Radio 4
Aural wonderland
My resolution this New Year is to get to grips with podcasts, to brace up and embrace this new aural…
Radio is flowering because it’s so much more potent than TV
Who would have thought in this visually obsessed age of YouTube, selfies and Instagram that radio, pure audio, no images…
There will be blood
It was a stroke of genius to invite Glenda Jackson to make her return to acting as the star of…
You can’t forget what Will Self says – even if you wish you could
It lasted for just a few seconds but was such a graphic illustration of the statistics behind the bombing campaign…
French connection
It was as if Andrew Marr and his guests on Start the Week on Monday morning were standing on the…
Bach breaking
It’s just not what you expect to hear on Radio 3 but I happened upon Music Matters on Saturday morning…
Battle fatigue
Can anyone explain this sudden enthusiasm for Agincourt, that unexpected victory over the French, now being celebrated, or rather commemorated,…
National Poetry Day broke the key rule of poetry readings: never let normal people do the reading
Imagine what Brennig Davies must have felt like just before 11 o’clock last Tuesday evening. The 15-year-old was about to…
Special effects
Maybe what we love about radio is the way that most of its programming allows us the luxury of staying…
Tales of the unexpected
Two significant anniversaries, each very different but both reflecting the BBC’s mission and the reasons for its continued success. From…
Eastern airs
On Private Passions this week the writer Amitav Ghosh gave us a refreshingly different version of what has become a…
Loose women
Late Night Woman’s Hour has created a Twitter storm with its twice-weekly (Thursdays and Fridays) doses of ‘mischievous and unbridled…
Selective memory
It’s 70 years since the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and yet there has been no rush to…
Matters of life and death
‘Bait by Cartier,’ she growls as her priceless diamond bracelet is strapped to a piece of rope and dropped overboard…
Let’s pay for the BBC content we use
What follows is a proposal for reducing the BBC licence fee and improving the corporation’s output while saving the British…
Space case
The idea that Radio 2 should be sold off by the BBC to a commercial rival is as nonsensical as…
Sea sound
It’s often not visual images that stimulate memory but a smell, a taste, the sound of pebbles crashing on to…
Evan sent
Evan Davis’s series on business life, The Bottom Line (made in conjunction with the Open University), has become one of…
Dr Johnson in Tahrir Square
Goodness knows what the Great Cham would have made of Radio 4 airing an adapted version of his philosophical fable,…
Object lesson
The idea of using objects — salt, cod, nutmeg, silk — to turn history lessons into something popular and accessible…
The lives of others
‘I call Zelma Cacik who may be living in London,’ says the announcer, in the clipped RP accent of the…
Home and away
An extraordinary black-and-white photograph of a young black boy taken on the Isle of Wight by Julia Margaret Cameron in…
Presence of mind
‘It’s hard to know how to tell this story,’ she said as she began. ‘Because it’s so loaded. It’s so…
Recorded delivery
‘You can hear pretty clearly the sound of one of the helicopters and you can see it in the darkness,’…
Serial success
To a debate on the future of radio at the BBC where it turns out not to be a discussion…
