Why was Something Understood cut?
It was never given the choicest slot in the schedule, airing first thing on Sunday morning with a repeat at…
The daunting, uplifting prose of The Psalms
As if in defiance of the BBC’s current obsession with programming designed to entice in that elusive young and modish…
The man who changed the sound of radio
He is said to ‘have changed the sound of speech radio’, not just by giving voice to those who until…
Art is often best experienced on the radio
At its best audio can be a much more visual medium than the screen. Making Art with Frances Morris (produced…
Listening to plays in a foreign language is a weirdly engaging experience
As the ravens circle around Broadcasting House in London’s West End, presaging difficult times ahead for BBC Radio, with less…
Is the increasing secularisation of funerals a good thing?
‘You’re thinking these girls all wrong,’ Miss Mai tells Enid in Winsome Pinnock’s play Leave Taking, adapted from the recent…
Scala Radio is a real threat to Radio 2
It’s not surprising given the way that electronic communication has taken over so much of our daily business, minimising human…
A great example of how Radio 4 is using new technologies to enhance audio
‘It’s too familiar, too obvious,’ says Cathy FitzGerald at the beginning of her new interactive series for Radio 4, Moving…
I always come away more confused after listening to Moral Maze
Is it me or are we now faced (or perhaps I should say fazed?) much more often by stories in…
Why wasn’t Poetry Please in the Radio Times’s top 30 greatest radio shows of all time?
With the upsurge of listeners to Classic FM (now boasted to be 5.6 million listeners each week) and the imminent…
The story of the River Clyde
It sounds like something out of Dickens or a novel by Thackeray, a classic case of high-minded Victorian philanthropy, but…
The man who never cried
It was odd listening to Jim Al-Khalili being interviewed on Radio 4 on Tuesday morning rather than the other way…
The attempt to bring back topicality to Ambridge has been far too effective
It’s becoming clear that the travails afflicting all the major players in The Archers, Radio 4’s flagship drama, are intended…
Why the BBC International Playwriting Competition really matters
We don’t know whether ‘Aziz H’ listened to radio plays as he grew up in Yemen. In fact we don’t…
Zoë Ball has the voice and warmth but not so much the chat
Whether by accident or design, Zoë Ball took over the coveted early-morning slot on Radio 2 this week just as…
Neil MacGregor’s intense, impassioned new radio programme is shamelessly anti-Brexit
I suspect that whether or not you admire Neil MacGregor’s latest series for Radio 4, As Others See Us (produced…
How did the BBC’s podcast Unexpected Fluids ever get made?
You may have noticed the flood of podcasts that’s been pouring out of the BBC since the launch of its…
Remembering the 1968 Apollo mission – when the world was reaching to the future rather than drawing in
Take yourself back to (or try to imagine) Christmas 1968; a year full of disturbances, dashed hopes and extreme violence…
![British poet Salena Godden presenter of Mrs Death Misses Death on Radio 4. [Photo: Roberto Ricciuti / Getty Images]](https://spectatorau.imgix.net/content/uploads/2018/12/Radio.jpg?auto=compress,enhance,format&crop=faces,entropy,edges&fit=crop&w=410&h=275)
Listening to people talking about death can be strangely consoling
‘Without death,’ says Salena Godden, ‘life would be a never-ending conveyor belt of sensation.’ For her death is what gives…
The story of the cook who spent 10 years preparing food for those on death row
You don’t need headphones to appreciate, and catch on to, the unique selling point of radio: its immediacy, its directness,…
Is Michelle Obama a secret Archers fan?
I wonder what Michelle Obama, the former First Lady who remade that role in her own image, would make of…
Radio 3 had the most simple yet effective way of reflecting on war’s impact
Amid all the remembrance, Radio 3 came up with a simple yet effective way of reflecting on war’s impact. Threaded…
When the first world war ended, many soldiers were left with ‘a terrible empty feeling’
‘It was so unreal,’ said one of the first world war veterans about the long-awaited Armistice. It was the most…
Why has BBC Radio been replaced by ‘BBC Sounds’?
You may have noticed that BBC iPlayer (for radio programmes) has been replaced this week with the new BBC Sounds…
What are the writers of The Archers trying to achieve with the Freddie Pargetter story?
‘I’m not here to rehabilitate,’ says Pamela, who teaches creative writing to prisoners in Northern Ireland. She doesn’t think of…
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