Radio 4
Ill-received pronunciation
Radio 4 recently ran an adaptation of Albert Camus’s The Plague in which the protagonist, Dr Bernard Rieux, was transformed…
Beige-washed Burton
The BBC has been having a good pandemic. Stuck at home, a generation raised on podcasts and YouTube has discovered…
The wonder of Wodehouse
Everyone knows a Lord Emsworth. Mine lives south of the river and wears caterpillars in his hair and wine on…
Watcher of the skies – and the coffee pot
‘To be recognised and accepted by a peregrine,’ wrote J.A. Baker in 1967, ‘you must wear the same clothes, travel…
Rules of engagement
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…
Baby love
I like Radio 4 — you can have it on in the background burbling away for hours and hours without…
Pulling power
Monday’s ‘World on the Move Day’ on Radio 4 was a bold challenge to government policy and proof that radio…
The power of song
You might not think that the Eurovision Song Contest (screened live from Stockholm tonight) could have any connection with how…
Word processing
‘Comedy is like music,’ said Edwin Apps, one of the characters in Wednesday afternoon’s Radio 4 play, All Mouth and…
Written on the body
Sue Armstrong’s programme on Radio 4 All in the Womb (produced by Ruth Evans) should be required listening for anyone…
Death watch
All this week Radio Five Live has been giving us an insight into what it is like not just to…
Intolerable cruelty
It was a toss-up on Sunday between the atmosphere in the Radio Five Live Sports Extra studio in Kolkata for…
Crossing continents
Could radio, and in particular a weekly soap, have a role to play in the Syrian crisis? You might think,…
Born again
Six years ago, on Good Friday, the journalist Melanie Reid was thrown off her horse while on a cross-country ride…
Home and away
Four programmes, four very different kinds of radio, from a classically made drama to weird sonic ramblings, via the best…
Just Williams
It’s tempting to believe that somewhere in the bowels of Broadcasting House in London the voice of Kenneth Williams is…
The big reveal
Much ado about Radio 4’s latest venture into the new smart world of aural selfies. Reaction Time, on Thursday mornings,…
Terry’s all gold
For once, the superlatives that have greeted Terry Wogan’s death from cancer have been entirely in keeping with the man.…
Lessons in the surreal
The new season of the Serial podcast (produced by the same team who make This American Life) was launched last…
All in the mind
You don’t expect to be brought close to tears by the Reith Lectures, which are after all at the most…
Chance encounters
Some might say that Jeremy Corbyn is cloth-eared, tone-deaf, socially inept but on Monday morning, as the death of the…
