The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.
Make no mistake: the Proms, whose 2015 season was launched last night, would not, could not, exist without the BBC, or the licence fee. Just under half the cost of putting on such an ambitious nightly series of concerts throughout the summer, drawing on orchestras from across the globe, commissioning new work, pulling together programmes
It’s not surprising that politicians have such an on-off relationship with the broadcast media. One slip. One casual comment. One lapse of memory. Even the immaculate, armour-plated Nicola Sturgeon was caught out by Jane Garvey last Wednesday as the Woman’s Hour presenter congratulated her on her latest elevation. It had just been announced that Scotland’s
There’s a part of me that thinks OK, we’ve heard enough now, one year on from the beginning of the centenary commemorations, about the first world war. Do we really need any more programmes (on radio or television) about Ypres, Gallipoli, Akaba, Versailles, and the Western Front? Or are we wallowing in history’s horror stories
It’s often not visual images that stimulate memory but a smell, a taste, the sound of pebbles crashing on to the beach, ice cream being scooped into a cone, seagulls circling overhead. Where was I when I first heard that sound? That’s why the National Trust (in association with the British Library sound archive) has
Evan Davis’s series on business life, The Bottom Line (made in conjunction with the Open University), has become one of those Radio 4 staples, something that’s just there in the schedule and all too easily taken for granted. Productivity, contracts and contacts, the new appreneurs (creators and sellers of apps) are not subjects I feel
If you’re in the least bit squeamish you’d better stop reading now. What follows is not for those who blanch at Casualty and come over all faint at the sight of blood. I’m told it’s a first for radio — following an operation in real time and going right inside the experience. It began at
Goodness knows what the Great Cham would have made of Radio 4 airing an adapted version of his philosophical fable, Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, on Sunday afternoon. Perhaps he would be surprised to see it done at all: the works of Dr Johnson are hardly fashionable these days and Rasselas is probably little known to
The idea of using objects — salt, cod, nutmeg, silk — to turn history lessons into something popular and accessible has been around for at least a generation. It’s a great way to avoid complicated chronologies and the need to remember dates. A well-chosen object, or trading tool, can tell a narrative story that at
‘I call Zelma Cacik who may be living in London,’ says the announcer, in the clipped RP accent of the BBC in the 1940s. ‘I call her on behalf of her 16-year-old cousin…’ The voice betrays no emotion, no feeling, it’s so matter-of-fact, but the script spares no punches as it tells the cousin’s story
An extraordinary black-and-white photograph of a young black boy taken on the Isle of Wight by Julia Margaret Cameron in 1868 shows him in exotic clothes and a heavy silver-bead necklace, like a chain-of-office or a prisoner’s collar. He looks so sad, reminding me of the caged lions in London Zoo, his eyes heavy-laden, his
‘It’s hard to know how to tell this story,’ she said as she began. ‘Because it’s so loaded. It’s so heavy-duty.’ Lore Wolfson was talking about the death of her husband, Paul, or rather about the onset of the illness that led him a year later to take an overdose of heroin, aged 61. He
The new controller of Radio Three, Alan Davey, was on Feedback this week (Radio Four) talking to listeners about his plans for the network. Roger Bolton, who presents, wondered if Davey was worried about ratings — Radio Three hovers around two million listeners compared with the 5.5 million boasted by its commercial rival Classic FM,
It was called Frankly Speaking and by golly it was. The great screen actress Bette Davis was being interviewed by not one but two men: George Coulouris, with whom she co-starred in Hollywood, and a BBC producer. ‘It’s a little sad for some of us who adore your work that a lot of your best
There was no shortage of Easter music and talks across the BBC networks with a sunrise service on Radio 4 followed by much fuss and fanfare for the ‘live’ relay of Libby Lane’s first Easter sermon as Bishop. A significant milestone for the C of E as women are at last allowed to don mitres
‘You can hear pretty clearly the sound of one of the helicopters and you can see it in the darkness,’ yelled James Reynolds over the noise of helicopters, police sirens, vehicles on the move. It was 8.10 a.m., the Today programme on the morning after the fatal Airbus A320 crash in southern France last week.
To a debate on the future of radio at the BBC where it turns out not to be a discussion on who’s listening now but how they’re listening. The Reithian ambition to inform, educate and entertain needs to change, says Mary Hockaday, controller of BBC World Service English, and become ‘inform, educate and connect’. But
If ever I found myself at a pretentious literary party obliged to play David Lodge’s ‘Humiliation’ game and to confess to the great books I’ve never read, I’d only escape the ignominy of winning (by being the most ignorant) because of the radio and the almost weekly possibility of hearing yet another classic adapted as
After a month cooped up in a Scottish castle, no internet, no TV, and no radio, watching hectic snowflakes billowing through the wooded hillside opposite my window, I realise that what I’ve missed most about this supposed deprivation has not been the news (to which I thought I was addicted) or the chatter, the company
The aching hum of crickets. The susurrus of reeds. The lapping of waves. The unmistakable noise of a sound technician ripping a duster in two as the heroine’s dress was torn, thuggishly, by a character in the heat of passion… The sound effects for Harold Pinter’s adaptation of Joseph Conrad’s Victory (which started life as
No phrase is better calculated to tense the neck muscles of a regular podcast listener than ‘We have something special for you now.’ Having your radio shows downloaded to your phone, music player or computer, rather than plucked out of the air the old-fashioned way, immediately grants the listener a great deal of extra freedom:
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 have to sit through a series of bombastic monologues from the host before any punters get a word in edgeways. O’Brien knows everything, and he doesn’t mind telling you. Still, I understand that running a
Perhaps the news that Radio 5 live will be the only BBC station (under the new broadcasting rights agreements) to broadcast ‘live’ golf will ensure that its audience stays above the six million listeners now dreamt of by its controller Jonathan Wall as the magic number he needs for the network to stay buoyant. (Figures
Last weekend BBC Arabic celebrated 77 years since John Reith (as he then was) launched the first foreign-language service of the fledgling BBC Empire Service with an announcement (in English) in which he declared that the programmes would always be ‘reliable, accurate and interesting’, values that have become virtually cast in stone as the Reithian
By some quirk of fate, just as news reached the papers that the Scottish nurse who had contracted Ebola while working in Sierra Leone was now recovered, the guest on that Radio 4 staple Desert Island Discs was the scientist who first identified the virus. This gave a programme that can seem rather outdated and
To have listened to Radio 4’s marathon ten-hour adaptation of Tolstoy’s War and Peace as it was being broadcast on New Year’s Day must have been both wonderful and a bit weird. Like soaking in an ever-replenishing warm bath, indulgent, luxuriant, all-absorbing. Yet at the same time I imagine it was quite hard by the
How many digital radios have you bought over the years? How many are still working? Of the four I used to have, only two are now working and those only in certain parts of the house. I wonder, if a nationwide audit were conducted, how many DAB sets would be found that are still up
‘So — take heart,’ said Alan Bennett, sending us out from his play, Cocktail Sticks, on a cheery note. The treatment for cancer had been gruelling, but that was 15 years ago, so… This Radio 4 production was adapted (and produced) by Gordon House from the stage version at the National Theatre but was perfectly
The fuss may now be over, the last episode of Serial revealed. But if the global success of WBEZ Chicago’s latest weekly podcast is a portent, then the future of radio lies not in static daily programming but in the fleeting pursuit of the latest internet download. No scheduling necessary. Listeners can just choose what
It was a bit of a surprise to hear Jarvis Cocker, the embodiment of cool and former frontman of Pulp, confessing to a love of Singing Together, a BBC programme straight out of the 1940s, with its clipped pronunciation and uptight pronouncements. But in his edition of Archive on 4, broadcast just as the Advent
