Only Neil MacGregor could do it — take us in a single thread from a blackened copper coin, about the size of a 10p piece, dating from Rome in about 200 AD, to a packed music hall in London during the first world war. In his new 30-part series for Radio 4, Living with the
Slow radio is popping up everywhere at the moment — programmes that have no outward form but just meander through the schedule, and often, but not always, are played out live in real time. In spite of their spontaneous feel and free flow these programmes have usually been carefully orchestrated, and that’s part of slow
There’s no doubting her passion for the programme of which she is now chief of staff. Talking to Roger Bolton on Radio 4’s Feedback slot, Sarah Sands told us repeatedly how much she loved Today, how it was ‘a privilege’ to be in charge of such a ‘flagship’ programme, how its length, three hours, was
Think back to that morning in September 1967 when the Light Programme was split in two, Tony Blackburn launching Radio 1 with a jaunty new jingle announcing it was all ‘Just for Fun’ while staid old Radio 2 went on with the Breakfast Show and told its listeners to ‘Wake Up Easy’. What is so
‘On air, I could be the most glamorous, gorgeous, tall, black-haired female… Whatever I wanted to be, I could be… That was the thrilling part to me,’ said Lurene Tuttle, talking about her career as a star of American radio in its heyday from the 1930s to the 1950s. She was known as ‘the Woman
‘You can’t lie… on radio,’ says Liza Tarbuck. The Radio 2 DJ was being interviewed for the network’s birthday portrait, celebrating 50 years since it morphed from the Light Programme into its present status as the UK’s best-loved radio station — with almost 15 million listeners each week. ‘The intimacy of radio dictates you can’t
The inimitably pukka voice of Jacob Rees-Mogg echoed through Radio 4 on Thursday morning. He was not, though, talking about nappies, nannies or even Brexit; his topic instead was death masks and specifically that made of his father William, the newspaper editor and vice-chairman of the BBC, who died in 2012. Not long after Rees-Mogg
As Classic FM celebrated its quarter-century on Wednesday with not a recording but a live broadcast of a concert from Dumfries House in Scotland — Bach, Mendelssohn, Chopin and Liszt, and the première of a specially commissioned work by the Welsh composer Paul Mealor — Radio 3 has upped the ante by announcing an autumn
Three weeks before Classic FM launched, I was on the radio in Hong Kong, introducing hits by Rick Astley and Wet Wet Wet. I’d just turned 21, and was working as a presenter for British Forces Radio. A phone call came from London. ‘My name is Michael Bukht. I’m setting up a new radio station
Yet another sign that we are living in very strange times: a pair of celebrities, their names made by TV, have switched over to radio for their next project. Not starring in their own series on BBC2 or Channel 4, but on a medium that could have become redundant yet is refusing to give way
Bold programming by the powers-that-be at Radio 4 meant it was possible to listen to all seven episodes of Ayeesha Menon’s adaptation of Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children in a single day on Tuesday, exactly 70 years since independent India was born, and Pakistan created. Four and three-quarter hours of meticulously crafted drama (directed by Tracey
It’s sneaky, the way in which the BBC, so much regarded as part of the family as to be nicknamed ‘Auntie’, has introduced the need to login (or register) whenever you want to listen to something on iPlayer. Maybe I’m doing something wrong because the alert message assures me I will be kept logged in,
As Europe remembers Passchendaele, India and Pakistan recall Partition, just 70 years ago, when Britain so hastily abandoned its Indian empire, exhausted by the costs of war in the world and troubled by the upsurge in violence between Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs as the campaign for Britain to Quit India took root. In Partition Voices
Two programmes this week presented two radically different world views, or rather ways of life. Aditya Chakrabortty’s series for Radio 4, Decoding the News, looked at five words or phrases which have come to characterise how politics, finance and business operate in the UK. We entered a world of policy wonks and pundits, of words
Summer nights, hot and humid, mean just one thing — it’s Proms season again. Sore feet, sweaty armpits, queuing outside the ladies loos, home on the Underground with a head and heart buzzing with Bruckner or Bacharach, Handel or Honegger. Just as special is the nightly feast on Radio 3 — a live concert, guaranteed
When Martha Ann Ricks was 76 she travelled from her home in Liberia to London to meet Queen Victoria. The daughter of a slave, who had purchased freedom for his family from his American owner and taken them to west Africa, she wanted to honour the Queen whom she believed had played a pivotal role
This week’s column is dedicated to my mother who loved her radio and encouraged us to be listeners. Without her, I would not be qualified to do this. My earliest memories are of sitting under the table while my mother sewed and the theme tune of Listen with Mother echoed through the house. The radio,
‘History is not the past,’ says the writer Hilary Mantel in the first of her Reith Lectures on Radio 4 (produced by Jim Frank, Tuesday). ‘It’s the method we’ve evolved of organising our ignorance of the past.’ In Resurrection: The Art and Craft, her series of five talks, Mantel shows her mettle as a novelist
By chance on Saturday morning, I tuned into Radio 4 and heard Professor Clare Brant talking on Saturday Live about Dear Diary, a new exhibition at Somerset House in London that celebrates the art of writing a daily journal. It caught my ear because diaries are such a crucial tool for the biographer yet whenever
In such times as these, enough to try a man’s soul, a dose of John Finnemore is advisable. His brand of comedy, as fans of Cabin Pressure will know, makes you laugh out loud (unlike, I fear, a lot of the programmes in that 6.30 p.m. slot on Radio 4). His quirky stabs at the
