Radio 4
Why it would be absurd to sell off Radio 2 - even if it could do with a refresh
The idea that Radio 2 should be sold off by the BBC to a commercial rival is as nonsensical as…
Why sound beats image when it comes to memory
It’s often not visual images that stimulate memory but a smell, a taste, the sound of pebbles crashing on to…
Why I love The Bottom Line
Evan Davis’s series on business life, The Bottom Line (made in conjunction with the Open University), has become one of…
When Dr Johnson went to Tahrir Square
Goodness knows what the Great Cham would have made of Radio 4 airing an adapted version of his philosophical fable,…
The history of India in 50 personalities
The idea of using objects — salt, cod, nutmeg, silk — to turn history lessons into something popular and accessible…
What happened to the children who survived the Holocaust?
‘I call Zelma Cacik who may be living in London,’ says the announcer, in the clipped RP accent of the…
This radio programme almost made me like Piers Morgan
An extraordinary black-and-white photograph of a young black boy taken on the Isle of Wight by Julia Margaret Cameron in…
Britain has the lowest percentage of women engineers in Europe. Why?
‘It’s hard to know how to tell this story,’ she said as she began. ‘Because it’s so loaded. It’s so…
Did Radio 4 have to deal with the Germanwings disaster as it did?
‘You can hear pretty clearly the sound of one of the helicopters and you can see it in the darkness,’…
Does the future of radio really lie in podcasts?
To a debate on the future of radio at the BBC where it turns out not to be a discussion…
Radio is the best way to mug up on the classics
If ever I found myself at a pretentious literary party obliged to play David Lodge’s ‘Humiliation’ game and to confess…
All radio drama should be as good as this Conrad adaptation
The aching hum of crickets. The susurrus of reeds. The lapping of waves. The unmistakable noise of a sound technician…
Why Putin is even less of a human than Stalin was
LBC likes to tell us it’s ‘Leading Britain’s Conversation’, though in the case of weekday pre-lunch presenter James O’Brien you’ll…
The amazing story of the blind photographer
Perhaps the news that Radio 5 live will be the only BBC station (under the new broadcasting rights agreements) to…
The man who discovered Ebola
By some quirk of fate, just as news reached the papers that the Scottish nurse who had contracted Ebola while…
Radio 4’s War and Peace: almost as good as the book
To have listened to Radio 4’s marathon ten-hour adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace as it was being broadcast on…
Was Beethoven influenced by yoga?
How many digital radios have you bought over the years? How many are still working? Of the four I used…
Without childhood traumas, how did Alan Bennett ever become a writer?
‘So — take heart,’ said Alan Bennett, sending us out from his play, Cocktail Sticks, on a cheery note. The…
What parenting meant in 1914
‘Not still War and Peace!’ exclaimed my husband on 1 January during the all-day Tolstoy splurge on Radio 4. In reality…
Children’s radio was once at the core of the BBC - now it’s all but disappeared
It was a bit of a surprise to hear Jarvis Cocker, the embodiment of cool and former frontman of Pulp,…
Why you have to listen to this year's Reith Lectures
Each year the Reith Lectures come round as Radio 4’s annual assertion of intellectual authority, fulfilling the BBC’s original aspiration…
Was this Christian pioneer of radio evangelism a fraud?
She was the sequinned star of the airwaves back in the 1920s, the first preacher to realise the potential of…
Why radio is a surprisingly good medium for talking about art
You might think it a fool’s errand to attempt programmes about art on the wireless. How can you talk about…
Many more Germans were displaced in 1945 than Indians during partition
What Radio 3 needs is a musical version of Neil MacGregor. The director of the British Museum and now a…
What it’s like being a scarily talented teenager
It was when she said how she loved ‘watching the computer do exactly what you wanted it to do’ that…
