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Back to School with 4Extra

2017-08-22T15:23:04+00:00

With the summer holidays drawing to a close, 4 Extra marks the putting away of bucket and spades and the re-emergence of pencil cases, sharpeners and the sound of the school bell – with a two week season of programmes that explore that near universal of experiences: school days.

Rooting around in the �鶹Լ��’s basement you find that school life has been a constant source of inspiration in the history of �鶹Լ�� Radio. Back to School with 4 Extra features classic comedies like a 1955 episode of Hancock’s Half Hour – in which the ‘the lad himself’ - Tony Hancock – takes a turn as teacher in a school full of ‘juvenile delinquents’. The episode - The Blackboard Jungle (starring Hancock, Kenneth Williams and Sid James) - was writers Ray Galton and Alan Simpson’s take on the controversial American movie of the same name that year. It was a pressure cooker story of inter-racial school life that featured the then incendiary song ‘Rock around the Clock’, and a breakout performance by the young Sidney Poitier. Nearly 30 years later, in 1984, award winning Caribbean-British writer Caryl Phillips penned his first radio play, The Wasted Years, exploring the pressures of identity faced by Solly, the 16 year old son of Caribbean immigrants, as he prepares to leave school for an uncertain future. Tony Armatrading stars as Solly, alongside Carmen Monroe and Rudolph Walker (EastEnders).

Alongside a five part adaption of RF Delderfield's classic school drama set between the two world wars, To Serve Them All My Days, we have BAFTA winning Sarah Lancashire returning to 1930s Yorkshire as headmistress Sarah Burton, in a radio version of Winifred Holtby’s (1898-1935) most famous novel South Riding. Published posthumously in 1936, it's a rich and memorable evocation of the characters of Yorkshire's South Riding, their lives, loves and sorrow and a fitting summation of Holtby’s life as noted feminist, pacifist, journalist and writer.

In much more boisterous mood, Helen Mirren, Joanna Lumley and Lisa Dillon star in three classic ‘jolly hockey-sticks’ tales, from writers Angela Brazil and Enid Blyton, Good Show Clarissa. While from 1957, John Gielgud stars in The Browning Version, striking a reflective mood in his first performance in a play by Terrence Rattigan. Playing a schoolmaster, it’s a story of personal betrayal, education and regret.

Beyond fictional school walls we get to explore the real school reports of Dame Edna Everage, Wendy Cope, Alan Coren, Terence Stamp, Stephen Fry and Kenneth Williams, as Robert Booth asks what they would have done differently in school in the series Could Do Better. Celebrated Crime writer Val McDermid reveals her passion for South Shields novelist, Elinor Brent-Dye’s boarding school novels in The Chalet School. Though often overlooked today, these novels inspired her to go to university and eventually to become a writer herself.

Always with the ability to surprise, the �鶹Լ�� radio archive often gives us the chance to open up an audio time capsule….in this case from a bygone age of education: “One day last autumn [1947] a �鶹Լ�� van arrived at the tiny village school of Bolventor, in the middle of Bodmin Moor….engineers proceeded to hang up microphones in front of the various desks and out in the porch….the microphones and cables were left until the children had become accustomed to their presence and took no notice of them….” So explained the Radio Times in 1948, introducing an experimental programme decades before the vagaries of ‘reality TV’. The School on the Moor is a remarkable audio document: presented by the headmaster himself, this small school and former pupils magically tell their own story in 1947.

And, not heard since 1962, a truly disturbing school drama - from a �鶹Լ�� master of radio drama writing and production, Giles Cooper – admits us to a classroom where a new teacher has the distinct impression that his class has had something to do with the unfortunate demise of his predecessor in: Unman, Wittering and Zigo.

As we all know, school holidays are but a short lived dream….unlike the famous rock song….schools are never out forever…..

Programmes featured include
Unman, Wittering and Zigo (Sat 26 Aug, 4.00pm–5.20pm)

Desert Island Discs Revisited: Sir Ken Robinson (Sun 27 Aug, 10.15 – 11.00am)
Conversation From the Engine Room (Sun 27 Aug, 4.00pm–5.00pm)
The Clitheroe Kid – One Hundred Not Out (Sun 27 Aug, 8.00pm – 8.30pm)
The Wasted Years (Sun 27 Aug, 8.30pm – 10.00pm)

Good Show Clarissa (Mon 28 Aug – Wed 30 Aug, 2.45pm -3.00pm)
To Serve Them All My Days (Mon 28 Aug – Fri 1 Sep, 11.15am–12.00pm)

Could Do Better (Mon 28 Aug – Fri 1 Sep, 2.15pm -2.30pm)
South Riding (Mon 28 Aug – Fri 1 Sep, 2.30pm -2.45pm)

Double Science 1/6 (Tue 29 Aug, 7.00am -7.30am)
Off the Page: The Making of You (Wed 30 Aug, 6.30pm – 7.00pm)
Comedy Club: The Museum of Everything (Thu 31 Aug, 10.30pm– 11.00pm)

The Chalet School (Fri 1 Sep, 13.30am – 2.00pm)

Hancock’s Half Hour – The Blackboard Jungle - (Sat 2 Sep, 12.00am-12.30am)

The Burkiss Way (Sat 2 Sep, 12.30am-1.00pm)

Could Do Better (Mon 4 Sep, 2.15pm – 2.30pm)

South Riding 6-10/15 (Mon 4 Sep – Fri 8 Sep, 2.30am – 2.45am)

Big Ben bongs

2017-08-14T09:14:09+00:00

Big Ben is iconic - it was first heard ringing out over London almost 160 years ago and is now the world’s most famous and immediately recognisable bell. It’s a sound that resonates not just in our ears but in our imagination, too. It also plays a crucial role here at �鶹Լ�� Radio 4, heralding the start of the 6pm and midnight news, as well as Westminster Hour on Sundays at 10pm. So, it may come as no surprise there has been much discussion about what to do when Big Ben falls silent from Monday 21 August, while the clock tower undergoes refurbishment.

After much consideration of alternatives, including using the pips or playing chimes from elsewhere, we decided to use a pre-recording of the Big Ben bongs for as long as the clock is out of action.

A number of factors were at play, including uncertainty over how long Big Ben will be silent, and a host of technical and practical considerations. A live broadcast of a bell might appear a very simple matter, but here are a number of things we needed to consider. The chimes must of course be live on air at exactly the right moment and they must chime at the key times for our schedule. And the sound must be clear and undistorted, without background noises creeping in. What may be less obvious is that, as the chimes signal the start of the news, we need to be sure the aural pitch is also appropriate.

Given all these factors, we decided that pre-recording the bongs offers the most reliable option, while allowing us to retain the commanding sound of Big Ben as part our schedule, as well as our listener’s daily lives. Once the clock is back in normal service we will resume the live broadcast in keeping with long tradition. It’s a sound which has been heard on the �鶹Լ�� for over 90 years and one we hope to hear on Radio 4 for many, many more.

Jane Austen 200

2017-07-03T12:17:34+00:00

�鶹Լ�� Radio 4 Extra marks the 200th anniversary of the death (18 July 1817) of one of the most celebrated writers of all time, Jane Austen - with a selection of radio dramas and an entertaining feature.

Thanks to her witty character portrayals and depictions of 19th century English society, Austen’s work has stood the test of time with legions of fans worldwide.

Amanda Root

Amanda Root stars as young Fanny Price in Mansfield Park (from 12 July). Austen’s unlikely heroine is plucked from her impoverished family and brought up by wealthy relatives, but the hopes of this poor relation are soon dashed. Yet as she grows up, Fanny proves to be an indispensable member of the household. This three-part 1987 dramatisation co-stars Michael Williams and Robert Glenister as Fanny’s cousins with Hannah Gordon as Jane Austen.

Sense and Sensibility (from 17 July) is Austen's tale about two sisters who learn that sense must mix with sensibility if they’re to find happiness in a society where money governs love.

Forced to leave their beloved family home, after the death of their father, Elinor and Marianne aim to make a new life at Barton Cottage. While Marianne unexpectedly meets the dashing Willoughby who sweeps her off her feet, Elinor has a surprise visit from Edward. But with neither fortune nor connections, the prospect of marrying the men they love appears remote. This 2-part 2013 dramatisation stars Amanda Hale as Elinor and Olivia Hallinan as Marianne.

Ever wondered what your favourite literary characters would do if they were around today? In What Would Elizabeth Bennet Do? (from 17 July) City boy James takes inspiration from his girlfriend's beloved Austen in plotting how to win her back. He’s determined to grab her attention with an offer he hopes she can't refuse. Charlotte Jones' 5-part modern take on Austen's classic love story stars Kobna Holdbrook Smith as a modern day Mr Darcy.

In Jane Austen's iPod (18 July) David Owen Norris offers a rare insight into the family life of Jane Austen through her favourite songs. With singer, Gwyneth Herbert.

Islands on 4 Extra

2017-06-23T09:33:38+00:00

�鶹Լ�� Radio 4 Extra showcases the enduring fascination of islands. In a two-week season we're roaming the globe, crossing centuries and investigating the real and the invented as we consider the special place of islands in our imaginations.

From idyll to prison, birthplace to workplace, refuge to colony, through corncrakes, campsites, witchcraft and ukuleles, Radio 4 Extra presents the mystery and magic of the island.

Drama highlights include RL Stevenson’s classic adventure Treasure Island (Sat, July 1st), starring Peter Jeffrey and Hugh Paddick, while Michael Denison and Moira Lister star in Noel Coward’s witty satire South Sea Bubble (Sat, June 24th).

In Three Chickens (Thur, June 29th), Anton Lesser encounters sorcery on a magic island in Brazil. Troubled lovers gaze from the Pembrokeshire coast to Skomer (Wed, June 28th), while identical twins on a remote Scottish island confront a secret in The Rocks Below (Fri, July 7th).

Adjoa Andoh reads Jean Rhys’s award-winning novel Wide Sargasso Sea (starts Mon, July 3rd), inspired by Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. We move from Jamaica to Orkney for a selection of George Mackay Brown Stories (starts Mon, June 26th).

Among our feature highlights, Gwyneth Lewis looks at the idea of the island in Archive On 4: Island Dreams (Sat, June 24th) and later takes A Voyage To Lundy (starts Mon, July 3rd).

Other documentaries travel from Anuta: An Island Governed By Love (Mon, June 26th) to Sable Island: A Dune Adrift (Fri, June 30th).

Kenneth Steven presents A Requiem For St Kilda (Thur, July 6th), we visit Sheppey in The Island (Wed, June 28th) and investigate the threat to the Carteret Islands in Journey Of A Lifetime - The Sinking Islands (Tues, July 4th). Our second Archive On 4 documentary, Island Of Tears (Sat, July 1st), hears the testimony of immigrants at Ellis Island, New York.

A Desert Island Discs mini-season celebrates writers and performers born on islands around Great Britain, with guests Dawn French (Sun, June 25th), Anthony Minghella (Sun, July 2nd), Frank Kermode (Sun, July 9th) and Roy Dotrice (Sun, July 16th). And there’s a comic slant on the desert island in dramas Going Troppo (Wed, July 5th) and Desert Island Desserts (Tues, June 27th).

Poetry Extra ranges from volcanic Iceland (Surtsey And Me – Sun, July 2nd) to the Hebrides (Crex Crex - Sun, July 9th) and war-torn Sri Lanka (Broken Paradise – Sun, June 25th).

Kerry Shale reads Bill Bryson’s Notes From A Small Island (starts Mon, June 26th) and comedies take us from the Northumberland coast (North East Of Eden – starts Mon, July 3rd) to the Isles of Scilly (On The Rocks - starts Mon, June 26th) and the sub-Antarctic (Bird Island – starts Tues, June 26th), while Tina C undertakes her Tiny Island Tour (starts Tues, June 26th).

A Family Gathering on 4 Extra

2017-05-10T16:37:06+00:00

The 1960s domestic sitcom 'Life with the Lyons' features in 4 Extra's family season.

Family… Whether you have heaps of squealing children, an arms-length relationship with an ex-partner, siblings, step-parents, grandparents or a huge tabby cat; families come in all shapes and sizes.

Radio 4 Extra invites you to celebrate the ‘Family’ in all its different guises showcasing famous radio comedy and iconic drama from the �鶹Լ�� archives including including TS Eliot’s drama Family Reunion not broadcast since original TX in 1965.

Here’s the family related delights that Radio 4 Extra has lined up for you:

Noel Coward’s inter-war play This Happy Breed starring John Moffatt. The story of the working class Gibbons family coping with life between the wars and stars Rosemary Leach. This Happy Breed was also produced as a highly successful film in 1944 by David Lean.

A family drama cataloguing the lives and loves across three generations in the The Cazalet Chronicles. Elizabeth Jane Howard’s family saga brought her success in her 70s. She was a writer who transferred and recycled the mistakes in her own family life into brilliant novels.

Comedian Shappi Khorsandi presents The Comedy Club to talk about the influence of her family and introduce a selection of family comedy.

Jeremy Hardy faces up to fatherhood and gives tips on How to Be a Father.

Shappi sees the funny side of being divorced and a single mother and discusses this with Jerry Hall in Shappi Talk.

Dominic Holland discusses the journey of life and points out the pitfalls of growing up, becoming an adult and having children in The Small World of Dominic Holland.

Mark Steel proposes a radical idea to improve our lives in The Mark Steel Solution: No One Should Live in the Same Family for More than One Year…

Stephen K Amos shares his teenage years in 1980s South London in Jonathan Harvey’s comedy, What Does the K Stand For?

In Isy Suttie's Guide to the Family, Isy returns to Derbyshire the home of her teenage years as she ambles through the archives to celebrate family life in a three hour showcase.

We hear from the classic comedy families across the decades starting with 50s & 60s families in Meet the Huggets and Life with the Lyons. The latter features the real American Lyon family in 60s London, starring Bebe Daniels and her husband Ben Lyon. For the first time since its original transmission, the silent film actress chooses her castaway choices in Desert Island Discs. Bebe visited Britain for 3 weeks with her family in 1936. They loved it so much she was still here 20 years later.

From the 1960s, we bring you Not in Front of the Children, the family sitcom adapted from television with Wendy Craig and Frances Matthews. Jennifer nags stubborn Henry due in court over a treehouse.

From the 1970s comes the iconic comedy Steptoe and Son adapted from television with Wilfred Brambell and Harry H Corbett. Harold falls for his drama society’s leading lady.

Simon Brett’s After Henry is a comedy drama from the 1980s featuring a widow, her mother and daughter, starring Prunella Scales and Joan Sanderson.

From the 1990s, the Conroy family are braced for school reports – and a loan in Stockport: So Good They Named It Once. Starring Dominic Monaghan (The Lord of the Rings) and Beverley Callard (Coronation Street).

And from the 2010s, Simon Greenall and Kay Stonham star in Robin and Wendy’s Wet Weekend. Away from their model village, the duo tackle a civil war recreation.

There are elements of family tragedy that we all recognise in Anne Tyler’s Dinner at the �鶹Լ��sick Restaurant, a portrait of a fractured Baltimore family, with details that ring sharply true and characters that are both truthful and entertaining. Starring Barbara Barnes as Pearl and Nathan Osgood as Beck. The narrator is Lorelei King.

After 20 years away from poetry, during which he co-wrote The Royle Family and produced Gavin & Stacey, amongst others, Henry Normal returned to Radio 4 in 2016 for a comic and poetic look at his family life. Recorded in front of an audience in Brighton, A Normal Family is centred around Henry’s son, Johnny, who was diagnosed with “mildly severe” autism. Through stand-up and poetry, Henry explores what this means for Johnny, for himself, and for his wife, Angela.

And finally, TS Eliot’s drama Family Reunion echoes Eliot’s own first failed marriage and looks at the family dynamics at a birthday gathering - always an opportunity for high tension.

Whilst in the beginning radio gathered the family together, whatever your family make-up today, radio can also be enjoyed in perfect solitude.

Gay Britannia on 4 Extra

2017-04-25T14:09:19+00:00

Radio 4 Extra joins in the �鶹Լ��’s Gay Britannia season marking the 50th anniversary of The Sexual Offences Act 1967 – which partially decriminalised homosexual acts in private between two men over 21 in England and Wales. Join �鶹Լ�� journalist Ben Hunte as he curates our season and interviews some of his LGBT heroes...

�鶹Լ�� Radio 2’s Paul O’Grady talks the secret gay slang of Polari ahead of The Bona History of Julian and Sandy (29 July) plus that bold edition of Round The Horne featuring Bona Law (30 July).

Ben Hunte meets Stephanie Hirst (29 July) discussing the �鶹Լ�� broadcaster’s gender reassignment – and talks to lesbian publisher, Linda Riley – ahead of the first of two episodes of EM Forster’s tale of early 20th-century gay love, Maurice (30 July).

HIV activist Greg Owen chats to Ben – ahead of Andy Kirby’s two-part 1980s drama about a hospital’s first ever AIDS patient, starring Michael Cashman: Compromised Immunity (31 July).

Inspirational gay journalist Dean Eastmond tells Ben about his brave battle with cancer – ahead of Armistead Maupin’s acclaimed tale of the denizens of the mythic apartment house at 28 Barbary Lane, San Francisco – set in the free and easy era of 1976: Tales of the City (31 July).

The Comedy Club welcomes Stephen K Amos telling Ben about the perils of coming out – ahead of the edition of What Does the K Stand For? where he tries to tell his family... (2 Aug) plus more chat with Paul O’Grady (3 Aug).

Get the confetti ready – as Ben meets �鶹Լ�� Three’s “Queer Britain” host Riyadh Khalaf – ahead of Ian and Adam’s 2006 Ambridge civil partnership in The Archers' Gay Wedding (4 Aug).

Week 2 of Gay Britannia kicks off with Ben’s chat with Stonewall’s CEO, Ruth Hunt – ahead of Patrice Chaplin’s Edwardian drama charting Meriel’s growing obsession with a local girl – chosen by a 4 Extra listener and starring Deborah Makepeace: The Tinker's Daughter (5 Aug).

Ben talks to Paul O’Grady about the impact of his alter ego Lily Savage (5 Aug) – and later PinkNews chief, Benjamin Cohen – ahead of the comedy featuring the only gay in the village: Little Britain (5 Aug) starring Matt Lucas and David Walliams.

Ben meets LGBT YouTuber, Calum McSwiggan – ahead of Nicholas McInerny's autobiographical tale of a husband coming out as gay after 19 years. Julia Ford and Greg Wise star in How To Have A Perfect Marriage (7 Aug).

Peter Tatchell chats to Ben about his role in gay activism – ahead of Phil Willmot’s drama about a 17-year-old and the lead-up to the 1994 age of consent protest by gay action group, Outrage, starring David Curtiz, Stealing the Scene (9 Aug).

And don’t miss the Comedy Club when Gina Yashere tells Ben about life as a lesbian comic – ahead of our special compilation of the best out and proud �鶹Լ�� Radio comedy from the past five years, Happy That Way (10 Aug).

You can find features and details of all the Gay Britannia programmes across �鶹Լ�� Radio networks, with links to TV programmes, here.

Honoured Actors – Dames & Knights

2017-04-05T16:00:33+00:00

�鶹Լ�� Radio 4 Extra raises the curtain on a season showcasing our honoured actors – those distinguished artists recognised as dames and knights.

Over three weeks, we’ll be celebrating a selection of these performers with a variety of programmes (many of them new to our network) including drama, documentary, interview and talk.

Our glittering cast list ranges from the first actor to be knighted (Henry Irving, played by Daniel Massey in Lord Of The Lyceum - Apr 12th, 11.15am) to the two stars acknowledged in the most recent Honours list: Patricia Routledge (Dolly’s Mexican Wave - Apr 13th, 11.15am) and Mark Rylance (Golden Lads And Girls – Apr 27th, 6.30am).

Our season begins in the weekend of the annual Olivier Awards and we’ll be marking the work of the first knighted actor to be ennobled: Lord Olivier is remembered in The Reunion: National Theatre (with Sir Michael Gambon, Sir Derek Jacobi, Dame Maggie Smith and Dame Joan Plowright - Apr 8th, 8am) and Philip Ziegler’s biography Olivier (read by Toby Jones - Apr 10th, 2.45pm). You’ll be able to hear the great actor himself in No End To Dreaming (Apr 9th, 4.20pm).

Other highlights in the first week include The Importance Of Being Earnest (Apr 8th, 6am) starring Dame Judi Dench and Sir Michael Hordern and It's Cold, Wanderer, It's Cold (Apr 9th, 4pm) with Sir Ian McKellen.

Beginning the same week, Sir John Gielgud shares an extraordinary range of reminiscence about his life in the theatre in An Actor In His Time (starts Apr 10th, 6.30am).

Sir Mark Rylance appears on Desert Island Discs(Apr 9th, 10.15am) and subsequent castaways include Dame Eileen Atkins (Apr 16th, 10.15am), Sir Ralph Richardson (Apr 23rd, 10.15am), Dame Harriet Walter (Apr 30th, 10.15am) and Dame Penelope Wilton (May 7th, 10.15am).

In our second week, Sir Anthony Hopkins stars in Howard Brenton and David Hare’s Pravda (Apr 16th, 8pm) and Dame Kristin Scott Thomas takes the lead role in Sophocles’ Electra (Apr 15th, 6am).

Sir Alec Guinness reads Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting Of The Snark (Apr 15th, 12pm) and is featured in the Archive On 4 documentary Dark Horse (Apr 15th, 8am), while legendary actor-manager Sir Donald Wolfit reads a selection from Jonathan Swift’s Satirical Verse (Apr 16th, 7.15am).

Sir Michael Gambon stars in The Annunciation (Apr 21st, 10am). Dames Peggy Ashcroft and Judi Dench read the paired monologues Chances (Apr 19th, 10am) and two knights combine as Nigel Hawthorne reads Charles Chaplin’s My Autobiography (Apr 17th, 2.45pm).

In our last week, we delve deep into the �鶹Լ�� Service archive for two 1940s pieces featuring Dame Edith Evans: The Actress - Dame Edith Evans Talks About The Stage (Apr 25th, 6.30am) and Love At Arms (Apr 25th, 6.50am), an extract from As You Like It, co-starring Sir Michael Redgrave.

We’ve rummaged in the World Service archive as well, bringing you Marvellous Party (Apr 27th 10am) in which Dame Dorothy Tutin’s co-star is Stanley Baxter, playing the real-life role of Sir Noel Coward.

Sir Robert Stephens stars in All Free Now (Apr 22nd, 6am) and Sir Daniel Day-Lewis appears in Dead-Heading The Roses (Apr 24th, 11.15). The State Of The Art (Apr 26th, 11.15) features Sir Antony Sher, Sir Ben Kingsley heads the cast in A Sense Of Things Moving Forward (Apr 28th, 10am) and Dame Flora Robson is Frankly Speaking (Apr 22nd, 2.15pm).

You might even find yourself recognising some potential dames and knights among our casts – Frances Barber? Simon Russell Beale? Miriam Margolyes? Michael Sheen?

Settle back as the lights dim and the curtain rises on our season of honoured – and marvellous – actors.

Book Club: The Travelling Hornplayer

2017-02-03T14:27:59+00:00

We heard a ghost story from our author on this month’s Bookclub. Barbara Trapido was talking about her novel The Travelling Hornplayer, which begins with the following sentence: ‘Early on the morning of my interview, I woke up and saw my dead sister.’ Not a bad opening line for a story about two interlocking dysfunctional families, but in the course of the discussion with our readers, Barbara revealed an unusual experience of her own.

She was at a literary event in Manchester when something mysterious happened in her hotel. ‘I woke up in the morning and a young girl passed through the room. It wasn’t at all scary, and I knew straight away that this wasn’t a person of flesh and blood. She touched my bedclothes, crossed the room and seemed to disappear through the window.’ Getting up, Barbara checked behind the curtains, found nothing, and went to reception to ask if anything had ever been known to happen in Room 102. Naturally, I asked if she thought she had been dreaming. The reply was emphatic – no. Although a moment or two later, she acknowledged that she couldn’t be entirely sure. The girl – ‘a demure school girl’ dressed in white vest and knickers – seemed perfectly real. And, of course, she became the dead sister – Lydia – in the novel.

However sceptical we may be about such experiences, it was one that fitted Barbara’s approach to writing as she described it to us. ‘I never plan, plot or structure anything – I stare in the dark and wait for it to emerge.’ But, of course, it’s not as simple as that. She got the idea for The Travelling Hornplayer at a Schubert recital in Oxford – it was just after the death of her mother – and found herself studying the text of the songs more closely than before. ‘I began to think can you take these quite trashy poems and transform them - the way Schubert takes them and transforms them into something deep and resonant. And that seemed to me interesting and also because I’d experienced this bereavement - the story had got to be gloomy, the whole notion of love and death, and I thought Oh my God one of these lovely little girls is going to have to die - namely the two little girls, Ellen and Lydia, the sisters, and that was the premise with which I began.’

That intuitive approach to writing evidently springs from her personality – she rather endearingly described herself as ‘batty’ in the course of our conversation – and her feeling for some of the agonies of family life is clearly rooted in her own background – she arrived in this country from South Africa in the 1960s. Her parents had emigrated there from Berlin and Amsterdam in the 30s.

‘I’d always been an outsider. I had funny foreign parents where I grew up, where being English was the thing to be, and after a while you make a virtue of being odd and I think I’m aware politically, aware of social class, for example.’ It was from her parents that she got a love of music – they would play Schubert at home – and so in this book, the lives of the characters unfold to the rhythm of one of his song cycles, with the words introducing each chapter. For all Barbara’s commitment to stories that seem to invent themselves, and her use of coincidence as a recurring plot device, there’s a deep pattern to the novel. It’s no accident that each chapter ends with the words ‘again and again.’

Maybe these characters have no choice but to live the lives she’s made for them: life is a story of repeating cycles.

I hope you enjoy hearing Barbara Trapido.

Happy Reading

Jim

Book Club: Capital

2017-01-03T12:03:19+00:00

Happy New Year! Listening to John Lanchester talking about his novel Capital - the programme is repeated on Thursday afternoon as usual - I was reminded of the force of a question he raised during our discussion with readers. How many of us live in a street where there is still someone around who was born there? It used to be common in London, even a single generation ago I’d guess, but changes in the capital have made that kind of community a rarity, and a thing of the past. In John’s account of life in one fictional London street - Pepys Road - just before the financial crash of 2007-8, there’s one resident (Petunia) who can say that she’s never lived anywhere else. It means that she catches something of the spirit of the whole story, which is partly about the growing sense of unease that precedes the coming storm, and partly about the sudden, even brutal, changes in lifestyle that Londoners have come to know.

As John put it to our readers, ‘She’s the daughter of a solicitor’s clerk and she’s the last contact with when it would have been a very different demographic, and a much more homogenous community. It’s part of the hollowing out of London where there are people who don’t feel rich but are rich by global standards, and the poor who serve them, and service them, and by and large they are almost in different cities. There’s a class of employers and the people who serve them and no one in the middle and it’s reflected in the 2011 census that the white British are now a minority in London. And as I was writing the book, I thought yes, I’m on to that.’

So it’s a novel that, through the prism of Pepys Road, looks at a city that was shaken by sudden demographic and financial changes that were beginning to affect everyone, even before the crash itself. As we discussed in the programme, there was a feeling of the kind that animals have when they sense a storm in the making...an edginess that John himself remembers very clearly (and perhaps alarmingly says he can feel once more, right now). It means that the character of Roger, the investment banker in the story, is inevitably a fulcrum for the novel.

The point about Roger, however, is that although he is a representative of trouble - inflated salaries, house price inflation at a daft pace, a financial system wobbling towards disaster - he isn’t a bad man. The less said about his wife, Arabella, the better. But Roger evoked the sympathy of our readers, as he does of the author. Roger has simply taken on the coloration of the world, as John put it to us, and absorbed contemporary values. It’s what so many people do, wherever they sit in society.

The cleverness of Capital is surely that it’s a moral fable without ever seeming to be preachy. It’s funny, quick and vivid, painting a picture that’s always throwing up a character or a problem that’s intriguing. You never feel you’re being told what to think. If you were, I think it would have been a flop. But instead it has been immensely successful, a story of our time that, as this month’s group of readers demonstrated, that has the capacity to make us think about ourselves. I do hope you have enjoyed hearing John talk about it if you were listening on Sunday or that you’ll enjoy the repeat on Thursday.

Next month’s author is the best-selling Barbara Trapido, and we’ll be talking about The Travelling Horn Player.

Happy reading!

Jim.

A Fabulous Festive Feast from 4 Extra

2016-12-20T16:20:09+00:00

Whether you fancy some Ho! Ho! Ho! or a merry melodrama or two, �鶹Լ�� Radio 4 Extra has got it all for you this season:

Mole Cooks His Goose
Sue Townsend’s festive tale sees Adrian Mole in charge of Christmas dinner. Thursday 22nd December at 2pm

The Adventure of The Christmas Pudding
Hercule Poirot investigates in Agatha Christie’s festive whodunit. Friday 23rd December at 11.15am

King Lear on Boxing Day
A recreation of the momentous 1606 opening night of Shakespeare’s play. Christmas Eve at 4pm

The Meow Show With Ed Reardon And Elgar
3 hours of purr-fect archive from Ed and his co-host cat – featuring Sian Phillips, Dawn French, Beryl Reid and a vintage “Ed Reardon's Week”. Christmas Eve at 9.00am

Victoria Wood as NOT seen on TV
An hour of rare clips of the much-missed entertainer’s appearances on �鶹Լ�� radio – hosted by her Dinnerladies TV co-star, Maxine Peake. Christmas Eve at Noon

Cabin Pressure
Benedict Cumberbatch and co prepare for take-off! Christmas Day in the Comedy Club at 11.00pm

Old Harry’s Game’s Christmas Special
Satan’s suffering Christmas confusion thanks to Andy Hamilton. Christmas Day in the Comedy Club at 11.30pm

A Haunted Christmas in the 7th Dimension
A frisson of festive fear with Robin Ince, including a treat from 1963 Christmas Meeting starring Dame Flora Robson. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day at 6.00pm

Count Arthur Strong’s Christmas Show
Christmas has crept up on Arthur, so everything is all last minute! Christmas Day at 5.30pm

The Eric Morecambe and Ernie Wise Christmas Radio Show
Wouldn’t be Christmas without them! Christmas Day at 12.30pm

Beatles Christmas
Alexei Sayle listens into the Fab Four’s festive fan club recordings. Boxing Day at 1.30pm

Oh Yes I Am
Discover why pantos still pack the crowds in for Christmas. Tuesday 27th December at 1.30pm

Happy Christmas to you all from Radio 4 Extra!

Listen to a preview clip of Ed Reardon and moggie Elgar's Christmas Eve Meow Show on 4Extra

Book Club: Bright Lights, Big City

2016-12-02T16:52:21+00:00

Jay McInerney’s book about a week of hedonism in New York in the early eighties is like a garish postcard from a vanished world. Bright Lights, Big City made the career of a writer who was then in his mid-twenties because, as he told this month’s group of Bookclub readers, it caught the city at a moment of social and cultural drama. It had virtually gone bankrupt, there was a heroin epidemic as obvious to everyone in Manhattan as violence on the streets, and the middle classes were indulging in cocaine without a thought about addiction. There was madness in the air. The AIDS crisis was just around the corner, and a certain wildness ruled.

The novel is the account of a week in the life of a nameless young man – he’s referred to throughout in the second person, simply as ‘You’ – who isn’t McInerney’s double but who lives some of the life that the writer knew, when he was often in what is often euphemistically referred to as ‘an altered state of mind’, thanks to drink – or more usually – drugs. And looking back on the book, more than thirty years on, McInerney talked interestingly about his ambiguous relationship with the city.

It was true, he said, that you’re now much less likely to have your apartment burgled by an addict or to be mugged on the streets than in the old days, or to hear ‘crack vials cracking underfoot’ but he’s certain that something has been lost. For him, the city seems less diverse, and despite the no-go zones of the past there was something attractive about its edges – when there were ‘islands of civilisation’ where people still lived in property with cheap rents – that represent, for him, something lost. He told us, ‘I’ve never fallen out of love with New York City and as much as this is a terrible week portrayed in Bright Lights, Big City, I think it’s also infused with a love of Manhattan. ‘

This may be why the book still has power. Many of our readers had read when it first appeared, appreciating the account of one lost week in the life of a young man who had many lost weeks – and celebrated them, whatever the physical and emotional cost. The city that never sleeps has a strong pull on so many people, whether they’ve read Damon Runyon or not, that owes a lot to the strong undercurrent of over-indulgence, chicanery and even violence that seems to flow across town even now. There was bohemia in Greenwich Village, absurd excesses of wealth on the Upper East Side and along Park Avenue but somehow it mixed a cocktail that was always worth a sip. You’d never forget it.

One reader said it had shaped all her imagination about New York when she first read it. She’d never been there, but it came to life. For myself, having first set foot there as a young student in 1970, I understand exactly what that means. The pace, the smells, the noise and the voices seem impossible to imagine in that particular combination, anywhere else. When you come across the 59th St Bridge from the airport into the ferment of Manhattan for the first time you’re likely to be smitten. If you don’t like it; stay away. If not, you’re probably at the start of a hectic love affair.

McInerney’s book is about a place that for ‘You’ seemed to have no rules, and maybe promised destruction in the end. But it was still intoxicating. That’s why so many people read Bright Lights, Big City and still do.

I hope you enjoy hearing him.

Happy reading

Jim

Marking the 90th Radio 4 Christmas Appeal with St Martin in-the-Fields

2016-11-29T16:08:21+00:00

The 90th Radio 4 Christmas Appeal with St Martin in-the-Fields launched on Sunday 4 December. To find out more and donate visit the Radio 4 Christmas Appeal or call 0800 082 82 84. Thank you for all your support over the years.

St Martin-in-the-Fields, a landmark church in the heart of London. Picture: Craig Barker

The neoclassical Church of St Martin-in-the-Fields at the corner of Trafalgar Square has a long history as a place of refuge. During the First World War the charismatic and maverick vicar, Dick Sheppard, threw open the doors to soldiers departing for the front from Charing Cross Station nearby.

"He created the tradition of the church of the ever-open door" says the Revd Dr Sam Wells, the current vicar of St Martin’s "and from that time forward people have come to St Martin’s with the expectation that even if they are desperate and destitute there’s a place here for them."

After the war Dick Sheppard’s appeals from the pulpit to his congregation to donate to those less fortunate became formalised and appeared in the Radio Times as the �鶹Լ�� Christmas Appeal in 1927.

So this year marks the 90th Radio 4 Christmas Appeal with St Martin in-the-Fields.

The money raised by donations to the appeal is shared between The Connection, the night shelter and day centre next to the church in Trafalgar Square, and the Vicar’s Relief Fund which gives crisis grants to applicants around the country who are homeless or who are in danger of losing their homes.

Tony from Wrexham who was helped by the Vicar's Relief Fund

Tony is a painter and decorator from Wrexham who now has somewhere safe to live for the first time in 5 years, thanks to a grant for £340 from the Vicar's Relief Fund which paid for a month’s rent in advance to secure his tenancy. Even though he thinks he could do a better job on the decoration, he is very relieved to have found a home:

"I couldn’t believe it. I was in a dream. I had to keep pinching myself! To be back in a house, not have the elements on you, to actually be able to sit down and have a cup of tea, it was just brilliant."

Government figures show that between autumn 2014 and autumn 2015 homelessness went up in England by nearly 30%.

Of the continuing Radio 4 Christmas Appeal Sam Wells says "This year is the 90th year. That’s an incredible record of partnership. It’s a story of wisdom and experience and friendship over 90 years. There’s a sad part of that, because it suggests that unfortunately homelessness is a problem that’s not going to go away. What I’m celebrating after 90 years is a gathering together of people who – together - have had an amazing record of making a real difference."

The 90th Radio 4 Christmas Appeal with St Martin in-the-Fields starts on Sunday 4 December. For more information or to make a donation visit the Radio 4 Christmas Appeal.

Donate online to the Radio 4 Christmas Appeal
To donate by phone call 0800 082 82 84
Find out more about The Connection
Find out more about the Vicar's Relief Fund

Bollywood: Music, Mystery and Magic on �鶹Լ�� Radio 4 Extra

2016-11-10T09:46:13+00:00

Bollywood, India’s popular cinema industry, produces thousands of films that are enjoyed around the world. As the nights draw in and the mercury falls, �鶹Լ�� Radio 4 Extra presents a selection of Bollywood-themed features and dramas filled with warmth, light, music and song. The programmes are introduced by Bobby Friction, Bollywood aficionado and presenter of the eponymous weeknight music programme on �鶹Լ�� Asian Network.

Sanjeev Bhaskar delves into Bollywood’s early history with Lights, Camera, Akshun! (2013), exploring how three of the industry’s key players started out in London. Niranjan Pal wrote a West End play before co-directing The Light of Asia (1925) with Himanshu Rai, who went on to found the production company Bombay Talkies with actress Devika Rani. In Nightingales of India (2013), Yasmin Alibhai Brown looks back at the careers of Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle, the sisters who’ve sung the songs in thousands of Bollywood movies for the past 70 years.

Bollywood Jane (2008) is a drama series that shows how Bollywood crosses cultures. Jane, a teenager from a tough background, discovers Bollywood through her friend Dini. The films’ themes of hope and love sustain her as she makes the difficult adjustment to working life in a new city. And we have two detective dramas from 2007: Feluda - The Golden Fortress and Feluda - The Mystery of the Elephant God, written by renowned Bengali director Satyajit Ray, best known for his Apu film trilogy. The adaptor, Ray Grewal, has described the detective Feluda as a mixture of Sherlock Holmes, Tintin and Indiana Jones. Prominent Bollywood actors take the lead roles in this drama, including Rahul Bose as Feluda, and Anupam Kher as his friend Lalmohan Ganguly.

Written by Alison Frank

Programmes in the series

Lights, Camera, Akshun! 13:30 Tuesday 22nd November 2016

Nightingales of India – 13:30 Monday 21st November 2016

Bollywood Jane – 14:30 Monday 21st to Friday 25th November 2016

Feluda - The Golden Fortress – 10:00 Thursday 24th November 2016

Feluda - The Mystery of the Elephant God – 10:00 Friday 25th November 2016

#LovetoRead

2016-11-07T16:10:19+00:00

Sometimes we’re allowed to indulge ourselves, and as part of the �鶹Լ��’s #LovetoRead season I had the chance to choose a book that meant a lot to me as a young reader. It was easy to decide on something by Robert Louis Stevenson. But which one? In the end, it was Kidnapped, although of course it was hard to put aside Treasure Island. To add to my happiness we managed to record Bookclub in the Hawes Inn at South Queensferry, just under the girders of the Forth Bridge, which is the very place where Stevenson is said to be started to write the story (in Room 13) and the inn from which the young David Balfour is snatched on the order of his bad uncle Ebenezer, and taken on board a ship bound for the Carolinas. Of course, it is the start of a wild adventure that begins after a shipwreck off the isle of Mull and takes David and his new friend – the Jacobite renegade Alan Breck Stewart – on a perilous journey across Scotland and finally home to Edinburgh, where he claims his rightful inheritance.

It’s a story of adventure, friendship and war. Scotland is divided after the 1745 rising – between Highlands and Lowlands, across the religious schism – and young David is blooded in a country where loyalties are preserved at a price. The red-coated soldiers of the King are ready to deal with any evidence of rebellion, and David and Alan are running for their lives. We had the novelist Louise Welsh as a guide – she’s a huge Stevenson admirer – and we spoke about the subtlety of the story-telling, the wonderful evocation of youthful innocence, the picture of a dark and divided country. Our Bookclub audience was powerfully engaged in the book – we had a couple who live in one of Stevenson’s old homes in Edinburgh – and there was a wonderful series of reminiscences about the way the book had excited them at a young age.

And a number of them spoke about how intriguing it was to come back to the book in later life and to find how dark a story it was: the evocation of a difficult but passionate friendship between two people who were on different sides of a cultural and political divide, Balfour from a Lowland, Presbyterian background whose family would always support King George, Stewart a Highland Jacobite still loyal to Bonnie Prince Charlie back in France and the idea of the restoration of a Catholic monarchy.

Above all we spoke about how Stevenson could spin a rattling good yarn with deceptive ease. He was a writer with profound psychological insights – think of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde – but he knew how to write concise, clear and uplifting prose. Over the years he’s suffered a little for being seen as ‘a children’s writer’ – imagine! – as if that is not something to be proud of. But in recent years the people who have always rated Stevenson highly (and that goes back to literary figures like Henry James) have found that his reputation has been rising. Edinburgh, his childhood home from which he had to depart because of his consumptive illness (he died in Samoa in his mid-forties in 1894), has played its part in celebrating his life and work.

And this Bookclub has done its best, too. I hope my moment of self-indulgence has made for a good programme, just as the chance to select some favourite readings and dramatizations from the Radio 4 Archive will give you some pleasure when it is broadcast on Saturday on Radio 4 Extra throughout the morning (and again in the evening – what an embarrassment of riches…)

You can listen to James Naughtie - I love to Read on �鶹Լ�� Radio 4 Extra here.

Happy reading,

Jim.

Radio 4 Extra: Corruption Season

2016-10-28T08:05:59+00:00

Dastardly! Dishonest! Deceitful! Dare we entice you to enjoy 4 Extra’s Corruption Season of comedy and dramas shining a spotlight on unethical or fraudulent conduct. Catch crooks, racketeers, charlatans and swindlers galore: