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Why has BBC Radio been replaced by ‘BBC Sounds’?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…
When haddocks flirt, they sound like a motorbike revving up
Flies buzzing, strange rustling, crunching sounds, and then the most chilling screech you’ll have heard all week. Vultures were feeding…
Radio 4 treats its radio listeners as second-best in favour of those who listen to podcasts
How very odd of Radio 4 not only to release The Ratline as a podcast before broadcasting it on the…
A week of extraordinarily direct and honest radio on the World Service
The most inspiring voice on radio this week belongs to Hetty Werkendam, or rather to her 15-year-old self as she…
Angela Carter was a master of radio drama
The writer Angela Carter (born in 1940) grew up listening to the wireless, her love of stories, magic and the…
What it was like to be a black lawyer in the deep south in the 60s
To have been a black lawyer in the deep south of America in the early 1960s would have taken a…
Podcasts still have a long way to go to challenge the best of conventional radio
Here’s a thought. Matthew Bannister, former Radio 1 controller turned presenter of programmes such as Outlook on the World Service…
The power of Sue MacGregor’s The Reunion
The return of Sue MacGregor’s long-running Radio 4 series The Reunion (produced by Eve Streeter) is a welcome reminder of…
Another side of John Humphrys
‘What can you tell me just now,’ asks Audrey Gillan. She’s talking to Tara, who’s been sleeping rough on Fournier…
Robert Redford turns his hand to radio
Much ado is being made of the latest listening figures, which have suggested that the percentage of those aged between…
Radio 4 brings back the dead
If proof were needed that radio will survive the onslaught of the new (or rather now not-so-new) digital technologies, albeit…
Why the scream of the elephant is much more chilling than the roar of a lion
Raw, earthy, ear-piercing. It’s hard to decide which was more terrifying and unsettling: the roar of the elephants in Living…
The marketisation of BBC radio is a recipe for creative disaster
There’s been a lot of fuss and many column inches written about levels of pay at the BBC, as revealed…
A warning to those who argue that we live in a visual society
‘Can one person really grasp the significance of what another person has been through?’ asks Dr Rita Charon in this…
The dumbing down of the Reith Lectures
It’s been a heavyweight week on Radio 4 with the start of the annual series of Reith Lectures and a…
The excitement of emigrating on your own as a child
There was one of those moments late on Sunday night when a voice is so arresting (either through tone, timbre,…
Rod Liddle is wrong: if anything we still hear too much from male presenters on Radio 4
I don’t know which day Rod Liddle travelled down from the northeast and found nothing but women’s voices cluttering up…
Why is Today losing its audience? Because it doesn’t care about its listeners
Headlines announcing that Radio 4’s flagship Today programme is losing its audience while Radio 3’s Breakfast has put on numbers…
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