A Radio 3 doc that contains some of the best insults I’ve ever heard
A recent Sunday Feature on Radio 3 contained some of the best insults I have ever heard. Contributors to the…
No balls
The first episode of George Osborne and Ed Balls’s new podcast, Political Currency, opened with an old clip of the…
Vampire diaries
The Immortals, which begins on Radio 4 this week, is not for the faint-hearted. While it professes to be about…
The one and only
With its carefully calibrated sense of time, the Iliad is clearly the work of a single man and not a ‘rolling snowball’ of different contributions, argues Robin Lane Fox
Between two worlds
The playwright Carlo Gozzi marvelled at ‘The spectacle of women turned into men, men turned into women, and both men…
Of mice and men
I’m listening to John Cleese talking to Justin Welby in the new series of The Archbishop Interviews when the thought…
All the rage
Welcome back to Room 101, which has returned to the radio – after nearly 30 years on TV – and…
Early birds
As the owner of a radio alarm clock, I could theoretically start listening to the Today programme before I’m even…
Lost Seoul
Ask a member of Generation Z where in the world they would most like to live, and chances are they…
Moomin minded
One of the lesser-known schools of modern philosophy is the Philosophy of Moomin. Like Cynicism or Epicureanism, it is difficult…
Lost worlds
Daisy Dunn on the mysterious Minoans
Ice cream and pickles
Can you ever truly know a poet? The question arises every time one publishes a collection that looks vaguely confessional.…
The Roman circus
Brutality might be expected of a people who fed each other to lions – but it extended even to the elephants the Romans regarded as soulmates
A frog’s-eye view
Whenever I listen to Great Lives on Radio 4, which is often, I am reminded of the gulf between fame…
Stranger things
‘The Age of Anxiety’, W. H. Auden’s book-length poem, has always been described as strange, and difficult. It is an…
Busy Lizzie
Elizabeth the First is a ten-part American podcast series that isn’t about Elizabeth I at all. The assumption of its…
Vital statistics
In a week of slim audio pickings, I spent time reacquainting myself with some of the BBC classics and can…
When Picasso met Lee Miller
During the liberation of Paris in August 1944, the photographer Lee Miller made her way to Picasso’s studio on rue…
The curse of Medusa
Natalie Haynes has been compared with Mary Renault, the historical novelist who scandalised readers in the 1950s with her unflinching…
Pod wars
The competition between news-led podcasts is nearing boiling point. If you tuned in to The Media Show on Radio 4…
Porn and pyjamas
It was recently reported that almost 8 per cent of global internet traffic is to pornographic websites. The rise of…
Shelley addict
Last week I heard the actor Julian Sands give a virtuoso performance of work by Percy Bysshe Shelley to mark…
Knives out
Daisy Dunn on the art of surgery
Just Stop Oil’s protest is doomed to fail
The eco-mob is at it again. Members of the protest group Just Stop Oil have progressed from blocking fuel terminals…
