents. The first is a revived Pension Commission with a wide remit. The second is a review into the state pension age. We'll speak to Pensions UK, which represents pension schemes that together provide a retirement income to more than 30 million people.
From September working parents of children aged 9 months to school age will get 30 hours of childcare funded by the Government. It simplifies the present system which has different rules at different ages and means working parents of children under three will potentially save thousands of pounds on the cost of childcare. Who is eligible and how does it work?
Thousands of people who were retained firefighters are being urged to claim pension payments worth thousands or tens of thousands of pounds. Retained or on-call firefighters generally work part-time. Sixteen thousand of their colleagues have already claimed but a further 10,000 could be eligible to buy back pensions after two legal changes in the past few years.
And some money saving tips for anyone going abroad for their summer holiday.
Presenter: Paul Lewis
Reporters: Dan Whitworth and Jo Krasner
Researchers: Eimear Devlin and Catherine Lund
Editor: Jess Quayle
(First broadcast
12pm Saturday 26th July 2025)
SAT 12:30 Too Long; Didn't Read (m002g53d)
Series 2
1. There's something in the water
Columns. Analysis. The Guardian's Long Read. Who has time? Catherine Bohart, that's who - and she's going beyond the headlines to give you the lowdown on one of the biggest stories this week, with the help of Phil Wang and our regular roving correspondent Sunil Patel.
This week, there's something in the water as Catherine & co investigate the regulation of the water industry, with the help of Helena Horton, environment reporter at The Guardian.
Written by Catherine Bohart, with Madeleine Brettingham, Tom Neenan and Pravanya Pillay.
Producer: Alison Vernon Smith
Executive Producers: Lyndsay Fenner & Victoria Lloyd
Sound Design: David Thomas
Production Co-ordinator: Katie Sayer
A Mighty Bunny production for BBC Radio 4
SAT 12:57 Weather (m002gcvy)
The latest weather forecast
SAT 13:00 News (m002gcw0)
National and international news from BBC Radio 4
SAT 13:10 Any Questions? (m002g53m)
Sir Vince Cable, Sir Mark Lyall Grant, Baroness Ayesha Hazarika, David Simmonds MP
Alex Forsyth presents political debate from Mycenae House in London with the former leader of the Liberal Democrats Sir Vince Cable; the former UK Ambassador to United Nations, Sir Mark Lyall Grant; broadcaster and former special adviser to Labour Party, Baroness Ayesha Hazarika; and David Simmonds MP, the Shadow Minister for Housing, Communities and Local Government.
Producer: Gareth Nelson-Davies
Lead broadcast engineer: Simon Tindall
SAT 14:05 Any Answers? (m002gcw2)
Listeners respond to the issues raised in the preceding edition of Any Questions?
SAT 14:45 The Archers (m002g53h)
Writer: Liz John
Director: Dave Payne
Editor: Jeremy Howe
Jolene Archer…. Buffy Davis
Kenton Archer…. Richard Attlee
Pip Archer…. Daisy Badger
Neil Carter…. Brian Hewlett
Susan Carter…. Charlotte Martin
Toby Fairbrother…. Rhys Bevan
Martyn Gibson…. Jon Glover
Amber Gordon…. Charlotte Jordan
Mia Grundy…. Molly Pipe
Brad Horrobin…. Taylor Uttley
Chelsea Horrobin…. Madeleine Leslay
Tracy Horrobin…. Susie Riddell
Akram Malik…. Asif Khan
Jazzer McCreary…. Ryan Kelly
Stella Pryor…. Lucy Speed
Lynda Snell…. Carole Boyd
Oliver Sterling…. Michael Cochrane
Dane…. Stavros Demetraki
SAT 15:00 Spotlight (m001kgch)
The Song of the Cossacks
“The Cossacks could have lynched me. Instead they didn’t want to believe me. They continued trusting me. That was horrible. I remember all of it with true horror. It was truly a diabolical plan.” (Rusty Davies, British Liaison Officer for the Cossacks in 1945)
At the end of the war in 1945, the Yalta agreement provided that Prisoners of War were returned to their home country. The Cossacks, bitterly opposed to Stalin, had joined the German forces to fight against Stalin.
Stalin insisted they be returned to their “homeland” in the USSR. All parties knew this would mean certain death.
In this fictional dramatisation of true events, Major Christopher Graham and Sergeant Wilson are in charge of a Cossack prisoner of war camp. The prisoners comprise whole families including women, children and young babies. The two officers, struggling with a lack of resources and manpower, work with the Cossack generals to run an orderly camp. The Cossack generals believe the British to be trustworthy and, although deeply concerned at the prospect of a forced return to the Soviet Union, accept the two officers’ assurances that this will not happen.
When the British government acceded to Stalin’s demands, the army felt obliged to break it’s word and organise the enforced repatriation to the Soviet Union.
Jean Binnie’s original stage-play, dramatised for radio by Stephen Wyatt, examines the dilemma of ordinary army officers ordered to betray the people whose trust they had gained and whose welfare they had been in charge of. Running through this play is the 2022 testimony of survivors of these events, voiced by actors from the Teatr Napadoli in Kyiv, and the testimony provided to the subsequent enquiry by Major Rusty Davies, the British Liaison office of the time.
Cast
Major Christopher Graham: Finlay Robertson
Sergeant Wilson: Phil Carriera
Sir William Temple: David Acton
John Pelham: Lawrence Russell
Colonel Wensley: Jonathan Keeble
General Dorov: Christopher Douglas
General Skiro: Geoffrey Kirkness
Captain Andrei Rostov: Ivantiy Novak
Katya Dorov: Amrita Acharia
And Mikhaila Rostov: Jilly Bond.
The testimony of Rusty Davies performed by Christopher Ettridge
Verbatim testimonies performed by actors from Teatr Napodoli, Kyiv
Drramatised for radio by Stephen Wyatt from an original stage-play by Jean Binnie and with additional material by Kit Hesketh Harvey
Recorded in London and Kyiv, and on location
Sound Design: David Thomas
Director: Jonathan Banatvala.
Producers: Jonathan Banatvala and Melanie Nock
An International Arts Partnership for BBC Radio 4
SAT 16:30 Woman's Hour (m002gcw4)
Weekend Woman’s Hour: Baroness Margaret Hodge, Dame Imelda Staunton and Bessie Carter, Statues of women
Baroness Margaret Hodge joined Nuala McGovern to talk about why she thinks routine mammograms should be extended to women over 70. The former Labour MP was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 80. She requested a mammogram after realising she hadn’t been invited to have one in nearly a decade. Routine screening is currently only available in the UK for women aged 50-70.
Dame Imelda Staunton, of Vera Drake and Harry Potter fame, and her daughter Bessie Carter, of Bridgerton fame, are starring as mother and daughter in Mrs Warren’s Profession by George Bernard Shaw, currently in the West End. The play explores the morals of earning money from prostitution. They joined Kylie Pentelow to talk about the relevance of the play today, and tell us what’s it like acting on stage together for the first time in their careers.
There are still more statues of men called John than of women in the UK. But this imbalance is being redressed, mainly thanks to local campaigns to memorialise more female figures. A new book, London’s Statues of Women, documents all the current statues of, or to, women in the capital. Its author Juliet Rix joined Nuala along with Anya Pearson from Visible Women UK and Joy Battick who has been immortalised herself in bronze not once, but twice.
Presenter: Kylie Pentelow
Producer: Annette Wells
Editor: Corinna Jones
SAT 17:00 PM (m002gcw6)
Full coverage of the day's news
SAT 17:30 Sliced Bread (m002g4pn)
Dehumidifiers
Can dehumidifiers dry out your house - and your clothes?
Greg Foot gathers the experts, dives into the data and crunches the numbers to get answers for listener Rhys.
Each episode Greg investigates the latest ad-hyped products and trending fads promising to make us healthier, happier and greener. Are they really 'the best thing since sliced bread' and should you spend your money on them?
All of our episodes start with YOUR suggestions. If you’ve seen an ad, trend or wonder product promising to make you happier, healthier or greener, email us at sliced.bread@bbc.co.uk OR send a voice note to our WhatsApp number, 07543 306807.
RESEARCHER: PHIL SANSOM
PRODUCERS: SIMON HOBAN AND GREG FOOT
SAT 17:54 Shipping Forecast (m002gcw8)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping
SAT 17:57 Weather (m002gcwb)
The latest weather reports and forecast
SAT 18:00 Six O'Clock News (m002gcwd)
National and international news from BBC Radio 4
SAT 18:15 Loose Ends (m002gcwg)
Tiff Stevenson, Sam Palladio, Ella Al-Shamahi, Chris Grace, Jess Robinson, The Miki Berenyi Trio
Clive Anderson's guests in Salford are all singing and dancing this week. Sam Palladio is finally acting in his own accent in 'The Couple Next Door' after playing Texan Gunnar Scott in 'Nashville'. Ella Al-Shamahi has been in search of what makes us 'Human' for her new BBC Two series. American actor and comedian Chris Grace is a member of the musical improv troupe 'Baby wants Candy', Jess Robinson's new show reimagines the hits of Elton John in the style of a selection of iconic women performers, and Tiff Stevenson is no stranger to a guitar. And there's more music from The Miki Berenyi Trio.
Presenter: Clive Anderson
Producer: Jessica Treen
SAT 19:00 The Bottom Line (m002gcwj)
The Decisions That Made Me
Julian Metcalfe (Itsu and Pret A Manger)
An early passion for the high street meant Julian Metcalfe was determined to get into retail from the get-go. He and his partner Sinclair Beecham founded Pret A Manger when he was just 26. In 2008 Pret was sold to a private equity firm, and Julian no longer had a say in the company’s future. Now Julian is in charge of Itsu, an Asian-inspired fast-food chain. The food entrepreneur talks to Evan Davis about how he is determined not to lose his decision-making role this time around.
Production team:
Producer: Eleanor Harrison-Dengate, Georgiana Tudor
Editor: Matt Willis
Sound: John Scott
Production co-ordinator: Katie Morrison
SAT 19:15 The Infinite Monkey Cage (m002fxn4)
Series 33
How to Build the Perfect Athlete - Helen Glover, Hugh Dennis, Steve Haake and Emma Ross
Brian Cox and Robin Ince are limbering up for a high-performance episode all about what it takes to build the perfect athlete.
Joining them on the track are physiologist Dr Emma Ross, sports engineer Professor Steve Haake, Olympic rowing legend Helen Glover, and comedian Hugh Dennis - who’s getting into gear and reliving his cycling adventures in the Pyrenees.
From muscle power and mental grit to high-tech training tools, the team dives into the science of champions. Can we engineer the ultimate competitor? And how do you get back to peak performance after becoming a parent? Helen Glover shares her inspiring story, while Hugh Dennis wonders if he’s still got what it takes to get to the top.
Producer: Olivia Jani
Series Producer: Melanie Brown
Executive Producer: Alexandra Feachem
BBC Studios Audio Production
SAT 20:00 Archive on 4 (m002gfpl)
Pétain on Trial: From Hero to Traitor
Allan Little explores the troubling legacy of Philippe Pétain’s infamous trial, 80 years on, which shook and divided France to its core.
Poring over archive, we hear how France attempted to reckon with its collaboration with the Nazi regime, the trial acting as a mirror for the nation to face up to its dark past. Eight decades of disagreement over Pétain’s crimes reflect not only national trauma, but a country that remains deeply divided over its past, even today.
Little speaks with those who find modern parallels with a resurgent far right, finding contemporary relevance in a country in which Pétainism remains alive and well.
He hears from Julian Jackson, historian and author of France on Trial, who argues that it was the nation itself that was put on trial in 1945. They discuss the key moments and why the event took such a toll on the nation's psyche.
Sophie Pedder, Paris bureau chief for The Economist, sees Pétain as a reference point for a country preoccupied with its past, and a reminder of dark and painful times.
Nabila Ramdani, author of Fixing France, believes the trial remains as relevant as ever, with far right figures rehabilitating Pétain’s image and apologising for his actions.
Historian Daniel Lee counts the cost of collaboration on France’s Jewish population. He reflects on why the Holocaust was almost completely absent from the trial, despite the Vichy regime having sent thousands of Jews to their deaths.
Presented by Allan Little
Produced by Robbie Armstrong
Executive producer: Mark Rickards
A Whistledown Scotland production for BBC Radio 4
SAT 21:00 Understand (m002gcwl)
Derailed: The Story of HS2 (Omnibus 2)
Kate Lamble investigates the extraordinary inside story of Britain's most ambitious and controversial rail project.
SAT 22:00 News (m002gcwn)
National and international news from BBC Radio 4
SAT 22:15 The Food Programme (m002g52k)
Big Food, Big Power
Sheila Dillon looks into claims that big food companies wield too much influence over government decisions and public health. The episode follows news from the youth-led campaign group BiteBack2030, which says its billboard campaign has been effectively silenced. The group recently organised a mock inquiry in Parliament, involving MPs, to share concerns about how junk food advertising and sponsorship are affecting the health of children in the UK.
Sheila also hears from a group of protesters who marched to Downing Street this month, shouting the message “Fight Fake Food.” Organiser Rosalind Rathouse, from the Cookery School on Portland Street, says the public needs to know how the food they’re eating is damaging their health. She is calling on everyone to learn to cook this summer. During the march, campaigners delivered a list of wishes to Downing Street, highlighting the changes they’d like to see in food policy.
Also featured are Jennifer Richardson from The BMJ, which has been investigating the impact of commercial influence on children’s health, and Cathy Cliff from the Soil Association, who submitted a Freedom of Information request to uncover the extent of food industry lobbying and its effect on government policy.
Presented by Sheila Dillon
Produced for BBC Audio in Bristol by Natalie Donovan
SAT 23:00 Kat Sadler's Screen Time (m002gcnx)
Series 2
4. Sorry
Disgraced former industry heartthrob Kat Sadler is still reeling from her cancellation. After alienating old audience by drinking through a plastic straw, she leant in and enjoyed the new audience she gained along the cancellation highway. But they've turned on her now too, thanks to a deepfake of her denouncing her plastic-loving ways.
With no audience left, and only her sidekick Alex Macqueen for company, things are looking bleak for our hero - not least because Alex is in the throes of a midlife crisis. While Alex's new teeth bed in, Kat is on a quest to craft the perfect online apology. Looking at the history of apologies from the likes of Ariana Grande, the Dalai Lama and Brewdog owner James Watt, Kat cherrypicks the best bits, and is poised to deliver a killer apology. Short, sweet, and from the heart. Will it work?
Cast
Kat Sadler - Kat
Alex MacQueen - Alex
Abbie Weinstock - Abbie
Al Roberts - Toby
Lizzie Davidson - Various
Jason Forbes - Various
Written by Kat Sadler and Cameron Loxdale
Production Coordinator - Caroline Barlow
Executive Producer - Pete Strauss
Sound Design - Rich Evans
Recorded by Neil Goody at Premises Studios
Produced by Gwyn Rhys Davies. A BBC Studios Audio Production for Radio 4.
SAT 23:30 Round Britain Quiz (m002g34m)
Programme 11 - The North of England v Northern Ireland
(11/12)
Teams from all over the UK will face Kirsty Lang's cryptic questions across the series, with Kirsty offering support and the odd hint where it might be needed.
This eleventh contest features the second meeting of The North of England and Northern Ireland.
Teams:
Jenny Ryan & Stewart Maconie
Paddy Duffy & Freya McClements
Questions in today's edition:
Q1 (from Duncan Jones)
On which day of the week in Yorkshire might you encounter:
A Danish queen in Cheshire
A Scottish duke in Devon
An 19th century American explorer in Lancashire
And Some professors in Bedfordshire
Q2
Why would a Boston poet with a love of nature, a Hollywood actress with a peek-a-boo hairstyle, and a bespectacled Cold War spy all be wandering through an art gallery together?
Q3 Music: Which author might these four have cause to fear?
Q4 (from Thisbe Archer)
Where would you find together….
A British surgeon and pioneer of aseptic surgery
An admirable film of 1957
Yusuf Islam
Perhaps the greatest goalkeeper in Aston Villa’s history
And a rock and roll pioneer from Lubbock, Texas?
Q5 (from Mark White)
How are…
The name of ‘The Millers’ stadium in Rotherham.
A Klondike chronicler
A hotel heiress (with a Kapital moniker)
And Harry Kane’z new home
…all connected, in this order, by a single letter in 1979?
Q6 Music: what is the crowning achievement of these pieces of music?
Q7 (from Ivan Whetton)
Following a short, repeated sequence of notes - why would the introduction of:
The Scot associated with Baker Street
The man who gave his name to the stinking corpse lily, or the painter of the Sistine Madonna,
lower the tone for Brad and Janet?
Q8
Why might these actors have been in a flap over missing out on a classic film?
Polanski’s Macbeth, the on-screen husband of Mrs. Bucket, the Mission: Impossible master of disguise who starred alongside his wife in Space: 1999, and the Ice Cold in Alex star who played Thomas Wolsey?
TEASER QUESTION:
What links:
Capability Brown
Henry VIII’s older brother
The Rolls Royce engine from the Spitfire
Asteroid 2054
Host: Kirsty Lang
Recorded by: Phil Booth
Sound Design: Chris Maclean
Production Coordinator: Caroline Barlow
Producer: Carl Cooper
Questions set by:
Lucy Porter, Alan Poulton, and public contributors.
SUNDAY 27 JULY 2025
SUN 00:00 Midnight News (m002gcwq)
National and international news from BBC Radio 4
SUN 00:15 Take Four Books (m002g34h)
Gurnaik Johal
Take Four Books speaks to writer Gurnaik Johal about his debut novel ‘Saraswati’, a tale about a holy river that appears to resurface in modern-day India. The story begins with Satnam, a man living in Wolverhampton, whose life becomes entangled in the unfolding events. His journey leads him to discover six distant relatives scattered across the world, all drawn together in a rapidly changing India.
‘Saraswati’ was shortlisted for this year’s Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize. The three books that influenced Gurnaik’s novel are: The Great Derangement by Amitav Ghosh; Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad; and Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz.
The supporting contributor is multi-award-winning writer, Professor of World Literature and Creative Writing at Newcastle University, and BBC New Generation Thinker, Preti Taneja.
Producer: Rachael O’Neill
Editor: Gillian Wheelan
This was a BBC Audio Scotland production.
SUN 00:48 Shipping Forecast (m002gcws)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping
SUN 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (m002gcwv)
BBC Radio 4 presents a selection of news and current affairs, arts and science programmes from the BBC World Service.
SUN 05:30 News Summary (m002gcwx)
National and international news from BBC Radio 4
SUN 05:34 Shipping Forecast (m002gcwz)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping
SUN 05:43 Bells on Sunday (m002gcx1)
St Peter and St Mary in Stowmarket, Suffolk.
Bells on Sunday comes from the church of St Peter and St Mary in Stowmarket, Suffolk. The 14th century church of St Peter and St Mary is in the Decorated Gothic style and stands at the centre of the medieval town. There are ten bells, the oldest of which was cast in the mid-15th century by John Danyell of London. The Tenor bell weighs nineteen and three quarter hundredweight and is tuned to the note of D. We hear them ringing Stedman Caters.
SUN 05:45 In Touch (m002g4gz)
Access to Work: What Is Happening?
The aim of the government's Access to Work scheme is to provide support for disabled people to get into and stay within employment. It can provide support with things like specialist equipment, support workers and transport to and from work. But over the past few months, there have been rumours circulating that there are proposed cuts to parts of the scheme which is causing uncertainty amongst disabled people. In Touch attempts to dig a little deeper into what could be happening to the scheme.
The Work and Pensions committee is calling for disabled people's experiences of seeking employment and support into work. If you would like to submit your experiences, you can do so via the committee's online form: https://committees.parliament.uk/work/9270/employment-support-for-disabled-people/ or call 020 7219 8976.
Presenter: Peter White
Producer: Beth Hemmings
Production Coordinator: Liz Poole
Website image description: Peter White sits smiling in the centre of the image and he is wearing a dark green jumper. Above Peter's head is the BBC logo (three separate white squares house each of the three letters). Bottom centre and overlaying the image are the words "In Touch" and the Radio 4 logo (the word ‘radio’ in a bold white font, with the number 4 inside of a white circle). The background is a bright mid-blue with two rectangles angled diagonally to the right. Both are behind Peter, one is a darker blue and the other is a lighter blue.
SUN 06:00 News Summary (m002gcz3)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4
SUN 06:05 Heart and Soul (w3ct6vnw)
The future of the Alawites
In the wake of the Assad regime’s fall in Syria, thousands of Alawites - a minority Shia sect historically linked to the former regime - have fled to Lebanon. They are seeking refuge from discrimination and sectarian violence that has left over 1,000 civilians dead, including women and children.
An offshoot of Shia Islam, the Alawites are commonly misunderstood and the group’s beliefs and distinct interpretation of Islam is often shrouded in mystery. Throughout their history the group has been persecuted but their fate in Syria was redrawn by the Assad family.
The late Hafez al-Assad, Bashar's father, became the most powerful Alawite when he seized control of Syria in a coup in 1970. While many Alawites insist they continued to suffer, just like other Syrians, from the grinding poverty and brutal repression under the rule of Hafez al-Assad and then his son Bashar - the ruling Assad’s recruited heavily from the Alawite community placing them in top posts in state, security and intelligence branches.
When opposition fighters finally toppled the regime in December last year, Syria’s new President Ahmed al-Sharaa - once the leader of a self-declared Sunni Muslim militant group - promised to protect Syria's minorities. But he has struggled to contain a wave of violence directed towards the Alawite community.
The BBC’s Emily Wither has travelled to the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli to meet Syrian Alawite refugees and a new youth movement that passionately believe the sect needs their own political identity away from the Assad regime.
Alawite Angelina Bilal is collecting testimonies of atrocities, including killings and sexual violence, to demand international accountability. She belongs to a fledgling group of young Alawites who have launched ‘The Alawite Project’ - a youth movement aiming to redefine Alawite identity beyond the Assad legacy and amplify their global voice.
(Photo: Alawite Angelina Bilal in a shelter for refugees in Lebanon. Credit: Emily Wither)
Producer/presenter: Emily Wither
Executive producer: Rajeev Gupta
Editor: Chloe Walker
Production co-ordinator: Mica Nepomuceno
SUN 06:35 On Your Farm (m002gcz5)
The Leech Farm
Biopharm Leeches is the UK’s only leech farm. Based in Swansea, it produces leeches for both human and animal medicine.
In this programme, presenter Mariclare Carey-Jones meets the team breeding the leeches, to find out what’s involved. “We produce somewhere in the region of 50 thousand leeches” says Carl Peters-Bond, Quality Systems Manager at Biopharm. It’s no easy task because, according to Carl, leeches “are sensitive to atmospheric pressure, they’re sensitive to light, they’re sensitive to heat, they’re sensitive to metal in the waters. They have moods and you can’t put them together when they’re in a bad mood - they cannibalise”.
Despite the difficulties in breeding them, leeches play a vital part in our health service. Most of the leeches produced at Biopharm are used by the NHS in plastic surgery and micro surgery procedures, such as skin grafts and re-attaching fingers. Others are sent to hospitals worldwide, “we’ve got offices in Japan, America, Norway and other places; they use them primarily in their hospitals” says Office Manager Cassie Rees. The leeches are also used in veterinary medicine, “primarily in dogs you’ll see aural hematomas, same thing as a cauliflower ear on a rugby player” and these respond well to leeches, according to Cassie, and where their breeding time is over, they play a useful part in the fishing industry.
As well as seeing the process of breeding these leeches first hand, Mariclare will also find out how they are distributed across the world - can it really be as simple as popping the leeches in the post? And she will find out what a leech feels like when it’s wriggling in her hand.
Produced and presented by Mariclare Carey-Jones.
SUN 06:57 Weather (m002gcz7)
The latest weather reports and forecast
SUN 07:00 News and Papers (m002gcz9)
National and international news from BBC Radio 4
SUN 07:10 Sunday (m002gczc)
A look at the ethical and religious issues of the week
SUN 07:54 Radio 4 Appeal (m002gczf)
Afghanaid
Broadcaster and author Konnie Huq makes the Radio 4 Appeal on behalf of Afghanaid. The charity supports communities by providing training and tools so families can sustain themselves and earn a living.
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 ‘Afghanaid’.
- Cheques should be made payable to ‘Afghanaid’.
- You can donate online at bbc.co.uk/appeal/radio4
Registered Charity Number: 1045348. If you’d like to find out more about the charity’s work visit *https://www.afghanaid.org.uk
*The BBC is not responsible for content on external websites
Producer: Katy Takatsuki
SUN 07:57 Weather (m002gczh)
The latest weather reports and forecast
SUN 08:00 News and Papers (m002gczk)
The news headlines, including a look at the newspapers.
SUN 08:10 Sunday Worship (m002gczm)
Counterculture - finding a balance and making a change
A service exploring counterculture in Christianity - meeting those seeking to challenge theologies and find balance.
Led by Sean Stillman, International President of God’s Squad Christian Motorcycle Club. Preacher: Dr Clair Linzey, Research Fellow at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford and Deputy Director of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics.
We hear from members of God's Squad Christian Motorcycle Club and graffiti artist Stephen Lamb on counterculture and the impact it's had on how they live out their faith.
Readings:
Matthew 25: 31-40
Genesis
1:27-31
Music:
Be Thou My Vision – Van Morrison
Pioneer – Nancy Honeytree
Go Forth Into the World in Peace (Rutter) – The Cambridge Singers
Speak O Lord – Keith and Kristyn Getty
Land of Hope and Dreams – Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
Blinded by Your Grace – The Kingdom Choir
Brother Sister, Let Me Serve You - The Northumbria Community
The Lord’s Prayer (It’s Yours) - Matt Maher
Blessed Assurance – Eilidh Patterson
Producer: Alexa Good
SUN 08:48 Witness History: The Killing of Jean Charles de Menezes (w3ct3c6j)
On 22 July 2005, an unarmed Brazilian man was shot dead by anti-terrorism police at Stockwell Tube station, in London.
Jean Charles de Menezes was shot seven times in the head because he was mistaken for a terror suspect.
The killing made headlines all over the world and his family demanded justice.
Matt Pintus spoke to Jean Charles’s cousin and best friend, Patricia da Silva, in 2022.
Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more.
(Photo: Patricia da Silva in front of mural of Jean Charles de Menezes. Credit: Getty Images)
SUN 08:58 Tweet of the Day (m002gczp)
Jo Wimpenny on the New Caledonian Crow
If you were walking past the Zoology building at the University of Oxford in the mid-noughties, you might have heard an unusual bird call. It’s undeniably crow-like, but not a UK native. It’s the New Caledonian crow, and zoologist and author Jo Wimpenny was studying them for her PhD. Jo describes her fondness for this bird, which is one of nature's smartest, due to its ability to make and use tools.
Presented by Jo Wimpenny and produced by Sophie Anton for BBC Audio Production in Bristol.
Featuring a recording from Xeno-Canto by Patrik Åberg: New Caledonian Crow - XC40120.
SUN 09:00 Broadcasting House (m002gczr)
The Sunday morning news magazine programme. Presented by Paddy O'Connell
SUN 10:00 Desert Island Discs (m002gczt)
Monica Dolan, actor
Monica Dolan is a BAFTA and Olivier award-winning actor. She is equally at home playing a wrongfully accused postmistress in Mr Bates Vs the Post Office as she is playing the serial killer Rosemary West.
Alongside her many roles in TV, stage and screen, Monica has also written and performed in her award winning one woman play B*easts.
Born in 1969, Monica was the youngest of four children and was brought up in Woking. Her parents were Irish and had studied science and came to the UK in the early sixties. It was a very academic family and Monica found her passion for drama when she joined a teenage acting group. She went on to study drama at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.
Since leaving drama school, she has had a very successful career and is known for her ability to master different accents and dialects. When she played the press officer, Tracy Pritchard in the comedyW1A, her Welsh accent was so convincing viewers thought she really was Welsh.
Her critically acclaimed career on TV stage and screen has seen her portray the fictional evil Anne Branson in BBC 1’s Sherwood, which earned her another BAFTA nomination. During the COVID pandemic, she gave a mesmeric performance as a grieving widow in The Shrine by Alan Bennett and because of restrictions at the time was her own makeup artist and costume designer.
Monica lives in London with her beloved husky, Velma.
Presenter Lauren Laverne
Producer Sarah Taylor
SUN 11:00 The Archers Omnibus (m002gczw)
Writer: Liz John
Director: Dave Payne
Editor: Jeremy Howe
Jolene Archer…. Buffy Davis
Kenton Archer…. Richard Attlee
Pip Archer…. Daisy Badger
Neil Carter…. Brian Hewlett
Susan Carter…. Charlotte Martin
Toby Fairbrother…. Rhys Bevan
Martyn Gibson…. Jon Glover
Amber Gordon…. Charlotte Jordan
Mia Grundy…. Molly Pipe
Brad Horrobin…. Taylor Uttley
Chelsea Horrobin…. Madeleine Leslay
Tracy Horrobin…. Susie Riddell
Akram Malik…. Asif Khan
Jazzer McCreary…. Ryan Kelly
Stella Pryor…. Lucy Speed
Lynda Snell…. Carole Boyd
Oliver Sterling…. Michael Cochrane
Dane…. Stavros Demetraki
SUN 12:15 The Bottom Line (m002gcwj)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 on Saturday]
SUN 12:30 I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue (m002g37d)
Series 83
3. Is It A Bird?
The godfather of all panel shows pays a visit to the Butterworth Hall in Warwick. On the panel are Harry Enfield, Lucy Porter, Miles Jupp and Marcus Brigstocke, with Jack Dee in the umpire’s chair. Regular listeners will know to expect inspired nonsense, pointless revelry and Colin Sell at the piano.
Producer: Jon Naismith
A Random production for BBC Radio 4
SUN 12:57 Weather (m002gczy)
The latest weather forecast
SUN 13:00 The World This Weekend (m002gd00)
Radio 4's look at the week's big stories from both home and around the world.
SUN 13:30 Let's Raise the Voting Age (m0001xqr)
New government plans to lower the voting age would see 16 and 17-year-olds given the vote in time for the next General Election.
The measures introduced in a new Elections Bill will be the first big change to the voting age since the age of representation shifted from 21 to 18 under Harold Wilson in 1969.
Having marked that anniversary in 2019, Professor James Tilley of Oxford University revists a challenging question.
Does it actually make more sense for the voting age to head back up to 21?
As most other areas of the law restrict the rights and responsibilities of 16-year-olds, why should voting buck a modern trend - that our rites of passage into adulthood happen increasingly late?
Recorded in 2019 to mark the anniversary of the Wilson changes, Ed Miliband offers his take on why 16-year-olds should be allowed to vote, and there's some voting mythbusting from Professor Phil Cowley, who honestly answers the question as to whether 16-year-olds really dislike him.
Maisie and Lottie, campaigners from York's Youth Council, put forward their views as to why they definitely should be allowed to vote.
Presented by Professor James Tilley
Produced by Kev Core
SUN 14:00 Gardeners' Question Time (m002g532)
Bracknell Forest: Garden Gnomes, Carrots and Tools
If you could have a garden gnome what would it be doing? What tools should I have on my first allotment? Any tips on growing carrots on a sandy soil?
Peter Gibbs and a panel of green-fingered gurus head to the lush landscapes of Bracknell Forest, where a lively audience of passionate gardeners awaits answers to their most pressing plant problems.
Joining Peter are pest and disease specialist Pippa Greenwood, head gardener Matthew Pottage, and the ever-enthusiastic plantswoman Christine Walkden.
Later in the show, Pippa Greenwood takes us behind the scenes at Heathrow Airport, where she meets Kelvin Hughes from the Animal and Plant Health Agency. Together, they uncover the fascinating work being done to safeguard the UK’s biodiversity from invasive pests and diseases hidden in overseas plants and produce.
Senior Producer: Daniel Cocker
Junior Producer: Rahnee Prescod
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4
Plant List
Questions and timecodes are below. Where applicable, plant names have been provided.
Q – If you were forced to have one garden gnome, what would that garden gnome be doing? (01’38”)
Q – Do the panel have any advice on growing carrots in sandy soil? (05’47”)
Q – Are the panel opposed to the use of decorative wood chips in borders? (07’56”)
Q – Can they explain how buddleia can grow in church roofs and railway sidings and not come to much in my garden? (11’36”)
Matthew Pottage –
Buddleja davidii 'Black Knight', butterfly bush 'Black Knight'
Feature – Pippa Greenwood meets with Kelvin Hughes with the Animal and Plant Health Agency to discover how Heathrow Airport protect the UK's biodiversity from overseas produce and plants. (18’31”)
Q – What could we grow in our south-west facing garden that will provide vibrant colours during the summer? (24’06”)
Matthew Pottage –
Aesculus
Aesculus parviflora, bottlebrush buckeye
Eucryphia
Eucryphia lucida, leatherwood
Eucryphia lucida 'Pink Cloud', leatherwood ‘Pink Cloud’
Hydrangea quercifolia, oak-leaved hydrangea
Hydrangea quercifolia Snowflake ('Brido') (d), oak-leaved hydrangea [Snowflake]
Hydrangea quercifolia Ice Crystal ('Hqopr010'PBR), oak-leaved hydrangea [Ice Crystal]
Hydrangea quercifolia 'Harmony', oak-leaved hydrangea 'Harmony'
Christine Walkden –
Desfontainia
Osmanthus
Q – I’ve just taken on an allotment in the last year, and I'd like to know what are the top five low-cost items you'd recommend? (28’20”)
Q – Is there an aesthetically please alternative to steaks and pea netting that I could use whilst my plants establish? (31’14”)
Q – What plant would you like to be remembered by? (36’03”)
Christine Walkden –
Soldanella hungarica
Matthew Pottage –
Araucaria Araucana, monkey puzzle tree
Pippa Greenwood –
Magnolia stellata, star magnolia
SUN 14:45 Opening Lines (m0021q56)
Death at La Fenice
John Yorke looks at the first in Donna Leon’s hugely successful Venetian police series. Death at La Fenice introduces Leon’s likeable Commissario Guido Brunetti, and establishes the recipe that has made Leon one of the world’s best-loved crime writers, and Brunetti one of the most popular fictional detectives.
Death at La Fenice was published in 1992, and opens with a dramatic interruption to a performance of La Traviata at Venice’s famous opera house. The death of a world-renowned conductor is an embarrassment for the Venetian police department, and the city’s politicians are anxious for a speedy result. As Brunetti embarks on his investigation, he navigates his way around Venice’s high society and its murky alleyways with intelligence and integrity, asking searching questions about the much-romanticised city and its inhabitants. Brunetti struck an immediate chord with readers, who warmed to his basic sympathy and decency, as well as his successful detective work, all set against an atmospheric Venetian canvas.
John Yorke has worked in television and radio for 30 years, and he shares his experience with Radio 4 listeners as he unpacks the themes and impact of the books, plays and stories that are being dramatized in BBC Radio 4’s Sunday Drama series. From EastEnders to The Archers, Life on Mars to Shameless, he has been obsessed with telling big popular stories. He has spent years analysing not just how stories work but why they resonate with audiences around the globe, and has brought together his experience in his bestselling book Into the Woods. As former Head of Channel Four Drama, Controller of BBC Drama Production and MD of Company Pictures, John has tested his theories during an extensive production career working on some of the world’s most lucrative, widely viewed and critically acclaimed TV drama. As founder of the hugely successful BBC Writers Academy, John has trained a generation of screenwriters.
Producer: Laura Grimshaw
Executive Producer: Sara Davies
Readings: Jenny Coverack
Contributor: Fi Glover, broadcaster
Archive: Donna Leon on This Cultural Life with John Wilson 24/04/2023
Donna Leon on World Book Club with Harriet Gilbert 05/05/2019
Researcher: Nina Semple
Production Manager: Sarah Wright
Sound: Sean Kerwin
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4
SUN 15:00 Drama on 4 (m002gd04)
Episode 1
With the storm clouds gathering and the water rising fast in Venice, the savage beating of renowned art historian, Dotoressa Brett Lynch with the message, 'Don't keep that appointment with the Director Semenzato of the Ducal Palace Museum', draws the Venetian Commissario Guido Brunetti out of his warm and loving home. He finds himself in the yearly onslaught of the acqua alta, which is caused by high tides and the torrential winter rains that inundate the city, making the canals and walkways grim and impassable.
His investigation to uncover a motive for Brett's beating takes him to dark, wet corners of Venice and into a sinister web of art theft, fakery and base human desires.
Questions begin to arise concerning the lucrative trade in rare antiquities and those dealers and museum curators who provide the all-important provenance for examples of 3,000 year-old Chinese porcelain - which may or may not be fake.
For wealthy obsessives, with Mafia connections, the difference between a facsimile which is to all intents identical to the original and the real thing, can mean the difference between life and death to those who would procure them or indeed authenticate them.
CAST
COMMISSARIO GUIDO BRUNETTI - Julian Rhind-Tutt
PAOLA BRUNETTI - Jeany Spark
SERGEANT LORENZO VIANELLO - Tayla Kovacevic-Ebong
BRETT LYNCH - Jane Slavin
CONTESSA FALIER - Siobhan Redmond
VICE-QUESTORE GIUSEPPE PATTA - David Horovitch
ELETTRA - Emily Bruni
SEMENZATO/GIORGIO - Richard Elfyn
SALVATORE - Elliot Barnes-Worrell
Dramatised by D J Britton from the novel by Donna Leon
Music by Julie Cooper
Produced and directed by Eoin O'Callaghan
A Big Fish Radio production for BBC Radio 4
SUN 16:00 Take Four Books (m002gd06)
Denise Mina
Multi-award-winning writer Denise Mina discusses her twentieth novel, The Good Liar, which follows blood-spatter forensics expert Claudia O’Sheil as she faces a profound moral dilemma.
Denise also shares the three key influences that inspired the novel’s creation: Dorothy Thompson’s Who Goes Nazi?, Stanley Milgram’s Obedience to Authority, and George Orwell’s 1984.
The supporting contributor is award-winning author, James Bond novelist, and lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Edinburgh, Kim Sherwood.
Producer: Rachael O’Neill
Editor: Gillian Wheelan
This was a BBC Audio Scotland production.
SUN 16:30 Round Britain Quiz (m002gd08)
Programme 12 - Scotland vs Wales
(12/12)
Teams from all over the UK will face Kirsty Lang's cryptic questions across the series, with Kirsty offering support and the odd hint where it might be needed.
Scotland take on Wales in the final contest, with Kirsty revealing the overall scores and announcing the series winner.
You can follow the questions in each edition on the Round Britain Quiz webpages. Each week's questions will be posted on the day before the Sunday transmission.
Teams:
Val McDermid and Alan McCredie - Scotland
Myfanwy Alexander and Cariad Lloyd - Wales
Host: Kirsty Lang
Recorded by: Phil Booth
Sound Design: Chris Maclean
Production Coordinator: Caroline Barlow
Producer: Carl Cooper
Questions set by:
Lucy Porter, Alan Poulton, and public contributors.
SUN 17:00 Witness History (w3ct74mf)
The Reichstag fire
On 27 February 1933, the Reichstag building in Berlin, which was home to the German Parliament, was burned down.
This was a key event in the establishment of the Nazi dictatorship.
Berlin-born journalist, Sefton Delmer, told his story to the BBC World Service in 1967.
He grew up in the city so knew people involved with the Nazi party. This meant he was able to get close to the main people on the night.
Delmer walked around the burning building with Hitler and Goring. He recalls their conversations and describes the scene in this fascinating account.
Produced and presented by Gill Kearsley.
Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more.
Recent episodes explore everything from football in Brazil, the history of the ‘Indian Titanic’ and the invention of air fryers, to Public Enemy’s Fight The Power, subway art and the political crisis in Georgia. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: visionary architect Antoni Gaudi and the design of the Sagrada Familia; Michael Jordan and his bespoke Nike trainers; Princess Diana at the Taj Mahal; and Görel Hanser, manager of legendary Swedish pop band Abba on the influence they’ve had on the music industry. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the time an Iraqi journalist hurled his shoes at the President of the United States in protest of America’s occupation of Iraq; the creation of the Hollywood commercial that changed advertising forever; and the ascent of the first Aboriginal MP.
(Photo: The Reichstag fire in 1933. Credit: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
SUN 17:10 Behind the Crime (m002b6nj)
Kieron
Kieron can remember the moment it dawned on him that he might not become a professional footballer. That was also the moment when he took a decision to start hustling – selling drugs to earn money.
This new life rapidly escalated, and at 17 he was in prison for a crime involving a knife.
Released aged 20, he sees now that he had just spent three years cooped up with people who shared his damaging mindset. After release, he picked up where he left off, leading to an altercation involving a firearm. He was arrested, charged and convicted, being sentenced to 25 years. He was only 22 at the time.
While in prison, Kieron discovered reading and completed a degree from the Open University. After release, he completed a Masters and is about to start a PhD. He has given evidence to the House of Lords Home Affairs and Justice Committee on conditions in prison.
But how does he feel, all these years later, about the harm he caused as a young adult?
This is an astonishing interview that gets inside a mindset that, according to Kieron, is pervasive among people from similar backgrounds to his.
Dr Sally Tilt and Dr Kerensa Hocken are forensic psychologists who work in prisons. Their job is to help people in prison understand the harm they’ve caused, identify why it happened, and work out how to make changes to prevent further harm after they’ve been released.
In Behind the Crime, they take the time to understand the life of someone whose crimes have led to harm and prison.
For details of organisations that can provide help and support, visit bbc.co.uk/actionline
Producer: Andrew Wilkie
Editor: Clare Fordham
Behind the Crime is a co-production between BBC Long Form Audio and the Prison Radio Association.
SUN 17:54 Shipping Forecast (m002gd0c)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping
SUN 17:57 Weather (m002gd0f)
The latest weather reports and forecast
SUN 18:00 Six O'Clock News (m002gd0h)
National and international news from BBC Radio 4
SUN 18:15 Pick of the Week (m002gd0k)
June Yee
This week, we're in a monetary mood, as we review the Chancellor's recent Mansion House speech with the help of Money Box, and hear about both the financial and human impact on people living close to the original planned route of HS2. Also, the age-old question: when is a Jaffa Cake a cake and not a biscuit? When it's for tax reasons, as Dan Neidle discovers. And if you need something to dunk that biscuit - sorry, cake - into, Drs Chris and Xand van Tulleken are finding out the benefits of a caffeinated brew.
Presenter: June Yee
Producer: Anthony McKee
Production Coordinator: Caroline Peddle
A BBC Audio Northern Ireland production for BBC Radio 4.
SUN 19:00 The Archers (m002gd0m)
Debate rages at Home Farm, and there’s a spanner in the works for Akram.
SUN 19:15 Illuminated (m002gd0p)
Don't Lose Your Head!
When the Reverend Andrew Doarks took on the church of St Gregory's in Sudbury three years ago - he received no warning of what he would discover in the vestry.
There - behind a perspex screen and a wooden flap in the wall - is the severed head of the fourteenth century Archbishop of Canterbury Simon of Sudbury. Simon who was decapitated during the Peasant's Revolt in 1381 shares the same space as the church's playgroup and receives visitors by appointment only. It is an unusual arrangement for the former Archbishop who met his demise after attempting to introduce a hated poll tax.
So how did Simon's head end up in Sudbury when his body is buried in Canterbury Cathedral? And should both head and body be reunited?
Andrew takes a trip to Canterbury to see Simon's tomb with the Cathedral's Head of Estates Joel Hopkinson. Inside the tomb - Simon's head has been replaced by a cannonball. He then visits the Cathedral library with Cressida Williams who discovers a document in the archive that relays Simon's will, dictated immediately before his death and he discusses Simon's future with the Canon Treasurer Andrew Dodd. Dr Helen Lacey from the University of Oxford and the People of 1381 project provides the historical context from the days of the Revolt.
It's a journey of discovery that sheds light on Simon's past and gives Andrew ideas for his future. After all - as he reflects - managing severed heads just wasn't part of his training at theological college.
Produced and presented by Robin Markwell for BBC Audio in Bristol
"Vice Or Virtue" is composed and performed by singer-songwriter Jonny Day
SUN 19:45 Just One Thing - with Michael Mosley (m001jc6p)
Lift Some Weights
Lifting weights is obviously great for your strength, but it can also boost your brain power, improve your immune system, and even reverse signs of cellular ageing. Michael enlists Jenny, a self-confessed weight lifting novice, to try strength training at home using milk bottles and a sturdy rucksack. He speaks to Dr. Teresa Liu-Ambrose at University of British Columbia, Canada who has recently found that strength training can lead to better memory. She reveals how activating your muscles can release special chemicals called myokines which astonishingly, can travel around the body and cross your blood-brain-barrier where they can have beneficial effects on your brain.
SUN 20:00 Feedback (m002g4q1)
Tony Hawks Is Giving Nothing Away, and Radio 3 Controller Sam Jackson Part 2
Comedian Tony Hawks is a lucky man - and that's why, in a recent series for Radio 4, he's been discussing how he's looking into alternatives to leaving an inheritance for his son once he's gone. Plenty of listeners got in touch with questions and comments on Tony Hawks Is Giving Nothing Away, and presenter Andrea Catherwood puts them to Tony directly.
We also hear the second part of our conversation with BBC Radio 3 Controller Sam Jackson, who talks to Andrea about this year's Proms, and the part he plays in the UK's arts sector.
And a listener has a nomination for Interview of the Year - this time it's for Chief North America Correspondent Gary O'Donaghue's interview with President Donald Trump.
Presenter: Andrea Catherwood
Producer: Pauline Moore
Assistant Producer: Rebecca Guthrie
Executive Producer: David Prest
A Whistledown Scotland production for BBC Radio 4
SUN 20:30 Last Word (m002g536)
Ozzy Osbourne, Connie Francis, Jacqui Browne, Douglas Chamberlain
Matthew Bannister on
Ozzy Osbourne, the Black Sabbath lead singer known for his outrageous antics, many while under the influence of drugs and alcohol.
Jacqui Browne, the Thalidomide survivor who campaigned for the rights of disabled people in Ireland.
Professor Douglas Chamberlain, the cardiologist who pioneered the use of defibrillators by ambulance crews, saving many lives.
Connie Francis, the Italian American singer known for hits like “Who’s Sorry Now?”, “Stupid Cupid” and “Pretty Little Baby”.
Producer: Ed Prendeville
SUN 21:00 Money Box (m002gcvw)
[Repeat of broadcast at
12:04 on Saturday]
SUN 21:25 Radio 4 Appeal (m002gczf)
[Repeat of broadcast at
07:54 today]
SUN 21:30 From Our Own Correspondent (m002gcvr)
[Repeat of broadcast at
11:30 on Saturday]
SUN 22:00 Westminster Hour (m002gd0r)
Radio 4's Sunday night political discussion programme.
SUN 23:00 Artworks (m002g4p8)
New York 1925
3. Summer
In 1925 New York became the biggest, most populous city in the world, overtaking London, and was the launchpad for an extraordinary range of writing, music, culture and politics which still resonate 100 years later - from the publication of F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and the launch of The New Yorker, to the rise of the Harlem Renaissance and the first success for the composer Richard Rodgers.
This is the story of that momentous year, season by season, told over four episodes, with contributors including novelist Jay McInerney, the writer and academic Margo Jefferson and the editor of the New Yorker David Remnick. The series is presented by the saxophonist and broadcaster Soweto Kinch, with an original sound track played by the composer and jazz clarinettist Giacomo Smith and his band.
Episode 3: Summer
The music coming out of Harlem, and across New York, was causing some consternation and the newspapers reported on the ‘immorality’ of the saxophone in 1925. Modernism in music and architecture was changing the look and sound of the city.
In September the novel Bread Givers by Anzia Yezierska was published which gave voice to the people from the tenements in the Lower East Side. And on Broadway the international sensation, No No Nanette, opened, with hits including Tea for Two.
The man who wanted to become the first ‘speakeasy’ mayor, Jimmy Walker, was out on the campaign trail in the summer months, ready for the final vote in November.
Presenter Soweto Kinch
Producer Katy Hickman
Band: Giacomo Smith, leader and clarinet; Laura Judd, trumpet; Daniel Higham, trombone; Alexander Boulton, banjo; Joe Webb, piano; Corrie Dick, drums; Soweto Kinch, saxophone.
SUN 23:30 The History Podcast (m0024bg1)
The Lucan Obsession
3. Lucky Lucan
Lord Lucan raced powerboats through the English Channel, drove an Aston Martin around the Grand Canyon and completed the Cresta Run at Saint-Moritz.
Throwing himself into gambling, he was nicknamed Lucky.
With slicked back hair, charm, style and humour, he was remarkably striking.
But underneath this image there was a very different man.
Alex hears from friends, biographers and someone who lived in the Lucan household to ask who really was Lord Lucan?
Was he the vicious, violent and dangerous murderer of Sandra Rivett or was this a myth it was seductive to believe?
Producer: Sarah Bowen
SUN 23:45 Short Works (m002g534)
The Bacchanal
In Helen McClory’s new short work, two friends embark upon a festival promising a wild and soulful escape from the daily grinds of modern life, only to be met by ominous forces and unsettling spaces, corrupting the supposed utopia they initially sought to find.
Reader Nalini Chetty
Producer Bethany Woodhead
Helen McClory is an award-winning Scottish writer.
A BBC Audio Scotland production for BBC Radio 4.
MONDAY 28 JULY 2025
MON 00:00 Midnight News (m002gd0t)
National and international news from BBC Radio 4
MON 00:15 Artworks (m002g4g2)
Souvenirs
In late 19th century Hammersmith, two titans of the printing scene, Emery Walker and Thomas Cobden-Sanderson, form a deep friendship. They hang out at the same printing events and socialist meetings, they move into houses four doors apart, they work in the same building, their families go on holidays together.
Then in 1900, they set up the ground breaking Doves Press together - whereupon their friendship swiftly implodes, and they spend the rest of the decade fighting over the custody of their in-house typeface, Doves. And then things get even uglier.
Souvenirs explores broken friendship, typefaces, lost words, self-destruction, and the legacies we didn’t intend to leave. With type designer Robert Green.
Written and performed by The Allusionist’s Helen Zaltzman, with an original score by Martin Austwick (performed by him and Adrienne LaBelle, violin).
Produced by Helen Zaltzman and Martin Austwick.
A Falling Tree production for BBC Radio 4
MON 00:45 Bells on Sunday (m002gcx1)
[Repeat of broadcast at
05:43 on Sunday]
MON 00:48 Shipping Forecast (m002gd0w)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping
MON 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (m002gd0y)
BBC Radio 4 presents a selection of news and current affairs, arts and science programmes from the BBC World Service.
MON 05:00 News Summary (m002gd10)
National and international news from BBC Radio 4
MON 05:04 Last Word (m002g536)
[Repeat of broadcast at
20:30 on Sunday]
MON 05:34 Shipping Forecast (m002gd12)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping
MON 05:43 Prayer for the Day (m002gd14)
The Language of Love
Bore da.
Good morning. A few years ago, I was on a train leaving Birmingham New Street, heading for Mid-Wales where I live. The carriage was packed, with many lively conversations taking place. Gradually, I became aware of maybe about seven different languages being used, including British Sign Language. It was fantastic, being surrounded by such a wealth of communication. The memory still makes me smile.
Here in Wales, we have two official languages, Welsh and English. Language can sometimes divide, but it can also enrich and unite, helping to create peace in our world, our communities and ourselves. We’ve found this to be true in the Methodist Church in Wales where we’ve been a single bilingual Synod since September 2022. Simply learning how to greet someone in their own language can make a huge difference and be the start of relating positively. Talking and negotiating must surely be the best way, to bring peace between people and nations. But there is a language beyond words which Mother Teresa called “the language of love,” spoken silently in her work of caring in Calcutta. Simply sharing a smile can speak much louder than words. So I pray to God today that I may listen with an openness of heart and mind that helps to foster unity and speak words that make for harmony and peace.
MON 05:45 Farming Today (m002gd16)
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
MON 05:57 Weather (m002gd18)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for farmers
MON 06:00 Today (m002gfyw)
News and current affairs, including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
MON 09:00 Marianna in Conspiracyland (m002fmjg)
Marianna in Conspiracyland 2
5. A collective immune system
Can people fight back against medical misinformation? In the months after Paloma’s death, her brothers say they want to prevent other deaths, and they believe social media companies should take stronger action against medical misinformation. Meanwhile her Mum, Kate Shemirani, takes to social media to share a different account of her death. She has promoted a range of unproven theories on social media and podcasts about how Paloma was murdered by medical staff. The BBC has not seen evidence to support this. The BBC’s social media investigations correspondent Marianna Spring interrogates whether and how some politicians and social media companies are emboldening anti-medicine conspiracy theorists, and speaks to a former cancer surgeon and patient trying to bust cancer myths online.
Host: Marianna Spring
Producer: Anna Harris
Sound Engineer: Tony Churnside
Editor: Sam Bonham
Commissioning producer: Nathan Jones
Commissioning editor: Rhian Roberts
This was a BBC collaboration with Panorama.
MON 09:30 Fool's Gold (p0l3d7sl)
5. History on Trial
Four men stand in the dock, accused of trying to hide and sell a Viking hoard worth millions of pounds. But there’s no honour among thieves. As the trial unfolds, George and Layton’s defence – that the hoard never existed – starts to unravel.
Can justice recover what history has lost?
Narrator: Aimee-Ffion Edwards
Contributors: Simon Wicks, Dr Gareth Williams, Kevin Hegarty KC
Sound Design: Peregrine Andrews
Production Co-ordinator: Dan Marchini
Associate Producer: David James Smith
Producer: Aron Keller
Exec Producer: James Robinson
A BBC Studios Audio Production
MON 10:00 Woman's Hour (m002gfyz)
Women's voices and women's lives - topical conversations to inform, challenge and inspire.
MON 11:00 En-Gulfed (m002gfz1)
Sport
Footballers are currently asking us to visit a long 170km city in the Arabian desert, that hasn't even been built yet. But why?
Fresh from probing into the hilarious hypocrisies of 'greenwashing' and 'wokewashing', comedian and journalist Heydon Prowse turns his attention to the growing presence of the Gulf nations in the UK, and why Anglo-Gulf relations are just, well, weird.
Gulf investment in the UK runs into the hundreds of billions, and we're hungry for more. In this series, Heydon takes his trademark tongue in cheek approach to asking whether the UK has become 'En-Gulfed'.
The countries have been criticised for using their vast wealth to 'wash' their reputation and distract from things like human rights abuses and a less than enthusiastic approach to democracy.
In the first episode, he traces the history of Britain's relationship with the region, and finds how Britain was involved in shaping the states we know today, including how their vast energy profits are spent. He travels back into the archive to see how the BBC talked about the Gulf at the time, and learns how that relationship has developed over the decades.
He then looks into one of the most high profile ways that the Gulf has made its presence known, through funding sporting projects. Top flight football clubs like Manchester City and Newcastle United are now owned by Gulf investment funds and Saudi Arabia is now heavily involved in sports such as Golf and Boxing.
Heydon looks into some of the oddities and unbelievable happenings that have emerged since the Gulf money started pouring into sport, like the prestigious game of Power Slap becoming a regular fixture, or the plan to host the Asian Winter Games 2029 in 40 degree heat.
He asks if the UK is guilty of hypocrisy for accepting so much money from nations that have been criticised for their human rights records? Or is that too naive and unrealistic? Join Heydon as he tries to find out.
Contributors:
David Wearing, Assistant Professor of International Relations at the University of Sussex, author of 'AngloArabia: Why Gulf Wealth Matters to Britain.
James Barr, Historian and author of Lords of the Desert: Britain's Struggle with America to Dominate the Middle East'
Shaista Aziz & Huda Jawad, from the Three Hijabis
Michael Skey, Loughborough University
Presenter: Heydon Prowse
Producer: sam Peach
MON 11:45 Speed of Light by Laura Cumming (m002gfz4)
1. Alexander Gardner: Photographing the American Civil War
In Speed of Light, Laura Cumming takes us on an exhilarating journey through the early years of photography, a revolutionary technology that changed the way we see ourselves forever. From Daguerre’s first patent, in 1839, this art hurtles forward at unbelievable speed - from close-up to collage, snapshot to montage, mugshot, news photography and more, all within two or three decades. To tell the story, Cumming delves into the lives of five ground-breaking photographers whose innovations transformed the medium, leaving us with some of the most affecting images ever made.
Links to photographs taken by Alexander Gardner:-
Abraham Lincoln at Antietam - https://catalog.archives.gov/id/533297
The Sharpshooter - https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/incidents-war-sharpshooters-last-sleep-76449
The Cracked Plate image of Abraham Lincoln - https://npg.si.edu/sites/default/files/blog/6a00e550199efb883301bb07eace8b970d-pi.jpg
Lewis Powell - https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/830968
The series opens with Alexander Gardner, the Scottish photographer who became an eyewitness to the American Civil War. Gardner's haunting images, including his iconic photograph of Abraham Lincoln just days before his assassination - "the moment when the President became a legend’ as Cumming puts it - offer a deeply human insight into living history. Another Scot, William Notman, sails from Glasgow to Canada to open the nation’s most celebrated studio. Here he invents ingenious ways to depict hundreds of people – together - in the snow and ice, and to bring the outside, as it were, indoors. In London, John Jabez Mayall takes the only known photograph of the painter, JMW Turner, as well as the first and most significant photographs of Charles Dickens and Karl Marx. Mayall also captures the spirit of democracy with his carte de visites – pocket sized photographs - that anyone could buy of the stars of the day, from Wilkie Collins to Queen Victoria. And in Paris the meticulous police officer Alphonse Bertillon invents the front-and-profile mugshot that is still used in the solving of crime today. Last comes Nadar, renowned for capturing the innermost thoughts of his Parisian sitters, who took the first aerial shots, and the first revolving shots, and put interviews with images for the first time, reaching forward to the advent of film and television.
Laura Cumming is Chief Art Critic of The Observer. Thunderclap, her memoir of art, life and sudden death, was shortlisted for The Women’s Prize and won The Writer’s Prize and The Saltire Book of the Year Award in 2024. The Vanishing Man: In Pursuit of Velazquez won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography in 2017. On Chapel Sands: My Mother and Other Missing Person was a Sunday Times bestseller and Radio 4 Book of the Week.
Produced by Elizabeth Allard
MON 12:00 News Summary (m002gfz6)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
MON 12:04 You and Yours (m002gfz8)
News and discussion of consumer affairs
MON 12:57 Weather (m002gfzb)
The latest weather forecast
MON 13:00 World at One (m002gfzd)
News, analysis and comment from BBC Radio 4
MON 13:45 The Power of Guilt (m002gfzg)
The First Hour
This is a deeply personal story of guilt – how to live with it, and its power to transform us.
Four years ago, producer Dave Anderson caused a climbing accident that badly injured his partner, Cassie. In this series, Dave and Cassie try to piece together their very different experiences of what happened. Through difficult and intimate conversations, they tell the whole story, from the first traumatic seconds to the emotional fallout years later.
For Dave, the guilt has been overwhelming. Now, he’s searching for ways of living with it, talking to people with unique perspectives on this painful emotion. What are we misunderstanding about guilt? And how can we tap into its hidden power?
In Episode 1, Cassie and Dave grapple with their unreliable memories of the accident and try to understand how the first hour set their course for years to come.
Presenter and Producer: Dave Anderson
Sound-design and mix engineer: Charlie Brandon-King
Executive Producer: Anishka Sharma
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 4
MON 14:00 The Archers (m002gd0m)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 on Sunday]
MON 14:15 Ed Reardon's Week (m002gfzj)
Series 16
5. For the Sake of the Planet
Commissions are so thin on the ground that the only thing on offer to Ed is the role of ‘Writer in Residence’ at a nuclear power station, and they’re looking for a national treasure, which Ed assures his agent he is.
After all, his episode of Tenko was watched by 12 million people. So it is that Ed convinces the nuclear people to give him them the job with a little help from Ping who insists he’s not a ‘wokeflake’ (sic.) Unfortunately, Maggie is on the other side of the fence protesting.
Ed Reardon - Christopher Douglas
Maggie - Pippa Haywood
Devashree - Aasiya Shah
Ping - Barunka O’Shaughnessy
Kayleigh/Newsreader - Nicola Sanderson
Danny - Tom Stourton
Written by Christopher Douglas
Produced by Dawn Ellis
Production Co-ordinator: Katie Baum
Sound: Jon Calver & Alison McKenzie
MON 14:45 Death of a Naturalist by Seamus Heaney (m001q10k)
Episode 4
A new reading of the debut poetry collection by the Nobel Prize in Literature recipient Seamus Heaney, specially commissioned by BBC Radio 4 to commemorate the tenth anniversary of his death.
As read by Bríd Brennan, Adrian Dunbar and Stephen Rea.
Music composed and performed by Neil Martin.
Seamus Heaney was a poet, translator, teacher and critic. During a career spanning fifty years, he became one of the most celebrated poets of his generation. While often rooted in the landscape of his homeland, Heaney’s poetry has a universal appeal that was to find a worldwide readership. During his lifetime he was the recipient of many honours, including the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature, and his work has been translated into 27 languages. His legacy lives on, as readers continue to enjoy and engage with his poetry, prose, drama and translations.
Readers: Bríd Brennan, Adrian Dunbar and Stephen Rea.
Author: Seamus Heaney
Music: Neil Martin
Producer: Michael Shannon
Editor: Andy Martin
A BBC Northern Ireland production.
MON 15:00 A Good Read (m002gfzl)
Zadie Smith and Colm Tóibín
OBLIVION by Héctor Abad, chosen by Colm Tóibín
FLESH by David Szalay, chosen by Zadie Smith
CALL ME BY YOUR NAME by André Aciman, chosen by Harriett Gilbert
Authors and good friends Zadie Smith and Colm Tóibín join Harriett Gilbert to share books they love. For a longer edition of this episode, check out the A Good Read podcast.
Colm Tóibín chooses Oblivion, a memoir by Colombian writer Héctor Abad. It’s a deeply moving tribute to Abad’s father – a warm, generous, and witty man who was a doctor, university professor, and tireless human rights campaigner. His life was tragically cut short when he was murdered by paramilitaries in Medellín in 1987. What do the others make of this powerful portrait of love and loss?
Next, Zadie Smith recommends Flesh, a taut and compelling novel by Hungarian-British author David Szalay. The story follows István, a Hungarian man whose life takes a picaresque turn – from the army to prison, and eventually to London, where he works as a security guard for a wealthy family. As he becomes entangled in their world in unexpected ways, do the others find the novel as gripping as she does?
Finally, Harriett Gilbert brings Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman, the novel that inspired the acclaimed film starring Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer. Set during a languid summer on the Italian Riviera, it captures the intense infatuation between Elio and Oliver. But how does the novel compare to the much-loved film?
Colm Tóibín is the author of eleven novels, including The Master, The Magician, Brooklyn, and Long Island, the latter now out in paperback. And Zadie Smith has written six novels, among them White Teeth, Swing Time, and her most recent, The Fraud.
Producer: Eliza Lomas
MON 15:30 You're Dead to Me (m002gcvp)
[Repeat of broadcast at
10:00 on Saturday]
MON 16:00 Let's Raise the Voting Age (m0001xqr)
[Repeat of broadcast at
13:30 on Sunday]
MON 16:30 Soul Music (m0018fzh)
Bruch's Violin Concerto
A Violin Concerto in G minor, Opus 26, became the best-known work of the German composer Max Bruch. Originally written in 1866 it went through many revisions before finally being completed in 1867. It was performed extensively but having sold both the publishing and the manuscript Bruch died in relative obscurity in 1920. The Concerto would continue to be played around the world and the second movement in particular, the Adagio, became a much-loved favourite.
Journalist Claire Read describes how much her Mother loved the piece after Claire learned and performed it in school, and how she would listen to it whilst being treated for cancer.
Ukrainian violinist Kostia Lukyniuk recalls playing it with an orchestra in his home town aged 11, and how music still gives him strength as he plays for those battered by the Russian invasion of his home country.
The second movement brings back fond memories for Archers actor June Spencer who listened to it with her husband and their friends on a veranda in Minorca.
Leader of the Welsh National Opera David Adams was inspired to take-up the violin after listening to a recording of David Oistrakh playing this piece, and later performed it at the Fishguard Festival. It was a favourite of his Mum's and that recording was played at her funeral.
The Carnegie Hall was the setting for violinist Shlomo Mintz's most treasured performance and he describes how it feels to play those soaring melodies.
Curator Robinson McClellan at The Morgan Library & Museum in New York explains how the manuscript of this concerto made its way from Germany to the USA, and why this work would later become a source of resentment for this 'establishment' composer.
Studio Manager: Ilse Lademann
Produced for BBC Audio in Bristol by Toby Field.
MON 17:00 PM (m002gfzn)
News and current affairs, reporting on breaking stories and summing up the day's headlines
MON 18:00 Six O'Clock News (m002gfzq)
National and international news from BBC Radio 4
MON 18:30 I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue (m002gfzs)
Series 83
4. Cricketers' Songbook
The godfather of all panel shows returns to the Butterworth Hall in Warwick. On the panel are Harry Enfield, Lucy Porter, Miles Jupp and Marcus Brigstocke, with Jack Dee in the umpire’s chair. Regular listeners will know to expect inspired nonsense, pointless revelry and Colin Sell at the piano.
Producer: Jon Naismith
A Random production for BBC Radio 4
MON 19:00 The Archers (m002gfx4)
Susan has the rug pulled from under her, and Alice has a decision to make.
MON 19:15 Front Row (m002gfzv)
Live magazine programme on the worlds of arts, literature, film, media and music
MON 20:00 The Briefing Room (m002g4q3)
How close is the UK getting to the European Union?
'Britain is back on the world stage' said Prime Minister Keir Starmer in May following the first UK-EU summit since the UK left the EU in January 2020. Outline agreements were reached to remove red tape for British farm exports and energy trading with the EU as well as plans for a security and defence partnership. Then a few weeks later
the Prime Minister held summits in London with first the French President, Emmanuel Macron and then the German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz. David Aaronovitch asks whether this is the beginning of a new closer relationship with the European Union and if so, what compromises might need to be made.
Guests:
Peter Foster, World Trade Editor of the Financial Times
Jill Rutter, Senior Fellow at the Institute for Government
Anand Menon, Director of the UK in a Changing Europe
Mujtaba Rahman, Managing Director for Europe at Eurasia Group Consultancy
Presenter: David Aaronovitch
Producers: Caroline Bayley, Ben Carter and Kirsteen Knight
Production Co-ordinator: Maria Ogundele
Studio engineers: Callum Mclean and James Beard
Editors: Richard Vadon and Lisa Baxter
MON 20:30 BBC Inside Science (m002g4q5)
The surprising culture of the animal kingdom
We discuss the incredible science of the animal kingdom, focusing on the latest fascinating research into animal culture, society and communication.
Victoria Gill is joined by a panel of experts in front of a live audience at the Hay Festival to hear about their research all over the world into animal behaviour.
Taking part are:
Jemima Scrase, who is currently finishing her PhD at the University of Sussex investigating matriarchal leadership in African elephants, and has spent most of the last few years out in the field in Kenya, working in collaboration with the charity Save the Elephants.
Dr Manon Schweinfurth, a Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of St Andrews, who runs a lab investigating the evolutionary and psychological origins of cooperation.
And Andy Radford, a Professor of Behavioural Ecology at the University of Bristol, who studies social behaviour and communication, and particularly how vocalisations are used to mediate cooperation and conflict.
MON 21:00 Changing the Odds (m00291y5)
Episode 1: Westminster; Gambling's Big Bang
The 2005 Gambling Act propelled the UK to become the world's biggest online gambling market. But at what price?
New Labour's 2005 Act was betting's big bang. Because of this liberalising gambling act the betting business has become a huge success but it's also now one of the country's most controversial industries.
Radio 4 Journalist Lydia Thomas has reported on the industry for over 10 years and teams up with industry insider Stewart Kenny, one of the founders of betting giant Paddy Power to tell the story of how we got here.
Stewart founded Paddy Power in the 80s, and the story of betting's growth mirrors Stewart's personal tale. He tells Lydia how he expanded Paddy Power across Ireland and into the UK, but also his doubts on where the industry was going as it moved online.
Starting in Westminster, Lydia interviews politicians about the how gambling laws couldn't keep up with technological innovations like the iPhone, which brought casinos to every customer's pocket. Tony Blair's failed Super Casino's idea - and the controversial Fixed Odds Betting Terminal; where you could gamble £100 every 2 minutes. The Fixed Odds Betting terminal changed the conversation about gambling, and put betting on the front pages of all the major newspapers, and the non-betting public's consciousness for the first time.
Lydia also investigates the influence of the industry's lobbying on politicians. Whether free gifts and tickets to sporting events really influences policy.
Presented by Lydia Thomas
Produced by Lydia Thomas and Richard McIlroy
Main Contributor: Stewart Kenny
Assistant Producer: Emma Smith
Technical Producer: Michael Smith
MON 21:45 Untaxing (m0029jjz)
4.The Porn Star Tax Lawyer
A football club in ruins. Thousands of people facing financial devastation. And one man at the centre of it all - a tax lawyer turned porn mogul.
But how did he get away with it? And why did HMRC struggle to stop him?
Producer: Tom Pooley
A Tempo+Talker production for BBC Radio 4
MON 22:00 The World Tonight (m002gfzy)
In depth reporting, intelligent analysis and breaking news from a global perspective
MON 22:45 The Spire by William Golding (m002gg00)
Episode Six
The classic story by William Golding, published in 1964, of one man’s obsession that endangers an entire community.
Dean Jocelin had a vision, and believes he has been chosen by God to add an enormous spire, his ‘spire of prayer’, to his cathedral. But the cathedral has no foundations.
Episode 6
Jocelin is horrified to discover more about Goody Pangall’s predicament and relationship with Roger.
Born in 1911, William Golding was the writer of 13 novels. These include Lord of the Flies, The Inheritors, Pincher Martin and The Spire. Rites of Passage - the first novel in his sea-trilogy To The Ends Of The Earth - won the Booker Prize in 1980. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983.
Writer: William Golding
Reader: John Heffernan
Additional voices by Lucy Davidson
Producer: Jeremy Osborne
A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4
With thanks to Judy Carver at William Golding Ltd
MON 23:00 Whodunnits (m000zv83)
A Charles Paris Mystery - A Deadly Habit
Episode 4
by Jeremy Front
based on the novel by Simon Brett
Charles ..... Bill Nighy
Frances ..... Suzanne Burden
Maurice ..... Jon Glover
Bethan ..... Christine Kavanagh
Justin ..... Tony Turner
Dervla ..... Jane Slavin
Neil ..... Simon Ludders
Peaches ..... Elinor Coleman
Directed by Sally Avens
With an actress and a stage doorman dead at The Aphra Benn theatre Charles believes he knows who the murderer might be.
But his sleuthing uncovers a deadly do-dependant relationship.
MON 23:30 What's Funny About... (m00274qk)
Series 4
1. A Bit of Fry and Laurie
In the first episode of a new series of What's Funny About… Peter Fincham and Jon Plowman are joined by comedy legends Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie to hear the story of how they made their breakout sketch series, A Bit of Fry and Laurie.
Stephen and Hugh talk about the beginnings of their partnership, and finding their place against the backdrop of alternative comedy. They explain their decision to, on the whole, avoid returning characters - a slightly unusual choice in the tradition of sketch programmes. And they unravel for us one of the great mysteries of modern comedy - the origins of “Soupy Twist”!
A Bit of Fry and Laurie is a BBC production, all clips written by Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie.
Producer: Owen Braben
An Expectation Entertainment production for BBC Radio 4
TUESDAY 29 JULY 2025
TUE 00:00 Midnight News (m002gg02)
National and international news from BBC Radio 4
TUE 00:30 Speed of Light by Laura Cumming (m002gfz4)
[Repeat of broadcast at
11:45 on Monday]
TUE 00:48 Shipping Forecast (m002gg04)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping
TUE 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (m002gg06)
BBC Radio 4 presents a selection of news and current affairs, arts and science programmes from the BBC World Service.
TUE 05:00 News Summary (m002gg08)
National and international news from BBC Radio 4
TUE 05:04 Let's Raise the Voting Age (m0001xqr)
[Repeat of broadcast at
13:30 on Sunday]
TUE 05:34 Shipping Forecast (m002gg0b)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping
TUE 05:43 Prayer for the Day (m002gg0d)
From Connemara Ponies to Royal Princes
Good morning
Many years ago I had the joy of knowing a breeder of Connemara ponies on the Welsh Marches who was instrumental in helping to re-vitalize the Basotho pony in Lesotho. It was around this time that the Dolen Cymru Wales Lesotho Link was created and whose Fortieth Anniversary is celebrated this year. Though thousands of miles apart our two small countries are committed to bring people together to improve their communities through the sharing of skills and experience, by partnerships in education, health care, religion and care of the environmental and not forgetting rugby to be a ‘shining source of inspiration and hope to our people.’ In the following years there have been many reciprocal visits of individuals and groups between Lesotho and Wales as well also of members of the Lesotho Royal Family.
On one such visit I was invited to take tea at the invitation of the then bishop of Wrexham with Her Majesty the Queen Mother and a young Prince Seeiso. I meet Prince Seeiso again earlier this year at the St. David’s Day Parliamentary Prayer breakfast in Cardiff where he was guest of honour and keynote speaker who shared a stirring reflection on the role of faith within his nation and its leadership.
So today I pray that the powerful witness of all rulers, leaders and governments listening to God’s voice even in the hustle and bustle of political life and debate, further the ways of unity and peace in our country and between nations.
Amen
TUE 05:45 Farming Today (m002gg0g)
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
TUE 06:00 Today (m002gfw8)
News and current affairs, including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
TUE 09:00 Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics (m002gfwd)
Alexandria: The Library
Natalie is joined by Professors Islam Issa and Edith Hall to tell the story of the great library of Alexandria. It was included in Alexander the Great's original design for his city, located in the Nile Delta. Alexandria was to be a city of knowledge.
The founders of the library were ambitious: they wanted nothing less than to collect all the books in the world. They were willing to pay huge sums, but they were also ruthless and unscrupulous. The Ptolemies would write to fellow rulers and wealthy friends and ask to borrow their priceless texts. Then the library would copy the scrolls, and return the copies. Or alternatively they'd just steal them.
Handily, papyrus, the principal reading material of the era, grew in great abundance around Alexandria. So there was plenty of it for those copies. Less fortunately, it's extremely flammable. So in 48 BCE, when Julius Caesar's besieged army set fire to ships in the harbour in order to block the invading fleet, the fire spread and destroyed a significant part of the library.
'Rockstar mythologist' Natalie Haynes is the best-selling author of 'Divine Might', 'Stone Blind', and 'A Thousand Ships' as well as a reformed comedian who is a little bit obsessive about Ancient Greek and Rome.
Islam Issa is Professor of Literature and History at Birmingham City University. His book 'Alexandria, the City that Changed the World' is the Winner of the Runciman Award and The Times, Sunday Times, TLS, Booklist, Epoch Times and Waterstones Book of the Year.
Edith Hall is Professor of Classics at Durham University, specialising in ancient Greek literature. She has written over thirty books and is a Fellow of the British Academy.
Producer...Mary Ward-Lowery
TUE 09:30 Inside Health (m002gfwj)
Exosomes: Is cosmetics' biggest trend a health risk?
Exosomes are tiny balls of fat that allow cells to communicate with each other in our bodies. They're being actively researched as an experimental new type of medicine, and they're also being used in the cosmetics industry in serums, as well as being injected into people's skin. Researchers have raised concerns about the safety of this hot new trend in beauty.
Presenter James Gallagher meets Dr James Edgar from the University of Cambridge who studies exosomes in his lab, he's also joined by consultant Kamal Kaur who advises the cosmetics industry on regulation around products containing exosomes, and we head to one of the UK's hot spots for beauty clinics and dermatology - the Marlyebone area of London - to meet consultant dermatologist in the NHS and One Wellbeck, Dr Ellie Rashid.
Also in the programme, a new physio app is being trialled by the NHS. It's been rolled out to patients in Lothian in Scotland and we meet the people who have been using it, the real-life physio behind it and hear whether apps could be the way many people access physio in the future.
Producer: Tom Bonnett with Debbie Kilbride
Assistant Producer: Minnie Harrop
Editor: Ilan Goodman
TUE 10:00 Woman's Hour (m002gfwn)
Women's voices and women's lives - topical conversations to inform, challenge and inspire.
TUE 11:00 Screenshot (m002g53k)
Remakes
Remakes continue to proliferate on our screens. Over the last few months, we’ve had live action remakes in cinemas of classic animations Snow White, Lilo And Stitch, and How To Train Your Dragon, along with legacy reboots of the horror hit I Know What You Did Last Summer and DC’s Superman, and - coming soon - a new spin on the 1980s comedy The Naked Gun.
So is this all just evidence of a dearth of creativity in Hollywood? Or are there some artistically valid reasons to re-make existing films? And can a remake ever be better than the original? Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode delve into the past, present and future of the remake.
Mark speaks to critic Anne Billson about the remakes she considers worthy of our attention, from Brian De Palma’s Scarface to John Carpenter’s The Thing. And he also talks with Jim McBride who, in 1983, directed Breathless - a remake of Jean-Luc Godard’s French New Wave classic A Bout de Souffle, which Mark has long considered superior to the original.
Ellen talks to TV critic Roxana Hadadi about what television can bring to the remake party - and about the TV series that managed to improve on their source material. And Ellen also speaks to Noah Hawley, showrunner of the multi-Emmy winning Fargo and upcoming Alien: Earth TV series, about the creative possibilities of TV reboots.
Producer: Jane Long
A Prospect Street production for BBC Radio 4
TUE 11:45 Speed of Light by Laura Cumming (m002gfwr)
2. William Notman - A Master of Innovation
A new and thrilling series written and read by Laura Cumming explores the extraordinary talents of the earliest photographers in the nineteenth century. Today, William Notman is in Canada where his innovative methods capture the building of a nation.
Links to photos taken by William Notman:-
William Notman - https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c1/William_Notman_%28Montreal%2C_1876%29_%28cropped%29.jpg
The Bounce - https://www.aci-iac.ca/art-books/william-notman/style-and-technique/
In Speed of Light, Cumming takes us on an exhilarating journey through the early years of photography, a revolutionary technology that changed the way we see ourselves forever. From Daguerre’s first patent, in 1839, this art hurtles forward at unbelievable speed - from close-up to collage, snapshot to montage, mugshot, news photography and more, all within two or three decades. To tell the story, Cumming delves into the lives of five ground-breaking photographers whose innovations transformed the medium, leaving us with some of the most affecting images ever made.
The series opens with Alexander Gardner, the Scottish photographer who became an eyewitness to the American Civil War. Gardner's haunting images, including his iconic photograph of Abraham Lincoln just days before his assassination - "the moment when the President became a legend’ as Cumming puts it - offer a deeply human insight into living history. Another Scot, William Notman, sails from Glasgow to Canada to open the nation’s most celebrated studio. Here he invents ingenious ways to depict hundreds of people – together - in the snow and ice, and to bring the outside, as it were, indoors. In London, John Jabez Mayall takes the only known photograph of the painter, JMW Turner, as well as the first and most significant photographs of Charles Dickens and Karl Marx. Mayall also captures the spirit of democracy with his carte de visites – pocket sized photographs - that anyone could buy of the stars of the day, from Wilkie Collins to Queen Victoria. And in Paris the meticulous police officer Alphonse Bertillon invents the front-and-profile mugshot that is still used in the solving of crime today. Last comes Nadar, renowned for capturing the innermost thoughts of his Parisian sitters, who took the first aerial shots, and the first revolving shots, and put interviews with images for the first time, reaching forward to the advent of film and television.
Laura Cumming is Chief Art Critic of The Observer. Thunderclap, her memoir of art, life and sudden death, was shortlisted for The Women’s Prize and won The Writer’s Prize and The Saltire Book of the Year Award in 2024. The Vanishing Man: In Pursuit of Velazquez won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography in 2017. On Chapel Sands: My Mother and Other Missing Person was a Sunday Times bestseller and Radio 4 Book of the Week.
Produced by Elizabeth Allard
TUE 12:00 News Summary (m002gfwt)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
TUE 12:04 You and Yours (m002gfww)
News and discussion of consumer affairs
TUE 12:57 Weather (m002gfwy)
The latest weather forecast
TUE 13:00 World at One (m002gfx0)
News, analysis and comment from BBC Radio 4
TUE 13:45 The Power of Guilt (m002gfx2)
The First Day
This is a deeply personal story of guilt – how to live with it, and its power to transform us.
Four years ago, producer Dave Anderson caused a climbing accident that badly injured his partner, Cassie. In this series, Dave and Cassie try to piece together their very different experiences of what happened. Through difficult and intimate conversations, they tell the whole story, from the first traumatic seconds to the emotional fallout years later.
For Dave, the guilt has been overwhelming. Now, he’s searching for ways of living with it, talking to people with unique perspectives on this painful emotion. What are we misunderstanding about guilt? And how can we tap into its hidden power?
In Episode 2, Cassie is in hospital waiting for the results of an x-ray that will shape her future. Dave is struggling to face up to what he’s done. Speaking to psychologist Tim Dalgleish, he takes his first steps towards understanding why guilt has such a visceral effect on us, and how we should respond to those feelings.
Featuring “After” by Andrea Cohen, read by Daniel Ryan.
Presenter and Producer: Dave Anderson
Sound-design and mix engineer: Charlie Brandon-King
Executive Producer: Anishka Sharma
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 4
TUE 14:00 The Archers (m002gfx4)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 on Monday]
TUE 14:15 Drama on 4 (m002gfx6)
Red Gold
New drama about the infected blood scandal and delays in paying compensation. Between the 1970s and the 1990s contaminated blood products were part of a billion dollar global industry. Forty years on, people are still dying. Compensation is coming too late for many.
Byron was given infected blood in the 1980s. He experienced decades of illness, stigma and poverty. Now, after the Langstaff inquiry, he is entitled to a large compensation pay out. But settlements are slow, and he is being evicted. With a new support worker to help, and an ex-girlfriend coming back into his life, what will he do with the money, and who can he trust?
What does valuing a life compromised through medical negligence mean? How is that financial value calculated? Red Gold is rooted in research, ensuring that key details, such as financial sums under the compensation scheme and the nature of relevant medical conditions, are factually accurate.
Topical drama about compassion, survival and justice.
Byron ….. Mat Fraser
Bernie ….. Amanda Wilkin
Mary ….. Christine Bottomley
Writer : Anita Sullivan
Production coordinator: Annie Keates Thorpe
Sound design: Jon Nicholls
Producer: Polly Thomas
Executive producer: Joby Waldman
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 4.
If you want to know more about the issues raised in the drama there are several organisations that can offer information:
The Haemophilia Society - https://haemophilia.org.uk
Tainted Blood - https://www.taintedblood.info
Hep C Trust - https://www.hepctrust.org.uk
Terrence Higgins Trust - https://www.tht.org.uk
The Infected Blood Inquiry - https://www.infectedbloodinquiry.org.uk
With thanks to everyone from the infected blood community who contributed.
TUE 15:00 Extreme (m0027h5s)
Peak Danger
2. Plan of Attack
The climbers at Base Camp come up with a plan to help everyone reach the top. Professional Adventurer Wilco van Rooijen and his team take one route. Cecilie, her husband Rolf and many of their fellow climbers take another.
But while nearly everyone reaches Camp 4, over 25,000 feet in the air, one vital member of the group is in terrible danger. He needs rescuing - but there’s nobody around to help. Or is there?
Featuring climbers Cecilie Skog, Lars Nessa, Eric Meyer, Predrag Zagorac, Wilco van Rooijen as well as journalist and author Amanda Padoan.
Special thanks to Fredrik Sträng for providing archival footage.
Host and Executive Producer: Natalia Mehlman Petrzela
Producers: Leigh Meyer & Amalie Sortland
Editor: Josephine Wheeler
Production Manager: Joe Savage
Sound Design and Mix by Nicholas Alexander, with additional engineering from Daniel Kempson.
Original Music by Adam Foran, Theme music by Adam Foran and Silverhawk
Executive Producers: Max O’Brien & Craig Strachan
Commissioning Editor: Dan Clarke
A Novel production for the BBC
TUE 15:30 Heart and Soul (w3ct6vnz)
Praise You: A forgotten love letter to black men
DJ Fatboy Slim’s Praise You is a song you might have heard in a Hollywood movie or danced to in a club - to this day, it is still his biggest hit. But there is something you won’t know - the singer behind it or the true meaning of the lyrics.
Civil rights activist Camille Yarbrough first released Take Yo’ Praise 50 years ago. It was written as a love letter to African-American men, inspired by a moment of spiritual awakening and family secret. After its release, radio stations refused to play it and she felt she was labelled a “troublemaker”.
When Fatboy Slim picked up an old copy of Camille’s song, he turned it into a hit. But there is an irony - it is now played by radio stations around the world, but the true meaning of the music has been lost.
Reporter Emily Webb goes to meet Camille in her New York apartment.
This programme includes discussion of sexual violence against a child.
Producer/presenter: Emily Webb
Executive producer: Rajeev Gupta
Editor: Chloe Walker
Production co-ordinator: Mica Nepomuceno
(Photo: Carmille Yarbrough. Credit: Emily Webb)
TUE 16:00 Artworks (m002gfx9)
Depeche Mode: Reach Out and Touch Faith
In 1981, four teenagers from Basildon released ‘Just Can’t Get Enough’ - a bright, synth-pop single that announced the arrival of Depeche Mode. Over the next four decades, that same band would evolve into something far darker, stranger, and more monumental. This documentary explores how Depeche Mode became one of the most beloved bands in the world - everywhere before the country they came from.
They’ve sold over 100 million records, filled stadiums from Mexico City to Moscow, and become a source of near-religious devotion for fans around the world. And yet, back home in Britain, they’ve often been misunderstood - too weird, too pop, too synthetic, too uncool.
Writer, critic and musician Sasha Frere-Jones leads a journey through class, coolness, eyeliner, bondage, synthesizers and the Cold War. Along the way, he meets the fans who followed the band across continents, critics and the artists who owe them so much.
Featuring exclusive interviews and extraordinary archive from behind the Iron Curtain to Los Angeles riot scenes, this is the untold story of how Depeche Mode conquered the world - by accident, by design, and by sheer persistence.
Contributors:
Gary Numan, musician
Daniel Miller, founder of Mute Records
Alexis Petridis, music critic
Jeremy Deller, artist and filmmaker
Suzie Stapleton, musician
Paul Gidley, Depeche Mode fan
Presenter: Sasha Frere-Jones
Producer: Richard Power
Executive Producer: Kellie While
A Pomona Audio production for BBC Radio 4
TUE 16:30 What's Up Docs? (m002gfxc)
Should you say 'no' more often?
Why is it so hard to say no? Whether it’s at work, with family, or in everyday social situations, many of us find ourselves saying yes when we really want to say no, then paying the price later in stress, burnout, or resentment.
In this programme, the doctors explore the psychology behind our reluctance to turn things down, and how we can become more comfortable protecting our boundaries.
They’re joined by behavioural scientist and physician Dr Sunita Sah from Cornell University , whose research reveals how social pressure, guilt, and even professionalism can get in the way of a simple two-letter word. Together, they explore why we struggle to say no, and offer practical strategies to help us do it more often, and with confidence.
If you want to get in touch, you can email us at whatsupdocs@bbc.co.uk or WhatsApp us on 08000 665 123.
Presenters: Drs Chris and Xand van Tulleken
Guest: Dr Sunita Sah
Producer: Emily Bird
Executive Producers: Rami Tzabar and Jo Rowntree
Editor: Kirsten Lass
Assistant Producer: Maia Miller-Lewis
Tech Lead: Reuben Huxtable
Social Media: Leon Gower
Digital Lead: Richard Berry
Composer: Phoebe McFarlane
Sound Design: Melvin Rickarby
At the BBC:
Assistant Commissioner: Greg Smith
Commissioning Editor: Rhian Roberts
A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 4
TUE 17:00 PM (m002gfxg)
News and current affairs, reporting on breaking stories and summing up the day's headlines
TUE 18:00 Six O'Clock News (m002gfxk)
National and international news from BBC Radio 4
TUE 18:30 Room 101 with Paul Merton (m001yqs1)
Series 2
Victoria Coren Mitchell
Paul Merton interviews a variety of guests from the world of comedy and entertainment to find out what they would send to Room 101 as well as the one item they cannot live without.
Victoria Coren Mitchell attempts to banish shops that don't take cash, as well as cows. The one thing she could not live without however is something she wouldn't recommend to everyone.
Additional material John Irwin and Suki Webster
Produced by Richard Wilson
A Hat Trick production for BBC Radio 4
TUE 19:00 The Archers (m002gfxm)
It’s all hands to the pump at the village shop, and there’s good news for Jolene.
TUE 19:15 Front Row (m002gfxp)
Live magazine programme on the worlds of arts, literature, film, media and music
TUE 20:00 File on 4 Investigates (m002gfxr)
We Are Not a Conspiracy School
In We Are Not A Conspiracy School, Darryl Morris sets out to meet the people behind HOPE Sussex, a community of home educators founded during the pandemic.
On a sprawling site in the East Sussex countryside, a number of families gather to learn together, away from the mainstream. What’s taught there is contested. The media has called it a “conspiracy school", but the founders say it’s a community centre that encourages critical thinking.
What are people actually doing there? And in a world where shared beliefs have fractured, and more are turning away from the mainstream, why do they feel a community like theirs is needed?
Producer: Louisa Adams
Sound Design: Craig Edmondson
Executive Producer: Ailsa Rochester
An Audio Always production for BBC Radio 4
TUE 20:40 In Touch (m002gfxt)
News, views and information for people who are blind or partially sighted
TUE 21:00 Intrigue (m0028zxl)
Word of God
6. Higher Powers
A dark, cold morning in February 2025. Hundreds are filing into the Museum of the Bible - evangelical leaders, gospel singers, and over 30 members of Congress including Speaker of the House Mike Johnson. They've gathered just three blocks from the US Capitol for an annual event of fervent prayer about what they see as America's most pressing problems.
Meanwhile, journalist Ben Lewis explores how an institution that once dreamed of becoming a centre for biblical scholarship has transformed after losing some 17,000 artefacts - nearly 40% of its entire collection.
Through revealing interviews with museum officials and its critics, Ben traces the extraordinary journey of the Museum of the Bible - from the Green family's ambitions to make Washington, DC a centre for biblical scholarship, to the devastating revelations of forged Dead Sea Scrolls fragments and thousands of problematically sourced artefacts. Yet despite these setbacks, the museum has found new purpose as a convening space for a movement that wants to make evangelical protestantism the moving spirit of America’s future.
As Ben explores exhibits that present a selective view of religious and American history, he discovers how the museum bridges faith and politics. While its staff insist there's no religious agenda, events hosted within its walls blend prayer with political messaging. Through conversations with scholar Roberta Mazza and journalist Katherine Stewart, Ben examines how museums shape our understanding of history through what they choose to display - and what they leave out.
This final episode reveals how the Museum of the Bible has quietly evolved into something more significant than just a repository of ancient artefacts - a platform for reimagining America's past to shape its future.
Presented by Ben Lewis
Produced by Martha Owen
Series producer: Clem Hitchcock
Executive producers: Philip Abrams and Jago Lee
Story editor: Andrew Dickson
Sound design by Richard Courtice
Original music by Max de Wardener
Additional sound effects courtesy of Freesound
A TellTale production for BBC Radio 4
TUE 21:30 The Bottom Line (m002g4pl)
The Bottom Line Business Awards 2025
Which business leader, or company, has had the most outstanding 12 months? What's been the biggest disaster or blunder? Evan Davis and guests look back over the business highs and lows of the last year.
Evan is joined by:
Sir Martin Sorrell, executive chairman, S4 Capital;
Greg Jackson, founder and CEO, Octopus Energy;
Joanna Jensen, founder, Childs Farm.
Production team:
Producers: Georgiana Tudor and Osman Iqbal
Series Producer: Simon Tulett
Editor: Matt Willis
Sound: Neil Churchill and Matt Cadman
Production co-ordinator: Katie Morrison
TUE 22:00 The World Tonight (m002gfxw)
In depth reporting, intelligent analysis and breaking news from a global perspective
TUE 22:45 The Spire by William Golding (m002gfxy)
Episode Seven
The classic story by William Golding, published in 1964, of one man’s obsession that endangers an entire community.
Dean Jocelin had a vision, and believes he has been chosen by God to add an enormous spire, his ‘spire of prayer’, to his cathedral. But the cathedral has no foundations.
Episode 7
While the tower sways in the wind, Jocelin sees a tragedy at the cathedral.
Born in 1911, William Golding was the writer of 13 novels. These include Lord of the Flies, The Inheritors, Pincher Martin and The Spire. Rites of Passage - the first novel in his sea-trilogy To The Ends Of The Earth - won the Booker Prize in 1980. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983.
Writer: William Golding
Reader: John Heffernan
Additional voices by Lucy Davidson
Producer: Jeremy Osborne
A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4
With thanks to Judy Carver at William Golding Ltd
TUE 23:00 Havana Helmet Club (m002ddb7)
5. The Lobby
Little Havana, Miami, is the political beating heart of Havana Syndrome - its own fascinating, often violent history beginning at the Bay of Pigs, becomes entwined with our story when powerful Cuban Americans pick up the issue, and call for an end to the Cuban regime.
Havana Helmet Club is written and presented by Jennifer Forde and Sam Bungey
Editor: Guy Crossman
Story editing: Mike Ollove Producer: Larry Ryan
Sound designer: Merijn Royaards
Additional mixing: Peregrine Andrews
Theme music: Tom Pintens, with additional music composed by Merijn Royaards
Fact checking: Stanley Masters. Additional reporting: Isobel Sutton, Pascale Hardey Stewart and Stanley Masters
Archive producers: Miriam Walsh and Helen Carr
Production executive: Kirstin Drybrugh
Editorial advisor: Jesse Baker
Commissioner: Dylan Haskins
Assistant commissioners: Sarah Green and Natasha Johansson
A Yarn production for Radio 4 and BBC Sounds
TUE 23:30 Illuminated (m002536j)
The Last of the Blind Piano Tuners
Composer Aidan Tulloch is fascinated by the physical process of making music – but fears he knows very little. He gains a unique insight from some of the most precise and gifted technicians in the country – members of the Association of Blind Piano Tuners. Aidan traces their journey into this field, goes along to their annual curry lunch, and finds out why the highly skilled craft of piano tuning was once a popular career for blind and partially sighted people: now their numbers are dwindling. They also reflect on how we listen to and perceive sound and music, and the joy it brings.
Presenter: Aidan Tulloch
Producers: Maryam Maruf and Emily Webb
Editor: John Goudie
Mix: Giles Aspen
(Photo: Piano tuner Martin Locke tuning a piano. Credit: Maryam Maruf)
WEDNESDAY 30 JULY 2025
WED 00:00 Midnight News (m002gfy1)
National and international news from BBC Radio 4
WED 00:30 Speed of Light by Laura Cumming (m002gfwr)
[Repeat of broadcast at
11:45 on Tuesday]
WED 00:48 Shipping Forecast (m002gfy3)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping
WED 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (m002gfy5)
BBC Radio 4 presents a selection of news and current affairs, arts and science programmes from the BBC World Service.
WED 05:00 News Summary (m002gfy7)
National and international news from BBC Radio 4
WED 05:04 BBC Inside Science (m002g4q5)
[Repeat of broadcast at
20:30 on Monday]
WED 05:34 Shipping Forecast (m002gfy9)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping
WED 05:43 Prayer for the Day (m002gfyc)
A Tandem Skydive
Good Morning.
I have something of a reputation for being impetuous, but when I announced a few months ago that to mark a major birthday I had coming up, I was going to book a tandem skydive to raise money for the work of The Salvation Army in my city of Newport, I think my husband decided I had finally taken leave of my senses completely!
So, last Saturday, I threw myself out of an aeroplane ten thousand feet above Swansea in South Wales – ten thousand feet is just under two miles, and after the exhilaration of the freefall, my instructor pulled the cord and we gently floated back to earth, taking in the beauty of the world below us.
From that height everything takes on a new perspective. I was struck by how insignificant the cars and buildings looked against the enormity of creation, how we take up so little space, but that God’s beautiful creation seems to go on forever.
In Psalm 8, we read:
When I look at the night sky and see the work of your fingers—
the moon and the stars you set in place—
what are mere mortals that you should think about them,
human beings that you should care for them?
Humanity has been given the joy and responsibility of caring for this beautiful world, and, seeing it from this perspective I was struck by our insignificance yet how loved we are by God who created us and charged us to care for creation – including each other.
Dear Lord. Forgive us the times when we have abused the gifts you have given us and help us each day to see this world as you see it and to love it - and each other – as you love us.
Amen
WED 05:45 Farming Today (m002gfyf)
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
WED 06:00 Today (m002gg48)
News and current affairs, including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
WED 09:00 Sideways (m002g7b9)
Chasing Peace
3. Peace Reimagined
When Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, one man declared the use of weapons to defend his nation as morally wrong. He faces years in prison for his views. He’s a pacifist, and believes that war is not justified under any means - a view Matthew Syed’s own grandfather held in the Second World War.
In this final episode of Chasing Peace, a special three-part mini series of Sideways, Matthew Syed scrutinises the arguments of people who are radically committed to non-violent solutions to conflict.
Persuading fellow young Palestinians that there’s a peaceful solution to the Israel-Gaza conflict is a daily, monumental challenge for Palestinian peacebuilder Wasim Almasri. Within his community, it's almost transgressive to consistently advocate a non-violent way forward - and he can understand why. He discusses a pioneering project he trialled that used AI to enable anonymous digital dialogues to help both sides find common ground.
Matthew contemplates whether there’s any possibility of clinging on to the idea of peace - when it feels like the most impossible option.
With Ukrainian conscientious objector and Executive Secretary of the Ukrainian Pacifist Movement, Yurii Sheliazhenko; Rachel Julian, Professor of Peace Studies at Leeds Beckett University; third-generation Palestinian refugee and Director of Programmes of the Alliance for Middle East Peace, Wasim Almasri; and Lisa Schirch, Professor of the Practice of Technology and Peacebuilding at the University of Notre Dame.
Presenter: Matthew Syed
Producer: Vishva Samani
Editor: Hannah Marshall
Sound Design and Mix: Daniel Kempson
Theme music by Ioana Selaru
A Novel production for BBC Radio 4
WED 09:30 Shadow World (m002gg4b)
The Grave Robbers
4. The Will to Steal
It should be impossible to steal a home, but this new narrative podcast from multi award winning investigative reporter Sue Mitchell (Intrigue: To Catch a Scorpion, Million Dollar Lover) reveals a gang operating in the UK to steal houses from people who die without a recent will.
The series hears from victims of the gang - and confronts its leaders, highlighting the shortfalls of a creaking system that leaves many others at risk. It also reveals the scale and depth of an ongoing scam which is denying rightful heirs significant windfalls - and depriving the UK Government of inheritance tax revenue.
This is an original investigation. A story never told before, leading across borders and into the dark underbelly of the UK. Over five episodes, Sue reveals a network of companies that connect the gang members and finds evidence that as well as scamming people out of property, they are involved in illegal drugs, money laundering and the sale of UK work visas.
WED 10:00 Woman's Hour (m002gg4d)
Women's voices and women's lives - topical conversations to inform, challenge and inspire.
WED 11:00 File on 4 Investigates (m002gfxr)
[Repeat of broadcast at
20:00 on Tuesday]
WED 11:40 This Week in History (m002gd94)
July 28th - August 3rd
Fascinating, surprising and eye-opening stories from the past, brought to life.
BBC Radio 4 explores the history books and archives to see what has happened on this same week throughout history.
With short vignettes of the events that have shaped the world and made us who we are today.
This week: July 28th - August 3rd
- 3rd of August 1936. The African-American athlete Jesse Owens wins the first of his four gold medals at the Berlin Olympics, in front of Adolf Hitler.
- 1st of August 1774. The English chemist Joseph Priestley discovers oxygen, but did he get there first?
- 28th of July 1939. The iconic Sutton Hoo helmet is unearthed in Suffolk and provides a connection to Britain’s Anglo-Saxon past.
Presented by Ron Brown and Viji Alles.
Produced by Stuart Ross.
WED 11:45 Speed of Light by Laura Cumming (m002gg4g)
3. John Mayall - A Celebrity Photographer
A new series written and read by Laura Cumming explores the exciting nineteenth century revolution in photography. Today, John Mayall's photographs of Victoria and Albert spark a new craze.
Links to photographs taken by John Mayall:-
JMW Turner - https://www.sandstoneridge.org.uk/footprints-on-ridge/joseph-mallord-william-turner-1775-1851.html
Karl Marx - https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw75680/Karl-Marx?LinkID=mp86512&role=art&rNo=0
Victoria and Albert – carte de visite - https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O77558/guy-little-theatrical-photographs-photograph-mayall-john-jabez/?carousel-image=2006AM5975
In Speed of Light, Cumming takes us on an exhilarating journey through the early years of photography, a revolutionary technology that changed the way we see ourselves forever. From Daguerre’s first patent, in 1839, this art hurtles forward at unbelievable speed - from close-up to collage, snapshot to montage, mugshot, news photography and more, all within two or three decades. To tell the story, Cumming delves into the lives of five ground-breaking photographers whose innovations transformed the medium, leaving us with some of the most affecting images ever made.
The series opens with Alexander Gardner, the Scottish photographer who became an eyewitness to the American Civil War. Gardner's haunting images, including his iconic photograph of Abraham Lincoln just days before his assassination - "the moment when the President became a legend’ as Cumming puts it - offer a deeply human insight into living history. Another Scot, William Notman, sails from Glasgow to Canada to open the nation’s most celebrated studio. Here he invents ingenious ways to depict hundreds of people – together - in the snow and ice, and to bring the outside, as it were, indoors. In London, John Jabez Mayall takes the only known photograph of the painter, JMW Turner, as well as the first and most significant photographs of Charles Dickens and Karl Marx. Mayall also captures the spirit of democracy with his carte de visites – pocket sized photographs - that anyone could buy of the stars of the day, from Wilkie Collins to Queen Victoria. And in Paris the meticulous police officer Alphonse Bertillon invents the front-and-profile mugshot that is still used in the solving of crime today. Last comes Nadar, renowned for capturing the innermost thoughts of his Parisian sitters, who took the first aerial shots, and the first revolving shots, and put interviews with images for the first time, reaching forward to the advent of film and television.
Laura Cumming is Chief Art Critic of The Observer. Thunderclap, her memoir of art, life and sudden death, was shortlisted for The Women’s Prize and won The Writer’s Prize and The Saltire Book of the Year Award in 2024. The Vanishing Man: In Pursuit of Velazquez won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography in 2017. On Chapel Sands: My Mother and Other Missing Person was a Sunday Times bestseller and Radio 4 Book of the Week.
Produced by Elizabeth Allard
WED 12:00 News Summary (m002gg4j)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
WED 12:04 You and Yours (m002gg4l)
News and discussion of consumer affairs
WED 12:57 Weather (m002gg4n)
The latest weather forecast
WED 13:00 World at One (m002gg4q)
News, analysis and comment from BBC Radio 4
WED 13:45 The Power of Guilt (m002gg4s)
The First Week
This is a deeply personal story of guilt – how to live with it, and its power to transform us.
Four years ago, producer Dave Anderson caused a climbing accident that badly injured his partner, Cassie. In this series, Dave and Cassie try to piece together their very different experiences of what happened. Through difficult and intimate conversations, they tell the whole story, from the first traumatic seconds to the emotional fallout years later.
For Dave, the guilt has been overwhelming. Now, he’s searching for ways of living with it, talking to people with unique perspectives on this painful emotion. What are we misunderstanding about guilt? And how can we tap into its hidden power?
In Episode 3, Cassie and Dave are both confronted with the gravity of her injuries. They meet face to face for the first time since the accident – will Cassie blame him for what he did, or offer forgiveness? Dave searches for a way forward in the Jewish tradition his family followed for many generations.
Presenter and Producer: Dave Anderson
Sound-design and mix engineer: Charlie Brandon-King
Executive Producer: Anishka Sharma
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 4
WED 14:00 The Archers (m002gfxm)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 on Tuesday]
WED 14:15 Fault Lines: Money, Sex and Blood (m000nkkh)
Series 2: Sex
Vocation
Celeste has returned from France and is looking after her Aunt Constance. Celeste feels Constance may need the solace of religion to help her cope with her illness and so enlists the help of a local priest. They all become friendly, but where exactly do the boundaries lie?
Constance . . . . . Glenda Jackson
Celeste . . . . . Melody Grove
Richard . . . . . Matthew Gravelle
Written by by Michael Symmons Roberts
Directed by Gary Brown
WED 15:00 Money Box (m002gg4v)
The latest news from the world of personal finance
WED 15:30 The Hidden History of the Window (m001009h)
Rachel Hurdley opens the window on an architectural feature which reveals a story of conflict, hierarchy, status and ventilation.
The history of windows in our homes begins with simple openings, designed to let in some light and air but small enough to protect the occupants from intruders. Glass was rare and expensive so only the wealthiest could afford to show off their affluence with a display of glazed windows. But, as the technology of glass making developed, windows became larger and made a statement about sophistication and modernity.
Rachel traces the history of the window from the arrow loops of Chepstow Castle to the massive plate glass windows of the 20th century and beyond. She visits Gloucester Cathedral to admire a stained glass window which was said to be the largest in the world when it was created and discovers how its design reinforced the medieval social order. Rachel also goes back to the 1590s to find out why Hardwick Hall was described as ‘More Glass Than Wall’ and how its many windows were used to show off wealth and status.
She discovers how department stores with their tempting window displays brought about social change and played a part in female liberation and she considers why windows suddenly got so much bigger in the early years of the 20th century. Along the way, Rachel hears from the Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage, about how his lockdown window provided poetic inspiration and she reflects on the central question of the window – are we inside looking out or outside looking in?
Interviewees:
Sonia Solicari, Director of The Museum of the Home - https://www.museumofthehome.org.uk/
Jonathan Glancey, Architectural Writer and Historian
Kate Roberts, Chief Inspector of Ancient Monuments for Cadw speaking at Chepstow Castle https://cadw.gov.wales/visit/places-to-visit/chepstow-castle
Celia Thomson, Canon Chancellor of Gloucester Cathedral - https://gloucestercathedral.org.uk/
Denise Edwards, General Manager of Hardwick Hall - https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/hardwick-hall
Deborah Sugg Ryan, Professor of Design History at Portsmouth University
David Scott, Tenant at The Homewood - https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/the-homewood
Simon Armitage, The Poet Laureate
Presenter: Rachel Hurdley
Producer: Louise Adamson
Executive Producer: Samir Shah
A Juniper Connect production for BBC Radio 4
WED 16:00 Human Intelligence (m0026pnp)
Disruptors: George Washington
Washington may be better known as a man of action rather than ideas. However, he gave the world one idea of huge power, an idea that was also about power. As a military General, Washington won the American War of Independence. Then, as the first ever US president, he helped establish a nation and guide it through its early life. And then he did something extraordinary – he voluntarily gave up his power and returned to his farm. The idea of the peaceful transfer of power has been at the heart of the American system ever since.
Special thanks to Dr Tom F Wright, Associate Professor in Rhetoric at the University of Sussex.
Produced by BBC Studios Audio in partnership with The Open University.
WED 16:15 The Media Show (m002gg4x)
Social media, anti-social media, breaking news, faking news: this is the programme about a revolution in media.
WED 17:00 PM (m002gg4z)
News and current affairs, reporting on breaking stories and summing up the day's headlines
WED 18:00 Six O'Clock News (m002gg51)
National and international news from BBC Radio 4
WED 18:30 Your Mum (m002fbf4)
6. Jo Brand and Eshaan Akbar
Jo tells us how her mum sweet-talked her way into Libya, renounced Catholicism as a teenager and stopped at nothing to stand up for what she believed in. Eshaan explains how his mum invented UberEATS, used him as a human shield against the Bangladesh Army, and how he has coped with tragically losing such an incredible character.
In this series, Laura Smyth sits down with some incredible guests to find out about their mums and explore the many faces of ‘motherhood’. Join her for a nostalgic, shameless, cathartic ride that asks what (if anything) our folks have taught us.
Producer: Sasha Bobak
Production Coordinator: Katie Baum
Executive Producer: Pete Strauss
A BBC Studios Audio Production for Radio 4.
WED 19:00 The Archers (m002gg54)
Emma considers what might have been, and David offers a supportive shoulder.
WED 19:15 Front Row (m002gg56)
Live magazine programme on the worlds of arts, literature, film, media and music
WED 20:00 AntiSocial (m002g52r)
Racism and prejudice
The debate around a hierarchy of racism was reignited this week when Labour MP Diane Abbott appeared on a BBC Radio 4 podcast and discussed previous comments she'd made about racism.
She maintained there is a difference between racism based on skin colour and other kinds of racism. This sparked conversation around the different types of racism and prejudice faced by Black people, Jewish people, and Gypsy, Roma, and Traveller people. We look at the statistics and discuss the history of the anti-racism movement.
Presenter: Adam Fleming
Producers: Lucy Proctor, Nik Sindle, Simon Maybin, Natasha Fernandes
Editor: Penny Murphy
Studio Manager: Hal Haines
WED 20:45 Café Hope (m0023y8f)
Band of sisters
Heather Sharp who started Forces Wives Challenge tells Rachel Burden about how the social enterprise has reduced loneliness and restored confidence to women who have partners serving in the military.
Café Hope is our virtual Radio 4 coffee shop, where guests pop in for a brew and a chat to tell us what they’re doing to make things better in big and small ways. Think of us as sitting in your local café, cooking up plans, hearing the gossip, and celebrating the people making the world a better place.
We’re all about trying to make change. It might be a transformational project that helps an entire community, or it might be about trying to make one life a little bit easier. And the key here is in the trying. This is real life. Not everything works, and there are struggles along the way. But it’s always worth a go.
You can contact us on cafehope@bbc.co.uk
WED 21:00 Walt Disney: A Life in Films (p0fxbr8n)
5. Bambi
Through the stories of ten of his greatest works, Mel Giedroyc examines the life of Walt Disney, a much mythologised genius. A man to whom storytelling was an escape from an oppressive father and a respite from periods of depression.
His name is truly iconic, but how much do we really know about this titan of the entertainment industry? Who was the real Walt and why did a man who moulded Western pop culture in his image end up on his deathbed, afraid that he’d be forgotten?
In this episode, Mel invites you into the woods to explore Disney’s Bambi, a deeply moving film following the story of an orphaned deer as he discovers the joys of nature and faces the dangers of hunters and the harshness of winter.
We hear how Walt obsessed over the realism of the animation, bringing live animals into the studio to act as models for his staff. At one point a rutting stag broke loose, causing havoc, but the end result is a sumptuously beautiful film. Under the surface however, Walt endured a torrid time, taking out hefty bank loans in order to finance the project which massively overran.
It has since been acknowledged as a classic, but Bambi received a muted response from the critics. Hugely impacted by the ongoing Second World War, Bambi didn’t even come close to breaking even on its initial release. Clearly, Walt needed a new approach if his studio was to survive.
A Novel production for BBC Radio 4
WED 21:30 Inside Health (m002gfwj)
[Repeat of broadcast at
09:30 on Tuesday]
WED 22:00 The World Tonight (m002gg59)
In depth reporting, intelligent analysis and breaking news from a global perspective
WED 22:45 The Spire by William Golding (m002gg5c)
Episode Eight
The classic story by William Golding, published in 1964, of one man’s obsession that endangers an entire community.
Dean Jocelin had a vision, and believes he has been chosen by God to add an enormous spire, his ‘spire of prayer’, to his cathedral. But the cathedral has no foundations.
Episode 8
Following Goody’s death, Roger is now absent and drunk. Jocelin becomes directly involved with the building work.
Born in 1911, William Golding was the writer of 13 novels. These include Lord of the Flies, The Inheritors, Pincher Martin and The Spire. Rites of Passage - the first novel in his sea-trilogy To The Ends Of The Earth - won the Booker Prize in 1980. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983.
Writer: William Golding
Reader: John Heffernan
Producer: Jeremy Osborne
Additional voices by Lucy Davidson
A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4
With thanks to Judy Carver at William Golding Ltd
WED 23:00 Stand-Up Specials (m002gg5f)
The Lively Life of Lindsey Santoro
4. You Can't Interfere with Wildlife
Today Lindsey attends Nutty Sue’s Hen Party. The ladies take things too far resulting in a number of injured strippers, a pensioner getting arrested, and losing the bride to be on a revolving dance floor. The night ends with a cold serving of cheesy chips and a shocking discovery.
Welcome to the life of the most beautiful princess in all of Birmingham and its surrounding areas. This week Lindsey Santoro has started a diary. But she’s not 13 years old daydreaming about her latest crush and sleepover plans. She’s a 37-year-old no-nonsense Brummie whose days are more likely to involve thrush cream and a bargy with a bus driver. You are cordially invited to step into her world and learn lessons from her lively life.
Producer: Sasha Bobak
Production Coordinator: Katie Baum
Script Editor: Ruth Husko
Executive Producer: Pete Strauss
A BBC Studios Audio Production for Radio 4.
WED 23:15 Where to, Mate? (m001k7p9)
Series 2
'... are those jam jars in your way...'
Series 2 episode 4
From filmmaker Jason Wingard and set and recorded on location in a car in Manchester, 'Where To, Mate?' is a semi-improvised comedy following our drivers Bernie, Ben, and Saj, as we eavesdrop on their taxi journeys around the North West.
Bernie picks up an old friend.
Featuring local voices and character actors/comedians from the North.
Dialogue is improvised by the cast based on ideas by Jason Wingard and Carl Cooper.
Ben ..... Peter Slater
Bernie ..... Jo Enright
Saj ..... Abdullah Afzal
Milton ..... Christopher J Hall
Paul ..... Brennan Reece
Sarah ..... Dylan Morris
Hazel ..... Janice Connolly
Controller ..... Jason Wingard
Controller ..... Abdullah Afzal
Additional voices and material by the cast and crew.
Director: Jason Wingard
Producer: Carl Cooper
A BBC Studios Audio production for BBC Radio 4
WED 23:30 Ken Cheng: I Can School You (m001t9rs)
1. Solving a Problem like Maths
Comedian Ken Cheng focuses his analytical observations on school subjects. In the first of the series, Ken explores Maths, the subject that he loved until it broke him. Ken looks into popular disdain of Maths, and offers up his answers on how we turn around its public image.
Producer: Rajiv Karia
An EcoAudio certified production.
It is a BBC Studios production for Radio 4.
THURSDAY 31 JULY 2025
THU 00:00 Midnight News (m002gg5h)
National and international news from BBC Radio 4
THU 00:30 Speed of Light by Laura Cumming (m002gg4g)
[Repeat of broadcast at
11:45 on Wednesday]
THU 00:48 Shipping Forecast (m002gg5k)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping
THU 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (m002gg5m)
BBC Radio 4 presents a selection of news and current affairs, arts and science programmes from the BBC World Service.
THU 05:00 News Summary (m002gg5p)
National and international news from BBC Radio 4
THU 05:04 Sideways (m002g7b9)
[Repeat of broadcast at
09:00 on Wednesday]
THU 05:34 Shipping Forecast (m002gg5r)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping
THU 05:43 Prayer for the Day (m002gg5t)
Salt Lake City Toffees
Good morning.
I was recently invited to a Bring and Share picnic in Cardiff’s Roath Park on an exceptionally hot Sunday afternoon, after a morning spent preaching about the good Samaritan in church. Thirty or forty people gathered in the shade of the park’s beautiful acer trees, and I made sure I was sitting near a Sikh couple who had brought delicious pakora and samosas to share. Delicious. As we chatted food was passed around including toffees from Salt Lake City, brought by a family from the church of Latter Day Saints, aka the Mormons. I declined on account of a fear of any unwanted filling extraction but I was left with a sense of my own limited vision when it comes to diversity and who I am prepared to take seriously or otherwise in terms of faith communities and their respective beliefs. For no good reason I found myself judging my brothers and sisters from the church of Latter Day Saints more because of their beliefs, whereas I was curious and open-minded about learning from a faith tradition wholly different from my own from the Sikhs. I realised later that that was exactly why Jesus answered the question who is my neighbour with the parable of the good Samaritan, a tribe with whom we learn the Jewish people were at loggerheads, and regarded as heretics. It took a shared meal to help me see my own bias and unconscious prejudices. It was a picnic which really provided food for thought as well as for bodily sustenance.
God of many names, friend of all, thank you for all who help us see the breadth of your love. Open our hearts to receive your hospitality. Make us always willing to receive from others.
Amen
THU 05:45 Farming Today (m002gg5w)
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
THU 06:00 Today (m002gg6s)
News and current affairs, including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
THU 09:00 Artworks (m002gg6v)
New York 1925
4. Autumn
In 1925 New York became the biggest, most populous city in the world, overtaking London, and was the launchpad for an extraordinary range of writing, music, culture and politics which still resonate 100 years later - from the publication of F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and the launch of The New Yorker, to the rise of the Harlem Renaissance and the first success for the composer Richard Rodgers.
This is the story of that momentous year, season by season, told over four episodes, with contributors including novelist Jay McInerney, the writer and academic Margo Jefferson and the editor of the New Yorker David Remnick. The series is presented by the saxophonist and broadcaster Soweto Kinch, with an original soundtrack played by the composer and jazz clarinettist Giacomo Smith and his band.
Episode 4: Autumn
It was election time for mayor of the biggest city on earth, and the fun-loving, fast-living Jimmy Walker was up against the establishment in the form of pen millionaire, Frank Waterman. But who ever won, Jimmy had changed politics in New York forever.
The New Yorker magazine was finally turning a corner, with its first edition that sold out – thanks to a celebrity debutante.
November saw two publications that showcased the city in different ways – the kaleidoscopic, impressionistic novel Manhattan Transfer by John Dos Passos, and The New Negro: An Interpretation, edited by Alain Locke, which was the nearest thing to a mission statement for the Harlem Renaissance.
Presenter Soweto Kinch
Producer Katy Hickman
Band: Giacomo Smith clarinet; Laura Judd trumpet; Daniel Higham trombone; Alexander Boulton banjo; Joe Webb piano; Corrie Dick drums; Soweto Kinch saxophone
THU 09:30 Politically (m002gg6x)
Reflections: Series 3
Steve Baker
Steve Baker was a pivotal figure in the Brexit turmoil that engulfed the Conservatives. Becoming an MP in 2010 order to help achieve Britain's severance from the European Union, he came to prominence as chair of an influential group of Eurosceptic rebels who helped bring down the prime ministership of Theresa May.
Having lost his seat in the general election of 2024, the former Royal Air Force engineer talks to James Naughtie about how to organise a rebellion, his Christian faith, the state of the Conservative party and the toll political life took on his mental health.
Producer: Leela Padmanabhan
THU 10:00 Woman's Hour (m002gg6z)
Women's voices and women's lives - topical conversations to inform, challenge and inspire.
THU 11:00 The Infinite Monkey Cage (m002fxn7)
Series 33
The Mighty Spud - Sandy Knapp, Glenn Bryan and Susan Calman
Robin Ince and Brian Cox get out the ketchup and peel back the layers of one of the most versatile and beloved foods - potatoes. From the science of starch to the surprising role potatoes have played in history, we’re digging deep to uncover the truth behind the mighty spud.
Chipping into the conversation are botanist Sandy Knapp, geneticist Glenn Bryan and potato passionate comedian Susan Calman.
Susan is astonished to learn that the potatoes lining our supermarket shelves all belong to a single species and once she discovered the rich diversity of wild potato species in South America, she’s already planning her next holiday to visit them! Plus we end the episode on a tuber-powered musical note as Helen Anahita-Wilson plays the monkey cage theme song on none other than a potato keyboard!
Producer: Melanie Brown
Assistant Producer: Olivia Jani
Executive Producer: Alexandra Feachem
BBC Studios Audio Production
THU 11:45 Speed of Light by Laura Cumming (m002gg71)
4. Alphonse Bertillon - The Mugshot
A new series written and read by Laura Cumming explores the exciting nineteenth century revolution in photography. Today, Alphonse Bertillon and his camera create a crime solving innovation.
Link to Alphonse Bertillon's self-portrait:-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphonse_Bertillon#/media/File:Bertillon,_Alphonse,_fiche_anthropom%C3%A9trique_recto-verso.jpg
In Speed of Light, Cumming takes us on an exhilarating journey through the early years of photography, a revolutionary technology that changed the way we see ourselves forever. From Daguerre’s first patent, in 1839, this art hurtles forward at unbelievable speed - from close-up to collage, snapshot to montage, mugshot, news photography and more, all within two or three decades. To tell the story, Cumming delves into the lives of five ground-breaking photographers whose innovations transformed the medium, leaving us with some of the most affecting images ever made.
The series opens with Alexander Gardner, the Scottish photographer who became an eyewitness to the American Civil War. Gardner's haunting images, including his iconic photograph of Abraham Lincoln just days before his assassination - "the moment when the President became a legend’ as Cumming puts it - offer a deeply human insight into living history. Another Scot, William Notman, sails from Glasgow to Canada to open the nation’s most celebrated studio. Here he invents ingenious ways to depict hundreds of people – together - in the snow and ice, and to bring the outside, as it were, indoors. In London, John Jabez Mayall takes the only known photograph of the painter, JMW Turner, as well as the first and most significant photographs of Charles Dickens and Karl Marx. Mayall also captures the spirit of democracy with his carte de visites – pocket sized photographs - that anyone could buy of the stars of the day, from Wilkie Collins to Queen Victoria. And in Paris the meticulous police officer Alphonse Bertillon invents the front-and-profile mugshot that is still used in the solving of crime today. Last comes Nadar, renowned for capturing the innermost thoughts of his Parisian sitters, who took the first aerial shots, and the first revolving shots, and put interviews with images for the first time, reaching forward to the advent of film and television.
Laura Cumming is Chief Art Critic of The Observer. Thunderclap, her memoir of art, life and sudden death, was shortlisted for The Women’s Prize and won The Writer’s Prize and The Saltire Book of the Year Award in 2024. The Vanishing Man: In Pursuit of Velazquez won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography in 2017. On Chapel Sands: My Mother and Other Missing Person was a Sunday Times bestseller and Radio 4 Book of the Week.
Produced by Elizabeth Allard
THU 12:00 News Summary (m002gg73)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
THU 12:04 Scam Secrets (m002h2p3)
Exposing the secret techniques criminals use to steal your money.
THU 12:32 Sliced Bread (m002gg75)
Greg Foot investigates the so-called wonder products making bold claims.
THU 12:57 Weather (m002gg77)
The latest weather forecast
THU 13:00 World at One (m002gg79)
News, analysis and comment from BBC Radio 4
THU 13:45 The Power of Guilt (m002gg7c)
The First Month
This is a deeply personal story of guilt – how to live with it, and its power to transform us.
Four years ago, producer Dave Anderson caused a climbing accident that badly injured his partner, Cassie. In this series, Dave and Cassie try to piece together their very different experiences of what happened. Through difficult and intimate conversations, they tell the whole story, from the first traumatic seconds to the emotional fallout years later.
For Dave, the guilt has been overwhelming. Now, he’s searching for ways of living with it, talking to people with unique perspectives on this painful emotion. What are we misunderstanding about guilt? And how can we tap into its hidden power?
In Episode 4, Cassie is finally taken into the operating theatre for major surgery on her spine. Everyone is waiting to see what her life will look like afterwards. Dave meets someone who is wrestling with an even more extreme experience of guilt. She has hard-won lessons for all of us.
Featuring “Sandpiper”, by Elizabeth Bishop. Read by Daniel Ryan.
Presenter and Producer: Dave Anderson
Sound-design and mix engineer: Charlie Brandon-King
Executive Producer: Anishka Sharma
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 4
THU 14:00 The Archers (m002gg54)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 on Wednesday]
THU 14:15 Drama on 4 (m002gg7f)
The Barber of Moville
With the Assisted Dying Bill making a slow and painful progress through Parliament, there are some people with dementia but not expected to die within six months who see Switzerland as their only option if they are to avoid a lingering decline over which they have no agency.
Ronan Carr’s drama, The Barber of Moville addresses this dilemma with unflinching poignancy. Kitty knew this was coming and so she prepared for it by drawing up a contract committing her partner to the trip to Zurich because she knew she would have forgotten all about it when the trip came due.
Inevitably however, despite the signed contract with her husband Dommo and a video recording committing her future self to what she sees as the only sensible way out, Kitty decides at the last minute that she has changed her mind - what’s left of it.
Kitty - Frances Tomelty
Dommo - Dermot Crowley
Director: Eoin O’Callaghan
A Big Fish Radio production for BBC Radio 4
THU 15:00 This Natural Life (m002gg7h)
Angela Harding
Martha Kearney travels to one of Britain's most isolated islands where the illustrator of books by the likes of Simon Armitage and Isabella Tree seeks her inspiration among the seabird colonies of Fair Isle.
Angela Harding's lino-cut prints are an integral part of the recent boom in nature writing. Dynamic birds or mammals dominate the foreground while abstract interpretations of landscape set them in the context of wild shores and woodlands. Martha catches up with Angela as she searches for fresh inspiration on an artist's retreat on Fair Isle, a tiny island halfway between Orkney and Shetland.
They take a walk along the steep cliffs of the island's southside, meeting puffins, kittiwakes and fulmars and discuss Angela's determination to make her career as an artist.
Producer: Alasdair Cross
THU 15:27 Radio 4 Appeal (m002gczf)
[Repeat of broadcast at
07:54 on Sunday]
THU 15:30 Feedback (m002gg7k)
The programme that holds the BBC to account on behalf of the radio audience
THU 16:00 The Briefing Room (m002gg7m)
David Aaronovitch presents in-depth explainers on big issues in the news.
THU 16:30 BBC Inside Science (m002gg7p)
A weekly programme that illuminates the mysteries and challenges the controversies behind the science that's changing our world.
THU 17:00 PM (m002gg7r)
News and current affairs, reporting on breaking stories and summing up the day's headlines
THU 18:00 Six O'Clock News (m002gg7t)
National and international news from BBC Radio 4
THU 18:30 Tim Key's Poetry Programme (m001xdnb)
1. The Pilot
The poetry show (without the poetry) returns for more comic chaos, with guests Stephen Merchant and Lolly Adefope.
This is a poetry programme like no other – over the course of 6 series Key has performed magic, music, cookery and witchcraft; he’s delivered a baby, gone underground, up the Shard and into space.
And sometimes he finds time to read poems.
This series, regulars Tom Basden and Katy Wix are joined by guest stars Stephen Merchant, Lolly Adefope, Mike Wozniak, Sam Campbell, Simon Armstrong and Morgana Robinson.
Written and presented by Tim Key
Produced by James Robinson
A BBC Studios Audio Production for Radio 4
An EcoAudio certified production
THU 19:00 The Archers (m002gd8f)
George has a big question to ask, and Chris struggles to offer reassurance.
THU 19:15 Front Row (m002gg7w)
Live magazine programme on the worlds of arts, literature, film, media and music
THU 20:00 Human Intelligence (m0026pnp)
[Repeat of broadcast at
16:00 on Wednesday]
THU 20:15 The Media Show (m002gg4x)
[Repeat of broadcast at
16:15 on Wednesday]
THU 21:00 Loose Ends (m002gcwg)
[Repeat of broadcast at
18:15 on Saturday]
THU 21:45 Sideways (m0025532)
Appetite for Distraction
4. Attention Shortfall?
Matthew Syed asks what it means to be distracted in a media world vying for our attention.
In this episode Matthew traces the inexorable rise of shortform video and investigates its success. He asks what the increasing popularity of this type of media might mean for our attention and finds out about the people using for purposes that may have surprised Neil Postman.
Apps such as Tik Tok, Youtube and Snapchat are ubiquitous and for many have become the chief way that they consume media. What does watching shorter videos mean for the content, and how do these apps change our habits and possibly, our brains?
The popularity of this medium has driven traditional institutions that are concerned with public affairs to embrace shortform video. So what's the result? Matthew finds out.
Contributors:
Dr Zoetanya Sujon, University of the Arts London
Dave Jorgenson, Senior Video Journalist, Washington Post.
Communications and Media Society, University of Liverpool
Presenter: Matthew Syed
Producer: Sam Peach
THU 22:00 The World Tonight (m002gg7y)
In depth reporting, intelligent analysis and breaking news from a global perspective
THU 22:45 The Spire by William Golding (m002gg80)
Episode Nine
The classic story by William Golding, published in 1964, of one man’s obsession that endangers an entire community.
Dean Jocelin had a vision, and believes he has been chosen by God to add an enormous spire, his ‘spire of prayer’, to his cathedral. But the cathedral has no foundations.
Episode 9
Jocelin climbs the spire to protect it with a Holy Nail and then meets with his aunt, the Lady Alison.
Born in 1911, William Golding was the writer of 13 novels. These include Lord of the Flies, The Inheritors, Pincher Martin and The Spire. Rites of Passage - the first novel in his sea-trilogy To The Ends Of The Earth - won the Booker Prize in 1980. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983.
Writer: William Golding
Reader: John Heffernan
Producer: Jeremy Osborne
Additional voices by Lucy Davidson
A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4
With thanks to Judy Carver at William Golding Ltd
THU 23:00 Radical with Amol Rajan (m002gg82)
Conversations about tomorrow, from Today.
THU 23:30 A Good Read (m002gfzl)
[Repeat of broadcast at
15:00 on Monday]
FRIDAY 01 AUGUST 2025
FRI 00:00 Midnight News (m002gg84)
National and international news from BBC Radio 4
FRI 00:30 Speed of Light by Laura Cumming (m002gg71)
[Repeat of broadcast at
11:45 on Thursday]
FRI 00:48 Shipping Forecast (m002gg86)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping
FRI 01:00 Selection of BBC World Service Programmes (m002gg88)
BBC Radio 4 presents a selection of news and current affairs, arts and science programmes from the BBC World Service.
FRI 05:00 News Summary (m002gg8b)
National and international news from BBC Radio 4
FRI 05:04 The Briefing Room (m002gg7m)
[Repeat of broadcast at
16:00 on Thursday]
FRI 05:34 Shipping Forecast (m002gg8d)
The latest weather reports and forecasts for UK shipping
FRI 05:43 Prayer for the Day (m002gg8g)
Land of Song
Good morning.
Researchers have long extolled both the physiological and psychological benefits of singing.
Here in Wales, often referred to as the “land of song,” songs continue to resonate around our sporting stadia uniting us in support of our teams, choral and solo singing fill our Eisteddfod stages, hymns and choruses punctuate our church and chapel services.
Singing in unison is a beautiful thing, there is beauty in the oneness of collectively singing the same melody line. Singing in harmony can be a powerful and deeply moving experience, particularly when the lyrics are meaningful. Who could fail to be moved by a choral rendition of Bread of Heaven, or fail to be inspired by Handel’s Hallelujah chorus?
Bible Society’s recent Quiet Revival report talks of the Church becoming increasingly diverse, with 32% of churchgoers aged 18–54 coming from an ethnic minority, and there is unity in this diversity as we learn from one another’s cultural traditions, belief systems and shared values.
David declares in Psalm 133 “How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity… For there the Lord bestows his blessing, even life forever more.” So today, I pray for the grace to embrace differences and live in unity with those around us. Where there has been division, bring your harmony, and where there has been conflict, bring peace.
Amen.
FRI 05:45 Farming Today (m002gg8j)
The latest news about food, farming and the countryside.
FRI 06:00 Today (m002gd7s)
News and current affairs, including Sports Desk, Weather and Thought for the Day.
FRI 09:00 Desert Island Discs (m002gczt)
[Repeat of broadcast at
10:00 on Sunday]
FRI 10:00 Woman's Hour (m002gd7v)
Women's voices and women's lives - topical conversations to inform, challenge and inspire.
FRI 11:00 The Food Programme (m002gd7x)
Food and the Elements
Dan Saladino explores stories of food and 'the elements', the theme of this year's Oxford Food Symposium. Expect surprising insights on earth, fire, air, water and much more.
Produced and presented by Dan Saladino.
FRI 11:45 Speed of Light by Laura Cumming (m002gd7z)
5. Nadar - The Psychological Side of Photography
An exhilarating series written and read by Laura Cumming explores the 19th century revolution in photography. Today, Nadar's talent for capturing the inner worlds of his subjects and his innovative approaches which point to photography's future and the moving image.
Links to photographs taken by Nadar:
Sarah Bernhardt by Nadar - https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Sarah_Bernhardt%2C_par_Nadar%2C_1864%2C_sepia.jpg
The Banker’s Hand - https://expositions.bnf.fr/les-nadar/grand_en/nad_207.php
The Revolving Potrait and other photos taken by Nadar - https://expositions.bnf.fr/les-nadar/albums/nadar/index.php?lang=en
Nadar and Chevreul - https://wellcomecollection.org/works/qbqhp84p/images?id=ksbgu7xa
In Speed of Light, Cumming takes us on an exhilarating journey through the early years of photography, a revolutionary technology that changed the way we see ourselves forever. From Daguerre’s first patent, in 1839, this art hurtles forward at unbelievable speed - from close-up to collage, snapshot to montage, mugshot, news photography and more, all within two or three decades. To tell the story, Cumming delves into the lives of five ground-breaking photographers whose innovations transformed the medium, leaving us with some of the most affecting images ever made.
The series opens with Alexander Gardner, the Scottish photographer who became an eyewitness to the American Civil War. Gardner's haunting images, including his iconic photograph of Abraham Lincoln just days before his assassination - "the moment when the President became a legend’ as Cumming puts it - offer a deeply human insight into living history. Another Scot, William Notman, sails from Glasgow to Canada to open the nation’s most celebrated studio. Here he invents ingenious ways to depict hundreds of people – together - in the snow and ice, and to bring the outside, as it were, indoors. In London, John Jabez Mayall takes the only known photograph of the painter, JMW Turner, as well as the first and most significant photographs of Charles Dickens and Karl Marx. Mayall also captures the spirit of democracy with his carte de visites – pocket sized photographs - that anyone could buy of the stars of the day, from Wilkie Collins to Queen Victoria. And in Paris the meticulous police officer Alphonse Bertillon invents the front-and-profile mugshot that is still used in the solving of crime today. Last comes Nadar, renowned for capturing the innermost thoughts of his Parisian sitters, who took the first aerial shots, and the first revolving shots, and put interviews with images for the first time, reaching forward to the advent of film and television.
Laura Cumming is Chief Art Critic of The Observer. Thunderclap, her memoir of art, life and sudden death, was shortlisted for The Women’s Prize and won The Writer’s Prize and The Saltire Book of the Year Award in 2024. The Vanishing Man: In Pursuit of Velazquez won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography in 2017. On Chapel Sands: My Mother and Other Missing Person was a Sunday Times bestseller and Radio 4 Book of the Week.
Produced by Elizabeth Allard
FRI 12:00 News Summary (m002gd82)
The latest national and international news from BBC Radio 4.
FRI 12:04 AntiSocial (m002gd84)
News and discussion of consumer affairs
FRI 12:57 Weather (m002gd86)
The latest weather forecast
FRI 13:00 World at One (m002gd88)
News, analysis and comment from BBC Radio 4
FRI 13:45 The Power of Guilt (m002gd8b)
The First Year
This is a deeply personal story of guilt – how to live with it, and its power to transform us.
Four years ago, producer Dave Anderson caused a climbing accident that badly injured his partner, Cassie. In this series, Dave and Cassie try to piece together their very different experiences of what happened. Through difficult and intimate conversations, they tell the whole story, from the first traumatic seconds to the emotional fallout years later.
For Dave, the guilt has been overwhelming. Now, he’s searching for ways of living with it, talking to people with unique perspectives on this painful emotion. What are we misunderstanding about guilt? And how can we tap into its hidden power?
In this final episode, Cassie set out to reclaim her independence, physically and emotionally. In conversation with author Max Porter, Dave discovers the true power of guilt in an unexpected place. At the end of their journey, Cassie and Dave reflect, tracing the ways the accident has shaped their relationship.
Featuring an excerpt from Grief is the Thing with Feathers, by Max Porter. Read by Daniel Ryan.
Presenter and Producer: Dave Anderson
Sound-design and mix engineer: Charlie Brandon-King
Executive Producer: Anishka Sharma
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 4
FRI 14:00 The Archers (m002gd8f)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:00 on Thursday]
FRI 14:15 Limelight (m002gd8h)
Central Intelligence: Series 2
Episode 7
The story of the CIA, told from the inside out by veteran agent Eloise Page. Starring Kim Cattrall, Ed Harris and Johnny Flynn.
In Episode 7 1959–1960. The global order is shifting fast. Revolution erupts in Cuba. John Foster Dulles, the fading architect of America’s Cold War stance, is gravely ill. In the Congo, chaos reigns—drawing urgent attention from Washington. To the CIA, it’s not just rebellion; it’s the next major front in the Cold War. As Eisenhower’s presidency winds down, the U.S. races to contain Soviet influence in Africa. The temperature is rising—and it’s Kennedy who’ll be handed the fuse.
Cast:
Eloise Page..........Kim Cattrall
Allen Dulles..........Ed Harris
Richard Helms..........Johnny Flynn
Frank Wisner..........Geoffrey Arend
Young Eloise Page..........Elena Delia
President Eisenhower..........Kerry Shale
John Foster Dulles..........Nathan Osgood
Clover Dulles..........Laurel Lefkow
Richard Bissell..........Ian Porter
Julia Helms..........Carin Chea
Christian Herter..........Raad Rawi
Patrice Lumumba..........Jonathan Nyati
Larry Devlin..........Patrick Poletti
Doctor..........Greg Lockett
Macy Dulles..........Flynn Avo
All other parts were played by members of the cast
Written by Greg Haddrick
Created by Greg Haddrick & Jeremy Fox
Directed by John Scott Dryden
Original music by Sacha Puttnam
Sound Designers & Editors: John Scott Dryden, Adam Woodhams, Martha Littlehailes & Andreina Gomez Casanova
Script Consultant: Misha Kawnel
Script Supervisor: Alex Lynch
Trails: Jack Soper
Sonica Studio Sound Engineers: Paul Clark & Paul Clark
Sonica Runner: Flynn Hallman
Marc Graue Sound Engineers, LA: Juan Martin del Campo & Tony Diaz
Director: John Scott Dryden
Producer & Casting Director: Emma Hearn
Executive Producers: Howard Stringer, Jeremy Fox, Greg Haddrick and John Scott Dryden
A Goldhawk production for BBC Radio 4
FRI 14:45 Uncharted with Hannah Fry (m0022syl)
13. The Grain of Truth
Amid the desperation of war-starved Netherlands a doctor finds a way of curing a group of gravely ill children. His finding challenges accepted medical wisdom, and provokes opposition from Catholics. But why had the rest of the world missed this miracle treatment?
Producer: Ilan Goodman
Sound Designer: Jon Nicholls
Story Editor: John Yorke
FRI 15:00 Gardeners' Question Time (m002gd8k)
Horticultural programme featuring a group of gardening experts.
FRI 15:45 Short Works (m002gd8m)
Flyology by Alison MacLeod
The acclaimed writer Alison MacLeod's new and specially commissioned story sees the brilliant Ada Lovelace take a liberating flight of fancy where a vision of the future unfurls. Phoebe Campbell reads.
In Alison MacLeod's beautifully written and sharply observed story, we travel back to the Victorian era where we encounter a young woman and her formidable intellect. Ada Lovelace well known as the daughter of Byron and an early contributor the forerunner to the computer and AI, the 'Analytical Machine' was a mathematical genius. Less well known is that she once wanted to fly, and in her desire to be airborne her fierce imagination led her into the unseen worlds of science and discovery.
Alison MacLeod is a novelist, short story writer and senior academic. Her most recent novel, Tenderness, was a New York Times ‘Best Book’ of the year and a ‘Best Paperback’ of the year for The Sunday Times. Her novel Unexploded was nominated for the Man-Booker Prize and adapted for BBC Radio 4. Her collection All the Beloved Ghosts was shortlisted for Canada’s Governor General’s Award for Fiction and for the UK's Edge Hill Short Story Prize. She has also been shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award, and her stories have often been broadcast on Radio 3 and 4. She is a Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund, Visiting Professor at the University of Chichester, a Writers' Award recipient of the British Library, and currently lectures on a part-time basis at Anglia Ruskin University, where she contributes to the Cambridge Writing Centre.
Phoebe Campbell is best known for playing Rhaena Targaryen in the fantasy series House of the Dragon. Campbell's played Susanna in the RSC West End production of Hamnet, and Nikki in Alma Mater at the Almeida.
The producer is Elizabeth Allard.
FRI 16:00 Last Word (m002gd8p)
Matthew Bannister tells the life stories of people who have recently died, from the rich and famous to unsung but significant.
FRI 16:30 Sideways (m002g7b9)
[Repeat of broadcast at
09:00 on Wednesday]
FRI 17:00 PM (m002gd8r)
News and current affairs, reporting on breaking stories and summing up the day's headlines
FRI 18:00 Six O'Clock News (m002gd8t)
National and international news from BBC Radio 4
FRI 18:30 Too Long; Didn't Read (m002gd8w)
Series 2
Episode 2
Columns. Analysis. The Guardian's Long Read. Who has time? Catherine Bohart, that's who, and she's going beyond the headlines to give you the lowdown on one of the biggest stories this week, with the help of our regular roving correspondent Sunil Patel.
Written by Catherine Bohart, with Madeleine Brettingham, Tom Neenan and Pravanya Pillay.
Producer: Alison Vernon Smith
Executive Producers: Lyndsay Fenner & Victoria Lloyd
Sound Design: David Thomas
Production Co-ordinator: Katie Sayer
A Mighty Bunny production for BBC Radio 4
FRI 19:00 The Archers (m002gd8y)
Writer: Sarah McDonald Hughes
Director: Helen Aitken & Kim Greengrass
Editor: Jeremy Howe
Brian Aldridge…. Charles Collingwood
David Archer…. Timothy Bentinck
Jolene Archer…. Buffy Davis
Alice Carter…. Hollie Chapman
Chris Carter…. Wilf Scolding
Susan Carter…. Charlotte Martin
Neil Carter…. Brian Hewlett
Justin Elliott…. Simon Williams
Martyn Gibson…. Jon Glover
Ed Grundy…. Barry Farrimond
Emma Grundy…. Emerald O’Hanrahan
George Grundy…. Angus Stobie
Mia Grundy…. Molly Pipe
Brad Horrobin…. Taylor Uttley
Joy Horville…. Jackie Lye
Adam Macy…. Andrew Wincott
Kate Madikane…. Perdita Avery
Akram Malik…. Asif Khan
Kirsty Miller…. Annabelle Dowler
Stella Pryor…. Lucy Speed
Annabelle Scrivener… Julia Hills
Terry…. Lloyd Thomas
FRI 19:15 Screenshot (m002gd90)
Police Procedurals
Ellen E Jones and Mark Kermode are on patrol, investigating why the police procedural continues to be so arresting for audiences.
Mark meets the film writer and critic Kim Newman who charts the beginnings of the genre and some of its tropes. Next, he talks to the director and documentarian Sandhya Suri, to discuss her feature film debut, Santosh, that follows the journey of a widow turned police constable.
Meanwhile, Ellen discusses how fiction aimed to mimic reality in 90s TV series, Homicide: Life on the Street, with actor from the show, Kyle Secor. She also speaks to Simon Ford, executive producer of the documentary series, 24 Hours in Police Custody, who explains how dramatic structure borrowed from fiction has helped the award-winning programme tell wider stories about the world around us.
Producer: Mae-Li Evans
A Prospect Street production for BBC Radio 4
FRI 20:00 Any Questions? (m002gd92)
Topical discussion posing questions to a panel of political and media personalities
FRI 20:55 This Week in History (m002gd94)
[Repeat of broadcast at
11:40 on Wednesday]
FRI 21:00 Politically (m002gd96)
Postwar: Omnibus 3
David Runciman tells the story of the 1945 election and the dawn of a new age.
The 1945 general election was one of the biggest shocks in British parliamentary history: a decisive rejection of Winston Churchill and his leadership. The election of Clement Attlee's Labour government in a landslide marked a break with the past and signalled a strong desire on the part of the British people for something new. But it was also a product of Britain's wartime experiences and revealed the many ways in which the country had already changed.
The years that followed -- the postwar years -- would bring about bold and radical reform, the building of a new nation, a 'New Jerusalem'. The Britain of the National Health Service and the welfare state, of nationalised industry and the so-called 'postwar consensus' -- all were ushered into place with this election. This is the Britain that most have us have grown up in and which still shapes an idea of who we think we are.
Featuring John Bew, Patricia Clavin, Lucy Delap, Christopher Frayling, David Kynaston, David Reynolds, Robert Saunders and Wendy Webster.
With additional research by Alex HIll.
FRI 22:00 The World Tonight (m002gd98)
In depth reporting, intelligent analysis and breaking news from a global perspective
FRI 22:45 The Spire by William Golding (m002gd9b)
Episode Ten
The classic story by William Golding, published in 1964, of one man’s obsession that endangers an entire community.
Dean Jocelin had a vision, and believes he has been chosen by God to add an enormous spire, his ‘spire of prayer’, to his cathedral. But the cathedral has no foundations.
Episode 10
Despite his illness, Jocelin ventures into the city to find Roger Mason for a final reckoning.
Born in 1911, William Golding was the writer of 13 novels. These include Lord of the Flies, The Inheritors, Pincher Martin and The Spire. Rites of Passage - the first novel in his sea-trilogy To The Ends Of The Earth - won the Booker Prize in 1980. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1983.
Writer: William Golding
Reader: John Heffernan
Additional voices by Lucy Davidson
Producer: Jeremy Osborne
A Sweet Talk production for BBC Radio 4
With thanks to Judy Carver at William Golding Ltd
FRI 23:00 Americast (w3ct7t5q)
Join Americast for insights and analysis on what's happening inside Trump's White House.
FRI 23:30 Illuminated (m002gd0p)
[Repeat of broadcast at
19:15 on Sunday]