Mothers’ ruin
At the heart of Basic Instincts, the new exhibition at the Foundling Museum in London, is an extraordinarily powerful painting…
Seeing the light
‘You can’t lie… on radio,’ says Liza Tarbuck. The Radio 2 DJ was being interviewed for the network’s birthday portrait,…
Face time
The inimitably pukka voice of Jacob Rees-Mogg echoed through Radio 4 on Thursday morning. He was not, though, talking about…
The listening project
As Classic FM celebrated its quarter-century on Wednesday with not a recording but a live broadcast of a concert from…
Universal appeal
Yet another sign that we are living in very strange times: a pair of celebrities, their names made by TV,…
The pleasures of reading aloud
‘I have nothing to doe but work and read my Eyes out,’ complained Anne Vernon in 1734, writing from her…
India in a day
Bold programming by the powers-that-be at Radio 4 meant it was possible to listen to all seven episodes of Ayeesha…
Big Auntie
It’s sneaky, the way in which the BBC, so much regarded as part of the family as to be nicknamed…
Separation anxiety
As Europe remembers Passchendaele, India and Pakistan recall Partition, just 70 years ago, when Britain so hastily abandoned its Indian…
The power of song
‘I went in at seven and came out aged 22,’ said Brian as he looked back on the day in…
Radio 4's bold challenge to government policy
Monday’s ‘World on the Move Day’ on Radio 4 was a bold challenge to government policy and proof that radio…
Might Eurovision determine the outcome of the EU referendum?
You might not think that the Eurovision Song Contest (screened live from Stockholm tonight) could have any connection with how…
Oliver Goldsmith: the most fascinating bore in literature
On 10 April 1772, the biographer James Boswell recorded in his diary that he had hugged himself with pleasure on…
If you want to know how music really works listen to Classic FM not Radio 3
He’s been billed as the new Pied Piper but it’s going to take a while for Tom Service to quite…
How the BBC made the most unlikely TV hit of the swinging Sixties
‘Comedy is like music,’ said Edwin Apps, one of the characters in Wednesday afternoon’s Radio 4 play, All Mouth and…
How trauma is passed down through the generations in our DNA
Sue Armstrong’s programme on Radio 4 All in the Womb (produced by Ruth Evans) should be required listening for anyone…
A timely reminder of what junior doctors actually do – and it's not pleasant
All this week Radio Five Live has been giving us an insight into what it is like not just to…
The Archers v the cricket: which was the more dramatic?
It was a toss-up on Sunday between the atmosphere in the Radio Five Live Sports Extra studio in Kolkata for…
Could radio save Syria?
Could radio, and in particular a weekly soap, have a role to play in the Syrian crisis? You might think,…
‘I could do many things... but I could not listen to Bach’
Six years ago, on Good Friday, the journalist Melanie Reid was thrown off her horse while on a cross-country ride…
Supporting Assad against the ‘invaders’
Four programmes, four very different kinds of radio, from a classically made drama to weird sonic ramblings, via the best…
Why has classical music been so gender-biased for so long?
Hurrah for Radio 3 and its (long-overdue) efforts to give us music not just performed by women but composed, and…
Why the World Service is worth every penny
What makes the World Service so different from the rest of the BBC? I asked Mary Hockaday, the controller of…
Why Archers fans are raising funds to save Helen
Never before has a radio soap crossed so far over from fiction and into the real world. Never before has…
Radio comedy still misses Kenneth Williams
It’s tempting to believe that somewhere in the bowels of Broadcasting House in London the voice of Kenneth Williams is…
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