Radio 4
Enjoyably tasteless: Power – The Maxwells reviewed
This year marks three decades since Robert Maxwell fell naked to his death from the deck of his yacht, The…
Englishness vs California dreaming: Meghan and Harry's Archewell Audio reviewed
On Archewell Audio, Harry and Meghan’s new podcast, ‘love wins’, ‘change really is possible’, and ‘the courage and the creativity…
Enjoyably bad-tempered: The Lock In with Jeremy Paxman reviewed
‘I used to be Mr Nasty! That was good! Mr Nasty was easy!’ Jeremy Paxman bellows at Michael Palin on…
A beautiful radio adaptation: Radio 4’s The Housing Lark reviewed
Nineteen fifty-six: the Suez crisis, the first Tesco, Jim Laker takes 19 wickets in a match. But also: Trinidadian pianist…
Hats (and knickers) off to the hosts: The Naked Podcast reviewed
I spent half an hour this week listening to a woman make a plaster cast of her vulva. Kat Harbourne,…
My pronouncement on the BBC
Radio 4 recently ran an adaptation of Albert Camus’s The Plague in which the protagonist, Dr Bernard Rieux, was transformed…
Why is Robert Burton’s masterpiece Anatomy of Melancholy being sold as self-help?
The BBC has been having a good pandemic. Stuck at home, a generation raised on podcasts and YouTube has discovered…
Adapting Wodehouse for the radio is a challenge – but the BBC has succeeded brilliantly
Everyone knows a Lord Emsworth. Mine lives south of the river and wears caterpillars in his hair and wine on…
I've lost patience with podcasts and their presenters
‘To be recognised and accepted by a peregrine,’ wrote J.A. Baker in 1967, ‘you must wear the same clothes, travel…
Ill-disciplined and self-indulgent: The Guilty Feminist podcast reviewed
With theatres shut, radio must lighten the darkness. The Guilty Feminist is a wildly popular podcast performed by Deborah Frances-White…
‘Smile, segue and shut up’
Three weeks before Classic FM launched, I was on the radio in Hong Kong, introducing hits by Rick Astley and…
Universal appeal
Yet another sign that we are living in very strange times: a pair of celebrities, their names made by TV,…
Separation anxiety
As Europe remembers Passchendaele, India and Pakistan recall Partition, just 70 years ago, when Britain so hastily abandoned its Indian…
What stopped Stoppard?
Two programmes this week presented two radically different world views, or rather ways of life. Aditya Chakrabortty’s series for Radio…
Coney Island amusement park used to display premature babies to a paying public
I like Radio 4 — you can have it on in the background burbling away for hours and hours without…
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…
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…
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…
